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.

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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Adding a failed HDD back into a ZFS mirror

I do have a FreeBSD-11 box, cuppy: $ uname -a FreeBSD cuppy.int.unixathome.org 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #0 r279394: Sat Feb 28 21:01:21 UTC 2015 dan@cuppy.unixathome.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64 $ That box is used mostly for testing and/or erasing DLT tapes. The current status of that box is not healthy. It’s running fine, but it is not optimal: Let’s fix this. Background Why is one drive upset? Because I installed FreeBSD onto it. Why? I don’t know,

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Added new drive when existing one gave errors, then zpool replace

In this post, I am working with FreeBSD 10.2 on this server. Over the past few days, a 3 year old drive has been giving errors. The number of errors has been constant, but I have a spare drive here, so I decided to replace it. I have verified that it is out of warranty. Rather than pull the error drive and replace it, I opted to add in a new drive and

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