heimic.net » Software

Ubuntu 11.10 iscsi setup

michaelf — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:23:17 +0000

If you need to setup Ubuntu 11.10 host as an iscsi client, check out the documentation here on how to do it.

All very easy to perform. Great to see some excellent documentation from the Ubuntu documentation teams.

New game – COD Modern Warfare 3

michaelf — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:14:43 +0000

My lovely wife purchased me a copy of COD Modern Warfare 3 for PC. So I will install this when I get home. Currently visiting wife’s parents in country NSW. I will be curious to see how game plays in … Continue reading →

Converting Kogan PVR ts files into mpeg streams on Mac OSX

michaelf — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:22:41 +0000

If you own a Kogan TV which has the PVR feature built in, did you know you can take those recordings and convert them into mpeg streams and/or other formats post removing of adverts on Mac OSX.

Software Required:

You’ve already recorded the program on your Kogan TV using the PVR feature. Now take the external drive used to record on and connect to the Macintosh. Copy the *.TS file from the media and place somewhere. I like to create a folder. Once copied, you can eject the media from the Macintosh.

ProjectX is now used to demux the *.TS (transport stream) file and this will produce some additional files. The two important ones are *.mp* and *.mp*.

Using MPEG Streamclip open the *.mpv file, now you can cut out the adverts and anything else, so your only got the program you want minus all the extra stuff. Use save as to save out the finished product. This will save out a *.mpeg file which can now be used to convert into other formats as required with other tools. i.e. ffmpegx etc.

Simpana 9.0 Service Pack 4a available for download

michaelf — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:14:31 +0000

If you don’t logon to Commvault’s Maintenance Advantage daily, you might not know that Service Pack 4s is now available for Simpana 9.0.

Simpana 9 – Check Readiness on Windows, Linux and Macintosh passes although backups fail

michaelf — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:05:34 +0000

Came across an interesting thing today and thought I would publish it, as it could certainly catch people out.

You’ll find the Client Readiness Check will pass on Windows, Linux and Macintosh clients (those I have checked so far), although you backup fails against the hosts with the error similar to below at the 5% mark.

Error Code: [19:599]
Description: Loss of control process ifind.exe.
Possible causes:
1. The control process has unexpectedly died. Check Dr Watson log or core file.
2. The communication to the control process machine wentx862k8-1 might have gone down due to network errors.
3. If the machine wentx862k8-1 is a cluster, it may have failed over.
4. The machine wentx862k8-1 may have rebooted.

And readiness check against the client will pass as per below;

It appears the readiness check doesn’t actually check all services/processes on the client required to perform the backup. i.e. In this situation, I killed the EvMgrC process, which is certainly required, it’s as important the cvd process for the client to function and be backed up. Without it, the backup will fail to work, however as you can see Readiness Check will pass for the client, as it looks like EvMgrC is not actual checked.

Of course it’s rare for this EvMgrC to be unavailable like this, however it certainly could happen and cause confusion when client readiness check is performed and clearly says everything is okay.

On Windows clients be sure to check that the essential services are running, and on Unix platforms run the following command to ensure the key items have an associated PID.

# cd /opt/simpana/Base
# ./simpana list
+---------------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+
| Service name                    |   PID   | Service command                  |
+---------------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+
| cvlaunchd                       | 4020    | /opt/simpana/Base/cvlaunchd      |
+---------------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+
| cvd                             | 4091    | /opt/simpana/Base/cvd            |
+---------------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+
| EvMgrC                          | 4085    | /opt/simpana/Base/EvMgrC         |
+---------------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+

Hope this helps anyone in the internet that might come across this. This type of failure can be seen with the following error message reported in the FileScan.log on the client too as outlined below, good indication of the issue probably being as described.

3044 be8 11/15 19:28:01 ### EvSocket::doConnect() - Could not connect to wentx862k8-1(wentx862k8-1):EvMgrC: Connect to 127.0.0.1:8402 failed: Connection refused

Although it appears that Windows clients appear to recover the EvMgrC process after a period of time, so it should correct itself, however not seen that same behaviour on Linux and/or Macintosh clients as yet. Will keep investigating if they too recovery it.

CommVault Simpana Linux client can backup but not restore

michaelf — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:37:36 +0000

Had an interesting issue with a Linux client that was running CommVault Simpana where it could backup fine but any attempts to restore would not work. Problem is the error indicate network/comms related. Although wasn’t the case.

Errors indicated kernel parameters, upon further investigation it was indeed kernel parameters. The errors in the logs are shown below for reference;

ClRestore.log
24346 407db90  11/09 12:20:28 105 [PIPELAYER  ]  Pipeline not Created Yet or is missing. retrying...
24346 407db90  11/09 12:20:46 105 [PIPELAYER  ] ERROR: Error: Received Message type=7 on sd=13
24346 407db90  11/09 12:20:46 105 CPipelayer::InitiatePipeline() - Error initiating pipeline!  plInitiatePipeline returned -1
24346 407db90  11/09 12:20:47 105 CCVAPipelayer::StartPipeline() - Failed to initiate pipeline
24346 407db90  11/09 12:20:47 105 CVArchive::StartPipeline() - Startup of DataPipe failed

And…

Cvd.log
12462 b7efd6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] IPCKEYS Path=//opt/hds/Base/Temp/1320798495_5482_55344016, curr=1, dest=2, topid=0
12462 b7efd6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] IPCKEYS key[0]=0x540e0055, key[1]=0x0a0e0055, key[2]=0x0b0e0055, key[3]=0x090e0055, ReaderKey=0x3b0e0055
12463 b7f4e6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] IPCKEYS Path=//opt/hds/Base/Temp/1320798495_5482_55344016, curr=2, dest=3, topid=0
12462 b7efd6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] ERROR: initIpc: shmget() err 22, flag 950, size 2007080
12463 b7f4e6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] IPCKEYS key[0]=0x540e0055, key[1]=0x0b0e0055, key[2]=0x0c0e0055, key[3]=0x090e0055, ReaderKey=0x3b0e0055
12462 b7efd6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] ERROR: plInitIpc: initIpc() fail err 22
12463 b7f4e6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] ERROR: initIpc: shmget() err 22, flag 950, size 2007080
12463 b7f4e6d0 11/09 10:28:15 ### [CVD        ] ERROR: plInitIpc: initIpc() fail err 22

I took another look at the kernel parameters set for some key kernel.* items;

kernel.sem = 500	64000	64	256
kernel.msgmnb = 65536
kernel.msgmni = 16
kernel.msgmax = 65536
kernel.shmmni = 8192
kernel.shmall = 0
kernel.shmmax = 0

Of course those last 2 caused me concern, got these modified and the the client could restore.

Turns out, the host in question although a 32bit Linux host with a PAE kernel had some how had the sysctl.conf that appeared to have values for these two kernel parameters with integers from the 64bit initscripts package. As such the values had been so large, that when applied by sysctl -p at boot, they wrap to 0. Hence the output as seen above.
From 64bit sysctl.conf file;

..
# Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes
kernel.shmmax = 68719476736

# Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages
kernel.shmall = 4294967296

From 32bit sysctl.conf file;

..
# Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes
kernel.shmmax = 4294967295

# Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages
kernel.shmall = 268435456

Anyways, problem solved. Talk about a bit of research and testing to find the culprit on that one. Don’t ask me how the host got the 64bit sysctl.conf, I can only assume they got pushed via a scripted change, as I can’t see a bug filed against initscripts for RHEL 5.7 for this. I can only assume it was introduced by script and/or manually.

Firmware upgrade on motherboard renders Windows 7 boot with BSOD

michaelf — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:38:55 +0000

I upgraded my motherboard firmware, and thought nothing of it. Turns out I should of been more concerned. Windows 7 now won’t boot and produces a blue screen of death (BSOD). Followed by the automatic reboot.

Oh well, been wanting to reinstall the Intel i5 system now for a few weeks on the account of some USB audio headset issues. So if the reinstall doesn’t resolve that fault, I will render the USB audio headset to the bin, and buy a new one.

Guess I got a bit of work ahead of me this week each evening. Glad I got a 2nd drive in the system, currently reinstalling onto it, and will pull the little data I had on the old system drive. Anything else needed is already on the 2Tb data drive in the system, which is not affected by the reinstall anyways.

Move over screen, we have a new player in town

michaelf — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:50:48 +0000

As long as I have used Linux, I have been a huge fan of GNU/Screen. Although it appears we now have a new player in town.

Let me introduce Tmux, highly recommend if you haven’t checked it out, do so.

I too just happened to stumble across a post by another blogger, at the link here which introduced this as an alternative. Had I not seen the post, I wouldn’t know it even existed.

Password Safe

michaelf — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 10:16:12 +0000

I’ve been using password safes now for a while, however I still hadn’t find the right product to work across the multiple platforms. i.e. I need something to work on a mac, pc, ipad and andriod based phone.

I’ve always been a big fan of KeePass, however just as of today I have gone back to using the simple Password Safe windows application. As I found that a neat iPad product pwSafe exists to read it’s files. In addition, the someone has made an andriod application too. Now I cant have the file available on all platforms. pwSafe can be upgraded for $1.99 to use Dropbox to grab the file and sync etc.

EDIT: The only compatible KeePass app I could find on iTunes was an old app that didn’t look great on the iPad. This was a factor moving away from KeePass format too.

Battlefield 3 – pre-ordered

michaelf — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 01:46:13 +0000

Finally got around to pre-ordering a copy of Battlefield 3. Purchased from ozgameshop. Which means it will take a few days to arrive post launch, but I’d sooner have a copy of the media, rather than download it.

Looking forward to playing this game. Still enjoying the Battlefield Bad Company 2, although I think I need a better mouse with more buttons. As I miss out on some knife kills time to time in game.