• Cloned VM/Server/Computer in Linux won't boot and goes to initramfs busybox Solution


    This is mainly for if you've done something silly like trying to clone a Live, running VM image. In this example, the VM initially finds grub and tries to boot but is kicked straight into initramfs rescue mode/busybox right after this. If you've done this "silly" thing, you could have dataloss but a lot of times just using fsck will fix it as you are guaranteed at best to have some corruption and inconsistencies in the filesystem. My theory is that some files wer........
  • zfs and LUKS how to recover in Linux


    Sometimes users take their removal drives and unplug and replug them to test what happens during the failure of a disk. However, this breaks things quite badly due to the /dev/mapper in LUKS not coming back online due to it not being closed. In other words, generally with non-encrypted drives the process is smooth but when encrypted you may want to follow a strategy like this: We can see below that both disks are unavailable as they were physically remov........
  • How to access a disk with bad superblock Linux Ubuntu Debian Redhat CentOS ext3 ext4


    Have you ever tried mounting a partition that you exists but you get this error? mount: /mnt: can't read superblock on /dev/sda1. The superblock in this example was bad because the physical disk had corruption and bad blocks/sectors. However, the data was generally accessible and you can always try this trick below (with caution and no warranty). This is specifically for filesystems that place superblocks in multiple locations, which........
  • Thunderbird Attachment Download Error Corrupt Wrong filesize of 29 or 27 bytes Solution


    This is an ongoing issue even with the latest Thunderbird 102.x where attachments downloaded via IMAP just won't save or will be corrupt which is a huge interruption to workflow or if you come back later to find out the file you thought you saved is invalid/corrupt and you have perhaps deleted the e-mail. How to solve the Thunderbird filesize attachment issue? 1. Click on "Settings". then go to "General". 2. Scroll to the bottom to find "Conf........
  • ?? Question Marks for time, permissions and size of a file?


    -?????????? ? ? ? ? ? shadow ----------. 1 root root 748 Jul 10 04:35 shadow- cat: shadow: Input/output error If you see this you are probably in big trouble, it could be a physical error or if it's a VM image that it is corrupted due to a physical error on the underlying disk/array/NAS or it could a........
  • Windows 7,8,10 and Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019 Read Only Attribute Won't Go Away


    I have seen this in a few rare cases after a reboot, where all folders and files will have the Read Only Attribute. If you uncheck it, it will just come back. It is more of a filesystem issue in Windows than a configuration issue and it looks like when Windows detects a badly corrupted filesystem that it will make things read-only, sort of like Linux would. If you are Administrator or the owner of the folder and this is happening it is probably due to the reasoning mention........
  • LVM How To Create Pool (dynamically allocated and not fully allocated)


    The main use I have for this is virtual servers being able to use an LVM volume but not occupying all of the space. It saves time in deploying machines and copying them so you are only copying the space they are using (eg. 5GB / 60GB vs the full 60GB). There are some disadvantages which is mainly the fact that thin pools by their nature allow you to "overallocate" disk space which is that you could use more space than is available on the disk itself and corrupt your data........
  • Linux partprobe/partx cannot access last and 4th partition


    On a test machine Iwas never able to access to a newly created 4th partiton. As we can see there are dev devices for everything but the 4th partition. The normal "partprobe" or "kpartx" or kernel being told to rescan the block device didn't help (only a reboot did). fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units........
  • DRBD Errors Caused By Physical Corruption


    In a RAID array I had a have periodically lost a drive here and there over the past several months. Iwas always able to readd and resync without losing data. However at some point it looks like some minor corruption happened and this makes DRBD unhappy. Using fsck did not help either. Dec 19 06:01:45 storageboxtest4 kernel: [19005.945890] EXT3-fs error (device drbd0): ext3_get_inode_loc: unable to read inode block - inode=22184379........
  • Why SMART is not smart at all and doesn't properly predict disk errors that cause a kernel panic or crash


    Before getting into the output here is my typical experience with SMART, there is what I call a "bad disk" with pending and uncorrectable sectors that cannot be reallocated. It has caused a kernel panic and system crash repeatedly as we can see from the logs. But SMART says it has "PASSED" its self assessment. SMART is still useful to me but it is more about looking at Current_Pending_Sector. Any time I have had anything but 0 for that attribute it........
  • Database Error One or more of the WHMCS database tables appear to be either missing or corrupted. Please check and repair. - WHMCS Solution


    Database Error One or more of the WHMCS database tables appear to be either missing or corrupted. Please check and repair. This error can be misleading especially if you know you are using a known good backup or restoration of the WHMCS database. The error can also be that the user lacks permissions to read and write to the database. To check to this in MySQL shell: GRANT read,write to dbusername@localhost on dbna........
  • Mozilla Firefox Address Bar History Not Working places.sqlite corruption solution database repair


    Here is the only solution Ifound that works in Firefox: *Note you could basically just copy all of the commands in bold (the rest just shows the output) Install sqlite3 sqlite3 places.sqlite sqlite> .clone places.sqlite-fixed moz_places... done moz_historyvisits... done moz_inputhistory..........
  • Linux How To Clone One System Harddrive to another remote system


    The easiest way is to use SSHand DD or a combination of netcat. SSHwill be a little slower due to encryption but is the most secure way (on two older systems the average clone speed is about 40-50MB/s). This is also OS independent as it doesn't matter what the source OS is because you are literallly cloning the drive so you retain the partition table and settings. Clone HDD using SSH and DD........
  • MySQL Cannot Update/Write to any database table solution


    This happened on Centos for no apparent reason with no obvious issue in the logs. Data could be read fine but not written (possibly due to some corruption or out of memory issue in the OpenVZ container is the best guess). All mysql update and insert queries failed freezing without any error log on any database and table. Tried to restart: service mysqld restart Timeout error occurred trying to stop MySQL........
  • USB Device/MP3 Player not working properly and can't browse the device filesystem? Check the cable twice and again!


    Here is a simple MP3 player and now there's a reason to understand why the supplied cable has some kind of capacitor and is very short. These devices can be VERY finicky and any voltage fluctuation or difference is enough to cause issues. Take for example the error messages from Linux Mint: [804829.895414] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 11 [806961.109030] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd........
  • ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server during query


    The solution is simple but strange, if you copy your /var/lib/mysql directory to another server and think it will work, be sure to check if you have /var/log/mysql and binary log files. If you do, the server will not work and will give you errors like below and crash without the proper log files. UPDATE user SET password=password("newpass") WHERE user='root'; flush privileges; ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server durin........
  • mdadm zero-superblock to solve md device created on root device


    It is possible to tell mdadm to create an md device on a raw disk even though it will give you an error, it writes a superblock and this corrupts the partition table which can result in your system not booting. To fix it just zero the super-block on the offending device that you made the mistake in. Eg: /dev/sda mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sda It is also a way of starting fresh if you wanted to create a new array.........
  • grub> setup (hd1) Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists...


    It freezes on"grub> setup (hd1) Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists..." Basically it looks like the partiion table is corrupt or the data/files are not there.........
  • Lost connection to MySQL server during query [2013]


    This happened while trying to delete several thousand users from phpBB and basically corrupted the innoDB tables. InnoDB: Page lsn 3 881164362, low 4 bytes of lsn at page end 881164362 InnoDB: Page number (if stored to page already) 86920, InnoDB: space id (if created with >= MySQL-4.1.1 and stored already) 0 InnoDB: Page may be an index page where index id is 700 InnoDB: (index "tid_post_time" of table "phpBBdb2005"."phpbb3_p........
  • KVM: unknown exit, hardware reason 0x80000021 kvm_run returned -22 solution


    If the below is happening on KVM (a very weird and scary looking error) it's probably because of Windows. This has happened countless times to me where the bootsector on Windows 7/2008 becomes corrupted easily (even by a crash or shutdown). KVM: unknown exit, hardware reason 0x80000021 kvm_run returned -22 rax 0000000000000010 rbx 0000000000000080 rcx 0000000000000000 rdx 0000000000000080 rsi 000000000025db2a rdi 000000000007db2a rsp 0000000000000200 rbp........
  • drbd won't create device if previous partition is on it Command 'drbdmeta 0 v08 /dev/md160 internal create-md' terminated with exit code 40


    This is what fixed it: [root@box13 ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md160 bs=512 count=500 Basically you need to wipe out more than just the 512 byte partition table so 512 bytes * 500 is more than enough to make DRBD happy and think the partition is now empty. The reason this happens is because it gets confused when there is a previous partition with data on the device you are using. root@box13 ~]# d........
  • CPanel Apache httpd won't start solution: Starting httpd: Syntax error on line 2 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: Invalid command 'Alias', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration


    root@hkhosting [/]# service httpd start Starting httpd: Syntax error on line 2 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: Invalid command 'Alias', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration ........
  • Dell Perci 6/i Firmware Upgrade Guide Tutorial


    One thing to remember is that you need MegaCli to do the flashing. You also need the correct file,I tried at least 2 different Perc 6 firmwares from Dell that kept getting rejected as corrupt by MegaCli(they were really the wrong version). I have an external PCI-E Dell 6 Perc/I butI chose images from the 'Integrated" on motherboard version as it was allI could find. They are different, and below is my first time finding success.........
  • Dell Perc 6/i cannot downgrade


    I flashed an LSI Logic firmware to it and it broke the BIOS (cannot do Ctrl+R) for booting purposes but allows other functionality to work normally. I tried downgrading to a Dell firmware for Perc 6i but it won't work, not even with MegaCli wget http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00416606M/1/SAS-RAID_Firmware_W83M2_LN32_6.3.1-0003_A14.BIN --2013-08-26 12:53:39-- http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00416606M/1/SAS-RAID_Firmware_W83M2_LN32_6.3.1-0003_A14.BIN Resolvi........
  • LSI MegaRAID Adventures, Guide and HowTo


    LSi Megaraid At first it was configured as a RAID 0, then I deleted the Virtual Disk Group. I thought both drives would be shown and detected in Linux as sda and sdb but it actually shows nothing. To make them work you have to hit Ctrl+R before the system boots (when prompted) and create a Virtual Disk Group. In my case I created each one as RAID 0 (with a single drive only) as I just wanted JBOD but there is no such option or default in these Dell Pe........
  • MySQL HowTo Copy Duplicate a Table for backup purposes


    This is a great way to test and experiment without risking your current table, or to make a backup of your current table to avoid corruption or dataloss due to malicious activity eg. deletion etc.. There are two steps and two commands 1.)Copy Table Structure "cars_backup" is the new table and it will be a copy of the table called "cars"........
  • Samsung Galaxy Note ICS Corrupting microSDHC partition table?


    This was partitioned as a single 32GB VFAT but when I inserted it into the phone it said that it can't read it and now here is how the partition table looks. Interestingly enough the data works and reads fine from the computer still. Disk /dev/sdb1: 32.1 GB, 32085360640 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 30598 cylinders, total 62666720 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum........
  • KVM Windows 7 won't boot Virtual Machine/VM after install solution


    This seems to be common for some reason when trying to run Windows 7 under KVM and 7 has always had strange issues with KVM. What happens for me is after the install it simply won't boot, it stays on the POST screen and does nothing. For some reason it appears the boot sector either doesn't get installed or gets corrupted with KVM. The solution is to boot the install disc for Windows 7 and reinstall the windows MBR into the boot sector: 1. Boot t........
  • Samsung Galaxy Note Upgrade to ICS 4.0 microSDHC card not detected/dataloss after upgrading - possible solutions


    I backed up everything in the /mnt/sd_card directory thinking that some dataloss could occur for some reason but purposely left my microSDHC unbacked up thinking that "it won't touch that since it's external" and Samsung's and other manufacturers website even say this (that it won't be affected and not to worry etc). Apparently I was wrong, my microSD was "undetected" and asked to be formatted after the upgrade (there goes 3-months worth of family photos). No........
  • xen how to resize an image properly


    The best way I could figure out is to use another guest of some sort to do this, while assigning the disk that needs to be resized to the same guest. So say we have /dev/xvda as the guests drive and we've booted it up. We also have /dev/xvdb (this is going to be the image/disk to be resized). In this case it's based on an ext3/4 image. Run e2fsck on it to ensure there are no filesystem errors. e2fsck /dev/xvdb........
  • ifup eth0 SIOCSIFFLAGS: Cannot allocate memory Failed to bring up eth0 Centos Network won't work after kernel update and reboot


    ifup eth0 SIOCSIFFLAGS: Cannot allocate memory Failed to bring up eth0 This is on a Centos 5.5 machine with OpenVZ kernel 2.6.18-238.12.1.el5.028stab091.1PAE, I updated 3 systems with the same hardware to the same kernel and for some reason the network didn't come back. This only happened once the first time I booted into the new kernel and hasn't happened again but this is a serious issue for those running systems from remote locations such as a datacente........
  • GRUB Solution to error "Error 6: Mismatched or corrupt version of stage1/stage2"


    GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory) [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename.] grub> root (hd1,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd grub> setup........
  • Mysql Solution - Timeout error occurred trying to stop MySQL Daemon. Stopping MySQL: [FAILED]


    Timeout error occurred trying to stop MySQL Daemon. Stopping MySQL: [FAILED] [root@devbox stats]# Solution (force kill mysqld - warning you do risk table corruption here but there's no choice i........
  • MYSQL Error Can't find file: './wf/Sessions.frm' (errno: 13) Solution


    mysql errors even though these files do exist: 110405 13:21:37 InnoDB: Operating system error number 13 in a file operation. InnoDB: The error means mysqld does not have the access rights to InnoDB: the directory. InnoDB: File name ./ibdata1 InnoDB: File operation call: 'open'. InnoDB: Cannot continue operation. 110405 13:26:15 InnoDB: Operating system error number 13 in a file operation. InnoDB: The error means my........
  • diff: memory exhausted


    I don't have a solution other than to use rsync, I used diff on about 1.7TB of data which includes hundreds of thousands if not millions of small files to ensure nothing was missing or corrupt. diff didn't even get past the first large directory without spitting that error out. Keep in mind I used "diff -r" because that means recursive, otherwise it wouldn't compare all files and subdirectories and would be a false way of doing it.........
  • mdadm/md-check how to check array integrity without rebuilding


    This doesn't seem to be widely known (maybe it's in some documentation that none of us read though)but there's an easy way to check the integrity of any mdadm array: sudo echo check > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action -bash: /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action: Permission denied sudo will never work, this only works as root since echo is not actually a binary/command. It is built-into bash. /sys/devices/virtu........
  • md: data-check of RAID array md3


    This really made me nervous but notice the mdstat says "check". This is because in Ubuntu there is a scheduled mdadm cronscript that runs everyday on Sunday at 00:57 that checks your entire array. This is a good way because it prevents gradual but unnoticed data corruption which Inever thought of. As long as the check completes properly you have peace of mind knowing that your data integretiy is assured and that your hard drives are functioning properly (I'........
  • Ubuntu/Debian DRBD 8.0 Setup Guide


    I've only used it on Centos, soI thought I'd make a quick Debian guide: Install the DRBD Package apt-get install drbd8-utils Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libswfdec-0.8-0 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following........
  • mdadm won't boot due to fsck error


    Nov 29 20:17:58 ubuntu kernel: [ 1157.180789] md: md1 stopped. Nov 29 20:17:58 ubuntu kernel: [ 1157.180829] md0: unknown partition table filesystem not responding/reading properly with du or rsync (this needed an fsck). [ 2571.489217] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 35923106 [ 2571.942299] EXT3-fs error (device md2): ext3_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 35923110 [ 2571.9568........
  • PHP Email Attachment Corrupt Solution


    I couldn't figure out why this wouldn't work, a test script in the root of my htdocs folder worked fine. Within some subdirectories the same code would produce different base64 results but I didn't know hwy. Archive: /tmp/archive.zip Zip file size: 6888 bytes, number of entries: 92 error [/tmp/archive.zip]: missing 242827681 bytes in zipfile (attempting to process anyway) error [/tmp/archive.zip]: attempt........
  • rsync ERROR: sdb2/backup.r18 failed verification -- update retained.


    ERROR: sdb2/backup.r18 failed verification -- update retained. This happened when Iwas rsyncing a dying hard drive, a lot of people seem to report this as an error with rsync itself but I don't think rsync is the issue at all. I know the source hard drive was bad, it was having all kinds of timeout, seek, hardware ECC recovered and reset errors. The only time something else could be the problem is if the data is being corrupted in transit, perhaps through........
  • Updated to Version 3.8 and can't login


    Updated to Version 3.8 and can't loginSSHD accepts my password but then hangs at "Last login: Wed Sep 13 21:30:02 2006 from" This occurred during a yum update after upgrading my release, installing the new kernel and rebooting. I got kicked out of sshd after seeing the following during yum update: telnet 100 % done 85/476 tux 100 % done 86/476 ntsysv 100 % done 87/476 rpmdb-redhat 94 % done 88/476........
  • CDR Manufacturers - Why is so much media bad?


    CDR Manufacturers - Why is so much media bad?I have searched for good media and tried many kinds for years. I guess I'll try to summarize my findings and conclusions. Dye is irrelevant, dye of any color can be good or bad, it more likely depends on the manufacturer. Speaking of manufacturers, the name at the top of the disc means nothing. For example, Memorex along with any other 'brand' is actually always made by another manufaturer including CMC Mag........
  • MySQL "Got error 28 from storage engine"


    I've gotten this error enough to bother posting about it, because I've come across so many servers where this happens, so what could "Error 28" possibly mean? Is your database corrupt, or is this a sign of a RAID failure/corruption or even worse, bad blocks on a clients system who has no RAID and never took backups? No, check your free blocks, it simply means you have no space. This was the result of a script that was overzealous and backed up the entire database........
  • GRUB "Error 2: Bad file or directory type" 0.97 won


    You can see the problem below, GRUB recognizes my hard drive and sees the partitions but cannot access them. This is from the GRUB boot disc I'm using. What happened is that I had some power issues causing this system's power to be interrupted several times and basically an on/off on/off situation. The system won't boot, I just get a flashing cursor and no message or error from GRUB. Obviously the problem is that my MBR seems corrupt or some other issue. My........
  • MySQL Restoring And Dumping/Backing UP MySQL Data/Tables/Databases


    Backing MySQL Databases Backing Up/Dumping All Mysql Databases To A Single File mysqldump --all-databases -u admin -p > allmysqldatabases.sql The "-all-databases" clause is pretty obvious isn't it? It means that it will backup all databases. The "-u admin" means login using the user "admin", if you h........
  • Using a Mac OSX DMG Image in Windows and Converting to Standard ISO Format use dmg2iso


    The dmg format is silly and annoying to work with, why couldn't Apple stick with the .iso standard? Anyway, there's an excellent Linux and Windows based tool to convert it back to a normal .iso Image called dmg2iso I'll only cover theLinux version although the Windows pre-built binary works the same way. Download dmg2iso here for free (from the author's website) It's just silly and doesn't make sense that Ubuntu doe........
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