October 2013 - luv-main

VirtualBox, AMD_V, and "recompile your kernel and reboot"
by Allan Duncan 09 Oct '13

09 Oct '13

I have VirtualBox up and running fine with a 32-bit XP image, but when I tried to configure a 64-bit linux machine VirtualBox barfs when you try to start it with: Failed to open a session for the virtual machine linux_test. AMD-V is being used by another hypervisor. (VERR_SVM_IN_USE). VirtualBox can't enable the AMD-V extension. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_SVM_IN_USE). Searching for this found a match, but their solution of rmmod kvm_amd kvm I had already tried with modprobe -r and it doesn't fix it anyway. I've tried with both 3.10.11 and 3.11.2 from fedora. I am unable to see any kvm that is already running, and - more to the point - what causes kvm_amd to be loaded in the first place, since rmmod happily unloads what must be an unused module. Playing around a bit, VirtualBox says that it turns on the AMD-V option automatically if a 64-bit VM is selected. Btw, the .vdi was converted from the raw - a bootable usb stick with a full blown fedora OS on it. I can't see that having any relevance as the error comes up before any boot process has happened. Suggestions please - I can do a kernel recompile, but what I have to disable isn't clear.

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Multiple job opportunities in MEL for PHP developers
by Arjen Lentz 08 Oct '13

08 Oct '13

Hi all I'm visiting a client in Melbourne (just south of the CBD, near St Kilda Rd), and they are currently looking for 8 (yes) more PHP developers. They're a nice bunch of people, decent fraction of female developers also. Other tech used... MariaDB (MySQL), memcached, Gearman, ... the usual kind of stuff you'd expect in the realm of scalable web and mobile. Drop me a line if you're interested, and I'll introduce you. Regards, Arjen. -- Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MariaDB/MySQL services Sane business strategy explorations at http://upstarta.com.au Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/

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what chat program?
by James Harper 05 Oct '13

05 Oct '13

What chat program should I be using these days to ensure maximum cross-compatibility? I suspect there isn't an answer. It used to be that I would use a jabber based chat client and I could talk to google (xmpp), msn (via a bridge), and anyone else running XMPP based services. Then MSN went to something incompatible and stupid (Skype?), and now google have gone to hangouts which is not XMPP, and I'm left with connectivity to the remaining few people still using the old google chat client. Frustrated. James

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Re: Combating Microsoft FUD.
by Petros 04 Oct '13

04 Oct '13

From: "Toby Corkindale" <toby(a)dryft.net> >> On 30/09/13 17:51, Peter Nunn wrote: >> From his perspective, it?s about redundancy. He can throw out one lot >> of IT people, replace them with another lot, and they will still be able >> to support the system. >> >> He can?t find a Linux shop just by walking up the street or finding the >> first IT company in the Yellow Pages. > > Also worth noting that with Linux, you tend to get a huge variance in > the way things are set up, depending on the sysadmins who created it. > If you bring in a new Linux shop, they may well take quite a while to > figure out how everything works, and then want to change it. I do not think that is true. Of course, you have few flavours but it boils down (for most) to Red Hat vs. Debian based distributions. It is probably even more consistent over years - compared to the move from Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 to Windows 8. Installs, setups and upgrades will be look very similar whoever it is doing it, as long they do not try to be deliberately "exotic". Customisation will need some understanding - but the same challenge will be there for every Windows admin too. I moved between jobs and never found that too hard to understand setups done by others. The bigger challenge was dealing with "messy setups" (means no policies at all - so I do it differently on every second machine). (Maybe that just offends the German in me;-) Well, that happens under Windows as well, and it is actually needs more effort to have computers that look the same. Regards Peter

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Combating Microsoft FUD.
by Peter Nunn 04 Oct '13

04 Oct '13

Hi Guys, At the risk of starting a thread that runs for months, how do you overcome microsoft FUB in the education sector. I've just quoted a couple of machines for a local, not for profit, school up my way that were intended to run KVM and file services with Winblows servers on top of them "because they have to have windows"). The Buresr, whom I do have some sympathy for, given the amount of crap he's been told, has made the decision that Linux is 'too risky', after consulting other bursers on some network of bursers (god knows) and being advised that "Linux is no good in an education environment, can't get staff, no-one uses it except a few 'out there risk takers'". Of course the M$ suppliers are pushing the same line. How the hell do you combat this bull shit? I have to say I'm amazed that a school with so little money is happy to throw it away to M$ (despite the heavy discounts they get for the licenses). Peter.

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slow mkfs.ext3
by James Harper 03 Oct '13

03 Oct '13

I want to create a filesystem to store my on-disk backups (from Bacula) on a new server. These backup files will be few (less than 10000) and mostly huge (>1GB). Because I will have multiple files being written out at once, a large data per inode ratio seems to make sense as it will greatly reduce fragmentation, and wasted space would be low because of the small number of files. Also because the write pattern is exclusively streaming writes, I can go against my normal rule and use RAID5. I've chosen a 4MB of data per inode ratio based on some rough calculations, but while my mkfs.ext3 <dev> -i 4194304 just raced through initially, when it got to "Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:" it just seemed to hang. Strace says it's doing seek, write 4k, seek, write 4k, over and over again. I hit ^C and the process is now [mkfs.ext3], but the system is still pegged at 100% disk utilisation. Any suggestions as to how I could make this go faster? The filesystem is around 8TB (RAID5 of 4 x 3TB disks), so it's not exactly small, and the disks are only 7200RPM SATA, but I know xfs would complete pretty quick. I'd use xfs but over the years I've used xfs and ext3 in roughly equal proportions, and I've lost 3 xfs filesystems and no ext3 filesystems, so I'm a little reluctant to commit to it. Thanks James

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Re: Combating Microsoft FUD.
by Petros 03 Oct '13

03 Oct '13

From: "Peter Nunn" <pnunn(a)infoteq.com.au> > At the risk of starting a thread that runs for months, how do you > overcome microsoft FUB in the education sector. I only see one way to establish open education in a school. You have staff that believes in values, as creativity, curiosity and privacy. Staff motivated to put some effort in it. Then you can back them by providing support. Economical values, usability etc. shouldn't be at the heart of the discussion. They follow if the motivation is there. I give you an example why I believe the staff and their motivation is most important. My daughter has Apple instead of Windows. Caged farming compared to Windows. At least you can easily transfer data from/to a Windows system. Some of the iPad apps suck soo much that I would throw them out after an hour. It also prepares the next generation to send their data feed directly to the spies. Who would save or exchange data via USB stick? Apple makes it so much easier. Just use iTunes. Or Windows Live. Or Google.. whatever the product and the cloud of the day is. At Albert Park College the iPads are integrated part of all classes, every student has to buy one, and for students class 8 and above Mac computers are mandatory too. The staff seems to be enthusiastic to have modern devices to work with and a bunch of apps they consider useful and hip. There are free alternatives but I guess there is no way to counter that. Apple is seen as cool and it fits into the image of a "modern school". Well, we are living in the age where the image of a school is more important than education itself. Because we have a school market, parents shop around. We do not have schools simply to educate kids. I had endless hours, week by week, month by month, parents talking about "the best college for my child". It simply sucks. $1500 per student, 150 students per year, 7 years at the school makes it ca. 1.5 million dollars private spending on devices. Plus the IT budget in the school.. I use open source, my kids are familiar with it and they used some at home. But they do not stand a chance against a whole society brainwashed to believe in brands. Imagine another approach: Some Linux computers for teachers at the school, and the school starts with kids building their computer from a Raspberry Pi, and then install Linux on it, learn how to understand a computer works, how to make a case etc. The teachers in the class room can add Scratch, Audacity, GIMP etc. That's not too hard but needs some motivation. I made a garden bench last weekend. It does not matter too much whether it is a fancy one. The kids were enthusiastic, sawing and filing and drilling and screwing - and the finished furniture is the most loved item afterwards. Regards Peter

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Re: Combating Microsoft FUD.
by Petros 02 Oct '13

02 Oct '13

From: "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck(a)gmail.com> > Petros <Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au> writes: > >>> Also worth noting that with Linux, you tend to get a huge variance in >>> the way things are set up, depending on the sysadmins who created it. >>> If you bring in a new Linux shop, they may well take quite a while to >>> figure out how everything works, and then want to change it. >> >> I do not think that is true. > > I'm a sysadmin. I routinely inherit systems. It's definitely true. > > Simple things are usually consistent, but Toby's right that it can take > a while (weeks/months) to understand all the... quirks and pecadillos of > the previous maintainer. I tend to dismiss that as incompetence, but it > could be style differences. > >> It is probably even more consistent over years - compared to the move >> from Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 to Windows 8. > > I can't comment on Windows systems administration. I was referring to it in a Linux vs. Windows context. I am "a bit" involved in the Windows administration too although I have a colleague who is doing a lot of the ground work. You will find similar quirks in the Windows world too, whether it is a domain setup, naming conventions, directory structures, shares, version control setup, monitoring, remote control, firewall solution etc - that all has to be added and configured on a "pristine" Windows box before you have a working system. And then you have the next version and "C:\Document and Settings" becomes "C:\Users". /home is there since I use Unix. You have to tweak the registry to use a file server home under Windows. Our company setup requires a particular samba share mounted as W: and some of the W: directories added to the path, Firefox under C:/Program Files (not the default C:/Program Files(x86), you have to create a fake D: drive to make a particular program happy.. not to know that will give you a bunch of surprises. Documentation helps (fortunately we have that, a long Wiki page describing how to install and configure Windows machines) - but that is universally true. At my kids' primary school the teachers started to use USB sticks to exchange data - because nobody was able to fix issues with their Windows file server, for months. They had some external Windows admins to maintain the network. Maybe that is a bright spot if you have a Linux admin: Most of them know what they are doing;-) Regards Peter

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Re: slow mkfs.ext3
by Petros 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

From: "Craig Sanders" <cas(a)taz.net.au> > On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 12:25:37PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote: > Oracle as the copyright holder on the Sun-developed ZFS could solve the > license problem by re-licensing it as GPL or BSD (preferably BSD so that > FreeBSD and Illumos etc could use it too) but that's extremely unlikely > to happen. It is part of the "standard FreeBSD kernel". I am not an expert in licenses but it looks as the current ZFS license (CDDL, AFAIK) is not an issue in the BSD world. BTW: There is OpenZFS now:(http://www.open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page) "OpenZFS was announced in September 2013 as the truly open source successor to the ZFS project. Our community brings together developers from the illumos, FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X platforms, and a wide range of companies that build products on top of OpenZFS." Nobody knows what Oracle is doing with ZFS (especially if it comes to open source). But they both can easily co-exist, similar as the various UFS filesystems. They all developed in various ways. E.g. Sun added filesystem journaling to it, something that wasn't happening under FreeBSD for a while. There were soft updates and volume journaling instead. Other projects and companies added other stuff to it. And there is some "cross-pollination" between the various projects. Regards Peter

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Capturing output
by Jay Amorin 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

Hi All, I have this crazy problem and I hope it is possible. Part in my script: svnadmin dump -r1:100 --incremental /srv/my_repo > /srv/my_repo.1-100.dump Output: * Dumped revision 1. * Dumped revision 2. * Dumped revision 3. * Dumped revision 4. * Dumped revision 5. * Dumped revision 6. * Dumped revision 7. * Dumped revision 8. * Dumped revision 9. * Dumped revision 10. Now I want to store the output (standard out/error) to a log file for future reference using this: svnadmin dump -r1:100 --incremental /srv/my_repo > /srv/my_repo.1-100.dump | tee /srv/my_repo.1-100.log But seems not to work. Is this doable with bash or python? TIA, Jay

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