Author: Christian

Stuttgart

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On Monday I finally got to do an expanded test drive with my shiny, new car (that is driving it up from Stralsund down to Stuttgart). I really can’t complain, the fuel consumption is like I expected (~6.6l/100km while driving between 160 and 180km/h), the noise while driving that fast is quite low (as in you hear the engine but you don’t really consider it noise) and the acceleration is nearly like the one of a F1-car 😛 (at least I’d wish 😉 ). Spent the evening relaxing from the near 950km nonstop trip (yes, only had one stop to put some fuel back into the car), had nice curry (my cousin’s husband made yummy potato curry!!!).

On Tuesday I nearly spent the whole time on a boat driving down and up the Neckar (that’s the river flowing through Baden-Wuerttemberg), being lazy, lying in the sun for 5 or 6 hours, spent time talking to my aunt and to my cousin while trying to listen to the music fluttering out of my iPod nano (“Autobahn – Linke Spur”).

On Wednesday I got up rather late, helped my aunt picking up her car from the car dealer (they had to fix the air conditioner and did the yearly inspection). Afterwards my brother and I went of to see if we could find a nice and gooood bed pour moi at Ikea in Sindelfingen (yes, I admit it .. I like IKEA too 😮 – which turned out rather, err, shite. I didn’t find a bed pour moi, but I picked up a couple of bookshelf’s and a 2,20m’ish CD/DVD shelf.

On Thursday, I had my complete lazy day. Woke up around 9am, went downstairs to see my brother and my cousin’s husband and his parents were already awake. Ate breakfast till 11am and sat around on the sofa for a few hours and waited till my aunt and my cousin would wake up. In the afternoon I went to see my other uncle and aunt, did some catch-up with them, played a bit with their cutie cats (they are like 9 months old). Afterwards we went shopping for some Maultaschen for my brother’s host family in Belgium/Eupen. Went onwards to see my other cousin’, his wife and his cute lil’ daughters. That was my lil’ four day vacation in Baden-Wuerrtemberg …

Vacation

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Here’s just a note for you people out there, how’re crazy enough and want something from me in the next week (that’s 18th till 26th June):

I’m on vacation …

Means I won’t be around to fix anything (as I’m gonna try and relax a bit), so if you encounter something that you want to fix; consult with the herd (that’s apache/hardened/kernel …) and/or fix it YOURSELF. Just make sure you don’t break it more 🙄

Continuing on SLES10

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OK, it turns out that I was rather stupid when configuring the my.cnf. As it turned out, the effect I was seeing was due to the presence of two log-bin lines, which looked like the following:

And some lines down there was this:

Now the next thing I encountered was while importing our old databases (they are like 1.1GiB each, 25 databases total). The second MySQL Master (and his Slave) will choke as soon as you dump the data too fast into the first Master, as the binlog seems to be too big for MySQL to transfer it via TCP (smth like “Packet too large – try increasing max_packet_size” in the error-log; only problem was that max_packet_size was already at 1GiB which is the absolut maximum for MySQL 5.0 according to the handbook).

A way around this (thanks to a co-worker who pushed me towards this road) is disabling all the MySQL Master/Slave stuff in your my.cnf, start the mysql daemon as a simple, dumb database, import all your databases, stop the mysql daemon; tar up the whole BASEDIR and scp/rssh it to your second master.

Clean out the BASEDIR on the second master, untar your tarball, edit your my.cnf again to include the whole Master/Slave portions on both boxes and you should be up and running 😀

I haven’t run any tests on the MasterMaster replication yet, but I’ll do that as soon as I’m at work again (which is the 27th June, as I’m off for vacation since yesterday, yay!)

Back at SLES10

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Here I am, sitting at my desk on a Thuesday evening thinking about what happened the last few days.

  1. I finally got to play around with our PacketPro 450 Cluster (nifty LoadBalancing appliance)
  2. We reworked the network the way *we* want it (and not that tool of a wannabe sysadmin)
  3. We mostly figured out how to do the LoadBalancing right, we just need to find some bugs in the LoadBalancer software (like the thing is failing over to its slave from time to time, but keeping the IP address for himself) or let the guys at teamix do their work and hopefully get a working release within the next week or so
  4. I figured out how to setup interface bonding with SLES10 (it was quite straight forward, thanks to the excellent in-kernel documentation), and we’re using an active-backup mode for now
  5. I still need to figure out how to do the MySQL Master<->Master replication right .. I’m currently building fresh RPM’s on one of those Dell blades (yes, they ROCK!) which will hopefully be finished till I’m at the office tomorrow.
  6. Pt. 5 also includes figuring out how to pass MySQL a custom location for the binary-log, at least that’s what the handbook says in Chapter “5.11.3. The Binary Log” …

When started with the –log-bin[=base_name] option, mysqld writes a log file containing all SQL commands that update data. If no base_name value is given, the default name is the name of the host machine followed by -bin. If the basename is given, but not as an absolute pathname, the server writes the file in the data directory. It is recommended that you specify a basename; see Section B.1.8.1, “Open Issues in MySQL”, for the reason.

That behavior works for –log-bin-index (like log-bin-index=/mysql/binlogs/$HOSTNAME.idx), but doesn’t for –log-bin. *shrug* I’ll see if that is fixed with something >5.0.18 (that’s what SLES10 currently ships).

I’m also looking for a network topology drawing program (possibly free), as Microsoft Visio (either 2003 or 2007, Standard or Professional) is nice, but still can’t draw shit correctly. So I stumbled upon yEd, which seems to look nice (I haven’t yet looked at it, but will tomorrow) that hopefully gives me the opportunity to draw/visualize my setup at work 😯

Progress with apache-2.2

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We’re finally making some progress with apache-2.2. It left the package.mask on the 8th of May (that’s like 3 weeks from tomorrow), we split some helper scripts into a separate package (app-admin/apache-tools).

I already fixed a few screwup I did myself (like apxs missing from either apache and apache-tools, or the compatibility symlinks being missing), so we “just” need to fix all the modules in the tree before apache-2.2 is going to get the new stable version (and of course anything else depending on. What also remains to do, is committing the new-style virtuals for bug 11007.

Also apache-1* is going to get removed from the tree pretty soon now (like starting next month 12th iirc). Now if anyone is going to start again, about apache-1* being “sooo” great and “waaay” better then the 2.* series, it may be yes.

But the point is, we (as in the apache team) needs to maintain it. Some other points include:

  1. We don’t have the manpower and/or time to maintain it any longer
  2. We don’t have the slightest interest anymore in apache-1, which hasn’t seen a release in about a year (July 2006 was the last release)

So, if you want to keep it around, either grab it from the attic at anoncvs.gentoo.org/sources.gentoo.org or copy it to an local/whatever overlay now, as its still in the tree.

Personal progress

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Well, I haven’t blogged in ages (like about a month).

To answer some of the questions I got either via mail or on IRC …

  1. yes, I’m still alive; you ain’t gonna get away that easy 😛
  2. yes, I finally managed to buy my shiny new car
  3. I’m still working on apache, virtualization, mobile, kernel, hardened …

Though I may haven’t been that active recently (I don’t look at CIA or do I count my own commits), I think I managed to close some apache bugs and some of my own. I’m still looking for someone interested in working on the ipw3945 related packages, as I’m kinda sick of that buggish thing.

On the (kinda) bright side of life, work has been a real blast the last few weeks. I started designing a new cluster/fail over system for our web server, also planning on buying some more hardware (as in 2* DS4700, a Cisco MDS9506, and some thin clients) which will require some interesting, additional work.

I finally got that backstabbing BAOH ( kinda like “BOFH – bastard operator from hell”, it’s my personal bastard administator from hell) off my back, and I’m finally able to do some work 😯 !

My life is still a bit messed up, as is my nutrition; but it’s all getting better 😆 (thanks to a kind person, who’s been telling me that I’m all cute and adorable 🙄 ) Thank you !!

Bla-bla-bla, yada-yada-yada

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Interesting title … *shrug* I’m sitting back home, in my bed, while I’m supposed to be at work. I’m now a certified sicko due to a common cold.

Watching the toaster series once again (that’s Battlestar Galactica) and trying to think about some things. Heh, well thinking isn’t the right term; it’s more like meditate over stuff happening in the last few months.

Guess this stupid cold is dictating my weekend 😡 and hopefully I’m gonna be better on Monday. Have fun.

grub via serial console

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As I have quite some trouble every time I need grub via serial console, here’s just my personal reminder on how to do it right:

Additionally the agetty entry for ttyS0 in /etc/inittab needs to be uncommented and changed accordingly to the serial speed

Saying thank you

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As I’m way better writing stuff than saying it with my own words, here a short “Thank you!“

  1. Christel, you have been a gracious and honest person, thanks for all the advice and help in the last year
  2. Chrissy, thanks for the inspiring words, you really made/make me feel better
  3. Alec (antarus), you’ve been a real friend and to say it with your own words “It sucks to be you”; to phrase it differently, I’m really going to miss you
  4. Bryan, thanks for all the help, thanks for all the fun at FOSDEM (and after FOSDEM, hah)
  5. Ned, Alexander (pappy); you’ve both been an inspiration, thanks for letting me work on hardened foo; it has been real fun
  6. Mike (vapier), thanks for being a smart ass and inspiration at the same time
  7. Chris, thanks for the inspiration and for being a sarcastic person 😉
  8. Andrew, thanks for trying to make a fun out of me 😛 and thanks for warning me of Chris’s sarcasm

The Letting Go (why does it hurt so much ?)

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As some of you know, I had some company the last few weeks by two amiable girls from Belgium. We did some hanging out, went out a couple of times and basically had a great time.

One thing I didn’t thought was possible, is them getting close to me (as in “I’d really like them to stay some time”) and as I gave them a ride to the train station yesterday, I really had my problems. Out of the sudden I had a feeling not to let them go, or is it the feeling to let friends (and I’m talking about real friends) slip by, without even knowing them for more than 3 weeks.

Well, it’s too late now; they are back in Eupen by now (hopefully 😥 ) and I’m probably never gonna see them again.