I had a rather brutal lesson in LVM recovery last week. I had four SATA disks in an LVM VG, one of which failed. Despite the failed disk *not* being the first drive in the VG, all the LVs in the VG were toast. Why? Because when I created the LVs, I striped them over the two disks that … Continue reading Recovering a striped LVM volume group… or not
Author: Vic Cross
A hard disk failure last week caused a big issue for the Crossed Wires admins. The drive was a WD, and they're not necessarily off the purchasing list because the drive failed: disk drives are mechanical devices, and especially the consumer-level ones are not indestructible. The reason they're off the purchasing list is that I had to … Continue reading Western Digital off the purchasing list
In chasing my VNC problem I came across this reference on the kernel Bugzilla about a general problem with segfaulting on SMP AMD64 systems. Some pretty ugly stuff (the comment list is huge!). Anyway, guys are chasing suspected bugs all over the place, with a couple of theories but not really any firm leads... Then, Linus (Torvalds, … Continue reading Linus, you da man
I like Gentoo Linux, but sometimes I find it's not really applicable for some of what I'm using it for. Like my main server. This machine is one of the two machines at my place that just HAVE to work (the firewall/phone server is the other), and there's been a few instances recently where Gentoo has let … Continue reading Gentoo Linux wastes a bit more of my life
My first (and at this stage only) podcast has commenced. I've created zCast, a podcast on the IBM zSeries and System z9 mainframe systems. Point your podcast-subscription weapon-of-choice at the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/zCast) and give in to the magic (or at least sit back and enjoy).Who knows: this could be the start of something big. I could become the … Continue reading My podcasting career commences!
Some would call me a late adopter, but I've become a great fan of Aunty's Media Watch (Aunty is the ABC, or the Australian Broadcasting Commission, for those not from Oz). The program provides a reality check for the print media as well as news and current affairs programs on television and radio. Compulsory viewing in my … Continue reading Abandoning tabloid journalism
We are really biased toward Open Source Software at Crossed Wires, especially when it looks as good and performs as well as Cacti. Cacti is a performance graphing tool that is really polished and sophisticated, and looks set to displace MRTG here.You might be aware that I've been using MRTG for graphing network traffic and system … Continue reading Cacti gets a run
Newly added to Crossed Wires is the Cool Sites navigation section. You'll see it at the left of the screen. Here I'll place links to some of the cooler stuff I surf through. Don't forget about the Other Blogs section at the right hand side, also!
If you've ever looked at our photo gallery (http://veejoe.com.au/gallery) you would probably notice that it's a little bit "update-challenged". Like the blog, you might say. Ha. This update problem should soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a little bit more free software.Our photo gallery operates using the wonderful Gallery software (http://gallery.menalto.com). It has its own methods … Continue reading Updates to the Photo Gallery
If you're like me, you'll be fed up with the trash that commercial TV serves up, and too cheap to pay for Pay-TV (it's still just TV, right?) An alternative, albeit audio-only, is available through your personal music device. Thanks to iTunes 4.9, I've discovered the marvel of "podcasting". For those who aren't familiar with the concept, think … Continue reading Podcasting
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