February 2012 - luv-main

RE: Warranty (was RAID-1 synchronisation)
by James Harper 13 Feb '12

13 Feb '12

> Hi, > > On 11/02/2012 1:10 PM, James Harper wrote: > > "Enterprise" drives don't normally cost that much more, although looking at > the prices right now they are quite a bit more expensive at the moment from > at least one of our suppliers. > > Drive pricing was severely effected by the Thailand floods. > > There is enough price differential between standard and enterprise drives, > but the standard ones come with lesser warranty -- I think it is better to > choose enterprise ALWAYS, just due to the warranty period extension. > > If the warranty is longer, then it should follow that the drive is more reliable > and can be trusted more easily (aside from the "use" type settings). > On the subject of warranty, the laws in australia have changed for goods purchased since 1/1/2011. The manufactures warranty just represents the point where you can get your money back easily. The product must still function for a reasonable time after purchase and must be repaired or replaced if it fails within that time, although I think that responsibility falls to the party you purchased it off. The "reasonable time" bit isn't clearly defined, but if I bought a disk and it failed within 18 months I'd be contacting the place I'd bought it off, even if it only came with a 12 month warranty. No manufacturer is going to agree that their product isn't expected to last 3 years. >From http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1023610 "Is there a time limit on when you can use your rights? There are no specific rules about exactly how long a product or service should last. Even after a voluntary or manufacturer's warranty expires you may still be entitled to a repair, replacement or refund. This will depend on what you purchased and the nature of the problem." Disks are a bit tricky though... I'd be reluctant to return a $99 disk for repair/replacement if it was a standalone or part of a RAID1 and had my (or my customers) data easily accessible, even if the chances are it would just be sent for destruction anyway. I guess that's another advantage of RAID[56]. It's all out the window if you imported it direct from an overseas reseller of course, but that's a choice you make. OT but it's also worth noting that the phone situation is much more clearly defined. If you get a phone on a contract from a Telco, your phone is covered at least for the duration of the contract (eg if your phone breaks 18 months into a 24 month contract they have to repair or replace it). Something to keep in mind next time your telco tries to screw you over (as was the case when my mum bought a phone recently). James

7 19

state of ZFS and btrfs (was: RAID-1 synchronisation)
by Toby Corkindale 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

On 05/02/12 19:13, Daniel Pittman wrote: > On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 23:30, Russell Coker<russell(a)coker.com.au> wrote: >> On Sun, 5 Feb 2012, Daniel Pittman<daniel(a)rimspace.net> wrote: >>> Yes, it does good. For something like RAID-5 that has enough >>> information to detect which device is wrong you can find and correct >>> problems with the system. With a RAID-1 you can know that a device is >>> returning bad data. >> >> You mean RAID-6. RAID-5 is no better than RAID-1 when it comes to determining >> which one of the disks is returning corrupt data. > > Sorry, yes, I did. I was thinking about that at the time I wrote it, > then went back and edited. Obviously, poorly. > >> On Sun, 5 Feb 2012, Daniel Pittman<daniel(a)rimspace.net> wrote: >>> Yes. This is the substantial advantage that BTRFS and ZFS have over >>> device-level RAID and LVM. The stronger checksums are useful because >>> they can be checked inline with lower I/O cost, and the intimate >>> knowledge of allocated space means you can check more quickly. Both >>> very attractive features. >> >> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/ >> >> The above URL lists mirroring as "Additional features in development, I don't >> think I can use this on serious servers for a while. > > Honestly, I wouldn't touch btrfs for some time. Last I heard overhead > was still in the thirty to fifty percent range, which makes ZFS look > nimble and efficient by comparison. ZFS looks significantly better, > though it is still a little annoying to use on Linux, and > Debian/KFreeBSD is annoying enough that I never got to testing it out > seriously. I've been giving ZFS a bit of a trial run on one of my servers, because the block-based deduplication looked attractive, as did the checksumming and using an SSD as L2 cache. Unfortunately I ended up giving up -- it *seemed* pretty good on the surface, but I managed to kill the server too often. I ended up in a state where attempting to 'rm -rf' a (large) directory would cause the machine to spike up to over 100 load, and after 15+ minutes the hardware watchdog would reboot the machine because it'd become totally unresponsive, even to the console. Prior to these crashes, there'd be a bunch of log messages about kernel memory allocation failures. I'm pretty sure this was because the memory required for the dedup hash map is huge -- gigabytes per terabyte of storage. Now, if that can't fit in RAM, then ZFS should just be paging it in from disk, which is slow, but shouldn't crash the machine. However in practice it did seem to kill it :( I'm giving btrfs another go now; pity about losing the block-based dedup (which is great when you have a lot of virtual machine images), but the overhead just wasn't worth it for me. One thing I'm already struggling to find in btrfs is simply to work out how much space a snapshot is consuming! Anyone? -Toby

11 22

*.cpt files under Linux
by Brian May 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

Hello, I seem to have a collection of *.cpt files, probably coral paint I think. Is there any way of being able to access this files without buying a copy of coral paint (which may or may not even work)? Doing a web search seems to suggest that the best solution is to convert them in coral paint. It seems even gimp doesn't support *.cpt files. I suspect the files aren't really very important, however. So not worth going to considerable measures to recover them. Thanks -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>

4 4

dd with large buffer locks up linux?
by Andrew Worsley 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

I'm reluctant to repeat this again but it appeared that under a squeeze version of PPC Linux Linux imac 2.6.32-5-powerpc on a machine that had 512Mb of ram I ran: dd if=/dev/zero of=empty.dat bs=1024M count=66 Then it swelled so that it''s RES become around 900+Mb and I couldn't kill it. I tried by ^C, ^Z on the spawning terminal I tried by kill, kill -9 from another terminal, even as root! The box ran but was extremely slow with 90% iowait times. This appeared to be lasting indefinitely i.e. minutes so the only way I could recover it was to issue a reboot which worked! This surely is a DoS type issue as I only ran it as a normal user. I was just trying to fill up the spare disk space with zero blocks to I could create an easily compressed disk image. Anyway I don't recomend people try to repeat this unless they are happy to reboot to get out of it, it could just be I was unlucky or that PowerPC is vulnerable to this issue. If not I would suggest perhaps reporting it as a vulnerability to be fixed. Thanks in advance for any comments. Andrew

5 4

swapping fields
by Russell Coker 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

I have a file with lines like "a,b,c" which I want to be "c,b,a". I tried using "cut -f 3,2,1 -d," but it didn't do what I wanted. It seems that you can specify the desired fields on the cut command line any way you like but it will sort them to be in numeric order. Any ideas other than a sed command with positional parameters? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

2 1

RAID-1 synchronisation
by Russell Coker 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

I run a bunch of servers with Linux software RAID-1. I use bitmaps on all of them because the ongoing overhead (*) of bitmaps is better than the occasional overhead of a full resync. Recently one of my servers suddenly decided to do a complete RAID-1 resync for no apparent reason. Other servers with the same versions of all software (Debian/Squeeze with all updates) didn't do it. The server in question did crash a few times recently (**). Is a server crash likely to result in an entire RAID resync even when bitmaps are used? Does anyone have any advice other than throwing the server in the bin? (*) I really doubt that the overhead is as bad as some people claim. I plan to test it but haven't had time so far. (**) Currently dmesg output includes the following: [87347.834590] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (r8169): transmit queue 0 timed out [87347.844958] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 94s! [swapper:0] I'm not sure if this is related to the crashes. I suspected a problem with eth1 and turned off TSO etc which seems to have helped. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

8 23

swap over iSCSI
by Tim Connors 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

I presume swap over iSCSI and NFS are still prone to deadlock? I've seen no followup to this thread back in 2007: http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Swap_Over_NFS other than this thread not finding a definitive answer: http://groups.google.com/group/open-iscsi/browse_thread/thread/bdff45207969… Can anyone trace whether these patches and iscsi patches ever made it upstream? It'd be a pity to waste all the memory in my new NAS. Swap to something essentially seekless would be quite nice. -- Tim Connors

2 1

Re: state of ZFS and btrfs
by Richard Archer 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

On 11/02/12 4:26 PM, Daniel Pittman wrote: > Total, actually. Although that was US dollars, and only cheap > consumer grade non-ECC memory. With ZFS able to parity-check data on disk for consistency and detect/repair bit errors, is it necessary to use ECC memory for a dedicated ZFS file store? ...Richard.

3 2

Install debian on Acer Aspire 1 D257?
by Craig Sanders 12 Feb '12

12 Feb '12

I'm installing debian on an Acer Aspire 1 D257 notebook for someone, and the installer won't recognise the hard disk. all i get from the installer is "No disk drive was detected. If you know the name of the driver needed by your disk drive, you can select it from the list." followed by a selectable list of mostly-ancient drivers, all irrelevant. i've tried the squeeze, wheezy, and sid installers (all pretty much the same, except for minor variations in the kernel*)...and tried both amd64 and i386 for each (the CPU is a 64-bit quad-core Atom N570). anyone have any ideas? lspci says: # lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05) 02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Device 0032 (rev 01) 03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5209 (rev 01) the Intel ICH7 should be well-supported. here's the syslog from when i run the Detect Disks menu option: Feb 10 09:17:18 main-menu[4292]: INFO: Menu item 'disk-detect' selected Feb 10 09:17:19 net/hw-detect.hotplug: Detected hotpluggable network interface eth0 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.101140] libata version 3.00 loaded. Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.116877] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.116918] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117004] alloc irq_desc for 28 on node -1 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117011] alloc kstat_irqs on node -1 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117038] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 28 for MSI/MSI-X Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117116] ahci: SSS flag set, parallel bus scan disabled Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117172] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 4 ports 3 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117184] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq ilck stag pm led clo pmp pio slum part Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117196] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.117714] scsi0 : ahci Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.118134] scsi1 : ahci Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.118390] scsi2 : ahci Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.118661] scsi3 : ahci Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.119536] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m1024@0x56204000 port 0x56204100 irq 28 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.119550] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m1024@0x56204000 port 0x56204180 irq 28 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.119557] ata3: DUMMY Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.119562] ata4: DUMMY Feb 10 09:17:19 net/hw-detect.hotplug: Detected hotpluggable network interface lo Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.600033] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.601999] ACPI Warning for \_SB_.PCI0.SATA.PRT0._GTF: Return type mismatch - found Integer, expected Buffer (20090903/nspredef-1006) Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.602016] ata1.00: _GTF unexpected object type 0x1 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.602351] ata1.00: ATA-8: WDC WD3200BPVT-22JJ5T0, 01.01A01, max UDMA/133 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.602365] ata1.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.604433] ata1.00: _GTF unexpected object type 0x1 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.604796] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.620280] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA WDC WD3200BPVT-2 01.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Feb 10 09:17:19 kernel: [ 407.940034] ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) Feb 10 09:17:20 kernel: [ 407.965473] sd_mod: Unknown symbol scsi_verify_blk_ioctl Feb 10 09:17:20 kernel: [ 407.967957] sd_mod: Unknown symbol scsi_cmd_blk_ioctl Feb 10 09:17:20 hw-detect: Loading PCMCIA bridge driver module: i82365 Feb 10 09:17:20 hw-detect: FATAL: Module i82365 not found. Feb 10 09:17:21 check-missing-firmware: no missing firmware in /dev/.udev/firmware-missing those Unknown Symbol and/or the ACPI Warning lines are probably where the problem is. googling for the ACPI warning got me a page that suggested adding "acpi_apic_instance=2" to the kernel cmd line, but that made no difference. I'm beginning to think i'm going to have to re-learn the PITA procedure to make a custom kernel/initrd for d-i so i can boot with a 3.0.x or 3.2.x kernel. it's been a few years since i did it, but i remember that it was a tediously convoluted process that involved shaving far too many yaks (including a full d-i build when all i want is a suitable kernel+initrd to place on my tftp server). (*) for instance, the latest squeeze kernel/initrd has removed the firmware for the Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E NIC. hooray, i just love screwing around with USB sticks and windows-like hunts for missing drivers. I also love PXE-booting into an installer and then finding that a NIC that IPXE has no problem with won't work with the debian kernel. The sid and wheezy installers still have the firmware...boo for nasty un-PC kernels. maybe i should try Linux Mint. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>

3 11

Will this ruling have implications for secure booting?
by Allan Duncan 11 Feb '12

11 Feb '12

A win in France for a Lenovo customer who didn't want bundled software on a laptop he wanted to run linux on appears to have ramifications for all of the EU. http://no.more.racketware.info/news/hardware-software-bundling-crumbles-fra… I wonder if that might extend to the boot process as well.

9 12