Dana Point Deep Zoom Set

Quick post, here is my latest Deep Zoom Set from a little place called Dana Point here in Sunny California. Temperature was mild, skies were clear, visibility was great. This is my first publicly posted Deep Zoom Set. Will post many more soon.

http://techie.org/Photos/2010/DanaPoint/BlueLantern/
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Details about this stitch

Canon 40D
Canon 2.8L 70-200 IS @f8.0, 1/500
122 Images
Total size, 248megapixels
No Tripod, one painful arm

How to rebuild Intel Raid (isw) on Linux

For years, I’ve ran many small servers running the popular ICH/ISW Intel Storage Matrix RAID in Raid-1 configuration. For many years this has worked absolutely perfectly with no issues on both Windows and Linux. But something has always really bugged me. What do i do when (and they will) a drive fails? How does ISW handle it?

On Windows, this is simple, you launch the Storage Matrix software and click rebuild (if it isn’t rebuilding automagically). But how do you do this on a Linux server which has no Storage Matrix software? After hours of Googling, i came across the command “dmraid -R”. But that didn’t work in my test environments.

So i spent a whole afternoon figuring this out. This is what i found.

DMRaid Works. Sort of

DMRaid is the linux implementation of popular onboard RAID setups. Your raid can be from Intel, Nvidia, Promise and a few others who do implement it. Intel is the most common one, and that’s the one i generally have on all my Intel servers. What *you* may find is that your implementation is different, but this posting should help you.

My test setup was a simple ICH6R machine with two 160gb Seagate hard drives. I booted up the machine, went into the Intel raid setup, and created a 20gb mirror partition called “System”. I then installed CentOS 5.5 32bit on this machine, and went to work.

Initial results

The first thing i did, was find out what i’ve got. Running “dmraid -s” gave me

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -s
*** Group superset isw_djhffiddde
–> Active Subset
name   : isw_djhffiddde_System
size   : 41942528
stride : 256
type   : mirror
status : ok
subsets: 0
devs   : 2
spares : 0

Then running “dmraid -r” gave me

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -r
/dev/sda: isw, "isw_djhffiddde", GROUP, ok, 312581806 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sdb: isw, "isw_djhffiddde", GROUP, ok, 312581806 sectors, data@ 0

This tells me, my mirror set is running, and has two drives attached and all is happy.

Broken results

I then, turned the machine off, and yanked a drive, inserted a different drive, and turned it back on. After fiddling with the bios for a few minutes (my machine wanted to boot form the newly installed drive, not the raid) i got back in, and this is what i saw

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -s
ERROR: isw: wrong number of devices in RAID set "isw_djhffiddde_System" [1/2] on /dev/sda
*** Group superset isw_djhffiddde
–> *Inconsistent* Active Subset
name   : isw_djhffiddde_System
size   : 41942528
stride : 256
type   : mirror
status : inconsistent
subsets: 0
devs   : 1
spares : 0

and

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -r
/dev/sda: isw, "isw_djhffiddde", GROUP, ok, 312581806 sectors, data@ 0

So, dmraid tells me that the raid is broken and inconsistent. Great. That’s what i want to see when a disk fails in my raid sets. According to the man pages, and the Google, to repair it you use “dmraid -R <raid id> /dev/<device>”

So, here goes.

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -R isw_djhffiddde_System /dev/sdb
ERROR: isw: wrong number of devices in RAID set "isw_djhffiddde_System" [1/2] on /dev/sda
isw: drive to rebuild: /dev/sdb

RAID set "isw_djhffiddde_System" already active
device "isw_djhffiddde_System" is now registered with dmeventd for monitoring
Error: Unable to write to descriptor!
Error: Unable to execute set command!
Error: Unable to write to descriptor!
Error: Unable to execute set command!

Hrm. Error’s. I don’t like errors. What’s happened? To be honest, I’ll never know – but it seems like it was not working. dmraid thinks its working, but i cant see it. I cant really hear any grumblings from the drive, nor can i see the LED’s flash. dmraid tells me the following:

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -s
*** Group superset isw_djhffiddde
–> Active Subset
name   : isw_djhffiddde_System
size   : 41942528
stride : 256
type   : mirror
status : nosync
subsets: 0
devs   : 2
spares : 0

Ok, so its not inconsistent now, but it is “nosync”, which i cannot figure out what it means. I should look at the source code, but i cant be bothered.

Alright, so it appears that its not working.

Plan B

To figure out if its doing something, i turned the machine off and removed the new drive, and put in a Western Digital Raptor. Something that makes sounds. Booted up, and dmraid still showed the same stuff, inconsistent raid set. Now, i added the new WDRaptor to this set.

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -R isw_djhffiddde_System /dev/sdb
ERROR: isw: wrong number of devices in RAID set "isw_djhffiddde_System" [1/2] on /dev/sda
isw: drive to rebuild: /dev/sdb

RAID set "isw_djhffiddde_System" already active
device "isw_djhffiddde_System" is now registered with dmeventd for monitoring

Oh wow, much better. On top of that, i could hear the grumblings of the WD, and i could see LED activity. So, it works!

I also found a command to monitor this progress. Its called “dmsetup status”

[root@nasri ~]# dmsetup status
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp2: 0 41720805 linear
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp1: 0 208782 linear
isw_djhffiddde_System: 0 41942776 mirror 2 8:16 8:0 928/1280 1 AA 1 core
VolGroup00-LogVol01: 0 4128768 linear
VolGroup00-LogVol00: 0 37552128 linear

[root@nasri ~]# dmsetup status
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp2: 0 41720805 linear
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp1: 0 208782 linear
isw_djhffiddde_System: 0 41942776 mirror 2 8:16 8:0 936/1280 1 AA 1 core
VolGroup00-LogVol01: 0 4128768 linear
VolGroup00-LogVol00: 0 37552128 linear

[root@nasri ~]# dmsetup status
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp2: 0 41720805 linear
isw_djhffiddde_Systemp1: 0 208782 linear
isw_djhffiddde_System: 0 41942776 mirror 2 8:16 8:0 1280/1280 1 AA 1 core
VolGroup00-LogVol01: 0 4128768 linear
VolGroup00-LogVol00: 0 37552128 linear

And finally

[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -r
/dev/sdb: isw, "isw_djhffiddde", GROUP, ok, 312581806 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sda: isw, "isw_djhffiddde", GROUP, ok, 72303838 sectors, data@ 0
[root@nasri ~]# dmraid -s
*** Group superset isw_djhffiddde
–> Active Subset
name   : isw_djhffiddde_System
size   : 41942528
stride : 256
type   : mirror
status : ok
subsets: 0
devs   : 2
spares : 0

So. This is why it “sort of” works. It didn’t work with another Seagate drive, but it worked with a different drive. Consequently, i yanked the good 80gb drive from this set, and plugged in a 750gb Seagate, and was able to mirror back to that without a problem. Maybe initially it was my drives.

Conclusion

To fix your broken Raid1’s on your Intel raid’s, use “dmraid -R <raidid> <dev>” and watch “dmsetup status” and wait for the ratio to be 1.

How to install the SNMP service on Microsoft Hyper-V R2

Another quick post/reminder to myself. I’ve been experimenting with the idea of using Cacti to monitor the performance of my Hyper-V servers, so i needed SNMP on my HyperV machines. However there is no UI to add that feature into the core installs. So, to install SNMP on HyperV R2, use the following command line

start /w ocsetup SNMP-SC

That’s it!

How to remove HyperV from a Domain

Just a quick post. Today i’m transitioning from my old win2k3 domain, to a new Windows 2008 R2 Domain. In moving my HyperV servers, i found i couldĀ not disjoin them from the domain, but found this quick tip to force it off the domain

netdom remove %computername% /domain:%userdomain% /force

Thats it!

Adaptec 3805 – It’s rubbish

An update on my previous posting about the Adaptec 3805 and my troubles with getting compatible drives.

I’ve been running a RAID-5 with the 3085 using 4 Samsung SpinPoint F3’s for about 2 weeks, and two days ago it started to give problems. The fourth disk in the array just dropped out, with no visible SMART issues or physical defects.

So, after waking up to this news I added it back into the array (probably not a great idea, but usually its fine). The moment the full initialization completed, something occurred that caused one of my Virtual Machines running from that RAID array to stop functioning (it was a mail server). There was another machine on there with much lesser activity, that kept running without a problem – but it did all but destroy the other virtual machine. Luckily, i have backups.

Not only did it knock off one of my virtual machines, it kicked out a different disk from the array, and started complaining again. So then I broke down, and ordered 2 ES.2 disks from Newegg which are on the HCL for this controller. However, 8hrs later, the controller barfed up completely and started giving timeouts to the host to the logical drive – even with 3 perfectly useable drives. The host became very unstable, i had to shut down the virtual machines, and reset the machine (thank god for Lights out control).

Upon reboot, the logical raid-5 array was unusable, and had to be forced online. I copied the two files that i absolutely had to have, and finally destroyed the array. When i go up to the data center again, I’m removing this card and burying it. Going to go back to my trusty Highpoint RR2224 which I’ve had for over 5 years now, without a single glitch.

Done.

Adaptec 3805 Compatibility Issues with Western Digital Blacks

Hello, a quick post / announcement that the Adaptec 3805 SAS Raid controller has compatibility issues with Western Digital Caviar Black drives. I don’t know if its an issue with all capacities of the Black series, but the ones i had were the 1TB ones, model number WDC-WD1001FALS-0.

After doing some research, it appears that the WD Blacks are NOT on the HCL for the Adaptec 3805 controller, but it took me some time to find this. I hope this post helps anyone who was going to go down this route.

Since i’d already gotten the WD Blacks, I ended up using Samsung Spinpoint F3’s from some of my servers. The WD Blacks work fine on Intel ICH Raid. I think next time, I’ll stick with these Samsungs. Cheap, good warranty, and FAST.

Now in general, why can’t Western Digital make standards compliant drives? I could easily blame Adaptec as well, but in this case, i think it has to be WD’s fault. They are known to make ATA drives that don’t work the same way as everyone else. How hard can it be? Even Samsung got it right.

Update, see my second post on this

Googles gone Goal!

My friend pointed out to me that Googles, gone Gooooooooall!

image

Search for world cup, and look at the bottom! Less than 24hrs to go!

Enabling xp_cmdshell

A quick post on how to enable xp_cmdshell on Sql 2005/2008/2008R2

EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘xp_cmdshell’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 0
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO

Done.

I think ESPN got it!

*Yawn*. Its good to stretch once in a while, get some blood to some relaxed muscles.

Waking up at 5.30am on a Saturday is normal behavior for me now. Get up, brush my teeth, and wonder downstairs and turn on the telly. You know its early when the cats ignore you, while you stumble across the dark floor to the sofa and fumble around for the remote.

Regardless, turned on the telly. Its June 5th, 5 days before WC2010 starts, 5.30am. I press the two power buttons, one for the TV, one for the dish network receiver. After about 5 seconds of eye rubbings, i hear a familiar voice. A very soothing, familiar voice. Martin Tyler.

At first, i make sure its not a rerun of a EPL game on Fox Soccer Channel. Then slowly, i realize that his color commentator, is John Harkes. Instantly I’m satisfied with something. I feel that ESPN got it right.

It was 5.30am on June 5th, and Australia were playing a pre world cup warm up against the USA, and it was being shown live from a tiny stadium in South Africa with less than 7,000 people in the crowd – on a pitch that looked like an empty field in the middle of the African jungle.

ESPN got it right. The commentary pairing of MT and JH was good, it wasn’t boring – even during the boring parts of the game. They weren’t even talking down to me as a viewer, they were just commentating. That was sweet.

Well done ESPN.

But wait! There’s more! After the game, ESPN showed a nice little piece on the Robben Island soccer league in South Africa. A very nice 30 minute segment about how the comings of a new government were practiced in the form of a full on “professional” football league within a prison.

Well done ESPN.

But wait! THERES MORE! E-60 had another segment on “saacker”. 3 short documentaries. The first was about Clint Dempsey, the 2nd was a great emotional piece about the U17 girls national team from Haiti after the quake, and finally a 3min segment on the craziest par 3 19th hole in South Africa, where the Tee is at the top of a mountain, and the green is a thousand feet below.

Well done ESPN.