Category Archives: Computers

SuperDuper! to the rescue!

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Today, I changed the password on my Mac Air, Agog. I then cooked dinner, and watched a couple of episodes of Poirot. I came upstairs … and I don’t remember the password I set. It was a good one. I have backups a couple of different ways, but neither of them seemed to be immediately accessible to me. In order to recover from the Time Machine backups, I need WiFi configured *and* I need to mount the volume that has that sparse image on it. That path seemed blocked to me. But there’s a better way!

I make periodic backups of my system using a program called SuperDuper! Among other lesser capabilities, it duplicates the whole system onto another (external) disc, and makes that bootable. Except that when I booted while pressing the Option key … the USB external drive wasn’t being presented to me as a boot option, as the documentation says it should. Sigh.

After spelunking around in Recovery mode (hold Command-R while booting) for a while, and taking a break to walk the dog, I came back, and FINALLY, in Disk Utility , the Apple menu offered me the option to set the boot disk. I selected the AirDuper disk I’d refreshed just last weekend, and that’s what I’m booted into now. I’m using that to restore Agog’s internal flash drive, which is happening in the background as I write this.

Whew!

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Staff Sgt. Carl E. Hammar, 24, of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, died July 14, in Khost province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from enemy small arms fire.
  • Sgt. Erik N. May, 26, of Independence, Kansas, died July 14, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Sergio E. Perez Jr., 21, of Crown Point, Indiana, died July 16, in Wali Kot District, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when his vehicle was struck by enemy rocket propelled grenades.
  • Spc. Nicholas A. Taylor, 20, of Berne, Indiana, died July 16, in Wali Kot District, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when his vehicle was struck by enemy rocket propelled grenades.
  • Sgt. Daniel A. Rodriguez, 28, of Baltimore, Maryland, died July 18, in Ghazni City, Afghanistan, when his vehicle was struck by an enemy improvised explosive device.
  • Sgt. Jose J. Reyes, 24, San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, died July 18, in Ghazni City, Afghanistan, when his vehicle was struck by an enemy improvised explosive device.
  • Cpl. Joshua R. Ashley, 23, of Rancho Cucamonga, California, died July 19 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Krystal M. Fitts, 26, of Houston, Texas, died July 17 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered from indirect fire.
  • Senior Chief Aviation Warfare Systems Operator Sean P. Sullivan, 40, of St. Louis, Missouri, died in a helicopter crash July 19 in Oman.
  • Naval Aircrewman (Helicopter) Second Class Joseph P. Fitzmorris, 31, of West Monroe, Louisiana, died in a helicopter crash July 19 in Oman.
  • Pfc. Jeffrey L. Rice, 24, of Troy, Ohio, died July 19, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Darrion T. Hicks, 21, of Raleigh, North Carolina, died July 19 in Ghazni, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained from an enemy improvised explosive device.

The Dortmunder

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I’ve decided to name the newest Linux system in the house Dortmunder. It amuses me greatly to name this bitty Raspberry Pi system after a spaceship the size of a small city. This one, however, isn’t captained by Andy Umberger, even though he is a friend of a friend. I’ve deployed Dortmunder in the “wiring closet”, running headless and hopefully trouble-free for a long, long time.

Dortmunder deployed

Dortmunder deployed

Fresh Pi, Have a Taste

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Here’s a shot of the screen:

Big screen running from new computer

Big screen running from new computer

The screen is running from my newest linux-based computational device, which you can see at the lower left of the picture above.

It's a Raspberry Pi!

It’s a Raspberry Pi!

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, yet, but at $35 plus shipping, I’m sure I can find a cost-appropriate use… I got in on one of the first few batches manufactured, placing my order last February, I think. It arrived today, a few weeks ahead of original schedule. They’re supposed to be opening up ordering again in a few days (whenever “mid-July” is, in marketing-speak), at this Newark/Element14 page.

Anyway, I’ve got to go roast coffee, but I thought I’d show you the newest small member of the menagerie around here. Ciao!

Another Sunday

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My day started in New Jersey. Seriously. I spent Thursday evening through this morning in New Brunswick, New Jersey attending PICC’12. What a great conference. Sponsored by LOPSA, and hosted by the New Jersey chapter of LOPSA, it was two superb days of new friends, meeting in meatspace folks I only knew electronically, good food, and some awesome technical training classes. My major focus this time around was on configuration management, security, and IPv6.

I can’t recommend this conference highly enough. Only a three hour drive for me, it’s also right close to the train and near to Newark airport. Think about it for next year for yourself. Oh, yeah, it’s inexpensive, too. Conf + food + hotel + gas was under $900.

Special thanks to William Bilancio, Thomas Uphill & Benjamin Rose, Aleksey Tsalolikhin, Shumon Huque, and Jesse Trucks. These folks were crucial to making the conference super for me.

*      *      *

Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

Master Sgt. Gregory L. Childs, 38, Warren, Arkansas, died May 4, in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Sgt. John P. Huling, 25, of West Chester, Ohio, died May 6 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Thomas K. Fogarty, 30, of Alameda, California, died May 6, in Ahmad-Kheyl, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

2nd Lt. David E. Rylander, 23, of Stow, Ohio, died May 2 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Spc. Junot M. L. Cochilus, 34, of Charlotte, North Carolina, died May 2 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Sgt. Jacob M. Schwallie, 22, of Clarksville, Tennessee, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Spc. Chase S. Marta, 24, of Chico, California, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Pfc. Dustin D. Gross, 19, of Jeffersonville, Kentucky, died May 7, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

Petty Officer Second Class Jorge Luis Velasquez, 35, of Houston, Texas, died as a result of a non-combat related incident in Manama, Bahrain.

Eventful

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The week, that is. Eventful.

First, I’m past halfway now, and on the long slide down into the twilight time. Yep, I turned 51 on Tuesday. It was a fun day: I worked my normal 9 hours, did some light VMware reading in the evening, and retired at my normal time of the evening. Do I know how to live it up, or what?

Regarding the light VMware reading, I’ve been boning up in preparation for a VCP vSphere 5 certification exam, which I took this afternoon.

Event the second – I did not pass that exam. Sigh, I suck. Well, in my defence, perhaps 20% of the exam covered upgrade topics, which neither the training class nor our work environment nor the VMware mock exam have anything to do with. So, some expanded scope in my reading, and I’ll sign up to retake the test in a month or so. I was hoping to have it out of the way before school starts up again in mid-May, but that wasn’t to be.

*      *      *

Lexi a-bed

Lexi a-bed

Lexi now retires before we do, often enough. For a nearly three year old dog, that’s rather pathetic. But she definitely thinks that she is people. This was last night, shortly after 9 PM.

*      *      *

At that time, I was still battling learning more about networking on OpenIndiana. The network was broken after an upgrade, and I had to learn how to fix it. But my normal tools for learning are manual pages. In this specific case, the manpage for ipadm was/is missing. Not a borked install, but actually missing from the distribution, a known bug. Hmmm. Still, thanks to generous souls who post online, the Goog helped me find the answer. I had to delete the interface, recreate it in a persistent mode, then set the IP address. Explicitly:

$ ipadm delete-if e1000g0
$ ipadm create-if e1000g0
$ ipadm create-addr -T static -a Q.Z.N.Y/24 e1000g0/v4
$ ipadm show-if -o all

Yeah, you see that I bowdlerized my internal IP there, you can take it as read that it’s in a non-routable range and leave it at that. There are other steps to networking in a modern Solaris without using the bloody awful NWAM (network auto-magic) facility. But you can look those up. But when you want to set an IP on an interface with ipadm, and it whines, saying that you can’t set an IP on a temporary interface … just adapt the steps above.

To Be Continued

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And here I am. So, Node.js. First, the lawyer crap: Node.js is a trademark of Joyent. I guess I have to say that, but seriously? Probably, just to protect the project from ne’er-do-wells out here on teh ‘tubes. It’s a sanely licensed project that provides good attribution to the bundled dependencies. I expect nothing less than good open source citizenship from the smart folks at Joyent.

Anyway, Node.js is a hunk of code and libraries that runs on the server-side of the HTML/XHTML transactional pipeline, and allows mind-bendingly simple code to do neat things. Is it secure? I dunno. Is it fast? I haven’t tested that. Is it cool enough for me to download, build, install, and run a web-based file server implemented in about 19 lines of code? Abso-freakin-lutely! If you like web frameworks and such stuff, you owe it to yourself to look into Node.js. You can learn more from an O’Reilly post, What is Node.js?

*     *     *

Now,DTrace. Why do I *REALLY* want to run Solaris and related operating systems? Two mega-features: ZFS and DTrace. ZFS rocks. DTrace rocks on steroids, all across the universe. (There’s also Zones, and Crossbow, and … there’s so much cool stuff to learn in the OS that used be be Sun’s.) But DTrace definitely takes the cake. And I say that without knowing how to use but the smallest part, yet. DTrace will instrument and help you debug systems, code, and network traffic (that hits your system). DTrace provides the ability to see into places that truss and strace only dream of after dropping massive quantities of hallucinogens. DTrace makes the best chocolate chip cookies on the planet. Okay, not the last bit, but it would if someone taught it how to cook.

I support some interestingly complicated (if small-ish in scale) Solaris-based applications and databases. DTrace gives me the right toolbox to properly support the developers and DBAs.  What can DTrace do? Simple examples abound, just search for DTrace one liners on your search engine of choice. When you want to learn more than web surfing and a few articles online will teach you, do what I did and pick up your own copy of DTrace by Brendan Gregg and Jim Mauro. I’m slowly working my way through the book, using my install of OpenIndiana as my test platform.

*     *     *

 The coffee, a Nicaragua Mozonte, it is roasted. And that reminds me, I’m down to three pounds on hand. That’s not much, time to visit Sweet Maria’s. Ciao!

 

 

Linux remodel, OpenIndiana build 151a, Node.js, and the DTrace Book

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Lots of computing updates going on. It all started last week …

*     *     *

It was the Thursday before Christmas, or Wednesday perhaps, the details blur just a bit. I’ve not been using the Linux box formerly known as Slartibartfast as a desktop machine for quite a while now. My old MacBook Pro got refurbished with a small-ish SSD drive, and that’s the primary desktop system these days. It sits in a custom upright support that I created for the purpose a couple of years ago, and finally put to use

Darlion, the sedentary MacBook Pro

Darlion, the sedentary MacBook Pro

Darlion — the OS X Lion -enabled former Darla — sits forlorn at home each day while the Air, known as Agog, travels with me now. But that’s another story. Anyway, the Ubuntu Linux box needed a shedload of updates, so I let it update. Ahem. That was a mistake.

When I was done, the system no longer booted properly. I’d managed to snag not a set of updates for my system, but a distribution upgrade to the latest and greatest ‘buntu. That’s all well and good, but I had lots of system-level customizations, especially on the networking side, that simply didn’t work anymore. Ethernet devices were renamed, the bloody network manager thing from Hell made a reappearance, and other stuff related to dbus and udev flatlined. That I was unhappy was an understatement, especially since it’s still my fault. I managed that system from a functional desktop that operated most of the time as a fairly reliable home server into a flakey piece of crap that didn’t boot. Me, I did this.

It’s ten o’clock at night on a working evening … I’m not getting this fixed today. Marcia’s nightly backups can skip a night, so can my nightly backups from the web (I back up our webs, MySQL databases, etc. every night into a rolling pattern that lets me restore at intervals back at least 60 days). So the backups just fail out overnight, and by Friday evening, I had time to do the work. Or so I thought.

I tried to get an ISO for Ubuntu LTS 10/04 (the long term support version: LTS) that would install. By around 2300 that night, I was ready to adjust the system with the aluminum LART [1] I keep in the house. I walked away, and re-approached the problem in the morning. Finally, on the fifth optical disc, and following two failures with USB media tries, I got Ubuntu Server 11/10 installed. That’s good for three years worth of security updates, and maybe I’ll have migrated to something else before then. I thought hard about OpenIndiana … but that’s the next chapter in the story.

*     *     *

Since I was rebuilding the system from scratch, I backed up the data I cared about separately from the normal weekly backups onto a pair of disks that weren’t part of the restructuring. I then dismantled both midsize towers, at least as far as storage was concerned.

For the purposes of conversation, let’s refer to these machines by the names they assumed at  the end of the process: Serenity, the Ubuntu Linux home server, and Hellboy, the OpenIndiana build 151a server and Gaming OS box. Both have quad-core processors (but Hellboy’s is a bit faster, and has VTS extensions, for later experimentation with Zones and KVM). Both have plenty of RAM, at 4G and 8G respectively.

I decommissioned the PCIe 1x 3Ware RAID card out of Serenity, and pulled the two 750G drives out of that system. I also pulled three 1TB drives, and a 500G drive out of Hellboy. All I left there was the 500G Windows 7 system disk. I put two of those 1TB drives into Serenity, and built them into a software RAID0 mirror set, which is fine for my purposes, and removed the dependency on the “custom” 3Ware RAID card. The performance hit for the purposes of this machine is negligible.

The Ubuntu install on Serenity is fine, and everything works. Why didn’t I go with a Red Hat or derivative? I’ve got current scripts with dependencies on packages that are trivial to acquire and install on Ubuntu, and I wanted this done before Christmas. Like I said, later. I configured the DNS, Samba, NTP and SSH services that Serenity provides, transcribing configs and updating as necessary from my backups. Then I restored the 500G or so of Userland data, and nearly everything was working again. I had to do some tuning on Marcia’s box to make backups work again, and modify some of her mapped drives to be happy with the new system, but that took no time at all. Putting the newer, larger drives into Serenity was actually a power-draw win, too! That system is only pulling about 70 watts at idle, where it was nearly 90 watts with the older drives and RAID card in play.

*     *     *

Next I reinstalled OpenIndiana build 151a onto Hellboy. This time, Hellboy got the two 750G drives as a single ZFS rpool mirror set, and that’s the extent of that system. It’s running, I can experiment with Zones and DTrace and Node.js there, and it doesn’t need to be running 24/7.

Why OpenIndiana? It’s one of the distributions of Illumos, the carrier of the OpenSolaris torch after Oracle abandoned that codebase in 2010. Do you want more Solaris history than that, leading up to what happened? Watch Bryan Cantrill’s Fork, Yeah! presentation from LISA 2011. What an awesome talk! Still, why OpenIndiana? I really like Solaris, but I don’t really want to spend the $2K/year which is the only way to legally license and keep updated Solaris on non-SUNOracle hardware. I want a Solaris playspace at home, and OpenIndiana provides that. And if the rumors are true, which is that internal to Oracle, Solaris is really just being treated as firmware for Oracle storage and database appliances, then the only general purpose computing inheritor of the Solaris codebase will be something evolved from/through Illumos. DTrace is cool. ZFS is über-cool. Zones are super-cool. And I want to play there, in my “spare time.”

*     *     *

Node.js and the DTrace book. That’ll have to wait for a pending post, I want supper! Ciao!

[1] LART – Luser Attitude Realignment Tool, in this case an aluminum baseball bat.

 

Hah!

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The formerly missing screwdriver.

The formerly missing screwdriver.

Remind me not to attempt brain surgery this week.

I ended up remounting the Windows drive into the chassis, and booting there for the financial management software. Hard mounted to metal, so it’s noisy as hell. But it got the job done, and I was able to boot back into hellboy shortly thereafter.

It was opening the chassis to pop in the drive that revealed the missing screwdriver. Hmmm.

Sidewalks, Ringtones, and iOS5

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Thoughtful neighbors fill the sidewalk with trashcans

Thoughtful neighbors fill the sidewalk with trashcans

Time for the last walk of the evening for Lexi. Up the street we go … and a couple of nights a week, we actually go up the street, rather than use the sidewalk, because some neighbors can’t help but block the way. I’ve even spoken to them about it, to no avail. Either they can’t remember that I asked, or they’re malevolent. Grrr. I really *want* to tip that stuff all over their lawn in response, but I’m too bloody nice to do that. They do the same thing, only more sprawled out, with bags of lawn clippings. Sigh.

*     *     *

So, iOS5.

After a bit of finagling, I got it installed on my iPhone 4 last week. I’ve been poking and plinking around the interface in my not-so-spare time, and finally discovered that you (and I) can assign ringtones as Alert sounds. Huzzah! It’s more than just the ability to do that, but now I can create custom loops and assign them to SMS alerts … which is good. The default Alert loops suck for waking me up in the middle of the night when I am on call. So now I have an Alert sound courtesy of The Who, and a default ringtone from Van Halen’s Eruption. Empirically, it appears that the loop length cutoff for using a ringtone as an alert is 30 seconds.

 

RIP Steve

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Steve Jobs was an insanely great dude. He pushed his people and his company to innovate and create in ways that would not have been possible without him. Rest in Peace.