Archive for the ‘linux’ Category

Firmware update ILO of HPE DL385 gen1

Monday, July 17th, 2017

Playing around with old hardware brought me to a place where I needed to firmware upgrade the ILO of an HPE DL385 G1 server in linux (Centos6). Fairly simple actually

[root@dl385 ~]# ./CP023365.scexe
FLASH_iLO v1.10 for Linux (Mar 19 2009)
Copyright 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Firmware image: ilo196.bin
Current iLO firmware version 1.87; Serial number ILOow�:nػ_�_�ܕ/ϟ

Component XML file: CP023365.xml
CP023365.xml reports firmware version 1.96
This operation will update the firmware on the
iLO in this server with version 1.96.
Continue (y/N)?y
***** DO NOT INTERRUPT! *****
Firmware image file is being sent … 100%
Flash is in progress…
Firmware flash is complete.
The device will reset …
Device reset will complete in 1 seconds…
Succeeded.
[root@dl385 ~]#

Firmware update HPE smartarray 6i in linux

Monday, July 17th, 2017

Playing around with old hardware brought me to a place where I needed to firmware upgrade some HPE Smart Array 6i controllers in linux (Centos6). Fairly simple actually

[root@dl385 ~]# sh ./CP009358.scexe
Firmware CD Supplemental Update / Online ROM Flash Component for Linux - Smart Array 6i
* Version of rom to be flashed: 2.84
* Number of controllers: 1
* The version of existing Array ROM is 2.68
* 1 controller(s) will be flashed
* This operation may take about 2 minutes
Flash ROMs Now? (Yes/No): yes
Flashing 1 controller(s), please wait....
Success: Product 40910e11 at controller position 0
with old version 2.68 has been updated with new version 2.84.
ROM Flash complete. New firmware will take effect when the server is rebooted.
As part of the reboot process, you should power cycle the server and any
external drive arrays.

Upgrading crucial M4 SSD firmware from grub2

Tuesday, October 28th, 2014

The download page for firmware for the Crucial M4 SSD have three options

  • One for windows 7
  • One for windows 8
  • One generic .iso for mac and windows

Lets for arguments sake think that someone have an x200s (no cdrom) with linux, then what? Actually not that hard:

[code]

sudo mount -o loop crucial-m4-070h-07-00.iso /mnt

sudo cp /mnt/boot/isolinux/memdisk /mnt/boot/isolinux/boot2880.img /boot/

sudo umout /mnt

sudo vi /etc/grub.d/40_custom

menuentry ‘Firmware Upgrade’ {
linux16 /memdisk floppy raw
initrd16 /boot2880.img
}

sudo update-grub2

sudo reboot

<hold shift for grub2 menu>

select ‘Firmware Upgrade’

[/code]

Non-disruptive in my end, going from 0009 to 070H, but if you break anything, I will yell unicorns at you and let you keep the pieces. Because a crazy dane decideds to do this without backup, you should not do the same!

Upgraded my routers to run Tomato by Shibby today.

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014

I upgraded my routers today. I ran EasyTomato v8.0 and 8.1 for a while on my Asus RT-N16 and had my Linksys E3000 laying dormant after I got the Asus RT-N16.

EasyTomato wins for having a porn/adult filter, and that was actually the reason for bying the Asus RT-N16 in the first place and running EasyTomato, but after some months I came to the conclusion, that the firmware lacked in the geek/hackability area.

After a bit of investigation, I have switched to Tomato by Shibby and both my Asus RT-N16 and my Linksys E3000 now runs Tomato Firmware 1.28.0000 MIPSR2-116 K26 USB Big-VPN.

The firmware works fine, have a lot of bells and whistles  and is actively developed as well with full sourcecode provided. If only I could read and write polish now :-).

Geek review of Bluesound Node

Monday, December 30th, 2013

I recently reviewed the Bluesound Node from a end user perspective. It rocks the house, so to speak.

The geek in me would not and could not let that be the end of it. How is it built? What makes it tick? Stuff like that.

A quick nmap of the box yields

[code]

edison% nmap 192.168.1.119

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-12-30 19:37 CET
Interesting ports on 192.168.1.119:
Not shown: 998 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open  ssh
80/tcp open  http

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 2.71 seconds
[/code]

The webserver serves some very minimal pages. Most interessting are the diagnostics pages. The advanced tab, actually serves the output of dmesg and /var/log/messages, so obviously linux inside.

A lot could be deduced from the output of dmesg alone, but being a geek I wanted to know everything.  A quick test with root/root and whats not yielded nothing using ssh. Actually the user/user combo works wrt. authorization, but fails due to the fact that /home/user does not exists.

On the back of the node there are a mini usb for support. Obviously that is a console port. I tried to play around with that a bit, but no obvious way in, except knowing the root password.

I then used a couple of hours of my life and figured out how to gain access without knowing the root password. The details will be kept off the net. You have to figure it out yourself.

But in the end

[code]
root@Stue ~$ uname -a
Linux Stue 2.6.35.3-998-ga1cd8a7 #117 PREEMPT Tue Dec 3 16:51:52 EST 2013 armv7l GNU/Linux
root@Stue ~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
BogoMIPS        : 799.53
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc08
CPU revision    : 5

Hardware        : NAD SOVI Board
Revision        : 51030
Serial          : 0000000000000000
root@Stue ~$ cat /proc/meminfo  | head -10
MemTotal:         254980 kB
MemFree:           83216 kB
Buffers:            7856 kB
Cached:            76932 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:            99812 kB
Inactive:          60908 kB
Active(anon):      75948 kB
Inactive(anon):      312 kB
Active(file):      23864 kB

[    0.000000] Linux version 2.6.35.3-998-ga1cd8a7 (kg@ubuntu) (gcc version 4.4.4 (4.4.4_09.06.2010) ) #117 PREEMPT Tue Dec 3 16:51:52 EST 2013
[    0.000000] CPU: ARMv7 Processor [412fc085] revision 5 (ARMv7), cr=10c53c7f
[    0.000000] CPU: VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT nonaliasing instruction cache
[    0.000000] Machine: NAD SOVI Board
[    0.000000] Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
[    0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 65536
[    0.000000] free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat 804c0634, node_mem_map 804eb000
[    0.000000]   DMA zone: 192 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   DMA zone: 0 pages reserved
[    0.000000]   DMA zone: 24384 pages, LIFO batch:3
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 320 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 40640 pages, LIFO batch:7
[    0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 65024
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: console=ttymxc0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait ro rootfstype=ext4
[    0.000000] PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[    0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
[    0.000000] Memory: 256MB = 256MB total
[    0.000000] Memory: 254868k/254868k available, 7276k reserved, 0K highmem
[    0.000000] Virtual kernel memory layout:
[    0.000000]     vector  : 0xffff0000 – 0xffff1000   (   4 kB)
[    0.000000]     fixmap  : 0xfff00000 – 0xfffe0000   ( 896 kB)
[    0.000000]     DMA     : 0xf9e00000 – 0xffe00000   (  96 MB)
[    0.000000]     vmalloc : 0x90800000 – 0xf4000000   (1592 MB)
[    0.000000]     lowmem  : 0x80000000 – 0x90000000   ( 256 MB)
[    0.000000]     modules : 0x7f000000 – 0x80000000   (  16 MB)
[    0.000000]       .init : 0x80008000 – 0x80024000   ( 112 kB)
[    0.000000]       .text : 0x80024000 – 0x8046a000   (4376 kB)
[    0.000000]       .data : 0x80484000 – 0x804c1040   ( 245 kB)
[    0.000000] SLUB: Genslabs=11, HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[    0.000000] Hierarchical RCU implementation.
[    0.000000]  RCU-based detection of stalled CPUs is disabled.
[    0.000000]  Verbose stalled-CPUs detection is disabled.
[    0.000000] NR_IRQS:272
[    0.000000] MXC GPIO hardware
[    0.000000] MXC IRQ initialized
[    0.000000] MXC_Early serial console at MMIO 0x73fbc000 (options ‘115200’)
[    0.000000] bootconsole [ttymxc0] enabled
[    0.000000] Console: colour dummy device 80×30
[    0.475328] Calibrating delay loop… 799.53 BogoMIPS (lpj=3997696)
[    0.703896] pid_max: default: 32768 minimum: 301
[    0.707706] Security Framework initialized
[    0.711075] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[    0.715116] CPU: Testing write buffer coherency: ok
[    0.722633] regulator: core version 0.5
[    0.726039] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[    0.729770] i.MX IRAM pool: 128 KB@0x90840000
[    0.733448] IRAM READY
[    0.737156] CPU is i.MX51 Revision 3.0
[    0.780569] Using SDMA I.API
[    0.783084] MXC DMA API initialized
[    0.786395] IMX usb wakeup probe
[    0.789124] the wakeup pdata is 0x80490eb8
[    0.789147] IMX usb wakeup probe
[    0.791858] the wakeup pdata is 0x80490f6c
[    0.801784] bio: create slab <bio-0> at 0
[    0.806432] SCSI subsystem initialized
[    0.810273] CSPI: mxc_spi-0 probed
[    0.813554] Freescale USB OTG Driver loaded, $Revision: 1.55 $
[    0.928925] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[    0.933645] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[    0.938140] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[    0.944076] Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
[    0.949939] mc13892 Rev 2.4 FinVer 2 detected
[    0.953900] Initializing regulators for NAD SOVI.
[    0.958842] regulator: SW1: 600 <–> 1375 mV at 1050 mV
[    0.963928] regulator: SW2: 900 <–> 1850 mV at 1225 mV
[    0.968760] regulator: SW3: 1100 <–> 1850 mV at 1200 mV
[    0.973686] regulator: SW4: 1100 <–> 1850 mV at 1800 mV
[    0.978440] regulator: SWBST:
[    0.981374] regulator: VIOHI:
[    0.984427] regulator: VPLL: 1050 <–> 1800 mV at 1800 mV
[    0.989364] regulator: VDIG: 1650 mV
[    0.992759] regulator: VSD: 1800 <–> 3150 mV at 3150 mV
[    0.997744] regulator: VUSB2: 2400 <–> 2775 mV at 2600 mV
[    1.002851] regulator: VVIDEO: 2775 mV
[    1.006396] regulator: VAUDIO: 2300 <–> 3000 mV at 3000 mV
[    1.011495] regulator: VCAM: 2500 <–> 3000 mV at 2600 mV fast normal
[    1.017172] regulator: VGEN1: 1200 mV
[    1.020756] regulator: VGEN2: 1200 <–> 3150 mV at 3150 mV
[    1.025887] regulator: VGEN3: 1800 <–> 2900 mV at 1800 mV
[    1.030904] regulator: VUSB:
[    1.033666] regulator: GPO1:
[    1.036497] regulator: GPO2:
[    1.039256] regulator: GPO3:
[    1.042029] regulator: GPO4:
[    1.045666] Device spi1.0 probed
[    1.048528] Switching to clocksource mxc_timer1
[    1.053749] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[    1.057403] IP route cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
[    1.063405] TCP established hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
[    1.069284] TCP bind hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
[    1.074643] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192)
[    1.079822] TCP reno registered
[    1.082401] UDP hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    1.087167] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    1.092389] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[    1.096156] RPC: Registered udp transport module.
[    1.099992] RPC: Registered tcp transport module.
[    1.103922] RPC: Registered tcp NFSv4.1 backchannel transport module.
[    1.109898] LPMode driver module loaded
[    1.113096] Static Power Management for Freescale i.MX5
[    1.117591] PM driver module loaded
[    1.120606] sdram autogating driver module loaded
[    1.124745] Bus freq driver module loaded
[    1.128048] mxc_dvfs_core_probe
[    1.130828] DVFS driver module loaded
[    1.133869] i.MXC CPU frequency driver
[    1.137356] DVFS PER driver module loaded
[    1.155861] Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
[    1.162207] Slow work thread pool: Starting up
[    1.166497] Slow work thread pool: Ready
[    1.169698] NTFS driver 2.1.29 [Flags: R/O].
[    1.173852] fuse init (API version 7.14)
[    1.177767] msgmni has been set to 497
[    1.183015] alg: No test for stdrng (krng)
[    1.186600] cryptodev: driver loaded.
[    1.189620] io scheduler noop registered
[    1.192902] io scheduler deadline registered
[    1.196489] io scheduler cfq registered (default)
[    1.439983] Serial: MXC Internal UART driver
[    1.443824] mxcintuart.0: ttymxc0 at MMIO 0x73fbc000 (irq = 31) is a Freescale i.MX
[    1.450099] console [ttymxc0] enabled, bootconsole disabled
[    1.462182] mxcintuart.1: ttymxc1 at MMIO 0x73fc0000 (irq = 32) is a Freescale i.MX
[    1.470812] mxcintuart.2: ttymxc2 at MMIO 0x7000c000 (irq = 33) is a Freescale i.MX
[    1.483203] loop: module loaded
[    1.486775] FEC Ethernet Driver
[    1.493082] fec_enet_mii_bus: probed
[    1.497306] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 ‘Enhanced’ Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[    1.504066] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.0: Freescale On-Chip EHCI Host Controller
[    1.510711] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    1.542280] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.0: irq 18, io base 0x73f80000
[    1.562251] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    1.568937] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    1.572760] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    1.792258] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.1: Freescale On-Chip EHCI Host Controller
[    1.798907] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[    1.832279] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.1: irq 14, io base 0x73f80200
[    1.852257] fsl-ehci fsl-ehci.1: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    1.858786] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    1.862596] hub 2-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    1.867015] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
[    1.872131] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[    1.878187] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[    1.882826] ARC USBOTG Device Controller driver (1 August 2005)
[    1.889550] input: gpio-keys as /devices/platform/gpio-keys/input/input0
[    1.897518] pmic rtc probe start
[    1.901432] pmic_rtc mc13892_rtc.1: rtc core: registered mc13892_rtc as rtc0
[    1.908562] pmic rtc probe succeed
[    1.912319] IR NEC protocol handler initialized
[    1.916856] IR RC5(x) protocol handler initialized
[    1.921650] IR RC6 protocol handler initialized
[    1.926214] IR JVC protocol handler initialized
[    1.930748] IR Sony protocol handler initialized
[    1.935382] MXC WatchDog Driver 2.0
[    1.939394] MXC Watchdog # 0 Timer: initial timeout 60 sec
[    1.946510] mxsdhci: MXC Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
[    1.953319] mxsdhci: MXC SDHCI Controller Driver.
[    1.958952] mmc0: SDHCI detect irq 128 irq 1 INTERNAL DMA
[    1.964444] mxsdhci: MXC SDHCI Controller Driver.
[    1.969706] mmc1: SDHCI detect irq 0 irq 2 INTERNAL DMA
[    1.975389] Registered led device: status_blue_a
[    1.975565] Registered led device: status_blue_b
[    1.975737] Registered led device: status_green
[    1.975909] Registered led device: status_red
[    1.977248] Cirrus Logic CS4350 ALSA SoC DAC Driver
[    2.013004] cs4350_spi spi1.2: found a CS4350 at REV C2
[    2.028561] No device for DAI imx-ssi-1-0
[    2.032611] No device for DAI imx-ssi-1-1
[    2.036660] No device for DAI imx-ssi-2-0
[    2.040675] No device for DAI imx-ssi-2-1
[    2.044735] No device for DAI imx-ssi-3-0
[    2.048751] No device for DAI imx-ssi-3-1
[    2.053946] in imx_sovi_asoc_init
[    2.057321] in imx_sovi_cs4350_probe
[    2.072494] capture=0 ext_ram=0 UseIram=0
[    2.077896] DMA Sound Buffers Allocated:UseIram=0 buf->addr=9f300000 buf->area=f9e0a000 size=524288
[    2.086991] asoc: cs4350 <-> imx-ssi-2-0 mapping ok
[    2.091916] Failed to add route AOUT1L->Line Out Jack
[    2.101133] ALSA device list:
[    2.104163]   #0: imx-sovi (CS4350)
[    2.108207] TCP cubic registered
[    2.111463] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[    2.116030] VFP support v0.3: implementor 41 architecture 3 part 30 variant c rev 2
[    2.157905] regulator_init_complete: disabling VCAM
[    2.163022] regulator_init_complete: disabling VAUDIO
[    2.169251] regulator_init_complete: disabling VSD
[    2.174254] regulator_init_complete: disabling VDIG
[    2.179556] pmic_rtc mc13892_rtc.1: setting system clock to 2013-12-30 18:50:38 UTC (1388429438)
[    2.188605] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk0p2…
[    2.291639] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address aaaa
[    2.297558] mmcblk0: mmc0:aaaa SU04G 3.69 GiB
[    2.302174]  mmcblk0: p1 p2 p3
[    2.427492] mmc1: new SDIO card at address 0001
[    2.437448] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[    2.445667] VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) readonly on device 179:2.
[    2.452531] Freeing init memory: 112K
[    2.572303] USB Host suspend begins
[    2.572327] will suspend roothub and its children
[    2.572361] ehci_fsl_bus_suspend, DR
[    2.572777] host suspend ends
[    2.868618] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p3): warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended
[    2.880309] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p3): recovery complete
[    2.886462] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: commit=30
[    4.542400] ehci_fsl_bus_suspend, Host 1
[    6.560837] mxc_spdif mxc_spdif.0: MXC SPDIF Audio Transmitter
[    6.569232] No device for codec mxc spdif
[    6.573331] No device for DAI mxc spdif
[    6.584224] No device for DAI imx-spdif-dai
[    6.600331] capture=0 ext_ram=0 UseIram=0
[    6.617000] DMA Sound Buffers Allocated:UseIram=0 buf->addr=9f500000 buf->area=f9e8f000 size=524288
[    6.626175] asoc: mxc spdif <-> imx-spdif-dai mapping ok
[    6.770533] eth0: Freescale FEC PHY driver [Generic PHY] (mii_bus:phy_addr=0:00, irq=-1)
[    6.961939] Compat-drivers backport release: compat-drivers-v3.8-1
[/code]

So it is a NAD SOVI board using an i.mx51 freescale arm processor. With 256MB memory. The sound are produced by an Cirrus Logic CS4350 chip. The system runs a 2.6.35 kernel off a NAND flash chip in a very trimmed down setup based around busybox and the selected custom applications needed to make a media player. The system utilizes the very well known and awsome u-boot boot loader.

Without voiding guarantee by opening up the box, I can not get more specific information than that.

What amazes me the most about this setup, is that the system outputs very good sound quality, is very very stable, has fast boot times and yet does not consume very much memory. This is a lean, mean, music machine. It has one purpose in life and are trimmed down to fulfill that purpose and only that purpose.

That being said, I can see that the platform is built to support more extensive media streamers. Mine is just the low cost one. I also speculate that the NAD SOVI board has GPIO pins needed to fit into products with way more features.

Gaining access to the OS will allow me to tweak the setup a bit more to my need being both a programmer and a Linux sysadm. I have no desire to alter the OS and/or hardware, but I can envision the need for using the USB port to control an amplifier or integrate the NODE with other equipment over IP. Small tweaks. But again. Out of the box this is a wonderful product that I will recommend to friends and family.

 

Restoring a wordpress site by scraping/crawling google

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

I love challenges, but once in a while the tend to be way tooo big! During my christmasholidays I accidently wiped my home server. I wanted to do some LVM stuff online, remotely, without console access, through the ESXi console. … and really thought that nothing could go wrong ;-). First assumption being wrong.

To make a long history short. I shot myself in the foot and was without a server for a 3-4 days. When I got home again, I thought a simple reboot and some LVM magic would make everything all right. Second assumption being wrong.

So in the very end I had to reinstall my server from scratch. Luckily I backup my stuff using and so should you! It will save your butt some time!

It turned out that, for some bizaro reason, my database had not been dumped to csv files. So in the end I came to these conclusions:

  • I lost my database.
  • I thus lost my wordpress blog.

🙁

But loving challenges I refused to let that be the end. I thought about using archive.org, but they did not really have a new crawl of my site.

I decided to crawl google! Not as easy as it might sound for a couple of reasons:

  • Google does not like being crawled …. at all. If googles infinite number of computers discover that you are crawling them, then your IP will be blocked from seeing their cached content.
  • When you enter keywords into google you normally get thousans of links to follow. I needed one. The correct one! The one that was a cached version of my site.

So I fired up my editor and utilized the great WWW::Mechanize. I ended up with this script, which do all the hard work of scraping google. It will take some time to complete — hours and days even! It will get there though. If you try to speed things up it will take longer as you will be blocked by google when they detect you are scraping them. Be warned. Been there. Tried that. Got blocked.

Having retrieved all of my old site through google I had to parse these pages and import them into wordpress. So again I fired up my editor and wrote this little script. For this to work, you have to have

    • a clean wordpress installation with a hello world post
    • XMLRPC writing enabled in WordPress, as the script uses WordPress::XMLRPC.
    • the following in wp-config.php
      [code]
      define( ‘AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL’,    3600 );     // autosave 1x per hour
      define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’,    false );    // no revisions
      define( ‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’,      true );
      define( ‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’,     7 );        // one week
      [/code]

So in the end what did I loose and what did I learn? I lost my comments on my site. Or more preciesely: I have them,but I will postpone putting them back in until I get the time to fool around with coding again. And I learnt a lot about tripplechecking my backup for all their pieces before doing storage related work remotely without a proper console!

About growing logical volumes, md devices, partitions and filesystems in Ubuntu 10.10

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Recently I found myself in a situation, where I was running out of space in my server. Luckily for me, the disks was not 100% utilized. On the positive side, that meant, that I had the possibility to extend my system without buying new hardware. On the negative side it meant that I had to fool around with my precious data. Normally I do this for a living, but on my job it is just customer data. In this case we are talking about pictures of the kids and wife….. Much more important stuff for sure :-)

So my setup

  • / mounted as an ext3 fs on top of an logical volume (LVM2) called lvroot in vg000
  • /boot mount as an ext3 fs directly on /dev/md0
  • vg00 has one physical volume called /dev/md1
  • /dev/md0 is a RAID1 device on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1
  • /dev/md1 is a RAID1 device on /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2

Here is the business case: both /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2 was not fully utilized. /dev/sdb2 had 67GB unused and /dev/sda2 had around 250GB unused. That meant that I could resize / with 67GB up front, for free!

I startet out with this situation

root@edison:~# df -k /
Filesystem             1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg000-root 240149008 232617156   2652288  99% /

So how do you do this, in an easy, controlled way, without taking time consuming backups of hundres of GB (I do make backups, so it is very easy for me to write this ;-) )? You can do it like I did below.

<DISCLAIMER>This is best-effort, free of charge information.  If you end up breaking your system into several pieces, it is your responsibility. I can and will not be held liable. You get to keep the pieces yourself! That will hopefully teach you not to trust ‘expert advice’ from some random internet place run by a random danish guy.</DISCLAIMER>

That said. Lets do some storage work

# First I fail /dev/sdb2
mdadm --fail /dev/md1 /dev/sdb2

# Then I remove /dev/sdb2 from the running config
mdadm --remove /dev/md1 /dev/sdb2
# Then we delete and recreate /dev/sdb2 with a larger size.
# Do a print beforehand to see the "before" values
fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa286eb78

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          26      208813+  fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb2              27       30400   243979155   fd  Linux raid autodetect
# delete it
Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 2
# recreate with larger size and same type
Command (m for help): n
Command action
 e   extended
 p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (27-38913, default 27):
Using default value 27
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (27-38913, default 38913):
Using default value 38913
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): fd
Changed system type of partition 2 to fd (Linux raid autodetect)
# Write it
Command (m for help): w

If you are so lucky that you are not using the device for anything else (ie booting), the kernel can reread the modified partition table on the live system. If the system do use the device for something, you have to reboot the system. Which I had to do. Which I then did… By issuing the command:

reboot

When the server came back up, I assembled the /dev/md1 device again and waited for a resync. I speeded up the resync quite significantly by issuing the echo commands, which basically just tell md that it has to work as hard as it possibly can.

# Assemble again
mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdb2
# Speed up rebuild process
 echo 900000 > /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min
 echo 900000 > /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max
# watch status, eat pizze, drink a beer
watch cat /proc/mdstat

When the resync was done, I did it all over, replacing /dev/sdb2 with /dev/sda2.  After that,  I had grown the underlying partitions on my two drives, but both md and lvm had not noticed anything.

I made sure everything worked fine  and went onto the  next step – growing an md device on the fly.

# See current md device stats
root@edison:~# mdadm -D /dev/md1
/dev/md1:
 Version : 00.90
 Creation Time : Sat Jul 31 16:45:08 2010
 Raid Level : raid1
 Array Size : 243979072 (232.68 GiB 249.83 GB)
 Used Dev Size : 243979072 (232.68 GiB 249.83 GB)
 Raid Devices : 2
 Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 1
 Persistence : Superblock is persistent

 Update Time : Mon Nov 15 20:16:27 2010
 State : clean
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
 Spare Devices : 0

 UUID : f510bad0:59d990c1:19dfcc76:62eb3300
 Events : 0.204498

 Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
 0       8        2        0      active sync   /dev/sda2
 1       8       18        1      active sync   /dev/sdb2

# Grow the device to the max - took about 1-2 seconds, but see below
root@edison:~#  mdadm --grow --size=max /dev/md1
# Recheck the device stat.
root@edison:~# mdadm -D /dev/md1
/dev/md1:
 Version : 00.90
 Creation Time : Sat Jul 31 16:45:08 2010
 Raid Level : raid1
 Array Size : 312359744 (297.89 GiB 319.86 GB)
 Used Dev Size : 312359744 (297.89 GiB 319.86 GB)
 Raid Devices : 2
 Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 1
 Persistence : Superblock is persistent

 Update Time : Mon Nov 15 20:17:21 2010
 State : active, resyncing
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
 Spare Devices : 0

 Rebuild Status : 78% complete

 UUID : f510bad0:59d990c1:19dfcc76:62eb3300
 Events : 0.204503

 Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
 0       8        2        0      active sync   /dev/sda2
 1       8       18        1      active sync   /dev/sdb2

Notice how the drive went into sync state. Looking at mdstat confirms that. You can use the device before the mirroring is done. … or you can play it safe and wait. I decided to go ahead and use it before the sync was done. Living on the edge … this is not work. Only something your wife will never forgive you for ;-)

root@edison:~# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1]
[raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]

md1 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
 312359744 blocks [2/2] [UU]
 [===============>.....]  resync = 78.6% (245745600/312359744)
finish=21.2min speed=52265K/sec

md0 : active raid1 sdb1[1] sda1[0]
 208704 blocks [2/2] [UU]
unused devices: <none>

Next step. Making lvm aware of the change. Quite easy actually:

# Before
root@edison:~# pvdisplay /dev/md
 --- Physical volume ---
 PV Name               /dev/md1
 VG Name               vg000
 PV Size               232,68 GiB / not usable 832,00 KiB
 Allocatable           yes (but full)
 PE Size               4,00 MiB
 Total PE              59565
 Free PE               0
 Allocated PE          59565
 PV UUID               saiFOT-Dw2O-OnVv-rA4b-wZG3-OQHN-fFD1w

You then issue an pvresize on the pv  like this

root@edison:~# pvresize /dev/md1
 Physical volume "/dev/md1" changed
 1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized

And you end up with

root@edison:~# pvdisplay /dev/md1
 --- Physical volume ---
 PV Name               /dev/md1
 VG Name               vg000
 PV Size               297,89 GiB / not usable 2,62 MiB
 Allocatable           yes
 PE Size               4,00 MiB
 Total PE              76259
 Free PE               16694
 Allocated PE          59565
 PV UUID               saiFOT-Dw2O-OnVv-rA4b-wZG3-OQHN-fFD1wI

We are getting there? Now onto extending the volume. First peek at the current sizes/free space

root@edison:~# vgdisplay vg000
 --- Volume group ---
 VG Name               vg000
 System ID
 Format                lvm2
 Metadata Areas        1
 Metadata Sequence No  4
 VG Access             read/write
 VG Status             resizable
 MAX LV                0
 Cur LV                1
 Open LV               1
 Max PV                0
 Cur PV                1
 Act PV                1
 VG Size               297,89 GiB
 PE Size               4,00 MiB
 Total PE              76259
 Alloc PE / Size       59565 / 232,68 GiB
 Free  PE / Size       16694 / 65,21 GiB
 VG UUID               rL7lfw-H2FC-4ala-KVV3-bLIA-MbA9-co2n1O
root@edison:~# lvdisplay /dev/vg000/root
 --- Logical volume ---
 LV Name                /dev/vg000/root
 VG Name                vg000
 LV UUID                uDPn6b-AvyO-xH2n-zpXm-n0Xt-5g5n-aSdu4C
 LV Write Access        read/write
 LV Status              available
 # open                 1
 LV Size                232,68 GiB
 Current LE             59565
 Segments               1
 Allocation             inherit
 Read ahead sectors     auto
 - currently set to     256
 Block device           251:0

Then extend the volume

root@edison:~# lvextend -l 76259 /dev/vg000/root
Extending logical volume root to 297,89 GiB
Logical volume root successfully resized

One step left – resize the live filesystem

root@edison:~# resize2fs /dev/vg000/root
resize2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem at /dev/vg000/root is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old desc_blocks = 15, new_desc_blocks = 19
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/vg000/root to 78089216 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/vg000/root is now 78089216 blocks long.

How much did I gain:

root@edison:~# df -k /
Filesystem              1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg000-root  307454080 232621080  68588172  78% /

Almost a walk in the park. I did actully run into a problem during this procedure. When I removed /dev/sdb2, grub would not reboot. Instead it gave me a grub rescue prompt.  I overcame this booting a rescue CD, starting up the system using that. I then added /dev/sdb2 into /dev/md1 from the rescue cd, waited for the mirroring and and rebooted again. When I did the same for /dev/sda2, grub was happy all along?! I have not bothered to figure out why grub misbehaved, I just put grub down as being like a teenager: unreliable and causing problems for no obvious reason ;-)

Configuring and using the BMC on an IBM eServer 326.

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

The IBM eServer 326 comes with a fairly minimalistic Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). That is understandable when you look at the form factor (1U) of the eServer 326 as well as the pricetag it had when it was introduced. IBM tried to give the eServer 326 some RAS features without impacting the price. Kudos for that!

It does also however, mean that it is hard to use and configure. A couple of points

  • The BMC piggybacks/shares the first NIC with the system (LAN 1)
  • You have to start the server once before the BMC gets activated. It is not truely a seperate entity of its own
  • When you enter the system BIOS you see a BMC menu option. Clicking that however will not allow you to configure the LAN settings of the BMC, hence this blog post.
  • At times the BMC is unreachable due to the fact that the NIC is a shared NIC.

When you boot the disk/iso, it will normally go through an upgrade cycle before you end up in the lancfg tool. If you only want to configure the BMC, you can break the upgrade during startup (ctrl-c) and start lancfg yourself.

content of the lancfg disk

Inside lancfg you can configure the ip settings of th BMC ….

lancfg – ip settings

… as well as the SNMP settings

snmp settings of the BMC

You can also setup privileges to be used when accessing the BMC. The default BMC username and password for the IBM eServer 326 is USERID/PASSW0RD (with a zero)

After you have installed the tool, you can use it under linux as follows:

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 sysinfo
DeviceID=       0
DeviceRevision= 1
FirmwareVersion=        1.25
IpmiVersion=    1.5
ManufacturerID= 2
ProductID=      34888
Status= OK
SDRVersion=     1.5
Guid=   171c049f-4ea8-b387-119d-321e09d85fe8

or

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 power
Status= on

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 power reset
Error(power,0xa3):Insufficient privilege level.
edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 -u USERID -p PASSW0RD power reset

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 -u USERID -p PASSW0RD power off

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 -u USERID -p PASSW0RD power on

edison% ./usr/bin/smbridge -ip 192.168.1.223 -u USERID -p PASSW0RD power cycle

And that is about it. Not enterprise RAS features, but enough to reset a hung machine and stuff like that. Given that the eServer 326 was marketed as a cheap calculation node in a calculation farm, the BMC features fits the bill perfectly, even though it would have been nice with some remote console features as well….

About errors setting up SASL/StartTLS in Postfix under Ubuntu

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

In the process of setting up SASL and StartTLS under Postfix, I got this in the log:

“warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory”

It took me some minutes to figure out what was wrong. Obviously it has to do with postfix not being able to connect to the saslauthd server. The question is just, why? I went with a hunch of permissions … and wasted some time, so if you get the error, here is what solved it for me. In

/etc/default/saslauthd

You have to remove the default line and let saslauthd create its file under the postfix dirstructure. That is

> OPTIONS="-c -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd
< OPTIONS="-c -m /var/run/saslauthd"

And then

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Not rocket science, but I chased a wild goose looking at permissions for 15 minutes before figuring out what was wrong.

Ubuntu Headless installation (serialport)

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

I had to install ubuntu 10.04 server edition over the serialport. This is doable, but requires a keyboard to be attached and keys pressed blindly in the right sequence. Here is a little cookbook on what to press:

  1. Run a terminal client on the serial console device. Configure the serial port to either the failsafe 9600 n-8-1, Hardware Flow Control=NONE, or to the much speedier 115200 n-8-1, Hardware Flow Control=NONE. The latter should be used only if the serial port in both ends support this kind of speed.
  2. Boot the server with the ubuntu 10.04 server install media in the CD/DVD drive, or from a USB ke
  3. When it has booted into the installation menu (takes a couple of seconds), then do this
    • Press ‘Enter’ (for language selection)
    • Press ‘F6′ (Other Options)
    • Press ‘ESC’ (to close the Other Options Menu)
    • Press ‘Backspace’ 3 Times (to delete “– “)
    • Type ‘console=ttyS0,115200n8 — ‘
    • Press ‘Enter’
  4. Installation willl continue, ouputting the dialogs on the serial device.

You should ofcourse replace ttyS0 with another serial device, if applicable. I am at a loss as to why I have to do this in order for me to install Ubuntu Server 10.04 over the serial port in 2010!