Posts Tagged ‘General’

Following on from my article on Setting up and Managing Raid1 on Ubuntu Server, I have been testing the raid using a VirtualBox VM.

Today, I took the VM, consisting of an OS drive (with Ubuntu Server installed) and 2 drives set up in raid 1 configuration and created a new OS drive, replacing the existing OS. The intention is to test inserting a new OS drive, re-installing the OS and getting the raid working again without loosing any data.

Useful Reference the mdadm man page

I installed the OS and installed mdadm as per the instructions in my previous post.

All commands are issued as root / sudo

So let’s see if can obtain any information about the raid, we’ll see what it knows about sdb1 which was part of the raid 1 with sdc1:

mdadm –examine /dev/sdb1

It successfully detects that the drive has a superblock and knows that it was part of a raid with /dev/sdc1. See the last two lines of the output.

So lets try to re-assemble the raid.

mdadm –assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

It responds saying /dev/md0 has been started.

So now we only need to create a mount point

mkdir /raid

and mount it

mount /dev/md0 /raid

We have successfully mounted the raid so let’s now put an entry in fstab so it mounts at startup.

nano /etc/fstab

add

/dev/md0           /raid          auto     defaults        0      0

reboot and all should be working.

Laptop has gone back again, with a loose bit of something inside. My warranty ran out on the second, but I called the day before. Phew. Well we’ll see what happens. At least I can still surf on my g1.

I currently have a thecus 2100 nas box with dual drives in raid 1 which is on 24/7 and is autobacked up to whenever my laptop or the wifes laptop is on.  It would be great to use this box as an SVN server, maybe a torrent server,etc but I really don’t want to connect it directly to the net / port forward, as I have no idea how secure the linux os that is installed on it really is.  Although firmware upgrades are available, they do not appear frequently enough to ensure that the box is secure and is not affected by the latest vulnarability.

A better solution would be to just run a pc, with unbuntu server etc on it, I can stick any services I see fit, apache, print server / svn etc. (thecus box uses the web server for the admin interface) but finding a small form factor, low power device that will take tw0 3.5″ sata drives is a challenge.

The MSI Wind Nettop might be it….. (Removing the XP crap first of course)

CPU	. Intel®  Atom230™ 1.6GHz
Operating System	. Windows® XP Home Install Super Free Linux OS
Chipset	. North Bridge: Intel® 945GC chipset . South Bridge: Intel® ICH7 chipset
LAN	. Gb LAN
Memory	. DDR-2 533MHz SDRAM, SO-DIMM
Wireless	. 802.11 b/g (optional)
Storage	. 160GB, Support two SATAII device
DVD	. DVD Super-Multi
Card Reader	. 4-1n-1 card reader socket, SD/MMC/MS/XD (optional)
I/O	. D-Sub VGA x 1, USB 2.0 × 6, Mic-in × 1, Headphone-out × 1
Audio	. Audio x 6(7.1 channel)
Power	. 65Watt Adapter
Dimension	. 300mm(H) × 65mm(W) × 240mm(D)(without Bezel) . Volume: 4.7 Liter

It supposedly supports 2x 3.5 sata drives, which is perfect and draws a measley 35 watts…..

1. DVD Super-Multi 2. Power Button & PowerLED 3. Headphone-out 4. Mic-in 5. USB2.0 6. Card Reader Drive (Optional)

1.	VGA Port
2.	USB 2.0
3.	LAN Jack
4.	DC-IN Jack
5.	Audio Jack x 6

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7788810.stm

Oh did I laugh…..

The importance of teaching your kids honesty, integrity and giving them a sound knowledge of right an wrong is paramount to a child’s upbringing….
[quicktime width="320" height="250"]/wp-content/uploads/dscn0703.mp4[/quicktime]
if it doesn’t show click here

[quicktime width="320" height="250"]/wp-content/uploads/dscn0704.mp4[/quicktime]
if it doesn’t show click here

I was emailing a friend today on my ipod touch, which at the best of times has a dodgy keyboard, even with the pre-emptive spell checking.  The wife called, and I put the touch down on the chair. When I got back to it, the unfinished email had been sent (by a careless swipe across the screen I guess).

I hastened to retype the email I was sending, and apologised:

Sorry, I suffer from Premature Salutation

It’s the Aids of the internet generation…..

I’ve added a gallery of images that IMHO make good desktop wallpapers. They are mostly optimized for 1680×1050.
See them here

Please feel free to comment on the quality or lack there of, of the photos.  If you like any and decide to use it as your desktop please let me know.

The last line is fantastic, a masterpiece..

Ordered a G1 today from T-Mobile. Although the web site has not been updated yet, you can get it on a reasonable tariff if you ring them.  I opted for the Combi £15 plus the obligatory £5 web’n'walk plus – On this tariff it only costs £99.99 upfront for the phone.

Options available according to the details they gave me were:

Tariff                    Monthly  Phone cost   
Combi15 + WebWalkPlus     £20      £99.99
Combi25 + WebWalkPlus     £30      £69.99
Combi30 + WebWalkPlus     £35      £49.99

Jono, former LugRadio presenter has ventured into proving that the Music Industry’s current business model is not the model of the future.  He aims to prove that a band/musician, can utilise the marketing power of the internet, Creative Commons Sampling+ License, and a completely different revenue model and be successful. 

Jono is Severed Fifth, “a music project designed to explore how far a musician can take his music with the new economics of the music industry.”

The first Album, “Denied by Reign” is available today, and I encourage you to download the album, listen and if you like what you hear, support Jono and as a thank you for his excellent contribution to the audio world buy something from his store. (I assume it will be up and
running on the release day, otherwise he’s made a mistake in his business model).