Re: Spam ? - Re: Increasing partition size by removing partitions

[Paul Wootton]

I dont know if it going to be of any use, but in the past, I have used a free 
but very low level partition editing tool called Ranish 
http://www.ranish.com/part/

It does allow for moving of any partitions (or slices in BSD terms)

Watch out though, as there is no real checks done against commands you issue 
(It WILL do exactly what you ask - be it right or wrong)

I have used it (v2.44 - the lastest beta version) in the past for moving, 
growing and shrinking of NTFS and FAT32 partitions with a FreeBSD slice on the 
drive, just never tried changing a BSD slice it self

If I remember right, if you try to run the editor under windows 2000 or XP, it 
will try to create a bootable floppy disk which might be more useful to 
FreeBSD users

Like I said, it might not be any use in this instance, but probably still 
worth a look, just incase

Paul

On Sunday 28 September 2008 02:38:14 Maxim Khitrov wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 7:22 PM, Aryeh M. Friedman
>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I have a disk that is laid out with partion 0 being NTFS and 1 being
> > FreeBSD.  I want to remove the NTFS partition and grow the FreeBSD one
> > but all the docs I have seen only talk about how to do this if the new
> > part of the partition is at the end of the partition you wish to grow.  
> > How do I go about this?
>
> Assuming that there is no (free) software that will do it for you, and
> you are unable for some reason to move the data to another place and
> repartition the drive, you have to manually move your FreeBSD
> partition back and then extend it. I've never done this before, but if
> I had to try it the first time I would do the following:
>
> 1. Try very hard to find some other hard drive where I can just dump
> the data and avoid this whole thing to begin with. :)
> 2. Boot from a FreeBSD livecd, attach a usb drive for storing some
> temporary files and mount it under /mnt.
> 3. Create a back-up of your master boot record (dd if=/dev/ad0
> of=/mnt/mbr-backup bs=512 count=1). Assuming here that your drive is
> ad0.
> 4. Use fdisk to get the start and size values of your two partitions
> (in sectors).
> 5. Erase the ntfs partition (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0s1 bs=2m).
> 6. Copy your FreeBSD partition to the former start location of ntfs
> (dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad0 bs=512 iseek=
> oseek= count=). Using
> bs=512 is slow, but it makes it easier for you to just take the
> numbers that fdisk gives you and plug them in.
> 7. Once this is done you will need to edit your mbr sector to
> overwrite the first partition entry with the second, but certain
> fields will need to be updated...
>
> I recommend you use a hex editor and work on the file that you saved
> in step 3. You can try the same thing with a partition editor, but you
> may not get the desired results.
>
> For the manual (and more fun) method, the partition table begins at
> offset 0x01BE, and each entry is 16 bytes long. That means that you
> need to copy 16 bytes starting at address 0x01CE to address 0x01BE.
> However, before you do this, you need to set the correct values for
> cylinder-head-sector of first and last sectors in the FreeBSD
> partition, as well as the logical address of the first sector.
>
> First, take 3 bytes starting at address 0x01BF and copy them to
> 0x01CF. This takes care of CHS start, which is unchanged. Next, take 4
> bytes at address 0x01C6 and copy them to 0x01D6. This is the logical
> sector start. The tricky bit is the CHS last sector value. If your two
> partitions were of identical size, then you can copy 3 bytes from
> 0x01C3 to 0x01D3. Otherwise, you'll need to calculate the new values
> by hand. If your NTFS partition was marked as active before, then set
> byte 0x01CE to be 0x80.
>
> One this is done, copy that second record over the first and zero-out
> the 16 bytes at 0x01CE. Use dd again to copy the updated mbr sector to
> your drive. At this point your master boot record will have the
> correct entry for your FreeBSD partition, which was moved over the
> NTFS one. See if you can mount /dev/ad0s1a while still in the livecd
> environment (actually, you will need to reboot first). If ad0s1a is
> under /dev and you can mount it, then your mbr is fine. Use growfs
> from here and then boot from the hard drive.
>
> As you can see, it's not a trivial thing to do, but it's possible if
> you are careful. Once again, I've never done this and am basing the
> whole thing on some of my previous experience in messing with the
> master boot record. There may be some other things that I missed. I
> also don't know if there is existing software that might make this
> whole process much easier, the directions here are a worst-case
> scenario for moving your partition by hand.
>
> - Max
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RE: Problems with zfsboot loader if raidz present on any drive

[Paul Wootton]

>-Original Message-
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Pegasus Mc 
>Cleaft
>Sent: 07 December 2008 12:17
> To: Doug Rabson
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Problems with zfsboot loader if raidz present on any 
>drive
> 
> On Sunday 07 December 2008 09:22:16 Doug Rabson wrote:
> On 7 Dec 2008, at 03:19, Pegasus Mc Cleaft wrote:
> > > Hello Hackers,
> > >
> > >   Recently and friend and I have been trying to get the new 
> > > gptzfsboot working on our machines and ran into a interesting 
> > > problem.
> > >
> > >   Initially I was building the world without the environment 
> > > variable LOADER_ZFS_SUPPORT=YES in the /etc/make.conf and this, of 
> > > course, didnt work very well. Every time the machine booted, it 
> > > would throw 2 lines after the pin-wheel and then reboot. I 
> > > couldent read what the lines were it went so fast.
> > >
> > >   My friend had a bit more luck and got his machine working OK with 
> > > a single drive and later a mirror drive added.
> > >
> > >   I added the environment variable and rebuilt everything and 
> > > installed. This time, I could see the bios drives and a further 2 
> > > lines of ZFS something and a reboot...
> > >
> > >   No matter what I tried, I couldent get the machine to boot up to 
> > > a point where I could try and fix the problem, so I started 
> > > pulling devices out and found the following: If there is a raidz 
> > > pool on any drive (not necessarily the one that you are trying to 
> > > boot from) the loader dies and reboots the machine. My friend, as 
> > > an experiment created 3 gpt partitions (in addition to the single 
> > > partition that he had been previously booted from) on his single 
> > > drive and made a raidz pool for testing. His machine showed the 
> > > same condition as mine, however he was able to capture the message 
> > > before the machine
> > > rebooted:
> > >
> > > 
> > > ZFS: can only boot from disk or mirror vdevs
> > >
> > > ZFS: inconsistent nvlist contents
> >
> > The zfsboot code in current doesn't support raidz or raidz2. I have 
> > been working on adding that support but its not ready yet. The code 
> > works in my test harness but crashes instantly when I put it in the 
> > boot code :(. I should have time to finish debugging it soon.
> 
> Hi Doug,
> 
>   In my haste to put a message to the group, I didnt do a very good
job 
> of explaining or give what platform I was working with.
> 
>   I set up a single disk pool with the gptzfsboot code on it as a boot
drive. 
> My idea was to have a single disk boot (and after it boots and I can 
> kill the UFS drive I am currently booting from) convert it to a 
> mirror. But I have 6 other drives in the machine that I have as a raidz
for my /usr/home, et al.
> 
>   If the 6 raidz drives are present at boot time, the machine starts
to 
> cyclic reboot just after the pin-wheel.
> 
>   The machine I am working on is running FBSD8.0-Current as of
midnight
> 7/12/2008 and the platform is AMD64. 
> 
>   If I can help test in any way I would be more than happy to try, or 
> provide any information necessary..
> 
> ~Peg

Hi Doug,
I was working with Peg on this over the weekend.
I think I have a patch for this - see
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=129539
The problem was that we were not checking the return code from
vdev_init_from_nvlist() on line 726 in /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c


Joao,
Do you want to try the attached patch? It seems to have fixed the problem,
at least on mine and Peg's machine. 


Cheers
Paul


zfsimpl.c.patch
Description: Binary data
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RE: ZFS and Graphics support for /boot/loader

[Paul Wootton]

Hi Oliver,

This doesn’t work for me.

I am booting off a ZFS mirror with GPT partitions (built from current on an
amd64).

Is there any change of a version of gloader but with ZFS support?

Cheers
Paul

-Original Message-
From: owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Oliver Fromme
Sent: 05 February 2009 22:19
To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; freebsd-curr...@freebsd.org
Subject: CFT: Graphics support for /boot/loader

Hello fellow hackers,

Some of you might remember that I'm working on graphics
support for our /boot/loader.  Unfortunately, progress has
been rather slow because of non-FreeBSD-related activity.

Anyway, I have now prepared a tarball containing a loader
binary for public testing.  If you are eager to give it a
try, please feel free to do so.  It should work with any
FreeBSD version on i386 and amd64 platforms.

I have posted detailed instructions on the FreeBSD wiki:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/OliverFromme/BootLoaderTest

Any kind of feedback is welcome.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606,  Geschäftsfuehrung:
secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün-
chen, HRB 125758,  Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart

FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr:  http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs
would delete themselves upon execution."
-- Robert Sewell
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Re: Summary: Re: Spin down HDD after disk sync or before power off

[Paul Wootton]

 On 10/21/10 15:20, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

Bruce Cran  writes:

The Ubuntu issue was what I was thinking of - I got that mixed up with
the aggressive power management of the WD EARS drives.

The entire Green series, actually, which includes models such as the
EADS, AARS etc., but there's more to them than that - the central
feature is their dynamically adjusted rotational speed, which allows
them to conserve power without spinning all the way down.

DES


Actually, the green series does spin all the way down, well at least the 
drive I have does.
Here is the output from one of my drives, that I do not think has long 
left to live.


=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green family
Device Model: WDC WD5000AADS-00M2B0
Serial Number:WD-WMAV51882791
Firmware Version: 01.00A01
User Capacity:500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is:In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:Thu Oct 21 23:31:35 2010 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME  FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE  
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f   200   200   051Pre-fail  
Always   -   0
  3 Spin_Up_Time0x0027   111   104   021Pre-fail  
Always   -   7425
  4 Start_Stop_Count0x0032   100   100   000Old_age   
Always   -   98
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140Pre-fail  
Always   -   0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e   100   253   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
  9 Power_On_Hours  0x0032   093   093   000Old_age   
Always   -   5295
 10 Spin_Retry_Count0x0032   100   253   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count   0x0032   100   100   000Old_age   
Always   -   96
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000Old_age   
Always   -   95
193 Load_Cycle_Count0x0032   001   001   000Old_age   
Always   -   781014
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022   120   102   000Old_age   
Always   -   27
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000Old_age   
Offline  -   0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count0x0032   200   200   000Old_age   
Always   -   0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000Old_age   
Offline  -   0



The datasheet for these drive 
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf 
says

"Reliability/Data Integrity
Load/unload cycles (3) 300,000
Limited Warranty (years) (4)
(3) Controlled unload at ambient condition
(4) The term of the limited warranty my vary by region"

Also 
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5357

"(drive has been validated to 1 million load/unload cycles without issue)"

Im already at 781014 load cycles, yet the drive is only about 7 months 
old. Doing the math, I am getting a load/unload cycle about every 24.5 
seconds
Another 2 months and I will be knocking on for 1 million load/unload 
cycles


As DES has already said, for most people the extra load/unload cycles 
when rebooting a computer will not be an issue at all and is far more 
desirable than an emergency park when powering down



Paul
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Re: To sendmail or to postfix that is the question?

[Paul Wootton]

Steven Hartland wrote:

Ok so I'm looking to replace our current windows mail
server using mdaemon with a FreeBSD solution, having
looked around there seems to be differing opinions
of which is the best option to go with between sendmail
and postfix.

...

Any advice, opinions on a full mail solution on FreeBSD
would be appreciated.

   Regards
   Steve



Sorry to hi-jack your thread, but this is also something I am currently 
looking in to


I really wanted to use Sendmail as a friend knows Sendmail fairly well 
and I have a Sendmail book, but what I am wanting is the ability to have 
mail for virtual users, ie I might have 4 admin accounts, 
ad...@domain1.com ad...@domain2.com ad...@domain3.com and 
ad...@domain4.com and want all the accounts to be independent of each 
other and not necessarily have a real UNIX user account. I know I can 
create 4 different admin accounts say admin1, admin2, admin3, admin4 and 
then use the "virtual users" table, but I can see that getting a little 
messy and from the end user's point they are going to have unusual login 
names.

I know I can do this in Postfix, but is it possible in Sendmail?

Cheers

Paul
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Re: To sendmail or to postfix that is the question?

[Paul Wootton]

Julian H. Stacey wrote:
I really wanted to use Sendmail as a friend knows Sendmail fairly well 
and I have a Sendmail book, but what I am wanting is the ability to have 
mail for virtual users, ie I might have 4 admin accounts, 
ad...@domain1.com ad...@domain2.com ad...@domain3.com and 
ad...@domain4.com and want all the accounts to be independent of each 
other and not necessarily have a real UNIX user account. I know I can 
create 4 different admin accounts say admin1, admin2, admin3, admin4 and 
then use the "virtual users" table, but I can see that getting a little 
messy and from the end user's point they are going to have unusual login 
names.

I know I can do this in Postfix, but is it possible in Sendmail?



Yes its possible. I do that with sendmail for a friend's domain I host
Here's an anonymised real operational sample from my server with comment added

...

PS I skimmed but didnt really understand Matthew's posting, (not
saying its right or wrong, just didnt grasp it), but I have sendmail
working fine for my @berklix.org & for a friend's @surfacevision.com
So Paul, you can use sendmail for this if you want.

Cheers,
Julian
  


Thanks but unfortunately this really wont help me too much.
My fault for not posting it before, but I currently have 9 domains (with 
a likely hood of another couple more being added), with an range from 5 
to 15 different email accounts per domain, hence me thinking it might 
get a little messy with all the UNIX accounts and virtual user table.


Cheers
Paul
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Re: Writing a (BSD like) Operating Systems From Scratch

[Paul Wootton]

On 05/25/13 06:44, Welcome, Traiano wrote:

a)  What kind of hardware (processor) would I use as a development

platform, given the requirements of cheap,  well documented, easily
obtainable, easy to debug etc ... I believe the hardware platform chosen
should satisfy the following requirements:

any except PCs unless you will like to deal with CPU and other
(over)complexity.

Exactly my thinking. Most of the online links to operating system development 
involve x86 hardware, although more and more Microcontrollers are appearing for 
embedded market with features that previously only existed in mainstream 
microprocessors. Ideally, the platform I'd choose would have a small enough 
instruction set to learn (small relative to Intel's mainstream processors), 
maybe something like  the ARM processor used on Raspberry Pi, or Zilog's ez80 
Acclaim series.


In that case, why not look at some of the Microchip's PIC32 development 
suites.
There are quite a few options from Microchip, their dev hardware is not 
that expensive and could prove as a good starting point


Looking at their site, dev kit DM320015 has a microcontroller, 4.3" 
WQVGA screen, capacitive touch screen and USB OTG all built on one unit
Or maybe DM320004 + DM320002 + other modules would give a nice platform 
(microcontroller, serial, ethernet, SD socket, wireless interface etc)
(as a side note) I have the DM320004 (uC board), DM320002 (backplane), 
AC164122 (SD card adapter), AC164129 (Audio adapter) and AC164126 
(breadboards)
They have loads of source code available, so you could use that as a 
starting point, then go on to writing everything your self, including a 
kernel with a full GUI and touchscreen control if you so wish.


Or, why not try a MaxiMite unit (http://geoffg.net/maximite.html). The 
schematics are available on the website and the PCBs should be available 
(with all combinations from blank PCB to fully populated)



But remember, there are a thousand ways to skin a cat and this is just 
one...


Paul



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