Stas Sushkov Journal | √♥=fsck!

Migrating ZFS pools from FreeBSD to (Open)Solaris

By Stas Sushkov | July 3, 2009

I had some issues with the pools created on FreeBSD (7.2-8) with ZFS (version 6 to 13) when I tried migrating those to (Open)Solaris/Nexenta.
Something like this:
# zpool import -f pool: tank id: 2794438138141825953 state: UNAVAIL status: One or more devices contains corrupted data. action: The pool cannot be imported due to damaged devices or data. see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-5E config: tank UNAVAIL insufficient replicas raidz1 UNAVAIL corrupted data c0t1d0p0 ONLINE c0t2d0s8 UNAVAIL corrupted data c0t3d0s2 ONLINE # zpool import -f tank cannot import 'tank': no such pool or dataset

The point is that c0t2d0s8 is actually a slice device along with c0t3d0s2 and the only real device is actually c0t1d0p0. So (re)moving, the slice devices from /dev/rdsk/ should leave anything but real devices (which should actually represent the real raidz arrays).

Something like this should help:
mkdir /tmp/bad_devs cd /tmp/bad_devs for i in /dev/rdsk/c7t[0123456789]d0s*; do mv $i ./; done zpool import -f tank zpool upgrade -V 14 tank

Still, I can’t explain how it came up like this in FreeBSD. :(

Posted in OpenSolaris, Software, Thoughts | Leave a comment

Nginx vhost autocreation script

By Stas Sushkov | June 16, 2009

I start using nginx on one of our production server. Amazingly, this piece of software saves now about 50% of our resources on the server. I also deployed lighttpd on a server, but It’s a far greater pleasure to work with nginx than with lighttpd.

Here are some results from loadimpact:

Apache tested
Nginx tested

As a credit to this software here is a script available in my code repository for creating vhosts.
Thanks.

Posted in Open Source, Planet, Software | Leave a comment

Cele 4 distribuții

By Stas Sushkov | June 12, 2009

Da, zilele acestea am avut plăcerea timpului de a-mi permite să testez 2 dintre distribuțiile la care țineam neapărat să le încerc: Fedora 11 și Nexenta 2 RC3. La acestea 2 s-au mai adunat OpenSolaris 2009.06 și Milax 04. Sincer, nu e frumos să aflați impresiile la început, însă OpenSolaris a fost practic distribuția care m-a frapat.

Deci pe rând…
Nexenta a fost una dintre distribuțiile pe care le urmăresc deja de vreo jumătate de an, și chiar dacă nu m-a satisfăcut la primele imresii (lipsa suportului pentru hardware major), m-a surprins plăcut la testul de zilele trecute. După mine, pare a fi un „the next thing” un sysadmin trebuie să încerce (Oricum nu o să vă ajungă și o să vă doriți mai mult, de aia am ajuns la OpenSolaris până la urmă). Oricum versiunea 2 deși e încă RC, își merită atenția, pentru suportul mai bun la hardware și software stack-ul din hardy disponibil!

Fedora 11, era pe listă încă după ce citisem impresionanta listă cu îmbunătățiri care a fost anunțată în notițele de lansare. Întradevăr, sunteți tari, ați băgat o grămadă sub capotă, însă la partea de desktop am fost profund dezamăgit să văd un nautilus vag (ați luat sursele din vcs și nu ați mai umblat la ele după compilare?), AbiWord în locul unei suite adevărate de birou, lvm manager pe undeva prin meniu (nu sunt sigur că un utilizator de rând va pricepe de ce i-ar trebui unealta aia…. ?!?), unelte SELinux prin meniu (fix cazul precedent)… și alte mici detalii care m-au lăsat rece pe când toată lumea vrea o Fedora ~~concurentă~~ superioară Ubuntu. Totuși este ceva ce mi-a plăcut: ecranul de autentificare, are fain integrate și indicatorul de baterie, și restul butoanelor… etc. Concluzia, bă poate că e tare F11, însă după ce aș băga CD-ul pentru sesiunea live, parcă nu aș continua mai departe. Păcat că și un utilizator ordinar nu poate aprecia într-un mediu comod toate funcționalitățile Fedora. :(

OpenSolaris. Bă, deci dacă excludem faptul că e o derivată Solaris, și e încă UNIX, și că nu e destinată „încă” lumii întregi, e totuși surpriza din zilele astea! Normal că nu o voi critica la partea de desktop (deși e unul din lucrurile la care ar putea da lecții atât colegilor de la Fedora cât și celor de la Ubuntu), și aici va fi privită din puctul de vedere a unei persoane interesată de servere. OpenSolaris ma atras după ce am încercat Nexenta (v-am scris, odată încercată o bucățică, vrei întregul tort)! Acum citesc o carte despre OpenSolaris (the best I could get, și e păcat că nu prea ai de unde alege), și sunt mișcat de ordonanța în care sunt menținute lucrurile în acel sistem de operare. Nu, nu despre ZFS merge vorba (citându-l pe Anil: „zfs is currently stealing all the thunder” :D), ci despre SMF spre exemplu. Mai multe nu pot povesti pentru că până aici am ajuns cu cititul. Oricum, sfatul pe care îl pot da este, să nu ignorați o carte/documentație bună dacă vă interesează (Open)Solaris, la mine e „second shot”, din prima nu a pușcat. Apropo, și ei sunt lansați recent cu suport mai bun pentru hardware, deci merită „pușcat”. :)

Milax, este ultima distribuție testată, și e mai mult pentru fun. M-am distrat enorm de autorul distribuției pentru faza cu look-ul a’la MacOS. :)

Oricum, într-o lună, poate mai puțin, apare Nexenta. Fedora 11 a fost lansată în 9, OpenSolaris a ieșit deja luna aceasta. Guys, suntem on hype! :)

P.S.: Oh, am avut și examene. :(

Posted in Linux, OpenSolaris, Planet, Releases, Thoughts | 4 Comments

Moving from Google Groups to Mailman

By Stas Sushkov | June 4, 2009

Recently we moved our mailing list from Google Groups to Mailman Free Software mailing list manager. The decision was taken cause we need more control on our mailing list and Google Groups is proprietary software.

Setting up mailman wasn’t that hard. The hardest part is to get our whole archive transfered from Google Groups to our Mailman server.

The point was to get an mbox of all our messages, which will later be copied above the new .mbox file in Mailman. To get the messages, I used an IMAP server which has a directory with the stored threads from our mailing list, and the getmail tool.

First install getmail:
apt-get install getmail4

Create the getmail rc file in ~/.getmail/getmail.rc:
[retriever] type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever server = imap.gmail.com username = username password = password mailboxes = ("MAILING-LIST-DIRECTORY-NAME",)

[destination] type = Mboxrd path = ~/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

Create the mbox file:
touch ~/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

Then run the getmail tool:
getmail -r ~/.getmail/getmail.rc

The resulted mbox file should be copied to your Mailman server (on Debian/Ubuntu I believe it’s in /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/ ), after it just run mmarc with --wipe.
mmarch --wipe your-mailing-list-name /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

That’s all folks, now your archives should be totally transfered.

Posted in Open Source, Planet, Software | Leave a comment

Romania needs a legal support for Open Source. Badly!

By Stas Sushkov | May 30, 2009

Due to the latest events I was involved in, I talked with a lot of people from Romanian IT. Today I was a speaker at ITBoard event, where I talked about Open Source virtualization solutions: Xen and OpenVZ (You won’t find too much information in the slides, cause I’m lazy and I preferred only to talk rather than to write and talk).
After my presentation we had another talk with some guys that came there. I must say that most of them where impressed about the features Xen and OpenVZ solutions can offer. The discussion stopped when it came to the problems in Romanian government.

I was reported that most of the companies in Romania WON’T allow you as a system administrator to opt for Open Source solutions in your infrastructure. They couldn’t explain in details what’s the reason of such “software racism”, but I assume the explication is simple: “In Romania, nobody will take you seriously when talking about Open Source in public and business institutions”.

We badly need a legal foundation in order to continue and support our position, only this way people from IT will join us among the end users.

Posted in Open Source, Planet, Romania | 3 Comments

Ubuntu rocked at eLiberatica 2009

By Stas Sushkov | May 24, 2009

As you already know, Ubuntu Romanian Team was at eLiberatica 2009, and they did it loudly and crowdly.

Coming from Cluj-Napoca, we joined Firebird SQL team from Mureș and ROSEdu Team from Bucharest to make the event successful. Finally in 2 days we were going to make the giveaways for about 200 Ubuntu CDs, a couple of caps, dozens of pens, several lainyards, a lot of papers and posters.

Our stand was one of the most visited stand build by the community (maybe the better was only Mozilla’s, but they were helped by other sources :D). After 2 days, there was not a single CD from those which we left for conference exhibition. We’re estimating that every second conference visitor got a CD from us (and the organizers were announcing about 400 visitors). Only several flyers left from the whole package of goodies.

We got in touch with several people that announced themselves ready to contribute with presentations and possibly sponsor invitations across the country. Those guys asked promotional goodies if possible and CDs for the event (this is what community will have to do in the next several weeks).

Guys from ROSEdu reported that their CDL courses held on Ubuntu systems were of great success. We’ll try to use their experince to achieve the same effect in Cluj-Napoca by organizing an event like that.

Ubuntu Romanian Remix and KiwiLinux were also a subject of interests at eLiberatica. Most of the people who asked about both distros are actually the people we targeted when building those distros.

Several guys came to ask about Ubuntu server edition and what new it brings in 9.04, and what are the plans for the next milestone. There were the same questions about Ubuntu Desktop editions.

In future Ubuntu Romania Team is going to be even more present at such events by all means, because we see it is the only way actually things roll in Romania. People that are able and may be helpful are looking to meet ourselves in person. Only after knowing the persons they seem to trust the idea and get into the project (which makes sense in a society where it is really hard to deliver the truth by digital means).

In the end I must say that I was very disappointed to see that for projecting the presentations organizers used a Windows machine. Thanks to Greg who solved somehow this issue when Danese was doing Lightning Talks.

Anyway it was cool to get ourselves together. Looking forward to see you on our IRC channel for more discussions and question regarding Ubuntu’s eLiberatica participation.

Posted in Open Source, Planet, Thoughts | 2 Comments

eLiberatica – Day 1

By Stas Sushkov | May 23, 2009

I was writing on GSL blog about some of the things that happened at eLiberatica today.

The most important thing is actually the fact that we finally gained all together, Diacritice, Firebird, Fedora-ro, GSL, ROSEdu, Mozilla-ro and Ubuntu-ro. I must say it was a fantastic day for me.

Of course there were some details that might be done better, but this is only my opinion and I might be wrong.

The most valuable presentation I think was the one by Georg Greve, this guy is at fsf-eu, and later, after his presentation, we discussed some points that can help GSL in one or another way.

I must bring credits to the guys from ROSEdu, which IMHO are some really open-minded hackers which rocked all day by helping us out and creating this day really special for all Romanian FLOSS fans/visitors.

I’m hope I’ll get some time tomorrow to talk the guys from Ceata, S. Buraga and Teo Teodorescu.

The event itself is worth to be visited, tomorrow speakers presentations are to be even greater.

Some pics in my photo gallery.

P.S.: I came there with my colegue, Raul OPRUȚA whom I should also help for his patience, time and contribution. :D

Posted in Culture, Open Source, Planet, Romania, Thoughts | Leave a comment

Chișinău Jaunty Release Party

By Stas Sushkov | May 5, 2009

Last weekend we held Ubuntu Party Chișinău, Moldova. I must say it was a lot of fun. New people, new places, new opportunities.

Get some pics here.

The whole party was driven by LMZ, and there was presentations about:

Linux, and some of it’s history, by Tiberiu
Ubuntu, and it’s history, by Andrei
Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope — 9.04 and what new it brings, by me
OpenStreetMap, and it’s Moldavian community, by Jekader
Ubuntu Romania, and it’s path to a LoCo, by me

We did some coffee/coke breaks between presentations during this time I met a lot of new people, which in my opinion are ready and wish to become part of a local Ubuntu LUG (and maybe in nearest future a LoCo).

There are some credits to be given, especially to Technical University of Moldova, Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, linux.md, fedora.md, bsd.md and of course GSL.

I must say that Ubuntu Moldavian community was started! Keep an eye on them, they’re going to become more and more visible soon. :)

Everybody can join the Ubuntu-MD mailing list, ubuntu-md IRC channel.

Soon there will be announced the forum, website and other details.

Posted in LUG, Moldova, Open Source, Planet | 2 Comments

Cărți de la OKIAN

By Stas Sushkov | April 15, 2009

Dacă ar fi să primesc un voucher pentru cărțile ce mi le doresc de la OKIAN.ro (da, OKIAN e noul amazon românesc, un pic cam scump, însă zic eu, până ieșim din criză) aș opta pentru:

Art of Computer Programming, The, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set de D. E. Knuth — aș avea o vară de lectură pe măsură! Prietenii știu de ce :)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar de E. S. Raymond — e o culegere de eseuri de care orice geek ar fi mândru să le stăpânească.
Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD de M. W. Lucas — probabil cea mai bună carte despre FreeBSD și nu numai. Cartea pe care am început să o citesc și probabil niciodată nu o voi termina de citit (dacă nu aș cumpăra-o sau primi-o cadou, Orlando ai ocazia =]).
Postfix the Definitive Guide de K. D. Dent — sincer nu am auzit prea multe despre autor sau despre cartea în sine, însă nu renunț să laud subiectul abordat: Postfix! (Din păcate pe OKIAN am găsit doar 2 cărți despre Postfix, și aceasta era cea mai reușită.
An Introduction to Python chiar de către autorul limbajului de programare, BDFL, Guido van Rossum și F. Drake — pentru că Python reprezintă din ce în ce mai mult obiectul meu de „joaca”. :)

Da, mulțumită lui Orlando am dat de OKIAN și de niște posibile cărți (ce ar valora averea de 1003.16 RON și nu contează că încă nu-s cumpărate sau primite cadou). :)

P.S.: Țineți minte, cel mai bun cadou poate fi numai o carte! (deși nu mai e valabil pentru toată lumea de la o vreme încoace…).

Posted in Blogging, Culture, Romania, Shopping, Web | 4 Comments