• Linux swapping too much? How to check the swappiness and stop swapping


    We could always disable swap but this would normally be a bad idea unless you have an incredible amount of RAM and a workload that will never exceed it. However, for live/containerized and high performance environments it could be desirable. Another middle ground may be to set swappiness to a lower number. You may also want to clear your kernel's cache, which could be eating up RAM unnecessarily by c........
  • request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found Pid: 1, comm: swapper/0 Not tainted solution


    request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found Pid: 1, comm: swapper/0 Not tainted This is usually caused by a mismatch in architecture and happens frequently in development environments. Here is a example of what caused this issue: Your binaries are based on one architecture Your kernel was compiled with another architecture. Why does this happe........
  • How To Enable Linux Swapfile Instead of Partition Ubuntu Mint Debian Centos


    This may be necessary if you have a VM or if for some reason you just want to be more efficient with your space and have the flexibility of changing your swap space at will. What we mean is the ability to use a "swap file" or similar to the Windows "pagefile" that normally resides on the root or c: partition of Windows. Here's all you have to do and then you to can have a single partiton with everything, including the swap file on the root partition if you........
  • 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.........
  • Ansible Tutorial - Playbook How To Install From Scratch and Deploy LAMP + Wordpress on Remote Server


    1. Let's work from an environment where we can install Ansible on. If you are using an older version of Linux based on Mint 18 or Ubuntu 16, you may want to get the PPA and get the latest version of Ansible that way: sudo apt install gpg sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ansible/ansible sudo apt update........
  • Convert and install to LUKS Encrypted Drive Ubuntu 18.04 19.10 Linux Mint and Debian Based Linux


    The reason for doing this is that the installer doesn't seem to work properly for LUKS and the server installer doesn't even support LUKS anymore. When you use the GUI install on Desktop for LUKS it won't boot and will just hang after you enter your password. So the only reliable way is to do it ourselves. 1.) Make a default minimal install of Ubuntu 2.) Have a secondary disk on the server or VM. 3.)........
  • 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 12 Install Errors on Proxmox/KVM


    The strange thing is that usually the first install or two will work on any new machine but then it suddenly won't. I had this experience on QEMU 2.13 on a different machine. There is something finicky or buggy about the CUCM installer even when choosing the same virtual hardware specs. qemu-kvm command: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -version QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.1 (qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.506.el6_10.1), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard ........
  • systemd management using systemctl and journalctl to check systemd logs


    systemd is like the service manager for your Centos and other modern Linux distributions (including Debian/Mint/Ubuntu) allows you to enable services, stop them, restart them, check their status and even reboot your system. The key commands or arguments you will use with systemctl are the following: Unit Commands: list-units [PATTERN...] List loaded units &nbs........
  • migration/4 migration 4 is using too much CPU


    top - 13:02:52 up 603 days, 19:19, 2 users, load average: 5.01, 4.15, 3.44 Tasks: 604 total, 5 running, 599 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 17.7%us, 36.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 42.0%id, 4.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Mem: 16278908k total, 4269684k used, 12009224k free, 119672k buffers Swap: 8k total, ........
  • Linux How To Free Wasted Memory RAM in Buffers


    We all know Linux is known for good memory management but is it really? It seems all on its own with hardly anything running that you can come back in days or weeks and find that almost all of your RAMis used! And many will say "no don't worry it's buffers for optimization" but it doesn't seem to help because what is in buffers is not available to use for new programs running or ones that allocate more RAM as far as Ican tell. The reason Iknow........
  • Intel NUC J3455 Linux Kernel freeze slowness 4.4.98 errors


    It looks like this has something to do with APIC but I am not sure. I have similar CPUs with a different MB and BIOS that work fine on the same type of kernel. A lot of time the issue is because of the C-step setting in the BIOS. The same thing happened on the 2.6 kernel with Centos 6 but this is a homebrew 4.4 kernel soI am not sure why it is happening when even Centos 7 (3.2) kernel works OK. Solution - It comes down to the BIOS set........
  • Debian Linux Mint Ubuntu Disable Automatic apt-get update


    sudo chmod 000 /etc/cron.daily/apt-compat This is the easiest way to disable the cron without anything more invasive like deleting the file. After that you won't have anymore apt-get's starting. This can be critical for systems without much extra RAMthat is not in use. I've seen systems that have swapped and crashed over apt-get.........
  • ffmpeg Linux Mint download, compile and install howto


    #if you have nvidia make sure you install the nvidia-cuda-toolkit so hardware acceleration can be used wget http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-3.3.2.tar.bz2 tar -jxvf ffmpeg-3.3.2.tar.bz2 cd ffmpeg-3.3.2/ ./configure --disable-yasm install prefix /usr/local source path ........
  • 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........
  • 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).........
  • OpenVZ Migration Hostnode Containers from Centos 5 to Centos 6


    migrating from an old OpenVZ (Centos 5) to new OpenVZ (Centos 6) Also if migrating from 32-bit HN to 64-bit your RAM will probably be much bigger than it should be! 16x bigger eg. 32bit HN: total used free shared buffers cached Mem:&nb........
  • How to manually mount Linux disk image partition without using losetup


    In this case we want to mount partition #2 fdisk -lu Centos-6.6-x86_64.img You must set cylinders. You can do this from the extra functions menu. Disk Centos-6.6-x86_64.img: 0 MB, 0 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders, total 0 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Device Boot&nbs........
  • 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........
  • How To Install Linux Mint 17.2 on mdadm RAID with a separate boot partition


    Iwas surprised to see that Linux Mint at the latest 17.2 version still has NO mdadm installer option, and worse the installer will not be able to create a proper booting environment even when you do install it. How to setup mdadm in Linux mint LiveCD sudo su apt-get install mdadm # partition as you need and then create your mdadm devices # create your SWAP md0 mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /d........
  • Dell CS24,FS12 NV5 and NV7 1U Server Information & Parts


    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-3CESL: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2658#dl Dell Part Numbers for the motherboard: R1232 R1232L R2232S SERVER MOTHERBOARD GENUINE 408P9 CN-0408P9 GA-3CESL Manual Download here RAMSlots: 16 (8 controlled by each CPU) RAMType: DDR2 ECC 5300P........
  • Linux find what processes are swapping


    Here is a handy script that will check all processes and report what is swapping #!/bin/bash for pid in `ps x|awk '{print $1}'`; do result=`cat /proc/$pid/status|grep VmSwap|awk '{print $2}'|grep -v ^"0"` if [ ! -z "$result" ]; then programresult=`ps x|grep $pid|grep -v grep` if [ $? == 0 ]; then program=`echo $programresult|awk '{print $5}'|grep -v ^grep`........
  • Migrate Linux Mint OS from one drive to another


    mount -o bind /proc /sda2/proc mount -o bind /dev/ /sda2/dev mount -o bind /sys /sda2/sys chroot /sda2 mint / # mount -o bind /proc /sda2/proc mint / # mount -o bind /dev/ /sda2/dev mint / # mount -o bind /sys /sda2/sys mint / # chroot /sda2 mint / # cd ~ mint ~ # ls Desktop mint ~ # cd / mint / # ls bin Desktop dev-temp home&nb........
  • Openvz OOM Centos Issue Memory Config Settings Solution


    Linux box13. 2.6.32-042stab076.5 #1 SMP Mon Mar 18 20:41:34 MSK 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux even setting privvmpages to a specific setting DOES not affect "free -m" in containers. This is probably a kernel issue 23:36:29 up 159 days, 7:12, 4 users, load average: 0.42, 0.44, 0.33 [root@box13 ~]# free -m total&n........
  • Dell SAS 6/ir Cards are just LSi 1068E cards


    02:00.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS1068E PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS (rev 08) 03:00.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS1068E PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS (rev 08) Basically these cards are a stripped-down version of Dell Perc 6/i only they (SAS 6/ir) support JBOD. The DellPerc 6/i are basically useless because it doesn't have JBOD support and requires software or BIOS commands to add or remove........
  • Dell FS12-NV7 2U Server Information and Guide


    I've got one of these for testing projects from work at home and got more than I bargained for with the time I've spent on it due to the storage handing/Perc 6/i cards. My particular model came with the following: 2U Rack Mount Server with Rails 2xOpteron 2373 EE (Quad Core, there is a 6-core version that can be found at times) 16GB RAM 2 x 250GB Seagate SATA 2 x Dell Perc 6/i (horrible and a nightmare to work........
  • LVM How-To Activate and Access Volumes/Data


    vgchange -ay 3 logical volume(s) in volume group "vg_12" now active lvscan inactive '/dev/vg_12/lv_root' [144.04 GB] inherit inactive '/dev/vg_12/lv_home' [1.00 GB] inherit inactive '/dev/vg_12/lv_swap' [7.85 GB] inherit........
  • Bad Hard Drive Slows Down Computer


    Here's a proven example of what a bad hard drive can do, it was technically functioning OKin a RAID array but the system became extremely low and the load become high and IOWAIT was even higher and I always thought it was a bad application. The truth is that this failing 1TBHitachi has slowly gotten worse and caused huge slowdowns, (eg. 100% load on Thunderbird waiting for e-mails to load etc..). After swapping it out, tabs change instantly, emails are not lagged, and........
  • Samsung 4GB 1Rx4 DDR2 PC5300F FBDIMM Running Hot


    sensors|head i5k_amb-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Ch. 0 DIMM 0:+115.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 0 DIMM 1: +63.5°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 0 DIMM 2: +61.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 1 DIMM 0: +65.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 1 DIMM 1: +75.0°C&........
  • Error: detected vswap CT config but kernel does not support vswap This means either old kernel or bad config (physpages NOT set to 0:unlimited) Solution for OpenVZ


    Error: detected vswap CT config but kernel does not support vswap This means either old kernel or bad config (physpages NOT set to 0:unlimited) Solution vzctl set $veid --physpages 0:unlimited --save........
  • failed to IDENTIFY (INIT_DEV_PARAMS failed, err_mask=0x80)


    [ 12.460014] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 17.626677] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 22.480011] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 27.646681] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 38.106817] ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (INIT_DEV_PARAMS failed, err_mask=0x80) [ 48.266676] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)........
  • The Importance of a High Quality Power Supply/Power Supplies To Prevent Overheating/System Crash/Hardware Damage


    For years I've always built cheap systems believing that there is little difference in more expensive components when it comes to reliability and quality, I generally believe this still except for Power Supplies. I've always bought cheap cases with nice sounding 350-550W stock/cheap/crap power supplies and haven't had any issues for the most part until recently. One such case is an NGEAR case with a 550W Optimax power supply, I always read that these supplies don't produce the........
  • KVM QEMU and Xen how to mount disk images off-line and access data


    fdisk -lu VPS.img last_lba(): I don't know how to handle files with mode 81ed You must set cylinders. You can do this from the extra functions menu. Disk VPS.img: 0 MB, 0 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders, total 0 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Device Boot Start End ........
  • Linux Kernel Panic Messages - Symptoms of bad RAM module/stick


    These were caused by a bad stick of Corsair RAM [] free_hot_cold_page+0xfc/0x150 [] __pagevec_free+0x14/0x1a [] release_pages+0x127/0x12f [] __pagevec_release+0x15/0x1d [] __invalid_mapping_pages+0x120/0x156 [........
  • Linux Out of Memory OOM Object Killer Solution "Out of memory: kill process 1955 (sshd) score 81 or a child"


    I had a system running a 128MB live CD image with 2.8 gigs of available RAM and the OOM kernel killer went crazy when using dd for more than 8 minutes and kept killing everything. I've read that this is due to a low-memory issue and paging in the kernel and 32-bit systems with lots of RAM. I even enabled swapspace on my LiveCD and the issue happened 25 minutes into dd rather than 8 minutes, so what gives? Also no swap space was ever used! cat /proc/s........
  • How To Test If Your Hard Drive Is Good/Signs of dying hard drive


    I like dd, although it only reads it, usually a read test of the entire disk will uncover if your hard drive is bad in some parts. This is a good thing to do at least once a month, a lot of times bizarre program behavior, laginess and crashing/unnmounting problems etc.. are due to a failing disc and SMART won't know it or indicate a problem: We must also remember there's never a guarantee, I've found that ever since we moved to larger and more platters per drive with 1TB drives........
  • Kernel/make compilation time and how to improve compile times/compile the Linux kernel faster without hardware upgrades


    I thought only a faster CPUand SSDwould help but I already have a Quad-Core CPU and it wasn't being maxed out. The actual tests were performed on an AMD-V enabled 128MB dual core VMWare container though. There is a flag that can be passed to make in order to start multiple threads, by specifying 4 threads I was able to reduce the whole kernel compilation time from scratch by about 50%! (65minutes vs 31minutes!). *Yes I did do a make clean before each co........
  • How not to change an IP address in CPanel during a migration


    /usr/local/cpanel/bin/swapip domain(s) It simply doesn't work, the Apache VHOSTS remain 100% unchanged, why does this script exist? I'm sure it would work from the control panel but I am locked out because my IP was changed and it doesn't match the CPanel license. I wish CPanel would make it easier to update the license IP. I even took it a step farther, I manually edited the vhosts and restarted Apache and it........
  • Linux Kernel Freeze/Hang during boot on io scheduler cfq registered (default)


    You'll see the following and the boot process will freeze: io scheduler noop registered io scheduler anticipatory registered io scheduler deadline registered io scheduler cfq registered (default) I have struggled with this issue on vari........
  • Realtek r8169 1gbit/1000mbit NIC/Ethernet Goes Down/Halts on Large File Transfer/Heavy Network Usage


    This is obviously a bug in the r8169 kernel module and it seems to affect a lot of people. I upgraded to the latest kernel and hope this won't happen anymore, as it is a very serious error. This is especially serious for those who are running servers with this chipset, who can afford for the NIC to randomly go off-line for no apparent reason? [655548.189113] type=1505 audit(1277067560.902:5): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/bin/freshclam&q........
  • 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........
  • Windows install blue screen of death caused by faulty optical/DVD-RW drive.


    I took an educated guess because it kept happening at the same spot when loading the XP install. I thought it was the hard drive or motherboard. But it turns out my heavily used but loved NEC 3500 DVD-RW drive was the culprit. After disconnecting it and swapping it for another much beloved Pioneer DVD-RW, everything has gone smoothly. I never ran into this or many issues because I've hardly used this drive since moving it to another Desktop years ago. I actua........
  • rsync halted froze Out of memory: kill process 7559 (rsync) score 635 or a child Killed process 7559 (rsync)


    Out of memory: kill process 7559 (rsync) score 635 or a child Killed process 7559 (rsync) I was surprised to see this in my dmesg whenmy rsync backup suddenly stalled/stopped. This system has 3 gigs of RAM and lots of free memory so I don't understand what is happening. rsync invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x200d2, order=0, oomkilladj=0 Pid: 7600, comm: rsync Not tainted 2.6.24.2 #83 [] oom_kill_pr........
  • Linux AHCI Hotswap Tips - Remember To Reread The Partition Table WITHOUT rebooting


    From the package "parted" you can use the command "partprobe" to re-read the partition table. I really hate rebooting, and that's what Iloved to hear about AHCI motherboards, that they allow hotswap so you don't have to reboot. But that's only as good as the OS, if the OS does not reload the partition table you won't be able to do anything with that new drive you attached without rebooting. Yes, even without re-reading the partiton table Linux will........
  • 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........
  • 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........
  • The New Chips on the Block


    The New Chips on the BlockThe New Chips on the Block By Bruce Gain Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,67795,00.html 02:00 AM Jun. 13, 2005 PT We have embarked upon a new era in x86 PC computing -- so say chip giants AMD and Intel following their launches of dual-core PC processors. So how will dual-core processing change your PC computing experience? Our FAQ should help you decide whether or when you sho........
  • Linux Kernel Error (2.6.33.1) BUG: Bad page state in process swapper - Keeps rebooting - initramfs bug


    *This is a bug with initramfs support, all kernels after around 2.6.27.54 suffer from this problem. If you try to include initramfs into your kernel (I mean actually building your binaries into the kernel) this will always happen. Obviously some code has changed in recent kernels that is present in all new kernels, it makes it impossible to boot I've tried the latest 2.6.32, 2.6.33, 2.6.34, 2.6.35, 2.6.36, 2.6.37, 2.6.38 kernels and they all do this. I found one bug re........
  • Have an OpenVZ VPS/Linux Virtual Private Server and nothing works right?


    A VPS Server I had just wasn't working right, code that I migrated there just wasn't working. For example, it kept telling me the connection to the database was unsuccessful, halfway through iterating through results it already had. Then I realized it wasn't my code. Ichecked my /proc/user_beancounters and found this: cat /proc/user_beancounters Version: 2.5 uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt........
  • resume: could not stat the resume device file


    resume: could not stat the resume device file I got that after migrating to a different physical hard drive, it wanted to resume from a swap partition that no longer exists. This is actually controlled by "uswsusp.conf" in /etc Just edit it and remove the device or change it to the correct new swap file.........
  • 1U Servers are Loud - We Have The Quiet Solution


    I've read a lot of people complaining that their 1U servers are too loud for the office, home or whatever strange places people might want to put them. Whenever Isee the question asked, "what can be done about the noise", you'll see a myriad of silly answers like "you shouldn't have it at home or in your office at all", "1U servers are meant to be loud". These all might be valid points but they're not the solution. A good example is a........
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