Titox`s Unixverse

Oracle/Sun Solaris 10 u10 8/11 published

2011-09-16T01:05:00.000+02:00

This week arrived my latest toy, a Sun Blade 1500 Sparc workstation, but when I went to install Solaris on it (came with Debian Sparc linux) I wasn't able to find th DVD. I went to the Oracle web and found a new release from August.

You can download the DVD iso for Sparc and x86 systems from this page: Solaris 10 downloads.

And here you are the 'What's new' document as pdf.

More info about this workstation later.

P.D.: I bought this machine without power supply. This can be a big problem because the Sun Blade 1500/2500 workstation series need three plugs/connectors from the power supply: an standard ATX 20 & 4 pin plugs and an special 12 pin plug for supplemental power supply. I just installed an standard ATX power supply and the machine is booting and working correctly. I have to make extensive more checks to the hardware but nothing rare is happening without this connection.

Decompressing a tar.bz2 archive

2011-07-18T21:16:00.000+02:00

Too many time without play with Linux machines!!!!! I forget how toi decompress a tar.bz2 archive. Posted to easy find it in a future:

# tar -jxvf myfile.tar.bz2

Speeding up ssh connections/logins

2011-07-18T21:06:00.001+02:00

Very useful is to deactivate the DNS lookups in the ssh server. Another easy modification: add one line to the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

Type: # pico /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Add the line (green bold one):

#PermitTunnel no

UseDNS no

# no default banner path

Cobalt RaQ 4: slow slow sloooooow ftp login

2011-07-18T20:55:00.001+02:00

Hi guys,
this week I turned on on RaQ with the old Cobalt OS with all the Zeffie's updates (New updates appeared this year). I like the fast responese of the Cobalt servers with this old Operating System and I don't need the extra capabilities of the BlueQuartz or BlueOnyx systems.

But today I started to check if I can compile the latest 2.4 kernel but when I went to some upload files to the server I could not connect to ftp. Some search of the web to found the problem, the proftp server has some features enabled in the latest version that can be deactivated for us.

To do this just add this lines (green bold ones) to the /etc/proftpd.conf file just after the first configuration lines:

ServerName "ProFTPD"
ServerType inetd
DeferWelcome off
DefaultServer on
DefaultRoot / admin
DefaultRoot ~/../.. site-adm
DefaultRoot ~ !site-adm

UseIPv6 off
UseReverseDNS off

And add one line to the GLOBAL subsection (green bold chars):

IdentLookups off
AllowAll
# Report localtime, not GMT
TimesGMT off

Adding SATA storage to a Cobalt RaQ 4

2011-04-12T23:02:00.016+02:00

UPDATED: 2011-05-05
Partition manage with fdisk.

Nearly three months without writing anything in this blog. I did a lot of unsuccessful tests, but nothing well until this week. From the last christmas I am trying to compile the 6.5.18 CentOS kernel for the Cobalt servers. I have a valid patch but the resulting rpm package is bigger than 30MB. I will check this before put on a server. I'm using a Sun LX50 with the latest BlueOnyx for this job.

But last week a new VIA chipset SATA card arrived and yesterday I did a new test. I had a lot of problems with my previous SIL3112 card, it was recognized but the hard disk was not. I tested various hd's and some of them were recognized but never with a good stability.

For this test I used my backup server, a RaQ 4i with a 80GB hd for boot the machine and a WD Raptor SATA 150GB as additional storage. It's a 10k disk but I don't have any other SATA hd at home with no use at the moment. This machine was instaled with a fully updated Strongbolt OS, with the 2.6.20 kernel from OSOffice.

The first part of the test was to install the latest kernel I published: 2.6.9-89.0.23-cobalt. Wow, near one year ago! I have o compile a new one...

With this kernel the SATA card and hard disk was correctly recognized as you can see in the next capture of the hardware information page.

This was the easy part. To use this hard disk as storage for BlueQuartz we need to move our /home partition to it. Here you can see how the first hard disk was before any change:

Now the not easy part:

Login to the server as root.
Check if the hard disk appears on fdisk. As you can see it was formatted with NTFS:

[root@cobalt ~]# fidsk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/hda1               1         250     2008093+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2             251         500     2008125   83 Linux
/dev/hda3             501         625     1004062+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4             626        9729    73127880    5 Extended
/dev/hda5             626         875     2008093+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6             876        9729    71119723+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sda: 150.0 GB, 150039945216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 18241 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System

/dev/sda1   *           1       18242   146521088    7 HPFS/NTFS

Start fdisk:

[root@cobalt ~]# fdisk /dev/sda1
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 18241.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Create a new DOS label. Im not sure if in my cas was needed because the hard disk had one but... Use the 'o' command

Command (m for help):o
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 18241.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

As you can see above fdisk reported an error reading the partition table but nothis was wrong here.
Delete existent partitions (if necessary) and create the new one and then change the system disk ID:

# fdisk /dev/sda1
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 18241.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): d
No partition is defined yet!

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-18241, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-18241, default 18241):
Using default value 18241

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes):83

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Here I rebooted the server.
Create the ext3 filesystem: # mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
Now we need to mount the new hard disk to a temporary folder:

# mkdir /tmpmnt
# mount /dev/sda1 /tmpmnt

Copy all files from /home to /tmpmnt: # cp -axv /home/* /tmpmnt
Unmount the new hard disk: # umount /tmpmnt
Create a backup of the old /home partition (I was not able to do that part last time because an error message: Files in use):

# mkdir /oldhome
# mv /home /oldhome
# mkdir /home
# mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /home

Now we have to modify the /etc/fstab file to make the new partition automount at boot time. Just change hda6 to sda1. My file is this:

And the last part is to reboot!!!!!! Here you can see the result, a near 150GB home partition in a SATA hard disk!

Now it's time to check if everithing is OK, a will boot up the server in a week or two and see what happens in a 24/7 work.

IMPORTANT NOTE: During these test I found some problems with fdisk. IF fdisk returns a WARNING when you type the command 'w' (write), usually the hard disk partition is not stored on the hard disk. This is the message

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 22: Invalid argument.
The kernel still uses the old table
The new table will be used at the next reboot.

I had this problem until I was able to delete the NTFS partition with FDSIK (the firsts attempts fdisk didn't show the old partition table). Then you can check the results:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 250 2008093+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 251 500 2008125 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 501 625 1004062+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 626 9729 73127880 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 626 875 2008093+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 876 9729 71119723+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 150.0 GB, 150039945216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 18241 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 18241 146520801 83 Linux

Do you know XMing?

2011-01-21T23:53:00.002+01:00

Sometime ago I was thinking to buy a Sun Sparc workstation. I always liked the Sun Blade 1000/2000 series but the last year the prices of Blade 1500/2500 were going down. Now you can buy a Sun Blade 2500 very cheap.

But before buy a new machine -and look for space at home- I decided to play a little more with my Sun Fire V120. I have a PGX32 VGA card for it and changued the fans for a new low noise ones but what I wanted to do is to connect to the server with an X server.

A quick search in the web and I found an small list of X servers for Windows (I have Vista on my laptop), most of them paid systems with a lot of functions. One of them is free: XMing. This is a very little tool but very useful. Just install XMing on your Window machine and you can connect to the server. More info here.

I didn't need any special cofiguration n the V120: it was reinstalled with the latest Sun Solaris -sorry, Oracle Solaris now- at the end of 2010 and nothing more was done.

The process of open a new connection is very easy:

- Start XLaunch. At the first screen I choose 'One Window'. The display number must be 10.

- At the second screen select 'Open session via XDMCP'.

The next step is to indicate the server address. Type the ip address of the server or select "Search" if you only have one.

- I leave the "additional parameters" values as default.

- Now you can save the configuration in a file to reuse it (I saved it on the desktop to use as a fast link).

And here you are my Solaris login screen on my laptop

This is not a fast way to work with an Sparc workstation but it's enough to play with Java desktop or CDE:

How to enable AWStats on Strongbolt

2011-01-19T19:47:00.000+01:00

Today I started to play with my backup RaQ 4 server. It's loaded with Strongbolt and looking at the hard disk I found that AWStats is installed by default but pointing a web browser to www.myaddress.net/awstats only gave me an small box asking for a user and password but never I was able to log in.

I remembered there is a post in the Strongbolt forums but with no good solution. A new search and I found this on the closed Nuonce Forums. In fact Strongbolt has AWStats installed but is missing one perl library that is needed to authenticate users in the systems: perl-suidperl.

Just need to install this library and then you can log with the vsite admin password:

[root@web etc]# yum install perl-suidperl

Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
update        100% =========================    951 B 00:00
BlueQuartz 100% =========================    951 B 00:00
base           100% =========================   1.1 kB 00:00
addons       100% =========================    951 B 00:00
extras         100% =========================   1.1 kB 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Excluding Packages from CentOS-4 - Updates
Finished
Excluding Packages from CentOS-4 - Base
Finished
Excluding Packages from CentOS-4 - Addons
Finished
Excluding Packages from CentOS-4 - Extras
Finished
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
> Downloading header for perl-suidperl to pack into transaction set.
perl-suidperl-5.8.5-53.el    100% =========================    20 kB 00:00
> Package perl-suidperl.i386 3:5.8.5-53.el4 set to be updated
> Running transaction check

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================
Package                Arch            Version              Repository                 Size
================================================================
Installing:
perl-suidperl        i386             3:5.8.5-53.el4    update                       112 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)
Total download size: 112 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/1): perl-suidperl-5.8.   100% =========================     112 kB 00:00
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: perl-suidperl ######################### [1/1]

Installed: perl-suidperl.i386 3:5.8.5-53.el4
Complete!
[root@web etc]#

Remeber that lo log in the Statistics page tou need the vsite admin usr and password, not the server admin password!

Wacom Graphire2 and Irix update

2010-09-14T21:40:00.000+02:00

Following this post in the Nekochan forums, I did some more test with my Wacom Graphire2 USB tablet. The goal was to check if pressure levels works with the sgi driver, the driver supplied with the Irix distribution cd's.

A quick search returned two interesting pages:

The SGI Irix Input man page. Where all the configuration paremeters are described.
Andreas Backaus's Wacom tablets on IRIX page. Here you will find how to install the Wacom Control Panel with the SGI driver. Unfortunately this tip onlyworks with serial devices.

The results are good. Not fantastic but pressure levels are working. I never used a tablet before but in my case to use the pressure level function I have to use a button to draw. While I push the button I can move the pencil away and closer to change the with of the draw. If I press the tablet the color changes to background color. (Extracted from my post in Nekochan forums).

In the following pic you can find an example of the pressure changes in size and color. The config file is also open:

The next job will be check if the Absolute Mode works. I checked some different setting but with no results.

We will see...

Solaris 10 release 9/10

2010-09-08T22:53:00.000+02:00

Don't forget to download the new release of Oracle (Sun) Solaris 10. Just launched. Check all the new features in the Oracle Solaris web page. Unfortunately the old Sun accounts aren't running and a new Oracle registration is needed until the old accounts are consolidated.

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 8: Now with UFS filesystem (ZFS to UFS)

2010-09-08T22:43:00.003+02:00

Before the summer I did a lot of test with a Sun Fire V120 Sparc server. At the time I used Solaris 10/09 installed in a 37GB disk and a ZFS array of three 18GB disk ia a Storedge S1. The results were bad in terms of network file transfer and I was thinking to reinstall everyrhin with a new UFS configuration.

Thats seems an easy job but The first step was so difficult: Solaris didn't want to changue the ZFS filesystem to UFS. After a lt of searching a I fund the good solution for Sparc Solaris (usually all the information was for x86 Solaris with a different format utility) here. Just a few steps are necessary.

1. We need to use the format utility once with each disc. Here how I re-labeled the first hd (SMI label needed):

# format -e c1t1d0
selecting c1t1d0
[disk formatted]

FORMAT MENU:
   disk - select a disk
   type - select (define) a disk type
   partition - select (define) a partition table
   current - describe the current disk
   format - format and analyze the disk
   repair - repair a defective sector
   label - write label to the disk
   analyze - surface analysis
   defect - defect list management
   backup - search for backup labels
   verify - read and display labels
   inquiry - show vendor, product and revision
   scsi - independent SCSI mode selects
   cache - enable, disable or query SCSI disk cache
   volname - set 8-character volume name
   ! - execute , then return
   quit
format> label
[0] SMI Label
[1] EFI Label
Specify Label type[1]: 0
Auto configuration via format.dat[no]? no
format> quit
#

Now repeat with the next 4 hd's.

2. Partitioning is more complicated.

Start the format utility: # format c1t1d0.
Select in the menu: partition, an then modify.
Select All free hog:

Select partitioning base:

   0. Current partition table (unnamed)

   1. All Free Hog

Choose base (enter number) [0]? 1

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
  0 root wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  1 swap wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  2 backup wu 0 - 7505 16.86GB (7506/0/0) 35368272
  3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  6 usr wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0)

At this stage we can change the partition sizes (this is a 18GB hd):

Do you wish to continue creating a new partition
table based on above table[yes]?
Free Hog partition[6]? 7
Enter size of partition '0' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 16gb
Enter size of partition '1' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:
Enter size of partition '3' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:
Enter size of partition '4' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:
Enter size of partition '5' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:
Enter size of partition '6' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
  0 root wm 0 - 7121 16.00GB (7122/0/0) 33558864
  1 swap wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  2 backup wu 0 - 7505 16.86GB (7506/0/0) 35368272
  3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  6 usr wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  7 unassigned wm 7122 - 7505 883.50MB (384/0/0) 1809408

Okay to make this the current partition table[yes]?
Enter table name (remember quotes): array

Ready to label disk, continue? yes

partition> quit
format> quit
#

3. Now is time to copy the partition table to the other hd's using:

# prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s2 | fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s2

Here I had an small problem because one of the hard disks is different, also 18 GB and Seagate but different model. I had to do all the partitioning one more time but with the same zise partitions.

Total disk cylinders available: 14076 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
  0 unassigned wm 0 - 13283 16.00GB (13284/0/0) 33555384
  1 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  2 backup wu 0 - 14075 16.95GB (14076/0/0) 35555976
  3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
  7 unassigned wm 13284 - 14072 973.15MB (789/0/0) 1993014

4. This step is easy, copy the metadata:

# metadb -a -f c1t1d0s7 c2t1d0s7 c2t2d0s7 c2t3d0s7

5. And create the Raid 5 array!!!

# metainit d0 -r c1t1d0s0 c2t1d0s0 c2t2d0s0 c2t3d0s0
d0: RAID configurado (RAID is setup)

Now the array is created but is not ready. Using metastat several times we can check the status of the build:

# metastat d0
d0: RAID
   Estado: Inicializando
   Inicialización en progreso: 0.4% terminado
   Entrelazado: 32 bloques
   Tamaño: 100653032 bloques (47 GB)
Dispositivo original:
   Tamaño: 100657536 bloques (47 GB)
   Dispositivo Bloque de in Base Estado Reubi Repuesto en marcha
   c1t1d0s0 5042 No Inicializand Sí
   c2t1d0s0 5042 No Inicializand Sí
   c2t2d0s0 2856 No Inicializand Sí
   c2t3d0s0 5042 No Inicializand Sí

Device Relocation Information:
Device Reloc Device ID
c1t1d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z33997____
c2t1d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z35960____
c2t2d0 Sí id1,sd@SSGI_____ST318404LC______3BT2FCQL0000V121048Z
c2t3d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z35919____

6. Finished!!!

# metastat d0
d0: RAID
   Estado: Correcto
   Entrelazado: 32 bloques
   Tamaño: 100653032 bloques (47 GB)
Dispositivo original:
   Tamaño: 100657536 bloques (47 GB)
   Dispositivo Bloque de in Base Estado Reubi Repuesto en marcha
   c1t1d0s0 5042 No Correcto Sí
   c2t1d0s0 5042 No Correcto Sí
   c2t2d0s0 2856 No Correcto Sí
   c2t3d0s0 5042 No Correcto Sí

Device Relocation Information:
Device Reloc Device ID
c1t1d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z33997____
c2t1d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z35960____
c2t2d0 Sí id1,sd@SSGI_____ST318404LC______3BT2FCQL0000V121048Z
c2t3d0 Sí id1,sd@SFUJITSU_MAN3184M_SUN18G_02Z35919____

7. When the array is finished we can create the filesystem (and wait a lot more time):

# newfs -i 8192 /dev/md/rdsk/d0
newfs: construir un nuevo sistema de archivos /dev/md/rdsk/d0: (y/n)? y

Advertencia: 4120 sector(es) en el último cilindro sin asignar
/dev/md/rdsk/d0: 100653032 sectores en 16383 cilindros de 48 pistas, 128 sectores
49147,0MB en 1024 grupos de cilindros (16 c/g, 48,00MB/g, 5824 i/g)
copias de seguridad super-bloque (para fsck -F ufs -o b=#) en:
32, 98464, 196896, 295328, 393760, 492192, 590624, 689056, 787488, 885920,
Inicializando grupos de cilindros:
....................
copias de seguridad del superbloque de los últimos 10 grupos de cilindros en:
99687200, 99785632, 99884064, 99982496, 100080928, 100179360, 100277792, 100376224, 100474656, 100573088

Sorry, I installed Solaris in Spanish but....

9. Now we can mount the filesystem in a directory and it will be ready for use. The same name as my first atempt with ZFS:

# mkdir /fsshared
# mount -F ufs /dev/md/dsk/d0 /fsshared

10. The final step is to make the mount persistent.we need to insert a new line in the /etc/vfstab (data separated with tabs)

/etc/vfstab
#device device mount FS fsck mount mount
#to mount to fsck point type pass at boot options
#
fd - /dev/fd fd - no -
/proc - /proc proc - no -
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s1 - - swap - no -
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s0 / ufs 1 no
-
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s7 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s7 /export/home ufs 2
yes -
/devices - /devices devfs - no -
sharefs - /etc/dfs/sharetab sharefs - no -
ctfs - /system/contract ctfs - no -
objfs - /system/object objfs - no -
/dev/md/dsk/d0 /dev/md/rdsk/d0 /fsshared ufs 2 yes -
swap - /tmp tmpfs - yes -

Swapping my server

2010-06-21T23:04:00.001+02:00

I switched my main web server. My beloved RaQ 4i had been working for the last three years 24/7. Being a second hand server with an old hard disk I feel a little bad and some time ago I decided to exchange for anther RaQ 4i I had as spare.

This new/old server has the same specs as the old one but with two Seagate 120 GB in RAID 1 configuration. I more confident with this setup. Obviously it runs Strongbolt 1 (CentOS 4 + BlueQuartz) but with no addon packages installed as I don't need anything outside Strongbolt.

I restored all the files of the old server (the /downloads/ folder) and it was 14 GB's!. Torrentflux isn't installed as I don't use it since a lot of time ago.

Well I think I have server for a lot of time but I want to switch to one of my RaQ 550. They are newer and powerful servers but before I have to change the power supply fan (and I don't need more power in fact).

CentOS 4 kernel 2.6.9-89.0.23 for Cobalt x86 appliances

2010-05-08T00:19:00.001+02:00

Well, after my mistake in the configuration of my last kernel (I forgot the RAID setup), last wednesday I compiled the latest CentOS 4 kernel (2.6.9-89.0.23.EL). This time I only prepared a RPM archive and not a BlueQuartz package because to install an RPM can be forced to avoid conflicts with the standard kernel RPM archives from CentOS.

I haven't done a lot of testing with this kernel but seems to work well in RaQ4 with RAID 1 setup and also in a RaQ 550. It has the same features of the old release:

Compiled for i586 architechture, compatible with the i686 architechture you can find on RaQ XTR and RaQ 550.
Drivers for VIA, SIS and Silicon Image SATA chipsets, to use as storage expansion or use the server as NAS but I don't have time to test yet. Compiled as modules.
Drivers for ethernet gigabit cards: Intel PRO/1000, Realtek 8169, Broadcom Tigon3 and Broadcom NetXtremeII. Compiled as modules.
Cobalt GenIII and GenV drivers included: the same kernel works on all Cobalt machines. Only tested in Cobalt RaQ 3&4 and RaQ 550. My Qube 3 has SB2 installed and I don't have any XTR (but if I can find one...).
SMP for two processors, not tested: usefull for RaQ XTR with two Pentium III.

And something new:

Suport for RAID storage (RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10).
I2C bus support enabled. It can be useful for RaQ XTR leds but it also needs some software what I don't have (and I can't test)

Unfortunately this fast job doesn't allow me to work in the problems of shutdown and reboot in the Pentium III machines. Next time...

Like other kernel, if you want to test, the files are here. You can follow this steps:

Log in to the server as root.
# rpm -i --force http://www.titox-net.es/downloads/cobalt/BlueQuartz/kernel/linux-2.6.9-89.0.23-cobalt/kernel-2.6.9-89.0.23_cobalt.i586.rpm
# cd /boot
# mv vmlinux.bz2 vmlinux_old.bz2
# cp vmlinux_2.6.9-89.0.23.EL-cobalt.bz2 vmlinux.bz2
# reboot

OBVIOUSLY: USE THIS KERNEL AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO GUARANTEE

Now here you are the boot logs of my RaQ 4r (RAID 1) and a RaQ 550:

         Sun Cobalt - Smaller, Bluer, Better, and Free

               Firmware version 2.10.3-ext3

Current date: May 07 20:57:18 UTC 2010
ROM build info: Thu Mar 11 08:51:36 MST 2004 .
System serial number: Uninitialized
System type: 3000 series system, Version 1 board
Silicon serial number: 7200000767f57a01
Monitor: 153536 bytes
Memory: 256 MB
CPU: 1 processor(s) detected
CPU 0: AuthenticAMD 448MHz (4.5 x 100MHz host bus) [BSP]
Initializing flash: done
Flash Bank 0: AMD AM29F080B 1024KB (01:d5)
Flash Bank 1: not installed.
Mounting ROM fs: done
Initializing PCI: done
Host Bus: 0 (device 1f:07) [33MHz]
    Device: 00:00 10b9:1541 Acer Labs M1541 Aladdin V Host Bridge
    Device: 01:00 10b9:5243 Acer Labs M5243 AGP Controller
    Device: 02:00 10b9:5237 Acer Labs M5237 USB Controller (IRQ 6)
    Device: 03:00 10b9:7101 Acer Labs M7101 PMU
    Device: 07:00 10b9:1533 Acer Labs M1543 Aladdin V PCI-ISA Bridge
    Device: 0e:00 1000:000f Symbios Logic SYM53C875 SCSI Controller (IRQ 12)
    Device: 0f:00 10b9:5229 Acer Labs M5229 TXpro IDE Controller (IRQ 14)
    Device: 10:00 8086:1209 Intel 82559ER EEPro100 Fast Ethernet (IRQ 11)
    Device: 12:00 8086:1209 Intel 82559ER EEPro100 Fast Ethernet (IRQ 10)
Bridged Bus: 1 (bridge: 00:01:00)
Initializing ethernet: 2 controller(s) found
Intel 82559ER Found at port 0xfd80, MAC: 00:10:e0:03:1d:c2
Intel 82559ER Found at port 0xfd40, MAC: 00:10:e0:03:1e:2b
Initializing IDE: found ALI M5229 at 00:78
scanning ide0: master
scanning ide1:
IDE: stabilizing spinup:    100%
Checking Memory: done

Press spacebar to enter ROM mode
Booting default method - From disk

Enabling L2 cache: on-chip L2 is 128K -done
First stage kernel (Linux): Decompressing -- done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug mem=22M cobalt_boot_image=/boot/vmlinux.bz2,/vmlinux.bz2,/boot/vmlinux.gz,/vmlinux.gz cobalt_boot_return=0x161f394 cobalt_boot_data=0x1634cc4 cobalt_boot_load=0x1700000 cobalt_ramcode_map=0x1600000,0xa00000 ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version 2.4.25-ROM (duncan@atherton) (gcc version 3.3.3 (Debian 20040306)) #1 Thu Mar 11 08:47:53 MST 2004
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000010000000 (usable)
user-defined physical RAM map:
user: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
user: 0000000000100000 - 0000000001600000 (usable)
22MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 5632
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 1536 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
DMI not present.
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug mem=22M cobalt_boot_image=/boot/vmlinux.bz2,/vmlinux.bz2,/boot/vmlinux.gz,/vmlinux.gz cobalt_boot_return=0x161f394 cobalt_boot_data=0x1634cc4 cobalt_boot_load=0x1700000 cobalt_ramcode_map=0x1600000,0xa00000 ip=off
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 448.219 MHz processor.
Calibrating delay loop... 894.56 BogoMIPS
Memory: 20208k/22528k available (1141k kernel code, 1932k reserved, 244k data, 100k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Enabling new style K6 write allocation for 22 Mb
CPU: L1 I Cache: 32K (32 bytes/line), D cache 32K (32 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 128K (32 bytes/line)
CPU:     After generic, caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000002
CPU:             Common caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000002
CPU: AMD-K6(tm)-III Processor stepping 04
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: AMD K6
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker http://www.scyld.com/network/eepro100.html
eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 Modified by Andrey V. Savochkin saw@saw.sw.com.sg and others
eth0: Invalid EEPROM checksum 0xd5fd, check settings before activating this device!
eth0: PCI device 8086:1209, 00:10:E0:03:1D:C2, IRQ 11.
Receiver lock-up bug exists -- enabling work-around.
Board assembly 000000-000, Physical connectors present:
Primary interface chip None PHY #0.
General self-test: passed.
Serial sub-system self-test: passed.
Internal registers self-test: passed.
ROM checksum self-test: passed (0xdbd8681d).
Receiver lock-up workaround activated.
eth1: Invalid EEPROM checksum 0x3efe, check settings before activating this device!
eth1: PCI device 8086:1209, 00:10:E0:03:1E:2B, IRQ 10.
Receiver lock-up bug exists -- enabling work-around.
Board assembly 000000-000, Physical connectors present:
Primary interface chip None PHY #0.
General self-test: passed.
Serial sub-system self-test: passed.
Internal registers self-test: passed.
ROM checksum self-test: passed (0xdbd8681d).
Receiver lock-up workaround activated.
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:0f.0
ALI15X3: chipset revision 193
ALI15X3: 100% native mode on irq 14
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfdd0-0xfdd7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfdd8-0xfddf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: ST310211A, ATA DISK drive
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
blk: queue c0298fa0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
ide0 at 0xfdf8-0xfdff,0xfdf6 on irq 14
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 19541088 sectors (10005 MB) w/1024KiB Cache, CHS=19386/16/63, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 >
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
   8regs     :   621.200 MB/sec
   32regs    :   367.600 MB/sec
   pII_mmx   :   849.600 MB/sec
   p5_mmx    :   826.000 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pII_mmx (849.600 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 2048)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 100k freed
BOOTLOADER: Mapping in physical locations
BOOTLOADER: load_addr=0xc2004000 ret_data=0xc2205cc4
BOOTLOADER: opening "/boot/vmlinux.bz2"
BOOTLOADER: reading "/boot/vmlinux.bz2"
BOOTLOADER: read 1493862bytes
BOOTLOADER: unmounting /
BOOTLOADER: calling reboot notifiers
md: stopping all md devices.
flushing ide devices: hda
BOOTLOADER: mapping 22M-32M for ride home
BOOTLOADER: disabling interrupts
BOOTLOADER: flushing cache
BOOTLOADER: Leap of faith!
Back in ramcode: done
Second stage kernel: Decompressing -- done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version 2.6.9-89.0.23.EL-cobalt (root@sbdevel.titox-net.es) (gcc version 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #1 SMP Wed May 5 21:51:13 CEST 2010
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000010000000 (usable)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
256MB LOWMEM available.
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 65536
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 61440 pages, LIFO batch:15
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI not present.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Allocating PCI resources starting at 20000000 (gap: 10000000:f0000000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
mapped APIC to ffffc000 (01213000)
Initializing CPU#0
PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 32768 bytes)
Detected 448.029 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Memory: 255856k/262144k available (2110k kernel code, 5860k reserved, 746k data, 188k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 897.57 BogoMIPS (lpj=448788)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I Cache: 32K (32 bytes/line), D cache 32K (32 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 128K (32 bytes/line)
CPU: After all inits, caps:        0080213f c08029bf 00000000 00000002
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
CPU0: AMD-K6(tm)-III Processor stepping 04
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 364.81 usecs.
task migration cache decay timeout: 0 msecs.
SMP motherboard not detected.
Local APIC not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
Brought up 1 CPUs
zapping low mappings.
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
SCSI subsystem initialized
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
Activating ISA DMA hang workarounds.
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
alim7101_wdt: Steve Hill steve@navaho.co.uk.
alim7101_wdt: WDT driver for ALi M7101 initialised. timeout=30 sec (nowayout=0)
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 6 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v2.6.3-rh (June 8, 2005)
bonding: Warning: either miimon or arp_interval and arp_ip_target module parameters must be specified, otherwise bonding will not detect link failures! see bonding.txt for details.
e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.5.10-k2-NAPI
e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2005 Intel Corporation
e100: Modified by jeff@404ster.com to ignore bad EEPROM checksums
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM corrupted, ignoring and moving on
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load:     Caclulated Checksum: E4BD
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load:     EEPROM Checksum:     0
e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr 0xf7ffc000, irq 11, MAC addr 00:10:E0:03:1D:C2
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM corrupted, ignoring and moving on
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load:     Caclulated Checksum: 7BBC
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load:     EEPROM Checksum:     0
e100: eth1: e100_probe: addr 0xf7fbf000, irq 10, MAC addr 00:10:E0:03:1E:2B
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.0
ALI15X3: chipset revision 193
ALI15X3: 100% native mode on irq 14
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfdd0-0xfdd7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfdd8-0xfddf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST310211A, ATA DISK drive
Using deadline io scheduler
ide0 at 0xfdf8-0xfdff,0xfdf6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
    current capacity is 19541088 sectors (10005 MB)
    native capacity is 19541089 sectors (10005 MB)
hda: 19541088 sectors (10005 MB) w/1024KiB Cache, CHS=19386/16/63, UDMA(33)
hda: cache flushes not supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 >
sym0: <875> rev 0x4 at pci 0000:00:0e.0 irq 12
sym0: No NVRAM, ID 7, Fast-20, SE, parity checking
sym0: SCSI BUS has been reset.
scsi0 : sym-2.1.18k
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: irq 6, pci mem d0808000
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
i2c /dev entries driver
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
   8regs     :   616.000 MB/sec
   8regs_prefetch:   464.000 MB/sec
   32regs    :   388.000 MB/sec
   32regs_prefetch:   360.000 MB/sec
   pII_mmx   :   988.000 MB/sec
   p5_mmx    :   956.000 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pII_mmx (988.000 MB/sec)
raid6: int32x1     82 MB/s
raid6: int32x2     97 MB/s
raid6: int32x4    101 MB/s
raid6: int32x8     93 MB/s
raid6: mmxx1      214 MB/s
raid6: mmxx2      250 MB/s
raid6: using algorithm mmxx2 (250 MB/s)
md: raid6 personality registered as nr 8
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (2048 buckets, 16384 max) - 344 bytes per conntrack
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Cobalt system type is Pacifica
Cobalt Networks ACPI driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LED driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LCD driver 4.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Serial Number driver 1.6 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Watchdog Timer driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Sensor driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks RAM Info driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 188k freed
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

INIT: version 2.85 booting

        Welcome to CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
        Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
Setting clock : Fri May 7 22:58:03 CEST 2010 [ OK ]
Starting udev: [ OK ]
Initializing hardware... storage network audio done[ OK ]
Configuring kernel parameters: [ OK ]
Setting hostname sbdevel.titox-net.es: [ OK ]
Checking root filesystem
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda1
/dev/hda1: clean, 85231/250368 files, 449287/500086 blocks (check in 5 mounts)
[ OK ]
Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ]
Checking filesystems
Checking all file systems.
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda2
/dev/hda2: clean, 1738/250368 files, 179343/500094 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /tmp] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda5
/dev/hda5: clean, 14/250368 files, 16075/500086 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /home] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda6
/dev/hda6: clean, 82083/346368 files, 568393/692236 blocks
[ OK ]
Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ]
Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ]
rm: cannot remove `/var/run/dovecot/login': Is a directory
Enabling swap space: [ OK ]
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
Entering non-interactive startup
Checking for new hardware [ OK ]
Starting dbrecover: [ OK ]
Starting lcdstatus: [ OK ]
Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ]
Setting network parameters: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Starting system logger: [ OK ]
Starting kernel logger: [ OK ]
[FAILED]
Starting cced: [ OK ]
Running CCE constructors:
Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ]
Starting lm_sensors: [ OK ]
Starting automount: No Mountpoints Defined[ OK ]
Starting smartd: [ OK ]
Starting sshd:[ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
Starting admin web server: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
Starting crond: [ OK ]
Starting poprelayd: [ OK ]
Starting atd: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting lcdsleep.init: [ OK ]
Starting system message bus: [ OK ]
Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ]

CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.9-89.0.23.EL-cobalt on an i586

sbdevel.titox-net.es login: root
Password:

          Sun Cobalt - Smaller, Bluer, Better, and Free

               Firmware version 2.10.3-ext3

Current date: May 07 20:58:24 UTC 2010
ROM build info: Thu Mar 11 08:51:36 MST 2004 .
System serial number: Uninitialized
System type: 5000 series system, Version 2 board
Silicon serial number: 5333333730303233
Monitor: 153536 bytes
Memory: 512 MB
Initializing Local APIC ID 0 at 0xfee00000 (Virtual Wire mode)
SMP: relocate AP boot code from 0x01617280 to 0x0000a000 [size=65]
SMP: attempting to start CPU 3
Sending Start-Up IPI (Edge/Assert) to APIC 3 [vector 0x0a]
Sending Start-Up IPI (Edge/Assert) to APIC 3 [vector 0x0a]
Sending Start-Up IPI (Edge/Assert) to APIC 3 [vector 0x0a]
SMP: CPU 3 not found!
CPU: 1 processor(s) detected
CPU 0: GenuineIntel 1262MHz (9.5 x 133MHz host bus) [BSP]
Initializing flash: done
Flash Bank 0: AMD AM29F016B 2048KB (01:ad)
Flash Bank 1: not installed.
Mounting ROM fs: done
Initializing PCI: PIRQ: Relocate table to 0xf8000 (96 bytes, 4 entries, checksum b8)
     OSB4 I/O port: 00:78 I/O base 0xfcfc [size=4]
     OSB4 I/O port: 00:78 I/O base 0xfcf8 [size=4]
     OSB4 I/O port: 00:78 I/O base 0xfcf4 [size=4]
     OSB4 I/O port: 00:78 I/O base 0xfce8 [size=8]
     OSB4 I/O port: 00:78 I/O base 0xfce0 [size=8]
done
Host Bus: 0 (device 00:00) [33MHz]
    Device: 00:00 1166:0009 ServerWorks CNB30LE Host Bridge
    Device: 00:01 1166:0009 ServerWorks CNB30LE Host Bridge
    Device: 0f:00 1166:0201 ServerWorks CSB5 South Bridge (IRQ 10)
    Device: 0f:01 1166:0212 ServerWorks CSB5 IDE Controller (IRQ 14)
    Device: 0f:02 1166:0220 ServerWorks OpenHCI USB Controller (IRQ 9)
    Device: 0f:03 1166:0230 ServerWorks CSB5 PCI-LPC Bridge
Host Bus: 1 (device 00:01) [33MHz]
    Device: 06:00 100b:0020 National DP83815 MacPhyter Ethernet (IRQ 5)
    Device: 07:00 100b:0020 National DP83815 MacPhyter Ethernet (IRQ 7)
MPTABLE: Bus #0 is PCI
MPTABLE: Bus #1 is PCI
MPTABLE: Bus #2 is ISA
MPTABLE:                 I/O Interrupt Entries
MPTABLE: TYPE    POLARITY   TRIGGER    BUS    IRQ   APIC   INT
MPTABLE: -------------------------------------------------------
MPTABLE:   INT   active-lo     level   PCI0   15:A      4     9
MPTABLE:   INT   active-lo     level   PCI1    6:A      5     0
MPTABLE:   INT   active-lo     level   PCI1    7:A      5     1
MPTABLE:   EXT   active-hi      edge    ISA      0      4     0
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi      edge    ISA      0      4     0
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi      edge    ISA      1      4     1
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi      edge    ISA      3      4     3
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi      edge    ISA      4      4     4
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi      edge    ISA      8      4     8
MPTABLE:   INT   active-lo     level    ISA     10      4    10
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi     level    ISA     14      4    14
MPTABLE:   INT   active-hi     level    ISA     15      4    15
MPTABLE:                Local Interrupt Entries
MPTABLE: TYPE    POLARITY   TRIGGER    BUS    IRQ   APIC   INT
MPTABLE: -------------------------------------------------------
MPTABLE:   EXT   active-hi      edge    ISA      0    255     0
MPTABLE:   NMI   active-hi      edge   PCI0    0:A    255     1
SMP: floating table base 0x000f8200 (16 bytes, checksum ff)
SMP: config mptable base 0x000f8210 (216 bytes, checksum d5)
SMP: extended entry base 0x000f82e8 (144 bytes, checksum f3)
Initializing ethernet: 2 controller(s) found
National Semiconductor DP83815 Found at port 0xfe00, MAC: 00:10:e0:06:34:d1
National Semiconductor DP83815 Found at port 0xfd00, MAC: 00:10:e0:06:34:d2
Initializing IDE: found ServerWorks CSB5 at 00:79
spinning up second channel: >>>>>done
scanning ide0: master
scanning ide1:
IDE: stabilizing spinup:    100%
Checking Memory: done
Press spacebar to enter ROM mode
Booting default method - From disk
First stage kernel (Linux): Decompressing -- done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug mem=22M cobalt_boot_image=/boot/vmlinux.bz2,/vmlinux.bz2,/boot/vmlinux.gz,/vmlinux.gz cobalt_boot_return=0x161f394 cobalt_boot_data=0x1634cc4 cobalt_boot_load=0x1700000 cobalt_ramcode_map=0x1600000,0xa00000 ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version 2.4.25-ROM (duncan@atherton) (gcc version 3.3.3 (Debian 20040306)) #1 Thu Mar 11 08:47:53 MST 2004
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000020000000 (usable)
user-defined physical RAM map:
user: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
user: 0000000000100000 - 0000000001600000 (usable)
22MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 5632
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 1536 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
DMI not present.
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug mem=22M cobalt_boot_image=/boot/vmlinux.bz2,/vmlinux.bz2,/boot/vmlinux.gz,/vmlinux.gz cobalt_boot_return=0x161f394 cobalt_boot_data=0x1634cc4 cobalt_boot_load=0x1700000 cobalt_ramcode_map=0x1600000,0xa00000 ip=off
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1263.113 MHz processor.
Calibrating delay loop... 2523.13 BogoMIPS
Memory: 20208k/22528k available (1141k kernel code, 1932k reserved, 244k data, 100k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU:     After generic, caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU - S         1266MHz stepping 04
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 00:0f.1
PCI: Discovered primary peer bus 01 [IRQ]
PCI: Using IRQ router ServerWorks [1166/0201] at 00:0f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:0f.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:0f.2
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
natsemi dp8381x driver, version 1.07+LK1.0.17, Sep 27, 2002
originally by Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
http://www.scyld.com/network/natsemi.html
2.4.x kernel port by Jeff Garzik, Tjeerd Mulder
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 01:06.0
eth0: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xc2000000, 00:10:e0:06:34:d1, IRQ 5.
PCI: Found IRQ 7 for device 01:07.0
eth1: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xc2002000, 00:10:e0:06:34:d2, IRQ 7.
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SvrWks CSB5: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:0f.1
SvrWks CSB5: chipset revision 146
SvrWks CSB5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfcb0-0xfcb7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfcb8-0xfcbf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c0298fa0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63, UDMA(100)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 >
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
   8regs     : 2330.000 MB/sec
   32regs    : 1150.800 MB/sec
   pIII_sse : 2940.800 MB/sec
   pII_mmx   : 2814.800 MB/sec
   p5_mmx    : 2939.600 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (2940.800 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 2048)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 100k freed
BOOTLOADER: Mapping in physical locations
BOOTLOADER: load_addr=0xc2004000 ret_data=0xc2205cc4
BOOTLOADER: opening "/boot/vmlinux.bz2"
BOOTLOADER: reading "/boot/vmlinux.bz2"
BOOTLOADER: read 1494007bytes
BOOTLOADER: unmounting /
BOOTLOADER: calling reboot notifiers
md: stopping all md devices.
flushing ide devices: hda
BOOTLOADER: mapping 22M-32M for ride home
BOOTLOADER: disabling interrupts
BOOTLOADER: flushing cache
BOOTLOADER: Leap of faith!
Back in ramcode: done
Second stage kernel: Decompressing -- done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version 2.6.9-89.0.23.EL-cobalt (root@sbdevel.titox-net.es) (gcc version 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #2 SMP Wed May 5 23:06:27 CEST 2010
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000020000000 (usable)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
512MB LOWMEM available.
found SMP MP-table at 000f8200
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 131072
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 126976 pages, LIFO batch:16
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI not present.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Intel MultiProcessor Specification v1.4
    Virtual Wire compatibility mode.
OEM ID: COBALT   Product ID: 5000 Alpine APIC at: 0xFEE00000
Processor #0 6:11 APIC version 17
I/O APIC #4 Version 17 at 0xFEC00000.
I/O APIC #5 Version 17 at 0xFEC01000.
Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 2 I/O APICs
Processors: 1
Allocating PCI resources starting at 30000000 (gap: 20000000:e0000000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off
mapped APIC to ffffc000 (fee00000)
Initializing CPU#0
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes)
Detected 1263.669 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Memory: 515440k/524288k available (2110k kernel code, 8332k reserved, 746k data, 188k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 2528.81 BogoMIPS (lpj=1264405)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After all inits, caps:        0383f3ff 00000000 00000000 00000040
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU - S         1266MHz stepping 04
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 1462.62 usecs.
task migration cache decay ti1meout: 1 msecs.
Total of 1 processors activated (2528.81 BogoMIPS).
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=0 pin2=0
Brought up 1 CPUs
zapping low mappings.
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
SCSI subsystem initialized
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:0f.1
PCI: Discovered primary peer bus 01 [IRQ]
PCI: Using IRQ router ServerWorks [1166/0201] at 0000:00:0f.0
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B0,I15,P0) -> 25
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B0,I15,P0) -> 25
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B1,I6,P0) -> 16
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B1,I7,P0) -> 17
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
alim7101_wdt: Steve Hill steve@navaho.co.uk.
alim7101_wdt: ALi M7101 PMU not present - WDT not set
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 6 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v2.6.3-rh (June 8, 2005)
bonding: Warning: either miimon or arp_interval and arp_ip_target module parameters must be specified, otherwise bonding will not detect link failures! see bonding.txt for details.
e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.5.10-k2-NAPI
e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2005 Intel Corporation
e100: Modified by jeff@404ster.com to ignore bad EEPROM checksums
natsemi dp8381x driver, version 1.07+LK1.0.17, Sep 27, 2002
originally by Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
http://www.scyld.com/network/natsemi.html
2.4.x kernel port by Jeff Garzik, Tjeerd Mulder
natsemi eth0: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xfebff000 (0000:01:06.0), 00:10:e0:06:34:d1, IRQ 16, port TP.
natsemi eth1: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xfebfe000 (0000:01:07.0), 00:10:e0:06:34:d2, IRQ 17, port TP.
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SvrWks CSB5: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.1
SvrWks CSB5: chipset revision 146
SvrWks CSB5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfcb0-0xfcb7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfcb8-0xfcbf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
Using deadline io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 >
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: ServerWorks OSB4/CSB5 OHCI USB Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: irq 25, pci mem e0804000
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
i2c /dev entries driver
piix4_smbus 0000:00:0f.0: Found 0000:00:0f.0 device
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: automatically using best checksumming function: pIII_sse
   pIII_sse : 2888.000 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (2888.000 MB/sec)
raid6: int32x1    390 MB/s
raid6: int32x2    468 MB/s
raid6: int32x4    394 MB/s
raid6: int32x8    332 MB/s
raid6: mmxx1     1148 MB/s
raid6: mmxx2     1437 MB/s
raid6: sse1x1    1078 MB/s
raid6: sse1x2    1472 MB/s
raid6: using algorithm sse1x2 (1472 MB/s)
md: raid6 personality registered as nr 8
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 131072)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (4096 buckets, 32768 max) - 344 bytes per conntrack
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Cobalt system type is Alpine
Cobalt Networks ACPI driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LED driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LCD driver 4.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Serial Number driver 1.6 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Watchdog Timer driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Sensor driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Fan driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks RAM Info driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 188k freed
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

INIT: version 2.85 booting
       Welcome to CentOS release 4.8 (Final)       Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.Setting clock : Fri May 7 22:59:01 CEST 2010 [ OK ]
Starting udev: [ OK ]
Initializing hardware... storage network audio done[ OK ]
Configuring kernel parameters: [ OK ]
Setting hostname raq550bq.titox-net.es: [ OK ]
Checking root filesystem[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda1 /dev/hda1: clean, 33451/251392 files, 219980/502023 blocks (check in 4 mounts)[ OK ]
Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ]
Checking filesystemsChecking all file systems.[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda2 /dev/hda2: clean, 1542/251392 files, 83380/502031 blocks[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /tmp] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda5 /dev/hda5: clean, 13/251392 files, 16105/502023 blocks[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /home] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda6 /dev/hda6: clean, 642/8896512 files, 304698/17779930 blocks[ OK ]
Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ]
Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ]
rm: cannot remove `/var/run/dovecot/login': Is a directoryEnabling swap space: [ OK ]
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
Entering non-interactive startupApplying Intel Microcode update: FATAL: Module microcode not found.[ OK ]
ERROR: Module microcode does not exist in /proc/modulesChecking for new hardware [ OK ]
Starting dbrecover: [ OK ]
Starting lcdstatus: [ OK ]
Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ]
Setting network parameters: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Starting system logger: [ OK ]
Starting kernel logger: [ OK ]
[FAILED]
Starting cced: [ OK ]
Running CCE constructors: Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ]
Starting lm_sensors: [ OK ]
Starting automount: No Mountpoints Defined[ OK ]
Starting smartd: [ OK ]
Starting sshd:[ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
Starting Dovecot Imap: [ OK ]
Starting admin web server: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
Starting crond: [ OK ]
Starting poprelayd: [ OK ]
Starting atd: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting lcdsleep.init: [ OK ]
Starting system message bus: [ OK ]
Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ]
CentOS release 4.8 (Final)Kernel 2.6.9-89.0.23.EL-cobalt on an i686raq550bq.titox-net.es
login: root
Password:

Troubleshooting kernel package installation

2010-05-04T23:58:00.001+02:00

If after applying my kernel 2.6.9-89.0.20 package the lcd shows 'IP Address not set' , there is a failure in the upgrade installation. This is because yum had installed newer kernels and the rpm software don't want to install the rpm included in this package.

1.- To repair it you need to boot the server with a terminal connected to the serial console port. When the message 'Press spacebar to enter ROM mode' appears, press the space bar.
2.- Once in the ROM menu type 'bfd /boot/vmlinux_old_002.bz2'. This command forces to boot from the old kernel.
3.- Login to the server as root.
4.- # cd /boot
5.- # rpm -i --force http://www.titox-net.es/downloads/cobalt/BlueQuartz/kernel/linux-2.6.9-89.0.20-cobalt/kernel-2.6.9-89.0.20_cobalt.i386.rpm
6.- # ln -s vmlinux-2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt.bz2 vmlinux.bz2
7.- # reboot

There is a mistake in the kernel config and RAID devices are not working... OK I will compile a new version soon as possible, I need for my new server!!!!!!! Sorry guys.

A big-little scare: Burning RaQ 4 ROM failure!!!!

2010-05-04T14:32:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I started to update an spare RaQ 4i to use it as main server at home. The old RaQ 4 have worked the last 3 years without any stop and I feel that I need to change the server for caution.

This second RaQ 4i has two extra ethernets ports and two 120GB Seagate hard disks but now it's loaded with the old Cobalt OS (fully upgraded). I tried to compile MySQL 5.1.46 on it but I has some problems and decided to upgrade the kernel to 2.4.36 (Zeffie's kernel). But this new kernel needs ROM version 2.10.3-ext3.

First I started doing a backup of the old ROM:

[root /root]# ./flashtool -v -r > cobalt-2.3.34-1M.rom
./flashtool: searching for PCI 10b9:7101 : found it at /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0
./flashtool: systype = COBT_3K
./flashtool: bank 0: ST Microelectronics M29F080A 1MB
./flashtool: reading page 0
./flashtool: reading page 1
./flashtool: reading page 2
./flashtool: reading page 3
./flashtool: reading page 4
./flashtool: reading page 5
./flashtool: reading page 6
./flashtool: reading page 7
./flashtool: reading page 8
./flashtool: reading page 9
./flashtool: reading page 10
./flashtool: reading page 11
./flashtool: reading page 12
./flashtool: reading page 13
./flashtool: reading page 14
./flashtool: reading page 15
./flashtool: flushing buffers

Like I did before in other servers I started using Tim Hocking's flashtool and OUCH!!! FAILED!!!!:

[root /root]# ./flashtool -v -w cobalt-2.10.3-ext3-1M.rom
./flashtool: searching for PCI 10b9:7101 : found it at /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0
./flashtool: systype = COBT_3K
./flashtool: bank 0: ST Microelectronics M29F080A 1MB
./flashtool: writing page 0
./flashtool: buffer page 0 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 1
./flashtool: buffer page 1 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 2
./flashtool: buffer page 2 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 3
./flashtool: buffer page 3 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 4
./flashtool: buffer page 4 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 5
./flashtool: buffer page 5 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 6
./flashtool: buffer page 6 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 7
./flashtool: buffer page 7 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 8
./flashtool: buffer page 8 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 9
./flashtool: buffer page 9 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 10
./flashtool: buffer page 10 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 11
./flashtool: buffer page 11 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 12
./flashtool: buffer page 12 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 13
./flashtool: buffer page 13 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 14
./flashtool: buffer page 14 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 15
./flashtool: buffer page 15 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: flushing buffers
./flashtool:   flushing block 0 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 0! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 1 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 1! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 2 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 2! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 3 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 3! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 4 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 4! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 5 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 5! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 6 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 6! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 7 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 7! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 8 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 8! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 9 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 9! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 10 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 10! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 11 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 11! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 12 to ROM..../flashtool: flashrom_flush_buffers(): write failed for block 12! Bad flash chip?
done
./flashtool:   flushing block 13 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool:   flushing block 14 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool:   flushing block 15 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool: flashrom_cleanup(): device error flushing buffers

As you can see this server has the standard old ST ROM chip. I upgraded this brand roms with this tool but yesterday it won't run. Fortunately I have a copy of Duncan's flashtool (the small one - 400 KB) and it worked fine. I uploaded via FTP and burned the rom:

[root /root]# ./flashtool -v -w cobalt-2.10.3-ext3-1M.rom
./flashtool: searching for PCI 10b9:7101 : found it at /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0
./flashtool: systype = COBT_3K
./flashtool: bank 0: ST Microelectronics M29F080A 1MB
./flashtool: Using pthread POSIX real time scheduling.
./flashtool: writing page 0
./flashtool: buffer page 0 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 1
./flashtool: buffer page 1 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 2
./flashtool: buffer page 2 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool: writing page 3
(...)

Very important in this case was to not power off the server: if after a failed rom burn the server is powered off, the server will be a brick, totally dead.

For this reason now I have both flashtool programs mirrored in my server here: http://www.titox-net.es/downloads/cobalt/rom/

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 7: Gigabit networking

2010-05-02T22:27:00.003+02:00

Well, one week ago I received a new Sun Quad GigaSwift PCI card for this server. It's a full lenght PCI card with 64 bits PCI bus, but works in 32 bits PCI bus also.

As you can see in the pictures, the card installation is very easy. Only take out the blank bracket and the small grey plastic, then mount the card in th server slot. Finally return to set the grey plastic which locks the rear part of the GigaSiwft.

The network cards can be configured via the ifconfig utility in Solaris but to make this configurations stored we have to do some more file editting:

1.- The first step is to check if the server detects the GigaSwift card:

# grep ce /etc/path_to_inst
"/pci@1f,0/pci@1/pci@5/pci@0/network@0" 0 "ce"
"/pci@1f,0/pci@1/pci@5/pci@0/network@1" 1 "ce"
"/pci@1f,0/pci@1/pci@5/pci@4/network@2" 2 "ce"
"/pci@1f,0/pci@1/pci@5/pci@4/network@3" 3 "ce"

2.- Second step: create the /etc/hostname.ce0 file containing the name of the server. This name can't be the same in two different ethernet ports. In the 100MB port I'm using v120 as hostname, now I added a 'g' to the name:

# cat /etc/hostname.ce0
v120g

ce0 is the instance number for the port I'm going to use. I only need one port of the four installed with this card. If we want to use more port, more hostname.ce'instance_number' are needed.

3.- Now we have to edit the /etc/inet/hosts file but the vi editor says it's write protected (and I'm doing it beeing root). Like other changes I did before, I uploaded this file to my laptop via FTP, modified with a text editor and then downloaded to the server.

# cd /etc/inet
# cp /export/home/admin/hosts .

# cat /etc/inet/hosts
#
# Internet host table
#
::1     localhost
127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.2.120   v120    loghost
192.168.5.120   v120g
~

4.- With the two configuration files ready, the card can be turned on:

# ifconfig ce0 plumb 192.168.5.120 up

Unfortunately the trasfer speed is the same as the speed obtained with the 100MB onboard port. Yes, I know there is a lot of parameters to tune, but I will look on the next days. Another problem I found is that: with both Ethernet ports configured (onboard an GigaSwift), when I unplug the onboard port cable, I have a lot of problems to connect with the Gigaswift (well, I can't connect). I think this is because Solaris uses the main port to check against DNS server. Then, I disconfigured the onboard ethernet port:

1.- Unplumb the card:

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
ce0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.5.120 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.5.255
        ether 0:3:ba:5c:2b:7d
eri0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 3
        inet 192.168.2.120 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
        ether 0:3:ba:5c:2b:7d

# ifconfig eri0 unplumb

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
ce0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.5.120 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.5.255
        ether 0:3:ba:5c:2b:7d

2.- Delete the /etc/hosts entry (I modified the file in my laptop):

# cd /etc/inet
# cp hosts hosts.old
# cp /export/home/admin/hosts .
# cat hosts

#
# Internet host table
#
::1     localhost
127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.5.120   v120g   loghost

3. Delete the /etc/hostname.eri0 file (here I moved it):

# cd /etc
# ls hostname*
hostname.ce0 hostname.eri0
# mv hostname.eri0 hostname.ri0.old

4.- Unplumb the ethernet port (and reboot):

# ifconfig eri0 unplumb
# reboot

Now everything works good with only the GigaSwift port 0 attached to the network. Something that is killing me is the low speed transfer via FTP. I can only reach 4.5 MB/s. This is a very low value. While doing a file tranfer I checked the server status with iostat:

# iostat
   tty        sd0           sd3           sd16          sd17           cpu
tin tout kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv   us sy wt id
   0    1   2   0    4 439   8   28 789   8   26 758   8   31   60 26 0 14

Here I can see that the CPU is hard working. Maybe all the calculations needed by Samba, ftp and the other services joined by the ZFS filesystem are eating a lot of resources. I think I will check to optimize the network parameters for play and then I will reformat the hard disks using SVM instead of ZFS.

P.D.: Do you know what is this? (Check picture)

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 6: Network shares and RAM upgrade

2010-04-19T23:10:00.001+02:00

Ok. Time to start some file sharing protocols.

First the easy part: NFS.
Solaris comes with NFS4 (backwards compatible with NFS2 and NFS3). Not very important in a normal home but in my case, this is the best option to share information with my SGI boxes. Only three steps are needed to start sharing, Fantastic!

1. Make writable to everybody the folder where I want to share. I use the same array than before:

# chmod 777 /fsshared

2. Add the share information to the file /etc/dfs/dfstab

#       Place share(1M) commands here for automatic execution
#       on entering init state 3.
#
#       Issue the command 'svcadm enable network/nfs/server' to
#       run the NFS daemon processes and the share commands, after adding
#       the very first entry to this file.
#
#       share [-F fstype] [ -o options] [-d ""] [resource]
#       .e.g,
#       share -F nfs -o rw=engineering -d "home dirs" /export/home2
share -F nfs -o rw -d "fsshared V120" /fsshared

3. Start sharing:

# shareall

The dfstab entry goes:

-F nfs .- Type of sharing.
-o rw .- The options. Here I only used read-write but there is a lot more (including loggin), but I just don't need.
-d "fsshared V120" .- Obviously is only a comment.
/fsshared .- Here comes the folder I want to export.

Here some captures from my Fuel mounting the exported folder of the Sun Fure V120:

Second part is SAMBA!
This is the standard Windows protocol. At the time the most important in any home or company. From a lot of time ago samba.org is publising the source code and it's widely used but all the test I did before (and some test done by friends) are telling Samba is slow, in Solaris and in Linux.

Configure Samba in Solaris is not as easy as I was thinking before to use it.
1. Check if Samba is installed. Well, installing Solaris with OEM option, Samba must be installed:

# /usr/sfw/sbin/smbd -V
Version 3.0.35

2. Now we have to create the smb.conf file. I copied the exampled provided with the Solaris installation:

# cd /etc/sfw
# cp smb.conf-example smb.conf

3. Edit the configuratin file. I modified three parts: The allowed ip ranges (my network subnet and localhost):

# This option is important for security. It allows you to restrict
# connections to machines which are on your local network. The
# following example restricts access to two C class networks and
# the "loopback" interface. For more examples of the syntax see
# the smb.conf man page
hosts allow = 192.168.2. 127.

Set the Windows workgroup name:

# workgroup = NT-Domain-Name or Workgroup-Name, eg: MIDEARTH
workgroup = WORKGROUP

And the last one, the shared folder. I want the folder open read-write to everybody, then the guest ok option must be set and the guest only option must be removed! The docs says guest only is discarded with guest ok but in my case guest ok was discarded with both options in the configuration of the folder.

# A publicly accessible directory, read/write to all users. Note that all files
# created in the directory by users will be owned by the default user, so
# any user with access can delete any other user's files. Obviously this
# directory must be writable by the default user. Another user could of course
# be specified, in which case all files would be owned by that user instead.
[public]
   path = /fsshared
   public = yes
   guest ok = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no
   browseable = yes

4. Test the configuration file:

# /usr/sfw/bin/testparm

Load smb config files from /etc/sfw/smb.conf
Processing section "[homes]"
Processing section "[printers]"
Processing section "[public]"
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions

5. Add a user to the Samba database:

# /usr/sfw/bin/smbpasswd -a admin
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Added user admin.

6. The last part must be start the samba service:

# svcadm enable samba

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: 2010/09/08
7. Now Samba is working but I can't see the computer in the Windows Explorer (or other smb bowsers): The last step is activate WINS:

# svcadm enable wins

Here you have the old post part (italic letter). NOT NECESSARY.
A new test showed that I don't need to do the next part. At the end
but in my case it didn't work. After some googling I found this guide related to Solaris u4, and I followed. Samba didn't start and after a new search I found a fault in my smb.conf: I writed /fssaredc instead of the name of my shared folder.
Now I have two commands to start samba:

# svcadm enable samba:smbd
# svcadm enable samba:nmbd

End of the update
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But it's working:

And here comes the bad part. I only get 4.3 MB/s downloading the test file via FTP and 1.9 MB/s via Samba! The V120 is connected to my main router via a non manageable HP ProCurve gigabit switch and the client is a Dell Precsion 390 with the onboard Broadcom gigabit network chipset. I did some checks in the V120 network port configuration but I didn't find anything wrong. Well, I will check later. Anyway I have a Quad GigaSwift PCI card at the mail coming home.

RAM tests.
Thursday arrived some more RAM sticks, 4x1GB ECC registered sticks!!!

I did various test with different amount of memory: 512 MB (one stick that came with the server), 2 GB and 4 GB.

                                 512MB         2 GB        4GB

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

From RAID5 to system disk.      12.8 MB/s    17.8 MB/s   26.9 MB/s

From system disk to RAID5.      11.3 MB/s    18.6 MB/s   21.6 MB/s

From RAID5 to disk 2.           12,5 MB/s    20.9 MB/s   32.0 MB/s

I was expecting a great improvement from 512 MB to 2 Gb, but I also discovered a great rise in performance with 4 GB using the RAID5 array. Yes, ZFS needs a lot of memory!
Note that tests are done by hand and I only did the test one or two times but are enough for comparision. At least for me!

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 5: Users, rows and some tips

2010-04-06T23:56:00.003+02:00

Well, I had some problems with the screen rows (lines) when using the vi editor. Some time surfing the net later I found a good solution: the TERM environment variable. The /etc/profile script only can set this variable only in two ways: sun-color or sun:

(...)
if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
then
        if /bin/i386
        then
                TERM=sun-color
        else
                TERM=sun
        fi
        export TERM
(...)

This could be changed at the Solaris prompt typing:

# TERM=vt100
# export TERM

But with this commands the values are lost when the user logouts. Due all the connections to the server console or terminal will use a vt100 terminal simulator I decided to modify the /etc/profile script as follows:

(...)
if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
then
        if /bin/i386
        then
                TERM=sun-color
        else
                TERM=vt100
        fi
        export TERM
(...)

One problem solved. Go to the second one: with only the root account nobody can login into the server via ftp, smb or something like that. I decided to create an admin account like my linux servers:

# useradd -d /export/home/admin -m -s /bin/ksh -c admin admin
# passwd admin
New password:
(...)

Ok now I can open a FTP session. -d specifies the user folder, -s sets the shell he will use and -c specifies the full name of the user (use " to enclose the name if it has spaces). Obviously the las word is the account name.

Another problem I had was that the man pages were not working. Man seemed installed but not the documentation files. I tried adding the routes to the path but finally the solution is more easy: the package SUNWman was not installed while the package SUNWdoc was perfectly on the hard disk:

# cd /cdrom/sol_10_1009_sparc/Solaris_10/Product
# pkgadd -d . SUNWman

One more thing: How to complete shutdown (well in this server it means 'put the server on standby'):

# shutdown -y -g 0 -i 5

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 4: Testing ZFS RAID-Z

2010-03-30T21:40:00.000+02:00

I wanted to test a RAID5 configuration but having my server booting from a ZFS disk, seems that the Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) databases are not created and I can't use it. Anyway my main project is focuses in ZFS. Start!!!!!
From the SSM software or the format utility I get the disks names (SCSI nodes 1 to 3, scsi bus 2 - onle array disk):

c2t1d0
c2t2d0
c2t3d0

Create a ZFS RAIDZ array is easy, just type:

# zpool create fsshared raidz c2t1d0 c2t2d0 c2t3d0

Now I have a new folder named /fsshared:

# ls
bin       dev       export    kernel    mnt       platform sbin      usr
boot      devices   fsshared lib       net       proc      system    var
cdrom     etc       home      lom2      opt       rpool     tmp       vol
# zfs list
NAME                        USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
fsshared                   89,9K 33,1G 28,0K /fsshared
rpool                      4,67G 28,6G    97K /rpool
rpool/ROOT                 3,67G 28,6G    21K legacy
rpool/ROOT/s10s_u8wos_08a 3,67G 28,6G 3,67G /
rpool/dump                  512M 28,6G   512M -
rpool/export                 44K 28,6G    23K /export
rpool/export/home            21K 28,6G    21K /export/home
rpool/swap                  512M 28,8G   230M -

At the list you can see the main boot zfs systems named as root and my new fsshared array. Now it's time to check speed.
Create a new 2 GB file and watch how the array free space decreases:

# cd /fsshared
# mkfile 2g testfile
# ls
testfile
# zfs list
NAME                        USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
fsshared                   2,00G 31,1G 2,00G /fsshared
rpool                      4,74G 28,5G    97K /rpool
rpool/ROOT                 3,74G 28,5G    21K legacy
rpool/ROOT/s10s_u8wos_08a 3,74G 28,5G 3,74G /
rpool/dump                  512M 28,5G   512M -
rpool/export                 44K 28,5G    23K /export
rpool/export/home            21K 28,5G    21K /export/home
rpool/swap                  512M 28,8G   230M -

To check the write speed I copied the testfile to / and measured the time manualy

# cp /fsshared/testfile /
2048 MB - 161s - 12.8 MB/s
# rm /fsshared/testfile
# cp /testfile /fsshared
2048 MB - 181 s - 11.3 MB/s

This is not a good result and I'm start to think that the small amount of RAM in the server is one of the causes (with the slow CPU of course). Writing from the main disk to the array is slower than the reverse option. This speed is not fantastic but it's a write speed, now I need a gigabit card to check read speed. If read performance is ok, the V120 will be enough as NAS.

A new test copying the same file from the array to the disk 2 of the server:

# zpool create disc2 c1t1d0
# cp /fsshared/testfile /disc2
2048 MB - 164 s - 12,5 MB/s

Not better results here... And from the main disk to the second one of the server? And reverse?

# rm /disc2/testfile
# cp /testfile /disc2
2048 MB - 121s - 16.9 MB/s

Wow... Maybe the ZFS RAID calculations are too heavy for this server.
Ok. Next must be test NFS, FTP and SMB trasfer results.

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 3: Enabling ssh root login

2010-03-30T00:57:00.001+02:00

Ok. I'm tired. This server is too loud to work behind it. Because I don't want to create users yet and I want to admin the server from another room I decided to enable login with the root account, like my other linux servers

Very easy to do, from the serial console logged as root: edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change:

PermitRootLogin no >>PermitRootLogin yes

SPECIAL TIP!!!! I can't use the vi editor from the console as I can't see all the lines of the file. I uploaded to my main server via ftp, modified it in my workstation an then it downloaded again.

# svcadm disable svc:/network/ssh:default
# ftp 192.168.2.254
(...)
# svcadm enable svc:/network/ssh:default

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 2: SSM

2010-03-29T21:56:00.001+02:00

Before I create a ZFS array I decided to check the RAID 5 software with the standard UFS configuration to get some performance results and, then, compare with a RAID-Z. But before everything, to install the Sun Storage Subsystem Manager 2.0 (SSM) is a good idea. This software monitors the status of the atthached StorEdge S1 SCSI array writing messages to the system log and can be accessed from diferent clients utside the main server.

The SSM can be downloaded form the Sun downloads page here or, like me, it can be installed with the CDROM supplied with the disk array.

Fortunately, the lasts versions of the Solaris operating system come with the Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) loaded by default and the cdrom is mounted as soon as the disc is in the drive:

# cd /cdrom/cdrom0
# ls
Copyright FR_Copyright License.ps Packages
# cd Packages
# ls
SUNWssmr SUNWssmu
# pkgadd -d /cdrom/cdrom0/Packages SUNWssmu SUNWssmr

Just type 'y' when the wizard ask to follow with the intallation. Now the status of the array can be followed with the help of the ssmadmin utility:

# /opt/SUNWssmu/bin/ssmadmin -view

At first time the server didn't show the status of my disk because I had the array turned off and for this reason the configuration file was bad. I have to recreated the disk configuration booting the system with thr '-r' flag at the ok prompt. To create a new one if you change any of the disk or insert a new one:

lom>poweroff
LOM event: +0h26m56s host power off
lom>bootmode forth
lom>poweron
lom>
LOM event: +0h27m19s host power on
ok setenv auto-boot? off
auto-boot? = false
ok reset-all

Sun Fire V120 (UltraSPARC-IIe 648MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 4.0, 512 MB memory installed, Serial #56372093.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:5c:2b:7d, Host ID: 835c2b7d.

ok boot -r
Boot device: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8/disk@0,0:a File and args: -r
SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_141444-09 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.

v120 console login: root
password:

Last login: Mon Mar 29 21:10:49 on console
Mar 29 21:32:56 v120 login: ROOT LOGIN /dev/console
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.10 Generic January 2005

# format
Searching for disks...done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c1t0d0
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8/sd@0,0
1. c1t1d0
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8/sd@1,0
2. c2t1d0
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@1,0
3. c2t2d0
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@2,0
4. c2t3d0
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0

# /opt/SUNWssmu/bin/ssmadmin -c /etc/opt/SUNWssmu/ssmon.conf
Reading configuration file: /etc/opt/SUNWssmu/ssmon.conf

Searching for disks...done.

NOTE: A disk drive must be physically installed in the
base target slot of each storage unit.

Press enter to continue:

Disks found on the system:

Disk
Number Bus Target Disk
1 1 0 c1t0d0s0
2 1 1 c1t1d0s0
3 2 1 c2t1d0s0
4 2 2 c2t2d0s0
5 2 3 c2t3d0s0

Please enter the disk number of the base target address of
the storage unit. NOTE: An asterisk denotes a selected disk.

Just press enter when finished: 3
Disks found on the system:

Disk
Number Bus Target Disk
1 1 0 c1t0d0s0
2 1 1 c1t1d0s0
* 3 2 1 c2t1d0s0
* 4 2 2 c2t2d0s0
* 5 2 3 c2t3d0s0

Please enter the disk number of the base target address of
the storage unit. NOTE: An asterisk denotes a selected disk.

Just press enter when finished:

The following disks have been selected:

/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s0
/dev/rdsk/c2t2d0s0
/dev/rdsk/c2t3d0s0

Save configuration? (yes,no): yes

The SSM daemon must be stopped and restarted after re-creating
the configuration file. Use the /etc/init.d/ssmgmt script to
stop and start the daemon:
# /etc/init.d/ssmgmt stop
# /etc/init.d/ssmgmt start

# /etc/init.d/ssmgmt stop
stopping SSM server.
# /etc/init.d/ssmgmt start
starting SSM server.
ssmond: Failed to open message catalog.
#

You can see the error message but the SSM works nice:

# /opt/SUNWssmu/bin/ssmadmin -view
ssmond: Failed to open message catalog.

Number of S1-D130 Units: 1
Critical Temperature Threshold: 60 Degrees Celsius
Warning Temperature Threshold: 50 Degrees Celsius

TIME: 29 de marzo de 2010 21:40:12 CEST
*****************************************************************

v120::S1-D130-1: Online
-------------------

DISK1[c2t1d0s0]:
Serial Number: 0224Z35960
Vendor: FUJITSU
Model: SUN18G
Status: Online
Current Temperature: 26 Degrees Celsius
DISK2[c2t2d0s0]:
Serial Number: 3BT2FCQL
Vendor: SGI
Model: C
Status: Online
DISK3[c2t3d0s0]:
Serial Number: 0224Z35919
Vendor: FUJITSU
Model: SUN18G
Status: Online
Current Temperature: 28 Degrees Celsius

#

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 1: Installing Solaris 10 and drivers

2010-03-24T23:22:00.006+01:00

One of my friends started to test FreeNAS in an old PC with bad results in performance over gigabit network and Samba. Seeking in the FreeNAS forums there is a lot of work to get a system working well in gigaethernet, with a lot of parameters to tweak. His test remembered me an old project: Creating my own NAS with an Sparc server.

I have a SunFire V120 and a Storedge S1 from a long time with no use and I decided to get a try with this system. Unfortunately it has 100 Mbit Ethernet and only one PCI slot, so: I can put a Sun Gigaswift or Quad Gigaswift network card or an SATA card but not both cards at the same time. Anyway if the systems probes its reliability with my configuration, I will buy a new server with more CPU power like the SunFire V210 who has gigaethernet and one PCI slot to atach a SATA RAID card.

In the other hand, if the project goes well I can use a X64 server with Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris and get a lot of power with low cost. Now in the after market there are a lot of Sun V20z for a low price and these systems have dual AMD Opteron (and dual core) possibility with two PCI slots.

For this test I choosed 5 hard disk: on 36GB 10K for the Solaris installation and four 18GB 10K as array in RAID 5 configuration, three of them in external SCSI array StorEdge S1. Not sure if I can mix internal HD's with the StorEdge ones but. If the mix is not possible maybe a new Storedge S1 must come here (now are very very cheap, more cheap without disk!). I pretend to use ZFS in all disks.

Ok. First of all I have to install the OS. I downloaded the latest Solaris 10. To connect to the server console we need a RJ45 RS232 cable (Cisco serial system) connected to the LOM port (blue cable in the picture). Once the terminal software is running (9600 baud, no par, 8 bit, 1 stop) the server must boot from the cdrom. Not easy to figure how to boot the DVD from the console: the V120 User guide says a few steps but this instructions doesn't work in my case. Finally, after a lot of websearch and found the solution:

1. Boot the machine to the console system. From the lom prompt type:

lom> bootmode forth
lom> poweron

2. The boot command usually has the cdrom argument, but in this case I have to add - install:

ok boot cdrom - install

At this stage, if the server renponds with Fast Data Access MMU Miss you must reset the server. This is because a forced power off:

ok setenv auto-boot? false # Yes, with the '?'
ok reset

Now the V120 will reboot and the installation can start (well, start the wizard takes a lot of time with this DVD device).

3. Now only is follow the screen installer is needed. Installed the Final User Software Group, configured the network and a lot of time before, the server will reboot. In Spanish in the picture:

4. After the first reboot the server showed a warning about the label of the second hard disk: Corrupt label; wrong magic number. This hd was on my SGI Octane and has SGI label. Logged in the system as root I labeled disk 1:

# format
Searching for disks...Mar 24 21:52:20 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@5,0 (sd20):
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@5,0 (sd20):
Mar 24 21:52:20 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
done

c2t3d0: configured with capacity of 16.86GB
c2t5d0: configured with capacity of 16.86GB

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c1t0d0           /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8/sd@0,0
       1. c2t3d0           /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0
       2. c2t4d0           /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@4,0
       3. c2t5d0           /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@5,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 1
selecting c2t3d0
[disk formatted]
Mar 24 21:54:38 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:54:38 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Disk not labeled. Label it now? y
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120 scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8,1/sd@3,0 (sd18):
Mar 24 21:54:41 v120    Corrupt label; wrong magic number

FORMAT MENU:
        disk       - select a disk
        type       - select (define) a disk type
        partition - select (define) a partition table
        current    - describe the current disk
        format     - format and analyze the disk
        repair     - repair a defective sector
        label      - write label to the disk
        analyze    - surface analysis
        defect     - defect list management
        backup     - search for backup labels
        verify     - read and display labels
        save       - save new disk/partition definitions
        inquiry    - show vendor, product and revision
        volname    - set 8-character volume name
        !     - execute , then return
        quit
format> quit

Repeated with all the bad labeled disks. The format is showing only 4 disk now... I can't see the second hd of the server... I will look later.

5. Turn on autoboot from the ok prompt.

# setenv auto-boot? true

6. Install LOMLite 2.0. With only the OS installed the server cant speak to the LOM device and we can't control it or shutdown the machine properly. Also the power button doesn't work well without this patch. I have this patch stored in my main server and I can access via FTP:

# cd /var/spool/pkg
# ftp 192.168.2.105
Connected to 192.168.2.105.
220 ProFTPD 1.3.2 Server (ProFTPD) [192.168.2.105]
Name (192.168.2.105:root): admin
331 Password required for admin
Password:
230 User admin logged in
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> get lom20.zip
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for lom20.zip (546804 bytes)
226 Transfer complete
local: lom20.zip remote: lom20.zip
546804 bytes received in 1 seconds (526,38 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

# unzip lom20.zip
# rm lom20.zip
# pkgadd

Now only follow the wizard to install the patch.

7. Shutdown the server. Here we have a problem with the shutdown command. The server doesn't have the NFS server configured and the shutdown command needs this service to send messages to all the client. Because I don't want to configure the NFS server now, I have to use the old shutdown command:

# /usr/ucb/shutdown now

this take the system to the ok promp, to power of the server then:

ok power-off

8. OPTIONAL and not needed: Update the PROM with a patch. This is done by the 111991-07 Sun patch. Like before I have it stored in my main server:

# ftp 192.168.2.100
Connected to 192.168.2.100
220 ProFTPD 1.3.2 Server (ProFTPD) [192.168.2.100]
Name (192.168.2.100:root): admin
331 Password required for admin
Password:
230 User admin logged in
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd /files
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
111991-07-PROM_ upgrade_patch.htm
110208-22_LightsOutManagement2_0_archivos
111991-07-PROM_ upgrade_patch_archivos
110208-22_LightsOutManagement2_0.htm
110208-22.zip
111991-07.zip
110208-22_LOM_2.0.txt
111991-07_PROM_UPGRADE.txt
226 Transfer complete
237 bytes received in 0,06 seconds (3,85 Kbytes/s)
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I
ftp> get 111991-07.zip
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 111991-07.zip (694197 bytes)
226 Transfer complete
local: 111991-07.zip remote: 111991-07.zip
694197 bytes received in 1,1 seconds (637,70 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
# reboot

9. When the machine is rebooting, type the scape carachters '#.' (without the ') and get the lom prompt:

lom> break
Type 'go' to resume
ok boot -s

10. Now you have to type the root password to login the system, follow:

# chmod +x Update.to.flapjack2.4.0.17@OS
# ./Update.to.flapjack2.4.0.17@OS

After a new reboot, the ROM is updated.

Yes!!! Finish!!! I have the SunFire V120 running:

Now I need some time to start the next step: Configure the disks array.

USB Wacom tablets on IRIX

2010-03-02T23:14:00.007+01:00

Googling for some information about the Wacom IRIX drivers for USB devices I found this great post in the Nekochan forums. Just some tweaking is needed to work. In my case I have a Wacom Graphire2 tablet (model ET-0405A-U) what I aquired some time before for only 6 Euro! The tablet was detected fine by the system and appeared on hinv, and it was useable -to some extend- in the PROM.

To use this on the X system I only created a config file like the Neko forum post:

fuel 1# cd /usr/lib/X11/input/config
fuel 2# vi tablet
    x_init {
    name "tablet"
    scalewhich "none"
    pushpointer "on"
    autostart "on"
    pressure "on"
    }
:wq

And then only logout and login to the X window system. Now at the end on the hinv I get:

USB controller: type OHCI
USB Human Interface Device: device id 0 type tablet

Finally: my own new Cobalt kernel for CentOS + BlueQuartz

2010-02-10T22:07:00.033+01:00

04 May 2010: Update
Troubleshooting: If after applying this patch the lcd shows 'IP Address not set' , there is a failure in the upgrade installation. This is because yum had installed newer kernels and the rpm software don't want to install the rpm included in this package.

1.- To repair it you need to boot the server with a terminal connected to the serial console port. When the message 'Press spacebar to enter ROM mode' appears, press the space bar.
2.- Once in the ROM menu type 'bfd /boot/vmlinux_old_002.bz2'. This command forces to boot from the old kernel.
3.- Login to the server as root.
4.- # cd /boot
5.- # rpm -i --force http://www.titox-net.es/downloads/cobalt/BlueQuartz/kernel/linux-2.6.9-89.0.20-cobalt/kernel-2.6.9-89.0.20_cobalt.i386.rpm
6.- # ln -s vmlinux-2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt.bz2 vmlinux.bz2
7.- # reboot

There is a mistake in the kernel config and RAID devices are not working... OK I will compile a new version soon as possible, I need for my new server!!!!!!! Sorry guys.

---------------------
Original post below
---------------------
Well... I compiled the latest CentOS 4 kernel for my machines. This kernel stays in version 2.6.9, but has a lot of patches on it, release 89-0.20. I started with a patch extracted from the Strongbolt 2.6.9-18 source of OSOffice, but it doesn't work well, then I modified the kernel 2.6.12 patch from Jeff Walter's with success. There is some faults with the shutdown in the RaQ 550 -like other kernels- but seems to work faster. I will work on this problems in a future release.

[admin@cobalt ~]$ uname -a
Linux cobalt.titox-net.es 2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt #13 SMP Mon Feb 15 23:15:01 CET 2010 i586 i586 i386 GNU/Linux
[admin@cobalt ~]$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt (root@sbdevel.titox-net.es) (gcc version 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #13 SMP Mon Feb 15 23:15:01 CET 2010

This kernel has this features:

Compiled for i586 architechture, compatible with the i686 architechture you can find on RaQ XTR and RaQ 550.
Drivers for VIA, SIS and Silicon Image SATA chipsets, to use as storage expansion or use the server as NAS but I don't have time to test yet. Compiled as modules.
Drivers for ethernet gigabit cards: Intel PRO/1000, Realtek 8169, Broadcom Tigon3 and Broadcom NetXtremeII. Compiled as modules.
Cobalt GenIII and GenV drivers included: the same kernel works on all Cobalt machines. Only tested in Cobalt RaQ 3&4 and RaQ 550. My Qube 3 has SB2 installed and I don't have any XTR (but if I can find one...).
SMP for two processors, not tested: usefull for RaQ XTR with two Pentium III.

Finally, The last weekend I finished the BlueQuartz package, now I can install the new kernel from the BlueQuartz GUI. This package is uninstallable but, in fact, the rpm software doesn't can remove everything because dependencies problems. The uninstallation script will restore the backed up vmlinux.bz2 if you uninstall this package.

Ok, if you want to test this kernel, the download is here. Use the package RaQ-Kernel-Titox-1.0.3.pkg, the other ones have some faults in the kernel or package scripts. In that directory you will find the package, the patched kernel source, the patch and a rpm package to install the new kernel in a system without BlueQuartz. There is a text file explaining all other packages. OBVIOUSLY: USE THIS KERNEL AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO GUARANTEE

This is the boot log from a RaQ 4 console:

Second stage kernel: Decompressing done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version 2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt (root@sbdevel.titox-net.es) (gcc
version 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #13 SMP Mon Feb 15 23:15:01 CET 2010
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000010000000 (usable)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
256MB LOWMEM available.
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 65536
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 61440 pages, LIFO batch:15
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI not present.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Allocating PCI resources starting at 20000000 (gap: 10000000:f0000000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
mapped APIC to ffffc000 (01213000)
Initializing CPU#0
PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 32768 bytes)
Detected 448.266 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Memory: 256044k/262144k available (2018k kernel code, 5672k reserved, 670k data, 176k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 897.55 BogoMIPS (lpj=448777)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 008021bf c08029bf 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I Cache: 32K (32 bytes/line), D cache 32K (32 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 128K (32 bytes/line)
CPU: After all inits, caps: 0080213f c08029bf 00000000 00000002
Checking 'hlt'instruction... OK.
CPU0: AMD-K6(tm)-III Processor stepping 04
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 364.81 usecs.
task migration cache decay timeout: 0 msecs.
SMP motherboard not detected.
Local APIC not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
Brought up 1 CPUs
zapping low mappings.
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
SCSI subsystem initialized
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
Activating ISA DMA hang workarounds.
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
alim7101_wdt: Steve Hill .
alim7101_wdt: WDT driver for ALi M7101 initialised. timeout=30 sec (nowayout=0)
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 6 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v2.6.3-rh (June 8, 2005)
bonding: Warning: either miimon or arp_interval and arp_ip_target module parameters must be specified, otherwise bonding will not detect link failures! see bonding.txt
for details.
e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.5.10-k2-NAPI
e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2005 Intel Corporation
e100: Modified by to ignore bad EEPROM checksums
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM corrupted, ignoring and moving on
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load: Caclulated Checksum: E4BD
e100: 0000:00:10.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM Checksum: 0
e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr 0xf7ffc000, irq 11, MAC addr 00:10:E0:03:1D:C2
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM corrupted, ignoring and moving on
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load: Caclulated Checksum: 7BBC
e100: 0000:00:12.0: e100_eeprom_load: EEPROM Checksum: 0
e100: eth1: e100_probe: addr 0xf7fbf000, irq 10, MAC addr 00:10:E0:03:1E:2B
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.0
ALI15X3: chipset revision 193
ALI15X3: 100% native mode on irq 14
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfdd0-0xfdd7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfdd8-0xfddf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST310211A, ATA DISK drive
Using deadline io scheduler
ide0 at 0xfdf8-0xfdff,0xfdf6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
current capacity is 19541088 sectors (10005 MB)
native capacity is 19541089 sectors (10005 MB)
hda: 19541088 sectors (10005 MB) w/1024KiB Cache, CHS=19386/16/63, UDMA(33)
hda: cache flushes not supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
sym0: <875> rev 0x4 at pci 0000:00:0e.0 irq 12
sym0: No NVRAM, ID 7, Fast-20, SE, parity checking
sym0: SCSI BUS has been reset.
scsi0 : sym-2.1.18k
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: irq 6, pci mem d0808000
ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (2048 buckets, 16384 max) - 344 bytes per conntrack
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Cobalt system type is Pacifica
Cobalt Networks ACPI driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LED driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LCD driver 4.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Serial Number driver 1.6 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Watchdog Timer driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Sensor driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks RAM Info driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 176k freed
INIT: version 2.85 booting

Welcome to CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
Setting clock : Mon Feb 15 23:59:36 CET 2010 [ OK ]
Starting udev: [ OK ]
Initializing hardware... storage network audio done[ OK ]
raidautorun: failed to open /dev/md0: 6
Configuring kernel parameters: [ OK ]
Setting hostname sbdevel.titox-net.es: [ OK ]
Checking root filesystem [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda1
/dev/hda1: clean, 59463/250368 files, 325210/500086 blocks
[ OK ]
Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ]
Checking filesystems
Checking all file systems.
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda2
/dev/hda2: clean, 1682/250368 files, 146660/500094 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /tmp] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda5
/dev/hda5: clean, 14/250368 files, 16075/500086 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /home] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda6
/dev/hda6: clean, 40429/346368 files, 367528/692236 blocks
[ OK ]
Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ]
Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ]
rm: cannot remove `/var/run/dovecot/login': Is a directory
Enabling swap space: [ OK ]
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
Entering non-interactive startup
Checking for new hardware [ OK ]
Starting dbrecover: [ OK ]
Starting lcdstatus: [ OK ]
Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ]
Setting network parameters: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Starting system logger: [ OK ]
Starting kernel logger: [ OK ]
[FAILED]
Starting cced: [ OK ]
Running CCE constructors:
Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ]
Starting lm_sensors: [ OK ]
Starting automount: No Mountpoints Defined[ OK ]
Starting smartd: [ OK ]
Starting sshd:[ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
Starting admin web server: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
Starting crond: [ OK ]
Starting poprelayd: [ OK ]
Starting atd: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting lcdsleep.init: [ OK ]
Starting system message bus: [ OK ]
Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ]

CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt on an i586

sbdevel.titox-net.es
login:

And this is the boot log from a RaQ 550:

Second stage kernel: Decompressing done
ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
command line: 'console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off '
booting kernel...
Linux version
2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt (root@sbdevel.titox-net.es) (gcc version 3.4.6 20060404
(Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #13 SMP Mon Feb 15 23:15:01 CET 2010
BIOS-provided
physical RAM map:
BIOS-e801: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e801: 0000000000100000 - 0000000020000000 (usable)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
512MB LOWMEM available.
found SMP MP-table at 000f8200
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 131072
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 126976 pages, LIFO batch:16
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI notpresent.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Intel MultiProcessor Specification v1.4
Virtual Wire compatibility mode.
OEM ID: COBALT Product ID: 5000 Alpine APIC at: 0xFEE00000
Processor #0 6:11 APIC version 17
I/O APIC #4 Version 17 at 0xFEC00000.
I/O APIC #5 Version 17 at 0xFEC01000.
EnablingAPIC mode: Flat. Using 2 I/O APICs
Processors: 1
Allocating PCI resources starting at 30000000 (gap: 20000000:e0000000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 debug ip=off
mapped APIC to ffffc000 (fee00000)
Initializing CPU#0
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes)
Detected 1263.669 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Memory: 515628k/524288k available (2018k kernel code, 8144k reserved, 670k data, 176k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 2528.77 BogoMIPS (lpj=1264388)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After all inits, caps: 0383f3ff 00000000 00000000 00000040
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU - S 1266MHz stepping 04
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 1462.62 usecs.
task migration cache decay timeout: 1 msecs.
Total of 1 processors activated (2528.77 BogoMIPS).
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=0 pin2=0
Brought up 1 CPUs
zapping low mappings.
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
SCSI subsystem initialized
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:0f.1
PCI: Discovered primary peer bus 01 [IRQ]
PCI: Using IRQ router ServerWorks [1166/0201] at 0000:00:0f.0
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B0,I15,P0) -> 25
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B0,I15,P0) -> 25
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B1,I6,P0) -> 16
PCI->APIC IRQ transform: (B1,I7,P0) -> 17
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
alim7101_wdt: Steve Hill .
alim7101_wdt: ALi M7101 PMU not present - WDT not set
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 6 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v2.6.3-rh (June 8, 2005)
bonding: Warning: either miimon or arp_interval and arp_ip_target module parameters must be specified, otherwise bonding will not detect link failures! see bonding.txt for details.
e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.5.10-k2-NAPI
e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2005 Intel Corporation
e100: Modified by to ignore bad EEPROM checksums
natsemi dp8381x driver, version 1.07+LK1.0.17, Sep 27, 2002
originally by Donald Becker
http://www.scyld.com/network/natsemi.html
2.4.x kernel port by Jeff Garzik, Tjeerd Mulder
natsemi eth0: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xfebff000 (0000:01:06.0), 00:10:e0:06:34:d1, IRQ 16, port TP.
natsemi eth1: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xfebfe000 (0000:01:07.0), 00:10:e0:06:34:d2, IRQ 17, port TP.
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SvrWks CSB5: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.1
SvrWks CSB5: chipset revision 146
SvrWks CSB5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfcb0-0xfcb7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfcb8-0xfcbf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
Probing
IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST380011A, ATA DISK drive
Using deadline io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 <>
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: ServerWorks OSB4/CSB5 OHCI USB Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: irq 25, pci mem e0804000
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 131072)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (4096 buckets, 32768 max) - 344 bytes per conntrack
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Cobalt system type is Alpine
Cobalt Networks ACPI driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LED driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks LCD driver 4.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Serial Number driver 1.6 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Watchdog Timer driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Sensor driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks Fan driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
Cobalt Networks RAM Info driver 1.0 (modified by jeff@404ster.com)
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 176k freed
INIT: version 2.85 booting
Welcome to CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
Setting clock : Tue Feb 16 13:50:57 CET 2010 [ OK ]
Starting udev: [ OK ]
Initializing hardware... storage network audio done[ OK ]
raidautorun: failed to open /dev/md0: 6
Configuring kernel parameters: [ OK ]
Setting hostname raq550bq.titox-net.es: [ OK ]
Checking root filesystem
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda1
/dev/hda1: clean, 33356/251392 files, 219240/502023 blocks
[ OK ]
Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ]
Checking filesystems
Checking all file systems.
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda2
/dev/hda2: clean, 1542/251392 files, 83330/502031 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /tmp] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda5
/dev/hda5: clean, 13/251392 files, 16105/502023 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /home] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/hda6
/dev/hda6: clean, 641/8896512 files, 304158/17779930 blocks
[ OK ]
Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ]
Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ]
rm: cannot remove `/var/run/dovecot/login': Is a directory
Enabling swap space: [ OK ]
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
Entering non-interactive startup
Applying Intel Microcode update: FATAL:
Module microcode not found.
[ OK ]
ERROR: Module microcode does not exist in /proc/modules
Checking for new hardware [ OK ]
Starting dbrecover: [ OK ]
Starting lcdstatus: [ OK ]
Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ]
Setting network parameters: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]
Starting system logger: [ OK ]
Starting kernel logger: [ OK ]
[FAILED]
Starting cced: [ OK ]
Running CCE constructors:
Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ]
Starting lm_sensors: [ OK ]
Starting automount: No Mountpoints Defined[ OK ]
Starting smartd: [ OK ]
Starting sshd:[ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
Starting Dovecot Imap: [ OK ]
Starting admin web server: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
Starting crond: [ OK ]
Starting poprelayd: [ OK ]
Starting atd: [ OK ]
[ OK ]
Starting lcdsleep.init: [ OK ]
Starting system message bus: [ OK ]
Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ]
CentOS release 4.8 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.9-89.0.20.EL-cobalt on an i686

raq550bq.titox-net.es login:

Fuel hinv

2010-01-19T14:27:00.007+01:00

Never published my Fuel hinv. I don't have finished the upgrades/updates but here you are what I have now:
UPDATED 2010-03-02

fuel# hinv -mv
Location: /hw/module/001c01/node
IP34 Board: barcode MSM061 part 030-1707-003 rev -H
Location: /hw/module/001c01/node/cpubus/0
IP34PIMM Board: barcode MSX243 part 030-1836-001 rev -C
Location: /hw/module/001c01/Ibrick/xtalk/13
ASTODYV10 Board: barcode MSX356 part 030-1826-001 rev -B
Location: /hw/module/001c01/Ibrick/xtalk/14
IP34 Board: barcode MSM061 part 030-1707-003 rev -H
Location: /hw/module/001c01/Ibrick/xtalk/15
IP34 Board: barcode MSM061 part 030-1707-003 rev -H
1 600 MHZ IP35 Processor
CPU: MIPS R14000 Processor Chip Revision: 2.4
FPU: MIPS R14010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 2.4
CPU 0 at Module 001c01/Slot 0/Slice A: 600 Mhz MIPS R14000 Processor Chip (enabled)
Processor revision: 2.4. Scache: Size 4 MB Speed 300 Mhz Tap 0xa
Main memory size: 1024 Mbytes
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 4 Mbytes
Memory at Module 001c01/Slot 0: 1024 MB (enabled)
Bank 0 contains 256 MB (Standard) DIMMS (enabled)
Bank 1 contains 256 MB (Standard) DIMMS (enabled)
Bank 2 contains 256 MB (Standard) DIMMS (enabled)
Bank 3 contains 256 MB (Standard) DIMMS (enabled)
Integral SCSI controller 2: Version IEEE1394 SBP2
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version QL12160, low voltage differential
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 1)
Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 2)
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version QL12160, low voltage differential
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty1
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty2
IOC3 parallel port: plp1
Graphics board: V10
Gigabit Ethernet: tg1, module 001c01, PCI bus 2 slot 1
Integral Fast Ethernet: ef0, version 1, module 001c01, pci 4
Iris Audio Processor: version EMU revision A4, number 2
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x14e4, device 0x1645) PCI slot 1
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x1077, device 0x1216) PCI slot 1
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x1102, device 0x0004) PCI slot 2
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x1102, device 0x7003) PCI slot 2
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x1102, device 0x4001) PCI slot 2
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x104c, device 0x8024) PCI slot 3
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x10a9, device 0x0003) PCI slot 4
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x11c1, device 0x5802) PCI slot 5
HUB in Module 001c01/Slot 0: Revision 2 Speed 200.00 Mhz (enabled)
IP35prom in Module 001c01/Slot n0: Revision 6.210
DMediaPro DM10 FW option: unit 0, revision 1.1.0
USB controller: type OHCI
USB Human Interface Device: device id 0 type tablet

CentOS 4 Kernel for Gen V Cobalt servers

2010-01-13T22:49:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I installed Strongbolt in a RaQ 550 server, with the idea of compile de kernel for Gen V Cobalt servers. What fast is the 550 compared with the RaQ 4!!! It compiled the kernel and modules in a few minutes!

Yesterday I finished the rpm package of the Gen III version and if I have enough time, I will have Gen V packaged in rpm format tomorrow with the BlueQuartz package scripts.

Remember: this kernel is 2.6.9-89.0.18 and yesterday CenOS.org released 2.6.9-89.0.19 but only has modifications in two network drivers not needed for Cobalt machines.

Here you can see a picture of the system configuration:

SGI Fuel Firewire and other things

2010-01-11T23:53:00.007+01:00

Today arrived (finally!!!) an Adaptec FW4300B, the red printed board one that works on SGI IP35 systems. By the way I decided to move the PCI cards I had installed to make the system more accessible: the Audigy 2 ZS card in the top PCI slot, the firewire card next and below the Gigabit Ethernet card.

This was the easy part but when I powered up the machine I just got automatic reboots. I was able to go into the maintenance mode and everything seemed good. The PROM shell console has commands to disable PCI slots but I don't know how to run the disable command: always getting an error with the modules identifier MODID.

Finally a decided to take out all the cards and boot. Once logged as root I reconfigured the kernel with autoconfig:

# autoconfig -vf
# reboot

After the first reboot I installed the sound card (powering off before, of course) and it started to work. During boot I had some error messages about the TG1 Ethernet card, although that card was not installed.

After a new power off the new firewire card (IEEE-1394) was on the next PCI slot. It also worked fine. And the last was to install the gigabit ethernet card. During boot I had a lot of error messages of IRIX (after PROM check) and then, the machine halted itself with red light bar. PROM hinv showed everything OK.

Remembering the fault messages of the TG1 card before it was reinstalled I decided to take it out, power on the Fuel and check for configuration files. I checked all inet an net configuration files without luck but, after a search at the web, I modified the /etc/ioconfig.conf file. Inside it there was a line that showed the 3Com card configured in the PCI slot 2. Deleted this line and a new autoconfig was done... Shutdown for one more time.

Then the system booted OK: just a warning message telling me that the two network cards had the same subnet. Reconfigure that in the System Manager and all was done!!!!! Woufff!!!!! How difficult is an Unix system than a Windows workstation!!!!!!

At the same time I installed a brand new Seagate 15K.5 hard disk, but this is my next job... Here you can see the aspect of the back panel with all three cards:

My touchpad works!!!!

2010-01-07T19:51:00.002+01:00

From a long time I have to use an external mouse with my Acer laptop because when I reinstalled the OS for the first time, the touchpad stopped working. I that time all my search in the web returned a lot of people with the same problem but never a solution.
Today I did a new search (I don't know why) but I found a forum post where a guy tells a simple-easy-stupid solution: "Press Fn+F7 to reactivate the touchpad..." When I arrived home I tested and... voilà: it just works. I never used the special buttons of the keyboard and I don't have a good manual of the laptop (well, it comes without, just files in the hard disk).
Seems that these are working without the Acer shit drivers and in linux systems also: I will try soon in Solaris.

Zend Optimizer in BlueOnyx

2009-12-31T18:16:00.002+01:00

Solarspeed.net has released an optional update for BlueOnyx. Now we can run Zend Optimizer for php with a simple yum command:

# yum install php-zend-optimizer.i386

More information in the mailing list.

*.tar.gz?

2009-12-29T23:24:00.002+01:00

Do you need to pack a big folder? While trying compilations and diverse patch files my last project (new cobalt kernel) I needed to pack the source folder a lot of times. I use tar and gzip commands to do that but using separately. I can recommend this super-easy guide to pack in one command.

It's very easy: $ tar czvf myfolder.tar.gz abcfolder/

I don't know why but my memory always forget the options of a command, this is the reason of this post.

Finally I have a new kernel for my Strongbolt servers

2009-12-29T23:08:00.004+01:00

After a lot of time working on it, I have a new kernel for my SB RaQ's. For now I only have compiled the SB1 Gen III version but it's running very good in my develop box. You can check the picture. It the latest Centos 4 kernel 2.6.9-89.0.18.EL.

I have a warning message while booting, that says: unable to initializetable 'filter' I have to double check but seems with not a lot of importance. Now I go to compile Gen V version and SB2 versions.

Stay tunned!

Update 30-12-2009: Everything is working now, just to actiuvate some more options in menuconfig before compile.

Finally: Qube 2 NAS!!!!!

2009-11-30T22:02:00.003+01:00

Tonight I managed to get running Samba passwords. After all it was no so difficult: I just needed to read the Samba documentation to find that I have to set my own password. I have 'Unix password Sync' parameter but I also neded to set password with smbpasswd from a SSH terminal session.
When I typed # smbpasswd from the command line, it asked for new password. After set it I was able to log from Windows Vista a save files. I'll test the write speed of the Qube 2 but I think it will be enough good to use it as a NAS. well, I need a bigger hard disk but this is the easy job!!!!

Confirmed: No more black screens.

2009-11-27T21:32:00.003+01:00

In this post I was speaking about my problems of black screens in my SGI 1600SW TFT monitor with a nVidia Quadro NVS 285 graphics card. I did small test with a new Quadro FX 570 and seemed good but I didn't have enough time to do extensive tests. Now, with more than one week running in this configuration I can say that: The problem has gone!!! No problems in more than a week and a speed performance increased more than I was thinking!!!

You can see the differences between both cards:

SATA in a Cobalt Qube 2?

2009-11-27T21:08:00.008+01:00

I have a SIL SATA card what I was bought to use with my main server with Strongbolt 2 but the idea was to boot from it and... this is not possible. This week I was playing with my RaQ's and I decided to test this card with the Qube 2. I know the Qube 2 ROM can't detect it or boot from it (normal) but I was thinking that maybe the Debian kernel can do.

This is the Qube 2 with the Silicon Image SATA card and a Seagate 7200.10 160 GB attached:

The kernel detected the card and the hard disk as you can see here:

Now it's time to learn how Debian works and mount the disk. Maybe tomorrow...

Cobalt RaQ: Main partition almost full!!

2009-11-19T20:51:00.003+01:00

I'm preparing a RaQ 4r with the original Cobalt OS with all the updates (including Zeffie's ones). Everything worked good except the update called Security-Update-4.4.8. The web installer returned "4015 Problem verifying package component". A manual installation said the same...

Then I unpacked all the rpms and tried to check using the same command than the installer script but without redirecting the console outut to /dev/null. The log shown what I have space problems in the main partition: 178 MB were not enough!!!

The solution is easy to understand: I have to clean as much as posible but What Can I trash?. /tmp and the logs were not so much... Finally the solution was to move something to the big /home partition and make a sym link. After a fast search, only the /usr/doc folder is easy to move without problems:

[root] # mkdir /home/usr/
[root] # mv /usr/doc /home/usr/doc
[root] # ln -s /home/usr/doc /usr/doc

Now to follow with the updates...

Black screen on Nvidia Quadro NVS and SGI 1600SW

2009-11-07T17:29:00.003+01:00

From some time ago I have my SGI 1600SW monitor with its Multilink Adapter attached to my Dell workstation. I was pleased with the image quality, although its slow refresh. But sometimes when rebooting or when the monitor turns on after an sleep I had a black screen. I was thinking that the problem could come from the monitor or the adapter but I have tried with my second 1600SW and the results were the same. Then I plugged my Fuel and the problem dissapeared. Now i have some problems with the V10 gfx card of the Fuel but this is another problem.Obviously my small Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 was the problem. It has some problems with rare resolutions.

After some days thinking which card I have to buy, ATI-AMD FirePro or a bigger Nvidia Quadro, I had good luck: A new Dell workstation arrived to my office with a Nvidia Quadro FX570. I decided to try at home and the result was fantastic: no more black screens. Now I'm waiting for a new Quadro 570 that I bought last thrusday.

New pictures!

2009-09-27T23:00:00.003+02:00

A lot of months ago I said "next week pictures". I think I wrote this more than one time. This weekend I started to clean my machines to move my desktop and I decided to take some pictures. No fantastic ones but this is an start.

You can see my new pictures of my Octane2, fuel and the 1600SW in my Flickr account.

Solarspeed BlueQuartz "unofficial" BETA quality updates

2009-09-26T23:43:00.004+02:00

Surfing the Solarspeed.net web site I found in the Knowledge Base a very interesting article: How to install a special updates made by Solarspeed. From a long time there is no a lot -or enough- official updates but there is a lot of things that must be updated/upgraded. Michael Satuber and his team published a lot of modifications for a BlueQuartz server and only a few tweaks are needed to install them. They said that are beta updates but enough stable to use in production.

A small list of improvements (from the original text):

Ability to switch from PAM based authentication to flat files again (minor performance loss, but a lot more stable).
Updated YUM GUI with the ability to exclude RPMs from updates.
German and Danish translation of the GUI.
Improved Active Monitor.
Removal of the defunct APOP checkbox from the GUI.
Ability to disable user owned webs (Example: http://www.company.com/~user/ )
Ability to render FTP usage of non site admin users unuseable (they can still login, but not do anything).
Strong password enforcement. On adding a user or changing his password, the new passwordis checked to see if it is strong enough. Only strong passwords will be accepted. Additionally it is no longer possible to use a password that is identical to the username. Furthermore the strength of the new password is shown while the new password is typed in.
Added the module base-phpsysinfo to the GUI.
Upgraded CMU package.
Various minor and major fixes to existing code.

I don't have a BlueQuartz server, but a Strongbolt one. and everything runs good!

The original article is here.

Sun Linux in a Cobalt LX50

2009-09-22T21:24:00.004+02:00

Only for play a bit with may new server I installed the original Sun Linux 5.0 what was shipped with the server. First I did a clean install to see what happens, but the Restore discs didn't made the Service Partition.

After some reading of the manuals I found that the Service Partition has to be made from the Diagnostics CD. The seller sent all the originals discs with the machine and no effort of downloading nothing was necessary.

Once I had the service software loaded I played a bit and found a software called Service Partition Administration. I think this part is not in the handbook. After the software appears in the screen, a new menu is showed. It has some features like a hard disk partitioning software: View service partitions, create partitions, format, etc.

But when I selected Create a new Service Partition, it says that the hard disk must be empty. And now, What? Some more play and some reboots later I used the Go to DOS option of the Service Software. There is a DOS OS and it has FDSIK, not the usual MS-DOS FDISK but similar. If you delete all the partition of the hard disk, remeber to Save the changes (in the MS-DOS utility was not necessary.

After the hard disk is erased and the server rebooted, you can create the new Service Partition. One more reboot with the Diagnostics CD and the Software can format and install the diverse diagnostics and configuration programs.

When everything is ready, come the easy thing: install Sun Linux 5.0: Just boot up the server with the first restore CD and do an automatic install... tomorrow some updates will be applied and see what happens.

See you.

My Cobalt collection is growing...

2009-09-21T21:06:00.003+02:00

Yes! I have a new Cobalt server. Really it's a rebranded Intel server but it has a nice blue face at front. It's (or she is) a Cobalt LX50. One of the first models of this series because later the LX50 lost the Cobalt brand from the front a was named only as Sun LX50.

At the beginning it was shipped with Sun Linux 5 but can run Linux, Solaris X86 or Windows. I'm thinking it will be a good server for BlueOnyx. I powered up this afternoon and I'm surprised with it's noise. It's loud but a lot less than my other 1U servers (V120, GigaByte, etc.). Maybe it has regulable fans.

This weekend I expect to have this machine running with BlueOnyx. Let's see...

Hey boys!!!

2009-09-17T22:22:00.004+02:00

No much work done from the last post. Holidays, job and my children are getting me all my free time. This week my children started school and maybe now is going better!!!

Today I powered up my Strongbolt 2 RaQ 550 and I yum-updated it. I had two issues with yum:

First is what nuonce repo is gone. Easy: # rm /etc/yum.repos.d/NuOnce.repo
Second issue is not more difficult: There is a conflict between the kernel update and iptables. Really, in Strongbolt we are not using this kernel and we can set to not download it. But I'm not using iptables and, like this post in the forums says, we can forget the iptables update: # yum --exclude=iptables update

PD: Rumours and more: OSOffice had some problems and now seems they are reorganizing the company. More information here. I hop OSOffice return to the good way and finish this rare Strongbolt 2 update, maybe we finally can have a SATA installation disk?

I'm in Twitter...

2009-07-23T00:10:00.000+02:00

... as you can see on the sidebar.

Projects are going

2009-07-19T22:47:00.003+02:00

A lot of time without any entry in the blog but I'm not stopped. First, this weekend I installed Debian in my old and lovely Cobalt Qube 2. After two bad attempts, I managed to install successfully after unselecting the DNS server package: BIND was halting the Qube at boot, maybe because it was misconfigured, but due I don't need Bind in the Qube this is not a problem.

The second project is find a way to run my RaQCop firewall as reverse proxy. I managed to compile the whole IPCop distribution with multi threading SSL, and after I understood how the IPCop compiling method works, I was able to compile Pound 2.4.5. This week I will write the scripts to install and uninstall Pound in a IPCop box and later test if it runs OK.

The last job is to write a HOWTO install Pound in an IPCop machine, sure only if Pound works and passes the test.

And that's all for today.. stay tunned!!!

Unix in a low cost laptop (part 5)

2009-05-07T00:11:00.009+02:00

Starting september 2008 I was able to install OpenSolaris 2008.05 on my Acer Aspire 5633 (5630) but disabling de ACPI functionality. In that case start the installed WiFi was impossible: the radio always was off and the special buttons were inoperable.

Yesterday, navigating in diverse forums, I found some messages about the pre-release of OpenSolaris 2009.06 and I decided to look for a solution for my problems. I found this bug in OpenSolaris Bugzilla and..... YES!!! Running!!!

Tonight I'm writing this post from OpenSolaris 2008.11. To install it I edited the LiveCD Grub by adding -B disable-pcic=true and then the same in the Grub cofiguration once installed in hard disk. All the hardware is working except the network interface (Broadcom NetXtreme) but I know how to install the driver because I installed the last time.

To modify the Grub configuration:

Open a terminal an be root: $ su
Start nautilus: # nautilus
Navigate to the folder /rpool/boot/grub/
Open menu.lst

My menu.lst file is:

splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
background 215ECA
timeout 30
default 0
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
splashimage /boot/solaris.xpm
foreground d25f00
background 115d93
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS,console=graphics,disable-pcic=true
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------

title OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86 text boot
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS,disable-pcic=true
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

And that's all for today, now play with this beast OS.

New RaQCop firewall

2009-04-16T23:37:00.014+02:00

The lasts days I was fighting with the Apache 2 reverse proxy functions to use two web servers with my ADSL connection. Unfortunately I had problems to redirect all the content I want. For this reason I decided to try an authentic Reverse Proxy software like Pound. But install Pound in one of the servers its not enough for me ;D

A new old project is alive: Run my own firewall in one server and install on it the Reverse Proxy. Just in time this week arrived a new toy: a Symantec Velociraptor 1100. In fact, the Velociraptor is a Cobalt RaQ 4i with a Special developed firmware and software (Axent originally). My Velociraptor came with a Cobalt 2.3.39 stored in the ROM but it doesn't shows the Cobalt logo at the display. Also has a Intel Pro 100 dual ethernet PCI-X card:

Due that the I don't have the original Velociraptor sofware, and I don't want to look for it because is old, not customizable and needs an expensive paid license I decided to install RaQCop. I had played with RaQCop before but not enogh time. RaQCop is a special version of ipCop that comes with a patched kernel for the RaQ hardware, LCD utils and a new administration web theme.

There is another firewall software ready for cobalt servers: Firebolt. Developed by the same team as Strongbolt, Firebolt is a port of the ClarkConnect firewall software, but this is a paid version (like Strongbolt) and I'm not sure which features are included by default. Maybe Firebolt is better solution for a home or office use as there is a very good manual and the support from ClarckConnect and OSOffice seems to be great. Firebolt will be the next game.

First of all the Velociraptor needed a ROM upgrade. Fortunately, I have a hard disk with the old CobaltOS ready and the Velociraptor boots from it. I get the necessary files for the upgrade from OSOffice, following this guide but doing a backup of the old ROM first. If you don't know which ROM maker your server has, you have to open the server and look to the chip as here is explained.

Go to temporary folder: # cd /tmp.

Download the flashtool (in my case is ST branded): # wget http://www.osoffice.co.uk/linux/roms/flashtool-amd-st.

Make the file executable: # chmod +x flashtool-amd-st.

Backup the original cmos and then download it with a FTP software:
# ./flashtool-amd-st -v -r > cobalt-vr-2.3.39-1M.rom
./flashtool-amd-st: searching for PCI 10b9:7101 : found it at /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0
./flashtool-amd-st: systype = COBT_3K
./flashtool-amd-st: bank 0: ST Microelectronics M29F080A 1MB
./flashtool-amd-st: Using pthread POSIX real time scheduling.
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 0
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 1
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 2
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 3
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 4
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 5
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 6
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 7
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 8
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 9
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 10
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 11
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 12
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 13
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 14
./flashtool-amd-st: reading page 15
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing buffers

Download the new ROM, this is for a GENIII RaQ, not valid for a RaQ 550: # wget http://www.osoffice.co.uk/linux/roms/cobalt-2.10.3-ext3-1M.rom.

And now the critic job, write the new ROM:
# ./flashtool-amd-st -v -w cobalt-2.10.3-ext3-1M.rom
./flashtool-amd-st: searching for PCI 10b9:7101 : found it at /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0
./flashtool-amd-st: systype = COBT_3K
./flashtool-amd-st: bank 0: ST Microelectronics M29F080A 1MB
./flashtool-amd-st: Using pthread POSIX real time scheduling.
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 0
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 0 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 1
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 1 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 2
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 2 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 3
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 3 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 4
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 4 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 5
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 5 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 6
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 6 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 7
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 7 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 8
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 8 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 9
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 9 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 10
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 10 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 11
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 11 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 12
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 12 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 13
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 13 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 14
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 14 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: writing page 15
./flashtool-amd-st: buffer page 15 does not exist - creating it
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing buffers
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 0 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 1 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 2 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 3 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 4 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 5 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 6 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 7 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 8 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 9 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 10 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 11 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 12 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 13 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 14 to ROM... verifying... done
./flashtool-amd-st: flushing block 15 to ROM... verifying... done

Now, if no errors appeared while the ROM upgrade, you can reboot. If you have errors you can repeat the process many time as you need. If still having errors write the backup ROM another time and DON'T REBOOT OR SHUTDOWN BEFORE THE ROM IS OK. The ROM is read at boot time and if it's wrong, you will convert your RaQ in a good case spare.

Be carefull to assure which type of EPROM you have. If your server has an Intel ROM chip you need a different flashtool created by Tim Hockin, as explained in the OSOffice guide.

The next Step is download the RaQCop image. I used a 128MB flash card as you can see in the next picture, but it was flashed some months ago:

RaQCop detects the four ethernet ports then I have 4 different zones: Green for the intranet, Red for de ADSL uplink, Blue for the wireless access point and Orange for the servers. Each zone works in its subnet and if I want to connect to a computer in a different zone I have to prepare a VPN or pinhole: a bit difficult for a newbbie as me but very safe.

Here you are the firewall running. Some adjustements had to be done in the GUI theme but it's so nice. To be continued...

Reverse Proxy

2009-04-10T17:42:00.012+02:00

Or how to use two web servers for different websites with only one external ip...

One thing that I want to test is Reverse Proxy with Apache. With my new server ready is time to try because my old one hasn't finished some jobs and I want to start to develop my new website with the new Strongbolt 2.

I don't know why but in Internet you can find a lot of descriptions and forums posts about the Apache's mod_Proxy, I can't find one configuration that works with my setup. I found an easy guide to use Reverse Proxy with Apache here. Following the guide I only needed to add this two lines in the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:

ProxyPass http://www.mywebsite.com http://internal1.example.com/
ProxyPassReverse http://www.mywebsite.com http://internal1.example.com/

But this is not enough: After some googling and a lots of tests I found a configuration that works: I need to write the Reverse Proxy configuration in a virtual host inside the httpd.conf of the first machine:

<VirtualHost 192.168.2.105:80>
ServerAdmin admin@mywebsite.com
ServerName mywebsite.com
ServerAlias www.mywebsite.com
ErrorLog logs/titox_net_log

ProxyRequests Off

<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / http://192.168.2.102/
ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.2.102/
</VirtualHost>

The main fault usually is ServerName and ServerAlias directives, usually everybody forgot to write the ServerAlias (like me). Remeber to stop the Apache HTTP server before edit the config file or Apache will overwrite the changes, In a BQ box:

# /sbin/service httpd stop
Edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
# /sbin/service httpd start

Now, when somebody writes www.mywebsite.com in his browser, the main server redirects transparently to my second server.

No more configuration is needed because the mod_proxy is enabled by default in Stronbolt.

UPDATE:
In fact, the first Apache server is redirecting all the incomming requests that are not in its virtual sites to the second one. Another thing is I can't login in the administrator panel of the second server.... more tests to be done.

Developing in a Bluequartz box

2009-04-10T16:22:00.003+02:00

Nuonce published a long time ago a package that installs all the development resources needed for a BQ box, but in the last releases of BQ, BlueOnyx or Strongbolt the package doesn't want to install. The solution acording to this posts in the Bluequartz list is to install everything from yum:

In one line:

yum install autoconf automake14 automake15 automake16 automake17 automake binutils bison cpp cvs diffstat flex gcc gcc-c++ gcc-objc gettext glibc-devel glibc-headers glibc-kernheaders libobjc libstdc++-devel ncurses-devel patch patchutils pkgconfig rpm-build

Now we can compile in our boxes.

Fuel goes Gigabit !!!

2009-04-10T14:48:00.003+02:00

From a long time that everybody want his systems with GigaBit EtherNET. In SGI systems there is a few options and usually are expensive. In fact, SGI cards are really 3Com rebranded ones and a mod can be done. All cards have a Tigon 3 chipset (Broadcom 5701) but with different PCI identification in its EEPROM.

First mod was a new driver kernel, you can find all the information in this post of the nekochan forums, but with this kind of mod the card only runs in a patched IRIX OS.

The best solution now is two modify directly the EEPROM with the ethtool software included in linux distributions. You can find how to do this mod at the end of this post. In my case I tried with my old Fedora 7 installation I have in my workstation with no success, then I recovered and old Gentoo LiveCD 00.2006 and applied the modifications.

Now I have my fuel with GigaBit EtherNET but I have to end my network wiring at home!!!!

Nuonce Networks is closed

2009-04-09T22:59:00.005+02:00

Unfortunately, starting 2009 we had very bad news: Nuonce Networks ceased its operations.
Brian N. Smith, the owner of Nuonce, run the company in his spare time and last year he had a little time for the company. Brian is the developer of the CentOS + BlueQuartz CD used in a lot of servers and has a lot of important packages for BlueQuartz and Strongbolt. Fortunately the Support Forum is still there for archival purposes.

Now one thing to do in our Strongbolt instalation due the mising Nuonce repo:

rm /etc/yum.repos.d/NuOnce.repo

If you want the Nuonce Installation CD, you can download it from SolarSpeed but maybe is worth to test the new BlueOnyx from the same developers.

Preparing my new main server with Strongbolt 2

2009-04-09T20:15:00.012+02:00

Yes, I haven't writen so much lately but this doesn't meant that I didn't had been busy. At the end of 2008 the Open Source Office (OSOffice) released an update for Strongbolt: Strongbolt 2. This update is composed by some packages that are installed via the BlueQuartz GUI. The most important part of the update is the new ROM for our Cobalt servers (RaQ and Qube). This new ROM is ready to detect SATA disk if using Silicon Image PCI cards and USB disks.

With this new ROM the OSOffice team developed a new reinstall system via an USB stick: after the server is upgraded with Strongbolt 2 and it has the new ROM, if the server needs a new installation of the OS, only setting the boot disk as sda1 (USB) in the ROM configuration is enough to reinstall al the system without any problem or any other computer as Installation server. Unfortunately the reinstallation only works in IDE hard disks. I tried to modify the installer stick to force Anaconda to install the OS in a SATA disk (now the USB stick is sdb1) but after a lot of tests in my Qube3, I had any success. I think a new Anaconda image has to be done and I don't have the necessary knowledge to do this job.

There is another important upgrade: PHP5, but only for the virtual sites while the BlueQuartz Panel (now called OSPanel) remains working in PHP4. But this is enough to install the latests PHP softwares we need.

After this small introduction what I did today: my main idea was install Strongbolt 2 in my RaQ550 that I had sleeping for some months. I had installed Strongbolt 2 in january to test the system but no more job was done. This afternoon I decided to put inside two Seagate 7200.7 of 120 GB from a RaQ4r and reinstall everything from the USB stick but when Anaconda is installing the rpm's in the server it reboots. I tried some more times but with the same result. In the OSOffice forum there is a post about the same problem with 80GB disks. Very odd as these disk were working in a RaQ4r nicely.

Due the problems with the hard disks I changed the RaQ550 by a RaQ3i upgraded with a 500MHz CPU and second IDE channel. The hard disks worked well here and now I have a new server ready to work. I want to use it for develop my personal website and my own email server at home.

Unfortunately my RaQ550 has to sleep some more time until next test that will be install the new Strongbolt 2.5 when available. The SB 2.5 will be a mix of Strongbolt 2 and BlueOnyx and, maybe, it could be installed in a new and BIG BIG BIG sata hard disk.

P.D.: I have to make some photos of the servers and SGI workstations but...

This the new OSPanel appearance:

Samba shares on Xubuntu

2008-12-11T23:23:00.004+01:00

Googling I found some tips to browse smb shares. First I configured "shared folders" on the Applications->System menu. The first time I run the configuration software, it asked to me to install all necessary NFS ans SMB software. It also installed the smb client.

Type smbclient -L -serveripaddress and now you can see what folders are shared. Then you can mount the desired folder with:

sudo smbmount //serveripaddress/folder localfolder -o username=youruser,password=yourpassword ,uid=1000,mask=000

There is, also, a small graphic soft to browse smb networks: pyneighborhood. It's a GTK2 application that runs very well. It can be installed from the Synaptic package manager.

More infomation on this thread at the Ubuntu forums.

Now I'm a Xubuntu user

2008-12-11T22:58:00.005+01:00

The last week I was testing the last releases of Solaris, OpenSolaris and SXCE (snv_103) on my laptop, but I had the same problem with the ACPI driver than before. This is a major problem because with no wireless connection and with a difficult Ethernet setup is update to anew release is a pain.

Then I decided to return to Linux but I decided to change from Fedora to a clean and fast solution. The distribution is XUBUNTU and, really, I'm very impressed: It's very fast and stable, has a good package manager and I can do everything I need for now except browse smb shares. I installed the samba client but I need some software to browse shares and I don't want to install Gnome or KDE file managers.

I will take a look this weekend.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is here

2008-12-02T21:54:00.002+01:00

Yes!!! If the last Solaris revision was out on november, the new release is available for download now from the opensolaris.com page.If you want a printed CD there is a free CD order page.
I'm downloading now and I will try this night !!!!!

New ADSL

2008-11-12T21:13:00.002+01:00

Yes... after 2 month of war have a new ADSL internet connection. A download test says 8850 Kb and near 450 Kb of upload bandwidth. Very good result. Now I only need some time to upload tons of pictures.
Maybe next week.

Fueling my life!!!!

2008-09-05T23:11:00.005+02:00

Yeeeessssss, This is my not new Fuel!!!!!

From a year ago there is not a lot of SGI machines in the second hand market and the price of this few machines was very high but this time, I bid on this Fuel and at the end I paid less that I paid for my Octane2. It has some scratches and repair will be hard but it works very nice.

This machine is a 600 MHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM. I think it's a medium range Fuel. Enough to watch the difference with my loved Blue One. Firefox and runs so smooth on this but... the same day the Fuel arrived I installed an extra GB of RAM in the Octane (2 GB total) I received some time ago from Ian Mapleson, and... WHAT A CHANGE!!! I can say that my old Octane2 has changed a lot and now is a lot faster. If one R12000 400MHz with 2GB is good enough, what can the Fuel do with the same amount of memory? Unfortunately I have to buy a complete set of dimm's because all the slots are populated and I can't afford this now.

Now I need sometime to check how many processes are running in both machines, maybe I don't need everything that is loaded in memory...

More comming soon...

Creating your own RaQ restore disc

2008-09-04T18:54:00.004+02:00

This is one of the easy admin solutions working with Cobalt RaQ's. It's easy to create a new CD to reinstall the Cobalt OS (OSRCD) but modifying partitions sizes and including Updates and Packages.

At the Cobalt Faqs site you can find this fantastic HOWTO, and create your special disc. this is a fast job using any linux flavor. In my case I have Fedora 9 running in my laptop and I find something different: Fedora doesn't include mkisofs but include genisoimage tool -OK genisoimage is linked as mkisofs but the parameters are not the same-.

Assuming you have stored your new OSRCD in /home/osrcd, the working command must be:

# cd /home/osrcd

# genisoimage -P YourName -b boot/eltorito.img -c boot/boot.catalog -R -l -L -J -o /tmp/filename.iso /home/osrcd

Another important thing: After the installation of the OS in our loved RaQ or Qube the LCD shows the name and net address of the server (after seccond reboot) but it doesn't ask for intro the new address. After a few seconds you can see how the LCD displays the name of the first package to install. This is a little bit strange because after the reboot seems that everything is finished, DON'T TOUCH THE FRONT PANEL KEYS!!!

The LCD messages changues between the name of the package being installed and the ip address until the last package is in the hard disk, the the server shutdown itshelf asking to turn off power.

My new OSRCD has all the updates created by Sun in order a runs nice but before a created a OSRCD with all Zeffies updates and it hang with a fault of campatibility (or something similar).

Bye

Unix in a low cost laptop (part 4)

2008-09-03T16:03:00.009+02:00

Yes... finally I have OpenSolaris 2008.05 working in my bad ACER 5633 laptop. Very tricky installation (I'm not an Unix especialist) but now I have a true Unix OS ready to work. As I said before it was a dificult installation and the next words are the steps I followed to bring OpenSolaris to work.

The first problem was boot the OpenSolaris Live CD. The firts atemps, at the time of the CD download was available, went wrong because of cardbuss warnings. After grub boot a have warning message: pciclass,0607000: Cardbus Present State 0x11111111. But this week I tried another time. Searching in Opensolaris laptop forums I found a topic where a guy said that he was able to install Solaris Community Edition in a laptop like mine adding ',acpi-user-options=0x8' to the boot manager of the CD (grub). This workaround doesn't work for me but I tried the with Opensolaris Live CD. After a lot of tries and more web search the correct option to add in the Grub boot config was '-B acpi-user-options=0x8'. This is my LiveCD grub config:

When the Desktop was shown I started the driver tool and saw that my Ethernet chip is not supported (Broadcom BCM4401-B01) but this is not relevant at this step. The ACPI system isn't supported (or no driver included) and this seems to be the reason why I need to deactivate ACPI at boot time.

Opensolaris is installed!!! Yes but it doesn't want to boot in first attempt. First edit the Grub parameters to disable ACPI and at the seccond reboot I have a warning saying SATA timeouts, something like this: Jul 30 21:24:55 xxxxx scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@12/ide@0 (ata0):Jul 30 21:24:55 xxxxx timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0. You can see in this tread. The good workarround was disable the second CPU with de boot debbuger: edit the Grub parameters and add -kd to the second line (and the ACPI option also). When OpenSolaris boot stops in the debuger type usep_mp/W 0 :c, and then OpenSolaris started to load!

Now I had the User Login screen but ssssshhhh... I created an user account without password and I wasn't able to login!!!!! I don't now why but nobody can login as root..... Reinstall creating an account with password was the solution and... the OpenSolaris desktop appeared!!!

It's time to make the configuration parameters permanent. To edit the config Grub we have to change the file menu.lst, and this file is not in /boot like the linux systems. Using a ZFS pool the correct menu file is in /rpool/boot/grub. Because I can't login as root and I can't open File Browser with superuser rights, I opened a terminal window and used the su command to be root. This is my menu.lst file (I have all the disk for OpenSolaris):

Then I needed to disable SMP. Being superuser type gedit /etc/system and add at the end of the file set use_mp=0:

Now we can reboot an every thing is OKAY!!! Now its time to setup the network...

Switching RaQ's

2008-06-24T19:59:00.003+02:00

I had some free time this weekend to realize one of my test. In this case I tested the second Cobalt RaQ4 with CentOS+BQ and Torrentflux 2.4. Very happy with the results. Now I can download big files of various GB's.

After this successfull test I decided to switch servers and use the new one as BitTorrent permanent client. To do that I only need to set the ip address of the new one like the old RaQ and install the no-ip.com linux client. And here start the problems: The CentOS+BlueQuartz distributions didn't have compiling tools.

I only found the GCC-Tools package from NuOnce Networks in a BlueQuartz package but it doesn't want to install by the easy way with the GUI. Fortunatelly theirs forums has the solution, install it manualy by the shell: Here is the link.

Upload the file via FTP to the server.
Uncompress the file: tar xfvpz BQ-5102*
Go into the RPMS folder: cd RPMS
Be root: type su and then the admin password as required.
Install all the pakages with rpm -ivh --force --nodeps *.

And ready. Now you can follow my previous guide to install the no-ip.com client.

UPDATE

With the new software, the symbolic links to the noip software have to be done in other way then the old RaQ4 software:

In the old Raq you have todo in the /etc/rc.d/init.d folder:

# ln -s noip /etc/rc3.d/S99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc6.d/K99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc0.d/K99noip

In the new CentOS is a bit more tricky:

# cd /etc/rc3.d
# ln -s ../init.d/noip S99noip
# cd /etc/rc6.d
# ln -s ../init.d/noip K99noip
#cd /etc/rc0.d
# ln -s ../init.d/noip K99noip

SunFire V120 as a Workstation

2008-04-11T23:12:00.005+02:00

Yeah... Finally I have an Sparc machine with display!!!!

The last two nights I had been working with my V120 server, installing a PGX32 gfx card that I received sometime ago. First I installed with the old Solaris 10 installation but nothig was appearing on the screen, only some noise. I didn't have the handbook and I wanted to do a fresh install. Today at lunch time I reinstalled it but the result was the same.

Some search in the sun website to reach the Framebuffer Handbook. First I configured the card from Solaris but I only get a yellow screen.. this was better anyway. Then I tried modifying the NVRAM parameters:

From the root prompt: # poweroff
In the lom prompt: lom> bootmode forth
lom> poweron
When I have the ok prompt I type >ok setenv output-device screen:r1280x1024x60
ok reset

And... after a reboot my monitor start to show the boot messages and then the login screen!

Today is too late and I am so tired. Soon I put pictures and more explanations.

See you.

A silent Octane

2008-03-20T22:30:00.004+01:00

She has new fans. Now she is enough quiet to work near the table!!!!!

Unfortunately I thing I was wrong ordering the Sharkoon 120mm fan, the Octane needs more power in this fan. Oufff. New fan will be ordered next week because now the air is getting hot after 30 minutes of run. The 92mm fan is OK and this is the good thing because this was the noisy one!!!

Nothing more today

Titox.

PD: How slooooowwwwww is Firefox in Irix!!!!!!! A lot of time wasted to write this post!!!

Silencing

2008-03-18T22:42:00.004+01:00

Hello.
Today arrived at home a new packet with a lot of fans. First I ordered two new fans for the Octane2 and small ones for the Extrem Networks switch and Gigabyte server. In th switch I changed the three original Delta Electronics fans by slow and quiet Sharkoon S402030L-3. This new fans run at only 3000 rpm with 16 dB(A) of noise.... With the switch running you hear anything!!!!! This new fans take out small air quantity but the switch is placed outside a datacenter - in my room!!!!-, and with the small amount of machines running over there, It isn't needed to take out a lof air -That room is not ver heat-.

Maybe tomorrow I'll upload some pictures. The only special thing that I did is to change the wires in the fan plug as the original fans have.

At the end I replaced the Octane PSU fan for a new quiet Sharkoon one but after a lot of work done (nearly 30 bolts out and then returned in place), the fan doesn't turn :(
Today I'm too tired to check it again.... tomorrow perhaps.

See you.

New BitTornado

2008-03-09T22:30:00.004+01:00

Using Torrentflux with BitTornado from a long time, I always had problems downloading big torrents. I never had been able to download any linux distribution via the BitTorrent network and this is a big trouble for me. In files bigger than 3 GB's, like Fedora or Solaris installation DVD's, always I had a "Torrent died" messahe whe the download reached near 2,5 GB's. And everytime I tried to restart the server returned a bad "Torrent died" after checking the existing data. I deleted the downloaded part but nothing went better.

Now I'm working 600 Km from my home but yesterday nigth I had the same problem, then I deleted the file partially downloaded I tried to restart de download but TorrentFlux said the same and I decided to search some information. The TorrentFlux website says nothing about upgrades and nothing related in the its forums. Then I went to the BitTornado webpage I there is a new release: 0.3.18.

The release information doesn't say anything about bug fixes, only encryption upgrade but happiness now I can restart my failed download. Only some days waiting for to see if I have a good end of my torrent file.

To upgrade BitTornado I downloaded the .tar.gz file in my laptop, uncompressed it and moved to the server the files used by TorrentFlux: two files .py in the TFBitTornado folder and then all the CVS folder. Then I rebooted the server.

Nothing more today, I need hollidays... too much work now...

Maybe the problem is my server. The Cobalt RaQ 4 is running the old CobaltOS and needs update to CentOS + BlueQuartz... I'll see.

One month later... One more RaQ4

2008-03-04T22:54:00.006+01:00

OK. I have a lot of work in my job and I can't dedicate a lot of time to my servers but... I can't be quiet. I bid on one more Cobalt RaQ 4i two weekends ago and it came here last friday. The seller said it has no hard disk and a lot of screws were lost. He didn't guarantee that te Cobalt runs but after installing an old Maxtor 40Gb, I installed the Cobalt software without problems. The best of all is This new RaQ had been very very cheap!!!!!

First I installed the Zeffies special restore CD and his Turbo Updates but some of the packages didn't want to install and this restore CD only detects 8GB-more or less- of the 40GB disk. Later I was thinking how this machine can serve files via SMB and I decided to install the Qube3 OS. Oohhhhh! This OS is beatiful and I think it is a lot faster then the old one.

I like the BlueLinq update system but it has a big fault: There is not a button to install everything with only one press, and I spent one day installing packages. Oh yes, the package Qube3-All-Security-4.0.1-17041 don't want to install.

Now I have a lot of work playing with this new software but I'm thinking to use this as first server and use the other Cobalt RaQ 4i as development system.

Here you have a picture of my servers - Ouch, yes, I have a new Extreme Networks switch-. maybe the next thing to do is find a place for all, a cabinet perhaps?

Finally, I have a Solaris machine

2008-02-04T11:28:00.000+01:00

Yesssss. Here it is. A Sunfire V120 arrived last week. I spent all the weekend installing and configuring Solaris 10 and the Java Web Server.

My first idea was to run this machine as redirector or Reverse Proxy but it's noisy as the my Gigabyte server... I have to buy a lot of new slow fans!!!!

After the installation of the last release of Solaris 10 for Sparc I'm very impressed with the Sun webserver software, the configuration page via web site is fantastic and it has a wide quantity of options to configure the server. But there is a new things to learn and I need some time to know how works this server software.

In the other hand, the Webconsole software -included in the Solaris package- is really a good idea but now I can only manage ZFS and I don't need it. I'm going to install the Webmin Solaris package and try.

I have to say Solaris is more different from linux than I was thinking, big diferences in console commands and file structures makes me headaches to find some configuration files and, the installation path of some applications are very inconsistent: I have the webserver on /sun/webserver7/, and the webconsole in /usr/share/webconsole/. The freeware of the Companion DVD is in another place and I can't remember everything. Maybe with some work.....

Also, I miss some usefull tools from linux like wget. I downloaded it from ftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com/ but after installation I received a message saying I need some libraries to get it running. This is not a big trouble but some extra work is needed to do some jobs that were very easy with the linux of my Cobalt Raq. Maybe Solaris has it's own tools for the same job but I can't find any list of the equivalent commands and the existance of some freeware makes me doubt about the existance of this list itself.

Here you have some pictures of this hard weekend:

My Intranet DNS server

2008-01-12T22:58:00.000+01:00

My home network is growing fast now with new servers, old PC's and new workstations. Now, I can't remember all my IP addresses and with Unix systems I can't use smb names. The solutions is easy and widely discussed: I need a DNS server.

The machine to runs DNS is easy to choose: my Cobalt RaQ4 is 24/7 up. The procedure is easy, and you can download the RaqTweak.com HOWTO. In my case, due this is a local network I simplified a lot the configuration.

Log in the admin panel and go to the Control Panel:

Click on the DNS Server Parameters to open the configuration screen and select Server Settings. Type your usual DNS servers, ask your DSL provider if don't know, as Forwarders servers. Our new intranet DNS server will redirect us to that servers in case of an Internet address translation.

Then select Address (A) record in the combo box and type the name you want for the network item and the domain name, here I use only home as domain name:

Now you only need to repeat this procedure with all the addresses of the net to access to them with names like router.home, webserver.home or films.home. Remember to add the ip address of your new DNS server to the network configuration of your computers, or better, put this in your DHCP server or router.

The next thing I need is a Reverse Proxy and some kind of ssh redirector because I have more than 2 webservers in my net and I need to access to them from everywhere without a VPN.

Upgrading Python

2007-12-31T20:18:00.000+01:00

Looking at the Torrentflux requisites there is one that a full upgraded Cobalt OS 6 doesn't have: Python release 2.2 or greater. The OS of a Cobalt RaQ 4 only has Python 1.5.3. I don't know why but I downloaded Python 2.2.3 sources (maybe I can use a newer release, I'll try later) from the Python RPM page. I downloaded the Redhat special version.

This time not tar zxvf, the command is rpm -i python-2.2.3-26.src.rpm, and then the sources must be located in the /usr/src/redhat/sources/Python-2.2.3 folder. You know... change to that folder and be root: cd /usr/src/redhat/sources/Python-2.2.3, then type su and intro the root/admin password.

After this you can do the usual compilation/installation from sources:

1 ./configure

2 ./make

3 ./make install

Now the executable is /usr/local/bin/python. In the case of the Cobalt OS we need this file in /usr/bin: cd /usr/local/bin, cp python2.2 /usr/bin/python2.2, cd /usr/bin, cp python2.2 python. The last command overwrites the old executable (it remains as python1.5).

The last thing to do is reboot the server and ...... voilà.

Installing the no-ip client

2007-12-31T16:37:00.000+01:00

I don't have static IP from my Internet provider, so I need use a Dynamic DNS server system to access my servers from everywhere I go. There is two major service providers: DynDNS and No-Ip.com. Some time ago I used the No-ip service in another project and I tried this now for hat reason and because I like its web interface (No tests with DynDNS are made but...). First decision made here comes the second: In what server install the client software? EASY, in the Cobalt RaQ 4... low power needed to run and usually it's running 24/7.

The process is very easy:

Download the client software to te Cobalt appliance. In my case I download it with my workstation and then used FTP to put the file in the admin folder, but there is a beter and faster command to do: log as admin with any telnet client and the write wget http://www.no-ip.com/client/linux/noip-duc-linux.tar.gz,
Uncompress the file. Write tar zxvf noip-duc-linux.tar.gz and press enter. Now you have a new folder called noip-2.1.7 -Obviously the numbers can change with a new release of the client-. go into the new folder with cd noip-2.1.7.
Compile the client program. First you need become root user. Type su and press enter. You will be asked for the password, this password is the same as the admin one. The prompt must chage from $ to #. This means you are root and you can do everything, including deleting something important and crash the sever. Now type make and press enter, the server is compiling the software.
Installing and configuring. When the compilation is done, type make install. Now the software is being copied to the destination folder -/usr/local/bin- and then the configuration wizard starts: it asks for your No-ip.com account user id and password, if you want to update all the existing domains or subdomains (in my case YES), and the time of check the domains.
Starting the daemon at boot. First we need a script to turn the daemon ON, OFF and RESTART. With the client there is a script -redhat.noip.sh- that is ready to use. Copy it to the folder cp redhat.noip.sh /etc/rc.d/init.d/noip and make it executable: chmod +x noip. Now we need to link the script in the runlevel folders (3 is the default runlevel when the server is running, 6 is for reboot and 0 for HALT status):

# ln -s noip /etc/rc3.d/S99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc6.d/K99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc0.d/K99noip

And that's all.

P.D.: One question: Why I need to see my server from outside my home?....... to check how my torrents are going with torrentflux!!!!!!!

Links:

No-ip.com linux download page: http://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php?page=linux
The Newbie's Guide to the No-IP™ Linux Client: http://www.no-ip.com/support/guides/update_clients/setting_up_linux_update_client.html