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Preparing for the Worst in FreeBSD
LiquidPC writes "In Part I of this series,
Michael Lucas, from ONLamp.com, goes over preparing your FreeBSD computer for the worst in case of a system panic."
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Where are the color-coded states of emergency? This is no respectable anti-panic plan.
Witness the rebirth of ENRON!
tcd004
Big_Scary_Daemons.html
Yep, that is the name of the page.
Michael Lucas lives in a haunted house in Detroit, Michigan
Maybe we could move the ghost to Seattle?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Panic 12 as described in the article is most likely a hardware fault somewhere on the mainboard. It is by far the most common cause of a panic on FreeBSD. Exchange mainboard, CPU and memory against working components and you are back up and running without the panics.
I'm a Sun admin by day, and Sun has always (since at least SunOS 4.1, when I started) made provisions to do this. I'll admit that I'm rarely cutting-edge with my Linux systems, so I haven't had any panics that I wanted to track down, so I don't know if Linux does this sort of stuff for you. I'm shocked that OpenBSD doesn't.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
"requires a bunch of preparation just to prepare". Yeah that's what sucks about preparation all right.
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
'Any' key? Where's the 'any' key? I see 'ke-tarl', 'esk', and 'pig-uh', but there doesn't seem to be any 'any' key!
Phew, all this computer hacking is making me thirsty.
come on, what kind of geek are you ? : ) there's always a technical solution to a social problem : ) what you need to do is go to www.smartin-designs.com/hosts_info.htm , grab a hosts file, modify it as needed, and wave bye bye to all the ads.......this works great for me, and kills a lot of spyware too.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
And you run Windows?
--Brett GLass
Very recently the head of our IT department decided that we were going to switch every one of our networks over to Windows XP Professional.
Windows is an Operating System, not a network. Your network probably "runs" TCP/IP, Netbios, and a handful of other protocols. Windows runs on desktops, laptops, and servers.
he decided to change all of the Computer Administrator passwords on a few of the XP Professional boxes sitting around in the server room. This caused absolute havoc, as Dell had failed to send along administrator passwords for the new boxes. Our company could not make use of these computers for three days. It took Dell that long to get us the administrator passwords.
This last paragraph is a touch more concerning...first of any Windows box I've purchased from Dell, or others, have no administrator password, or are set to "admin". Why would Dell have set specific passwords for your systems? I'm just a little bit confused.
On a related point, even for those systems that come pre-installed with an OS, it's [my] standard practice to bare-iron re-install from scratch. I'm not a huge fan of MS (quite the opposite), however, in the hands of someone who has a solid understanding in operating systems, it IS possible to build a stable Windows box. I have an NT 4 server, running a database, and a mail exchange, that has an uptime of 94 days. It was rebooted for a disk addition. It was up 86 days prior to that (it's installation date.)
That said, I prefer and use Linux and Solaris much more frequently, and, unlike the windows example above, am not surprised by the continued uptime of my hosts! ;)
Now, I've gotta ask...why did you just sit at your desk waiting for the bad news?? I've (and my VP) have recieved visits from MS cronies in the past. The thing is, those people are sales/marketing weenies. Get in on the meeting, and use your own skills to ask very pointed questions. Its not very difficult to run circles around these droids. Keep it calm, polite, and just bury them in the technical truths which they simply cannot refute. If they try to call you a "Linux zealot" you know you're on the right track, and they're in the process of losing their cool. As long as you keep it together, and don't let them change the topic, I've found that its pretty easy to expose others in my company to MS's shortcomings...right in front of MS folks themselves.
If you just sit back and let non-techs make tech decisions without, at least, making them aware of the ramifications of such things, then you really can't blame them. Its kind-of what they say about voting, right? If you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain?
Now, if you work in a super huge corporation where such things are a fact of life, I'm sorry, and you probably don't have a choice. Well...other than to extract yourself from between Mr. Rock, and Mr. Hardplace.
its on my machine at work, at home tonight
can post it up to a website later, I will
This is most likely a hardware failure, possibly memory. Try memtest86 before you go on a kernel debugging hunt... basically, if your server has worked great for 12 months and then craps like this it probably ain't software.
I mean c'mon. We get tons of mentions of .NET around here, talk about how Microsoft is only into closed source, etc. Now Microsoft actually releases 1.9 million lines of source code spread among almost 10,000 files that people can compile to get .NET up and running on their FreeBSD boxes, and Slashdot suddenly clams up about it?
Who can honestly say that this isn't a story of interest to a large amount of people here, whether they hate .NET or not? There's a lot of discussion to be had about it. Comparisons to Mono/DotGnu? The licensing details? The performance? Comparisons to Java on FreeBSD? To pretend it doesn't exist is just silly and does seem to call Slashdot's motives into question.
Well, for FreeBSD users who might be interested, I'll go ahead and post a link to a few articles about it myself, from O'Reilly's site who's been doing a pretty decent job of breaking it down: http://www.oreillynet.com/dotnet/. Discuss amongst yourselves. ;)
I don't know why I typed "OpenBSD", I knew it was "FreeBSD", I guess that my fingers were typing ahead of my brain. Sorry if I offended anyone.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Talk about hook, line and sinker! The mere mention of 'OpenBSD running on qaud processor systems' should have set alarm bells off in your little head.
As an OpenBSD user, I am well aware that it does not support more than one processor. Ooh you have been so trolled. Priceless.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
For more info, check out the FreeBSD Release Engineering Page
Disclaimer:
Yes, there's a slight chance you might come across some new bug in the 4.x tree; however, it's unlikely.
SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE A_WINNER = "YUO";
no ads at all. although on my windows box, I got this really useful error message:
anotherboguserror.jpg
after I wrote my new host table and disabled my DNS caching and putting in a static IP. The machine only has one NIC.
take that back, preview reveals the need to ad ssads.osdn.com for some of those slashdot ads.
I've been running two FreeBSD systems for over seven years each. I've had to do a grand total of *ONE* reboot that I can remember, aside from powering down to swap hardware, update the kernel, or to move the equipment.
It's a damn stable OS. One of these machines is a dual PII/400, serving 700-1000kbps day in day out, with hundreds of active TCP connections at any given time, starting 15-20 new processes per second. The other machine is for a single, fairly busy web site doing 700kbps traffic.
FreeBSD is rock solid. I have absolutely no need to plan for a kernel panic.
Oh your so so so wrong. A stop 0xA is purely driver bug. It typically occurs when it tries to touch pagable memory at high IRQL (like in a DPC) and that memory is actually swapped out in the swap file. That particular case is due to poor programming practice on the driver writter's part. They should have allocated that memory as non-paged. Also before they shipped that driver they should have run "verifier" with special irql checking enabled. (For those who don't know what verfier is, it is a built in tool that is used to test device drivers [old and new]. If you are running a Win2k or WinXP box just open up the run line and type in verifier. You will get this program. Unless you know what you are doing and have a kernel debugger enabled and attached I wouldn't fuck with its setting or you may be looking at a blue screen due to a bug verifier found and you may not know how to recover it [without reinstalling]) If you want a defination of all of the bugchecks and what each parameter means download the lastest debugger from http://www.microsoft.com/DDK/Debugging/default.asp and look in the help file.
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
Actually, I had one about 30 seconds ago, on this box, and oddly enough it's still ticking (quite strange). Of course I'm working on a device driver at the moment, so I know actually who's fault it is :)
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Oh, of course - the ksymoops! Man, I loved how *nix makes their commands so obvious.
Let me take it apart: ksymoops = "kernel symbolic oops". In general, if something starts with a 'k' on Linux, it's either inside the kernel or some part of KDE.
For another thing, how is it obvious that a "chair" is something you sit on while in front of a desk, other than the fact that you've been using the word since you were two? As you learn Linux debugging, you pick up its special vocabulary.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"To prepare for a kernel panic, you need the system source code installed. You need one (or more) swap partition that is at least one MB larger than your physical memory and preferably twice as large as your RAM. If you have 512MB of RAM, for example, you need a swap partition that is 513MB or larger, with 1024MB being preferable."
I've never been able to get a straight answer as to why the swap rule of thumb is double the ram. I guess that explains it, although since Linux puts the backtrace to the console and syslog maybe there is another reason as well...
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
The article is informative and clearly written, but crashdumps are more useful for determining kernel software problems than hardware ones.
If the system is a stable release, and has been running without crashes for about a year, I'd start by running diagnonstics on the hardware - specifically, memory and disk - before trying to debug the kernel.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
As usual, an ignorant post get moderated up, sigh. .NET article.
Here is your
It was correctly posted only to a section, since I don't think the average slashdotter will start compiling it, let alone show interest in it.
Wow, a well written, entertaining, somewhat original troll.
:-) Also, there was a Win2k box at work that had a sound card that NT 4 supported but Win2k and above didn't (and the company was out of business, so no future support was going to happen). Linux has and still does support the thing fine.
+1, Troll
However, because some of these points are valid, I'm going to respond.
"When my Linux machine crashed and I was unable to mount my root partition..."
In terms of troubleshooting capabilities, Linux is the best OS I've ever used. When Windows dies, all the techs I know just reinstall the thing, and if that doesn't work, wipe the drive and reinstall. There simply aren't any good diagostic tools, and if a crash happens during startup...well, how the heck are you supposed to know what caused it? If I can view and edit my initscripts, I *can* fix this. The main problem is that while you *can* fix almost any problem in Linux, it's also not necessarily easy, and you may spend a while reading up on things.
IE 5 *for Windows* is not more W3C compliant than Mozilla, and IE 6 is worse.
As for an "American OS", I wouldn't be suprised if large chunks of Windows are developed in MS's software dev branch in India, though admittedly I don't know for sure, and MS may have a keep-the-crown-jewels-at-home policy.
Windows *does* provide good game support. Better than Linux. My productivity has climed a bunch since getting rid of Windows.
As for NT and routing, my experience with trying to convince NT to handle Ethernet and a modem line at once have gotten me incredibly frusterated with Windows as a whole. The wizards are fragile (close a window when the wizard doesn't expect it and things start breaking, I reached a state where the entire networking component needed to be reinstalled or else it ignored all the numbers I was entering in to it...) Granted, the non-GUI wrapped interface to Linux routing is a little more complicated than in NT, but it's not that bad.
May we never see th
Okay, I'll bite. What "cool technologies" does MS provide?
".NET allows developers to build very powerful solutions around web services much more quickly". So what about perl and java? What are they?
7x performance? Bullshit. Yes, Java isn't fast, but the limiting factor with modern, good VMs (like IBM's) is *not* the CPU but the fact that it eats RAM like there's no tomorrow. Java generally runs more than 1/7 the speed of a compiled C program. You are not going to convince me that MS's newcomer C# compilers run 7 times faster than Java, which would be faster than C benchmarks.
May we never see th
The thing is that Linux was designed to be flexible. You want this kind of functionality?
echo "\"xwd -out screenshot\"\n shift + alt + printscreen" -e >> ~/.xbindkeys
And voila, you have the same functionality.
Of course, most Linux distros don't turn on all the bells and whistles by default...you get to find 'em.
May we never see th
Details: "BSD" has existed for almost twenty years. Today's BSD software -- BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X -- are derived from 4.4BSD-lite, the last public release from Berkeley CSRG. What is CSRG, you ask? Well, UNIX was originally developed at Bell Labs (AT&T), and AT&T released the source (sound familiar?) to academic and research institutions in the late seventies/early eighties. These groups did a lot to improve UNIX, but none did more than the Computer Systems Research Group ar Berkeley. They created the primary non-AT&T variant of UNIX, called BSD (Berkeley System Distribution). BSD played a huge part in the early years of the Web -- DARPA, the government agency whose ARPAnet was the precursor of the WWW, contracted CSRG to add TCP/IP support to BSD. BSD was the first OS to have integrated TCP/IP, actually -- it was the original Internet platform. BSD had a good number of other innovations as well, and the CSRG freaks added many loved/hated things to UNIX culture (such as Bill Joy's C shell and vi), but none is as significant IMNSHO as TCP/IP.
The CSRG was winding down in the late eighties, after DARPA funding dried up. They were going to call it quits, and decided to release the BSD source to the public. Well, there was still some AT&T code in there, so AT&T had a hissy fit and sued. Bottom line: CSRG removed the AT&T code., and "4.4BSD-lite" was released in 1994 IIRC, and it was that same year (IIRC) that Free- and NetBSD started becoming popular. This is 2002, so it is very possible that the poster has been using FreeBSD for eight years, and if he's referring to BSD as an OS family, it's quite obvious that he could have been using it for eight years.
Just because you're a clueless newbie doesn't mean that everyone else is!
Continuing my history of BSD... OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, created when Theo the Rat^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hde Raadt became enraged when fellow NetBSD developers would not give him the title of "Grand NetBSD Master of the World" and allow him to appear naked on the cover of NetBSD CDs. OpenBSD claims to be ultra-secure because Theo has personally read every line of code, but in truth it's really sort of amateurish and its "amazing" history of few exploits is due to the fact that its userbase is like five people, including Theo's dead mother and his dog Farmer, whom he has hot dog sex with.
BSDi, a company whose board included several original CSRG members, produced a 4.4BSD-based OS called BSD/OS (creative, eh?). This OS was used by many ISPs and webhosts, but the company is gone now. BSDi had bought Walnut Creek, FreeBSD's primary supporter and distributor, last year, but BSDi is now owned by Wind River, a small loser company that doesn't seem to know what the fuck to do with BSD/OS. (They don't even put their prices on the website. I emailed and asked. I was returned a Word document with a price list. A Word document! I mean, sure I use NT as my primary workstation platform, but they're not going to sell anything to the BSD nazis by writing a price list in MS Word!) I'm honestly not sure what the status or future of FreeBSD is at this point, but going to FreeBSDMall.com and buying some daemon crap certainly won't hurt.
SunOS, the kernel of what is today called "Solaris," was once BSD. Many choose to exclude this from their histories, but you cannot change the fact that SunOS was once the most popular BSD OS. (You do know that famed BSD hacker and possibly homosexual Bill Joy is Sun's Chief Scientist, right?) In a controversial move, Sun moved to a Sys V kernel in the late eighties, to help show solidarity with AT&T's goals of standardizing the many UNIX variants. AT&T soon stopped caring, and ownership of UNIX moved from Bell to Novell and then to SCO (just about bankrupt, eh?).
Today, UNIX branding is controlled by the Open Group, the official publisher of the UNIX specs and certifier of UNIX operating systems. It's because GNU/Linux doesn't pass the OG's tests that it cannot be called real UNIX. Real UNIX operating systems include Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Tru64/Digital, and UnixWare. Notice anything missing? That's right, BSD is not a real UNIX! UNIX specifies a SysV system, and since BSD-lite doesn't include any original AT&T code, no modern BSD has any ties to real UNIX. Nevertheless, this is a very hazy area from a legal standpoint, so the OG seems to have no problem in letting BSD users call their systems "UNIX." (Note the absence of any trademark/copyright marks.)
But back to BSD! The only other BSD system worth mentioning is Mac OS X. Mac OS X is really sort of a bastard, having a lot of fucked up Apple and Mach shit mixed in with its FreeBSD roots. System-level development is different than normal BSD system development. However, because it's similar from a userland perspective, you can call it Unix, I guess. If Apple is to be believed, Mac OS X has made "Unix" a major player in the desktop market. (And if you want to really think about that, and all of the Microsoft software that runs natively on OS X, it will weird you out!)
Today, *BSD truly is dying. I'm sorry, but it is. The market is fueled by business users' money, and business users often require specific applications, applications which only NT, UNIX, and GNU/Linux can provide. BSD will remain a nice platform to run Apache, but you're not going to see FreeBSD be a targey platform for many business projects. (Note: Sony Japan runs their website on FreeBSD, but that case can be safely ignored because they're crazy Japanese and can be counted on to rice-up even the best of computer systems.) FreeBSD developes have noticed this, and most have chosen to spend their time working on GNU/Linux -- which, while equally lame, at least looks better on a resume than BSD. (PHB: "FreeBSD? What's that? Oh, you've used Linux too! I read about that last year in PHB Monthly, the PHB's guide to buzzwords and trends!")
I hope that this post has been Interesting and Informative (hint, hint).
--
"Negative One, Troll."
A golden badge of honor,
worn on my penis.
FreeBSD-3.5 hemsut 7:07AM up 822 days, 06:32, 2 users, load averages: 1.17, 1.15, 1.10
What are you people complaining about?
So MS releases some source (seeing their .NET in serious jeopardy), which could in theory be compiled on different platforms. If someone went through the herculean porting effort, do you think MS would actually let you *run* anything or *distribute* anything, without some serious licensing fees? Don't fool yourself.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Because if it is then by all means spend time doing this. Else, just spend some money on better hardware - probably memory. The cost of that hardware is probably far less then the cost of your labor.
If you need to build an insto-recovery system for a network of identical machines, that is something different. By all means create an ability to rapid rebuild a blown system and recover the last incremental backup. But otherwise don't try to make a hardware problem into a software solution.
BSD goes back at least to the 70's, but not readily available due to difficultities with ATT.