March 2014 - luv-main

Interface bonding and ADSL
by Toby Corkindale 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

Hey all, Does anyone have real-world experience of using linux's interface bonding on public networks? (In the bandwidth-aggregation mode, not the redundancy mode) I was wondering how I could make the following setup work: * Rent a VPS in Melbourne with four IP addresses * Get four (or just two) ADSL connections wired up to home * Have your VPS connect four VPN connections from itself back to each of your home IPs. * Bond all four interfaces together * Create a fifth VPN connection, this time going over the bonded-virtual-interface between VPS and home, and then configure your home server to use that link as the default route? It sounds pretty messy and I'm not sure it'd actually work in practice; the routing tables would be hell to get right. Are there any guides already out there? Cheers, Toby

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crash on netgear readynas
by James Harper 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

We have a few Netgear ReadyNAS 104's, and they all crash under high iscsi load. They are being used to hold backups from a windows server, and the one I've been working on rarely gets through a single overnight backup. I have ssh'd in and it seems that the iscsi backing store is a file sitting on a btrfs mount. The kernel is 3.0.101, which strikes me as a little old for running btrfs although I guess being an appliance they could well have backported everything from a newer more stable release. Or not, going on how much crashing it's doing. I was planning on using netconsole to see if I could capture its dying gasp, but it's not compiled in and not built as a module. A warranty claim is the obvious answer, but that's always a pain so I'm wondering if it's possible to work around the problem by tweaking some things. Netgear are aware of the problem, and have asked things like how full is it getting so I guess they know about the btrfs limitations relating to running out of space. So far the only solution they have offered is to try the latest beta kernel and do yet another factory reset, which we've done. Some info (abridged): # mount /dev/md127 on /data type btrfs (rw,noatime,nodiratime,nodatasum,space_cache) /dev/md127 on /apps type btrfs (rw,noatime,nodiratime,nodatasum,space_cache) /dev/md127 on /home type btrfs (rw,noatime,nodiratime,nodatasum,space_cache) # uname -a Linux RPCV-NAS1 3.0.101.RN_ARM.1 #1 Thu Mar 6 09:31:05 PST 2014 armv7l GNU/Linux Any hints appreciated! Thanks James

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Upgrading to LibreOffice 4.2.2 on Ubuntu 10.4
by Carl Turney 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

Hi All, I'm trying to upgrade my LibreOffice from 4.0.2.2 to 4.2.2, on my Ubuntu 10.4 Desktop. (Yes, yes, I'll upgrade to Ubuntu 14.4 as soon as I get more powerful hardware and it comes out stable in April.) I followed the instructions here, which seems the most authoritative (it said nothing about upgrading, just installing): > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LibreOffice#Installing_a_newer_version_of_LibreOffi… (I followed the steps in the above-cited section, as normal Synaptic updates stopped a long time ago on my system.) But when I executed this command... sudo apt-get update ...I got (among others) this message: W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/libreoffice-4-2/ubuntu/dists/lucid/mai… 404 Not Found So am I correct in assuming that I can't upgrade LibreOffice to 4.2.2 on my Ubuntu Lucid? Thanks very much, Carl Turney Bayswater

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throttle removed from FreeBSD ports - alternatives?
by Peter Ross 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

Hi all, I am using "throttle" for snapshot backups. It is a small utility reading from stdin and writing to stdout and used to limit the speed (to avoid "hammering" of disks and networks) E.g. "throttle -1M" reads 1 MByte/sec. Unfortunately this utility was removed from the FreeBSD ports. I do not know the background. It is nowhere maintained anymore, it seems (if I get the change log right, it was part of a "bulk retirement commit" in FreeBSD) I am exploring and considering options.. Do you know any alternatives? Regards Peter

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ipsec not routing packets
by James Harper 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

I have a linux router set up like 10.x.x.A/32 | 203.x.x.B (linux router) | {Internet} | 203.x.x.C (other IPSEC gateway, not sure of brand) | 10.x.x.D/29 And an ipsec tunnel set up with endpoints 203.x.x.B and 203.x.x.C, and the tunnel 10.x.x.A/32 - 10.x.x.D/29 If I ping from D->A, I see the ping reach A, the response reach B on the way back, but is never sent from B->C, either encrypted or not. If I ping from A->D, same thing, the packet is never sent from B->C. I have a route for 10.x.x.D/29 on B pointing towards B's default gateway. I have excluded 10.x.x.D/29 from any nat or mangle transformations in iptables, but still nothing. tcpdump definitely shows no corresponding send from B->C when a packet is sent from A->D. There is no other traffic that would occur from B->C so it's fairly easy to determine that no traffic is being sent. The linux router is debian wheezy, running Debian 3.2.0-4 kernel (3.2.54-2). IKE is being done by racoon, and all appears correct. Setkey appears to show the correct SA's, it's just that nothing gets forwarded towards the other end. Any and all suggestions for fixes appreciated! Thanks James

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Re: File transfer between Linux and Apple iOS
by Peter Ross 27 Mar '14

27 Mar '14

From: "Jason White" <jason(a)jasonjgw.net> > To: "LUV-main" <LUV-main(a)luv.asn.au> > Sent: Tuesday, 25 March, 2014 10:21:55 AM > Subject: File transfer between Linux and Apple iOS > > What's the best way to transfer files (images, media files, etc.) between > a > Linux machine and an Apple iPad running iOS 7.1? > > It should preferably be achieveable from the shell and amenable to > scripting. e-mail? At least on the Linux side you can script that (auto-generating an e-mail with a file as an attachment) Setup a little local mail server and create an account for the iOS device. I tried once an SSH client on an iPad but it gave me some errors when trying to connect to the Ubuntu box. I was not persistent enough to figure out why (I hate Apple devices with a passion because of the lock-up/lock-in and complete surveillance issues - but the kids' schools insist:-( Regards Peter

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Filesystem becomes readonly.
by Daniel Jitnah 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

Hi LUVers 1.Linux (Debian Wheezy) running on a cloud server 2.Everything working fine for weeks/months 3.Last nite, for some reason all disk writes to server stops 4.Even root cannot write to anywhere on the disk, and plenty of space left on disk (~80%) All file permissions look OK. 5.After reboot all return to normal.(ie problem is fixed) My questions: Is it fair to assume that the problem was caused by something that the cloud provider has done? Or could it be something on server OS side? What can cause this? (I am thinking the virtual disk hosting the VM has become readonly somehow, but how? ) Cheers Daniel.

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Re: Filesystem becomes readonly.
by Peter Ross 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

From: "Daniel Jitnah" <djitnah(a)greenwareit.com.au> > 1.Linux (Debian Wheezy) running on a cloud server > 2.Everything working fine for weeks/months > 3.Last nite, for some reason all disk writes to server stops > 4.Even root cannot write to anywhere on the disk, and plenty of space > left on disk (~80%) > All file permissions look OK. > > 5.After reboot all return to normal.(ie problem is fixed) > > My questions: > > Is it fair to assume that the problem was caused by something that the > cloud provider has done? Or could it be something on server OS side? > > What can cause this? > > (I am thinking the virtual disk hosting the VM has become readonly > somehow, but how? ) I had this in the past, with a VirtualBox VM (Ubuntu Server) on FreeBSD ZFS. The performance of the ZFS became very bad - resulting in disk write timeouts in the Ubuntu VM. The Ubuntu server assumed a faulty disk and remounted the disk as read-only to prevent further damage. Although you are very unlikely to have FreeBSD/ZFS underneath there are other ways to "produce" high I/O latency. If so you should find these disk I/O related errors in your kernel logs. I am afraid there is not much you can do (if you do not run the host system). It only needs a short period with this problem and your system becomes unresponsive. Monitoring.. I did not do that for the read/only mount but all services running on that VM turned red on the Icinga webpage. Regards Peter

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File transfer between Linux and Apple iOS
by Jason White 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

What's the best way to transfer files (images, media files, etc.) between a Linux machine and an Apple iPad running iOS 7.1? It should preferably be achieveable from the shell and amenable to scripting. I've started looking at http://libimobiledevice.org/ and it appears there are utilities available from that project, but I'm yet to find a good howto and I don't know what other options are open and which protocols are available. Also, I would rather avoid taking any risks that might adversely affect the device.

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Ubuntu touch not "marginalising" carriers.
by noah.odonoghue＠gmail.com 24 Mar '14

24 Mar '14

At Melbourne mobile last night I participated in a Google Hangout with Ubuntu Phone product manager Richard Collins where he said some rather controversial things about Ubuntu Touch / Ubuntu Phone. Namely that it would succeed because it wouldn't "marginalise" the poor carriers out of customising their device and that access to the filesystem would be "up to the individual manufacturer". I'm curious to see if anyone has the same "what the hell" reaction I did to hear the Ubuntu brand and all it represents being pitched this way. Anyway, here's the link to the Google hangout - Interested to hear people's opinions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90xcwK1sbQg - Noah

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