Older blog entries for Boris (starting at number 119)

Just now I got a piece of spam trying to make me download a tool called "Spam Ready" which supposedly stops spam.

Who in thier right mind would trust software from a company who spams...

Time to update my content filter yet again...

Been hacking at getting a cluster running without the need for actual shared hard drives (not even for the quorum), and I'm looking at using some form of network block drivers for this. (BTW If anyone has clustered linux servers without using physical shared drives let me know)

Cyclic redundancy for today: I needed to hit google to look up some information on block drivers. Switched back to my code screen and hacked a little. Switched back to google, and entered "google.com" in the google search box.

It came back and one of the options it offers is "Show Google's cache of google.com" Nice. I wonder how many levels of cache I can go to :)

10 Jul 2003 (updated 10 Jul 2003 at 22:30 UTC) »

So there was a fire a few blocks up the street from the university yesterday.

Apart from a few hours when the power was cut to my office the fire seemed to not have any affect on the university.

Until today.

My co-worker started his holidays today.

I get into work and go get a laptop to restart the sun servers after the power cut.

I discover that security has closed the lab where we keep the main servers and our storeroom. The storm drain/sewage system/something had backed up with water poured into the warehouse and this caused the subfloor under the lab to fill to a depth of about 8 inches. This water was filled with charred sawdust and wood fragments, so we got flooded, but the place smells like a fire.

I had to move all the equipment in the lab into a store room, close the lab, reschedule two classes, notify staff and students, and deal with a dozen other issues arising from having to close a computer labs for the forseeable future.

And all I wanted to do was to finish working on my iSCSI clustering project.

Hmm. Real Weasel is a nifty bit of hardware.

Exactly what we need to remotely administer a server that locks up randomly.

My attepmt to get my PC to show the modem status lights was a dismal failure.

Earthlink's stupid dialler ate the modem status indicator a long time ago. I've been poking around Windows innards trying to find what was changed.

Last night I got the lights to display once. Just once. They never came back again. I've tried to recreate what I did so I can figure out what needs to be fixed.

Tonight I gave up. I wiped out all the dialup networking files I could find and reinstalled windows hoping that wiping out the registry and dumping new files might work.

Nope. Didn't work. Something was changed that lasts past a reinstall, and I don't know what the heck it is.

I've searched the internet for solutions, but there isn't a solution to be found.

Anyone with ideas or even better a solution should email me

A kernel ghost story...

I just discovered a real nasty thing with grub, raid and RedHat 7.3. It goes like this:

I just spent the last 2 days building a server. I have RedHat 7.3 as the os, 2 ide drives running software raid 1, and these are using ext3 as the filesystem.

7.3 has been out a while and a lot of the packages are out of date, so I do a update all RPMs to bring the server up to spec. This includes updating the kernel to 2.4.18-5. It shouldn't be a problem.

I check /boot, and it's all been updated to the correct kernel. I check grub, and these files are pointing to vmlinuz 2.4.18-5. I'm happy and I reboot.

Grub loads. It prompts with "Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)". I think "What the...?" I try booting it to see what happens, expecting obscure error codes, kernel panics, and the end of civilisation as we know it.

It starts booting, then it loads vmlinuz-2.4.18-3, alogn with the rest of the OS. Of course all the device drivers fail because the symbols are wrong. I'm amazed, astounded and astonished. I search for signs of 2.4.18-3. It's not there. Totally absent. Not a 2.4.18-3 anywhere on the server. Totally eradicated. I check two different ways just to be sure. I am totally confused, confounded and chastened. The server just semi-successfully booted a ghost; I had thought I felt a chill enter the room. I wrote that off to the AC coming on, maybe it hadn't. I think "Buh?"

I search the internet for answers - it knows everything - this has to have happened before. This will be fixed in two minutes. No problem.

I find lots of questions relating to this. No answers. Nothing. Not a clue. Not a hint.

This is a problem.

I wonder if maybe civilisation did end when I booted a kernel that didn't exist and could only have been a ghost. I idly wonder if Dr. Egon Spengler would have any ideas. He seems like the type that would know about a ghost kernel.

I assume grub is storing the config file elsewhere. It doesn't explain how it's loading the previous kernel though; it can't be storing that much data in the MBR. I try running grub-install. It won't run because it says "/dev/md0 does not have any BIOS drive". Of course not. I try forcing it to do something. Anything. Because I have everything on a raid device it refuses. I try everything short of trying to find a sharp stick and poking it, but it just won't work. By now I'm looking at losing 2 days of a server install because I have no way to get all my config files off the machine (no devices are working, remember?). By now, I'm beginning to drool and idly wondering if it will stain my shirt.

I decide that the system is pretty irreprable, and elect to try desperate measures.

init 1
...
umount /dev/md0
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /tmp
cd /tmp/boot
ls

Suddenly I see the old boot directory. vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 is there, along with the old grub files that it won't change. I wipe the drool off my chin, and type the following:

mkdir old
mv * old
cp -r /boot/* .
ls

All new files are there, I double check permissions and links. I type: sync; init 6

Grub appears on the screen. It happily prompts me to boot "Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-5)". The new kernel boots and all is right with the world again. I've exorcised the ghost of 2.4.18-3 and I can go back to breaking MySQL again.

Wow. It's so cold in here, I think my PC is running faster

It's build a borg week. Here's the recipe:

Take 4 SCA drives from some Dell servers, 2 IDE drives from a couple of other PC's. Grab a SCSI card from yet another PC, use the motherboard from an old server, and the case from another server.

Upgrade the CPU, and add some extra memory.

Fit the motherboard into the case and attach cables as required.

Add an adaptor so that the SCA drives will work with standard scsi, and fit into drivebays

Fit the SCSI card, and cable this to the SCA disks

Fit ide drives, and cable to the motherboard

Configure IDE drives as a Raid 1 linux array, and install Red Hat; configure as a bug tracking server

Cable SCSI drives to a Windows NT cluster

You're done bulding a borg...

Actually I think I'm going to have to remove the SCSI card from the setup; it seems to be confusing the NT raid card, and is probably unnessecary.

Now to finish configuring the cluster, and testing failover...

Man, I've been having some wierd problems with Borland C++. I can't get librarys to link, io.h won't #include (well it includes, it just won't recognise anything that io.h should provide...) It's being a royal pain. I wish I knew what was up with it.

Hmm. It's been a while. Lets see: I took off to visit my folks in Ireland. Did that for about 3 weeks came back and started looking for work.

Just finished debugging the christmas tree lights and now getting onto the decoration part.

I need to find out what is contained in the Philips 7.12 DVD firmware upgrade.

And thats about that...

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