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.

The File Server (more detail)

3 Comments / hardware / By / /

Following on from my previous post on my file server, here is what I’m now looking at. It’s based upon various discussions on mailing lists and IRC channels. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping) SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping) RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping) Crucial 3x2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping) Xeon W3520 $310 Total price in cart: $1389.95 + $52.95 shipping = $1441.90 Not included: HDD, […]

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The File Server

Leave a Comment / hardware / By / /

This is the current thinking for my soon-to-be-built storage server. I should consult freebsd-hardware first. Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case The above case comes with two of these backplanes close up photos of that backplane mother board? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136 was suggseted. m/b will either need 8 SATA connections or room for several cheap SATA controllers power supply, probably dependent upon the M/B but has to be grunty enough for 8xHDD 4GB RAM? HDD: SATA

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Bacula Configuration

3 Comments / Bacula, Open Source / By /

Bacula uses flat text files for configuration. From time to time, people, usually new to the project, ask: why isn’t the configuration in the database? Bacula uses the database to store information about what files were backed up, from what client, and when. This information is useful when you need to know how if you have a copy of a file from last Tuesday before you wrote crap into it but after you

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Bacula Retention Periods

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Bacula is a backup system with three different retention periods: Volume Job File I set all three to the same value. It is important to note that these values affect only the Catalog. It determines how long a given record is held in the database. For example, if you set File Retention to be 45 days, it means that there are no records in the database for any files backed up in any

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Graphing

5 Comments / Open Source, PostgreSQL / By / / ,

I have about 14,000 data points collected from backups. I started in Oct 2007, but have not done anything with the data. I’d like your help. I have put the data into a PostgreSQL database and dumped it. The dump is here: http://langille.org/tmp/dlt_stats.sql.gz The table looks like: $ psql dan psql (8.4.2) Type “help” for help. dan=# \d dlt_stats Table “public.dlt_stats” Column | Type | Modifiers ————-+—————————–+——————————————————– id | integer | not null

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Big storage

5 Comments / hardware, Open Source, ZFS / By / /

I’m thinking about creating a storage box. One with a lot of disk space. It will be used for backups and stuff. I will continue to backup to tape as well. I’m considering this case, which has 8xSATA hot-swap bays: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058 If I was buying a RAID card, I’d buy this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131002&Tpk=areca%201120 But I may go with ZFS instead of hardware RAID.

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Pentabarf – seeing the speakers

Leave a Comment / Bacula, BSDCan, Conferences, FreeBSD, FreshPorts, Mountain Bikes, Open Source, Pentabarf, PGCon, PostgreSQL / By /

Both BSDCan and PGCon use Pentabarf for accepting and reviewing proposals for talks. An issue raised in 2009 highlighted the ability to see the speaker name when review the list of submissions. It is a bit of very useful information. This year, I’ve found out that we can see that vital data. Provided the speaker role has been set to confirmed. I think Pentabarf design assumes that you have created a talk, and

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“libcroco-0.6.so.3” not found

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Seen this? /libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object “libcroco-0.6.so.3″ not found, required by ” msgfmt” Rebuild gettext. portupgrade -f gettext And try again Port details, not relevant: # less /var/db/ports/postgresql73/options # This file is auto-generated by ‘make config’. # No user-servicable parts inside! # Options for postgresql-server-7.3.21_1 _OPTIONS_READ=postgresql-server-7.3.21_1 WITH_NLS=true WITHOUT_PAM=true WITHOUT_MIT_KRB5=true WITHOUT_HEIMDAL_KRB5=true WITHOUT_OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS=true WITHOUT_LIBC_R=true WITHOUT_TESTS=true WITHOUT_DEBUG=true The building errors: [root@pg73 /usr/ports/databases/postgresql73-server]# ldd `which msgfmt ` /usr/local/bin/msgfmt: libgettextsrc-0.17.so => /usr/local/lib/libgettextsrc-0.17.so (0x800655000) libgettextlib-0.17.so => /usr/local/lib/libgettextlib-0.17.so (0x80078f000) libcroco-0.6.so.3 =>

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mtx-changer script catches me

Leave a Comment / Bacula, Open Source / By /

NOTE: this problem may not be a problem. After rebooting the system while having the tape library powered up, the problem went away. This may or may not be coincident. Note to self: mtx-changer needs more customization than I thought. Today showed great progress in completing the integration of my tape library into my Bacula system. I have been writing the testing and configuration of supporting tools. I had moved onto a new

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