New Project: Email Updates

Posted on September 20, 2012 by deoren

I’ve never been known for being the most creative, so this new project I’m kicking about suffers from the same lack of creativity when it comes to the naming: Email Updates.

It’s a Bash script that has evolved over time from a simple 

apt-get dist-upgrade -s | mail -s "Updates for `date`" root

into a workable script that remembers what updates it previously told you about (and doesn’t tell you again).

So far I have it working with Ubuntu and Red Hat distros (RHEL5.x, CentOS 5.x and CentOS 6.x), but I’ll add other distros as I find the time or get requests for them. The project page can be found here. Feedback is very welcome.

Thanks.

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EMC VNXe 3100 Power Button

Posted on August 24, 2012 by deoren

Just in case you also get caught by this, this particular storage array does not have a power button. Instead, once power is cycled (unplug the cords and replug), it will boot up and run internal diagnostics prior to powering back up. It took about 15-20 minutes for it come online again after it was safely shutdown.

If you have other hosts/services that depend on it to be online first, it is probably a good idea to wait for the array to come online first before powering them on, otherwise you’ll have to restart any services that depend on it.

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Finished first Linux Software RAID wiki entry

Posted on August 11, 2012 by deoren

Thankfully all went well with the recovery of the Software RAID devices and I was able to finish up the first wiki entry that I wrote while I was going through the process. At some point I hope to repair another server and will use that experience to expand on the existing entry or add a separate page.

The only regret I have about the current wiki is that I didn’t set it up sooner. I have far too many paper notes that are sitting in binders on the shelf instead of up somewhere where bots can crawl them and offer them up as search results. Had I used the wiki approach long ago they might have helped someone out.

Oh well, better late than never.

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GNU/Linux Software RAID

Posted on August 8, 2012 by deoren

I worked a good bit yesterday and earlier today writing up my experiences working with GNU/Linux Software RAID and I feel I’m starting to get a grasp of how it all goes together.

The last array is rebuilding now with another 9+ hours to go, so tomorrow sometime I hope to finish the first draft of that page and get the server back in operation.

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More wiki content for Francis Glassborow’s FGW Library

Posted on July 29, 2012 by deoren

I spent much of today working on the directions for building the latest FGW Library source code using current MinGW or the version bundled with Quincy 2005 (Quincy 2002 was used in the book, but is no longer available). In addition, I also worked through the source code downloads from the author’s website and the publisher’s book page and merged them all, starting with the original CD source files and ending with the zip files available from the publisher’s site. The results are an unofficial public source code repository for The FGW Library, aka “Playpen” and a new project page here.

My goal is to merge the source code changes provided by Jaime Moreno and other community patches around the web. It will be a low priority task for me, so I’d be more than happy to turn it over to someone else that has a strong interest.

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