05.09.08
Posted in Computing, Linux at 11:28 pm by DeusExMachina
Checked the system logs yesterday and saw a bunch of write errors. Checking the RAID status showed this:
# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md1 : active raid5 hdg[2] hde[3](F) hdc[0]
398296960 blocks level 5, 32k chunk, algorithm 0 [3/2] [U_U]
unused devices:
Normally, the last part of line 3 shows [UUU]. The underscore means it’s a bad drive. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly when the drive fails, which just illustrates the need to have some kind of log monitoring. Ok, so now I have to figure out how to get EVMS to replace a drive. I want to do it as quickly as possible because another drive loss means a total loss of data. Which brings up another good point: RAID isn’t a substitute for backups (which I’ve been delinquent in doing). So I went to to my local Fry’s to get a replacement drive, but they don’t seem to make 200 GB drives any more. I ended up getting a 250 GB but the array will only use 200 GB of it. The other caveat is that the failed drive is IDE and the replacement is SATA. Will it work? In theory it will, I guess I’ll find out soon. Oh yeah, and I hope I pull the right drive out (they all look the same in the case). This is why making backups is a good idea. Meanwhile, changing out drives means shutting down the system. There goes my 81 day, 13 hour up time.
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12.08.05
Posted in Linux, Ramblings at 8:02 pm by DeusExMachina
So GCC has just released a new stable version, and a major revision at that. What this means, if you’re using a source-based Linux distribution (I’m using Gentoo), is that you get to sit here for hours watching compiler text scroll through your terminal window. Here’s a sample of what you’d see:
gmake[2]: Entering directory `/var/tmp/portage/doxygen-1.4.4/work/doxygen-1.4.4/src’
g++ -c -pipe -Wall -W -fno-exceptions -O3 -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -I../qtools -I../libpng -I../libmd5 -o ../objects/ce_lex.o ce_lex.cpp
It’s not quite 1’s and 0’s as you might expect, in fact, it looks almost human readable, almost. So all you can do is sit in front of your computer since most of your CPU’s cycles are being spent literally rebuilding the operating system from the ground up. Before I scare away all the potential Linux users out there, let me clarify that you only need to do this for certain types of Linux (source as opposed to binary based systems), and that I wouldn’t bother going through all this work if there weren’t a (real or perceived) benefit.
Anyway, seeing as how I’m so totally bored, I figured I’d actually work on this dumb website. I’ve been trying to figure out what the theme of this blog should be, or if there should be one. And now I’m faced with a bit of a conundrum: I probably won’t be motivated to do anything interesting unless it becomes somewhat popular, but on the other hand, it won’t become popular unless there’s something interesting on here. That’s assuming I’m underestimating the human need for inane chatter. I suppose time will tell where we go with this.
So, this closes the first post on this new blog, nice to get it out of the way… longest journey… single step… and all that good stuff.
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