Author name: Dan Langille

I've been playing with computers since I read an Elementary Electronics magazine way back in the 1970s. I started contributing to open source projects in 1998. After that, I gradually moved from being a software developer to being a systems administrator.

system freezes up with lots of sonewconn Listen queue overflow

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I recently added 10 new HDD to a system which already had 10 HDD (now a total of 20). The HDD are split into two zpools: $ zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT system 27T 22.1T 4.93T – 19% 81% 1.00x ONLINE – tank_data 45.2T 26.3T 19.0T – 37% 58% 1.00x ONLINE – zoomzoom 436G 9.67G 426G – 6% 2% 1.00x ONLINE – The zoomzoom zpool is […]

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Flashing an LSI SAS 9201-16i – correctly

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Three weeks ago, I thought I had flashed my new LSI SAS 9201-16i. I had not. When I powered up the system via mfsBSD, I could see the device, but during the boot process, there was no splash screen. I now believe this should always be a signal that you have not correctly flashed the card. Finally, I went back to basics. I went back to something I did in photos. I used

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OSX was caching my ssh passphrases – easy fix

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I have used ssh-agent for a long time. I enter my passphrase once, then let ssh-agent handle my ssh sessions. Last night, I noticed I ssh’d to a box and did not enter my passphrase. I got logged in. I had just rebooted my laptop so I was very concerned about this. It look at while, but eventually, I discovered the cause. OSX was caching the passphrase. More interestingly, it was not using

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slocum

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This post has been replaced by a newer one. For reference, the previous post on this server is still available. . This server recently moved to a rack-mount chassis. On an interim basis, it contains an LSI SAS 9101-16i. For future reference, this is the slocum server, which I use for various jails and services. The filesystems, well, some of them: And dmesg:

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Flashing an LSI SAS 9201-16i

2 Comments / Disks, FreeBSD, hardware, HBA / By /

WARNING: This did not work. It succeeded, without error, but the card did not work. There will be a new blog post soon. Yesterday, a new LSI SAS 9201-16i arrived. I bought it on eBay from a supplier in China and paid for expedited shipping. I offered US$250 for their $338 listing and it was accepted. Shipping was another $30. It arrived 6 days later. Why do I need one? The system in

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Greg Truskey, TruCo

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I’m writing this to document the facts. I’ll leave adjectives and opinions to you. Greg Truskey, TruCo was hired to perform renovations which started in August 2015. The estimate was 11 weeks. He was on site from about 9am to 3:30pm. Arriving earlier or late was uncommon. On days he would not arrive, we would not be notified. It would be fine weather, and he would not be present. You will recall the

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pkg upgrade: Certificate verification failed for /C=IL/O=StartCom Ltd./OU=StartCom Certification Authority/CN=StartCom Class 2 IV Server CA

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I noticed this on one FreeBSD server today: $ pkg -vv | grep url url: “pkg+http://services.unixathome.org/packages/103amd64-default-master-list/”, I decided: let’s use https, not http, there. After making the change (in my case, it was in /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf, I tried upgraded packages, and it barfed: $ sudo pkg upgrade Updating local repository catalogue… Certificate verification failed for /C=IL/O=StartCom Ltd./OU=StartCom Certification Authority/CN=StartCom Class 2 IV Server CA 34401225432:error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed:/usr/src/secure/lib/libssl/../../../crypto/openssl/ssl/s3_clnt.c:1191: Certificate verification failed for /C=IL/O=StartCom Ltd./OU=StartCom

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Changing the default host for Cisco AnyConnect OSX client

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My first day back from EuroBSDCon 2016, I wanted to fix an issue which arose before the conference. My Cisco AnyConnect client configuration contained old hosts which I no longer used, but didn’t contain the host I was primarily using now. I could add the host, but upon restart, that new host was no longer there. Plus, when started, AnyConnect would attempt to connect to the old host, which is not even remotely

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Moving from shelves to racks

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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

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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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