Solaris 10 x64 and Symbios SYM22801 (and other LSI SCSI controllers)
Today I’ve discovered that the very common Symbios 22801 (aka Symbios Logic 53c875) SCSI controller is (unexpectedly) failing to be recognized by Solaris 10 on x64 hardware. In fact I was in the middle of the upgrade of my home backup infrastructure from an old DLT 20/40 to a newer DLT 40/80 to be connected to a Symbios card inside my Solaris box. Unfortunately after the reboot, the new card was unseen.
Bacula mail changer script (aka poor man’s autoloader)
I enjoy Bacula for automated home backups on DLT and DDS tape drives. Being used at home there’s no – obviously – big-dollar-company-manager to ask for an autoloader; and when the time of a tape change comes bacula lacks a simple way to request a manual tape change and just hangs up. So I managed to build a fake autoloader shell script, which, using emails, would emulate a real autoloader. This script, which I baptised mail-changer, features:
- email support
- periodic email resend when tape change is needed
- tape detection and check (if you’re supposed to insert tape 4 and you enter 5, the script will kindly refuse the tape, unload it and send a warning email message asking for the right one)
Nagios nrpe and sudo: “NRPE: Unable to read output”
On CentOS 5 (and RedHat EL as well), you can encounter the following behaviour when configuring an nrpe plugin with sudo:
[andrea@feyd ~]$ /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nrpe -H 1.2.3.4 -c check_md_raid
NRPE: Unable to read output
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Bash delirium (delirio in bash)
f1() { :; }; f0() { f$((${#1}==0)) "${1:1}"; echo -n "${1:0:1}"; }; f0 'dlrow olleh'; echo
MusicBrainz not working with Amarok on Fedora 8
On my Fedora 8 system with Amarok I was trying to fill an mp3′s tag header using MusicBrainz, getting the following error:
Tunepimp (MusicBrainz tagging library) returned the following error: "Fingerprinting of .mp3 files is not supported."
To make it work, just yum install libtunepimp-extras-nonfree
SSH X11 forwarding issue
Recently I’ve been in an awkward situation with ssh and X11 forwarding, where ssh using the classic -Y (or -X) switch wasn’t working (DISPLAY was not set):
[andrea@duncan ~]$ ssh -Y root@thufir
root@thufir's password:
Last login: Sat Apr 12 23:30:09 2008 from ***
[root@thufir ~]# echo $DISPLAY
[root@thufir ~]#
If you are experiencing the same and your sshd_config looks fine (which means TCP and X11 forwarding is already enabled) then the answer is missing xauth!
On RedHat yum install xauth will do the trick
Solaris 10 si3124 backport (workaround for bug #6566207)
Do you think you can get a fast cheap SATA mass storage at home with Solaris 10 and ZFS just plugging a cheap si3124 controller?
Not so easily: on Solaris 10 you will be afflicted by some boring bug known as bug #6566207 which gets your controller stuck for around a minute after some heavy I/O.
seq equivalent
On platforms without seq (MacOSX, Solaris), you can emulate it using dc as follows (note the upper bound and the lower bound):
echo '[1+pdupper bound>aq]salower bound 1-lax' | dc
For example:
alia:~ andrea$ echo '[1+pd5>aq]sa0 1-lax' | dc
0
1
2
3
4
5
alia:~ andrea$
