Defense of fundamental rights on the Internet
I was going to copy it, but lazy as I am, I think is more interesting to link it, as I'm not the original author and I don't have more much to add, so this is the link to Ana's blog entry «En defensa de los derechos fundamentales en Internet» (in Spanish), hey Ana! ;-)
English readers: if you want to know what this Ana's post is about, read this.
Migrating disk
I had in LJ the final story of the failed disk, so, having woken up in the mood of bloggin', it saves me a precious time :-). Lots of console output and boring stuff, you know, but here it goes:
The failing setup were two discs I synced manually from time to time, their partition table:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0003b1cf Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 122 979933+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 123 365 1951897+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 366 1581 9767520 83 Linux /dev/sda4 1582 24321 182659050 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1582 2189 4883728+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 2190 2554 2931831 83 Linux /dev/sda7 2555 2676 979933+ 83 Linux /dev/sda8 2677 24321 173863431 83 Linux
/dev/sda1 918322 445462 423864 52% / /dev/sda3 9614148 5303228 3822544 59% /usr /dev/sda5 4806904 3629392 933328 80% /var /dev/sda6 2885780 1107812 1748652 39% /opt /dev/sda7 918322 8256 861070 1% /tmp /dev/sda8 171134396 135680768 35453628 80% /home
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000a9eb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 134 1076323+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda2 135 620 3903795 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 621 2322 13671315 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda4 2323 60801 469732567+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 2323 3416 8787523+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda6 3417 3538 979933+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda7 3539 12170 69336508+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda8 12171 60801 390628476 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/md0 1059264 263360 742096 27% / /dev/md1 13456532 1703152 11069820 14% /usr /dev/md2 8649480 1365644 6844464 17% /var /dev/md3 964408 17632 897784 2% /tmp /dev/md4 68248448 184216 68064232 1% /opt /dev/md5 384497716 132355408 252142308 35% /home
-bash: /bin/su: Input/output error
That's today's message from bash. Fortunately seem's it's able to spawn it, su command and a bunch of others had not been so lucky.
The ps command is another of the lucky ones, an excerpt (hey! less also works) is highly insightful:
20292 ? S 0:00 sh -c $SMARTD_MAILER -s 'SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu' root 2>&1 << "ENDMAIL"?This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:?? host name: busgosu? DNS domain: [Unknown]? NIS domain: (none)??The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:??Device: /dev/sda, Read SMART Self-Test Log Failed??For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/syslog).??You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.?No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.?ENDMAIL? 20293 ? S 0:00 /bin/bash -e /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root 20301 ? S 0:00 run-parts --report --lsbsysinit --arg=/tmp/fileCJFXti --arg=-s --arg=SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu --arg=root -- /etc/smartmontools/run.d 20302 ? S 0:00 /bin/bash -e /etc/smartmontools/run.d/10mail /tmp/fileCJFXti -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root 20303 ? S 0:00 /usr/bin/mail -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root
Debcamp
So, finally here we are, after a 6 hour travel by car I arrived to DebConf 9 venue on Thursday afternoon.
Weather is marvelously sunny (as expected), but not as hot as the figures may suggest (36ºC at arrival, something less today).
Still a lot of people to come (DebConf starts next week) but nearly about 50 are already here, and growing.
Go virtual and die
Yesterday I got a interesting announce in my inbox: try our hosting solution for free during two months. The announce came from the nice people of Gandi, the registrar where I maintain my mones.org domain.
So far, so good. Applied and got my share in minutes. The features are not impressive, just the minimal: 256 MB RAM, 3 GB (system) + 5 GB (data) disk, 5 Mbit bandwidth and a 1/60th part of the processor, which is marketed as something between a Pentium III and Via C7 processor (not very informative).
What took most time was to wait the reverse DNS to be active because of my change of mind in the middle of the process :-). The system installed was Debian Lenny, of course, and took just minutes.
Less than 24 hours later you can see what happens, and I have not access to the server... despite I love the way Gandi does business those are not the things that inspire confidence in a hosting solution :-(.
As times goes by
It's amazing to check and see how much has passed since last post. Not that I had nothing to tell, but maybe not in the mood to do it. Anyway there's not much excitement in my life lately, but looking back seems it isn't going too bad.
The project we were working at is already at production stage, and with only two or three phone calls to solve minor issues so far, which is not common, as I've heard. This is something I, as a the project leader, am proud of, and not being wrong with all the work-hours invested in testing and bugfixing ;-). The client seems to be happy with the results, and a second phase is planned, so more work waiting for our group. This contrasts with the landscape in other parts of the company, and the rumors floating around fed by the bad economic situation. Currently we already started other project for the our regional government, so we can't get bored at work until the end of year or so... Anyway, if luck smiles to me, I'll be doing more interesting things by the next year: yesterday submitted a grant application for review. Grants is a R+D program to provide funds for innovative ideas within the company. My idea is not so new, but it will be fun to investigate how to replace our Windows based SOE (i.e.: the image deployed in our laptops and desktops) by a Linux based one.
Time for lunch now...
Facts and things that happen
Since last post...
back to vacation!
Getting older left me a nice flu as a birthday present. So nice that I had to take my first couple of sick leave days. The fever, which reached 39.1 Celsius degrees at some moment, didn't let me do other things than stay in bed and sleep (when possible). At the beginning of the week I was somewhat recovered, but today my throat still hurts slightly (probably because I've stopped taking analgesics as soon as fever disappeared).
Anyway I feel better now, and despite having missed the Claws Mail 3.7.0 released completely (no Spanish translation updates again) I can at least bring the Debian packages as a Christmas present ;-)
They're at experimental (claws-mail and extra-plugins), as previous ones, because required libetpan is still there.
This time it happened Sylpheed has released also a new version, namely 2.6.0, also in experimental now. On the other side the sylpheed-gtk1 package has been removed from Debian. I doubt someone uses it currently. Anyway, after the massive bug cleanup will let see if someone cares :-)
I have also a pending release of Clawsker, to support the new hidden preference in 3.7.0, but tomorrow we're going to visit Madrid for the weekend, so I guess it can wait until next week or even the new year! Going by car, I hope the snow and ice don't take part in the travel... wish me luck! :-)
14
Hint for subject:
final class Age {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println (java.lang.Integer.parseInt ("14", 32));
}
}
Lenny will rock you!
It took two months, but finally the hard disk replacement for the MacBook has come. Of course I'll think twice before ordering anything else from Alternate (ES), not to mention the fact they served the SD cards without micro adapter (which means they're useless to me)...
Anyway that was not the point. The point was, as you may have guessed, I tried the latest Debian installer for Lenny, which is beta 2 at this moment:
First, the niceness of jigdo downloading the first amd64 DVD image flawlessly and without a single retry.
Second, wodim burning it without error in a disc I had forgotten for two weeks inside the drive.
Third, being able to swap broken disk and the new one despite Apple's instructions to change it forgot to mention you need a very small torx screwdriver to detach the drive from the pulling tab it has (it's located deeply inside and the tab is necessary for removing it).
Fourth, partitioning and installing MacOS X... well, last time I tried dual-boot it didn't work at all, so I had to try again, and with a 320 GB disk using less than 10% for a proprietary OS doesn't look like a great loss ;-). Partitioning is a bit tricky, as detailed in the wiki, but the Disk Utility method worked fine for me. Scheme was 30-2-288 (more or less), you'll discover later why. Worth to mention that the MacOS X showed a lot of upgrades after setting up the wireless, including an EFI firmware upgrade (new boot ROM version is MB21.00A5.B07). I installed all of these before continuing.
Fifth, installing rEFIt, though this one has no trick...
Sixth, rebooting and installing Lenny beta 2 from the DVD. To run an encrypted system two partitions are required, one for /boot (unencrypted, bootable) and other for the encrypted filesystem, hence the two partitions defined. I forgot to add a swap partition, but a swap file can be added later. The uswsusp package will warn about lacking swap, but seems it does complain even if you have a swap partition. You have to avoid installing bootloader at this point, because MBR layout is not the same that GPT (which Disk Utility wrote), hence bootloader installer would be misled.
Seventh, rebooting and entering rEFIt's disk utility, which immediately offers to resync MBR to match GPT layout. Wonderful.
Eighth, restarting Debian installation again, having to reinstall, because the filesystem inside the big encrypted partition is not recognized and had to be reformatted. Not a great problem though. Finally installing grub in the /boot partition, and finish installation.
Et voilà!
Upon restart, rEFIt menu shows both MacStuff and the penguin, and both work fine... in fact I'm writing this from the new Safari in MacOS X, because the wireless card in Debian is still to be configured, but that's another story...
Note: if you're going to try this, first of all read the wiki like I did, it has been improved a lot.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!