failure - write_dma issue

2012-01-06 Thread John Almberg
One of my servers -- I believe running 6.x -- developed a HD problem last 
night. The console was displaying the following, over and over again:

g_vfs_done():ad0s1d[WRITE(offset=970506240, length=-16384)error= 5
ad0: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA status=71READY,DMA_READY,DSC,ERROR error=4ABORTED 
LBA=3918703

My FreeBSD servers have been quite reliable since I started using them 4 or 5 
years ago, so I don't have much experience debugging them.

Can anyone give me a hint about what might be wrong (I assume with the HD), and 
how/if it might be fixable?

TIA: John 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau

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IP Address not working?

2011-03-25 Thread John Almberg
I have a Freebsd box that has had just one IP address for a long time. I 
am trying to add another to run a website with it's own IP, ssl cert, 
etc. I've added IP addresses to boxes before without problem, but either 
this box has a problem, or I've forgotten something important (probably 
the latter.)


on# uname -a
FreeBSD on.identry.com 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE #0: Fri May  1 
07:18:07 UTC 2009 
r...@driscoll.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64


I have the new address (66.111.0.251) configured:

on# ifconfig
em0: flags=8843UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST metric 0 mtu 1500
options=19bRXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4
ether 00:0e:0c:ea:af:c2
inet 66.111.0.250 netmask 0xffc0 broadcast 66.111.0.255
inet 66.111.0.251 netmask 0x broadcast 66.111.0.251
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX full-duplex)
status: active

The interface responds to pings:

$ ping 66.111.0.251
PING 66.111.0.251 (66.111.0.251): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.111.0.251: icmp_seq=0 ttl=20 time=16.474 ms

And IFF I am logged into the server I can access the website using lynx, 
or by using telnet to access the page:


on# telnet test.gradedstamps.com 80
Trying 66.111.0.251...
Connected to test.gradedstamps.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /test.html HTTP/1.1
host: test.gradedstamps.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:25:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (FreeBSD) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8e PHP/5.2.12 
with Suhosin-Patch

Last-Modified: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:17:16 GMT
ETag: 439155-63-49f4d93188b00
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 99
Content-Type: text/html

html
head
titleTest Page/title
/head
body
Hello, world
/body
/html


However, I cannot access the website from outside the box, even with PF 
turned off:


~ 510 $ telnet test.gradedstamps.com 80
Trying 66.111.0.251...
telnet: connect to address 66.111.0.251: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
~ 511 $

I'm stumped. Can anyone give me a clue where to look next?

Thanks:  John






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Re: IP Address not working?

2011-03-25 Thread John Almberg
Well, I figured it out. There was another machine configured with the 
same address. I was pinging another machine, in other words.


The address is in my address range, but it isn't one of my two machines 
in the rack, so I'm working with the colo guys to figure out what is 
sitting on my address.


A nice way to waste a morning!

Thanks for your help, guys.

-- John
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Re: can't use godaddy SSL cert

2010-11-25 Thread John Almberg
Don't know if this applies, but I had to install the intermediate cert to get 
the godaddy Certs to work. You can download it from the gd website.

-- John

Sent from my iPhone, so may be a bit brief.

On Nov 25, 2010, at 11:26, bluethundr bluethu...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey list,
 
 I was having a similar SSL/openLDAP problem to this last week. I had
 a chance to look at this again today and it still appears to not be
 working. I called godaddy and had the last cert cancelled and reissued
 as I had mis-typed the name of the CN on the last one.
 
 I am trying to setup a Godaddy turbo SSL certificate with an openLDAP
 2.4 server under FreeBSD 8.1.
 
 [r...@lbsd2:/usr/home/bluethundr]#pkg_info | grep openldap
 openldap-sasl-client-2.4.23 Open source LDAP client implementation
 with SASL2 support
 openldap-sasl-server-2.4.23 Open source LDAP server implementation
 
 
 
 I have setup the certificate chain in my slapd.conf like so:
 
 [r...@lbsd2:/usr/home/bluethundr]#grep -i tls
 /usr/local/etc/openldap/slapd.conf## TLS options for slapd
 TLSCipherSuite HIGH:MEDIUM:+SSLv2
 TLSCertificateFile  /usr/local/etc/openldap/cacerts/LBSD2.summitnjhome.com.crt
 TLSCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/etc/openldap/cacerts/slapd.pem
 TLSCACertificateFile  /usr/local/etc/openldap/cacerts/sf_issuing.crt
 
 I have tried each of the following certs with no luck in getting my
 cert to talk to it's CA:
 
 -rw-r--r--  1 root  bluethundr  2604 Nov 25 11:37 ca_bundle.crt
 -r--r-  1 root  ldap4604 Nov 24 18:57 gd_bundle.crt
 -r--r-  1 root  ldap1537 Nov 25 02:00 sf_issuing.crt
 
 
 and I get the same result for each when I attempt to connect to SSL on
 the LDAP server:
 
 [r...@lcent01:/tmp/Foswiki-1.1.2]#openssl s_client -connect
 ldap.example.com:389 -showcerts -CAfile sf_issuing.crt
 13730:error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or
 directory:bss_file.c:122:fopen('sf_issuing.crt','r')
 13730:error:2006D080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file:bss_file.c:125:
 13730:error:0B084002:x509 certificate
 routines:X509_load_cert_crl_file:system lib:by_file.c:279:
 CONNECTED(0003)
 13730:error:140790E5:SSL routines:SSL23_WRITE:ssl handshake
 failure:s23_lib.c:188:
 
 
 ldapsearch -h ldap.example.com -d -1 -ZZ dc=example,dc=com
 
 TLS certificate verification: depth: 0, err: 20, subject:
 /O=LBSD2.summitnjhome.com/OU=Domain Control
 Validated/CN=LBSD2.summitnjhome.com, issuer:
 /C=US/ST=Arizona/L=Scottsdale/O=GoDaddy.com,
 Inc./OU=http://certificates.godaddy.com/repository/CN=Go Daddy Secure
 Certification Authority/serialNumber=07969287
 TLS certificate verification: Error, unable to get local issuer certificate
 tls_write: want=7, written=7
  :  15 03 01 00 02 02 30   ..0
 TLS trace: SSL3 alert write:fatal:unknown CA
 TLS trace: SSL_connect:error in SSLv3 read server certificate B
 TLS trace: SSL_connect:error in SSLv3 read server certificate B
 TLS: can't connect.
 ldap_perror
 ldap_start_tls: Connect error (-11)
additional info: error:14090086:SSL
 routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
 
 It seems to indicate that it can't talk to it's CA...
 
 does anyone have any suggestions on how to make this work?
 
 thanks!
 
 
 -- 
 Here's my RSA Public key:
 gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys B6D6EAC3
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1 file system, 2 drives?

2010-07-26 Thread John Almberg
One of my clients has a server that hosts big public-access type videos. 
He started off with a separate 200G drive just for video storage 
(FreeBSD is on another drive). This video storage drive is mounted as 
/videos.


He's just bought another drive, but now I'm thinking of what to do with 
it...


I know this is probably impossible, but FreeBSD can do so many 
miraculous things, that I can't help asking...


Is it possible to use the second drive to 'expand' the /videos file 
system? So it would miraculously look like a single 400G drive?


I ask this, because logically, Im going to use the second drive the 
same way as the first: to store videos. It will be really awkward to 
have two mount points, and try to decide which video should get stored 
on which drive. And no doubt it will get more complex as we go along. It 
would be much simpler if this logical drive could just expand as needed.


Any ideas much appreciated.

-- John
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Re: 1 file system, 2 drives?

2010-07-26 Thread John Almberg

Volodymyr/Chuck,


Is it possible to use the second drive to 'expand' the /videos file system? So 
it would miraculously look like a single 400G drive?
 


The canonical way of doing this is to either create a RAID-0 concat or stripe 
volume.
   

Wow, of course... I should have thought of that.

Something like that should be just what the Dr. ordered. I will look 
into it.


Thanks: John
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Re: 1 file system, 2 drives?

2010-07-26 Thread John Almberg



If you have hardware controller with RAID capabilities, using native RAID is 
better, otherwise look towards gvinum or maybe ccd; see also:
   
I've just been reading up on RAID in my Absolute FreeBSD book, and it 
occurs to me that my client has a SCSI RAID drive chassis that he is 
using stupidly...


It's a 14 bay drive, and he's currently got seven 32G drives stuck in 
it, configured with RAID-0. This is the original 200G drive I was 
talking about. It's a few years old.


Over the next few years, this guy is going to need lots of storage for 
his videos.


After a bit of reading, I'm wondering if the best idea might be to toss 
out those 32G drives and replace them with 3 big (say, 300G) drives 
configured with RAID-5. It sounds to me like a RAID-5 array can be 
expanded by adding new drives.


QUESTION: is expansion normally a matter of just plugging in a new 
drive? Is the new drive automatically grafted onto the old drives? Or do 
you have to go through a process like, backing up the data, plugging in 
the new drive, reformatting the expanded array of drives, and restoring 
the data.


I don't know the brand/model of the RAID drive chassis, but the client 
thinks it can be switched to use RAID 5. I'm waiting for the technical 
details, but assuming it can handle RAID-5 for now.


Thanks: John
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Re: 1 file system, 2 drives?

2010-07-26 Thread John Almberg

John Almberg wrote:
If you have hardware controller with RAID capabilities, using native 
RAID is better, otherwise look towards gvinum or maybe ccd; see also: 
I've just been reading up on RAID in my Absolute FreeBSD book, and it 
occurs to me that my client has a SCSI RAID drive chassis that he is 
using stupidly...


It's a 14 bay drive, and he's currently got seven 32G drives stuck in 
it, configured with RAID-0. This is the original 200G drive I was 
talking about. It's a few years old.


Over the next few years, this guy is going to need lots of storage for 
his videos.


After a bit of reading, I'm wondering if the best idea might be to 
toss out those 32G drives and replace them with 3 big (say, 300G) 
drives configured with RAID-5. It sounds to me like a RAID-5 array can 
be expanded by adding new drives.


QUESTION: is expansion normally a matter of just plugging in a new 
drive? Is the new drive automatically grafted onto the old drives? Or 
do you have to go through a process like, backing up the data, 
plugging in the new drive, reformatting the expanded array of drives, 
and restoring the data.


I don't know the brand/model of the RAID drive chassis, but the client 
thinks it can be switched to use RAID 5. I'm waiting for the technical 
details, but assuming it can handle RAID-5 for now.

Answering my own question...

So its a HP 6402 / 128 RAID controller. From a quick skim of the manual, 
it looks like the controller has to go through an 'expansion' process 
when adding a new drive. This sounds time consuming, but more or less 
automatic -- i.e., handled by the controller.


Sounds like this might be the best way to go.

-- John
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Re: shrinking swap space

2010-07-10 Thread John Almberg

Robert  Chuck,

Thanks for your answers... they sound like good clues. I'll need to read 
up some more to understand the answers :-)


Thanks!

-- John
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shrinking swap space

2010-07-09 Thread John Almberg
Since my server locked me out last week because it was out of swap 
space, I've been monitoring the swap space every 4 hours. It started off 
with 3% used and little by little it has crept up to 17% this morning.


I've been reading up on the subject in my two FreeBSD books (Absolute 
and Complete) but neither give me a hint on how to find the program(s) 
that are slowly eating up my swap space.


Is there a utility that shows which programs are using swap space? Or 
that can help debug this problem?


Thanks: JOhn
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ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

2010-07-02 Thread John Almberg

Hi guys,

Woke up this morning and discovered that one of my FreeBSD 7.2 servers 
was down. When I try to SSH into the box, I get this:


~ 510 $ ssh m...@my.example.com
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

FTP doesn't work, either, but the DNS server on the machine responds to 
queries, and I can ping the box.


Any ideas on what might be the problem?

Thanks: John

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Re: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

2010-07-02 Thread John Almberg

Christer Solskogen wrote:

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:52 PM, John Almbergjalmb...@identry.com  wrote:

   

~ 510 $ ssh m...@my.example.com
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

 


Locked account, maybe?
   
I've tried several accounts and they all give the same result. There's 
also the fact that FTP and Apache seem to be broken, as well.




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Re: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

2010-07-02 Thread John Almberg

Bas Smeelen wrote:

On 07/02/2010 01:28 PM, John Almberg wrote:
   

Christer Solskogen wrote:
 

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:52 PM, John Almbergjalmb...@identry.com
wrote:


   

~ 510 $ ssh m...@my.example.com
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host


 

Locked account, maybe?

   

I've tried several accounts and they all give the same result. There's
also the fact that FTP and Apache seem to be broken, as well.
 

It could be that your /var filesystem filled up
   

I'm on the console, now. Looks like a swapspace problem...

The first terminal is scrolling by the swapspace messages really fast (it kills 
httpd, but then starts again).
I tried logging in on the 2nd and 3rd virtual console, but hangs after I type 
root - never prompts for password.

Is there anything I can do besides rebooting?

On that subject... does Ctrl-Alt-Del initiate an orderly shutdown?

-- John

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Re: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

2010-07-02 Thread John Almberg



On that subject... does Ctrl-Alt-Del initiate an orderly shutdown?
 


If you can't log in -- even on the console -- then rebooting is really
your only option.  Ctrl-Alt-Del should bring the system down cleanly if
you haven't disabled that functionality.  Otherwise, just toggle the power.

The symptoms you're seeing could well be due to filesystem problems or
to some filesystem filling up (/tmp is a prime suspect) or due to
running out of memory+swap.  Some sort of memory leak sounds pretty
likely actually.

Probably best to bring the system up in single user mode and run fsck on
all the filesystems manually -- that will show if you've got h/w
problems with drives and possibly with disk controllers or cabling too.
  Then check for overfull filesystems.  You may not find any -- rebooting
can clear a number of conditions where disk space is not released back
to the OS properly after use.  You may or may not find any clues as to
what went wrong in the system logs.  In the absence of any other clues,
the only option is to monitor the server closely and wait for something
similar to happen again.  Hopefully if there is a next time, you'll be
able to catch it and fix the underlying problem before it takes the
machine out a second time.

   
Yes, I can't log in. I get a login prompt, but no password prompt. I'm 
going to try ctrl-alt-del and see what happens.


Crossing fingers...

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Re: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

2010-07-02 Thread John Almberg



If you can't log in -- even on the console -- then rebooting is really
your only option.  Ctrl-Alt-Del should bring the system down cleanly if
you haven't disabled that functionality.  Otherwise, just toggle the
power.

The symptoms you're seeing could well be due to filesystem problems or
to some filesystem filling up (/tmp is a prime suspect) or due to
running out of memory+swap.  Some sort of memory leak sounds pretty
likely actually.

Probably best to bring the system up in single user mode and run fsck on
all the filesystems manually -- that will show if you've got h/w
problems with drives and possibly with disk controllers or cabling too.
   Then check for overfull filesystems.  You may not find any --
rebooting
can clear a number of conditions where disk space is not released back
to the OS properly after use.  You may or may not find any clues as to
what went wrong in the system logs.  In the absence of any other clues,
the only option is to monitor the server closely and wait for something
similar to happen again.  Hopefully if there is a next time, you'll be
able to catch it and fix the underlying problem before it takes the
machine out a second time.


   

Yes, I can't log in. I get a login prompt, but no password prompt. I'm
going to try ctrl-alt-del and see what happens.

Crossing fingers...
 

Sorry  I missed that you can't login.
Good luck
   
So, ctrl-alt-del did the trick. I was able to log in and actually, the 
whole box came up and everything seems to be working.


I thought for sure I'd find that my /var directory was full up, but it's 
only at 77% (that's the weak spot on this box... I wish I'd made the 
/var partition bigger.)


The message log is full of these messages:

38054 Jul  2 08:13:02 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(16): failed

If I run swapinfo, I get this:

[mas...@qu:log] swapinfo
Device  1K-blocks UsedAvail Capacity
/dev/ar0s1b   2055952  208  2055744 0%

I looked back in the log file to see if there were any clues when the 
problem began and found this:


Jul  2 03:19:25 qu kernel: swap_pager: out of swap space
Jul  2 03:19:26 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(7): failed
Jul  2 03:19:26 qu kernel: pid 93543 (mysqld), uid 88, was killed: out 
of swap space
Jul  2 03:19:26 qu kernel: pid 85077 (ruby18), uid 1023, was killed: out 
of swap space

Jul  2 03:19:25 qu root: Check for bad ssh behavior
Jul  2 03:20:05 qu root: Check for bad ssh behavior
Jul  2 03:20:49 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(16): failed
Jul  2 03:20:49 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(15): failed
Jul  2 03:20:49 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(14): failed
Jul  2 03:20:49 qu kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace(16): failed
Jul  2 03:20:49 qu last message repeated 2 times

It pretty much goes on forever from there.

Is there any other place I can look for clues as to why I ran out of 
swap space? This machine is basically a webserver, running apache/mysql 
and ruby on rails. It's been running for over a year with no problems. 
No new software introduced on the box, recently.


-- John

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Re: Add watermark to PDF

2010-06-02 Thread John Almberg
Thanks CP, Nathan,  Kevin. You've given me some good places to start 
looking.


-- John


C. P. Ghost wrote:

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:15 PM, John Almbergjalmb...@identry.com  wrote:
   

So basically this script would have to read in the PDF and (ideally) a plain
text file, and output a PDF with the plain text merged into the PDF as a
footer.
 


Maybe this will help?
   http://www.reportlab.com/software/opensource/rl-toolkit/
There's even a FreeBSD port for it:
   print/py-reportlab2

   

Any ideas, much appreciated.

-- John
 


-cpghost.

   


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Add watermark to PDF

2010-06-01 Thread John Almberg
I've just spent a couple hours googling for an answer to this question 
without success... This is probably a bit off topic, but this list seems 
to be able to come up with answers to questions that stump other lists, 
so...


I would like to add a customized footer (a stamp or watermark) to an 
existing PDF, like the guys at Pragmatic Programmers do with their PDFs.


So basically this script would have to read in the PDF and (ideally) a 
plain text file, and output a PDF with the plain text merged into the 
PDF as a footer.


Anyone know of an existing utility that might do something like this?

Probably not, so anyone know of a PDF library that I could use to roll 
my own? I'm competent in Perl, PHP, and Ruby, and at this point, would 
be willing to learn Sanskrit if it could solve this problem for me. 
Unfortunatley, I've never done any PDF programming, so not quite sure 
where to start.


Any ideas, much appreciated.

-- John
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Why does soft link in /var/log disappear?

2010-02-15 Thread John Almberg
I didn't make my /var partition big enough, way back when, and have had to move 
my /var/log/www directory to another partition. I did this by moving the 
directory, and then adding a soft link from /var/log to the moved directory, 
using something like:

ln -s /home/wwwlog /var/log/www

This works great, but something is deleting the soft link. 

Is there anything in the freebsd base that 'cleans up' the /var/log directory? 
Any hints on how I can discover what is doing this clean up, or a way to 
protect this link from being deleted?

Thanks: John


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required apache22 modules

2010-01-07 Thread John Almberg
I'm installing Apache22 on a new server and for once, I'd like to 
install just the modules I need, instead of the default mess.


I've been googling for this answer, but can't seem to find it: Are any 
apache modules *required*? Or can I just disable them all and then add 
them in as I need them?


-- John
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cvsup blues

2010-01-04 Thread John Almberg
I am trying to update my ports collection on a new server using cvsup. 
I've added a mirror site to my ports-supfile, but keep getting the 
following error message:


on# csup -g -L 2 /root/ports-supfile
Parsing supfile /root/ports-supfile
Connecting to cvsup7.us.FreeBSD.org
Cannot connect to 64.215.216.140: Operation not permitted
Will retry at 09:13:28


I've tried several different mirror sites, so the problem seems to be on 
my side (unless all the mirror sites are locked?)


Any ideas?

Thanks: John
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Re: cvsup blues

2010-01-04 Thread John Almberg

The csup servers do have a rate-limiting feature on them. However, I
think it gives a different error message than that. Operating not
permitted makes it seem more like a networking issue on the local
machine. Can you ping the IP? Firewall blocking outgoing ports?


I pinged a few of the mirror sites to choose the fastest one, so, yes I 
can ping them.


I turned off PF temporarily to see if it could be a firewall problem. No 
difference.


I'm also having problems installing ports. I wanted to get vim installed 
while trying to figure out this port upgrade problem. Vim uses lots of 
files and a bunch of them downloaded when I typed 'make install clean', 
but then I ran into a batch that give an error message like below.


I can fetch the files manually, using wget (which installed with no 
problem), but I'm getting a lot of these problems, which means its going 
to take about 5 years to install all the ports I need.


I've never had this problem, before... weird.

-- John

= Attempting to fetch from 
ftp://ftp1.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/gnome2/.

fetch: libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz: local modification time does not match remote
= Attempting to fetch from ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/.
fetch: libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz: local modification time does not match remote
= Attempting to fetch from ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/libxml/.
fetch: libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz: local modification time does not match remote
= Attempting to fetch from ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/.
fetch: libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz: local modification time does not match remote
= Attempting to fetch from 
ftp://ftp1.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/gnome2/.

fetch: libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz: local modification time does not match remote
= Couldn't fetch it - please try to retrieve this
= port manually into /usr/ports/distfiles/gnome2 and try again.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/textproc/libxml2.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/textproc/libxml2.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/textproc/libxslt.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/textproc/libxslt.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/x11/libxcb.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/x11/libX11.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/libXt.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/editors/vim.


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Re: cvsup blues

2010-01-04 Thread John Almberg

John Almberg wrote:

I am trying to update my ports collection on a new server using cvsup.
I've added a mirror site to my ports-supfile, but keep getting the
following error message:

on# csup -g -L 2 /root/ports-supfile
Parsing supfile /root/ports-supfile
Connecting to cvsup7.us.FreeBSD.org
Cannot connect to 64.215.216.140: Operation not permitted
Will retry at 09:13:28


I've tried several different mirror sites, so the problem seems to be on
my side (unless all the mirror sites are locked?)


Okay, well, it must have been a short-term problem on the mirror side. I 
tried it several times over the last 1/2 hr, and it suddenly started 
working...


Computers!

-- John
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Virtual box to do cross-browser testing

2009-11-16 Thread John Almberg
Anyone have experience using Sun's Virtual Box on FreeBSD? I am 
looking for a way to run virtual Windows machines to do cross-browser 
testing...


Don't need sound card or anything complex... if I can get it working 
good enough to have access to IE 6, 7, and 8 (with 3 different virtual 
boxes, probably), that would be enough for me.


But before I jump through the hoops of setting up a new FreeBSD box and 
setting up this virtual box software, I'd like to hear how others have 
fared with this software.


Any experience, much appreciated.

-- John
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Re: Virtual box to do cross-browser testing

2009-11-16 Thread John Almberg

Jonathan Chen wrote:

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:02:59AM -0500, John Almberg wrote:

Anyone have experience using Sun's Virtual Box on FreeBSD? I am
looking for a way to run virtual Windows machines to do cross-browser
testing...


I've been using it to do some .NET programming, and it's been pretty
good. No major problem, aside from the lack of CPU cycles the odd time
or so.


That sounds encouraging enough to give it a try. Thanks.

-- John
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Re: Fwd: upgrading remote server

2009-10-19 Thread John Almberg
Okay! After a lot of googling/reading I successfully upgraded to 7.2, 
now I'm trying to upgrade ports...


I ran portmaster -L and got a long list of ports that need upgrading... 
From my reading, it seems like the only way to do this is to go through 
the list, one by one, and either (1) delete unused ports or (2) upgrade 
ports that seem to need it.


This is going to take quite a bit of time... am I missing something 
(other than the fact that I should have been doing this all along?)


-- John
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upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg
I just reinstalled a server that was out for repair. It's on the network 
 in the data center, but no applications are running on it, yet.


I thought this would be a perfect time to upgrade the OS. It's currently 
running 6.2 Release, I want to bring it up to 7.2 Release.


I'd like to do this remotely, if possible, since going to the data 
center is a pain.


I've been reading the upgrade chapter in Absolute FreeBSD, and it 
seems like the best option is to download the source files for 7.2 and 
upgrade from sources.


 Sanity check: Am I on the right track?

I've never done a major upgrade remotely, but I guess the worst that can 
happen is I have to burn a CD and drive into the data center.


Any thoughts, much appreciated.

-- John
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Re: upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg

I've been reading the upgrade chapter in Absolute FreeBSD, and it seems
like the best option is to download the source files for 7.2 and upgrade
from sources.



I've done it several times via ssh between major and minor versions without
any problems. You should read /usr/src/UPDATING for any additional
information.


Updating the source tree was no problem. So far so good. I'm running 
'make buildworld' right now.


Luckily I have a remote serial port thingy, so I should be able to login 
to the box, even if ssh doesn't come up after reboot.


Pretty interesting, though I'd be a lot more nervous if this box had 
live applications running... Which is why it was still on 6.2!


Hopefully after this I'll feel more comfortable doing major upgrades, 
instead of just running freebsd-update.


-- John
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Re: Fwd: upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg

Jeronimo Calvo wrote:

quiet interesting that serial port thingy! do you know the name of it
btw? I will be interested to install on of them... and start saving
some money going to my office :D when i can not use even ssh...


I had to look it up... Here's what I have:

http://www.digi.com/products/serialservers/portservertsmei.jsp#overview

Basically, this box needs its own internet connection. You can ssh into 
it. I think it has some sort of embedded Linux system.


Then the box has two serial port connectors -- this is a real rs-232 
type interface, that most servers have, but hardly any desktops have 
anymore.


You plug the serial connector into the computer and that's it. Knock on 
wood, I've never needed it, but I bought it for just this sort of thing.


My build-world is finally done, so going to see if it works, now...

-- John

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Re: Fwd: upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg

My build-world is finally done, so going to see if it works, now...


H'mmm... I have a question about the kernel configuration file...

I am currently using a customer kernel. Unfortunately, this machine was 
installed by someone before my time, so I don't know the details.


Can I make a 7.2 kernel using this 6.3 custom kernel configuration file? 
Or should I start with the 7.2 generic, and somehow customize it correctly?


I've been looking at the custom  configuration file... so far, I can see 
that it:


1. adds PF to the kernel
2. deletes unneeded drivers, like unused RAID cards and unused serial 
interfaces.


Or should I just try the GENERIC kernel, and maybe just add PF to it?

-- John
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Re: Fwd: upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg

The 7.2 GENERIC kernel includes PF, but not ALTQ.


Okay, that's good to know. Thanks.

Well, I was able to boot the new kernel in single user mode, but when I 
tried to run mergemaster -p, it couldn't find mergemaster.


It looks like only one file system is mounted... nothing in /usr for 
instance. I should be able to figure out how to mount the others, but my 
brain is done for today. Will tackle this fresh tomorrow, but good 
progress, I think!


Thank goodness for that serial port thingy... not sure how I would have 
booted into single user mode, otherwise.


-- John




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Re: Fwd: upgrading remote server

2009-10-18 Thread John Almberg



After you boot into single user mode, type mount -a. Then cd to /usr/src
and run mergemaster -p.


This worked, thanks.

mergemaster -p then ran fine with no errors, but when I tried 'make 
installworld', it stopped on this error:


--
cd /usr/src; make -f Makefile.inc1 install
=== share/info (install)
=== lib (install)
=== lib/csu/amd64 (install)
install -o root -g wheel -m 444  crt1.o crti.o crtn.o gcrt1.o /usr/lib
install: crt1.o: No such file or directory
*** Error code 71

Stop in /usr/src/lib/csu/amd64.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src/lib.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
#


Ah well, tomorrow is another day!

-- John
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Re: reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-11 Thread John Almberg

Ivan Voras wrote:


There is another thing you can try. Judging from the process size you've
given it looks like you are not using PHP or a similar Apache module.
Also, you didn't specify anything so I assume you are using the default
configuration, which operates in prefork mode - MPM_PREFORK, which
means a separate process is forked for every request.

If all of this is true, you can trivially switch to the worker-threaded
MPM in which every Apache process (which will be of comparable size to
the one you currently have) will handle a large number of request. In
effect, instead of e.g. 50 Apache processes active for 50 connections,
you will have 2-3 Apache processes.

Enable WITH_MPM=worker in /etc/make.conf to enable this.


I am using PHP, in fact. I've listed all the loaded modules below, and 
marked the ones I added with an '*'. I need the proxy modules because I 
use Apache as a front end for Mongrel.


BTW, this is Apache 2.2 on FreeBSD 7.1

This WITH_MPM=worker sounds interesting. I'll have to read up on it. I 
guess there is some downside to enabling it, like slower performance?


-- John

Loaded Modules:
 core_module (static)
 mpm_prefork_module (static)
 http_module (static)
 so_module (static)
 authn_file_module (shared)
 authn_dbm_module (shared)
 authn_anon_module (shared)
 authn_default_module (shared)
 authn_alias_module (shared)
 authz_host_module (shared)
 authz_groupfile_module (shared)
 authz_user_module (shared)
 authz_dbm_module (shared)
 authz_owner_module (shared)
 authz_default_module (shared)
 auth_basic_module (shared)
 auth_digest_module (shared)
 file_cache_module (shared)
 cache_module (shared)
 disk_cache_module (shared)
 dumpio_module (shared)
 include_module (shared)
 filter_module (shared)
 charset_lite_module (shared)
 deflate_module (shared)
 log_config_module (shared)
 logio_module (shared)
 env_module (shared)
 mime_magic_module (shared)
 cern_meta_module (shared)
 expires_module (shared)
 headers_module (shared)
 usertrack_module (shared)
 unique_id_module (shared)
 setenvif_module (shared)
 version_module (shared)
 *proxy_module (shared)
 *proxy_http_module (shared)
 *proxy_balancer_module (shared)
 *ssl_module (shared)
 mime_module (shared)
 *dav_module (shared)
 status_module (shared)
 autoindex_module (shared)
 asis_module (shared)
 info_module (shared)
 cgi_module (shared)
 dav_fs_module (shared)
 vhost_alias_module (shared)
 negotiation_module (shared)
 dir_module (shared)
 imagemap_module (shared)
 actions_module (shared)
 speling_module (shared)
 userdir_module (shared)
 alias_module (shared)
 *rewrite_module (shared)
 *php5_module (shared)
Syntax OK
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Re: reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-11 Thread John Almberg

PHP is incredibly buggy and will in all probability break Apache if you
try running it in threaded mode.


That doesn't sound so good.

As a sanity check... I've been studying these processes all morning. 
When I use 'top', the column RES shows the amount of RAM used for the 
process, correct? This is the value I'd like to get down.


Okay, well after a morning studying and observing, and thanks to 
suggestions from you all, I think I understand enough to start turning 
modules off.


Crossing fingers...

-- John
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Re: reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-11 Thread John Almberg

Linda Messerschmidt wrote:

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 1:48 PM, John Almbergjalmb...@identry.com  wrote:

As a sanity check... I've been studying these processes all morning. When I
use 'top', the column RES shows the amount of RAM used for the process,
correct? This is the value I'd like to get down.


How many Apache processes are involved, total?  Because I'm really not
sure how much success you're going to have with this.  You're at 22mb
already (by comparison mine are 44mb *without* mod_php).  How much
improvement are you looking for?  A couple of megs?


Yup... that's about what I got for my troubles. After turning off all 
the unneeded modules, they are now running about 17mb. Not a huge 
improvement...


I definitely need more ram and I have it on order. While I'm waiting for 
it, I figured I'd see what processes I could slim down.


My basic problem is at peak usage times (usually in the afternoon), the 
server starts using swap space, and then response times really bog down.


This is on a 'spare' server that is temporarily in service while one of 
our 'big' servers is out for repair. This 'spare' server only has 1G ram 
and was never really meant for web server service.


It's trying it's best. I'm just trying to lighten the load for it.

-- John
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Re: reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-11 Thread John Almberg



You've misunderstood what you've done.  You have not saved a couple of
MB, you've saved one.  Of the 18 MB, nearly all of it is shared memory
which is only loaded once.


Ah... Okay. That actually makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.


1GB web server is more than enough for basic www server, even more.


I would have thought, but some times it really gets slow and I'm trying 
to figure out why. When bogged down, the load averages are low. The main 
thing that looks out of whack is swap space, which seems to never go 
below 7%, but sometimes gets up into the 20%-30% range. When it gets 
that high, the server slows to a crawl.



last pid: 12732;  load averages:  0.44,  0.31, 0.27 
  up 34+03:57:58  16:16:27

187 processes: 2 running, 185 sleeping
CPU:  4.5% user,  0.0% nice,  1.1% system,  0.0% interrupt, 94.4% idle
Mem: 425M Active, 106M Inact, 268M Wired, 3160K Cache, 110M Buf, 176M Free
Swap: 2008M Total, 150M Used, 1858M Free, 7% Inuse
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Re: reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-11 Thread John Almberg

In this case you don't want to look at processes with big RES, you
want to find processes with a big difference between RES and SIZE
and/or the ones with flat-out largest SIZE.  Try sorting top by SIZE
and see what bubbles up.  (Ignore rpc.statd if it's running.)


Huh... okay. That's interesting.

Well the biggest SIZE process is mysql, followed by three mongrel 
instances (for a ruby on rails app), and then a bunch of httpd processes.


Mysql is optimized for a small server, there isn't much I can do about 
the size of the Rails app, so the apache instances seemed like the 
logical place to start.


I'm starting to wonder about the Swap info from top... it never changes. 
It has said the same thing all day, since I've been watching it. Does 
that make sense?


Swap: 2008M Total, 150M Used, 1858M Free, 7% Inuse

-- John
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reducing size of apache instances

2009-09-10 Thread John Almberg
My Apache 2.2 instances are running about 18 Meg each. I've been 
thinking about doing something to trim these down, and I think tomorrow 
is the day to take action. They are getting out of hand.


I've done a bit of research on this. I think the way to get started is 
to eliminate unused modules. Problem is, I know which ones I need, since 
I purposefully added them. I *don't* know which ones I don't need, if 
you see what I mean, since I inherited them from the default configuration.


I assume that some are critical to the basic operation of Apache. I am 
hoping I can google a list of these tomorrow. Obviously these I'll have 
to live with.


But what about the set that is left after I remove the ones the system 
needs, and the ones I need? How do I know which ones I can safely turn 
off? All I can think of is a trial and error process (i.e., turn them 
off one by one and see if anything breaks.)


Is there a better way?

-- John
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measuring mysql usage

2009-08-31 Thread John Almberg

Anyone know of a tool that can measure mysql usage per mysql user?

My database is getting hammered by something, but I'm having a hard  
time figuring out what. It seems to come and go. Perhaps I have one  
or two websites that are just getting a lot of traffic, and maybe  
they just need their own machines. I'm not sure, which is why I'm  
looking for ways to start monitoring these sites and their resource  
usage - particularly db usage - more closely.


Any thoughts or tips, much appreciated.

Thanks: John

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Re: measuring mysql usage

2009-08-31 Thread John Almberg
Check out mTop.
http://mtop.sourceforge.net/

Okay, got this running from ports. Cool tool, but after reading the man
page and fooling around with it for a bit, I don't see how you can monitor
usage by user with it. Am I missing something?

-- John

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Can partitions span more than one drive?

2009-08-26 Thread John Almberg
Now that I've got my rsnapshot backup server working beautifully,  
backing up several servers to a central backup server (I like this a  
lot), I have a problem...


I built my backup server from a machine I had lying around. It has  
two 140G hard drives. I dedicated one drive to a /backup partition.  
Unfortunately, that is now running at 88% capacity... i.e., only 16G  
left...


Now that I know this approach is going to work, I'm going to run out  
and buy a big drive.


Question: is it possible to just expand my existing /backup partition  
to encompass both the current drive and the new drive? I'm guessing  
not, since Chapter 8 in Absolute FreeBSD says that a partition is  
part of a slice, which is part of a physical drive, but maybe some  
bright person has come up with an app that overcomes that limitation.


Thanks: John
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Re: What should be backed up?

2009-08-24 Thread John Almberg
If you have any databases or ldap service, then you want to add  
those as well, but it is recommended to dump these rather than  
backup the files themselves.


I'm learning a lot from this thread. Thanks for all the suggestions.

The paragraph above raises one more question... how to use the  
backup_script feature of rsnapshot.


There is a mysql database on the server I want to backup. At the  
moment, I have a cron script on the web server that periodically  
dumps the database into one of the directories that gets backed up.  
This works fine, but I am about to experiment with the backup_script  
feature of rsnapshot.


I'll be darned if I can find an example in the HowTo or on the web  
for using backup_script remotely, but I'm hoping it's possible...


I'd like to have the backup script on the backup server, rather than  
the remote server. The difference is small for one server, but if you  
are backing up several servers, or several hundred servers, it would  
be much nicer for all the backup configuration and scripts to be on  
the backup server, rather than scattered around on the net.


So, I'm going to take the trial and error approach to getting this to  
work today, unless someone has actually done this and can provide any  
information (for example that's impossible... the backup script  
needs to be on the remote server would save me a lot of work!)


Thanks: John
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Newbie discovers two useful apps...

2009-08-24 Thread John Almberg
Even after a year or so of administering a number of FreeBSD servers,  
I still consider myself to be a newbie (see my various posts for  
evidence of this fact!)


I've been hoping to have something useful to contribute back, and I  
suddenly realized there are probably newbies that are even newbier  
than I. Hard to believe, but true!


You pros can flip to the next post, there's nothing here for you, but  
my fellow newbies may find this interesting...


Anyway, this weekend I 'discovered' two VERY useful utilities:

1. The 'at' command: http://tinyurl.com/nzz5a9

I don't know about you, but I am constantly promising clients that  
something will happen at an odd hour of the day or night. A typical  
example is someone who wants some promotion to end at 7:30 am.  
Accomplishing this is pretty simple, but has required me to log into  
the server to manually execute some command, or write some tiny  
script and have it execute by cron in some tortured way.


Super inconvenient, or a waste of time, or worse (if you forget).

But this weekend I discovered the 'at' command. The man page gives  
you the details, but basically it allows you to say execute that  
command or set of commands at this time on this day. You can set up  
the 'at' command to do what you need to do at 2am on Tuesday and  
forget it. No more setting alarms or forgetting. And it's dead easy  
to set up. I can't believe I haven't found this sooner. Fantastic.


2. DJB Daemontools: http://thedjbway.org/daemontools.html

Lots of programs that are meant to run as daemons come packaged with  
a nice rc.d script. You just configure them in /etc/rc.d and they  
come up automatically when you reboot.


But not all, and frankly I have never had time to figure out how to  
write a rc.d script. I really, really needed to get a linux-oriented  
daemon to work this weekend -- rubycas-server, if you are interested.  
But it doesn't have an rc.d script. Bummer.


However, I run tinydns as my dns server, and that program doesn't use  
rc.d scripts, either. DJB has his own way of doing things,  
apparently. The standard way to install tinydns has you install  
another DJB product called daemontools. Daemontools is good for,  
well, getting daemons to run at boot time, in a fairly platform  
independent way (UNIX only, of course).


Anyway, I dimly remembered this and dug into the DJB docs. Some will  
wonder why I found it easier to read a DJB doc than to read how to  
write a rc.d script... An excellent question, but in 5 minutes, I had  
my rubycas-server running under daemontools. It is that easy. I still  
don't know how to write an rc.d script, but I have to believe it  
would take me more than 5 minutes to learn and write. If you have  
daemons running, that you started manually from the command line, and  
are just hoping you'll remember to re-start them the next time you  
reboot, you should really check out daemontools...


Much better than putting a reminder in your MOD (Me??? I would never  
do that!!!)


-- John

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What should be backed up?

2009-08-21 Thread John Almberg
I am currently using rsnapshot to back up these directories on a  
FreeBSD 7.2 webserver:


/etc
/usr/home
/usr/local
/var/cron

These directories contain all the data and config files that I use...  
I think...


Question: am I missing anything crucial?

Thanks: John
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Re: What should be backed up?

2009-08-21 Thread John Almberg
QUOTE

My general advice is to back up everything and then explicitly
excluding those things that you know that you don't need.  Here is my
exclude list from my rsnapshot.conf

  exclude /var/log
  exclude /var/tmp
  exclude /usr/obj
  exclude /usr/ports/distfiles
  exclude /usr/local/squid

Also I backup by file system, so I'm already excluding /tmp

UNQUOTE

Interesting...

That raises another question... How feasible is it to restore a server
from these backups? Is it really possible to install 7.2 on a new machine
and then just copy the backed up data onto the new machine?

I guess I should really verify the value of my backups by trying to do
exactly that!

-- John

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Re: svn+ssh server only

2009-07-28 Thread John Almberg
So the only one you had marked was the svnserve-wrapper ? in Make  
config


No, I just used the default config. You don't need svnserve-wrapper  
(what ever that is). You just run svnserve as a daemon, and access it  
like svn://host.name/project/trunk/


Note the importance of PF to control access, otherwise, your svn  
server will be wide open. But since PF allows me (or rather, any one  
or process using an allowed IP address) to access the repository  
without authentication, use is really simple and straight forward.


This is a pretty simple set up and probably only works well for  
single-user repositories, but that's exactly my situation.


-- John

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Re: limit to number of files seen by ls?

2009-07-27 Thread John Almberg

understanding what is going on. I'm reading up on this, and as soon
as I know enough to either understand the issue, or ask an
intelligent question, I will do so...


When a program is executed with arguments, there is a system  
imposed limit on
the size of this argument list. On FreeBSD this limit can be seen  
with sysctl

kern.argmax, which is the length in bytes.
When you do ls *, what really happens is that the shell expands  
the asterisk
to all entries in the current directory, except entries starting  
with a dot

(hidden files and directories). As a result, ls is really called as:
ls file1 file2  fileN

If the string length of file1 to fileN is bigger then kern.argmax,  
then you

will get argument list too long error.


Mel,

What I get is this:

 sysctl kern.argmax
kern.argmax: 262144

Which is why I'm starting to think that (a) my problem is different  
or (b) I'm so clueless that there isn't any problem at all, and I'm  
just not understanding something (most likely scenario!)


I'm going to write a little script that generates a bunch of files to  
test my hypothesis that once I get more than n files in a directory,  
some things stop working correctly, like ls and ftp directory  
listings, and to discover the value of n. That will give me some hard  
data to work with.


This problem has been nagging at me for a while, so it's time I nail  
it down once and for all...


I'll be back...

-- John



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Re: svn+ssh server only

2009-07-27 Thread John Almberg


On Jul 26, 2009, at 7:35 PM, Kalle Møller wrote:


Hi

I'm trying to make a ssh+svn server only (apache is installed, but  
that is

for view.vc)


For what its worth, I just built a new svn server (to replace my old  
apache-based svn server that should have been replaced years ago, but  
it kept on doing the job).


This time, I used a very simple set up, using svnserve without any  
authentication. I use pf to limit access to the small number of IP  
addresses that I use. This setup is super-simple, fast, and secure  
enough for my needs.


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Re: limit to number of files seen by ls?

2009-07-26 Thread John Almberg


On Jul 26, 2009, at 4:45 AM, Mel Flynn wrote:


On Saturday 25 July 2009 23:34:50 Matthew Seaman wrote:


It's fairly rare to run into this as a practical
limitation during most day to day use, and there are various  
tricks like

using xargs(1) to extend the usable range.  Even so, for really big
applications that need to process long lists of data, you'ld have  
to code

the whole thing to input the list via a file or pipe.


ls itself is not glob(3) aware, but there are programs that are,  
like scp. So
the fastest solution in those cases is to single quote the argument  
and let

the program expand the glob. for loops are also a common work around:
ls */* == for f in */*; do ls $f; done

Point of it all being, that the cause of the OP's observed behavior  
is only
indirectly related to the directory size. He will have the same  
problem if he

divides the 4000 files over 4 directories and calls ls */*


H'mmm... I haven't come back on this question, because I want my next  
question to be an intelligent one, but I'm having a hard time  
understanding what is going on. I'm reading up on this, and as soon  
as I know enough to either understand the issue, or ask an  
intelligent question, I will do so...


Thanks for all the comments...

-- John

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limit to number of files seen by ls?

2009-07-22 Thread John Almberg

I seem to have run into an odd problem...

A client has a directory with a big-ish number of jpgs... maybe 4000.  
Problem is, I can only see 2329 of them with ls, and I'm running into  
other problems, I think.


Question: Is there some limit to the number of files that a directory  
can contain? Or rather, is there some number where things like ls  
start working incorrectly?


-- John


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Re: SSO solution in ports?

2009-07-17 Thread John Almberg
Well, after a week of looking, I think I am going to go with a CAS  
solution, rubycas-server and rubycas-client. This supports several  
methods of authentication, including SQL, ActiveDirectory, LDAP, and  
GoogleAccounts. SQL is probably good enough for my application at the  
moment, but the LDAP option might come in handy someday. And it  
integrates nicely with Rails apps, which is my target platform.


I looked at OpenID, which Rails also has good support for, but to my  
mind, it's just too complicated for the average user to use. I  
remember the first time I had to set one up, it was quite difficult  
to understand what it was they were looking for. I think it would  
scare away the average, non-technical, website user.


Thanks for the ideas!

Brgds: John


On Jul 16, 2009, at 1:03 PM, Mel Flynn wrote:


On Thursday 16 July 2009 06:54:39 Bill Moran wrote:

In response to John Almberg jalmb...@identry.com:

I am trying to build a set of web applications that are accessed
through a web portal that uses a Single Sign On (SSO) solution.
Problem is, there are MANY competing SSO solutions. Since building
the client side of the SSO system is more than enough for me, I was
wondering if there are any SSO servers in ports that I can just
install and use? A CAS solution would be the best, but I'll look at
anything.


The most widely supported I know of is LDAP, and OpenLDAP works  
pretty

well.


That won't really work as LDAP can't read a browser cookie or  
maintain session

information. LDAP is a good choice as storage backend.

Your best bet is probably to use an OpenID based solution, as  
support for this
sign on method is growing in web applications, so you lessen the  
chance of
having to maintain your custom glue into the application. The  
security/phpmyid
port is one implementation that allows you to run your own OpenID  
server.


http://openid.net/
--
Mel
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~~
Websites and Marketing for On-line Collectible Dealers
~~
IDENTRY, LLC
John Almberg - Managing Partner
(631) 546-5079
jalmb...@identry.com
www.identry.com
~~



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SSO solution in ports?

2009-07-16 Thread John Almberg
I am trying to build a set of web applications that are accessed  
through a web portal that uses a Single Sign On (SSO) solution.  
Problem is, there are MANY competing SSO solutions. Since building  
the client side of the SSO system is more than enough for me, I was  
wondering if there are any SSO servers in ports that I can just  
install and use? A CAS solution would be the best, but I'll look at  
anything.


Any tips or ideas, much appreciated.

-- John

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Should DNS be on same server as webserver?

2009-07-13 Thread John Almberg
The other day, a FreeBSD 'expert' told me that it is important to  
have the DNS server for a domain on the same server as the domain's  
web server. Supposedly, this saves doing tons of DNS look ups over  
the network. Instead, they are done locally.


This makes sense to me, but I wonder if the performance difference is  
really that significant?


-- John
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Re: Should DNS be on same server as webserver?

2009-07-13 Thread John Almberg


On Jul 13, 2009, at 3:05 PM, Mel Flynn wrote:


On Monday 13 July 2009 08:36:42 John Almberg wrote:

The other day, a FreeBSD 'expert' told me that it is important to
have the DNS server for a domain on the same server as the domain's
web server. Supposedly, this saves doing tons of DNS look ups over
the network. Instead, they are done locally.


Bogus. A high-performance webserver should not be doing DNS  
lookups, other

then application driven ones, like verification of email domains upon
registration. If having hostnames in the live logs is mandatory by  
some weird
company policy or the webserver does not provide a configuration  
setting to

turn this behavior off, then more performance is gained by having the
nameserver on the network gateway as the likeliness of cache hits and
especially negative cache hits is increased. As others have  
mentioned, network
overhead is negligible. Human noticeable delays are caused by  
upstream DNS
servers slowly or not at all responding when a client IP is being  
resolved.


Secondly, a named cache size depends on available memory. A high  
performance
webserver uses plenty of that, so you wouldn't be able to grow the  
named cache
to almost caching the entire net size, which you would be able to  
on a

dedicated machine.


Thanks for all the comments on this topic. Glad I put 'expert' in  
quotes. I had a feeling...


-- John
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Re: Should DNS be on same server as webserver?

2009-07-13 Thread John Almberg


On Jul 13, 2009, at 6:27 PM, Karl Vogel wrote:


On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:03:24 -0400,
Jon Radel j...@radel.com said:


J Apache and Bind have both had their security issues over the  
years, and
J there's something to be said for running them on different  
servers to

J reduce both the all eggs in one basket factor and the ease of
J spreading an attack.  (Yes, I'm assuming what you're actually
J running)

   You can fix the security problems by dumping Bind and using djbdns.
   It's very easy to set up a caching nameserver without using all the
   memory on your system.  See http://www.lifewithdjbdns.com/ for  
more.



I actually do use djbdns. Super easy to use, once you figure it out.

-- John
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Re: Compact Freebsd 'appliance'

2009-06-19 Thread John Almberg


On Jun 18, 2009, at 7:59 PM, Charlie Kester wrote:


On Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 14:18:21 PDT Tim Judd wrote:


I've read reports (and forgotten it's source since then) that some
Intel Atom processors work well, some don't with FreeBSD.  This was
something I read within a couple months, so I would see if anyone  
here

can provide input on pros and cons on weather that particular Atom
model number is well received and well tested.


The only problems I've seen reported re Atoms was back in the days
before the FreeBSD 7.2 release (or was it 7.1?) when there were  
problems

with not recognizing the Realtek networking chip included on the Intel
motherboards.

FWIW, I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 on an Intel D945GCLF motherboard, which
has an Atom 230 CPU.  I got mine from http://www.mini-box.com.  (I  
*am*
using a Intel networking card rather than the builtin Realtek chip,  
but
only because the Realtek recognition problems still existed when I  
first

set up the machine.  One of these days I should probably see if those
problems are truly fixed, so I can recover the single PCI slot for  
some
other use.) Since this is a home machine, I can't say it's the best  
test

of whether FreeBSD runs OK on it. But I haven't had any problems with
it.


Sounds good. They are so inexpensive, I will just give it a whirl and  
see if it cuts the mustard. Speed isn't really an issue, since it's  
going to be twiddling it's thumbs most of the time. Doesn't really  
matter if it takes 10 seconds or 30 minutes to translate the videos.


Thanks: John
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Re: Compact Freebsd 'appliance'

2009-06-19 Thread John Almberg


I have a couple of Via Artigo a2000 boxes, one running FreeBSD-STABLE
(post 7.2) and the other running FreeNAS.  Both work well.  I've seen
posts from one fellow who's tracking a bug with the vge interface
under very heavy load, but both of mine stream music and do Time
Machine backups via netatalk without any trouble.  Logic Supply has a
custom FreeNAS build that recognizes the disks as SATA and that adds
support for Gb ethernet to the NIC (rolling in changes from -STABLE to
the 6.x series on which the stable FreeNAS is based).

  http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2009/05/11/custom-a2000-freenas- 
image/


They're not the cheapest place to buy the box, but they're close and
they do good support (I'm just a happy customer and I helped with the
FreeNAS image, no other association).

They're not Living Room quiet, but they're about as unobtrusive as you
can get in a little box w/out going fanless.



Also very nice looking boxes. Thanks!

-- John
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Compact Freebsd 'appliance'

2009-06-18 Thread John Almberg
I have a client who has an application that he wants to deploy in his  
customer's offices as a headless 'appliance'. Basically, just a black  
box that you can plug into a Lan, turn it on, and it runs. No floppy  
disk or CD, no monitor/keyboard, just remotely managed.


This application won't store any critical data, so it doesn't need  
redundancy. It just needs to be reasonably reliable, compact, and quiet.


My first recommendation was to use a Mac Mini, but that excellent bit  
of hardware was deemed 'not professional enough'. So now I am looking  
for a compact pc that can run FreeBSD, of course. I think it probably  
just needs a power supply, tiny motherboard with onboard ethernet,  
usb, etc., and hard drive.


If anyone has a recommendation (or if their are any vendors lurking),  
please shoot me an email off list. I'll compile a list of  
recommendations and post it all at once, in case anyone else is  
interested in this.


Thanks: John -- jalmberg at identry dot com
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Re: Compact Freebsd 'appliance'

2009-06-18 Thread John Almberg

There was a discussion on this a few days ago. I happen to have one of
these Atom based systems, a Shuttle X27D:

CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU  330   @ 1.60GHz (1596.01-MHz 686-class  
CPU)

  Origin = GenuineIntel  Id = 0x106c2  Stepping = 2

Features=0xbfe9fbffFPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,P 
GE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE
   
Features2=0x40e31dSSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,b2 
2

  AMD Features=0x2010NX,LM
  AMD Features2=0x1LAHF
  Cores per package: 2
  Logical CPUs per core: 2
real memory  = 2137915392 (2038 MB)
avail memory = 2086662144 (1989 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: Shuttl Shuttle 
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  1
 cpu2 (AP): APIC ID:  2
 cpu3 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  3
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 4
ioapic0 Version 2.0 irqs 0-23


This works nicely with FreeBSD (needs only a sysctl setting to hush  
some

messages on absurd temperature measurements - all onboard devices
work).  One disappointing thing about it: the one and only fan in the
system failed about after a week of continuous operation.


I can't find the discussion you mentioned, but this Shuttle looks  
pretty nice. You can't beat the price of these little boards. Thanks.


--- John

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Re: Terminal / vim / shortcuts

2009-06-14 Thread John Almberg

I edit python code in vim using Terminal on xfce.  I find myself, not
surprisingly, having to exit insert mode and save changes  
frequently
(when making code changes and wishing to test the immediate  
effects of

the changes in a separate terminal).  This requires pressing 4 keys:
esc, :, w, and enter.  How can I configure a shortcut  
(ideally

using an F# key) that will perform this sequence of 4 key-presses?


This would rather be a question for the Vim mailing list.

  imap F5 esc:wbarsleep 1crgi

The purpose of the sleep is that you see the written message.


It may be off topic, but also very cool! Thanks for the question and  
the answer.


-- John
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Re: PDF inventory software

2009-06-09 Thread John Almberg


On Jun 8, 2009, at 5:17 PM, Daniel Underwood wrote:


I'm looking for a way to manage my personal collection of research
articles.  Ideally I'd like some way to keep records on authors,
keywords, journals, and publication years of articles (PDF files)
downloaded onto my local drive.

 In the course of reading literature for research, it often happens
that I find myself wanted to return to something I have previously
read, but I only recall a few things about the article, often the
author and a keyword.  Is there some inventory/database software (for
local use only) that can be easily used for this purpose?  (The
closest things that comes to mind (conceptually) is image collection
software.)

What are some of my options here?


I know this probably won't help pure FreeBSD users, but if, like me,  
you use FreeBSD for servers, and Macs for desktop, I can't resist  
recommending my favorite program of all time, Yojimbo:


http://www.barebones.com/products/Yojimbo/

This is a general purpose 'Memory Bank'. You can throw all kinds of  
information into it, tag it with keywords, and retrieve it in an  
instant. It integrates with all Mac programs, so I use it all the  
time... Any time I get a pdf or web page I think I *might* want to  
reference someday, I throw it into Yojimbo. It's also great for  
documenting how to do things, so you don't have to relearn how to do  
a certain complicated thing 6 months after you figured it out the  
first time (I hate that).


It's hard to explain how it works, but it is the most incredibly  
useful program. Wish there was something like it in ports.


-- John

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Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?

2009-06-08 Thread John Almberg

Hi,

I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get  
them from
someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w  
suppport,

which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc.


I have two Intel servers that I like a lot. I don't have on-site  
support, but it might be available from one of Intel's official  
distributors.


-- John

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Re: Backing up FreeBSD and other Unix systems securely

2009-05-18 Thread John Almberg


Is there any possibility of using your own media locally - such as
tape or a large USB attached disk?If security is such a primary
concern, I can't see sending the data to that type of offsite thing.

Get a couple of large USB SATAs and use dump(8) to back the stuff up
on them.Write them encrypted if you need.


I'd have to agree with this... After looking at a lot of options, I  
ended up building a simple freebsd server and connected it to my main  
server on a separate ethernet port via a twisted ethernet cable.  
Thus, the server and backup server had a 'private', high speed  
connection and I can pump tons of data through that connection  
without paying my colo provider for that bandwidth.


A whole server, rather than a USB drive might be overkill, but its a  
little more flexible, and I can use the backup server for a DNS  
server, and a few other things, as well.


-- John
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Re: [pure-ftpd] Security Scan question

2009-05-02 Thread John Almberg


On May 2, 2009, at 8:50 AM, Frank Denis wrote:


  Hello Josh,

Le Fri, May 01, 2009 at 08:55:10AM -0500, Josh Trutwin ecrivait :

Because I programmed a custom cart solution for one of my customers,
their merchant account is doing a monthly server scan to check for
known vulnerabilities.


  Great.


I've had to endure these scans, myself, and I must say that they  
helped a lot. The scans are pretty thorough and they made me re-think  
some things I was doing... particularly limiting access to ports that  
I thought 'needed' to be open, but actually just needed to be open to  
a small number of outside addresses. Thank goodness for PF... would  
hate to try to pass one of those scans without a flexible firewall.


-- John
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Re: Is it necessary to generate a new SSL request each year?

2009-04-30 Thread John Almberg


 You can reuse the old one.


I'm not an expert on these, but it was my understanding that
certificates carry in internal expiration date after which the
application may respond as it pleases.


Yes, but the *request* does not.
Also, if using openssl, just set the defaults in /etc/ssl/ 
openssl.cnf to your

values, so you can enter through the questions


Cool... save a minute here and a minute there... at the end of a  
year, I might have enough saved up to take lunch!


-- John


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Is it necessary to generate a new SSL request each year?

2009-04-29 Thread John Almberg
When buying a new SSL cert, I've been generating a new request each  
year... I am just about to buy another and it occurred to me that I'm  
entering the same info. Do I really need a new request file each  
year? Or can I just reuse the same one (presuming none of the info  
has changed.)


-- John

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Sorting out owner and group permissions...

2009-04-20 Thread John Almberg
I have a directory called 'scans' that is owned by 'master', but I  
want to allow 'customer' to FTP images to that directory. This is the  
way I have permissions set:


# ls -l
drwxrwxr-x  5 master  customer 251904 Apr 20 10:29 scans

The problem is that when customer ftp's a file to the directory, the  
permissions end up like this:


-rw-r-  1 customer customer  772584 Apr 20 15:28 image.jpg

When a process run by 'master' tries to copy this file to another  
directory (also owned by master), I get the following:


# cp scans/image.jpg thumbs/image.jpg
cp: scans/image.jpg: Permission denied

The only solution that occurs to me smells like a newbie kludge: to  
have a root cron job periodically chown all the images to  
master:customer. This seems like the proverbial sledgehammer. There  
must be a better way?


Any thoughts, much appreciated!

-- John

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Re: Sorting out owner and group permissions...

2009-04-20 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 20, 2009, at 2:48 PM, John Almberg wrote:

I have a directory called 'scans' that is owned by 'master', but I  
want to allow 'customer' to FTP images to that directory. This is  
the way I have permissions set:


# ls -l
drwxrwxr-x  5 master  customer 251904 Apr 20 10:29 scans

The problem is that when customer ftp's a file to the directory,  
the permissions end up like this:


-rw-r-  1 customer customer  772584 Apr 20 15:28 image.jpg

When a process run by 'master' tries to copy this file to another  
directory (also owned by master), I get the following:


# cp scans/image.jpg thumbs/image.jpg
cp: scans/image.jpg: Permission denied

The only solution that occurs to me smells like a newbie kludge: to  
have a root cron job periodically chown all the images to  
master:customer. This seems like the proverbial sledgehammer. There  
must be a better way?


Any thoughts, much appreciated!


Well, I did figure out one way that seems reasonable... since I am  
using pureftpd, I changed the upload mask in the pureftpd  
configuration so new files are created with permissions like:


-rw-r--r--  1 customer  customer   93177 Apr 20 20:12 image.jpg

This seems like a pretty good approach, but if there's a better one,  
I'm all ears!


-- John

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Upgrading from 6.3 to 7.1 -- how dangerous?

2009-04-19 Thread John Almberg
I need to upgrade a live, production server from 6.3 to 7.1. I can't  
afford to have any troubles with this server. I have Absolute FreeBSD  
and a few other BSD books, and the upgrade process looks fairly  
straightforward. That's the theory...


Real world question: how scared should I be?

I've thought about setting up a dummy server, just to practice on. Is  
this a good idea? Or am I just a nervous Nellie?


-- John

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where to grab source tarball?

2009-04-15 Thread John Almberg
I'm trying to upgrade FreeBSD from source, but my /usr/src directory  
is empty. Absolute FreeBSD glibly says to grab the source tarball  
from a FreeBSD mirror.


I found a list of mirrors here:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors- 
ftp.html


But it isn't clear to me which tarball I need to 'grab', or where it  
is on the mirror.


Basically, I want to get to the point where I can type:

cd /usr/src
make buildworld

And build FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE

I'd like to download the source to the server, rather than inserting  
a CD in the machine, since Im 2 hours away from the machine.


Thanks: John

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Re: where to grab source tarball?

2009-04-15 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 15, 2009, at 4:10 PM, John Almberg wrote:

I'm trying to upgrade FreeBSD from source, but my /usr/src  
directory is empty. Absolute FreeBSD glibly says to grab the  
source tarball from a FreeBSD mirror.


Never mind. I figured out how to do this using csup, which will help  
with later upgrades.


-- John

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How to diagnose hardware problem?

2009-04-13 Thread John Almberg
I have what looks like a hardware problem with an Intel 1U server,  
which I am using mainly as a mysql database server for some of my  
bigger website clients.


The server went down last week with a badly corrupted file system.

After spending a day trying to fix the file system, we gave up and  
did a fresh install of FreeBSD, PF, and mysql, using our daily  
backups to restore the database. It all seemed to work fine until I  
switched the websites from the temporary database server that I had  
been using, onto the restored server.


The database ran well for about 2 minutes, then the server crashed  
again. The filesystem was again corrupted so badly that we could not  
even log in to look at the logs.


We've reinstalled FreeBSD again, just to be able to SSH into the box.  
It looks like there is probably a hardware problem, like a bad power  
supply or overheating CPU that fails when the load of the database is  
applied.


Problem is, I have no idea how to determine which bits are failing.  
Can anyone suggest a favorite book or website that focuses on how to  
troubleshoot hardware issues?


Thanks: John

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Re: How to diagnose hardware problem?

2009-04-13 Thread John Almberg


First things first; if the machine is still in warranty, don't mess  
with

it but send it back to the manufacturer and demand a replacement.


It is in warranty and I am following their process. I'm hoping to  
short-circuit that process by finding the problem on my own, if  
possible. Plus, I've never really had to deal with a hardware failure  
before, so it's a good learning process.




If the machine is out of warranty, you might consider replacing it
altogether. My employer's IT department ditches PC's and servers at  
the first
failure after the warranty runs out. Accordinf to them it's cheaper  
than

repairing them.


But if you want to have a go, this might help:
http://www.daileyint.com/hmdpc/manual.htm

Basically, it's just a problem of elimination.

First check if your machine is the only one having problems at the
hosting site. Maybe they have unstable electrical power.

Then make sure that all expansion cards and RAM are well-seated, and
that all connectors are OK. Also check that there is no dust build- 
up on

e.g. fans and heatsinks. If necessary, clean carefully with (dry, oil
free) compressed air. Dust can lead to short circuits or reduced
cooling. Next, look for capacitors that have leaked fluid, or have
bulging metal end plates on the motherboard; those are dead or
dying. It's a leading cause of motherboard failure. It is possible to
replace them, but you'll need the right equipment:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fixing-motherboard,1606.html

Install a monitoring program like mbmon or healthd, and have it log to
another machine or a USB stick mounted syncronously. Monitor CPU
temperature, fan speeds and the different voltages. Not all power
supplies are created equally. See the articles at tom's hardware:
  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Components,1/Power-Supplies,6/

If you've found nothing so far, it's time to start swapping out
components, starting with the power supply.


This is all good stuff to try. Thanks.

-- John

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Fwd: How to diagnose hardware problem?

2009-04-13 Thread John Almberg

On Apr 13, 2009, at 2:32 PM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:



The database ran well for about 2 minutes, then the server crashed  
again. The filesystem was again corrupted so badly that we could  
not even log in to look at the logs.


did memtest? it looks like it's fine until you stress your hardware


I didn't, but I just installed it and am running it at the moment. So  
far, so good.


The machine has 1G of memory, but I could not get an mlock unless I  
request 100 Meg or less. That is, I need to run something like:


# memtest 100

Does this sound right? If I run with 125 Meg, I get the following:

# memtest 125
memtester version 4.0.8 (64-bit)
Copyright (C) 2007 Charles Cazabon.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (only).

pagesize is 4096
pagesizemask is 0xf000
want 125MB (131072000 bytes)
got  125MB (131072000 bytes), trying mlock ...failed for unknown reason.
Continuing with unlocked memory; testing will be slower and less  
reliable.

Loop 1:
  Stuck Address   : ok
  Random Value: ok
  Compare XOR : ok
  Compare SUB : ok
  Compare MUL : ok
etc...


-- John
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Re: C programming question

2009-04-07 Thread John Almberg

On Apr 7, 2009, at 5:41 AM, Valentin Bud wrote:


Hello community,

 I have built with a micro controller a system of power plugs that  
can be

controlled through the serial port.
I have 2 plugs that i can start/stop and check the status of them.  
This is

accomplished by sending different
letters (eg. A/W) to start/stop one of the plugs and another set of  
letter

for the other plug and one letter
to check the status.

 Taking into account the fact that my C skills are almost 0 how  
complicated

would be to write a program
so I can control that micro controller through the serial port. Or  
is there

some kind of program that can
read/write from/to the serial port from the command line. I don't  
want an

interactive program like minicom,
just a program that connects and send a command (a letter in my  
case) to the

serial port.

 Why not minicom (or any other program like it)? My goal is to be  
able to

start/stop the plugs using a web interface.
I have tried using minicom and background it but when i log out  
minicom

closes. If minicom is started i can
send commands to ttyd0 with echo, but i can't read anything from  
serial.


 Now back to my original question, how hard/complicated will it be  
to write

a C program to control the micro controller
through the serial port.

 Of course on FreeBSD :).


More complicated than you need. The last time I twiddled bits on a  
serial port, the choice was Assembler, or C, but today my choice  
would be Ruby. You can probably do whatever you want with a few lines  
of Ruby, rather than many lines of C. And since you don't know either  
language, you might as easily learn Ruby as C.


Unless you are going to start writing low level code, a high level  
language like Ruby will let you write any program you need. I haven't  
needed to write a line of C code in probably 20 years.


Check out the Ruby serial port library:

http://ruby-serialport.rubyforge.org/

The standard Ruby book is Programming Ruby (http:// 
www.pragprog.com). If you don't know programming at all, they have a  
Learn to Program book that uses Ruby as a first language.


-- John

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Re: low-level format before install?

2009-04-07 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 7, 2009, at 3:37 PM, Chuck Swiger wrote:


On Apr 7, 2009, at 12:15 PM, John Almberg wrote:
Well, I've got real problems with that database server that lost  
power over the weekend. We reloaded FreeBSD from scratch and then  
reinstalled mysql, and pf. I loaded up my database and switched  
over all my customer's websites. The database server ran fine for  
about 2 minutes, and then died. At the moment, I can't even ssh  
into the machine, although they can get into it using a keyboard/ 
monitor at the data center. In other words, sshd is not working.


That sounds like either a hardware problem (ie CPU overheating or  
marginal PSU failing under production load), or less likely, some  
kind of software misconfiguration.  System logs would be useful to  
see whether any signs of trouble are being mentioned.


Apparently, power was fluctuating drastically before they decided to  
cut power, so a hardware problem is a definite possibility. A PSU  
failure would not surprise me in the circumstances.


Assuming I can ever ssh in again, what log would hardware failures be  
reported to?


-- John
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low-level format before install?

2009-04-07 Thread John Almberg
Well, I've got real problems with that database server that lost  
power over the weekend. We reloaded FreeBSD from scratch and then  
reinstalled mysql, and pf. I loaded up my database and switched over  
all my customer's websites. The database server ran fine for about 2  
minutes, and then died. At the moment, I can't even ssh into the  
machine, although they can get into it using a keyboard/monitor at  
the data center. In other words, sshd is not working.


I am now wondering what kind of format the FreeBSD install process  
does by default, and if it is possible to do a low level format,  
first, to block out any bad sectors (not sure if this is the right  
terminology).


I'm starting to get real depressed about this machine... You would  
think a top-tier data center could keep the power on...


-- John

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Re: low-level format before install?

2009-04-07 Thread John Almberg

Thanks for all the tips. At least I have something to start with.

The guys in the data center reinstalled FreeBSD (the filesystem was  
totally corrupted again), and then ran what they called SMART test,  
which might be smartctl, and said the hard drives look good.


I am now able to get back in.

So the system ran fine until I put a load on it with the database  
(many transactions a second). This corrupted the file system again.


So I guess I need to load it enough to produce error messages  
(hopefully) but not enough to destroy the file system again.


Sounds like fun :-(

This is an Intel server, not a crummy white box, so hopefully it is  
smart enough to monitor its own hardware at least a bit. We'll see.


-- John
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Re: how to recover after power outage

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg
Check the machine-hostname.err file when you manually try and  
start MySQL.
Provided that you have mysql_enable=YES in /etc/rc.conf you  
should be able
to manually attempt to start with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server  
start (it
seems to work reliably when you type out the entire command path- 
wise).


Note that if somehow permissions on the my.cnf file got changed  
MySQL won't
start if my.cnf is world writable. Check for stale PID and  
sockets. Normally
these shouldn't be a problem as a startup will just overwrite  
them. Check
these to eliminate any wonkiness, e.g. some permission change  
isn't allowing

for MySQL to wipe the old ones.

The whateverthehostname.err log and possibly /var/log/messages  
might give
some clue for what's going on. If the database files are corrupt  
just clean
them out and replace with a backup done with dump. Ensure the /var/ 
db/mysql
tree is chowned mysql:mysql. If you had to install/reinstall from  
ports the
install should have created the appropriate uid/gid accounts.  
Check and see

if these are missing.

At any rate I wish you the best of luck. Now that you can SSH in  
you can

probably fix it up.




Okay, so my new database server is running with backup data and I am  
trying to salvage the old database, or what's left of it.


Unfortunately, it seems like what's left of it, is not much.

the /var/db/mysql directory tree is now a file:

qu# ls -l /var/db/mysql
-rwx--  2 mysql  wheel  1024 Jul  5  2008 /var/db/mysql

The situation looks hopeless to me. Is it?

Another question: given that the file system took a major hit, should  
I try to fix it, or just do a clean install? I'm leaning towards the  
clean install since I've been meaning to upgrade this machine to 7.1  
anyway.


Is there anyway to fix the file system, reliably? fsck doesn't seem  
to be able to solve all the problems.


-- John

 
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How to remove all files with a certain extension

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg

This is a real newbie question, but I can't figure it out...

I want to remove all .tar files from a directory tree. I think  
something like the following should work, but I must have something  
wrong, because it doesn't:


find . -name *.tar -exec rm /dev/null {} \;

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks: John

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Re: How to remove all files with a certain extension

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 6, 2009, at 4:57 PM, John Almberg wrote:


This is a real newbie question, but I can't figure it out...

I want to remove all .tar files from a directory tree. I think  
something like the following should work, but I must have something  
wrong, because it doesn't:


find . -name *.tar -exec rm /dev/null {} \;

What am I doing wrong?


Oh, duh... that /dev/null shouldn't be there.

-- John



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Re: How to remove all files with a certain extension

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 6, 2009, at 5:11 PM, Dan Nelson wrote:


In the last episode (Apr 06), John Almberg said:

This is a real newbie question, but I can't figure it out...

I want to remove all .tar files from a directory tree. I think  
something
like the following should work, but I must have something wrong,  
because

it doesn't:

find . -name *.tar -exec rm /dev/null {} \;


find . -name *.tar -delete

Make sure you quote your wildcards so the shell doesn't expand  
them, and use

the -delete primary to save a fork/exec for each filename.


Fantastic. I never noticed the -delete option before. Amazing what  
you can find in a man page if you know it's there :-)


Thanks: John



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How big can a tar file get?

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg
Because of a big problem I had this weekend, I need to do an  
emergency backup. I'm basically just creating a tar file of my /home  
directory.


My question: how big can a file get on FreeBSD? This tar.gz file is  
already 5G. Hard drive space is no problem, but as I'm watching this  
file grow, I'm wondering if there is some file size limit that is  
going to make this long backup abort.


Naturally, that will happen when the backup is almost complete :-)

-- John

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Re: How big can a tar file get?

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg

On Apr 6, 2009, at 7:28 PM, Adam Vandemore wrote:


John Almberg wrote:
Because of a big problem I had this weekend, I need to do an  
emergency backup. I'm basically just creating a tar file of my / 
home directory.


My question: how big can a file get on FreeBSD? This tar.gz file  
is already 5G. Hard drive space is no problem, but as I'm watching  
this file grow, I'm wondering if there is some file size limit  
that is going to make this long backup abort.


Naturally, that will happen when the backup is almost complete :-)

-- John

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System

Max file size 2^73 bytes
(8 ZiB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebibyte)


That should just about do it...

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Re: How big can a tar file get?

2009-04-06 Thread John Almberg




With the default blocksize (16384) UFS2 can deal with files up to  
128TB.

However traditional tar only supports up to 8GB while the newer ustar
format goes up to 64GB.  It seems that at least on 7.x tar creates
ustar archives by default


Well, I'm already past 10GB, so good thing I'm on 7.1.

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how to recover after power outage

2009-04-05 Thread John Almberg
Blast... my beautiful FreeBSD servers were rudely switched off when  
my data had a power outage a couple hours ago. They restored power  
about 30 minutes later, and one box came up no problem.


The other has a login prompt on the serial console, but my login does  
not work. I get a Login incorrect message, even though the username/ 
password is correct.


When I try to SSH into the box, I get this (server name changed):

$ ssh u...@example.com -p 48420
ssh: connect to host example.com port 48420: Connection refused

In other words, I seem to be locked out.

I don't want to do anything drastic without having a good idea what  
I'm doing. Any suggestions, much appreciated.


-- John

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Re: how to recover after power outage

2009-04-05 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 5, 2009, at 4:41 AM, Glen Barber wrote:

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 2:59 AM, John Almberg jalmb...@identry.com  
wrote:
Blast... my beautiful FreeBSD servers were rudely switched off  
when my data
had a power outage a couple hours ago. They restored power about  
30 minutes

later, and one box came up no problem.

The other has a login prompt on the serial console, but my login  
does not
work. I get a Login incorrect message, even though the username/ 
password

is correct.



Can you log in as *any* user?  Even root login fails?


Can't log in at all.




When I try to SSH into the box, I get this (server name changed):

$ ssh u...@example.com -p 48420
ssh: connect to host example.com port 48420: Connection refused

In other words, I seem to be locked out.

I don't want to do anything drastic without having a good idea  
what I'm

doing. Any suggestions, much appreciated.



What was the previous (estimated) uptime on the machine?


Several months, at least.


In other
words, did you change something and not/forget to restart the service?


I don't believe so, but if I forgot it, then I guess anything is  
possible.



 Have you tried ssh-ing to port 22 to see if the setting was changed
back to default?


I can't at the moment, because the guys at NYI are working on the  
box. They have run fsck, which doesn't seem to have solved the problem.




Are there any other services on this box?  If so, are they running?


The main app is MySQL. I don't think it is running, but can't really  
tell unless I can log in.


I have backups, and while NYI is trying to get this box running, I'm  
setting up a new database server, just in case...


-- John

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Re: how to recover after power outage

2009-04-05 Thread John Almberg


The main app is MySQL. I don't think it is running, but can't really
tell unless I can log in.

I have backups, and while NYI is trying to get this box running, I'm
setting up a new database server, just in case...



If you were lucky having the guys at NYI login to single user mode  
at the
console and run fsck in an attempt to clear up minor file system  
damage
would have squared things away. MySQL is not real happy if there  
has been fs

damage to the underlying files and their .bin logs.

However, not being able to log in to a basic service like SSH is  
not good.
Whether or not MySQL wants to come up SSH should still be working.  
In the
end the guys at NYI are probably going to have to do a full system  
load and

restore the last backup, and/or replace defective hardware.

I have seen old hard drives in RAID arrays that had perked along  
for years
show no hint of any problem. Power down the machine to do something  
like
blow the dust out or stick in some more memory sticks and it won't  
come up
again. Had I not powered down it may have happily run a while  
longer. I have
seen drives fail like this before, especially when they are fairly  
old. At

this stage you can only emit SIGH and replace/rebuild.

But if the NYI guys are responsible for providing you with a  
running system
the onus is on them to get it going again, at least up to a certain  
point.
After that you would need to pick up and carry the ball the rest of  
the way.


Okay, so the machine is back online and I can log in again.

The hardware is only 18 months old or so... good quality stuff, so  
hopefully nothing is physically damaged. We'll see...


Unfortunately, mysql isn't working at the moment... will make a  
backup of data (I have the previous night's backup, of course, but  
would like the latest, if possible.) Then will try to figure out  
what's working and what's not.


-- John

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Re: how to recover after power outage

2009-04-05 Thread John Almberg


On Apr 5, 2009, at 2:10 PM, Michael Powell wrote:


John Almberg wrote:

[snip]


Okay, so the machine is back online and I can log in again.

The hardware is only 18 months old or so... good quality stuff, so
hopefully nothing is physically damaged. We'll see...

Unfortunately, mysql isn't working at the moment... will make a
backup of data (I have the previous night's backup, of course, but
would like the latest, if possible.) Then will try to figure out
what's working and what's not.



Check the machine-hostname.err file when you manually try and start  
MySQL.
Provided that you have mysql_enable=YES in /etc/rc.conf you  
should be able
to manually attempt to start with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server  
start (it
seems to work reliably when you type out the entire command path- 
wise).


Note that if somehow permissions on the my.cnf file got changed  
MySQL won't
start if my.cnf is world writable. Check for stale PID and sockets.  
Normally
these shouldn't be a problem as a startup will just overwrite them.  
Check
these to eliminate any wonkiness, e.g. some permission change isn't  
allowing

for MySQL to wipe the old ones.

The whateverthehostname.err log and possibly /var/log/messages  
might give
some clue for what's going on. If the database files are corrupt  
just clean
them out and replace with a backup done with dump. Ensure the /var/ 
db/mysql
tree is chowned mysql:mysql. If you had to install/reinstall from  
ports the
install should have created the appropriate uid/gid accounts. Check  
and see

if these are missing.

At any rate I wish you the best of luck. Now that you can SSH in  
you can

probably fix it up.


Well, I had to give up, temporarily, on this server to get my clients  
back online.


I took a nice machine I had laying around, loaded a fresh copy of  
FreeBSD on it, installed mysql, and loaded the Saturday morning  
database backup.


I had to set up all the database permissions correctly, which took  
some time, but I'm happy to say that I've got all my clients back  
online with this new database server.


Now I am going to catch a couple hours sleep (this has been going on  
since 2 am). Once I restore some brain cells, I'll see if I can  
figure out what's happening with the main database server. NYI has  
taken it off line, for some reason, and I can't log into it anyway,  
at the moment.


Thanks for all the helpful advice. It's great to have this list to  
fall back on in a crisis.


Brgds: John

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Re: utility that scans lan for client?

2009-03-24 Thread John Almberg
I suspect that you don't have a switch that can port 'mirror' or  
'span'.

If you do, let us know.

Otherwise, if you *really* want to find out what is on your switched
Ethernet network, and nmap/arp etc. isn't enough, then I'd  
recommend an
application called 'ettercap'. It runs on the CLI, and a colleague  
also

has a nice GUI for it (under Linux) as well.

This will allow you to infiltrate the network at Layer-2 by arp
poisoning all connected devices, and intercepting all traffic.

Essentially, you perform a MitM, and you become the host (or in a  
small

environment the default gw) that the device is trying to talk to.

This way, you can find out not only what the host is, but what it  
is saying.


Please understand that this approach has significant side effects. You
can do extensive harm to your local network by using this approach, so
read up on it, and be careful. Know what you are doing, and know the
ramifications of simply disconnecting yourself from the network  
prior to

stopping the procedure. Not only that, but if you don't own control of
the switched environment, this is a very good way to get yourself
blocked completely from it.

This tactic, and port mirror/span/monitor are the easiest ways to know
what is really going on with regards to the wire (if you don't have
ACL's and other mitigation/protection strategies already in place).


Thanks. This is probably overkill for this little LAN. There are only  
8 machines on it, mainly servers and a big printer and this Vonage  
device. The clients are mainly wireless devices that come and go,  
depending on who is in the building.


The network is just one Cisco router and an Apple Airport Extreme for  
wireless (the best wireless access point I've ever used.) The  
wireless network just extends the wired LAN, so all wired and  
wireless devices are in the same address space. We actually have a  
couple cheap Airport Express boxes spread around the building, but  
they are essentially repeaters for the Airport Extreme, to extend the  
range. All the machines are either FreeBSD servers or Apple laptops  
(with the occasional rogue Windows laptop that sneaks in :-)


The whole network is simple and cheap, with a minimum of wires, but  
it works. It just bugged me that I didn't know the IP address of the  
Vonage box.


- John
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utility that scans lan for client?

2009-03-23 Thread John Almberg
I've tried googling for this, but I guess I don't know the name of a  
utility such as this...


What I'm looking for is a utility that can scan a LAN for attached  
clients... i.e., computers that are attached to the LAN.


I have one box (an appliance that I have no access to), that is on  
the LAN but I don't know what IP address it's using. I'd like to  
complete my network map, and that is the one empty box on my chart.


Yes, I am obsessive :-)

Any help, much appreciated.

-- John

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Re: utility that scans lan for client?

2009-03-23 Thread John Almberg

On Mar 23, 2009, at 3:10 PM, Mel Flynn wrote:


On Monday 23 March 2009 19:59:36 John Almberg wrote:

I've tried googling for this, but I guess I don't know the name of a
utility such as this...

What I'm looking for is a utility that can scan a LAN for attached
clients... i.e., computers that are attached to the LAN.

I have one box (an appliance that I have no access to), that is on
the LAN but I don't know what IP address it's using. I'd like to
complete my network map, and that is the one empty box on my chart.


security/nmap

If the box pings, you can simply scan your LAN like:
$ nmap -sP 192.168.2.0/24

Starting Nmap 4.76 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-03-23 11:05 AKDT

hosts snipped

Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (18 hosts up) scanned in 1.11 seconds

There's tons of options available (including OS fingerprinting),  
most of which

will require root to run as it needs on-the-fly changes to IP packets.


That did it. Beautiful. Thanks.

-- John

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Re: utility that scans lan for client?

2009-03-23 Thread John Almberg

On Mar 23, 2009, at 3:19 PM, David Kelly wrote:


On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 02:59:36PM -0400, John Almberg wrote:

I've tried googling for this, but I guess I don't know the name of a
utility such as this...

What I'm looking for is a utility that can scan a LAN for attached
clients... i.e., computers that are attached to the LAN.

I have one box (an appliance that I have no access to), that is on
the LAN but I don't know what IP address it's using. I'd like to
complete my network map, and that is the one empty box on my chart.


How about something as simple as arp -a? This lists the arp cache of
machines recently heard by your machine. If you know the IP address of
the machine in question and its not in your arp table, ping it.  
Then the
MAC address will appear unless there is a router between here and  
there.


No need to be root.


H'mmm. This is also very interesting.

nmap did not find this appliance, as it turns out. But arp -a did  
found something on 192.168.1.107 (see below)


server1 (192.168.1.106) at 0:13:d4:45:45:31 on en1 [ethernet]
server2 (192.168.1.107) at (incomplete) on en1 [ethernet]
server3 (192.168.1.108) at 0:23:12:f8:5e:fd on en1 [ethernet]

I'm guessing this appliance (a Vonage phone adapter) is doing  
something non-standard.


-- John

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links vs real directories

2009-03-16 Thread John Almberg
I always thought that links to real directories were pretty much the  
same as real directories, but I've just discovered a situation where  
they are not and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong...


I have a Ruby on Rails application running on a FreeBSD server. All  
Rails apps use the same directory structure, that consists of an  
application directory, plus a number of subdirectories. One of these  
sub directories is called 'config'.


I would like to move this config directory out of the main Rails app  
directory, and then add a link from the app directory to the moved  
config directory.


so:

app -- config

will become

app -- config(link) -- config

Basically, what I'm doing is:

cd ~/app # now in directory with real 'config' dir
mv config ~/shared/config
ln -s ~/shared/config config

That moves the directory and creates a functional link to it (I  
tested it), but Rails doesn't like it and refuses to run the app. The  
permissions are correct, I believe:


[mas...@on:current] ls -l
total 34
... snip ...
drwxrwxr-x  3 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 bin
drwxrwxr-x  3 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 components
lrwxr-xr-x  1 master  master26 Mar 16 11:07 config - /home/ 
master/shared/config

drwxr-xr-x  4 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 db
etc...


So, I guess a link is NOT exactly equivalent to a directory. At least  
not the way I am doing it.


I'm guessing I'm making a real newbie mistake, so if anyone can set  
me straight, I'd appreciate it.


Thank: John
 
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Re: links vs real directories

2009-03-16 Thread John Almberg


On Mar 16, 2009, at 11:22 AM, John Almberg wrote:

I always thought that links to real directories were pretty much  
the same as real directories, but I've just discovered a situation  
where they are not and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong...


I have a Ruby on Rails application running on a FreeBSD server. All  
Rails apps use the same directory structure, that consists of an  
application directory, plus a number of subdirectories. One of  
these sub directories is called 'config'.


I would like to move this config directory out of the main Rails  
app directory, and then add a link from the app directory to the  
moved config directory.


so:

app -- config

will become

app -- config(link) -- config

Basically, what I'm doing is:

cd ~/app # now in directory with real 'config' dir
mv config ~/shared/config
ln -s ~/shared/config config

That moves the directory and creates a functional link to it (I  
tested it), but Rails doesn't like it and refuses to run the app.  
The permissions are correct, I believe:


[mas...@on:current] ls -l
total 34
... snip ...
drwxrwxr-x  3 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 bin
drwxrwxr-x  3 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 components
lrwxr-xr-x  1 master  master26 Mar 16 11:07 config - /home/ 
master/shared/config

drwxr-xr-x  4 master  master   512 Mar 16 11:06 db
etc...


So, I guess a link is NOT exactly equivalent to a directory. At  
least not the way I am doing it.


I'm guessing I'm making a real newbie mistake, so if anyone can set  
me straight, I'd appreciate it.


Thank: John
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A little more information on this... from the Rails log, I can see  
that a Ruby script in the config directory cannot load ('require') a  
needed file because it can't find it:


/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in  
`gem_original_require': no such file to load -- application  
(MissingSource File)


It looks like this require statement is using a relative path, like  
'../path/to/file'. Does '..' not work properly with a soft link? In  
other words, '..', should mean ~/app, but since the config directory  
is really in '~/shared', perhaps '..' translates to '~/shared'? That  
would cause the problem finding the file.


Is there a way around this problem?

Digging in man ls, right now..

-- John

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Re: links vs real directories

2009-03-16 Thread John Almberg


On Mar 16, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Erik Trulsson wrote:


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:22:13AM -0400, John Almberg wrote:

I always thought that links to real directories were pretty much the
same as real directories, but I've just discovered a situation where
they are not and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong...


A *soft* link to a directory entry (be it a directory or a file or  
something
else) is not quite equivalent to the original entry since they are  
easily
distinguished and some programs do treat softlinks differently from  
other

targets.


I can see that, now... If I create a soft link to ~/shared/config,  
and then cd into the directory, when I type 'ls ..', I get the  
listing for ~/shared, not ~/app.


Bummer...

I've just dug through man ln, and don't see any obvious solution.  
Since this must be a problem for anyone who wants to do something  
like this, I guess I am taking the wrong approach, altogether.


Will have to re-think this

smell of burning rubber commences...

-- John

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Re: links vs real directories

2009-03-16 Thread John Almberg


On Mar 16, 2009, at 11:47 AM, John Almberg wrote:



On Mar 16, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Erik Trulsson wrote:


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:22:13AM -0400, John Almberg wrote:

I always thought that links to real directories were pretty much the
same as real directories, but I've just discovered a situation where
they are not and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong...


A *soft* link to a directory entry (be it a directory or a file or  
something
else) is not quite equivalent to the original entry since they are  
easily
distinguished and some programs do treat softlinks differently  
from other

targets.


I can see that, now... If I create a soft link to ~/shared/config,  
and then cd into the directory, when I type 'ls ..', I get the  
listing for ~/shared, not ~/app.


Bummer...

I've just dug through man ln, and don't see any obvious solution.  
Since this must be a problem for anyone who wants to do something  
like this, I guess I am taking the wrong approach, altogether.


Will have to re-think this

smell of burning rubber commences...


Okay! I guess I wasn't the first to have this problem...

lndir (in ports) solves the problem by creating a set of soft links  
for all the files in the 'linked' directory. Kinda kludgy, but it works.


-- John

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Re: / partition full

2009-03-13 Thread John Almberg

On Mar 13, 2009, at 8:46 AM, Bill Moran wrote:


In response to Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl:


good lesson to NOT make multiple partitions :)


And when a rogue app fills up /var and kills 4 other apps that could
have kept going ... are we then learning conflicting lessons?

Enterprise-class servers should have many partitions to separate  
different

functions and protect apps from each other.


This newbie admin agrees with this. Having a separate /var partition,  
in particular, has saved my bacon several times, at least until I  
figured out how to turn mysql-bin files off. The /var partition was  
at 100%, but the server kept going so I could diagnose and find the  
problem. Whew!


-- John

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Battery powered, SBC that can run BSD

2009-03-05 Thread John Almberg

Hope this isn't too off topic... And I'm not sure of my terminology...

I'm looking for a small, single board computer that can run for a  
week or two on batteries (so very low power drain), topped up by  
solar cells when the sun is out, and that can run some sort of  
unix... preferably one of the BSDs. No hard drive, obviously, or any  
other power draining peripherals.


The user interface would be a low powered LCD display plus some buttons.

The application is for a custom measuring instrument that would run  
in a marine environment.


I've been Googling for it for the last hour, but can't find what I'm  
looking for. Any ideas much appreciated.


-- John

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Re: Battery powered, SBC that can run BSD

2009-03-05 Thread John Almberg


On Mar 5, 2009, at 9:12 AM, George Davidovich wrote:


soekris.com



Nice. Thanks.

-- John
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tab-delimited to csv

2009-02-16 Thread John Almberg
Can anyone suggest a way to convert a tab-delimited file to csv using  
standard unix utilities? I could whip up a Ruby script to do it, but  
I hate to reinvent the wheel.


Thanks: John
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