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.

Bootstrapping / installing pkg on FreeBSD unattended and without answering Yes

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Sometimes you want to do things alone. Or rather, without intervention. Unattended. Bootstrapping the pkgng package management tool is one of those things. From the pkgng documentation, “FreeBSD 9.1 and later includes a bootstrap utility which can be used to download and install pkgng, along with its manual pages”. Let me show you how that goes: # pkg The package management tool is not yet installed on your system. Do you want to […]

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running OpenVPN as something other than nobody:nobody

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I am a big fan of OpenVPN. I’ve been using it since 2008. It’s been extremely reliable and stable. Out of the box, at least on FreeBSD, it runs as nobody:nobody (not really, but that’s how most people configure it). I can’t point to am immediate security issue with this situation. However, I’d prefer it to run as something else. How, about running it as openvpn:openvpn? NOTE: In the original version of this

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Bacula – client changes host name

2 Comments / Backups, Bacula, Open Source / By /

Like many people, I have a laptop which I backup using Bacula. In my case, the laptop may be present under one of two condition: directly connected to my network via wireless indirectly connected to my network via VPN My VPN of preference is OpenVPN, but that’s not relevant to the situation. The issue is: the IP address for my laptop changes depending upon which of the two connections it is using. Putting

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Adding a tape library to Bacula

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This article was written some months go, but only published today. I recently acquired a new tape auto-changer / library. I have already run some simple tests on the library, and all seems well. I already have an existing Bacula installation and my plan is to add this new auto-changer into that. The Devices The following is a list of the devices associated with my auto-changer. The output has been trimmed to exclude

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Upgrade or replace?

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I have this server (I don’t actually have it; I haven’t seen it since 2006) which has started to be restrictive in what I can do with it. It’s running FreeBSD 9.2 and I’d love to start making more use of jails and ZFS. The server has 8x 50G Raptor drives, all on a 3Ware 9550SX-8LP, and 8GB of RAM. The RAM has been giving these types of messages for a few years

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OpenVPN and dynamic DNS

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My laptop’s hostname is dent. I want my DNS records to point to that laptop whether I’m connected to my LAN directly (via WIFI or ethernet cable) or via OpenVPN (my VPN of choice). SIDE NOTE: You will see references to nsupdate -k below. Note that in recent versions of this program, the option you want has changed to nsupdate -y. You will find an example of the new format later in this

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can’t re-use a leaf or module_register: module g_label already exists

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For some time, I’ve seen these messages and been slightly bothered by them. Today, I found the solution. can’t re-use a leaf (geom_label)! can’t re-use a leaf (geom_part_gpt)! module_register: module g_label already exists! Module g_label failed to register: 17 module_register: module g_part_gpt already exists! Module g_part_gpt failed to register: 17 Those messages appeared on the console while booting and were logged in /var/log/dmesg.boot. I was told, but I forget where, that this was

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zpool upgrade to get lz4_compress

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FreeBSD now has zl4 compression for ZFS. But you must upgrade your pools to get it. If you try before upgrading, you’ll get: # zfs create -o recordsize=8k -o primarycache=metadata -o compress=lz4 system/usr/home/dan/pgsqlsql cannot create ‘system/usr/home/dan/pgsql’: pool must be upgraded to set this property or value So, let’s upgrade: # zpool upgrade -a This system supports ZFS pool feature flags. Successfully upgraded ‘system’ from version 28 to feature flags. Enabled the following features

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sym0: SCSI parity error detected: SCR1=1 DBC=11000036 SBCL=ae

1 Comment / SCSI / By /

This happened today: Nov 15 21:28:36 knew kernel: sym0: SCSI parity error detected: SCR1=1 DBC=11000036 SBCL=ae Nov 15 21:28:49 knew last message repeated 1611 times Nov 15 21:28:49 knew sudo: dan : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/usr/home/dan ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/sbin/camcontrol rescan all Nov 15 21:28:49 knew kernel: sym0: SCSI parity error detected: SCR1=1 DBC=11000036 SBCL=ae Nov 15 21:28:52 knew last message repeated 374 times Nov 15 21:28:52 knew kernel: sym0: SCSI parity error detected:

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temporary failure. Command output: maildrop: signal 0x19

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Earlier this week, I started seeing this error on a FreeBSD 9.2 mail server running Postfix 2.10.1: CDDB71C56D53 37470 Mon Nov 11 16:22:45 MAILER-DAEMON (temporary failure. Command output: maildrop: signal 0x19) mailarchives@tallboy.unixathome.org I use maildrop, a procmail alternative. I first started using procmail in December 2000. It’s been a good 13 years, but it’s time. At the prompting of Warren Block, who has helped me (and many others) on numerous occasions in the

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