Author: Christian

metadata.xml

Christian 2 Comments

So I ended up cleaning out some retired (~20) people from metadata.xml, where I found this interesting piece of metadata.xml:

And here the hint for all you people again: A DAMN HERD AIN’T NO MAINTAINER. SO IF YOUR HERD IS MAINTAINING A PACKAGE, PUT IT INTO <herd> and not into the <maintainer>. kthnxbye.

To be or not to be …

Christian 3 Comments

… that’s the question. I’ve been thinking lots and lots about my involvement with our “beloved” distribution.

I talked to some of the users (that is Gordon), some fellow developers (hello Christina, Łukasz, solar, Jorge, Anders) about whether or not I’m actually still wanted and/or needed. Turns out, the collective opinion is, that I am fun to have around (*shrug* don’t ask me why, I don’t find myself particularly funny/amusing) and that’d I’d be the person to have around.

That being said, I still do have some things on my agenda (they haven’t changed .. like getting healthier – as in heading to the gym; getting a better paid job; getting my own life; getting some friends), which are going to jockey with those Gentoo interests.

Integrating Windows XPe into Active Directory

Christian Leave a comment

As the guys over at FreeWyseMonkeys demonstrated with JoinDomain.zip, it ain’t hard to integrate a Windows XP Embedded system into Active Directory.

You basically need this:

  • A system powered by Windows XP Embedded
  • netdom.exe (from any Windows XP – SP2 in your MUI language)
  • some know-how, on how to use netdom to integrate it into your AD

Everything else is already present on the Windows XP Embedded systems I’ve seen. Then let’s get it on !

First, copy over the netdom.exe to your XPe, and then run the following command:

Here as a note:

  • ud and pd is a User/Password inside your Active Directory with the permissions to create new computer accounts
  • uo and po is a User/Password with administrative rights on the Windows XP Embedded device

After that, you just need to reboot, Et Voilà! the system is present in your Active Directory. Just be aware, if you’re using a localized Windows XP Embedded by Wyse, make sure to contact your fellow Wyse Support, as the is a bug with the MUI stuff needed for the domain logon.

Also, as yet-another side note: The default Administator password is mentioned in this Knowledge Base entry.

Backup solutions

Christian Leave a comment

Well some people apparently completely *don’t* understand the use of a backup client like dsmc, additionally they don’t seem to have the slightest clue on how to draw up a “clever” backup solution.

Lemme describe the situation for you. We do have two Solaris systems at work, housing our mailing system(s). Now apparently, people are unable to install the Tivoli Storage Manager Client on Solaris (or get it working properly – which people are blaming on the software not working).

Now, they draw up this insane plan … We do have about 900GiB of mail space, which is currently located on our SAN. So people decide, they don’t want the backup client on their system, as it’s slow (which I do agree to, dsmc is *slow* for large amounts of data – especially if it’s 900GiB in 15MiB parts).

So they think of something like this:

  • Attach a second disk to the mail system
  • The mail server then creates a tar file (at which iteration I can’t say, but from the size of the volume, I’d figure once a day) on the secondary disk
  • The mail server exports said disk via NFS
  • Another, semi-independent system then imports said disk via NFS, while also housing the Tivoli Storage Manager client, to backup that big tar-file …

So much for *well* planned backup solutions ……… 😆

OCFS2 follow-up

Christian Leave a comment

OK, it turned out that said colleague wasn’t responsible at all. Turns out, the *real* trigger was me creating a new volume on our SAN, on the same array that houses the OCFS2 volume.

Apparently, during creation of an additional SAN volume, all other SAN volumes in this array are either read-only or delayed during that time, as you can see from the following log:

OCFS2 fun yet again

Christian 1 Comment

I’m coming back today from a six day vacation in the warm south (that is Stuttgart), back at work and find three sheets of paper on my desk. Two tell me something I haven’t done yet, the other one tells me something I haven’t seen yet.

One of my colleagues had to restart one of our web nodes and now the thing can’t mount the logging volume (and thus, logrotate / awstats failed to do it’s job). OCFS2 ain’t spitting any error messages, when trying to mount the volume you see it joining the domain the volume belongs to on the other nodes, so from a first glance at things .. nothing is wrong ?

One thing I’ll have to add is, that you can’t reboot the box cleanly (as in you have to use the power button, so I figure something is either stuck or something is malfunctioning ..) *shrug*

Zend Optimizer again

Christian Leave a comment

Well, I happen to be back at my favorite application. Today I stumbled upon a “nice” thing. If you turn on the Zend Optimizer (doesn’t matter whether it is 2.6.2 or 3.3.0), one of the TYPO3 back ends ain’t showing *any* content in the preview pane. Once you turn the Zend Optimizer stuff off, it works without a problem.

O RLY ?
O RLY ?

And as Zend stated on their “Support Forum“, they don’t really support the Zend Optimizer stuff in the first place. Which is nice, what for do you need the Zend Guard shit in the first place ??

Well, so I do have two options now:

  1. Disable the one plug-in, which really needs the Zend Optimizer (as it also features the Zend De Guard engine – or whatever you want to call it)
  2. or risk some other things breaking due to the Zend Optimizer engine not working (correctly) with php-5.1.2 (which is rather old considering 5.3.0 is in development right now)

But I will see about that tomorrow …

YA RLY!
YA RLY!