Rescanning sata/scsi devices on non-hotswap capable controllers

January 12th, 2010

I wanted to use the hotswap tray I recently installed in my computer case, and easily plug in the 1.5TB disk to make a backup of the backup server, before reinstalling it in a couple of days.
When plugging in the disk, the Ubuntu system didn’t see it appearing, or at least, I didn’t notice or know where to look for it.

Looking around (googling) for a ’sata rescan’ I found a thread describing how to rescan the scsi/sata bus (as sata is seen by the kernel as scsi).
It quite simple, once you know which bus holds which disk…

It works as follows:

Become root:
sudo su
go to the directory for the host/controller in /sys/class/scsi_host/hostN where N is the number of the host

and issue this command:
root@ubuntu:/sys/class/scsi_host/host0# echo - - - > scan

in dmesg you will see the new devices found on this controller/host appearing, and the appropriate /dev/sdX device directives are created automatically.

Easy, no?

Posted in System Management, hardware, linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

TV Vlaanderen HD vs Telenet HD

January 10th, 2010

TV Vlaanderen broadcastst Eén HD and others. Apparently Eén HD is only 720p where others (like Discovery Channel) is broadcasted in 1080i, which is a noticeable difference, no?

The reason, someone told me, is that Eén HD on Telenet HD is actually 720p too, because Telenet just uses 720p for all its HD transmissions…

I’ll look into it further, don’t take this as ‘the thruth’, but use it as a guidance to be cautious and to not just believe everything Telenet tells you ;-)

Posted in MythTV | 1 Comment »

TechnoTrend DVB-S2 S2-3200 on MythTV

January 9th, 2010

Well,

after some testing and trying, it looks like the TechnoTrend S2-3200 is working quite well with MythTV 0.22, though I don’t have or use the DVB-S2 stuff yet… no dual LNB, no HD equipment, just testing for the future.

My Backend was running Ubuntu 9.04 with Mythtv 0.22 packages, which did find the card, but couldn’t use it.
I installed a test machine on an similar motherboard/config and used Ubuntu 9.10, and the card was detected. Switching the TVV smartcard over to the S2-3200 CAM/CI, I was able to scan and later tune in to the TVV encrypted channels!
Bottom line: Ubuntu 9.10, MythTV 0.22 and TT S2-3200 with TVV smartcard: working out of the box!

Update: Sander Van den Bosch has the same setup (kind of, also using the S2-3200 with a TVV subscription). He had an issue receiving the encrypted channels, and he asked for a little information (the reason I installed this testsetup and eventually did the upgrade on my ‘production’ backend). I tried, and he ‘copied’ what was successful for me, but he didn’t succeed in getting the same results.
In the end, he found out that his CAM (original TVV CAM) had an ‘old’ firmware, which wasn’t compatible… It seems my 2 CAM’s (also original TVV CAM modules) are ‘newer’… He used a Windows XP laptop to update the firmware, and succeeded in receiving the TVV encrypted channels! He was able to tune into Eén HD successfully!
Another happy MythTV – TV Vlaanderen user :-D

Posted in MythTV, hardware, linux, ubuntu | 7 Comments »

And then there was Zimbra!

December 9th, 2009

Zimbra, the collaboration suite, gives you a complete MS Exchange server replacement, as far as I can see.
Email, Contacts, Calendar, Documents, Tasks, … everything is in there!

There is an Open Source edition, where you can get the basics for free, without support that is, and can install it on a number of systems. According to Wikipedia and the FAQ it consists of a number of Open Source packages such as postfix, clamav, and such (full list is on the wikipedia article), combined to make a solid Groupware suite.

I recently re-started looking to replace the old Exchange 2003 system I’m still running in a VM, but was always confrontend with either a do-it-yourself approach (combining an mta, antivirus and antispam solution, some ical stuff,… myself), or a you’ll-have-to-pay-a-fee for a complete basic solution.

I knew about Zimbra, and had played a bit with it a couple of years ago. In the beginning of this year, I started looking at the Zimbra Desktop as an email client with integrated calendar and task management modules, because of the platform support. It has an installer routine for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and could easily replace Outlook and other proprietary email/groupware clients at some of the customers of the firm I work for.

The server side installation was done in a VM’ed Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS 32 bit running under VMWare Server 2.0. Installation is quite easy for the Open Source edition (and I presume that the installation routine is the same for all editions…?). You run the big installer package you downloaded, and answer a couple of questions regarding desired modules. It came to tell me a couple of dependencies weren’t met, which were easily installed through apt-get.
After the installer finished, it proposed me a list of settings. In this list, the installer required me to set an admin password, which wasn’t all that clear at first. I asked to quit, because I didn’t see what the installer needed. Seeing, after quitting, that it didn’t start the server daemons, I knew I missed something. I quickly did a reinstall of the package, and when the list was proposed again, I noticed the *** before the password line.
After setting the password, I could Activate the settings, which wasn’t possible before.
Once activated, the install routine ended with a start of all the services.

I redirected a browser to http://serverIP:7107 and was prompted for a username and password. I logged in with the details I entered in the installer, and got a nice and complete configuration module.
Setting up a user for myself, and fiddling around with the settings, the first installation was completed.

I changed my MX records to the newly installed Zimbra server, and noticed mail coming in… It was working.

Next up:
-setup another user to check calender sharing and such
-zpush configuration for Activesync based push email and synchronization
-export-import Exchange mailbox into the Zimbra server mailbox
-shutdown Exchange server VM at last ;)

I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Server Management, System Management, linux, ubuntu | 2 Comments »

MythTV 0.22 on Ubuntu 9.04

December 3rd, 2009

I had a major issue at home with my MythTV backend server… and off course, right before I was implementing a decent backup strategy.

I wanted to move to a Raid5 solution to increase speed and disk capacity, but wanted to do an Ubuntu 9.04 reinstall, move all data and config over from the old single-disk install, and keep running on settings and recordings already in the database. At the same time I wanted to upgrade the backend to Ubuntu 9.10, and use the newer MythTV 0.22 packages.

My install went pretty fine, using software Raid 5 on 3 disks I still had lying around (WD Raid edition SATA2), formatting the 500GB usable space as an ext4 volume, and installation of MythTV and other related packages was done without any issues. I started copying from the old single-disk setup to the new soft-Raid volume, and was almost done migrating. The configuration of MythTV through mythtv-setup couldn’t find my Technotrend S-1500 DVB-S card I used for months now, without any issues on Ubuntu 9.04… so I needed to have a look at that… but I even didn’t get to that point!
All of a sudden, the session over ssh was having some big issues, not finding commands, giving errors etc… Returning to the console, a lot of raid error messages were displayed, so a reboot and recover/rebuild was needed… the machine didn’t take any commands anymore… even a ‘halt’ or ‘reboot’ didn’t work…
When powering down and back up, the machine hung at the kernel loading, giving me a serious error not retrieving md0 anymore… Panic!!!

I disconnected my original disk, booted a Live session of the Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 cd (ext4 is better supported in 9.10 than it is in 9.04), and tried almost everything I know and could find about retrieving data from a faulty software raid volume… to no result…
I decided to do a fresh install on ext3 instead of ext4 with the Ubuntu 9.04 distro, to resolve the card-support issues I was having with Ubuntu 9.10, which worked out pretty fine again.
Card was detected, and scanning gave the results I expected.

I hooked up the original single-disk install SATA drive, and wanted to start copying the database, recording and settings files, but I wasn’t able to mount any of the original partitions on the disk. After some looking around on the disk, I found all partitions vanished! The disk was empty! Even more panic!!!!

Testdisk, an open source partition and data recovering program, had me regain access and information of the recordings partition, and I immediately made a copy of the data to my backup-server, but still no /etc or /var/lib/mysql to be retrieved to get access to the original database and settings… So I need to start from scratch, and convert the old recordings to standard mpg or avi files, so I can at least play them without info etc… That’s not the end of the world!

Now, the MythTV 0.22 upgrade part was going to be the hardest…, or so I thought.
In Ubuntu 9.04, the 0.22 MythTV packages aren’t available through the normal repositories…
I searched in google, and eventually found a page on the MythBuntu site that describes the necessary steps and packages needed to upgrade a 9.04 (or even a 8.10) Ubuntu distro with the MythTV 0.22 release…
The MythTV backend server was easily upgraded through the use of the MythBuntu Repositories package
After installing this deb file through dpkg -i, going into aptitude and doing an update/upgrade, the MythTV packages were upgraded to 0.22 automatically.

I tried connecting with my 0.21 based frontend machines (which run Ubuntu 8.04 LTS), but found that the database structure was changed in such a way the 0.21 cannot contact and use the 0.22 database structure… An upgrade to 0.22 on these machines is needed as well.

I installed the same MythBuntu Repositories package package on these 2 machines, and found it could only install the already installed 0.21 version. I needed to upgrade the distro to 8.10 or higher… I decided to go all the way up to 9.10…

The standard AMD based pc which resides in my living room and is hooked onto the beamer, is the easiest… if anything goes wrong, I can just reinstall it with 9.10 from scratch…, so I started with this one before messing up the MythBuntu 8.04 installation on the AppleTV in the bedroom (which is a lot more work to do a complete (re)installation).
Though not supported, I changed over the /etc/apt/sources.list hardy listings to karmic, and did an apt-get update followed by an apt-get upgrade and an apt-get dist-upgrade… I met a lot of errors installing or configuring packages, and needed to uninstall a lot of packages through aptitude, but eventually using apt-get dselect-upgrade and another apt-get upgrade and dist-upgrade, the machine eventually ended up booting fine with Ubuntu 9.10.
I installed the MythTV 0.22 packages through aptitude and ended up configuring the connection to the newly installed database on the backend. Two minutes , and some screen adjustments later, I was looking at LiveTV through the new 0.22 MythTV release!

For the AppleTV, I will follow the same things, but I’m making a full rsync of the complete filesystem first. If anything goes wrong, I can just rsync it back over it, and have the machine working again…

Now I just need to convert all recordings to a viewable format (mpg or avi) and change all the filenames so I know what recording is in what file… that will take another weekend to do so, I think.

First impressions of 0.22: faster, slicker, … but I didn’t see that many adjustments or changes… (except from the new theme stuff, which was the biggest change announced off course)

Next on the list: BACKUPS!!!! I have a backupserver giving me 2,3TB through NFS of which still 1,2TB is free, why wouldn’t I use it??? :p

More to follow later…
At least now, I’m up to date again…

Posted in AV/TV, MythTV, Server Management, System Management, hardware, linux, ubuntu | 6 Comments »

Arkeia free Enterprise Backup solution for Ubuntu

November 16th, 2009

According to this page found through this article Arkeia is providing a free license for their Enterprise grade Backup solution Arkeia Network Backup version 8.

The license includes 2 agent licenses for Windows, Mac OSX/BSD and Linux machines and the server software is included in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories.

I’ll install it on my server for sure!!

Posted in IT-news, Server Management, System Management, linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

Astaro Essential Firewall

November 16th, 2009

Astaro introduces an Essential Firewall Edition of the Astaro Security Gateway software firewall solution, which helps smaller businesses to secure their network, without having to pay lots of money.

As far as the news bulletin describes, the Essential version includes the normal networking stuff, including QoS, DNS Proxy, Statefull Packet Inspection, DHCP Server & Relay, and PPTP/L2TP vpn connectivity.

The software is available as an installation iso image, and a VMWare package.

The last one I will test this evening or tomorrow, so I can give you a detailed overview of the possibilities etc…

More info here.

Posted in IT-news, Security, hardware, linux | No Comments »

VMWare Server weird behaviour

October 27th, 2009

I’m in the middle of migrating my VMWare Server machine to lower-power hardware, after one of the disks in the old machine has been giving me lots of filesystem troubles lately.

Now, I installed an MSI AMD AM3 socket based board with a single dual core X2 240 (which has a TDP of 65W)on it, and 2GB DDR3 for starters (will be upgraded to 4GB or more afterwards), instead of the old Intel Pentium D930 which has a TDP of 95W. Added that I’m using the Western Digital Green Power drives now, that lowers the power requirements even further…

Now, when migrating the VMWare Server guest machines (a Windows SBS 2003, and 2 Linux machines), I noticed a weird thing: The Processor Usage window displayed a whopping 113740.00MHz, which would mean I overclocked the (standard 2.8GHz) 113,74GHz!!!!

I don’t believe it… do you?
See for yourself!Screenshot-VMware Infrastructure Web Access - Mozilla Firefox

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ubuntu 9.10 and MythTV

October 12th, 2009

I’ve been running a beta version of Ubuntu 9.10 for over two weeks now, with mixed feelings.
Updater tool isn’t really consequent about updating my machine, making me check updates again after installing them over and over again.
The overall performance of the machine, bootup times etc are great, but when loading Gnome, it always freezes when gathering my deskbar icons and settings, so there must be something wrong.
FPM2, the password manager I love and use, doesn’t “copy” the passwords anymore, making me have to ‘edit’ the entry, let it display the password, select and Ctrl-Ins it to copy it and use it in another application…
Firefox is version 3.5 by default now, but Astaro pre 7.5 firewall Config GUI’s have an issue with their drag-’n-drop functionality with 3.5, so I needed to get it out and install 3.0 again, which ran quite OK.

Now the best part is: I just received a ‘partial upgrade’ notification, letting me know MythTV has an upgrade waiting to 0.22… Nice!!!

I’ll be testing it with my 0.21 backend, and maaaaaybe, if I feel very lucky and adventurous, I might install it on the backend machine I have running here too…
I’ll keep you posted on my findings and the new things I find in 0.22 that are really worth mentioning!.

Mythtv is still advancing, though it took a while before 0.22 really got usable, it seems, but hey! I’m patient, I know they’re working hard to make it the best Media Center Software solution there is.
Keep up the good work! MythTV rocks!

Posted in MythTV, linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

MythTV EPG updating

October 12th, 2009

I recently had a changeover to TV Vlaanderen, as you might have read in my other posts.
Not sure if it was related, but I had some issues watching and recording programs, while the DVB Broadcasted EPG function was on.
I searched around for a decent solution that could pull the EPG data from the web, and as the good old xmltv grabbers for Belgium don’t work anymore, or at least they didn’t in june/july because of the source website blocking the grabbers from getting the info from their webpages, I stumbled upon mc2xml.

I got it all to work thanks to a script, I can’t remember where I got it from. Normal decency obliges me to post back my additions or changes (if at all…, don’t remember that part anymore either), which you can find under the seperate page EPG configs and scripts in my pages section.

Good luck and if you have additions, changes, remarks, … please let me know so I can adjust or complete my configs and post them back for others to read here.

Posted in MythTV, linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

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