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........

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........

docker error not supported as upperdir failed to start daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported

Nov 15 17:00:49 rttbox kernel: overlayfs: filesystem on '/var/lib/docker/overlay2/check-overlayfs-support450709549/upper' not supported as upperdir Nov 15 17:00:49 rttbox dockerd[93755]: failed to start daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported The above error is often/normally caused because you are trying to run docker out of an unsuitable directory/filesystem. For example if you try to place docker's data inside an existing overl........

apache2 httpd apache server will not start [pid 22449:tid 139972160445760] AH00052: child pid 23248 exit signal Aborted (6) solution Mint Debian Ubuntu Redhat

If you get this error, it is often because you have configured Apache with modules that weren't actually installed. Eg. you try to load the PHPmodule but didn't actually install the apache2 php module, so the server can't start. In general, this error can often be caused by issues with problematic modules and/or Apache being configured for modules that have not actually be installed (eg. libapache2-mod-php) is missing. The above results in this less than obv........

How To Setup Python3 in Ubuntu Docker Image for AI Deep Learning

The issue is that Docker images are stripped down, so many tools and even python3 is missing, so you'll have to build or update the actual image yourself. I assume you have started an image with something like this and that you have the Nvidia Toolkit installed (assuming you are using GPUs). If you're not using nvidia just remove --runtime=nvidia --gpus all. docker run -it --runtime=nvidia --gpus all ubuntu bash These works for most images li........

Docker cannot work on other overlayfs filesystems such as ecryptfs won't start overlayfs: filesystem on '/home/docker/overlay2/check-overlayfs-support130645871/upper' not supported as upperdir

This does not seem to be officially documented but makes sense that an overlay on an overlay does not work and is considered an unsupported filesystem as is even NTFS . Some admins/organizations try to use ecyptfs as a simple solution to encrypt the contents of Docker. Instead, you could probably........

Linux How To Access Original Contents of Directory Mounted Debian Mint CentOS Redhat Solution

Let's say you have a directory /mnt/raid which has files and directories inside it, but nothing is mounted to it. Then you mount a block device such as /dev/sdh to /mnt/raid Even though /mnt/raid has files and directories there, you can only see the mounted contents of /mnt/raid. How do we access the original contents? Just do a bind mount of the root filesystem to another location. mkdir /bindmount mount --bind / /b........

Linux grub not using UUID for the root device instead it uses /dev/sda1 or other device name solution

You can read lots of posts about this issue but there is not much information about why this is the case or how grub determines the root= device name. Some even suggest modifying grub.cfg manually which is a disaster as the next kernel update will cause grub to revert back to the device name. For most people this won't be an issue but those using template system, automated deployments and working in embedded may run into this issue with custom embedded and created minimal kernel........

Cisco Switch / Router How To Restore Factory Default Settings

1.) Make sure your conf register is 0x2102 Do show version and at the very end of the output you will see the Configuration register. show version Configuration register is 0x2102 If the config register is not 0x2102 then enter this command: r1#configure terminal r1(config)#config-register 0x2102 r1(config)#end 2.) Let's Erase the NVRAM/flash........

ecryptfs How To Backup / Migrate Linux Mint Ubuntu Debian system ecryptfs properly and restore access

In this scenario, let's say you want to clone your OS at the filesystem level and the source system (the system you want to clone from) is in use. Doing a blind rsync / is a big problem because it uses twice as much space for no reason. The reason for this is that with ecryptfs you have a /home/.ecryptfs directory which has the actual encrypted versions of your files and folders. However your home directory (eg. /home/someuser) is mounted. Doing the blind rsync will ca........

symbol 'grub_calloc' not found grub boot error solution / fix

I've encountered this after upgrading some Debian/Ubuntu/Mint based systems for no explicable reason, although there are some bug trackers on Ubuntu that document this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1889509 The short end of the solution is that you need to properly reinstall grub. 1.) Boot from a LiveCD 2.) Mount your root / filesystem and don't forget to mo........

404 Not Found [IP: 151.101.194.132 80] apt update Debian 11 Bullseye Solution The repository 'http://security.debian.org bullseye/updates Release' does not have a Release file.

This happens during an apt update and is related to an issue with sources.list, which is particularly troubling, if you are doing a "live-build". P: Configuring file /etc/apt/sources.list Hit:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye InRelease Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates InRelease [39.4 kB........

Docker Tutorial HowTo Install Docker, Use and Create Docker Container Images Clustering Swarm Mode Monitoring Service Hosting Provider

The Best Docker Tutorial for Beginners We quickly explain the basic Docker concepts and show you how to do the most common tasks from starting your first container, to making custom images, a Docker Swarm Cluster Tutorial, docker compose and Docker buildfiles.........

How To Startup and Open Remote/Local Folder/Directory in Ubuntu Linux Mint automatically upon login

Just click on the Start Menu and go to "Startup Applications" Then click on the "Add"Button Now enter the command we need to open the folder/directory automatically using the filemanager For remote SSH host (you need pub key auth for it to open without a pa........

Proxmox Services Won't Start Failed to start The Proxmox VE cluster filesystem. Proxmox VE firewall. PVE Status Daemon. Proxmox VE scheduler. PVE Cluster HA Resource Manager Daemon. PVE Local HA Resource Manager Daemon.

There are many reasons why Proxmox services may not start, but one common one, is if you have changed your /etc/hostname or /etc/hosts and don't have a valid FQDN (eg. proxmox01 instead proxmox01.com). Failed to start The Proxmox VE cluster filesystem. Failed to start Proxmox VE firewall. Failed to start PVE Status Daemon. Failed to start Proxmox VE scheduler. Failed to start PVE Cluster HA Resource Manager Daemon. Failed to star........

Juniper JunOS Command Overview and Howtos Switch, Router, Firewall Tutorial Guide

Enable "cli" mode equivalent in JunOS cli Configure Mode configure So rather than going to the console on a Cisco switch and typing "enable" and then "conf t", the equivalent in JunOS is "cli" and "configure". How Do You Apply Changes You've Made? You can make all kinds of changes to the switch, but remember they are not........

CentOS 7 8 PXEBoot Netinstall Not Working Solution "Pane is dead "new value non-exisetnt xfs filesystem is not valid as a default fs type"

The problem seems to be that whatever kernel and initrd you have is tied to an old version of CentOS 7 that is no longer in the current repos of most mirrors. If you were previously able to PXEboot and install CentOS and you are sure your network and tftp are good the problem is that you have an outdated kernel and initramfs that point to a defunct version.........

How To Get Started on Ubuntu with gpt-2 OpenAI Text Prediction

apt install software-properties-common add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa apt update apt install python3-pip apt install python3.7 curl gnupg python3.7-dev git ln -s /usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/python3 pip3 install numpy keras_preprocessing curl https://bazel.build/bazel-release.pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add - echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-apt stable jdk1.8" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel........

How To Install NextCloud on Centos 7 and Centos 8

yum -y install wget unzip wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-18.0.2.zip unzip nextcloud-18.0.2.zip yum -y install php php-mysqlnd php-json php-zip php-dom php-xml php-libxml php-mbstring php-gd mysql mysql-server Last metadata expiration check: 0:58:02 ago on Fri 13 Mar 2020 02:12:49 PM EDT. Dependencies resolved. ===================================================================........

OpenVZ vs LXC DIR mode poor security in LXC

It is unfortunate that LXC's dir mode is completely insecure and allows way too much information from the host to be seen. I wonder if there will eventually be a way to break into the host filesystem or other container's storage? OpenVZ better security: [root@ev ~]# cat /proc/mdstat cat: /proc/mdstat: No such file or directory /dev/simfs 843G 740G 61G........

CentOS 8 how to convert to a bootable mdadm RAID software array

The cool thing here is that we only need 1 drive to make a RAID 10 or RAID 1 array, we just tell the Linux mdadm utility that the other drive is "missing" and we can then add our original drive to the array after booting into our new RAID array. Step#1 Install tools we need yum -y install mdadm rsync Step #2 Create your partitions on the drive that will be our RAID array Here I assume it is /dev........

Cisco Unified Communications Manager / CUCM IP 8.6,10,12 Install Error Solution

Install Errors on Version 12: This error happened on QEMU emulator version 2.11.1 pve-qemu-kvm_2.11.1-5 on Proxmox/Debian but installing on QEMU.12 on Centos 6 did not produce the error. *Update it is not related to the OS or QEMU version. This happened in Centos 6 too after a second install. What really causes this even though you successfully install........

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........

How to install and setup LXC Containers (OpenVZ alternative) on Centos 6 / 7

If you don't aleady have it, you'll need EPEL Install LXC yum -y install lxc lxc-templates Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Setting up Install Process Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror.it.ubc.ca * epel: mirrors.kernel.org * extras: mirror.it.ubc.ca * updates:........

Cisco Switch Reset To Factory Defaults

This works on the 2000 and 3000 series generally. *The easy way is to just hold the mode button for 10+ seconds. The full/proper way is below: 1.) Either power on the unit and hold the "mode" button or hold the "mode" button until you see the below: 00:04:08: %SYS-7-NV_BLOCK_INIT: Initalized the geometry of nvram 00:04:08: %EXPRESS_SETUP-6-CONFIG_IS_RESET: The configur........

Centos 7 Reallocate logical volume space to another

Do you hate how Centos 7 defaults to allocating most of your valuable space to /home even though it is a production server? Here is a quick guide on how to take back that space live, while online (of course make sure you have backups just in case something goes wrong!): First we will reduce our home dir by 100G: lvreduce -L -100G /dev/mapper/centos-home WARNING: Reducing active and open logical volume to ........

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........

genisoimage errors with long filenames and deep directory structures

You'll have to violate the iso9660 standards but it is necessary if you want to preserve your filesystem and filenames and shouldn't be an issue as long as you are using a modern OS like Linux. genisoimage -o Backup-Myfiles.iso -r -J -joliet-long /some/path/ You will get errors like below (even enabling joliet-long didn't help) genisoimage: Error: /some/filename.pdf have the same Joliet name Joliet tree sort failed. The -joliet-lo........

Proxmox error uploading an iso solution

Error 0 occurred while receiving the document root@vh1:/var/tmp# wget http://mirror.compevo.com/proxmox/proxmox-ve_5.2-1.iso --2018-08-30 16:27:37-- http://mirror.compevo.com/proxmox/proxmox-ve_5.2-1.iso Resolving mirror.compevo.com (mirror.compevo.com)... 103.25.61.44 Connecting to mirror.compevo.com (mirror.compevo.com)|103.25.61.44|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 641517568 (612M) [application/o........

vi error solution E166: Can't open linked file for writing

This is not so much of a vi error as it is a physical filesystem error in the sense that the file you are trying to write to is a symlink and the destination doesn't exist or for some other reason is inacessible. So vi is tellng you "you're writing to a symlinked file and the file the symlink points to cannot be written to". This is especially highlighted byt he fact that if you are using wq! to write and you still get the error.........

NFS Share Won't Mount Solution - mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount

nfs mount failed: mount 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount /mnt/nfs/ mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 10.10.2.20:/tmp/nfsmount, missing codepage or helper program, or other error (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount. helper program) ........

Centos PXEBoot NetInstall Failure - Pane is dead

ValueError: new value non-existent xfs filesystem is not valid as a default fs type Pane is dead From what Iread this is misleading and has to do with the fact that the initrd and kernel are mismatched. This is a hard situation because for some older hardware Iam using the Centos Plus kernel which has modules that Irequire for an older server/NIC. This seems to have cropped up in the past few months and there is no simple fix........

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........

Ubuntu/Debian/Linux won't boot and drops to Busybox shell after cloning HDD with dd

I don't recall having this issue in the distant past but nowadays at least Debian seems to be very picky about this. I used dd to copy one hard drive to another and tried booting it. Everything seemed fine with grub working but each time it would drop to the busybox shell. There is no particular error so this is misleading. Normally the first things you would check are to make sure your fstab is correct (that the UUID is correct)and that you've updated grub.&........

cannot mount kvm ntfs image

guestmount -a kvmuserscra.img -m /dev/sda1 mount libguestfs: error: mount_options: /dev/sda1 on / (options: ''): mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs' guestmount: '/dev/sda1' could not be mounted. guestmount: Did you mean to mount one of these filesystems? guestmount: /dev/sda1 (ntfs) guestmount: /dev/sda2 (ntfs) yum -y install ntfs-3g still........

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lboost_system-mt-s /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lboost_filesystem-mt-s /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lboost_program_options-mt-s /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lboost_thread-mt-s collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [cag

cagecoin linux compile: sudo apt-get install qt4-qmake libqt4-dev build-essential libboost-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev libssl-dev libdb++-dev libminiupnpc-dev Solution: sed -i s/"BOOST_LIB_SUFFIX=-mt-s"/"#BOOST_LIB_SU........

Migrate Centos 7 from Single HDD to mdadm RAID 10 array:

Done on Centos 7.3 very important as clearly based on older guides it was a lot easier and more simpler! Hint do not use grub2-install! If you have trouble booting after this check this CentOS mdadm RAID booting/fixing guide. One huge caveat if you are an oldschool user or sysadmin who has avoided UEFIbooting The nor........

How to change reserved blocks in Linux partition

user@box:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md99 [sudo] password for user: tune2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014) Filesystem volume name: Last mounted on: /mnt/md50 Filesystem UUID: 976a8655-2619-4587-878c-dab07f7b7652 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic) Fi........

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........

Migrating from Linux Mint 17.2 mdadm RAID array to a new one (because I upgraded to larger drives).

1.) Replicate the number of partitions in your new drives. gdisk /dev/sda gdisk /dev/sdb I created 3 partitions of the same same size. partition #1: +1G (/boot) partition #2: +60G (swap) partition #3: rest of it (/) #note if you are using GPT/gdisk you need to create separate a partition at least 1MB in size (in my case I would a 4th partition and mark it type ef02).........

mdadm and lvm how to completely disable and remove vg/pv/lv

In short the solution is just to use vgremove for the actual /dev/mapper device: vgremove /dev/mapper/backups-backuplv box mnt # mdadm --manage /dev/md8 --stop mdadm: Cannot get exclusive access to /dev/md8:Perhaps a running process, mounted filesystem or active volume group? box mnt # lv lvchange lvconvert lvcreate l........

mdadm frozen and doesn't realize array is dead/missing failed due to unplugged drives

This was a surprising bug but I unplugged all drives for an array md127. At first it was just 1 drive and mdadm seemed to notice this. I unplugged the second drive taking the array offline but mdadm did not realize it was offline and still showed a non-existent disk as being part of it. This created problems trying to unmount it or even to stop this array with mdadm freezing. As for how to fix it I can only think of making sure you are not in a mounted path of........

remove gpt partition linux

sudo fdisk /dev/sdh WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdh'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. WARNING: The size of this disk is 8.0 TB (8001563221504 bytes). DOS partition table format can not be used on drives for volumes larger than (2199023255040 bytes) for 512-byte sectors. Use parted(1) and GUID partition table format (GPT). The device presents a l........

blocked for more than 120 seconds issues with iowait and timeout on Live Linux distribution while writing to physical disk

This happened while an mdadm array was syncing, all access from writing a new blank file to opening a small .txt file was very slow: [222117.312078] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds [222117.685060] EXT3-fs (md0): using internal journal [222117.685096] EXT3-fs (md0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode [222122.376847] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds [222122.602825] EXT3-fs (md2): using internal jour........

Errors were found while checking the disk drive for /.

Iwill start by saying I think I know what caused this boot-time error on Linux Mint but should also apply to Debian and Ubuntu. I changed my BIOS time to several hours in the past to match the current time, but this caused Linux to think there were incorrect filesystem times. The problem is that it seems when you hit this I am not sure what is happening, it doesn't seem to be doing fsck and hangs without prompting the user. What I have found is that........

Mount a SMB Samba share in fstab Linux Debian/Ubuntu/Centos

Add the following to fstab where 192.168.1.125/Media is the samba share and where /home/homeuser/Downloads is where you want to mount. Change user and pass to what is needed (if no pass is required it still works fine with the below). //192.168.1.125/Media /home/homeuser/Downloads cifs user=guest,pass=bla 0 0 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.1.125/Media, &nbs........

Centos installing grub problems suspect gpt problem

grub> root (hd0,0) root (hd0,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd grub> setup (hd0) setup (hd0) But if you do: root (hd1,0) setup (hd1) it does work, I think hd0/sda had a GPT partition that was not removed properly (what I did was just dd bs=512 count=1 the partition table from another drive since the partition table should be identical). Checking if "/boot/grub/........

Windows showing wrong drive size after resizing the VPS/image or cloning howto fix

How to Increase The Disk and Partition Size in Windows 2022,2019,11,10,8,7 etc.. Server 1, Enter the command prompt Start -> cmd 2. Start diskpart diskpart 3. Find the drive that has the wrong size list volume 4. Select the volume (in this example we use volume 2) select volume 2 5. Extend the volume........

Centos 6 how to guide convert LVM non-RAID into mdadm 1/10 RAID array live without reinstalling

Here is the scenario you or a client have a remote machine that was installed as a standard/default minimal Centos 6.x machine on a single disk with LVM for whatever reason. Often many people do not know how to install it to a RAID array so it is common to have this problem and why reinstall if you don't need to? In some cases on a remote system you can't easily reinstall without physical or KVM access. So in this case you add a second physical or disk or already ha........

grub cannot install or boot from mdadm RAID 10 array

root (hd2,1) Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83 grub> root (hd2,2) root (hd2,2) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 grub> setup (hd2) setup (hd2) Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no #weird thing about grub is that the drive you enter is considered hd0 For example when booted fu........

libguestfs tools howto guide for mounting partitions and managing virtual machine images

libguestfs tools howto guide for managing virtual machine images. libguestfs-tools aka guestfs tools has a lot of tools that make this very easy for you. You can easily mount partitons from an image with some of the commands below. To mount a partition #mount the kvmuser102821.img image and the /dev/sda1 partition from it to the local directory "mount" guestmount -a kvmuser102821.img -m /dev/sda1 mount ........

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........

Howto Convert Xen Image to KVM

#count=10000 makes an image of 10000MB make sure your image is at least the same as your existing dd if=/dev/zero of=yourimage.img bs=1M count=10000 # losetup -fv newimage.raw # fdisk -cu /dev/loop0 # kpartx -a /dev/loop0 # dd if= of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 # e2fsck -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 # resize2fs /dev/mapper/loop0p1 # a lot of guides tell you to edit /etc/fst........

lvm how to resize and extend a volume

lvextend -L +10G /dev/kvmvm/w2k8r2evalstandard Extending logical volume w2k8r2evalstandard to 20.00 GiB Logical volume w2k8r2evalstandard successfully resized The above adds 10GB to the logical volume. Of course you must resize the filesystem using other tools to take advantage of the space.........

Unixbench Testing

The first is a dual CPU AMD Opteron 2373EE (4 cores x 2) and I think it did bad because it has some old 250GB SATAs which can only do about 65MB/s max sequential reads. I think it should have blown away the second (AMD X4 640 Quad Core). [root@fs12home unixbench-4.1.0-wht-2]# ./Run make all make[1]: Entering directory `/root/unixbench-4.1.0-wht-2' Checking distribution of files ./pgms exists ./src exists........

mkdir: cannot create directory 'test': Disk quota exceeded - Solution

mkdir: cannot create directory 'test': Disk quota exceeded You are out of inodes usually: df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/simfs 200000 200000 0 100% / none ........

mkdir(): Too Many Links - The Solution and Problem in ext3 filesystems

The error itself "mkdir(): Too Many Links" is not very useful, but I'll translate it into plain English. It means you've reached the filesystem's limit of how many directories can be created in a single directory. In this case for ext3 the limit is 32000 and it was exceeded. What's the solution? The simple solution is to move those directories into more subdirectories possibly sorting them by date, alphabet or numerically.........

EXT4-fs error (device md20): ext4_add_entry: bad entry in directory #2552670:

Jun 12 10:30:53 kernel: [724514.291670] EXT4-fs error (device md20): ext4_add_entry: bad entry in directory #2552670: rec_len % 4 != 0 - offset=216, inode=2553603, rec_len=94, name_len=84 Jun 12 10:30:53 kernel: [724514.292400] EXT4-fs error (device md20): ext4_add_entry: bad entry in directory #2552670: rec_len % 4 != 0 - offset=216, inode=2553603, rec_len=94, name_len=84 This happened when an unprivileged user was backing up a Windows filesystem, once they ha........

mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'show create table `general_log`': SHOW command denied to user 'user'@'localhost' for table 'general_log' (1142) - Solution

mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'show create table `general_log`': SHOW command denied to user 'user'@'localhost' for table 'general_log' (1142) One of my clients almost found out the hard way, here is an unlikely situation that happened. 1.) Years ago the client had another VPS to which they backed up a BLOG nightly to an .sql file, what they forgot is that the file also contained all databases (they used the --all-databases option but forgot). So imagi........

How to install GRUB to the MBR of a disk image.

cat | grub --device-map=/dev/null Now pay close to the attention of the beginning. Type: "device (hd0) VPS.img" this is telling what hd0 will be to GRUB and we're telling it the disk image file "VPS.img" in the current directory is hd0, you can specify alternate paths and image names of course. GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory) [ Minimal BASH-li........

kvm cannot boot xen guest using lvm

This booting error is because the Xen PV guest image uses the Xen kernel, this is not compatible with anything but a host running a Xen kernel. I did a kpartx -av virtual.img and then it created some partitions that showed up in fdisk. I mounted it and did a chroot into it and removed the xen kernel and installed a normal kernel but Xen still shows the same kernel in Grub (only the Xen one). This is strange but it seems like this Xen PV guest has some sort of hidden or........

lvm resize and use the remaining extra space

df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vg_12-lv_root 50G 1.2G 46G 3% / tmpfs 7.8G 0&nb........

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........

mdadm/Debian problem

This is one in a series of weird things whichIthought was motherboard related (I RMA'd the motherboard), the RAM tests fine with memtest86 and I used badblocks on both RAID 1 members with no errors and smartctl is happy with them. Basically the array crashes the kernel a lot and has issues when writing. [112322.723465] md0: rw=0, want=14958668696, limit=1887460480 [112322.731077] attempt to access beyond end of device [112322.731087] md........

samba/smbd connection to share problems and solutions

I'll start by showing some problems in the logs: [2011/08/07 16:22:06, 0] param/loadparm.c:8569(process_usershare_file) process_usershare_file: stat of /var/lib/samba/usershares/movie failed. Permission denied [2011/08/07 16:22:06, 1] smbd/service.c:676(make_connection_snum) create_connection_server_info failed: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED That means you don't have permission to access the fi........

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........

Linux High IOWAIT updatedb can't be killed and crash with mdadm

high IO wait 424 root 39 19 1900 848 552 D 0.0 0.0 0:00.91 updatedb root 424 0.0 0.0 1900 848 ? DN Mar11 0:00 /usr/bin/updatedb -f sysfs?rootfs?bdev?proc?cpuset?binfmt_misc?debugfs?sockfs?usbfs?pipefs?anon_inodefs?futexfs?tmpfs?inotifyfs?eventp........

Virtualmin/Webmin Postfix Error: The status of your system is being checked to ensure that all enabled features are available, that the mail server is properly configured, and that quotas are active ..

Virtualmin Postfix Error: The status of your system is being checked to ensure that all enabled features are available, that the mail server is properly configured, and that quotas are active .. A problem was found with your Postfix virtual maps : No map sources were found in the Postfix configuration .. your system is not ready for use by Virtualmin. ........

Cygwin and crontab backups via ssh/scp/rsync

Install the "Editors" and "Net" groups that will give you rsync, ssh, ssh-keygen and cron. The trickiest thing that I keep forgetting about each time is you have to run "cron-config" which adds the cron service to Windows, and without doing that obviously no cron jobs will be run thus making automatic backups impossible. Warning about rsync/cygwin and using the -a archive switch. It's a good thing I caught this because it doesn't work ri........

rsync preserve attributes, permissions/ownership and times without being root non-root user

One of the purposes of rsync is to backup whole filesystems and archive them but how can you do that properly and restore things to normal if all permissions and ownerships are not preserved from your root filesystem? It's not desirable to have everything running as root, especially not just for an rsync. The Easy rsync preserve permission solution for non-root users sudo is the answer and all you have to do is edit /etc/sudoers At the end o........

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........

yum in Centos 5/Xen halts and exits suddenly

yum exits in the middle The problem is this VPS seems to be an OpenVZ template from HyperVM. The only way to make it work was to disable i386 packages since this was an x64 kernel. That shouldn't be necessary but it was the only way to make yum stop quitting after the first package or two. I couldn't find any issue by checking the logs either. echo y|yum install vim-minimal telnet expect jwhois net-tools slocate iptables elinks gawk L........

mdadm RAID 1 adventures

I separated the 2 drives in the RAID 1 array. 1 is the old one /dev/sda and is out of date, while the separated other one /dev/sdc was in another drive and mounted and used with more data (updated). I wonder how mdadm will handle this: usb-storage: device scan complete md: md127 stopped. md: bind md: md127: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction raid1: raid set md127 active with 1 out of 2 m........

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........

Ubuntu 10.04 Linux is still not ready for the Desktop world

I am a huge fan of Linux and the idea of OpenSource but I've said it many times, there are still hurdles in today in 2010 for Linux as a Desktop. Linux is still intended for servers at its very core. This can be changed succesfully though, as Apple has shown us with Mac OS X based on FreeBSD. Half of the issue is lack of driver support and the other half is the Linux Kernel and Window Manages, KDE and GNome still both don't cut it (but they're getting closer). I'll........

Local policy does not permit you to log on interactively. - Solution/Fix

For a standalone system the solution is simple, just use the same version of Windows a copy a good version of: C:windowsSecurityDatabasesecedit.sdb from another computer. Then you should be able to login again without getting the nasty message "Local policy does not permit you to log on interactively." Of course you will probably need a way of accessing the filesystem off-line in order to get to it such as a Linux boot disc. Some........

FUSE/Curlftpfs mount ftp account as drive partition in Linux

This is a great way to use your ftp server space, for example on your web hosting account (althoughI believe many hosts don't allow storage like this), but if you have a VPS/Dedicated Server etc.., this would be perfect. Imagine how easy it is to work with an ftp account that you can just mount as a normal partition or directory in Linux, it would be great for backups etc.. Name curlftpfs - mount a ftp host as a local directory Synopsis........

Install Mac OS X 10.4.6 Tiger on AMD32 VMWare

*Note OS X is strange to install, I thought my HDD was not being detected by you just have to go to Diskutil and create a partition for the root filesystem and then close/move the Window and proceed with the install. After install Mac OS X 10.4.6 Tiger I get a black screen that says: b0 error Most people say the partition has to be marked as "active", actually that just means marked as "bootable". Instead of t........

LUKS/cryptsetup Tutorial for Linux Hard Drive Partition Encryption

This is based on Debian Linux but should apply equally to any *nix distro. Install LUKS/crypt-setup apt-get install cryptsetup Setup your LUKS Partition Of course change /dev/md2 with whatever partition you intend to use LUKS on. cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/md2 You'll be asked to verify your decryption password twice *DO NOT FORGET THIS PASSWORD AS IT IS NOT RECOVERABLE!........

Centos 5.5 RAID 1 boot issue

I installed 5.5 with a 300GB RAID 1 partition (boot is also on this partition). It booted up fine the first few times until after I used a Live CD and accessed the array, and it became named /dev/md127 for some reason. Now whenI boot into CentOS I get a kernel panic and different errors, once I got "invalid superblock", even though the array is fine (it didn't happen again, probably because I was sure to dismount and stop the mdadm array properly). Here's what........

Unixbench Score on Core i5 750 with OpenVZ Kernel vs Xen/Openvz

This was unbelievable how much the Xen kernel slows things down, keep in mind both tests were done on the hostnode, one was with the Openvz-Xen hybrid kernel and the other was just OpenVZ. You can see the performance difference is nearly 300% better when not using the Xen kernel. OpenVZ-Xen Kernel Test Results (I was wondering what was wrong/so slow with my Core i5!) # # # # # #&n........

rsync my favorite/best/optimal default switches and options

Not sure what rsync switches/options to use? rsync -PDrphogtl The short version would be: rsync -Pha I think these are really common sense options to use and probaby should be the default. Explanation of rsync switches P = display the progress D = hybrid of --specials and --devices so all special and device files will be copied as well. r = recursive (otherwise rsync won't copy files deeper than........

Convert HDD/Hard Drive Partition(s) into non-RAID into RAID 1 using existing data without data loss and without reformatting.

Before we start I take no responsibility for this, you should have a backup and if you make a mistake during this process you could wipe out all of your data. So backup somewhere else before starting this as a precaution, or make sure it's data you could afford to lose. The RAID 1 Setup (Hardware Wise) I've already setup my 2 x 1TB (Seagate) drives with identical partitions, make sure your new hard drive (the empty one) is setup like your curr........

Linux EXT3 16GB-17GB maximum filesize issue solved/how to fix

I have no idea why but mkfs.ext3 defaults to a patheticlly small blocksize of 1024 bytes/1KB (kilobyte). That means the maximum filesize is ONLY 16GB! With 2KB/2048 bytes you get a 256 GB maximum filesize, and with 4KB/4096 bytes you get 2TB! I finally noticed/paid attention to this after realizing that with rsync and scp that no file larger than 17GB could be transferred. I then realized it must be a file size limit on the partition. Here is what tune2fs tol........

Picking an FTPD (vsftpd) Server in Linux Centos/Debian

I decided on using yum to help me decide even though I normaly use proftpd I decided to see what else I could find. yum search ftp Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * rpmforge: ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de * base: mirrors.netdna.com * updates: updates.interworx.info * addons: yum.singlehop.com * extras: mirrors.netdna.com rpmforge........

Compaq V2405CA Laptop - Unixbench Performance Test

Here are the results, it is Sempron 3000+ AMD Mobile, 500Gig HDD, 512MB RAM with shared ATI Radeon graphics. # # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # # # # ## # # # #&nb........

GRUB Boot FreeBSD

GRUB Boot FreeBSD[code:1:a7050277b7]title FreeBSD 6.0 root (hd0,2,a) kernel /boot/loader[/code:1:a7050277b7] Just insert the above code into GRUB's [b:a7050277b7]menu.lst[/b:a7050277b7] and make sure you set the root path correctly. [quote:a7050277b7]Let's quickly explain what the root (hd0,2,a) means: *hd0 stands for the primary master drive *2 stands for partition 3 *a stands for the........

sed is great for pattern matching or retrieving lines

sed is great for pattern matching or retrieving linesHere is a cool example Say you type df: The output would be something like: [quote:3bb8d51437]Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 1712432 1206664 418780 75% / /dev/hda1 31201 10505 19085 36% /boot none 30932 0 30932 0% /dev/shm [/quote:3bb8d51........

Clustering Links

Clustering LinksI thought this might be interesting for people with spare time. [b:6423c19973]Great clustering article from Linux Mag[/b:6423c19973] http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-11/clusters_01.html [b:6423c19973]General Linux cluster information[/b:6423c19973] http://www.gdargaud.net/Hack/ClusterNotes.html#HighA http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Cluster-HOWTO.html#s3 http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxClustersAndFileSys........

MySQL Error "ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user"

This happened with a select statement which writes the result to an external file. I didn't remember the privilege "FILE" must be granted on *.* for this to work successfully, it wasn't actually an authentication issue as it implies since I was already in the SQL prompt and doing the query. SELECT some_id FROM sometable INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/result.txt'........

How to Track Down/Find Cause of Linux high disk iowait/wa

top - 09:34:12 up 2 days, 20:57, 2 users, load average: 1.83, 1.99, 2.03 Tasks: 59 total, 2 running, 57 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 99.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st That 99.7% wa is iowait, it means the server is waiting for a process to complete an IOoperation or in plain English, there is a delay in........

iPhone Enable Tethering Manually Update ipcc Carrier Settings/Update via SSH

Everyone says there is a "manual" way of doing it and then they tell you to use iTunes, but if you're like me, you're travelling on business in a foreign country and your laptop does not have iTunes and you don't have a way of getting it and/or don't want it. For this example I'm using the provider "du" in Dubai, UAE (United Arab Emirates) but this method works for virtually all providers. The requirements in this case to truly "manually update........

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........

Clustered/Distributed Network Filesystems, Which Ones live up to the hype?

I've tried to find a good sensible solution to cluster with and each technology has it's pros and cons and there is no perfect solution and I've found a lot of "exaggerations" in the applications, benefits and performance of these different filesystems. DRBD I first started off with DRBD and Ihave to say it does live up to the hype, is quite reliable (although it can be annoying to match up the kernel module and user applications since they must match and whe........

Unixbench Score with Glusterfs/Openvz & Quad Core Xeon - Updated with GlusterFS 2.0.8

You might remember my original GluserFS/OpenVZ benchmark which produced a horrible 29.8 This is the exact same system, but using the latest 2.0.8 (with some small files patch which speeds up performance) you can see it is about 25% faster. I also haven't tuned my config files at all, but there are some settings that should increase performance on small files which I believe i........

Unixbench Score with Glusterfs/Openvz & Quad Core Xeon

This is very disappointing since GlusterFS markets itself as a solution to deploy VPS servers on. On the HNitself I get a Unixbench of about 360. I'm also using an SSH tunnel to secure the communications, but even before that, things seemed very slow. # # # # # # # #####&n........

iPhone 3GS Jailbreak Information & Benefits

Truly, the only way to unleash the capabilities and customization abilities of iPhone are to jailbreak, it's not just for hackers anymore. A few days ago someone by the named of "geohot" released a single click application called "purplera1n", which does the entire operation smoothly and seamlessly. In our case, the first time it went as far as "done, wait for reboot" on our Windows machine and for minutes we waited and saw the pic on the iPhone w........

Configuring OCFS2 Clustered File System on Debian Based Linux including Ubuntu and Kubuntu

There's a lot of information and guides on OCFS2 for RHELand Centos Linux but the package setup and configuration is slightly different and this has thrown some people off. Installing OC2FS You should install the following packages to get started: apt-get install ocfs2-tools ocfs2console Configure OC2FS In RHEL/Centos the main configuration file is located in /etc/sysconfig/o2cb However in Debian based Linux it is located........