2016

Moving from shelves to racks

The time has come for me to move from shelving to racks. My first thought was to list the various racks over the years. Look below for old photos and links to the posts I lifted them from. Why a rack? In the past, I have always built my own servers, computers, from parts. I always chose tower cases for space and quiet. A large fan and heatsink can be easily mounted in […]

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leapsecond file (‘/var/db/ntpd.leap-seconds.list’): expired less than N days ago

After upgrading all my servers to FreeBSD 10.3 last weekend, I started to see these messages in the logs: Aug 3 21:15:19 slocum ntpd[29456]: leapsecond file (‘/var/db/ntpd.leap-seconds.list’): expired less than 64 days ago I found this post which suggested running service ntpd fetch but that did not fix it. While debugging the issue, I added ntp_leapfile_fetch_verbose=”YES” to /etc/rc.conf, which provides more output to the fetch command: $ sudo service ntpd fetch ntp_src_leapfile version

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PGCon 2016 charity auction

Every year PGCon holds a charity auction as part of the closing session. All proceeds go to The Ottawa Mission, a local group. The auction includes items you would keep as art, and some you would consume before you left town. Others, such as empty paper bags or cardboard boxes are left in the recycling bin. It is all in good fun. 1 Chocolate from Japan $20.00 2 Elephant with cloud $220.00 3

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pfsense 2.3, now on FreeBSD 10.3 with pkg

I upgraded my pfSense box to 2.3 last night. Here is what I got: # uname -a FreeBSD bast.int.unixathome.org 10.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #4 05adf0a(RELENG_2_3_0): Mon Apr 11 19:09:19 CDT 2016 root@factory23-amd64-builder:/builder/factory-230/tmp/obj/builder/factory-230/tmp/FreeBSD-src/sys/pfSense amd64 These are the package repos they are using (as taken from pkg -vv): Repositories: pfSense-core: { url : “pkg+http://firmware.netgate.com/pkg/pfSense_factory-v2_3_0_amd64-core”, enabled : yes, priority : 0, mirror_type : “SRV”, signature_type : “FINGERPRINTS”, fingerprints : “/usr/local/share/pfSense/keys/pkg” } pfSense: { url : “pkg+http://firmware.netgate.com/pkg/pfSense_factory-v2_3_0_amd64-pfSense_factory-v2_3_0”, enabled

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Adding SLOG to a zpool

I have recently added two 480 GB SSDs to a 10 x HDD raidz2 system. The SSDs will be mainly used for spooling to tape during backups, but I’m going to use a small part of it for a SLOG. Not all systems benefits from a SLOG (Separate intent LOG), but synchronous writes, such as databases, do. All ZFS systems have a ZIL (ZFS Intent Log); it is usually part of the zpool.

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Importing a zpool and renaming it

Last night, I moved a SAS card and had to renumber some devices. I also moved two SSDs into the same box (see photos). Those SSDs were the boot drives from the system from which I pulled the SAS drive. That box, tape01, contains the Bacula configuration file I need for this new box. I know, I know. Why not use Bacula to restore that file. That would be too easy. I want

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Adding in a SAS card renumbered my devices

Last night, I added a SAS card into a box which is connected to a tape library (photos here). After starting up the box, Nagios reported that the tape device was no longer present. I first added such checks back in 2012 and updated them for more recent acquisitions. This means that the copy-to-tape jobs did not run last night, because there was no sa0, instead, there was an sa1, which was not

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