What's worth - week 27, 28, 29, 30 & 31

Finally get the chance to put in these links. "Busy" is the usual excuse, lack of discipline is the real cause :p

So much for nonsense, here's the link accumulated for the passed weeks (if not months):

What's worth - week 25 & 26

For the past 2 weeks, meat space have been a busy but very interesting one. Much to my realized the world without BSD are wild & unstable, but yet surprisingly interesting. I wouldn't recommend anyone with less sanity to spare but if you must have a dangerous adventure, try linux kvm on a (mere) load average of 38 with dual six core processor. All process curse & swear.

Worse, even after so many iterations of versions, the BSOD stalks me forever. Why must they keep pushing me to BSDs? Daemons, I miss you so much.

Enough bitching, readings for the past 2 weeks have been low and I'm combining week 25 & 26. Nonetheless, my time was well spent on these links. Here's what's worth:

What's worth - Week 24

This blog hasn't been updated as ofter as it should. That doesn't mean I'm abandoning. I'm still lurking on the internet, poking my nose around here and there.

I routinely read Justin's Dragonfly BSD Digest and particularly fond of "Lazy Reading" weekly post. He'll talk about the list of interesting stuff he finds on the internet and share it with the readers. I'm copying his idea to fuel my updating of this blog.

For what's worth, here it goes:

vim - improving vim skill by breaking arrow keys

Improving vim skill have a new way, "breaking" the arrow keys on the keyboard.

No No, not literally! Just disable them by assigning "no operation" to the arrow keys stroke. This will render your arrow keys useless when you're inside vim editor, thus forcing you to stick to h, j, k & l key to move around.



Put these into ~/.vimrc:

noremap <Up> <NOP>
noremap <Down> <NOP>
noremap <Left> <NOP>
noremap <Right> <NOP>

If this is not dramatic enough, I foresee I'll put these in as well:

noremap h <NOP>
noremap j <NOP>
noremap k <NOP>
noremap l <NOP>

further forcing myself to use keys like "w", "b", "e", "ge", "W", "B", "E", "gE", "f", "F", "t", "T", ";" & ",". To decrypt those characters, check out ":help word" in vim editor.

Via here then here.

Adios!

FreeBSD Foundation - 2012 Year-End Fundraising Campaign

Just did a quick check on the targeted $500k donations and FreeBSD Foundation have made it!
As of this post, FreeBSD Foundation have managed to surpass it's 2012 fund raising goal by $184 905, at the total of $684 905.

This is no doubt a great news to the end 2012 and I look forward to see more of these contribution towards FreeBSD Foundation, funding my favorite operating system FreeBSD.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !!!

Scratch of the day - PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

Yesterday, I noticed one of my Apache server's error log is growing like 1.1 gb in 12 hours. The log is full of these :

Scratch of the day - php throwing stricts error on browser

Today, I had to setup a Postgresql database server with phpPgAdmin web interface. While visiting the web interface for the first time, this error message appears on the top :

Strict Standards: Only variables should be assigned by reference in 
/usr/local/www/phpPgAdmin/classes/database/Connection.php on line 23

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by 
(output started at /usr/local/www/phpPgAdmin/classes/database/Connection.php:23) 
in /usr/local/www/phpPgAdmin/classes/Misc.php on line 540

Seems like php 5.4.4 imposed some extra measure as best practice.

Although phpPgAdmin works as usual, the error message is annoying. Plus, it is kind of bad to show what potentially can be exploit.

To turn off these error messages, just tweak the below parameter in /usr/local/etc/php.ini :

Scratch of the day - ssh transfer from server to server

There's 2 servers which configured only my workstation is able to login using ssh keys. But I need to transfer files between these 2 servers. Downloading from server A to my workstation then upload the files to server B seems to be way. It would be good if I can combine the 2 operations into 1 single execution.

With shell's pipe, cat & ssh, this is what I've come up with :

ssh bob@server-A.example.com "cat /source/file-or-directory.txt" | \
ssh bob@server-B.example.com "cat > /destination/file-or-directory.txt"

Shalom !!!

Scratch of the day - exclude logging to /var/log/messages

After telling dhcpd to log messages to local7 of syslogd, "uid lease" messages are still being log in /var/log/messages. This is because by default, syslogd logs "notice" level and above to /var/log/messages.

If you don't wanna see these messages in /var/log/messages, which it has already log to /var/log/dhcpd.log, include the log level "none" that tells syslogd logs to /var/log/messages. This assumed that dhcpd is configured to use log facility "local7" in it's config file, that output all messages to /var/log/dhcpd.log.


Example :
(in /etc/syslog.conf)

----- snip -----
*.notice;authpriv.none;kern.debug;lpr.info;mail.crit;news.err;local7.none   /var/log/messages
----- snip ----

Reload syslogd and monitor /var/log/messages & /var/log/dhcpd.log :

/etc/rc.d/syslogd reload

Namaste !!!

Scratch of the day - ISC dhcpd is complaining about subnet declaration

Just now, restarting the ISC DHCP server, after adding new subnet, spill out some error messages :

No subnet declaration for gem0 (192.168.168.168).
** Ignoring requests on gem0.  If this is not what
   you want, please write a subnet declaration
   in your dhcpd.conf file for the network segment
   to which interface gem0 is attached. **

Sending on   Socket/fallback/fallback-net

This is because the DHCP server doesn't find any "subnet" declaration on the IP used on interface gem0. Tell DHCP server to listen on the intended interface by putting the below line in /etc/rc.conf :

dhcpd_ifaces="gem1"

This will make DHCP server listen on "gem1" and ignore listening on "gem0".

Adios !!!

Scratch of the day - arpresolve: can't allocate llinfo

Today, one of the server was uncontactable after a network switch flood incident. All other servers are working fine except this one. Log into this server through the console, reveals :
- ping to gateway is fine
- ping to a host outside this network failed
- ssh connection to same segment is fine but not beyond gateway





/var/log/messages has a dozens of dozens of these :

Apr  9 00:30:01 hostname kernel: arpresolve: can't allocate llinfo for 10.0.0.1
Apr  9 00:31:00 hostname kernel: arpresolve: can't allocate llinfo for 10.0.0.1
Apr  9 00:32:00 hostname last message repeated 15 times 

It looks like connection from this server to machines within it's own segment is fine but other then that, all are unavailable. Another thing, machines connected before initiated from this server to it, is fine. Connections from other server within own segment to this server (if NOT initiated by this server before) still failed.

After some googling, it seems like a patch is needed to fix this error :
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-net/2011-August/029687.html

Since the arp cache might be leaking and causes the table to be corrupted, a reboot is needed for the network stack to work. After reboot, the usual patching applies.

The moral of the story, updating FreeBSD is as important upgrading ports. :p

Ciao !!!

Scratch of the day - dmesg log is not at /var/log

dmesg log is the place where system information are written to it, similar to /var/log/messages. It is particularly useful to get information of Hardware details. But after some time, the information in /var/log/dmesg.today & /var/log/dmesg.yesterday are replaced with system messages where by boot messages are replaced.

Fortunately, a copy of boot messages in dmesg are still available in :

/var/run/dmesg.boot

Au revoir !!!

FreeBSD - Running Puppet on FreeBSD

The latest issue of BSD Magazine is out and guess what? It has an article that I've wrote on running Puppet on FreeBSD!

BSD Magazine is a free to download magazine that focus on BSD, be it FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, PC-BSD and others. From BSDMag.org website :

"We decided to create a magazine for BSD users, enthusiasts and communitites. There were lots of Linux magazines and none devoted to BSD systems. Does that mean Linux is better than BSD? Not at all!"


To download a copy of the BSD Magazine, just register your email address with BSD Magazine and the download will be available. Spread the news, this magazine is full of BSD related news, tutorials, tips & tricks.

The BSD community needs more of these valuable resource!

Ciao !!!

Scratch of the day - Real time network statistic, like top

There's a sudden surge of network traffic in one of the servers and I need to find out what causes it. Roaming around ports show up this :

/usr/ports/net-mgmt/iftop

iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage ...

(via)

To start monitoring :

Scratch of the day - Back dated date

Did some sysctl tuning and need to monitor the log file every "yesterday". This is what I've managed to split out from "strftime" manual (via "date") :

# date
Fri Dec 30 09:59:27 MYT 2011

# date -v -1d +%b\ %Oe
Dec 29

With this, make cron send me an email with filtered entries of /var/log/messages :

1 1 * * * grep "`date -v -1d +\%b\ \%Oe`" /var/log/messages | mail -s "Yesterday ..." root@example.com

See ya !!!

FreeBSD Foundation - 2011 Year End Fundraising Campaign

Another year is passing and the season of giving is coming !!!

This year, the FreeBSD Foundation is targeting to raise 400k. These funds will be put into the good use of FreeBSD related activities :

• sponsor BSD conferences & events
• sponsor developers to attend these conferences
• protect the intellectual property of the FreeBSD project
• marketing of FreeBSD project
• hardware procurement for FreeBSD infrastructure
• R & D to enhance the FreeBSD OS

(via here)

If you find that using FreeBSD is fun & useful, please donate to the foundation. Donating to the FreeBSD Foundation is the most effective way to promote & sponsor this wonderful OS. Plus, having your name on the donation list does draw some "feel good" feeling. :)

By the way, all it takes for your name to appear in the donation list is just mere USD 5. Click on this link to DONATE.

Adios !!!

FreeBSD - HP DL 120 G7 hardware

Recently, I had a chance to test the compatibility of installing FreeBSD on an HP server. This are the specs of the server :

HP DL 120 G7 E3-1240
- 16gb DDR 3 ram
- dual nic port (HP NC112i 1-Port Ethernet Server Adapter (x2))
- Array Card (HP Smart Array P212/256MB Controller (RAID 0/1/1+0/5/5+0))


The NICs, Smart Array & hard disk all work fine.

Except this server came connected with the SATA hdd to the Smart Array. I've always skeptical about RAID cards, especially if the RAID card is faulty, we'll need to get the same RAID card in order for the data to be recognize. That sucks big time.

End up, I bypass the SATA hdd from Smart Array to the on-board connector. Now, ZFS is just ready to rock. :)

Ciao !!!

FreeBSD - Mounting NFS share gives error "timed out"

Connecting to a NFS server from a FreeBSD installation hit an error. The command executed was :

mount -t nfs nfs.example.com:/vol/some/nfs/share /mnt/mount/point

The error :

[tcp] nfs.example.com:/vol/some/nfs/share: RPCMNT: clnt_create: RPC: Remote system error - Operation timed out

The firewall has open port 111 (portmapper) & 2049 (mountd), so that should clear some of the permission. But still no luck.

Checking network connections doesn't seems to show anything interesting, particularly in ESTABLISHED & LISTEN state connections.
E.g.

netstat -an

But checking the NFS server info from the NFS client do reveal some interesting info :

# rpcinfo nfs.example.com
   program version netid     address                service    owner
    100024    1    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.207         status     unknown
    100024    1    udp       0.0.0.0.15.207         status     unknown
    100011    1    udp       0.0.0.0.15.209         rquotad    unknown
    100021    4    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100021    3    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100021    1    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100021    4    udp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100021    3    udp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100021    1    udp       0.0.0.0.15.205         nlockmgr   unknown
    100005    3    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100005    2    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100005    1    tcp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100005    3    udp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100005    2    udp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100005    1    udp       0.0.0.0.15.206         mountd     unknown
    100003    3    tcp       0.0.0.0.8.1            nfs        unknown
    100003    2    tcp       0.0.0.0.8.1            nfs        unknown
    100003    3    udp       0.0.0.0.8.1            nfs        unknown
    100003    2    udp       0.0.0.0.8.1            nfs        unknown
    100000    2    tcp       0.0.0.0.0.111          rpcbind    unknown
    100000    2    udp       0.0.0.0.0.111          rpcbind    unknown

Seems like these services "mountd", "nlockmgr", "rquotad" & "status" are needed. Those services translate to port no. 4045, 4046, 4047 & 4049.

After opening these ports in firewall, the NFS share mount finally works.

Voilla !!!

FreeBSD - Logos & images

Stumble upon the FreeBSD logo page while reading the mailing list.

Take a look here.

Namaste !!!

FreeBSD - Updated device names in new GENERIC kernels

This just caught my attention. There's some changes in device naming convention for the latest GENERIC kernel, that comes with default installations of FreeBSD.

An abstract (via) :

The GENERIC kernels for all architectures now default to the new
CAM-based ATA stack. It means that all legacy ATA drivers were
removed and replaced by respective CAM drivers. If you are using
ATA device names in /etc/fstab or other places, make sure to update
them respectively (adX -> adaY, acdX -> cdY, afdX -> daY, astX -> saY,
where 'Y's are the sequential numbers starting from zero for each type
in order of detection, unless configured otherwise with tunables,
see cam(4)).

For more feeds on these, check out http://updating.versia.com/.

Ciao !!!