MoonPoint Support Weblog

TinyMUSH 3.1 Crashing After a Power Outage

A CentOS Linux system on which I was running TinyMUSH 3.1 patchlevel 5, the latest version of the MUSH available at the time I'm writing this entry, would not restart after I brought the system back online after a power outage. When I ran the Startmush script, I would see the following:

$ ./Startmush
Indexing help.txt
1004 topics indexed
Indexing mushman.txt
395 topics indexed
Indexing news.txt
line 5: line too long
line 7: line too long
line 9: line too long
line 11: line too long
line 13: line too long
line 17: line too long
line 19: line too long
line 21: line too long
line 23: line too long
line 25: line too long
line 27: line too long
line 41: line too long
line 43: line too long
line 45: line too long
line 47: line too long
line 49: line too long
line 120: line too long
line 122: line too long
line 124: line too long
line 126: line too long
line 128: line too long
line 130: line too long
line 132: line too long
line 134: line too long
line 136: line too long
line 138: line too long
line 140: line too long
line 142: line too long
line 144: line too long
line 146: line too long
line 148: line too long
line 150: line too long
line 152: line too long
line 244: line too long
line 247: line too long
line 298: line too long
line 300: line too long
line 305: line too long
line 350: line too long
line 357: line too long
line 359: line too long
line 362: line too long
line 364: line too long
line 621: line too long
line 623: line too long
line 625: line too long
line 627: line too long
line 629: line too long
line 631: line too long
line 633: line too long
line 839: line too long
line 841: line too long
line 843: line too long
line 845: line too long
line 847: line too long
line 853: line too long
line 862: line too long
line 874: line too long
line 876: line too long
line 878: line too long
line 880: line too long
line 882: line too long
line 884: line too long
line 886: line too long
line 888: line too long
line 890: line too long
line 907: line too long
line 912: line too long
62 topics indexed
Indexing plushelp.txt
line 4: line too long
line 9: line too long
line 142: line too long
line 229: line too long
line 254: line too long
line 282: line too long
line 655: line too long
line 680: line too long
line 880: line too long
42 topics indexed
Indexing qhelp.txt
18 topics indexed
Indexing wizhelp.txt
379 topics indexed
Indexing wiznews.txt
1 topics indexed
Checking for database files and creating backups of old files.
Saving old comsys module db.
Saving old mail module db.
Saving old game log moondreaming.log
Log cleanup done.
Process 18073
080729.193501 TinyMUSH INI/START: Starting: TinyMUSH version 3.1 patchlevel 5 #1 [01/27/2008]
080729.193501 TinyMUSH INI/START: Build date: Thu Apr 10 21:54:36 EDT 2008
080729.193501 TinyMUSH INI/START: Build info: ./configure
            gcc   -g  -I./gdbm-1.8.0
*** glibc detected *** ./bin/netmush: double free or corruption (top): 0x000000000c2076f0 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib64/libc.so.6[0x2aaaab825684]
/lib64/libc.so.6(cfree+0x8c)[0x2aaaab828ccc]
/lib64/libc.so.6(fclose+0x14b)[0x2aaaab8148eb]
./bin/netmush[0x430a85]
./bin/netmush(tf_fclose+0x1d)[0x430cb0]
./bin/netmush[0x497e11]
./bin/netmush(main+0x74b)[0x499a72]
/lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4)[0x2aaaab7d18b4]
./bin/netmush(sin+0xb1)[0x40f529]
======= Memory map: ========
00400000-0053d000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 30377121                           /home/amy/tinymush/src/netmush
0073c000-0074c000 rw-p 0013c000 fd:00 30377121                           /home/amy/tinymush/src/netmush
0074c000-00770000 rw-p 0074c000 00:00 0 
0c052000-0c221000 rw-p 0c052000 00:00 0 
2aaaaaaab000-2aaaaaac5000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651907                    /lib64/ld-2.5.so
2aaaaaac5000-2aaaaaac6000 rw-p 2aaaaaac5000 00:00 0 
2aaaaaae3000-2aaaaaae4000 rw-p 2aaaaaae3000 00:00 0 
2aaaaacc5000-2aaaaacc6000 r--p 0001a000 fd:00 6651907                    /lib64/ld-2.5.so
2aaaaacc6000-2aaaaacc7000 rw-p 0001b000 fd:00 6651907                    /lib64/ld-2.5.so
2aaaaacc7000-2aaaaad49000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651947                    /lib64/libm-2.5.so
2aaaaad49000-2aaaaaf48000 ---p 00082000 fd:00 6651947                    /lib64/libm-2.5.so
2aaaaaf48000-2aaaaaf49000 r--p 00081000 fd:00 6651947                    /lib64/libm-2.5.so
2aaaaaf49000-2aaaaaf4a000 rw-p 00082000 fd:00 6651947                    /lib64/libm-2.5.so
2aaaaaf4a000-2aaaaaf5f000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651956                    /lib64/libnsl-2.5.so
2aaaaaf5f000-2aaaab15e000 ---p 00015000 fd:00 6651956                    /lib64/libnsl-2.5.so
2aaaab15e000-2aaaab15f000 r--p 00014000 fd:00 6651956                    /lib64/libnsl-2.5.so
2aaaab15f000-2aaaab160000 rw-p 00015000 fd:00 6651956                    /lib64/libnsl-2.5.so
2aaaab160000-2aaaab162000 rw-p 2aaaab160000 00:00 0 
2aaaab162000-2aaaab173000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651972                    /lib64/libresolv-2.5.so
2aaaab173000-2aaaab373000 ---p 00011000 fd:00 6651972                    /lib64/libresolv-2.5.so
2aaaab373000-2aaaab374000 r--p 00011000 fd:00 6651972                    /lib64/libresolv-2.5.so
2aaaab374000-2aaaab375000 rw-p 00012000 fd:00 6651972                    /lib64/libresolv-2.5.so
2aaaab375000-2aaaab378000 rw-p 2aaaab375000 00:00 0 
2aaaab378000-2aaaab381000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651918                    /lib64/libcrypt-2.5.so
2aaaab381000-2aaaab580000 ---p 00009000 fd:00 6651918                    /lib64/libcrypt-2.5.so
2aaaab580000-2aaaab581000 r--p 00008000 fd:00 6651918                    /lib64/libcrypt-2.5.so
2aaaab581000-2aaaab582000 rw-p 00009000 fd:00 6651918                    /lib64/libcrypt-2.5.so
2aaaab582000-2aaaab5b0000 rw-p 2aaaab582000 00:00 0 
2aaaab5b0000-2aaaab5b2000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651941                    /lib64/libdl-2.5.so
2aaaab5b2000-2aaaab7b2000 ---p 00002000 fd:00 6651941                    /lib64/libdl-2.5.so
2aaaab7b2000-2aaaab7b3000 r--p 00002000 fd:00 6651941                    /lib64/libdl-2.5.so
2aaaab7b3000-2aaaab7b4000 rw-p 00003000 fd:00 6651941                    /lib64/libdl-2.5.so
2aaaab7b4000-2aaaab8fe000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651914                    /lib64/libc-2.5.so
2aaaab8fe000-2aaaabafd000 ---p 0014a000 fd:00 6651914                    /lib64/libc-2.5.so
2aaaabafd000-2aaaabb01000 r--p 00149000 fd:00 6651914                    /lib64/libc-2.5.so
2aaaabb01000-2aaaabb02000 rw-p 0014d000 fd:00 6651914                    /lib64/libc-2.5.so
2aaaabb02000-2aaaabb09000 rw-p 2aaaabb02000 00:00 0 
2aaaabb09000-2aaaabb18000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 30377114                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/comsys.so.0.0.0
2aaaabb18000-2aaaabd18000 ---p 0000f000 fd:00 30377114                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/comsys.so.0.0.0
2aaaabd18000-2aaaabd19000 rw-p 0000f000 fd:00 30377114                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/comsys.so.0.0.0
2aaaabd19000-2aaaabd2b000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 30377105                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/mail.so.0.0.0
2aaaabd2b000-2aaaabf2b000 ---p 00012000 fd:00 30377105                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/mail.so.0.0.0
2aaaabf2b000-2aaaabf2c000 rw-p 00012000 fd:00 30377105                   /home/amy/tinymush/game/modules/mail.so.0.0.0
2aaaabf2c000-2aaaabf2e000 rw-p 2aaaabf2c000 00:00 0 
2aaaac000000-2aaaac021000 rw-p 2aaaac000000 00:00 0 
2aaaac021000-2aaab0000000 ---p 2aaaac021000 00:00 0 
2aaab0000000-2aaab000d000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 6651906                    /lib64/libgcc_s-4.1.2-20080102.so.1
2aaab000d000-2aaab020d000 ---p 0000d000 fd:00 6651906                    /lib64/libgcc_s-4.1.2-20080102.so.1
2aaab020d000-2aaab020e000 rw-p 0000d000 fd:00 6651906                    /lib64/libgcc_s-4.1.2-20080102.so.1
7fffd4567000-7fffd457d000 rw-p 7fffd4567000 00:00 0                      [stack]
ffffffffff600000-ffffffffffe00000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0                  [vdso]
080729.193501 TinyMUSH CNF/MOD  : Loaded module: comsys
080729.193501 TinyMUSH CNF/MOD  : Loaded module: mail
080729.193501 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Using gdbm file: moondreaming.gdbm
080729.193501 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Loading object structures.
080729.193501 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Loading db: data/mod_mail.db
Timeout - String 'Cleanup completed.' not found in 'moondreaming.log'. Giving up.
./Startmush: line 262: 18073 Aborted                 $BIN/netmush $make_db -c $GAMENAME.conf -l $LOGNAME -p $PIDFILE -t $TEXT -b $BIN -d $DATA -g $GDBM_DB -k $CRASH_DB >> $LOGNAME 2>&1

The "line too long" messages are normal for this MUSH and don't impact the functioning of the MUSH. The first unexpected message I see is the line below:

*** glibc detected *** ./bin/netmush: double free or corruption (top): 0x000000000c2076f0 ***

The line in the Startmush file that was producing the error message is shown below:

$BIN/netmush $make_db -c $GAMENAME.conf -l $LOGNAME -p $PIDFILE -t $TEXT -b $BIN -d $DATA -g $GDBM_DB -k $CRASH_DB >>$LOGNAME 2>&1 &

I suspected the problem might be related to the fact that I'm running the MUSH on a 64-bit version of CentOS now. It was previously installed on a 32-bit Red Hat 9 Linux system. I remembered encountering problems when I initially moved it to the CentOS system in April, related to the fact that the CentOS system was a 64-bit operating system. Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly how I resolved the problems I encountered then.

When I performed a Google search on "glibc double free or corruption 64-bit", one of the pages I found, glibc detected double free or corruption error? had a posting by RavenOfOdin that offered a solution:

Re: glibc detected double free or corruption error?

That's an old Linux C++ error. Not new news.
To fix it so you can run the program just type:

export MALLOC_CHECK_=0

before running the program.

So I entered the command export MALLOC_CHECK_=0 from a BASH shell prompt before the Startmush command. It solved the problem and the MUSH started as before the crash. I don't remember entering that command previously to get the MUSH to run, but since it did fix the problem, I thought I had better document it for the next time I encountered the problem.

$ export MALLOC_CHECK_=0
$ ./Startmush
Indexing help.txt
1004 topics indexed
Indexing mushman.txt
395 topics indexed
Indexing news.txt
line 5: line too long
line 7: line too long
line 9: line too long
line 11: line too long
line 13: line too long
line 17: line too long
line 19: line too long
line 21: line too long
line 23: line too long
line 25: line too long
line 27: line too long
line 41: line too long
line 43: line too long
line 45: line too long
line 47: line too long
line 49: line too long
line 120: line too long
line 122: line too long
line 124: line too long
line 126: line too long
line 128: line too long
line 130: line too long
line 132: line too long
line 134: line too long
line 136: line too long
line 138: line too long
line 140: line too long
line 142: line too long
line 144: line too long
line 146: line too long
line 148: line too long
line 150: line too long
line 152: line too long
line 244: line too long
line 247: line too long
line 298: line too long
line 300: line too long
line 305: line too long
line 350: line too long
line 357: line too long
line 359: line too long
line 362: line too long
line 364: line too long
line 621: line too long
line 623: line too long
line 625: line too long
line 627: line too long
line 629: line too long
line 631: line too long
line 633: line too long
line 839: line too long
line 841: line too long
line 843: line too long
line 845: line too long
line 847: line too long
line 853: line too long
line 862: line too long
line 874: line too long
line 876: line too long
line 878: line too long
line 880: line too long
line 882: line too long
line 884: line too long
line 886: line too long
line 888: line too long
line 890: line too long
line 907: line too long
line 912: line too long
62 topics indexed
Indexing plushelp.txt
line 4: line too long
line 9: line too long
line 142: line too long
line 229: line too long
line 254: line too long
line 282: line too long
line 655: line too long
line 680: line too long
line 880: line too long
42 topics indexed
Indexing qhelp.txt
18 topics indexed
Indexing wizhelp.txt
379 topics indexed
Indexing wiznews.txt
1 topics indexed
Checking for database files and creating backups of old files.
Saving old comsys module db.
Saving old mail module db.
Saving old game log moondreaming.log
Log cleanup done.
Process 20430
080729.202051 TinyMUSH INI/START: Starting: TinyMUSH version 3.1 patchlevel 5 #1 [01/27/2008]
080729.202051 TinyMUSH INI/START: Build date: Thu Apr 10 21:54:36 EDT 2008
080729.202051 TinyMUSH INI/START: Build info: ./configure
            gcc   -g  -I./gdbm-1.8.0
080729.202051 TinyMUSH CNF/MOD  : Loaded module: comsys
080729.202051 TinyMUSH CNF/MOD  : Loaded module: mail
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Using gdbm file: moondreaming.gdbm
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Loading object structures.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Loading db: data/mod_mail.db
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Loading db: data/mod_comsys.db
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/COM  : Unrecognized comsys format.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Load complete.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH CFG/UPDAT: God(#1) entered config directive: money_name_singular with args 'Moon Coin'. Status: Success.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH CFG/UPDAT: God(#1) entered config directive: money_name_plural with args 'Moon Coins'. Status: Success.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Startup processing complete.
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH NET/SLAVE: DNS lookup slave started on fd 1
080729.202051 MoonDreamingMUSH INI/LOAD : Cleanup completed.

References:

glibc detected double free or corruption error?
By: RavenOfOdin
Date: May 12th, 2006
Ubuntu Forums

[/gaming/tinymush] permanent link

Tue, Jul 29, 2008 11:53 am

Ghost 2003 Backup of Laptop SATA Drive

I received another HP Compaq tc4400 laptop while mine, which would no longer power on, was being repaired. I put the 80 GB SATA drive from my laptop in the new laptop. I wanted to backup the drive to an external USB drive using Norton Ghost 2003 prior to using it in the new system, so I attached the laptop's external DVD drive and attempted to boot from a Ghost 2003 boot CD. I received a message that command.com couldn't be found. I tried several Ghost 2003 boot CD's, but none worked. I was able to boot from a Ghost 2003 boot floppy disk, but when I ran Ghost, I received the message below:

Application Error

Read sector failure, result=1, drive=1,sectors 729050177 to
729050178
If this problem persists, contact Symantec Technical Support
at http://service.symantec.com

I put the drive in a desktop system and booted that system from one of the Ghost 2003 CDs I had tried with the laptop. I didn't receive any error messages and was able to back up the drive without any problems, so I'm not sure why I received the error message when attempting the backup with the laptop.

I know that sometimes a CD or DVD drive will have problems with discs from a particular manufacturer, so perhaps the external HP DVD ROM drive (p/n: PA509A#ABA) was having a problem reading the Office Depot CD-R discs I had put Ghost on, but that shouldn't have any bearing on Ghost aborting when I tried to start it to backup the disk drive. I was able to boot the laptop using the external DVD-ROM drive with an Ubuntu Linux LiveCD.

Ghost Backup

Drive	Size (MB)	Type	Cylinders	Heads	Sectors
    1	    76319	Basic	    20023	  255	     63


					Volume	Size	Data Size
Part	Type	ID	Description	Label	in MB	in MB
   1	Primary 07	       NTFS	No name	76316	    41270
					Free	    2
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                        Total	76319	    41270


Speed (MB/min): 369
MB copied: 38730
Time elapsed: 1:44:56

[/os/windows/utilities/backup/ghost] permanent link

Mon, Jul 28, 2008 7:32 pm

Blosxom Not Working After Reboot on 64-bit System

A Linux server on which a Blosxom blog was running lost power due to a power outage. When power was restored and I rebooted the server, I found that the website hosting the blog was functioning ok, but attempting to access the blog itself returned only a blank webpage. Checking the error log for the site, I saw error messages such as the following:

[Mon Jul 28 08:57:25 2008] [error] [client 216.246.77.172] calendar debug 1: filter() called
[Mon Jul 28 08:57:25 2008] [error] [client 216.246.77.172] File is not a perl storable at blib/lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into blib/lib/auto/Storable/_retrieve.al) line 380, <DATA> line 32, at /home/jsmith/www/blog/plugins/calendar line 322
[Mon Jul 28 08:57:25 2008] [error] [client 216.246.77.172] Premature end of script headers: blosxom
[Mon Jul 28 08:58:22 2008] [error] [client 66.249.71.193] calendar debug 1: start() called, enabled
[Mon Jul 28 08:58:23 2008] [error] [client 66.249.71.193] calendar debug 1: filter() called
[Mon Jul 28 08:58:23 2008] [error] [client 66.249.71.193] File is not a perl storable at blib/lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into blib/lib/auto/Storable/_retrieve.al) line 380, <DATA> line 32, at /home/jsmith/www/blog/plugins/calendar line 322

The blog uses a Blosxom Calendar plugin.

I remembered having problems when I moved the blog from a 32-bit Linux system to a 64-bit system (see Blosxom Calendar Plugin on 64-bit System). I found the problem was similar and I was able to resolve it by deleting the .calendar.cache file from the Blosxom plugins state directory, plugins/state.

Once the blog was accessible again, I checked the state directory with ls -al again and saw the .calendar.cache file had been recreated.

[/network/web/blogging/blosxom] permanent link

Sun, Jul 27, 2008 3:53 pm

Ghost 2003 Boot CD - Abort, Retry, Fail?

I use Symantec's Ghost 2003 to create image backups of disk drives. Since the Ghost 2003 Boot Wizard can't create bootable CD's, only boot floppy disks, I create a boot floppy disk and then use a program like Nero or Roxio Easy Easy CD Creator, which can create boot CDs from floppy diskettes, to create a Ghost 2003 boot CD (see Procedure for Generating Norton Ghost Bootable CD for procedure to use with Roxio's Easy CD and DVD Creator 6). When I booted systems from the boot CD's I created I would see the message below:

Write protect error writing drive A
Abort, Retry, Fail?

I would hit F and the boot process would proceed. If I hit R, I would get the same message again. Hitting A for "Abort" would allow me to proceed to running Ghost, but the mouse driver wouldn't load. If I hit F8 just as I was booting from the Ghost 2003 boot CD, I could walk through the commands in config.sys and autoexec.bat, which allowed me to see that the error occurred just as the mouse driver was being loaded.

I didn't know how to eliminate the error until I found the cause of the problem described by eASYkILL in a posting at Ghost 2003 Multi-Boot CD (Abort,Retry,Fail) error. He posted the following information:

So here is the deal... MOUSE.COM is trying to create a MOUSE.INI file and because you created a bootable CD (read-only) it is unable to write the file and gives the error message (Abort, Retry, Fail). If you fail, you can continue just fine with mouse support.

The solution... add a MOUSE.INI to your floppy that you are creating the image from. If you booted from the floppy at least once, this problem doesn't occur because the file is created. That may be how it went away for you. Just re-create the bootable CD from the floppy with mouse.ini added.

Here is my mouse.ini

[mouse]
MouseType=PS2

Cheers!

Since most of the systems on which I'm performing the Ghost 2003 image backups have a mouse attached by the PS/2 mouse port, I thought that should work fine. So I used Notepad to create a mouse.ini file with the above lines on one of the Ghost 2003 boot floppy disks (be sure to change the "save as type" to "all files", if using the Windows Notepad program). I also found that I was able to boot laptops with a built-in mouse touchpad and use use the mouse with no problems with the mouse type set to PS2 in mouse.ini. I no longer received the "Abort, retry, or fail" message when booting from a Ghost 2003 boot CD that had the mouse.ini file in the root directory.

Note: you can see optons for the mouse.com program by typing mouse /? at a command prompt. You can use mouse off to remove the mouse driver from memory.

. You can specify the mouse type by using the type option.


mouse type       /Cn (serial), /Z (PS2), /In (inPort), /B (bus)
                  (n specifies a prot and can be either 1 or 2)

References:

Procedure for Generating Norton Ghost Bootable CD
MoonPoint Support
Ghost 2003 Multi-Boot CD (Abort,Retry,Fail) error
By: eASYkILL
Date: April 1, 2005
Microsoft Software Forum Network (MSFN)

[/os/windows/utilities/backup/ghost] permanent link

Thu, Jul 24, 2008 10:16 am

NTFS Support on CentOS

I needed to be able to access files on a USB drive formatted with the NTFS filesystem from a CentOS 5.1 Linux system. To do so I used the free open source NTFS driver for Linux, NTFS-3G.

I followed the instructions at How to Mount an NTFS Filesystem in order to be able to do so. I issued the command yum install fuse fuse-ntfs-3g dkms dkms-fuse to install the required packages (dkms and dkms-fuse install the fuse kernel module).

The system needs to be configured to use the RPMforge repository in order for the above yum install command to work. See Installing Wine on CentOS or RPMForge Packages and Yum Priorites for information on configuring yum to use the RPMforge repository.

After installing the ntfs-3g driver, I was able to mount the NTFS-formatted drive.

[root@localhost ~]# mkdir /mnt/windrive
[root@localhost ~]# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windrive

I first created a mount point, which I arbitrarily named "windrive" under /mnt. Then I needed to specify the file system type with -t ntfs-3g. This particular drive was an external USB drive, which Linux identified as /dev/sda. It had only one partition on it, so I used /dev/sda1 to mount it. If you are unsure how Linux will identify the drive, see Linux Drive Designations

If the NTFS drive contains the Windows operating system for a system and the system was put into hibernation mode when it was shut down, you can only mount it in read-only mode. You will see the following message, which I saw when I tried to mount another drive from a hibernated Windows system, if you don't specify read-only mode for mounting the drive:

# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /mnt/workdrive
Windows is hibernated, refused to mount.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1': Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is hibernated. Please resume and shutdown Windows
properly, or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option, or
mount the volume read-write with the 'remove_hiberfile' mount option.
For example type on the command line:

            mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /mnt/workdrive -o remove_hiberfile

I was able to mount the drive by using the -r option for the mount command (you can also use -o ro).

mount -r -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /mnt/workdrive

fuse-ntfs-3g package information:

[root@localhost /]# rpm -qi fuse-ntfs-3g
Name        : fuse-ntfs-3g                 Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 1.2712                            Vendor: Dag Apt Repository, http://dag.wieers.com/apt/
Release     : 1.el5.rf                      Build Date: Mon 14 Jul 2008 04:20:28 PM EDT
Install Date: Thu 24 Jul 2008 08:48:39 AM EDT      Build Host: lisse.leuven.wieers.com
Group       : System Environment/Kernel     Source RPM: fuse-ntfs-3g-1.2712-1.el5.rf.src.rpm
Size        : 905700                           License: GPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Mon 14 Jul 2008 05:57:27 PM EDT, Key ID a20e52146b8d79e6
Packager    : Dag Wieers <dag@wieers.com>
URL         : http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
Summary     : Linux NTFS userspace driver
Description :
The ntfs-3g driver is an open source, GPL licensed, third generation Linux NTFS
driver. It provides full read-write access to NTFS, excluding access to
encrypted files, writing compressed files, changing file ownership, access
right.

Technically it’s based on and a major improvement to the third generation Linux
NTFS driver, ntfsmount. The improvements include functionality, quality and
performance enhancements.

ntfs-3g features are being merged to ntfsmount. In the meanwhile, ntfs-3g is
currently the only free, as in either speech or beer, NTFS driver for Linux
that supports unlimited file creation and deletion.

After unmounting the drive with the umount command, I removed the directory I created when mounting it.

[root@localhost /]# rmdir /mnt/windrive

[/os/unix/linux/centos] permanent link

Thu, Jul 24, 2008 10:05 am

Linux Drive Designations

If you are unsure how Linux will designate a drive, Linux identifies IDE drives as hdx, e.g. hda, hdb, hdc, or hdd, while sdx, such as sda, sdb, etc., is used to designate SATA, SCSI, and USB drives.

IDE/ATAPI device names

Name	Device
hda	IDE bus/connector 0 master device
hdb	IDE bus/connector 0 slave device
hdc	IDE bus/connector 1 master device
hdd	IDE bus/connector 1 slave device

To find drives on your system, type mesg | grep '^hd.:' and/or dmesg | grep 'SCSI device sd.:'

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | grep '^hd.:'
hda: HDS722516VLAT80, ATA DISK drive
hdc: Memorex DVD16+/-DL4RWlD2, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: ST3120026A, ATA DISK drive
hda: max request size: 512KiB
hda: 321672960 sectors (164696 MB) w/7938KiB Cache, CHS=20023/255/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
hdd: max request size: 512KiB
hdd: 234441648 sectors (120034 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdd: cache flushes supported
hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(66)
[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | grep 'SCSI device sd.:'
SCSI device sda: 398297088 512-byte hdwr sectors (203928 MB)
SCSI device sda: 398297088 512-byte hdwr sectors (203928 MB)
SCSI device sdb: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sdb: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sdc: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sdc: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sdc: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sdc: drive cache: write back

[/os/unix/linux] permanent link

Wed, Jul 23, 2008 2:41 pm

Installing Wine on CentOS

I needed to install Wine on a CentOS 5.1 system I had just set up. Wine is available from the RPMForge repository, so I downloaded the latest rpmforge-release package from RPMForge and installed it.

[root@localhost ~]# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uhv rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

That placed two new files, mirrors-rpmforge and rpmforge.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d. I then checked to ensure the yum-priorites package was installed.

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qi yum-priorities
Name        : yum-priorities               Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 1.1.10                            Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 9.el5.centos                  Build Date: Sun 08 Jun 2008 06:25:46 PM EDT
Install Date: Wed 23 Jul 2008 12:20:43 AM EDT      Build Host: builder16.centos.org
Group       : System Environment/Base       Source RPM: yum-utils-1.1.10-9.el5.centos.src.rpm
Size        : 12698                            License: GPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Sat 14 Jun 2008 07:23:04 PM EDT, Key ID a8a447dce8562897
URL         : http://linux.duke.edu/yum/download/yum-utils/
Summary     : plugin to give priorities to packages from different repos
Description :
This plugin allows repositories to have different priorities.
Packages in a repository with a lower priority can't be overridden by packages
from a repository with a higher priority even if repo has a later version.

I then verified that yum-priorities is enabled by ensuring that the following lines were present in /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf:

[main]
enabled = 1

The yum repository information is stored in /etc/yum.repos.d.

[root@localhost ~]# ls -l /etc/yum.repos.d
total 32
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2049 Jun 19 09:48 CentOS-Base.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  626 Jun 19 09:48 CentOS-Media.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  684 Mar  8  2007 mirrors-rpmforge
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  428 Mar  8  2007 rpmforge.repo

I added priority=1 as the last line in the following sections of CentOS-Base.repo:

[base]
[updates]
[extras]

I added priority=2 as the last line in the [centosplus].

I edited /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo and added priority = 11 at the end of the file.

Repositories with lower priority numbers are considered to have a higher priority than than those with higher numbers. E.g. if repository A has priority=4 associated with it while repository B has priority=5 associated with it, repository A has a higher priority than repository B.

After adding the RPMForge repository, I was then able to install Wine with yum install wine. The following dependencies were also instaled:


Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size 
=============================================================================
Installing:
 wine                    i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge          2.9 k
Installing for dependencies:
 wine-capi               i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           16 k
 wine-cms                i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           65 k
 wine-core               i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           36 M
 wine-esd                i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           43 k
 wine-jack               i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           13 k
 wine-ldap               i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge          251 k
 wine-nas                i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           12 k
 wine-twain              i386       1.0-1.el5.rf     rpmforge           23 k

After the installation, I ran winecfg.

[root@localhost ~]# winecfg
wine: created the configuration directory '/root/.wine'
Could not load Mozilla. HTML rendering will be disabled.
wine: configuration in '/root/.wine' has been updated.

Wine was configured to emulate Windows XP by default. I clicked on the Desktop Integration tab and set the "My Documents", "My Pictures", "My Music", and "My Videos" folders to link to directories I created under a "Documents" folder, I created under the login directory for the account I was logged in under. The directories must be created before you link to them with the Wine configuration utility.

[root@localhost Documents]# mkdir Pictures
[root@localhost Documents]# mkdir Music
[root@localhost Documents]# mkdir Videos

Wine configuration of folders

In the Wine configuration window, I clicked OK to retain the default settings. When I was returned to the shell prompt, I ran wine notepad to test Wine with the notepad application.

References:

[/os/unix/linux/centos] permanent link

Tue, Jul 22, 2008 11:00 pm

Installing Centos 5.1 on a USB Drive

Though it took me some trial and error to figure out how to get it working, I was finally able to install CentOS 5.1 on a USB drive and have a system boot from the drive automatically. I wanted to have the drive set up with CentOS, so I could easily transport programs and my personal files between locations.

[ More Information ]

[/os/unix/linux/centos] permanent link

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 8:31 pm

Use SFTP Rather Than FTP

FTP uses unencrypted userids and passwords for file transfers, whereas SFTP uses an encrypted userid and password and encrypts the data as well. Many may have also experienced problems with getting FTP to work through a firewall. Steven Frank provides a list of other reasons at http://stevenf.com/archive/dont-use-ftp.php as to why one should avoid FTP when possible.

[/network/ftp] permanent link

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 5:12 pm

Requiem for Windows XP

InfoWorld published an artcile A requiem for Windows XP on July 1, 2008 stating that Microsoft has held firm on discontinuing sales of Windows XP, though enterprises, small businesses, and some consumers will still be able to install XP as a "downgrade" to Windows Vista Business or Ultimate. System builders will still be able to build PCs with Windows XP until February 1, 2009, so if you purchase a PC at a computer show, such as those run by MarketPro, which I attend when they are held in my area, you will still be able to get Windows XP on such a system.

There is also a link in the article to a Windows 7 compatibility checker, if you are interested in determing whether a system will be able to support the next version of Windows.

[/os/windows/xp] permanent link

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 4:58 pm

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

InfoWorld has an article published July 15, 2008 titled Can you really live without Microsoft Office? that discusses open source and cloud computing alternatives to Microsoft Office.

One of the alternatives is OpenOffice. Though I use Microsoft Office on my Windows laptop, I use OpenOffice on other systems, such as Linux or Solaris systems and even on one Windows system. I've found it quite useable and, for most of the documents I work with, able to handle documents created in Microsoft Office's applications fairly well.

I also use Google Docs, though just the spreadsheet capability. I use Google Docs spreadsheets for personal use, such as tracking my mileage and gas consumption. It works fine for that and could also suffice for others with uncomplicated spreadsheet requirements, but it definitely isn't on a par with Microsoft Excel's capabilities.

I haven't tried the other alternative discussed in the article yet, Zoho. Zoho is a suite of online applications (services) that you access from the Zoho website. The applications are free for individuals and some have a subscription fee for organizations. In their FAQ, Zoho states that "We assure you that the contents of your Account will not be disclosed to anyone and will not be accessible to employees of AdventNet. Neither do we process the contents of your Account for serving targeted advertisements."

[/os/windows/office] permanent link

Mon, Jul 14, 2008 10:33 pm

Netscape Mail View

Someone who uses Netscape 7.2 for email reported that the count for unread messages, which appears on the left hand side of Netscape's mail window, was showing uread messages, but he couldn't find them. When I checked his system, I found he had changed the message "view" to show only messages with attachments. I changed it to show all messages again, by selecting "All" for "View" ("View" appears slightly above the list of messages in a folder).

Netscape 7.2 supports the following "views"

All
Unread
Important
Work
Personal
To Do
Later
People I know
Recent Mail
Last 5 Days
Not Junk
Has Attachments

There is also an option to customize the view of messages.

[/network/email/clients/netscape] permanent link

Sun, Jul 13, 2008 7:57 pm

BFG Tech Model BFG550WGSPSU Power Supply

Click either image to see a larger version

Manufacturer: BFG Tech Model: BFG550WGSPSU AC Input: 115/230V~,60/50Hz,10/6A Specifications ATX12V 2.2 Dual 12V Rails SATA Connectors PCI Express Ready Efficiency: > 80% Typical Silent 140mm Intake Fan BFG Thermal Control Technology Protection Circuitry MTBF: 80,000 Hours at 25° C Safety Approval: CCC, CB, UL, TUV, CE, CSA, CUL, NEMKO, SAA, GS, VDE Dimensions: 8.6cm W x 15cm H x 14cm D (3.4" W x 6" H x 5.5" D) 1 Year Warranty
DC Output +3.3V = 35A +5V = 40A +3.3V +5V Max. Combined Wattage = 130W +12V1 = 18A +12V2 = 18A +12V Max. Combined Wattage = 432W -12V = 0.5A +5VSB = 2.5A
Included in Box 1 x 550 Watt Power Supply Unit 1 x US Power Cable 1 x User's Guide 4 x Mounting Screws
Connectors 1 x 24-Pin (20+4-Pin) Motherboard Connector 1 x 8-Pin (4+4-Pin) CPU 12V Power Connector 1 x 6-Pin PCI Express Connector 1 x 8-Pin (6+2-Pin) PCI Express Connector 4 x 4-Pin Molex Connectors 1 x 4-Pin Floppy Connector 4 x SATA Connectors (also includes connectors for IDE drives)
Works With The Following Motherboards PCI Express AGP PCI

Manual

BFG Tech "GS" Series User's Manual - Microsoft Word Document
BFG Tech "GS" Series User's Manual - HTML Document (produced by OpenOffice.org Writer)

References:

[/pc/hardware/power-supply] permanent link

Sun, Jul 13, 2008 3:04 pm

Scheduling NTBackup for a Daily Backup

The NTBackup utility comes with Windows NT, 2000, Server 2003, Small Business Server (SBS) 2003, and Windows XP. NTBackup is not installed by default with Windows XP Home Edition, but is available on the Windows XP installation disc. Microsoft has replaced NTBackup in Windows Vista.

NTBackup backs up files to a proprietary BKF format. With Windows XP and later, it can even backup open files using Volume Shadow Copy, aka Volume Snapshot Service (VSS)..

To create a backup process that runs every week on a specific day to backup a folder on a system, you can create a batch file similar to the following:

@echo off

REM NTBackup batch file for ACCI folder

REM Set date variable
For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set date=%%a-%%b-%%c)
date = %date%

ntbackup backup D:\ACCI /J "ACI" /V:No /M Normal /Snap:on /f "F:\ACI\Backups\Current\ACCI_Weekly_%date%.bkf"

The above batch file, which I've named acci-weekly.bat will backup the D:\backup on the system on which it is run. The files will be backed up to F:\ACI\Backups\Current\ACCI_%date%.bkf. The %date% variable is set by the code below:

For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set date=%%a-%%b-%%c)
date = %date%

The %a variable holds the month, %b holds the day, and %c holds the year. Files will be created with names in the form ACCI_Weekly_07-12-2008.bkf.

The other parameters used are as described below:

/J {"JobName"} Specifies the job name to be used in the backup report. The job name usually describes the files and folders you are backing up in the current backup job. /V:{yes | no} Verifies the data after the backup is complete. /M {BackupType} Specifies the backup type. It must be one of the following: normal, copy, differential, incremental, or daily. /SNAP:{on | off} Specifies whether or not the backup should use a volume shadow copy. /F {"FileName"} Logical disk path and file name. You must not use the following switches with this switch: /P /G /T.

Further information on the options availabe with the ntbackup command can be obtained by running ntbackup /? from a command prompt.

By specifying normal as the backup type, all of the files in the folder will be backed up. If the folder occupies a large amount of disk space and will take a considerable amount of time to backup, you may not want to backup all of the files every day.

In this case I would run a normal backup on Sundays, but an incremental backup every other day. So I have a second batch file, acci.bat.

@echo off

REM NTBackup batch file for ACCI folder

REM Set date variable
For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set date=%%a-%%b-%%c)
date = %date%

ntbackup backup D:\ACCI /J "ACI" /V:No /M Incremental /Snap:on /f "F:\ACI\
Backups\Current\ACCI_%date%.bkf"

To run the batch file that performs the incremental backup every day, you can use the at command.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>at 19:30 /every:m,t,w,th,f,s d:
\backups\acci.bat
Added a new job with job ID = 1

The above command schedules the backup to run every night, Monday through Saturday, at 7:30 P.M. The backup is an incremental backup. An incremental backup is a backup that copies only those files created or changed since the last normal or incremental backup. It marks files as being backed up by clearing the archive attribute on files. If you use a combination of normal and incremental backups to restore your files, you will need to have the last normal backup and all incremental backup sets.

You can check scheduled jobs by running the at command with no parameters. You can get help on the command with at /?.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.mayberry>at
Status ID   Day                     Time          Command Line
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        1   Each M T W Th F S       7:30 PM       d:\backups\acci.bat

To schedule the job that runs once a week on Sunday, I can use at 19:30 /every:su d:\backups\acci_weekly.bat.

For a full restoral from the backups, I would need to restore first from the weekly normal backup and then restore from each of the incremental backups from that week.

[/os/windows/utilities/backup/ntbackup] permanent link

Sat, Jul 12, 2008 2:42 pm

Ghost 7.5 Client Timed Out Failure

When I ran a Symantec Ghost 7.5 backup task to create an image backup of a system over the LAN, the task failed. I looked at the event log for the backup task by right-clicking on the failed task.

Ghost 7.5 task failure

I saw that the initialization failed.

Ghost 7.5 initialization failed

The event details showed that the client timed out.

Ghost 7.5 client timed out

A Ghost client system should be listening on UDP port 1346. The Ghost server sends a datagram from UDP port 1347 to port 1346 on the client to start the backup. But when I scanned the client system with Foundstone's free ScanLine program, I found it wasn't responding on port 1346.

C:\>sl -u 1346 192.168.0.14
ScanLine (TM) 1.01
Copyright (c) Foundstone, Inc. 2002
http://www.foundstone.com

Scan of 1 IP started at Sat Jul 12 13:29:59 2008

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.0.14
Responded in 0 ms.
0 hops away
Responds with ICMP unreachable: Yes

UDP ports:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scan finished at Sat Jul 12 13:29:59 2008

1 IP and 1 port scanned in 0 hours 0 mins 0.02 secs

And when I examined the network traffic between the two systems with MicroOLAP's tcpdump when I ran the backup task, I saw the client system was returning a "udp port 1346 unreachable" message.

I logged onto the system from the server using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). When I logged on and checked whether the system was listening on UDP port 1346 with netstat, I saw it was listening.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netstat -a | find "1346"
  UDP    Ellie:1346             *:*

When I disconnected and scanned the system from the Ghost server again using ScanLine, I could then see it was responding on UDP port 1346. Apparently just logging on to the system caused it to start accepting data on port 1346 again.

C:\Program Files\Network\Scanning\Scanline>sl -u 1346 192.168.0.14
ScanLine (TM) 1.01
Copyright (c) Foundstone, Inc. 2002
http://www.foundstone.com

Scan of 1 IP started at Sat Jul 12 14:09:32 2008

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.0.14
Responded in 0 ms.
0 hops away
Responds with ICMP unreachable: Yes

UDP ports: 1346

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scan finished at Sat Jul 12 14:09:36 2008

1 IP and 1 port scanned in 0 hours 0 mins 4.02 secs

But when I ran the Ghost task again, it again failed. And when I scanned the system with ScanLine again, I found the client system was no longer responding on port 1346. And when I checked from the system itself by using the netstat command again, I found netstat was no longer showing it listening on port 1346.

From the client system itself, I ran ngctw32.exe, which is located in C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost. When I ran ngctw32, the ScanLine program showed it listening on port 1346 as did netstat. I then reran the Ghost task from the server. This time the backup started.

[/os/windows/utilities/backup/ghost] permanent link

Tue, Jul 29, 2008 8:48 pm

Tue, Jul 29, 2008 11:53 am

Mon, Jul 28, 2008 7:32 pm

Sun, Jul 27, 2008 3:53 pm

Thu, Jul 24, 2008 10:16 am

Thu, Jul 24, 2008 10:05 am

Wed, Jul 23, 2008 2:41 pm

Tue, Jul 22, 2008 11:00 pm

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 8:31 pm

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 5:12 pm

Tue, Jul 15, 2008 4:58 pm

Mon, Jul 14, 2008 10:33 pm

Sun, Jul 13, 2008 7:57 pm

Sun, Jul 13, 2008 3:04 pm

Sat, Jul 12, 2008 2:42 pm

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 3:26 pm

Thu, Jul 10, 2008 3:57 pm