Ellis Giles

Sunday night the 13th I was loading the car getting ready for Monday.  Sandy was hanging out with me by the car, wanting to jump in and go wherever I might head off to.  But, I wasn’t going anywhere, and I guess she finally gave up.  I was cleaning out the car and heard a dog fight in the distance.  It was about 10pm.  I turned around, didn’t see Sandy, and knew right away she got into a fight with the pit-bull across the street.

I went running in that direction yelling Sandy.  She came running across the street yelping and whining with her tail so far up between her back legs it was on her stomach.  Poor girl!  She came up to me, then as we went back to the house she went straight to the car and jumped in and wouldn’t get out.  I examined her.  She had a huge gash in her leg and a cut by her eye.  She obviously needed stitches, the bleeding had already almost stopped. 

I went inside to tell MH and Alden was still awake too.  MH called the vet and they sent someone to the animal hospital to meet us.  I took Sandy to the clinic and met one of the animal doctors.  He bandaged Sandy up and said to bring her back in the morning.  He gave her some pain killers, anti-biotics and said she would even be ok in the wild, just would have a huge scar if it didn’t get stiches.  I carried Sandy out as I had carried her in.  We barely slept as we were worried about her.

The next morning, I dropped Sandy off at the vet as I went into work.  She did fine and MH picked her up on her way home.

She started trying to pull her stitches out so Mary-Helen dropped her off during lunch to get a cone put on her head.  Poor girl!  She gets medicine twice a day now.  I took some video of the cone head and will post it up sometime.

Filed under: Family | Tagged: cone head, Sandy | 34 Comments »

This weekend we moved Cas to a new Apartment.  I met up at the storage shed Cas got in Brenham and helped load.  After filling up four vehicles, we stopped for lunch at Chili’s to fuel up before heading into Houston.  We looked for Alden’s coloring of a Chili Pepper, but they had not hung it up yet.

After making our way through hwy 6 traffic we got to Cas’s new apartment, which is very nice.  It has a study and large bathroom.  It’s on the third floor, so it was tough to move everything upstairs!  I think I did about 14 trips!

On Sunday we went to visit GG and Gramp.  I had bought a suit on Friday for my interview.  It was on sale for 60% off, should have picked up several.  :-)  GG finished the pants for me, and it looks great.  Alden had a good time running around.  Gramp gave me his old weed-eater which is gas powered!  We went home to give Alden a nap, and I got the weed-eater running.  It does run really rough and is hard to start.

On the way to meet GG for dinner for her B-day we stopped to visit Grand D.  We had a good visit and Alden got into everything.  We had a nice visit but couldn’t stay too long.  We met Mom, Doug, and GG for dinner in Bellville for GG’s birthday and Alden really loved the Chinese food!  As the waitress was serving the appetizers that came with the family meals Alden said, “where’s mine?”  haha.  He got a won-ton from Grandma and ribs and part of a egg roll from the table.  Alden wanted to keep GG’s balloon.

I weed-eated and eventually ran out of gas!  :-(  The gas that was in there was old.  I now need to get a one-gallon gas can to make a gas-oil mix.

Filed under: Family | Tagged: Alden, Cas, GG, Grand D., Grandma, Grandpa, MH | No Comments »

Ubuntu

Make sure you have the proper services installed:

apt-get install smbclient smbfs

List Services

/usr/bin/smbclient -L host

Connect

/usr/bin/smbclient service <password> [-U username]

Example, to connect to a MyBookWorld partition:

/usr/bin/smbclient //MyBookWorld/Public mypassword -U myusername

Where myusername and mypassword are created on the MyBookWorld store and Public is the store on the MyBookWorld.

Mounting the shareMounting a Samba Share

mount -t smbfs -o username=<name>,password=<passwd> //sambashare /mountpoint

If a password contains a space or you wish to mount the share on startup, create a credentials file:
username=myusername
password=mypassword

Your username might also contain a domain, e.g. domain/user.

mount -t smbfs -o credentials=<credentialsfile> //sambashare /mountpoint

You can also create an entry /etc/fstab, and it will be mounted automatically every time you boot up:

//Server/Share    /mountpoint     smbfs credentials=credentialsfile,rw

It is important that the credentialsfile be not readable by the general user or the passwords will be readable too.  So, chmod 600 credentialsfile.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Linux, MyBookWorld, Samba, smbfs, Ubuntu | 27 Comments »

This process works for VMware server 1.09 and Kernel 2.6.28 (and .27) from Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

1.  Make sure you have a build environment (gcc, make, etc).  If not:

apt-get install gcc make build-essential

2.  Install your kernel’s headers:

apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Make a note of where the headers were installed.  It’s usually in /usr/src/.  I usually do a:

ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r` /usr/src/linux-headers

Then the headers are linked from /usr/src/linux-headers, and when the VMware build asks for a location you can specify /usr/src/linux-headers/include.  Note the extra include.

3.  Download VMware Server 1.0.9 tar gz from vmware.com. 

Unpackage:

tar -xvzf VMware-server-1.0.9-156507.tar.gz

4.  Download and install vmware-update kernel patch.

http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz

Save this file in the vmware-server-distrib directory.

tar -xvzf vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz

cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2

perl runme.pl

I used the defaults on everything except the linux headers as specified above (/usr/src/linux-headers/include) and ignored all warnings.  Note if you run into problems make sure to clean the entire build (best to just delete and start over) or you might have corrupted object files around that won’t properly integrate with the kernel.

5.  Edit the inet file to allow connection from remote hosts.
Made sure the vmware conf line was in the /etc/inetd.conf file:
# VMware authentification daemon
902 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/vmware-authd vmware-authd

#/etc/rc.d/inetd restart

or

#kill -HUP inetd

apt-get install xinetd openbsd-inetd

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, Linux, Ubuntu, VMWare | 21 Comments »

When burning an iso file (an image of a CD or DVD), it is important to not only verify the buring of the disc but to also verify the download of the data.  Many times data can be corrupted when downloading large files or transferring large sets of data between machines.  One time I had a Lynksys router that combined dsl and a local four port switch.  It stated it could handle 100 Mb/s and indeed would… for the most part.  But, if you transferred a large file or lots of smaller ones on machines on the local switch, it started dropping bits.  It took awhile to figure out what was going on and to replace the hardware.  Basically, the solution was to add a real switch behind the dsl router for local traffic.  The data going to/from the Internet on dsl never got close to the threshold of dropping bits, but it made me aware that hardware manufactures can make junk sometimes, and it’s kept me away from future Lynksys products.

When you do download a large iso, say Ubuntu 9.04, verify the iso file against the published md5 hash at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SoftwareRAID.  Basically, this computes a one way hash of the entire iso and gives you a number, and if that number matches the published by the iso provider, you have a valid iso file.  Download the md5sum here:

http://www.etree.org/cgi-bin/counter.cgi/software/md5sum.exe

Then simply launch a Dos window and run:

md5sum filename.iso

When burning the disc enable check for errors, verify or test (depending on your software).  As the disc is created it will check to make sure the burn to the disc was successful.

After you have burned the disc, for an Ubuntu install, reboot and launch from CD.  In the first menu choose “Check disc for defects”.

This is very important.  I performed the above steps for verifying the md5 sum and burning and testing the CD and the CD still failed the Ubuntu check for disc defects test.  It had several corrupted packages that somehow got burned onto disc.

I didn’t have to redownload the iso, just reburn the disc.  The next time it passed.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: 9.04, iso, Jaunty Jackalope, Linux, MD5Sum, Ubuntu | 33 Comments »

When installing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope from CD on a new machine, configuring with RAID 1 is easier than ever.

You can follow the instructions directly from Ubutu forums and even skip the boot loader and startup script as the install has improved from the previous release.

Useful command before reboot to check the sync of the disks:

cat /proc/mdstat

Here’s the steps followed:

For a 2 hard drive system in RAID 1 configuration. (repeat steps for additional hard drives)

Warning: the /boot filesystem cannot use any softRAID level other than 1 with the stock Ubuntu bootloader. If you want to use some other RAID level for most things, you’ll need to create separate partitions and make a RAID1 device for /boot.

Warning: this will remove all data on hard drives. See DrivesAndPartitions for more information.

1. Select “Manual” as your partition method.
2. Select your 1st hard drive, and agree to “Create a new empty partition table on this device ?”
3. Repeat step 2 with your 2nd hard drive.
4. Select the “FREE SPACE” on the 1st drive then select “Create a new partition”
5. Select the size (suggestion, normally you want a root partition major part of the hard drive and swap which is 1.5 times the amount of ram )
6. Select Primary, then Beginning.
7. Select the “Use as:” by default this is “Ext3 journalling file system” we want to change that to “physical volume for RAID”
8. Select “bootable flag” and set it to “on”
9. Select “Done setting up the partition”
10. Repeat steps 4 to 10 for the 2nd hard drive and the other partitions.

Configuring the RAID

1. Once you have complete your partitioning in the main “Partition Disks” page select “Configure Software RAID”
2. Select “Yes”
3. Select “Create new MD drive”
4. Select RAID1, or type of RAID you want (RAID0 RAID1 RAID5)
5. Number of devices 2 or the amount of hard drives you have
6. Number of spare devices 0
7. select which partitions to use. Generally they will be sda1 and sdb1 or hda1 or hdb1. Generally the numbers will match and the different letters are for different hard drives.
8. At this point the installation may become unresponsive this is the hard drives already syncing. Repeat steps 3 to 7 with each pair of partitions you have created.
9. Once done, select finish.

Formatting

You now have a list of your hard drives and your RAID drives. We will now format and set the mount point for other RAID drives. Treat the RAID drive as a local hard drive and format and mount accordingly

1. Select Partition.
2. Go to Use as Select Ext 3 for your normal partitions or swap area for your swap partition
3. If you select Ext 3 then select your mount point if you only have one partition for ext 3 select /
4. Repeat for each RAID partition.

Select “Finish partitioning and write changes to disk”

From this point on, your hard drive lights will probably be on continuously. This indicates the array syncing. The system can be used normally and even rebooted while the array syncs.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, Linux, RAID, Ubuntu | 40 Comments »

If you’re running into hard drive issues, sporadic error messages, or other problems, it’s time to backup and test your drive.

If you’re on a journaling file system ext4 or other, these errors might sometimes get corrected, but you need to replace your drive.

apt-get install smartmontools

smartctl -a /dev/sda1 (or your problematic drive)

Any errors or queued reads/writes can mean a problem.

Try forcing a fsck.  You need to download and burn the latest copy of Ubuntu.  Boot into rescue mode and you will get a system prompt.  Then run:

e2fsck -f -c -v /dev/sda1

or your problem drive.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: e2fsck, fsck, Ubuntu | 31 Comments »

I was randomly getting hard drive error messages.  UNC means UNCorrectable ERRor, …. not good.  These messages were like:

Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: ata1.00: cmd 60/f8:08:85:fe:dd/00:00:18:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 126976 in
Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: res 40/00:10:7d:00:de/00:00:18:00:00/40 Emask 0×1 (device error)
Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: ata1.00: cmd 60/08:10:7d:00:de/00:00:18:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 4096 in
Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: res 40/00:10:7d:00:de/00:00:18:00:00/40 Emask 0×1 (device error)
Feb 17 10:40:34 server04 kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Feb 17 10:40:39 server04 kernel: ata1.00: cmd 60/08:18:7d:ff:dd/00:00:18:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 4096 in
Feb 17 10:40:39 server04 kernel: res 40/00:10:7d:00:de/00:00:18:00:00/40 Emask 0×1 (device error)
Feb 17 10:40:39 server04 kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }

and

ata1.00: exception Emask 0×0 SAct 0×0 SErr 0×0 action 0×0
ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0×25
ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:8f:01:3c/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 4096 in
         res 51/40:00:8f:01:3c/00:00:00:00:00/01 Emask 0×9 (media error)
ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata1.00: error: { UNC }
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata1: EH complete
ata1.00: exception Emask 0×0 SAct 0×0 SErr 0×0 action 0×0
ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0×25
ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:8f:01:3c/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 4096 in
         res 51/40:00:8f:01:3c/00:00:00:00:00/01 Emask 0×9 (media error)
ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata1.00: error: { UNC }
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata1: EH complete

and

[ 6308.750919] ata1.00: exception Emask 0×0 SAct 0×0 SErr 0×0 action 0×0
[ 6308.750930] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0×65
[ 6308.750939] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:27:45:94/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0
dma 4096 in
[ 6308.750942]          res 51/40:08:28:45:94/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask
0×9 (media error)
[ 6308.750948] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 6308.750951] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[ 6308.757809] ata1: nv_mode_filter: 0×3f01f&0×3f01f->0×3f01f,
BIOS=0×3f000 (0xc600c0c0) ACPI=0×3f01f (20:600:0×13)
[ 6308.773842] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
[ 6308.774057] ata1: EH complete
[ 6315.576605] ata1.00: exception Emask 0×0 SAct 0×0 SErr 0×0 action 0×0
[ 6315.576616] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0×65
[ 6315.576627] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:27:45:94/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0
dma 4096 in
[ 6315.576629]          res 51/40:08:28:45:94/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask
0×9 (media error)
[ 6315.576635] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 6315.576638] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[ 6315.588519] ata1: nv_mode_filter: 0×3f01f&0×3f01f->0×3f01f,
BIOS=0×3f000 (0xc600c0c0) ACPI=0×3f01f (20:600:0×13)
[ 6315.608523] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
[ 6315.608711] ata1: EH complete

I obtained and ran the SmartCTL utility:

apt-get install smartmontools

smartctl -a /dev/sda

(or your hard drive)

You’ll see output like:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
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     0×000b   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0×0007   144   139   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       3325
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0×0032   094   094   040    Old_age   Always       -       6229
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0×0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0×000b   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0×0032   084   084   000    Old_age   Always       -       11802
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0×0013   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0×0013   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0×0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       6203
194 Temperature_Celsius     0×0022   111   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       39
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0×0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0×0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0×000a   200   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0×0009   200   155   051    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

A retry, error, or pending count can mean bad sectors!

Luckily if you’re running ext4, or another journaling file system, these errors may recover and you can backup you machine, install a RAID and get on with life!

You might run into posts that say that adding kernel options like:

“options libata noacpi=1″ on /etc/modprobe.d/options

may not show errors of these types again, but hiding errors is not a good idea.  The above errors are symptoms of a failing drive and should be replace immediately.

Even if fsck runs fine, you should force an fsck check.  See my other post on running fsck.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Hard Drive, Sector Error, Ubuntu | 26 Comments »

After a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04,  you might have a network interface virbr0 if you’ve selected to install a virtual machine emulator.  During the CD install, selecting vm, it will install kvm and xen.  It will create a network interface virbr0 or virbr1 to perform host networking.

Later, if you decide to install VMWare or decide you really didn’t want a virtual machine server, you remove the applications easily.  Just do a (sudo):

apt-get purge kvm

apt-get purge libxen3

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: 9.04, apt-get, Jaunty Jackalope, Linux, Ubuntu, virbr0 | 30 Comments »

I had moved Alden’s mattress into his new room and he slept ok.  Mommy made muffins for breakfast which were excellent.  We didn’t do much in the morning, tried to play guitar but the strings are buzzing.  Alden had been painting and coloring.  His latest is he wants to “run away!” when he gets upset.  We put him down for an early nap.

Luckily, Alden went down for a nap easily and got up a little past two.  Grandma called and it was going to be an early dinner for Lobsters so we hurried and got ready and headed over.

Alden played for a little while we visited with Grandma R., Grandma and Grandpa W., Allison, Evan, Cas, Grandma and Grandpa.  Grandpa had also made ribs in addition to the lobster, mom made corn and salad and baked potatoes.

Alden ate a ton!  4 ribs, part of my lobster claw, part of MH’s, a claw from Grandma R, and part of his baked potato.  He went for a golf cart ride with Uncle Cas.  We all had cookies from Grandma R, ice cream and had a great time visiting.

Most of us all left about the same time, which was good for Alden since he started to protest, but everyone else was saying goodbye too, so he didn’t end up protesting at all!  He wanted to jump out of the car, “climb over the fence and run away into the woods” several times on the way home.  Aren’t you supposed to wait until you’re about 14 for this phase?  :-)  He was very tired and went to sleep.

Alden didn’t sleep through the night though, got up and came in our room about 3:30 am.  Tuesday morning he got up early and wanted to “run away!”

Filed under: Family | Tagged: Alden, guitar, Lobster | 26 Comments »