[SLUG] optusnet cable modem.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 hi all, I'm interested in knowing what is actually involved in the initial setup for an optus cable modem. the reason I ask is because if for some reason accepting a power outage, you lose power to the modem for more than 12 hours, aparently optus need to come and reinitialise the modem again at a cost of aprox $160 or there abouts. does anyone actually know what they do to begin with, if so I'd love to know that way I can save me some dollars if I once in a while do something silly. thanks in advance. - -- Shaun Oliver I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WEB: http://blindman.homelinux.org/ IRC: irc.awesomechat.net: IRCNICK: blindman -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQFAEjcU67hYtcFGIIcRAvwhAJ9KYjEFWjnzaKmPveQJntbKcoPXFgCfdWHV Wcd+aM016bW0ZZBQY64FhGk= =Rcuu -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] optusnet cable modem.
On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 08:12:52PM +1100, Shaun Oliver wrote: the reason I ask is because if for some reason accepting a power outage, you lose power to the modem for more than 12 hours, aparently optus need to come and reinitialise the modem again at a cost of aprox $160 or there abouts. You're kidding, right? If I move stuff around my house, and don't get around to plugging the modem in again for a couple of days, Optus charges me a small mint to get it going again? Or if I kick the power pack out of the ratsnest powerboard and don't notice I'm out a chunk of change? Where did you find out about this? Is it sitting somewhere on Optus' website, or is it in the manual for the modem, or what? Gee, I almost wish I had Optus cable now just so I could have a nice long menage a trois between myself, the ACCC or Fair Trading, and Optus - with the latter most definitely being the bitch. - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Some raid add and remove tips for raidtools
I'm just documenting a problem and a solution in case anyone else suffers the same problem - it took quite a bit of googling to find the solution. Not a lot of info on raid recovery. One thing about raid1 mirroring, if something goes wrong and a partition (mirror) gets removed from the raid array, the system continues working flawlessly. To find them, you have to look through the output of dmesg (or notice as the messages flash by during boot), for messages like this: md: hde6's event counter: 0174 md: hda6's event counter: 01ae md: superblock update time inconsistency -- using the most recent one md: freshest: hda6 md: kicking non-fresh hde6 from array! md: unbindhde6,1 md: export_rdev(hde6) md: RAID level 1 does not need chunksize! Continuing anyway. md0: max total readahead window set to 124k md0: 1 data-disks, max readahead per data-disk: 124k raid1: device hda6 operational as mirror 0 raid1: md0, not all disks are operational -- trying to recover array raid1: raid set md0 active with 1 out of 2 mirrors md: updating md0 RAID superblock on device md: hda6 [events: 01af]6(write) hda6's sb offset: 3076352 md: recovery thread got woken up ... md0: no spare disk to reconstruct array! -- continuing in degraded mode However, there is no other notification of an error occurring. I recently accidentally discovered I'd been running my system with all raid discs in degraded mode. I.e. I thought I was under the nice safe raid1 umbrella but I wasn't, and hadn't been for a long time. There's a note somewhere that says never access your partitions of a raid directly via the hd name like /dev/hda1 - if you must, use the ataraid name: /dev/ataraid/d0p1 (disc 0 partition 1). That's probably what I'd done to cause the problem. So, on an old Red Hat 7.2 system, pre- mdadm raid comamnds, how do you fix it? Probably you can fetch and install the mdadm package, which everyone likes better than the old raidtools. I was feeling paranoid about doing that, and thought I'd have a go at getting back into action with the old (raidtools-0.90) commands, which I'd used to build the array in the first place. First problem was I couldn't remember the command for rebuilding a raid device, and a man -k raid listed the raid commands, but none could rebuild the array. Eventually I found that there's no man entry in RH 7.2 or 7.3 for the required command, raidhotadd. Usage: /sbin/raidhotadd /dev/md0 /dev/hde7 for example. Seemed to work just fine, and you can cat /proc/mdstat to watch the progress of the rebuild. That's all you'd need to do. Unless you're a complete idiot like me, and you add the wrong partition to the raid array. Which is what I discovered when I went to reconstruct the *other* raid array. # /sbin/raidhotadd /dev/md2 /dev/hde7 /dev/md2: can not hot-add disk: invalid argument. Not a catastrophe because at least it was only the partition that had been kicked out of the other array. So sure, I'd wiped all the partition's data, but it was still happily sitting on the one that was still in the array. I added the correct partition and so now had three partitions used in the mirror. (I didn't even know you could do that.) So now a cat /proc/mdstat showed this: Personalities : [raid1] read_ahead 1024 sectors md0 : active raid1 hde6[2] hde7[1] hda6[0] 3076352 blocks [2/2] [UU] md2 : active raid1 hda7[0] 29567488 blocks [2/1] [U_] unused devices: none So, the problem then became, how to remove a partition (hde7) from the raid device? A little search turned up raidhotremove. Unfortunately, that won't work on a running device: # /sbin/raidhotremove /dev/md0 /dev/hde7 /dev/md0: can not hot-remove disk: disk busy! I noticed the raidhotgenerateerror command (usage: raidhotgeneraterror /dev/md0 /dev/hde7), which appeared to work but didn't actually let me hot remove it afterwards. (Still: device busy!) Then a google search turned up this exact problem, and the solution too: mark the partition faulty with the raidsetfaulty command. I soon discovered this isn't part of the raidtools-0.90-24 package, but is in 1.00.3. synaptic quickly showed there was no RH7.2 package available via apt-get, and rpmfind quickly confirmed this. Google lead to the name for the file, and with that a google search on raidtools-1.00.3.tar.gz actually lead to a place holding not just the ..tgz but also a source rpm (http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/raidtools.html) So I grabbed that, did the rpm --rebuild followed by the rpm -F, and got the necessary commands. Then it was a simple matter of: 1. raidsetfaulty /dev/md0 /dev/hde7 2. raidhotremove /dev/md0 /dev/hde7 3. watch cat /proc/mdstat (until the reconstruction completed on /dev/md0) # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] read_ahead 1024 sectors md0 : active raid1 hde7[2]
Re: [SLUG] optusnet cable modem.
Hi, I'm sure you'll be relieved to find it's not true. If you leave your modem unplugged for a few days you *may* need to call up tech support to have your modem reprovisioned which takes a maximum of 45min and costs you nothing. This can easily be confirmed by calling tech support and asking them. Anyone who says otherwise is talking complete and utter rubbish. Shane Shaun Oliver wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 hi all, I'm interested in knowing what is actually involved in the initial setup for an optus cable modem. the reason I ask is because if for some reason accepting a power outage, you lose power to the modem for more than 12 hours, aparently optus need to come and reinitialise the modem again at a cost of aprox $160 or there abouts. does anyone actually know what they do to begin with, if so I'd love to know that way I can save me some dollars if I once in a while do something silly. thanks in advance. - -- Shaun Oliver I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WEB: http://blindman.homelinux.org/ IRC: irc.awesomechat.net: IRCNICK: blindman -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQFAEjcU67hYtcFGIIcRAvwhAJ9KYjEFWjnzaKmPveQJntbKcoPXFgCfdWHV Wcd+aM016bW0ZZBQY64FhGk= =Rcuu -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Hard drive health monitoring
Excellent article in Linux Journal on a little-known facility built in to most ATA and SCSI drives to allow monitoring of the health of the disc drive, and even being alerted before a drive fails: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983 I downloaded smartmontools-5.26, compiled and installed it with no problems, and did thinsg like smartctl -s on to turn on health monitoring and configured /etc/smartd.conf and added smartd.initd to /etc/init.d and ran chkconfig to add it in. In the last 10 years I think I've had four HDD fail on me (though not lost data, fortunately, since I do try to be careful with backups). smartmon should give you at least 24 hours notice of a failing drive. Sounds like a good combination with software raid! 1090 smartctl -i /dev/hda 1091 smartctl -s on /dev/hda 1094 smartctl -i /dev/hda 1095 smartctl -Hc /dev/hda 1101 smartctl -A /dev/hda 1103 smartctl -l error /dev/hda 1104 smartctl -l selftest /dev/hda I've never heard of such a facility for Windows. smug smile luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] optusnet cable modem.
On 24 Jan, Shane Anderson wrote: I'm sure you'll be relieved to find it's not true. If you leave your modem unplugged for a few days you *may* need to call up tech support to have your modem reprovisioned which takes a maximum of 45min and costs you nothing. This can easily be confirmed by calling tech support and asking them. Anyone who says otherwise is talking complete and utter rubbish. BTW, the power off switch on the Optus cable modem turns off the front LEDs. To actually power cycle it you have to unplug the cable at the back. I guess now I know why! luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Little OT but about MS only shop WAS Re: [SLUG] Who has spoken to Commonwealth bank Tech support?
Grant Parnell wrote: Trust me on this, call back and bluff your way through saying you're running Windows 98. Might take several calls and you'll need to try to hold off identifying yourself. Also, for the sake of the thread, StGeorge also use Java.. at least I think they're slightly more receptive saying they just need Java1.4 or something like that. I also use ANZ, javascript/http/https, works real nice. Someone should tell some of these companies there is an EVER growing user who are no longer using MS products! The worst I have seen is this one! http://www.waterways.com.au/netscape.asp which comes up when you enter http://www.waterways.com.au You were redirected to this page because you are not using Internet Explorer 5 or later. In order to view the proper site, you'll have to use at least IE5 (IE6 is recommended). You can download IE6 from here. Hmm Well they must not want any one other than MS customers using their services! One wonders if their product quality is similar in nature! My 2c on the lack of Open Standards Support! David On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Kevin Saenz wrote: Well this is my little story. I logged on to netbanking to check my accounts java popped up with a verisign issue. So I decided to call commonwealth bank. This is what I get. [Support person] So you are using Windows XP? [me] No, I'm using Linux [Support person] Can you open up My Computer? [me] I am not using windows I am using Linux. [Support person] Can you spell the operating system you are using? [me] Linux, l-i-n-u-x, can you tell me where you want me to go? [Support person] can you go to add remove programs [me]??? add remove programs, what program would you like me to find? [Support person] the version of java [me] Ok that is simple j2re1.4.blah [Support person] Can you hold? 5 mins later [Support person] We don't support that operating system and the version of java you are using needs to be updated. [me] thanks that helped me a lot bye. Sadly I had no resolve. Are most commonwealth bank support people this brain dead? :) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Little OT but about MS only shop
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, David Uzzell wrote: Someone should tell some of these companies there is an EVER growing user who are no longer using MS products! The worst I have seen is this one! http://www.waterways.com.au/netscape.asp which comes up when you enter http://www.waterways.com.au Works fine on Mozilla on OSX/PPC. And on Safari. My 2c on the lack of Open Standards Support! They are supporting some sort of standards, since the page looks fine in Moz. Perhaps their CGI application interface is a bit too severe when it denies access to (older versions? of) Netscape. The prohibition does seem to allow browsers other than IE. Like Safari and Mozilla. Then again, this could be spam :( cheers rickw - Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited NAFTA might be friendly to investment but it was not all that friendly to democracy. -- Bill Moyers -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: Updating your system (was: Re: [SLUG] glib2 oddity)
On 22 Dec, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 12:45:31PM +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 22 Dec, Jeff Waugh replied to: I think it's time to try installing gentoo, and leave all these upgrade problems in the past. You just need a recent distro - and you don't have to go to extremes to get one. :-) Upgrading to a new version of a distro is always a big hassle, taking days to get working as well as the old one. That's *why* I'm still running 7.2 (albeit heavily updated) on this machine. If you want to get the mostest for the leastest, surely something that uses apt (or yum) would be the best option. I.e. debian or redhat/fedora. What are the major inhibiters for your upgrade? Do you install a lot of software that is not from rpms/debs? Matt Apologies for this belated reply. The major upgrade inhibitors are: 1) Config file breakages. Things I have to painstakingly reconfigure are sendmail, printing, sound, cdwriter 2) Dead utilities. Things I've come to depend on that are no longer maintained so I have to build them myself. (E.g. Postilion.) Tk/Tcl are classic examples: seems like every new release loses backward compatibility so lots of good tools die. (E.g. TkDesk.) 3) Discovering all the little bits and pieces that I use only a few times per year and no longer work, obviously takes a long time. 4) Discovering where config files etc. have moved to, between versions. This is much less of a problem since the FSSTND became widely adopted. I used to install a lot of programs from source, but gave up after RH 6.2, and started using rpms. Then I got fed up with the dependency hell problem and installed apt-get and synaptic, for RH. That kept me happy for a long time, until the packages for the old system started withering up for RH 7.2, because (fair enough) so many dependencies couldn't be satisfied and fewer people were using it. Very natural. The gentoo system is basically working well now, but I'm only working on it in small amounts of my limited spare time. I still haven't checked out the cd writing, and a few other things. But filling in the gaps seems to go pretty smoothly, and I'm happily pockling away at it as a low-priority background task. (While looking forward to switching over permanently. It's been painful: I wouldn't recommend gentoo to most Linux people yet; but I'm feeling confident that I've made the right choice. I just don't enjoy upgrades, and want to avoid having to do it again. In contrast, I don't mind tiny incremental steps.) luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] EverythingLinux People Please Read
Hi, Apologies for this, but I'm not sure of personal email addresses, and I don't know if they'll be checking work accounts over the weekend. I think that EverythingLinux people are on this list. Please check your sales and webmaster email accounts ASAP. Tom -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] A good idea re config file updates?
This idea is in relation to the way most (all?) distros handle the updates of config files that are included in packages. (Mainly I'm thinking of files under /etc). I'm referring to the way they leave you with an extra config file for you to hunt up and examine to manually merge in syntax changes, by leaving you effectively with a crude versioning system represented by multiple files. RH has its .rpmsave and .rpmnew things, gentoo has ..thing_blah_number. What all the distributions should probably be doing instead is using a real versioning system to hold the multiple versions. This way when you install the package it could install the real updated config file and check for merge conflicts and warn you if there were any. That way you could easily roll back; and if something did break, you could easily check what differences had been recently introduced. E.g. cd /etc; cvs diff -D2 days ago . As things stand, all the distros are effectively saying that you do source file config management by storing multiple separate versions of each file and manually diff, merge, and copy files to make changes. Imagine if we were still trying to do that for program source code! Heh. luke PS: Note to self: I must dust-off and set up my cvs-etc script under gentoo. Then I can try out my own suggestion with a short wrapper shell script, and see how it works out in practice. (The only problem I found in keeping /etc under cvs was after doing a system upgrade by installing the new distro version into a spare partition: in that case, if I wanted to preserve the repository and history of changes across upgrades, I had to transfer the repository and history manually. Tedious.) To be perfectly honest: I had interesting discussions on the cvs developers mailing list about this - about using cvs on /etc config files. Several developers were dead against it, but their objections seemed odd to me, almost religious, rather than logical: dire warnings of unnamed disasters. In practice, it works well.) In the unlikely event anyone's interested, the cvs-etc scripts and man page (cvs-etc cvs-etc.1 cvsadddir printf quote) can be found chucked into this directory: http://members.optushome.com.au/lukekendall/script/ luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Who has spoken to Commonwealth bank Tech support?
Kevin Saenz wrote: Sadly I had no resolve. Are most commonwealth bank support people this brain dead? :) I don't know if it's still the case, but some years ago Commonwealth Bank support was outsourced to a company which provided minimal training to the support staff. The staff weren't brain dead, but the management was only interested in getting the caller off the line quickly. John -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] EverythingLinux People Please Read
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004, Tom Massey wrote: Apologies for this, but I'm not sure of personal email addresses, and I don't know if they'll be checking work accounts over the weekend. I think that EverythingLinux people are on this list. Please check your sales and webmaster email accounts ASAP. And what are we looking for? New sender's emails are delayed a minimum of one hour (out of office hours) with a temporary failure on purpose, then we check to see if they're not blacklisted and we could send an email back, if not we reject. This is an anti-spam measure. Happens when you receive about 4000 spams a day on average. It's possible Anthony's still making some adjustments. -- ---GRiP--- Electronic Hobbyist, Former Arcadia BBS nut, Occasional nudist, Linux Guru, SLUG/AUUG/Linux Australia member, Sydney Flashmobber, BMX rider, Walker, Raver rave music lover, Big kid that refuses to grow up. I'd make a good family pet, take me home today! Do people actually read these things? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] dd and tape errors
all, I have a problem getting data of a tape, dd reports errors, but yes I want *that* data (this is the only one). Now I read something of dd using conv=noerrors, but I also read that this ONLY works if st can handle this. I do not need the data where the error occurs but later within that file of the tape. this is what happens: mt -f /dev/nst0 asf 1 dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT.tgz bs=32k dd: reading `/dev/amandatape': Input/output error 801+0 records in 801+0 records out So I thought: mt -f /dev/nst0 asf 1 dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT_02.tgz bs=32k skip=801 but that runs into the same trouble: dd: reading `/dev/amandatape': Input/output error 0+0 records in 0+0 records out So if I would now go to block 805 or even futher and then pad the missing blocks with some data. * Can I do this? * What data would that need to be? * Are there any other ways to pull that data of? jobst -- The email address in this email is used for Mailing Lists Only. Please reply ONLY to the list email address, do not reply to the email directly. My Dogma got run over by my Karma. __, Jobst Schmalenbach, Technical Director _ _.--'-n_/ Barrett Consulting Group P/L The Meditation Room P/L -(_)--(_)= +61 3 9532 7677, POBox 277, Caulfield South, 3162, Australia -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] dd and tape errors
On 25 Jan, Jobst Schmalenbach wrote: all, I have a problem getting data of a tape, dd reports errors, but yes I want *that* data (this is the only one). Now I read something of dd using conv=noerrors, but I also read that this ONLY works if st can handle this. Have you tried that, then, or do you mean it's not supported? I've certainly used the option successfully with failing floppies. I do not need the data where the error occurs but later within that file of the tape. this is what happens: mt -f /dev/nst0 asf 1 dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT.tgz bs=32k dd: reading `/dev/amandatape': Input/output error 801+0 records in 801+0 records out So I thought: mt -f /dev/nst0 asf 1 dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT_02.tgz bs=32k skip=801 I take it that dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT_02.tgz bs=32k conv=noerror didn't help? So if I would now go to block 805 or even futher and then pad the missing blocks with some data. * Can I do this? * What data would that need to be? * Are there any other ways to pull that data of? I don't know a way to do that. And I think there's a fundamental problem with writing a single compressed file to any backup device: AFAIK, if there is any data corruption at some point in the compressed data stream, there's no way to re-sync to recover data beyond that point. There may be commercial ventures who have ways to recover data from the tape, just as there are for disc drives. Others here may know more. Sorry I couldn't be more help. luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Well, It's been nice Lurking ya!
Hi! I'm just DeLurking to say Goodbye, as i'm basically Moving to Bendigo, so SLUG isn't gonna be in my juristiction for longer :P I wanna say thankyou to all the posters to the ML, as, while i've been lurking, i've gained a lot of useful information that i've been using sucessfuly for the last few months. Thanks guys. Bye SLUG, Hello.. err.. MLUG or.. whatever ^^; [PEQ]Muskie Tech Reporter for Planet EverQuest -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] dd and tape errors
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 12:25:16PM +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On 25 Jan, Jobst Schmalenbach wrote: all, I have a problem getting data of a tape, dd reports errors, but yes I want *that* data (this is the only one). Now I read something of dd using conv=noerrors, but I also read that this ONLY works if st can handle this. Have you tried that, then, or do you mean it's not supported? I've certainly used the option successfully with failing floppies. I was wondering whether the st driver supports taht option. I do not need the data where the error occurs but later within [snip] dd if=/dev/amandatape of=/backup/OUT_02.tgz bs=32k conv=noerror didn't help? It failed once. This time I added conv=noerror,notrunc cause the problem is that gzip is then getting the wrong data. So if I would now go to block 805 or even futher and then pad the missing blocks with some data. * Can I do this? * What data would that need to be? * Are there any other ways to pull that data of? I don't know a way to do that. And I think there's a fundamental problem with writing a single compressed file to any backup device: AFAIK, if there is any data corruption at some point in the compressed data stream, there's no way to re-sync to recover data beyond that point. There is two different types of compression * hardware * software AFAIK you cannot recover from software compressed data but you can from hardware compressed data There may be commercial ventures who have ways to recover data from the tape, just as there are for disc drives. Others here may know more. Sorry I couldn't be more help. thanks for trying .. jobst -- The email address in this email is used for Mailing Lists Only. Please reply ONLY to the list email address, do not reply to the email directly. There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn lies, and statistics. - Disraeli __, Jobst Schmalenbach, Technical Director _ _.--'-n_/ Barrett Consulting Group P/L The Meditation Room P/L -(_)--(_)= +61 3 9532 7677, POBox 277, Caulfield South, 3162, Australia -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
