Open Source

Benchmarking the Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series DXM03B0Q – ZFS

3 Comments / Disks, File Systems, hardware, ZFS / By /

Following on from yesterday’s benchmark, I’m adding in some ZFS tests. All hardware is the same. Of note: $ zdb | grep ashift ashift: 9 $ sudo diskinfo -v ada0 Password: ada0 512 # sectorsize 128035676160 # mediasize in bytes (119G) 250069680 # mediasize in sectors 0 # stripesize 0 # stripeoffset 248085 # Cylinders according to firmware. 16 # Heads according to firmware. 63 # Sectors according to firmware. S12PNEACB31368P # Disk […]

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MIRROR/gm0 has changed from COMPLETE to DEGRADED

3 Comments / FreeBSD / By /

GEOM Watch sent me an email this morning: The status of GEOM MIRROR/gm0 has changed from COMPLETE to DEGRADED. The following components have been lost: ad6 Remaining components: ad3 Here’s the smartctl output: [dan@ngaio:~] $ sudo smartctl -a -i /dev/ad6 smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE i386] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Device Model: Maxtor 6Y120M0 Serial

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Aligned versus not aligned

1 Comment / File Systems, FreeBSD, Open Source / By /

In this post, we’re going to demonstrate why aligning your disk partitions can be a good idea. For starters, we’re going to go with the default alignment, do a test, then align, and redo the test. But first, in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, this randomly discovered post may be a useful primer. Create the scheme on the disk This command creates a GPT scheme on the drive. Create

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Aligning disk partitions for better throughput

7 Comments / File Systems, FreeBSD, Open Source / By /

During a recent install of FreeBSD 9.1 onto a gmirror, it was pointed out that my disk partitions were not aligned. Today, I’ll look at how that affects performance, both before and after alignment. Last night, I installed FreeBSD 9.1 onto a separate HDD, which I’ll use as a floater. I can attach this HDD to any system I need to work on without booting from the main HDD. In attached this HDD

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Installing FreeBSD 9.1 into a gmirror

Leave a Comment / FreeBSD, Open Source / By /

Late last week I installed FreeBSD 9.1 onto a gmirror, which I created during the install process. I documented it via photographs and comments. Hopefully, the next time I do this, it will be useful to refer to this resource. NOTE that when I did this, the partitions were not aligned properly. See the comments in the above URL for details. I will be covering this in a future post.

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ssl-admin

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People often talk about security. There are many different types of security. Personal security. Security theater. Physical security. In this post, we’ll talk about securing communications channels so that others cannot listen in, and so that others cannot connect. In this article, I’ll talk about using a toolkit, ssl-admin, to create a certificate authority, create self-signed certificates, and use them for both backups (via Bacula) and for a VPN (using OpenVPN). We will

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Bacula: TLS Allowed CN

Leave a Comment / Bacula, FreeBSD, Open Source / By /

I wrote this some time ago, but never published it. Here we go… Bacula is a fantastic backup solution. It’s open source. It uses a database to keep track of backups. I’ve been writing recently about using ssl-admin as a certificate authority tool. Today, I started using ssl-admin for generating certificates for my backup clients. In this post, I’m using Bacula 5.2.12 and using this reference page as a guide. I started playing

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PGCon 2013 call for papers

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The PGCon 2013 Call for papers is out. It’s been out for over two weeks. Had you heard about it already? If you have not already submitted, please do so. The deadline for submissions (19 Jan) is just over a month away. That time will fly past. Please don’t leave it to the last minute. If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please submit a proposal. You might be one of the

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Adding Nagios checks for tape drives / libraries

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I use Bacula for my backups. Most of my backups are done to disk, then copied to tape. I have long liked the idea of having multiple backups on different media. On a regular basis, I move the FULL backup tapes to an offsite location. This is standard practice and highly recommended if you can do it. I don’t use the latest and greatest tape drives. I’m using DLT drives. I like them

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