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• Windows 2003 Storage Server Hanging on Large File Transfers

  - by user25272

  In one of our offices we have a Dell PowerVault 745N NAS device which acts as the main file server. Its running 32bit Windows 2003 Storage Server SP2 with 3GB RAM. The server holds around 60 users HOME folders, which are mapped via AD. The office clients are a mix of XP SP3, Vista and Windows 7. Occasionally the server will completely hang when transferring large files. When the hang happens the console becomes unresponsive with only the mouse active and blank wallpaper. Sometimes stopping the copy frees the server, sometimes not. The hanging can last around 20 minutes. During this time other servers also become unresponsive with blank wallpaper at the console. If you do manage to get onto another server the taskbar and run commands are unresponsive. This also transcends to the client computers sometimes with explorer crashing. I'm guessing this is due to the HOME folder mapping. Eventually the NAS server with free up and everything will be back to normal. The server is configured as follows: PERC 4/DC DATA 2 - 12 SCSI HDD - RAID5 SHADOWCOPY 2 SCSI HDD - RAID1 CERC SATA DATA 11 4 SATA HDD - RAID5 OS 4 SATA HDD - RAID5 All the drivers and firmware is up to date. I've been through all the diagnostics with Dell and the hardware has come up clean including full HDD tests on the arrays. The server has NOD32 installed as the AV, but the hanging happens when it is uninstalled. There are no errors in the event log when this happens and we don't have any errors logged on any of our ProCurve switches. DNS is fine on the domain and AD from what I can tell is running happily. There are no DFS or NFS shares setup either. All the shares are standard Windows. I've unchecked the allow the computer to turn off this device to save power box under Power Management on the NIC. "Set Link Speed and Duplex to Auto-negotiate 1000 " Increased Receive Descriptors buffer from 256 to 352 (reserves more CPU resource for handling data) I've run network traces using network monitor and have found the following: 417 8.078125 {SMB:192, NbtSS:25, TCP:24, IPv4:23} 192.168.2.244 192.168.5.35 SMB SMB:R; Nt Create Andx - NT Status: System - Error, Code = (52) STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND I've tried different cabling; NICs and switch ports all with the same result. Transferring files from other servers on the domain is fine. All I haven't done is run CHKDSK on the drives to look for any file system errors. On the Vista clients I have also run netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled with no result. Could it be that the server has a faulty drive or that the I/O is too much for it to handle? Any ideas why would the hang cause issues with the other servers on the LAN? Many Thanks.

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• Hot-swap drive got new name, can I change it on-the-fly?

  - by T.J. Crowder

  One of the HDDs in my server's RAID config failed, so I took it out of the array and had the data center hot-swap it. They've done that, but now the new drive is /dev/sdc rather than /dev/sda. I suspect — correct me if I'm wrong — that if I reboot the server, it will be /dev/sda again, so I'm hesitant to add it back to the array as /dev/sdc because I don't want to lay a trap for myself to fall into on the next reboot. I'd just as soon not reboot the server if I don't need to (if I do need to, well, too bad for me). Is there a way I can change the device name from /dev/sdc to /dev/sda without rebooting? This is on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It's an md array ("Linux Software RAID"), where currently one of the devices (there are a couple of them) looks like this ("degraded" because I've removed the old /dev/sda from it): # mdadm --detail /dev/md0 /dev/md0: Version : 00.90.03 Creation Time : Sun Oct 11 21:07:54 2009 Raid Level : raid1 Array Size : 97536 (95.27 MiB 99.88 MB) Used Dev Size : 97536 (95.27 MiB 99.88 MB) Raid Devices : 2 Total Devices : 1 Preferred Minor : 0 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Thu Jun 30 09:31:16 2011 State : clean, degraded Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 UUID : 496be7a5:ab9177ed:7792c71e:7dc17aa4 Events : 0.112 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 17 0 active sync /dev/sdb1 1 0 0 1 removed Thanks, Update: Reading through the kernel md documentation, I suspect that if the name changes on reboot, it won't matter. (Good design, that.) Here's why: Boot time autodetection of RAID arrays When md is compiled into the kernel (not as module), partitions of type 0xfd are scanned and automatically assembled into RAID arrays. This autodetection may be suppressed with the kernel parameter "raid=noautodetect". As of kernel 2.6.9, only drives with a type 0 superblock can be autodetected and run at boot time. The kernel parameter "raid=partitionable" (or "raid=part") means that all auto-detected arrays are assembled as partitionable. I do have md compiled into the kernel, so I'm rebuilding the array now and will do the reboot to see what happens. Even if it works, the above doesn't answer the question I actually asked, so unless someone comes along and answers that question in the meantime (I'd be interested, even if it's not necessary for what I'm doing this very moment), I'll just delete the question to keep noise down.

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• flashcache with mdadm and LVM

  - by Backtogeek

  I am having trouble setting up flashcache on a system with LVM and mdadm, I suspect I am either just missing an obvious step or getting some mapping wrong and hoped someone could point me in the right direction? system info: CentOS 6.4 64 bit mdadm config md0 : active raid1 sdd3[2] sde3[3] sdf3[4] sdg3[5] sdh3[1] sda3[0] 204736 blocks super 1.0 [6/6] [UUUUUU] md2 : active raid6 sdd5[2] sde5[3] sdf5[4] sdg5[5] sdh5[1] sda5[0] 3794905088 blocks super 1.1 level 6, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/6] [UUUUUU] md3 : active raid0 sdc1[1] sdb1[0] 250065920 blocks super 1.1 512k chunks md1 : active raid10 sdh1[1] sda1[0] sdd1[2] sdf1[4] sdg1[5] sde1[3] 76749312 blocks super 1.1 512K chunks 2 near-copies [6/6] [UUUUUU] pcsvan PV /dev/mapper/ssdcache VG Xenvol lvm2 [3.53 TiB / 3.53 TiB free] Total: 1 [3.53 TiB] / in use: 1 [3.53 TiB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ] flashcache create command used: flashcache_create -p back ssdcache /dev/md3 /dev/md2 pvdisplay --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/mapper/ssdcache VG Name Xenvol PV Size 3.53 TiB / not usable 106.00 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 128.00 MiB Total PE 28952 Free PE 28912 Allocated PE 40 PV UUID w0ENVR-EjvO-gAZ8-TQA1-5wYu-ISOk-pJv7LV vgdisplay --- Volume group --- VG Name Xenvol System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 1 Metadata Sequence No 2 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 1 Open LV 1 Max PV 0 Cur PV 1 Act PV 1 VG Size 3.53 TiB PE Size 128.00 MiB Total PE 28952 Alloc PE / Size 40 / 5.00 GiB Free PE / Size 28912 / 3.53 TiB VG UUID 7vfKWh-ENPb-P8dV-jVlb-kP0o-1dDd-N8zzYj So that is where I am at, I thought that was the job done however when creating a logical volume called test and mounting it is /mnt/test the sequential write is pathetic, 60 ish MB/s /dev/md3 has 2 x SSD's in Raid0 which alone is performing at around 800 MB/s sequential write and I am trying to cache /dev/md2 which is 6 x 1TB drives in raid6 I have read a number of pages through the day and some of them here, it is obvious from the results that the cache is not functioning but I am unsure why. I have added the filter line in the lvm.conf filter = [ "r|/dev/sdb|", "r|/dev/sdc|", "r|/dev/md3|" ] It is probably something silly but the cache is clearly performing no writes so I suspect I am not mapping it or have not mounted the cache correctly. dmsetup status ssdcache: 0 7589810176 flashcache stats: reads(142), writes(0) read hits(133), read hit percent(93) write hits(0) write hit percent(0) dirty write hits(0) dirty write hit percent(0) replacement(0), write replacement(0) write invalidates(0), read invalidates(0) pending enqueues(0), pending inval(0) metadata dirties(0), metadata cleans(0) metadata batch(0) metadata ssd writes(0) cleanings(0) fallow cleanings(0) no room(0) front merge(0) back merge(0) force_clean_block(0) disk reads(9), disk writes(0) ssd reads(133) ssd writes(9) uncached reads(0), uncached writes(0), uncached IO requeue(0) disk read errors(0), disk write errors(0) ssd read errors(0) ssd write errors(0) uncached sequential reads(0), uncached sequential writes(0) pid_adds(0), pid_dels(0), pid_drops(0) pid_expiry(0) lru hot blocks(31136000), lru warm blocks(31136000) lru promotions(0), lru demotions(0) Xenvol-test: 0 10485760 linear I have included as much info as I can think of, look forward to any replies.

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• Chrome Problems on Windows 8

  - by Akshat Mittal

  There are a lot of problems with Chrome (24.0.1312.14 beta || But all this happened before update also) on Windows 8. Problems and explanations are listed below: Google Chrome re-draw time: When I switch tabs, the window retains the content of the previous tab and displays that even if I move my mouse, if only refreshes (re-draws) when there is a change on the webpage (like on hover) or I do a select all (or scroll). One thing to note is that the hover and select happens on the real page and not the retained image-like thing of the older webpage. Chrome is slow and laggy: Websites such as Facebook and Twitter (and more) have gone extremely laggy on Chrome (Win 8). When I was using Windows 7, I never experienced a lag or something. Also when using HTML-5 Websites, the transition (the -webkit-transition in CSS) goes extremely slow at times. Plugins Crash: Plugins like Flash Player, Shockwave Player, and more that are in-built into Chrome Crashes a lot, even when doing simple tasks like playing YouTube Videos, displaying ads or something. Chrome Crashes: Chrome has crashed over 100 times in the past month. Google Chrome just crashes randomly or I don't know the reason. Random Page crashes: Chrome results chrome://crash/(Copy-Paste this in address bar) on random pages even when the page is just loaded, I understand that this can happen on heavy HTML5 or JS websites but what about HTML only websites! Most of the things above happens on Super User also, Super User never had any problem when using Chrome on Windows 7. UPDATE 1: @magicandre1981 Commented for trying to disable Hardware Acceleration. I tried it, it somewhat solved the problem but din't fix it. I am still experiencing all the above issues but less frequently (maybe because Chrome Restarted Completely) UPDATE 2: @avirk asked me to try a Stable Version of Chrome and Firefox, I din't experience any lag in Firefox, a little (negligible) lag in Chrome 22 (Maybe because its a new copy of Chrome, I haven't used it much). Is anybody else experiencing such issues? Does anybody has a solution to any of these? Any Help is appreciated! Thank You!

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• OS X server large scale storage and backup

  - by user135217

  I really hope this question doesn't come across as trolling or asking for buying advice. It's not intended. I've just started working for a small ad agency (40 employees). I actually quit being a system administrator a few years ago (too stressful!), but the company we're currently outsourcing our IT stuff to is doing such a bad job that I've felt compelled to get involved and do what I can to improve things. At the moment, all the company's data is stored on an 8TB external firewire drive attached to a Mac Mini running OS X Server 10.6, which provides filesharing (using AFP) for the whole company. There is a single backup drive, which is actually a caddy containing two 3TB hard drives arranged in RAID 0 (arrggghhhh!), which someone brings in as and when and copies over all the data using Carbon Copy Cloner. That's the entirety of the infrastructure, and the whole backup and restore strategy. I've been having sleepless nights. I've just started augmenting the backup process with FreeBSD, ZFS, sparse bundles and snapshot sends to get everything offsite. I think this is a workable behind the scenes solution, but for people's day to day use I'm struggling. Given the quantity and importance of the data, I think we should really be looking towards enterprise level storage solutions, high availability and so on, but the whole company is all Mac all the time, and I cannot find equipment that will do what we need. No more Xserve; no rack storage; no large scale storage at all apart from that Pegasus R6 that doesn't seem all that great; the Mac Pro has fibre channel, but it's not a real server and it's ludicrously expensive; Xsan looks like it's on the way out; things like heartbeatd and failoverd have apparently been removed from Lion Server; the new Mac Mini only has thunderbolt which severely limits our choices; the list goes on and on. I'm really, really not trying to troll here. I love Macs, but I just genuinely don't know where I'm supposed to look for server stuff. I have considered Linux or FreeBSD and netatalk for serving files with all the server-y goodness those OSes bring, but some the things I've read make me wonder if it's really the way to go. Also, in my own (admittedly quite cursory) experiments with it, I've struggled to get decent transfer speeds. I guess there's also the possibility of switching everyone off AFP and making them use SMB or NFS, but I understand that this can cause big problems with resource forks and file locks. I figure there must be plenty of all Mac companies out there. If you're the sysadmin at one, what do you use? Any suggestions very gratefully received.

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• Searching For a Desktop Security Software to harden Windows machines, anybody?

  - by MosheH

  I'm a network administrator of a small/medium network. I'm looking for a software (Free or Not) which can harden Windows Computers (XP And Win7) for the propose of hardening standalone desktop computers (not in domain network). Note: The computers are completely isolated (standalone), so i can't use active directory group policy. moreover, there are too many restriction that i need to apply, so it is not particle to set it up manual (one by one). Basically what I’m looking for is a software that can restrict and disable access for specific user accounts on the system. For Example: User john can only open one application and nothing else -- He don’t see no icon on the desktop or start menu, except for one or two applications which i want to allow. He can't Right click on the desktop, the task-bar icons are not shown, there is no folder options, etc... User marry can open a specific application and copy data to one folder on D drive. User Dan, have access to all drives but cannot install software, and so on... So far ,I've found only the following solutions, but they all seems to miss one or more feature: Desktop restriction Software 1. Faronics WINSelect The application seems to answer most of our needs except one feature which is very important to us but seems to be missing from WINSelect, which is "restriction per profile". WINSelect only allow to set up restrictions which are applied system-wide. If I have multiple user accounts on the system and want to apply different restrictions for each user, I cant. Deskman (No Restriction per user)- Same thing, no restriction per profile. Desktop Security Rx - not relevant, No Win7 Support. The only software that I've found which is offering a restriction per profile is " 1st Security Agent ". but its GUI is very complicated and not very intuitive. It's worth to mention that I'm not looking for "Internet Kiosk software" although they share some features with the one I need. All I need is a software (like http://www.faronics.com/standard/winselect/) that is offering a way to restrict Windows user interface. So if anybody know an Hardening software which allows to set-up user restrictions on Windows systems, It will be a big, big, big help for me! Thanks to you all

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• Use windows 7 inside virtual box,as guest i mean, to create a Windows 7 USB using "Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool" ? (Linux as host)

  - by Abel Coto

  I want to download the Windows 7 professional iso (x32), from microsoft, and , i can do two things. Or buy a new burner , as mine doesn't work (i am trying to decide what dvd writer i could buy) or use a usb dongle to copy the iso to it , and install it via usb. I want to install Windows 7 in a netbook that now has debian,and in my pc. I think i have to buy only the license for the pc , as the netbook came with windows 7 preinstalled, so i suppose that i can use that serial to activate the windows , although i don't know how to install windows 7 starter instead of professional (i think if you remove a file from the iso, windows let you choose the edition to install). The problem is that in both pcs there isn't any windows , only debian. My father has a netbook with windows 7 starter, but i think it hasn't antivirus (at least until have the Karspersky Internet security for 3 pcs bought ), and i don't trust to make the usb there , if i don't now that there isn't any virus or malware. So i am trying to find a way of Create a Windows 7 usb installation , to at least be able to install windows 7 in the netbook without a external dvd writer. I know that with dd in linux you can copy a debian.iso to the usb , and then install debian with it (i've done it) using something like dd if=win7.iso of=/dev/sdb, but i don't know if this would work for windows 7 iso,and if dd will correctly copy the iso to the usb. I suppose that if you are able to boot and install windows 7 from the usb , is that the method works,and you can forget of problems later with the windows 7 installation (problems because some files could not be copied or like). So , i remembered that Microsoft created a tool to copy the iso to the usb using windows. So i thought that i could install in my pc , virtual box , as i have VT and 8 GB ram in it, and download the iso from microsoft ,install windows 7 in the virtual machine , and then copy the iso inside the machine , donwload the iso tool, and atach a usb to the pc, connect it to the guest , and use the tool to copy the iso to the USB. But i don't now if is possible to use a virtual machine to do this , or the virtualization could give problems with the usb, or something. I have found some minutes ago this How to make a windows 7 usb flash install media, from linux? The first method (dd) is the one i like more , and i trust more ( i don't now if the second method using ms-sys , works well , and if i can trust it. I understand that a iso is like a .rar , but no compressed,only containing the files ,so mount the iso and cp the data inside perhaps is ok. Although the method i like more is the microsoft one (more because is from microsoft , and i suppose they now what they do ,at least with this usb related thing, than anything). Perhaps worth more to buy a external dvd writer haha ... Should the virtual machine method work ?

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• What the best way to recover from when your RAID H/W incorrectly thinks a disk is missing

  - by Software Monkey

  I have a Windows 7 system with an MSI motherboard (running the latest AMD BIOS) and two of my four disks (not the system boot disk) configured via the Mobo as RAID-1. After a normal system restart today, the RAID BIOS reports that one of the two drives has been disconnected or has failed. It's not really failed; via recovery tools I can verify that if I take the BIOS out of RAID mode. But I can find no way to re-add the second hard disk to the array and rebuild via the BIOS - the only option seems be to delete the array and recreate it, but I've done that once before and it blows away the disk. It's done this once before, however on a subsequent reboot after double-checking the drive cabling (but not changing anything) and it boot up fine. So I think the mobo RAID is a little bit flaky. At this point I would like to remove the RAID drivers, change to AHCI mode and switch over to using a Windows 7 dynamic mirror disk. But the RAID drivers seem somehow deeply bound into the Windows startup - I can't find anything like the good ol' safe-mode in Windows 7. If I boot from the Win 7 install disk in ACHI mode I can use recovery tools to log in to the Windows 7 installation, so the boot drive it seems fine with ACHI mode. Additionally, I can see all my other disks, run chkdsk on them and they seem to be fine. If I try to boot from the HDD in AHCI mode, it just reboots part way through, presumably because the RAID drivers load and conflict with the BIOS being set to AHCI. So: How do I strip the RAID drivers from my Win 7 installation? If I delete the RAID logical disk, will it really delete partitioning information, or is that just a poorly worded message when it says the data on the disk will be deleted? If I disconnect the 2 disks in a RAID array, then delete the logical disk array, and then reconnect and reboot still in RAID mode, will the disks simply revert to RAID single-disks like my other 2 and then maybe I can leave windows with RAID drivers by operate the disks as singles with 2 of them in a Windows dynamic disk mirrored setup? Does Windows 7 have anything like the Windows XP Repair Install, where it will reinstall the O/S binaries from CD, but leave apps and setup alone. I am really hoping I don't have to do a complete reinstall of Windows 7 - the last one, when I upgraded from XP, took me two days to get everything set up and installed.

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• Linux Software RAID1 Rebuild Completes, but after reboot, its degraded again

  - by zimmy6996

  I have been beating my head with an issue here, and I'm now turning to the internet for help. I have a system running Mandrake Linux, with the following configuration: /dev/hda - This is a IDE drive. Has some partitions on it that boot the system and make up most of the file system. /dev/sda - This is drive 1 of 2 for a software raid /dev/md0 /dev/sdb - This is drive 2 of 2 for a software raid /dev/md0 md0 gets mounted but fstab as /data-storage, so it is not critical to the systems ability to boot. We can comment it out of fstab, and the system works just fine either way. The problem is, we have a failed sdb drive. So I shut the box down, and have pulled the failed disk and installed a new disk. When the system boots up, /proc/mdstat shows only sda as part of the raid. I then run the various command to rebuild the RAID to /dev/sdb. Everything rebuilds correctly, and upon completion, you look at /proc/mdstat and it shows 2 drives sda1(0) and sdb1(1). Everything looks great. Then you reboot the box ... UGH!!! Once rebooted, sdb is missing again from the RAID. It is like the rebuild never happened. I can walk through the commands to rebuild it again, and it will work, but again, after reboot, the box seems to make sdb just vanish! The real odd thing is, if after reboot, I pull sda out of the box, and try to get the system to load with the rebuilt sdb drive in the system, and when I do, the system actually throws and error just after grub, and says something about drive error, and the system has to shut down. Thoughts??? I'm starting to wonder if grub has something to do with this mess. That the drive isn't being setup within grub to be visible at boot? This RAID array isn't necessary for the system to boot, but when the replacement drive is in there, without SDA it won't boot system, so it makes me believe there is something to that. On top of that, there just seems to be something wonky here the drive falling off of RAID after reboot. I've hit the point of pounding my head on the keyboard. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

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• Why Photoshop CS5's photomerge's result immediately disappear?

  - by koiyu

  I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function. I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there. When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always. Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally. This is what I've tried so far: Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above Loaded 5 JPG images, see above Loaded 3 JPG images, see above Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3 Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this) Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already Disabled OpenGL Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5 Read more unanswered threads around the internet In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge. Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this? Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6. Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues. This doesn't fix photomerge, though.

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• System failure - need diagnostic recommendation

  - by Ladislav Mrnka

  I have big problem with my computer. Configuration is: Intel i7 + 6x2GB OCZ DDR3 Motheboard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2, HDD controller configured to AHCI Main drive: OCZ Vertex 2 (SSD) - contains all installed programs and system Second drive: Samsung SpinPoint - contains User profiles, ProgramData, virtual machines and databases Third drive: Samsung SpinPoint - data drive + backups OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 I have never had any problem with this computer until now. During weekend my computer completely crashed without any reason. Each time I tried to boot to Windows I got BSOD with message BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO and automatic restart (I didn't install any new SW or HW). But after restart main OCZ drive was disconnected (not detected by BIOS). When I turned off and on computer, the drive was again connected. It also happend every single time I tried to repair installation somehow. It ended with some error and after restart drive was disconnected. The only thing which worked was format + fresh install. After installing almost everything I wanted to install Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (complete installation without SQL Server Express). During installation of VS itself I always get BSOD - it is too fast so I'm not able to read description. After restart it searches for all disk drives for really long time and sometimes it changes boot drive so the system is not able to start - Bootmgr not found. After reconfiguring BIOS the system starts. There is no event describing the failure in Event viewer. Installing VS 2010 is absolutely necessary for me. I need help with diagnostic. I need to find where is the problem - I expect that the problem is in OCZ drive or in HDD controller on motherboard but I don't know how to find it. All components still have valid warranty. Can you recommend me some approach or tools to find the problem? Edit: I'm still looking for source of the problem. New information is that Windows are not able to perform check disk (Chkdsk) on the SSD system drive. After restarting it always starts checking drive and in part where files are checked it fails with BSOD - BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO. After next restart and skipping check disk tests the system runs.

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• I want to virtualize my workstation (Tier 1), Looking for Bare Metal Hypervisor for consumer grade components

  - by Chase Florell

  I find myself in this similar bind at least once a year. The bind whereby I'm either upgrading a motherboard, or an OS hard drive. It drives me crazy to have to reinstall Windows, Visual Studio, all my addins, reconfigure my settings etc... every single time. I have a layout and I like and I want to stick with it. My question is... Is there a Bare Metal Hypervisor on the market that will enable me to virtualize my consumer grade workstation? I really want to avoid Host/Client virtualization. Bare Metal is definitely a better way to go for my needs. Is this a good approach, or am I going to suffer some other undesirable side effects by doing this? Clarification My machine has very limited purposes. My primary use is Visual Studio 2010 Professional where I develop ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. The second piece of software that I use (that's system intensive) is Photoshop CS3. Beyond that, my applications are limited to Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, LinqPad, and various other (small) apps. Beyond this, I'm considering working on a node.js project and might run ubuntu on the same hypervisor if possible. System Specs: Gigabyte Motherboard Intel i7 920 12 GB Ram basic 500GB 7200RPM HDD for OS 4 VelociRaptors in Raid 1/0 for build disk Dual GTS250 (512MB) Graphics cards (non SLI) for quad monitors On a side note I also wouldn't be opposed to an alternative suggestion if the limitations are too great. I could install the ESXi (or Zen Server) on my box, and build a separate "thin client" to RDP into the virtual machine. It appears as though RDP supports dual monitors. Edit (Dec 9, 2011) It's been nearly a year since I first asked this question. Since then, there have been a lot of great strides in Hypervisor technology... AND MokaFive is now released for corporate use. I'd love to dig into this question a little more and find out if there is a solid BareMetal Hypervisor for workstations running consumer grade components (IE: not Dell, HP, Lenovo, Etc).

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• How do I tell mdadm to start using a missing disk in my RAID5 array again?

  - by Jon Cage

  I have a 3-disk RAID array running in my Ubuntu server. This has been running flawlessly for over a year but I was recently forced to strip, move and rebuild the machine. When I had it all back together and ran up Ubuntu, I had some problems with disks not being detected. A couple of reboots later and I'd solved that issue. The problem now is that the 3-disk array is showing up as degraded every time I boot up. For some reason it seems that Ubuntu has made a new array and added the missing disk to it. I've tried stopping the new 1-disk array and adding the missing disk, but I'm struggling. On startup I get this: root@uberserver:~# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md_d1 : inactive sdf1[2](S) 1953511936 blocks md0 : active raid5 sdg1[2] sdc1[3] sdb1[1] sdh1[0] 2930279808 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU] I have two RAID arrays and the one that normally pops up as md1 isn't appearing. I read somewhere that calling mdadm --assemble --scan would re-assemble the missing array so I've tried first stopping the existing array that ubuntu started: root@uberserver:~# mdadm --stop /dev/md_d1 mdadm: stopped /dev/md_d1 ...and then tried to tell ubuntu to pick the disks up again: root@uberserver:~# mdadm --assemble --scan mdadm: /dev/md/1 has been started with 2 drives (out of 3). So that's started md1 again but it's not picking up the disk from md_d1: root@uberserver:~# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md1 : active raid5 sde1[1] sdf1[2] 3907023872 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/2] [_UU] md_d1 : inactive sdd1[0](S) 1953511936 blocks md0 : active raid5 sdg1[2] sdc1[3] sdb1[1] sdh1[0] 2930279808 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU] What's going wrong here? Why is Ubuntu trying to pick up sdd into a different array? How do I get that missing disk back home again? [Edit] - After adding the md1 to mdadm.conf it now tries to mount the array on startup but it's still missing the disk. If I tell it to try and assemble automatically I get the impression it know it needs sdd but can't use it: root@uberserver:~# mdadm --assemble --scan /dev/md1: File exists mdadm: /dev/md/1 already active, cannot restart it! mdadm: /dev/md/1 needed for /dev/sdd1... What am I missing?

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• Spotlight Infinite Indexing issue (external data drive)

  - by Manca Weeks

  This is an external drive, formerly a boot drive which is now in use only to access music files (sibelius, audio, midi, live, logic etc.) without transferring the data into a new boot system, partly because of the issue I am about to describe, but mostly because the majority of the data is mainly there for archival purposes. The user is a composer and prominent musician and needs to be able to rehash the data at will. I have tried several things - here is a list: - make complete filesystem clone with antonio diaz's ddrescue - run Disk Warrior on copy, repair whatever errors occurred - wipe out all ACLs on entire drive - set all permissions to the same value - wide open 777 - remove any system data (applications, system files, including hidden files to the best of my knowledge) by selecting only non-system/app data and using Carbon Copy Cloner to put only the data of interest onto a newly formatted drive - transfer data to newly formatted drive folder by folder, resetting the spotlight index in between adding each to observe for issues (interesting here is that no issues occurred except for in Documents folder - when I transferred only the Documents folder to a newly formatted drive on its own - no trouble. It appears almost as thought it may not be the content but the quantity or specific combination of data that results in problems) - use DataRescue to transfer the data to yet another newly formatted drive to expose any missed hidden files Between each of the above steps I stopped Spotlight (search for anything beginning with md in Activity Monitor - All Processes and quitting it), deleted the .Spotlight-V100 directory from the affected drive. Restart Splotlight indexing by adding drive to Spotlight privacy list and removing it. In each case the same issue occurs - Spotlight begins indexing normally (or so it seems), then the index estimated time increases, usually to 4 hours remaining. This is where it gets stuck and continues to predict 4 hours remaining but never finishes. Sometimes I can't eject the drive and have to quit the md.. processes from Activity Monitor to be able to eject the drive without Force Eject. Once I disconnect the drive after the 4 hours remaining situation - if I reattach it, Spotlight forever estimates remaining time and never gets going again. So there it is. It is apparently not a filesystem issue, not a permissions issue and not tied to any particular piece of hardware or protocol (used USB and FW drives). I have tried this on several machines (3 to be precise) and in 10.5.8 and 10.6.5. Simply disabling Spotlight on this volume is not an option because the owner has no clue where things are as the data on the volume dates back to music projects and compositions from 2003 and before. He needs to be able to query for results. Anyone got any ideas? Thanks, M

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• Why is domU faster than dom0 on IO?

  - by Paco

  I have installed debian 7 on a physical machine. This is the configuration of the machine: 3 hard drives using RAID 5 Strip element size: 1M Read policy: Adaptive read ahead Write policy: Write Through /boot 200 MB ext2 / 15 GB ext3 SWAP 10GB LVM rest (~500GB) emphasized text I installed postgresql, created a big database (over 1GB). I have an SQL request that takes a lot of time to run (a SELECT statement, so it only reads data from the database). This request takes approximately 5.5 seconds to run. Then, I installed XEN, created a domU, with another debian distro. On this OS, I also installed postgresql, with the same database. The same SQL request takes only 2.5 seconds to run. I checked the kernel on both dom0 and domU. uname-a returns "Linux debian 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.41-2+deb7u2 x86_64 GNU/Linux" on both systems. I checked the kernel parameters, which are approximately the same. For those that are relevant, I changed their values to make them match on both systems using sysctl. I saw no changes (the requests still take the same amount of time). After this, I checked the file systems. I used ext3 on domU. Still no changes. I installed hdparm, and ran hdparm -Tt on both systems, on all my partitions on both systems, and I get similar results. Now, I am stuck, I don't know what is different, and what could be the cause of such a big difference. Additional Info: Debian runs on a Dell server PowerEdge 2950 postgresql: 9.1.9 (both dom0 and domU) xen-linux-system: 3.2.0 xen-hypervisor: 4.1 Thanks EDIT: As Krzysztof Ksiezyk suggested, it might be due to some file caching system. I ran the dd command to test both the read and write speed. Here is domU: root@test1:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/dd count=5MB bs=1MB ^C2020+0 records in 2020+0 records out 2020000000 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 18.8289 s, 107 MB/s root@test1:~# dd if=/root/dd of=/dev/null count=5MB bs=1MB 2020+0 records in 2020+0 records out 2020000000 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 15.0549 s, 134 MB/s And here is dom0: root@debian:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/dd count=5MB bs=1MB ^C1693+0 records in 1693+0 records out 1693000000 bytes (1.7 GB) copied, 8.87281 s, 191 MB/s root@debian:~# dd if=/root/dd of=/dev/null count=5MB bs=1MB 1693+0 records in 1693+0 records out 1693000000 bytes (1.7 GB) copied, 0.501509 s, 3.4 GB/s What can be the cause of this caching system? And how can we "fix" it? Can we apply it to dom0? EDIT 2: I switched my virtual disk type. To do so I followed this article. I did a dd if=/dev/vg0/test1-disk of=/mnt/test1-disk.img bs=16M Then in /etc/xen/test1.cfg, I changed the disk parameter to use file: instead of phy: it should have removed the file caching, but I still get the same numbers (domU being much faster for Postgres)

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• Is there a Distributed SAN/Storage System out there?

  - by Joel Coel

  Like many other places, we ask our users not to save files to their local machines. Instead, we encourage that they be put on a file server so that others (with appropriate permissions) can use them and that the files are backed up properly. The result of this is that most users have large hard drives that are sitting mainly empty. It's 2010 now. Surely there is a system out there that lets you turn that empty space into a virtual SAN or document library? What I envision is a client program that is pushed out to users' PCs that coordinates with a central server. The server looks to users just like a normal file server, but instead of keeping entire file contents it merely keeps a record of where those files can be found among various user PCs. It then coordinates with the right clients to serve up file requests. The client software would be able to respond to such requests directly, as well as be smart enough to cache recent files locally. For redundancy the server could make sure files are copied to multiple PCs, perhaps allowing you to define groups in different locations so that an instance of the entire repository lives in each group to protect against a disaster in one building taking down everything else. Obviously you wouldn't point your database server here, but for simpler things I see several advantages: Files can often be transferred from a nearer machine. Disk space grows automatically as your company does. Should ultimately be cheaper, as you don't need to keep a separate set of disks I can see a few downsides as well: Occasional degradation of user pc performance, if the machine has to serve or accept a large file transfer during a busy period. Writes have to be propogated around the network several times (though I suspect this isn't really much of a problem, as reading happens in most places more than writing) Still need a way to send a complete copy of the data offsite occasionally, and this would make it very hard to do differentials Think of this like a cloud storage system that lives entirely within your corporate LAN and makes use of your existing user equipment. Our old main file server is due for retirement in about 2 years, and I'm looking into replacing it with a small SAN. I'm thinking something like this would be a better fit. As a school, we have a couple computer labs I can leave running that would be perfect for adding a little extra redundancy to the system. Unfortunately, the closest thing I can find is Dienst, and it's just a paper that dates back to 1994. Am I just using the wrong buzzwords in my searches, or does this really not exist? If not, is there a big downside that I'm missing?

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• Educate me - should I buy these prebuilt NAS (which is better) or make my own?

  - by user29336

  I'm trying to learn as much as possible, and I think I've learned quite a bit so bear with me here under my confusion. I found a coupe NAS setups. I'm not sure if one is better than the other, other than the price being higher on some, and some coming with drives VS not. Let me list my setup so you can get an idea of what I want to provide: Macbook Pro Macbook Mini for Media streaming (so far) Windows 7 Gaming Computer Xbox 360 I'd like to provide a storage system for all these devices so they can access files very easily, I'd also like any of these devices to be able to stream media from this storage system. I'd like this storage system to be hassle free in terms of my confidence in the data integrity. If a drive fails, I want to know that I can replace the drive and all my files will still exist. I'd like to access this storage system OUTSIDE of my LAN. If I'm out on a job for work I'd like to go in, or be able to have people DL some files. This brings me to a question, is this what iSCSI is? I'd like this data system to be able to download torrents. I want to mount any drive on this storage system onto my OSX laptop as if it were a local drive attached. (Is this with iSCSI is?) I'd like this system to have a GOOD web based GUI. I don't want to install software to use it. I believe those are the most of my requirements. If I'm missing something that I have no knowledge about, can someone educate me? Here are the systems I found: $729ish on Newegg Lacie 5Big Network 2 (comes with 5TB of space. iSCSI / mac compatible, torrents, nice ui, + others?) Is this overpriced for what it provides? It almost seems like a great deal to me because of the 5TB of space it comes with vs the other NAS systems that don't come with storage but cost $600-700. Should I get a different NAS system? Netgear? Others? Do they have same features? Better? Is it better to buy your own disks? What about making my own? I'm tech savy all around. It seems cheaper to buy a premade one especially with the support/warranty it provides...

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• System won't boot: Gigabyte HD 7790 1GB OC GPU issue or Corsair VS550 PSU issue?

  - by MGOwen

  Installed a new GPU, and PC won't boot. Turn it on and: No monitor signal at all (tried HDMI and VGA via DVI, on 2 working monitors). CPU and GPU fans DO spin, but No system beeps, no sounds from drives (they might make a small noise in the first 1 second or so, but there's definitely no OS loading or anything like that) If hit "power off" button it turns off immediately (no holding down for 3 seconds like usual) If I put my old HD 5670 GPU back in, everything works fine. But (plot twist!) card is not totally dead. My friend put it in his PC, and it works fine (he even played a game for 15 minutes, no issues). He has a Corsair TX850 850W and a Gigabyte MB. So my main theory is: the GPU isn't getting enough power from the PSU. But is it: Bad PSU? Seems unlikely, since it works fine with the other GPU. Also, the PSU Is brand new and 550W (single 42A/504W 12V rail). Overkill for this GPU. Corsair is a decent brand, but maybe just mine is faulty? Bad GPU? Could it be drawing more power than it should be, somehow, or something? Supposedly HD 7790 needs only 21A/75W on the 12v rail, though this one is factory overclocked a bit... but should that triple the power requirement? Something else? Could there be a motherboard incompatibility somehow? Both MB and GPU are less than a year old and PCI Express 3.0 x16. Things I've tried: Re-seating the video card Testing PC with old GPU (works fine, same PCIe slot). Checked AMD's stated amp/watt requirements of a 7790 and my PSU (see above). My PSU can output twice the amps (single rail) and 5x the Wattage a 7790 needs. Here are the full specs: Gigabyte HD 7790 1GB OC GPU Corsair VS550 550W PSU 4GB RAM AsRock H61M U3S3 motherboard i3-2100 500GB SATA HDD (2007-ish) blu-ray drive (new) PCI 802.11g card Edit: Motherboard BIOS Update seems to have fixed it. (If anyone has same problem and it doesn't work, comment here).

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• Model M Keyboard inputs incorrect characters after logging in to Fedora

  - by mickburkejnr

  I recently bought a 24 year old IBM Model M keyboard. From what I gather, it'd been left on a shelf for the last 5 years, so you can imagine the amount of dust dirt and crap that was on it. Before cleaning it, I plugged it in to my laptop (running Fedora 17) using a PS/2 to USB adapter. What I found was, while it still works, the keys I press don't correspond to what is displayed on the screen. So for example, when I type S on the keyboard, I get ß display on the screen instead. At the time, I put this down to the adapter not working properly. Since then, I stripped the keys off the keyboard and cleaned the whole thing. It looks like it's just come out of a box! I then plugged it in to my computer (also running Fedora 17) via a standard PS/2 plug. The computer loaded up to the login screen, and I typed in my password. Pressed enter, and I logged straight in to my machine. At this point, I opened up a text editor and started typing some stuff. To my horror, the keystrokes I was entering weren't coming up as intended. What came up instead were characters that would map to the pressed key but only under a different keyboard language setting. I opened up a program to see what keyboard language had been selected, and the correct one for the keyboard was selected (which is UK in my case). I opened up a window that would show what characters mapped to what keys, and I pressed every single key on the keyboard, and every corresponding block representing each key lit up. I went back to the text editor to try again, but I was still getting these random characters. Whats more is that the backspace key would not work, although in the other utility it would flash when pressed. What I know is that at the login screen the keyboard must have entered the correct characters, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to log in. Further more, keys that don't respond while using a text editor as sending signals to the computer, as illustrated in that keyboard utility. The question is why random characters are displayed when they really shouldn't be? Would this be a hardware fault or a software issue?

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• PC will POST whenever feels likes it

  - by kyrpas

  I'm really sick of my PC and I'd love to throw it off the 5th floor but unfortunately I don't have this luxury right now. The issues started when I moved to a new house about 2 months ago. I didn't have this problem before. Case: Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 with embedded Fusion 550 Eco 80 PSU. M/B: ASRock A790GMH/128M Gfx: ATI Radeon HD 5770 Here's what's happening almost on a daily basis: I wake up in the morning, switch on the PC and all the fans start spinning. 9/10 the graphics fan stays on 100% and I know it won't post. If I'm lucky, ATI's fan stays on full power for a second, then goes back to normal and I get a normal post but that doesn't happen often. No, instead it's just drives me crazy. When I get no POST I'm trying a lot of different things and what bothers me the most is that they all work. But not always. No... That way I could find out what the hell is going on and we don't want that.. right? So, sometimes it manages to POST if I: remove the keyboard remove the power cable for a few minutes remove the graphics card remove the HDD cables do nothing, just turn it on and off a few times Sometimes it doesn't POST even if I do all of the above. And I end up removing all power cables from the M/B, and connecting all the stuff one by one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I just have to pray and wait. What the hell is that? I'm getting pissed of again just thinking about it. The only solution is to leave it on 24/7 but I don't want to do that. It should be able to turn on and off when I press the power button. I'm not asking much. I'm starting to think there's some weird electricity/power issue but I really don't understand what it is. There's no logical explanation about it. At least I can't find one. Any ideas?

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• VPN Connection Causes Internal LAN Connection Loss with Server

  - by sleepisfortheweak

  I've tried configuring basic PPTP VPN at my small business using a number of different tutorials. As far as I can tell, the actual VPN connection worked fine, but upon connecting a client, the Server 'disappears' from the internal LAN. The RRAS service must be stopped before the connection is restored. My Setup: The network is simply a DSL Gateway/Router to the outside functioning as NAT/Firewall/DHCP. The server is a Win Server 2008 machine at fixed IP 192.168.1.200. The server has 1 NIC, so I used the 'custom' option when configuring RRAS. The RRAS settings should be default except that I've disabled ports for connection types I'm not using and reduced PPTP ports to 10. I've also created an address pool and disabled DHCP packet forwarding. The server only functions as a File Share and now a VPN Server. Local LAN computers all have mapped network shares to the server authenticated based on Local User/Group setup on the server. The Problem: The moment a client connects through VPN, the server 'disappears' from the local network. All mapped drives disconnect and there is no response to a ping 192.168.1.200. Even if the client disconnects, the server does not re-appear at that address until the RRAS service is stopped. I've Tried: Using an Address Pool inside and outside the local subnet. Using DCHP Relay Checking Inbound/Outbound filters (none enabled) The fact that nothing I've tried has had any effect, and that I can connect and successfully obtain an IP tells me that it's something more fundamental I'm missing. My gut tells me that it's something to do with the second IP address added by the VPN client somehow taking over the interface or traffic from the local LAN accidently getting routed to the VPN client instead of handled at the server once RRAS has become 'active' when a client connects. Hopefully this may be obvious to someone with real IT experience. I've been doing this a while and almost never been stumped. I'm starting to think it might actually be something tricky since my setup is pretty basic yet refuses to work. I'll be happy to include more info if this doesn't ring any bells right away for anyone. Thanks

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• Have a server, need to figure out a method of backup

  - by PolishHurricane

  My company has an older Dell 2650 server running ArchLinux x64: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/2650_specs.pdf (2 x 2.4GHz Intel Xeon w/around 3287 RAM according to "free -m") We use it to host our internal company site and to post some information from our orders to and we'd like the ability to keep it up as much as possible. What we require: - It needs to always be functional from 8am to 4pm for our data entry person to use it and others to do other things required on it. - If it goes down, we need a quick way to get the machine running again. - If it goes down, we would like to have the data backed up. Some of the major problems include: - The servers old and it may have memory issues - We don't know when one of the hard drives could fail - Our power goes out here once in a while We have a battery backup, but that's pretty much it and it's not for long term. If the server does go down, we have another system in place to store order information that comes in while it's down and repost it when it's back, but we need it up during the day. So we're wondering, what should we get for options? These are the things we thought of, sort of: Setup RAID 1, but that would involve wiping everything right? If we do that, how would we transfer the data over without messing up the server? We could buy an extra server or 2 off eBay for $100, the same model, is that practical or should we get something else? Should we buy a PC or another better server and host off that because it is if anything easier to exchange parts? Should we keep extra parts handy incase it implodes? Should we buy/use backup software? We hear drobo's are cool, but suck. Perhaps there is a software solution to this problem that backs up to another machine or gets us up and running again quickly. Also, if we are to purchase hardware, what is decent? Does anybody know of one for ArchLinux/Linux? We both know a ton about computers but we're kind of unsure what step to take with this, especially with this type of server. Thanks

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• Should I choose KVM/XEN over OpenVZ or use them together?

  - by Krystian

  I've got a dual xeon e5504 server, with [for now] only 8GB of ram. Storage is'n impressive either: 3x 146GB sas in raid5 + 500GB sata drives. Currently it works as a development server, but it's over speced for our needs and since our development methods changed through last 2 years we decided it will work as a production system for some of our applications + we would like to have a separate system for testing/research. Our apps are mainly web apps deployed on tomcats [plural as some of the apps require older versions] and connected to Postgres. I would like to have a production system, where only httpd+tomcat+db are setup and nothing else runs there. Sterile system. Apart from that, I would like a test system, where I can play with different JVM settings, deploy my test apps, play with tomcat/httpd settings and restart them without interfering with the production system. Apart from that, I would like to be able to play with different linux flavors, with newer kernels to test how they work etc. I know, this is not possible with OpenVZ and I would have to choose KVM for that. I am thinking about merging the two, and setting up a KVM to be able to work with different systems [linux only to be frank] + use openVZ to setup separate machines for my development needs. I would simply go with that, but reading here and there about the performance impact full virtualization has over containers and looking at the specs of my server makes me think twice about it. I don't want to loose too much performance, especially because of the nature of my apps [few JVMs running at the same time]. It will be my first time with virtualization, apart from using desktop virtualbox/vmserver. Although I am a fast learner I don't want to mess with the main system so much that it will break the production apps or make them crawl. Although they are more or less internal apps and they don't produce much load, they need to be stable. I've read, that KVM host is a normal linux installation and it allows to run normal processes on it. If that is so, does it allow to run openVZ as well? I mean... can I have KVM and OpenVZ running on the same system/kernel? Or do I have to setup another system to run OpenVZ containers? How much performance impact can this have for me? Will my hardware suffice? oh and one more thing... unfortunately I'm quite limited with the funds... I'm looking for a free solution only :/

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• How should we serve files in a small bioinformatics cluster?

  - by cespinoza

  We have a small cluster of six ubuntu servers. We run bioinformatics analyses on these clusters. Each analysis takes about 24 hours to complete, each core i7 server can handle 2 at a time, takes as input about 5GB data and outputs about 10-25GB of data. We run dozens of these a week. The software is a hodgepodge of custom perl scripts and 3rd party sequence alignment software written in C/C++. Currently, files are served from two of the compute nodes (yes, we're using compute nodes as file servers)-- each node has 5 1TB sata drives mounted separately (no raid) and is pooled via glusterfs 2.0.1. They each have as 3 bonded intel ethernet pci gigabit ethernet cards, attached to a d-link DGS-1224T switch ($300 24 port consumer-level). We are not currently using jumbo frames (not sure why, actually). The two file-serving compute nodes are then mirrored via glusterfs. Each of the four other nodes mounts the files via glusterfs. The files are all large (4gb+), and are stored as bare files (no database/etc) if that matters. As you can imagine, this is a bit of a mess that grew organically without forethought and we want to improve it now that we're running out of space. Our analyses are I/O intensive and it is a bottle neck-- we're only getting 140mB/sec between the two fileservers, maybe 50mb/sec from the clients (which only have single NICs). We have a flexible budget which I can probably get up $5k or so. How should we spend our budget? We need at least 10TB of storage fast enough to serve all nodes. How fast/big does the cpu/memory of such a file server have to be? Should we use NFS, ATA over Ethernet, iSCSI, Glusterfs, or something else? Should we buy two or more servers and create some sort of storage cluster, or is 1 server enough for such a small number of nodes? Should we invest in faster NICs (say, PCI-express cards with multiple connectors)? The switch? Should we use raid, if so, hardware or software? and which raid (5, 6, 10, etc)? Any ideas appreciated. We're biologists, not IT gurus.

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• Successfully concatenating multiple videos

  - by wiseguydigital

  My mission is to create videos out of old web slideshows. To start with I have jpegs and audio files that worked as Flash slideshows in an old system, structured such as this: Audio structure my_audio_1.mp3 (this file is a 3 second mp3 of silence) my_audio_2.mp3 my_audio_3.mp3 my_audio_4 etc... roughly 30 mp3s per slideshow Image structure my_image_1.jpg (this acts as the opening slide) my_image_2.jpg my_image_3.jpg my_image_4. etc... roughly 30 images per slideshow. As there are almost 100 slideshows that must be converted to video, I have created a web-based interface using PHP to automate the process, that sits on a local system and attempts to combine the files using shell_exec(). The process uses the following workflow: Loop through each slide and make an avi or mpeg. So for instance my_mini_video_2.avi would be a video that consists of my_image_2.jpg and has a soundtrack of my_audio_2.mp3. This slide would last the length of my_audio_2.mp3. Join / stitch / concat all of the mini videos to create the final video (Using a combination of cat and either mencoder or ffmpeg (I have also tried avimerge but to no avail). Transcode the new 'master' video to various formats such as flv etc. I thought this would be simple and have been close on many occasions but it still won't work. I can't get past stage 2 as I can't get a perfect 'master' video. I have now experimented with Mencoder, FFMpeg and seem to have been through every combination I can think of. The problem is that the audio and visuals never sync, no matter what I try. Also, I have even tried created audio-less mini videos, joining the MP3s into one long MP3 using both cat and mp3wrap and then assigning the new long MP3 as the audio track, but this always produces either a very short file or a badly slowed down file and makes the female voiceover sound like a male boxer!!! There appears to be no problems at all with the original files. Does anybody have any experience in producing a video successfully from the same kind of starting point? Or any ideas on what I may be doing wrong? As an example: If I create silent mini-videos, and stitch them together into 'temp-master.mpg' and then join the MP3s together into single MP3 called 'temp-master-audio.mp3', the audio file's duration is 09:10 and the video file's duration is 08:35. They should be the same and the audio will seem sloooow. I haven't posted code as I have written lots and lots of combinations.

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