Nov

17

Create degraded RAID 1 array

Filed Under Linux, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

If you finally decided to add protection to your valuable data by using software RAID 1 – congrats. You are on the right path. But do not forget that you still need good backup.
If you have only 1 additional drive the procedure is more difficult, but still possible.

Note1: Try following procedure on your own risk. Preferably testing it on non-prod machine.
Note2: /dev/sdb is secondary disk it could vary for you.

First you create degraded RAID 1
mdadm –create /dev/md0 -l raid1 -f -n 1 /dev/sdb1

Validate
cat /proc/mdstat

Add it to mdadm.conf
mdadm –detail –scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf

Inform it the there is second disc
mdadm –grow /dev/md0 -n 2

Here you create partition on degraded drive and copy data from first disk

Repartition first disk if needed and add it to the array.
mdadm –manage /dev/md1 –add /dev/sda1

Note that this is just skeleton of steps and not full step by step tutorial.

Nov

1

Google Chrome offline installer

Filed Under Howto | Leave a Comment 

Google Chrome is excellent browser. And probably most of you have it installed.

Only drawback I’ve noticed is that installation is online. This is generally not a problem, but what to do if the target system does not have internet connection?

The answer is not obvious and required some research. I was not able to find direct link on Google Chrome download page 🙁

Quick search on the web returned this Google Help Page.

Using Alternate installer for all user accounts link I was able to get the package and install it.

This package will help if you deploy Chrome on wider base (Windows GPO for example).

Unfortunately if target system does not have Internet access you have to revisit this page often to download new release.

Oct

30

Blackberry Error ID: 30702 – How I’ve resolved it.

Filed Under Fix | Leave a Comment 

Recently I got Error ID: 30702 on my Blackberry.

Initially I suspected problem on BB side, but after researching on the web it is common problem.

Following instructions on this post I’ve tried to login to payment options, but I’ve received same error Error ID: 30702.

Following further posts I logged in in blackberry app world.

Unlike other reports my login was successful.

Then something else was wrong.

Looking at my account I’ve noticed that my e-mail address was unconfirmed. I followed instructions and confirmed my E-mail.

This allowed me to login to my app world gain.

So solution to Error ID: 30702  for me was to confirm my e-mail address.

Lesson learned 😉

Sep

14

RaspberryPi – money talks

Filed Under news | Leave a Comment 

RaspberryPi is well known for it’s price. Everywhere it is mentioned that the cost is $35.

And actually really is 🙂

But there is “fineprint” too…

This is not the price at what you will receive the board?!

In addition to cost of RaspberryPi board you have to count for additional charges.

Here are the facts:

(NOTE: numbers are coming from my invoice and may vary for different cases):

1. PaspberryPi board ($ 35 USD) (note USD part) = $37.96 CAD

Per google (On 14/9/2012) it should be $33.81 CAD

This equals to $4.15 CAD for currency exchange and rate of 1.0846

2. Tax = $7.93 CAD (  🙂 )

3. Shipping = $15 CAD ( again 🙂 )

For total of: $60.89 CAD

So let’s do some financial analysis.

If we sum all “additional charges” they come at ~ 45% of total price.

And for the visuals representation on pie chart:

RaspberryPi total price pie chart by charges

RaspberryPi total price pie chart by charges

 

Hope this will help to make educated choice and not get caught by surprise.

Aug

24

Skype updates available from Windows Update

Filed Under Windows | Leave a Comment 

After acquiring Skype Microsoft continues to integrate Skype with existing infrastructure.

Now Skype updates are available from Microsoft update service in addition to previous Skype update (Help -> Check for updates).

Skype now also on Windows update

What is new in version 5.10:

  • Voice and video calling your Facebook friends from Skype
  • Finding your Facebook contacts more easily and faster with the new contacts lists
  • Tagging the contacts you talk to most often as Favorites
  • Possibility to control Skype video rendering technology for backward compatibility for people who have trouble with video calls
  • And of course New update method…

For more information Microsoft KB article 2727727 and Skype Blog post.

Aug

22

RaspberryPI – Unpacking

Filed Under news | Leave a Comment 

After almost 2 months waiting my RaspberryPI finally is in my hands.

I’m sharing unpacking pictures:

 

May

9

zerobin service available for testing

Filed Under Announcements | Leave a Comment 

We are pleased to announce that our ZeroBin service is available for testing.

You can find the service at: HBCOM Technologies ZeroBin service.

For those who still wonder what is ZeroBin service:

“ZeroBin is a minimalist, opensource online pastebin/discussion board where the server has zero knowledge of hosted data. Data is encrypted/decrypted in the browser using 256 bits AES.”

The service is provided free of charge, please do not abuse it. Since it is still in testing mode we cannot gurantee if information will not be erase prior to expiration.

In case you find any unappropriated material posted there, please let us know.

If you need hosting we can provide you with web hosting, virtual or dedicated server. Contact us for details.

Mar

8

How to reinstall vmware tools after kernel update

Filed Under Howto | 1 Comment 

Probably most of you already had to log in the VMWare console to reinstall vmware tools after kernel update.

Usually we do that by simply running:

/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

After doing it few times I’ve decided to find an automated way of doing it. After quick search on Internet I found an article giving acceptable solution to my problem.

I’ll share the solution here (with two small fixes 😉 as bonus).

– Open terminal and create new file

vi /etc/init.d/vmware-check-tools

– Paste following inside:

#!/bin/bash
# Following lines auto-recompile VM Tools when kernel updated
VMToolsCheckFile="/lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/.vmware_installed"
VMToolsVersion=`vmware-config-tools.pl --help 2>&1 | awk '$0 ~ /^VMware Tools [0-9]/ { print $3,$4 }'`

printf "\nCurrent VM Tools version: $VMToolsVersion\n\n"

if [[ ! -e $VMToolsCheckFile || `grep -c "$VMToolsVersion" $VMToolsCheckFile` -eq 0 ]]; then
[ -x /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl ] && \
printf "Automatically compiling new build of VMware Tools\n\n" && \
/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl --default && \
printf "$VMToolsVersion" > $VMToolsCheckFile && \
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vmxnet
depmod -a
modprobe vmxnet
fi

Then make it executable:

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/vmware-check-tools

And finally create symlink:

cd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d
ln -s ../init.d/vmware-check-tools S09vmware-check-tools

Mar

6

Upgrade Shorewall from 4.4.x to 4.5.x

Filed Under Linux | Leave a Comment 

Recently Shorewall (Shoreline Firewall) released new version 4.5.0.

This version introduced new packing. From this version you have follwoing packages:

  • Shorewall Core – Core libraries installed in /usr/share/shorewall/
  • Shorewall – Requires Shorewall Core. Together with Shorewall Core, provides IPv4 firewalling.
  • Shorewall6 – Requires Shorewall. Provides IPv6 firewalling.
  • Shorewall Lite – Requires Shorewall Core. As before.
  • Shorewall6 Lite – Requires Shorewall Core. As before.
  • Shorewall Init – As before.

Since we have Core package now to upgrade from 4.4.x version you need to update at least 2 packages – core and shorewall.

To do that in CentOS 5 the spteps are follwoing (in your case probably versions will be different):

1. Download new packages

wget http://www.invoca.ch/pub/packages/shorewall/RPMS/ils-5/noarch/shorewall-4.5.0.2-1.el5.noarch.rpm http://www.invoca.ch/pub/packages/shorewall/RPMS/ils-5/noarch/shorewall-core-4.5.0.2-1.el5.noarch.rpm.

2. Upgrade shorewall

rpm -Uvh shorewall-core-4.5.0.2-1.el5.noarch.rpm shorewall-4.5.0.2-1.el5.noarch.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
perl(Digest::SHA1) is needed by shorewall-4.5.0.2-1.el5.noarch

In my case additional package was required so I have to install it:

yum install perl-Digest-SHA1

and update again

3. Check configuration

shorewall check

4. Restart shorewall

shorewall restart

Feb

20

Debian – packages being kept back

Filed Under Fix | Leave a Comment 

To upgrade you Debian installation usually you use:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

This should upgrade all installed packages. But sometimes there is a message that some packages are kept back. This means that dependencies have changed on one of the packages you have installed so that a newer package must be installed to upgrade.

To fix this you must execute:

apt-get dist-upgrade

This will do the trick.

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