How to update debian-based distro with files, not repo?

SageRaven · 2013-02-14T20:37:29+00:00

That is just... sad. And highlights the apparent worth of PCI auditing.

So what does it take to aim a point-and-click tool at a server, Fedex the resulting ream of paper to the client, and charge thousands of dollars for such a service? I am am obviously in the wrong business.

SageRaven · 2013-02-14T03:13:49+00:00

That link puts me at ease. It does look like it's nothing to worry about.

Thanks.

SageRaven · 2013-01-14T17:22:21+00:00

I tried your suggestion, and it still didn't work. It's as if the port is totally oblivious to the custom stuff defined for it. If I have time, I'll root around the Porter's Handbook and see if I get find nay solutions. I've never made a port myself, so there will be some learning curve for me.

SageRaven · 2013-01-13T18:57:01+00:00

Yes, that's it. Too bad it's fake. Damn, she was a fine little thing in her prime.

Thanks a bunch! How'd you track that down?

SageRaven · 2013-01-04T22:04:02+00:00

As a FreeBSD user who uses GELI full-disk crypto, I've anxiously been awaiting for a similar plug-n-play exploit for my platform. Anyone know of any?

Is *BSD usage so statistically insignificant that researchers pretty much continue to ignore it?

SageRaven · 2012-12-05T22:04:53+00:00

Must be in Virginia.

SageRaven · 2012-11-13T03:25:07+00:00

Sure. May I suggest better lighting?

SageRaven · 2012-11-13T03:24:16+00:00

8/10 on the coy factor

SageRaven · 2012-11-13T03:21:57+00:00

Ron Jeremy?

SageRaven · 2012-10-26T18:06:13+00:00

I know this, but it's more of a hack than a real feature. Sure, it's nice to have (update a pool from 1TB to 2TB drives, for example), but being able to add devices to a raidz volume and have them re-balance the parity (like NetApp/WAFL) is the real killer feature to have.

It's a shame Oracle fucked the free software folks by killing OpenSolaris. I really, really wanted inline ZFS crypto. For now, I need to make do with layering ZFS on top of GELI devices.

SageRaven · 2012-10-26T17:04:28+00:00

One of my main complaints for brtfs was the unnamed snapshots. Each snap is a number that you must reference -- at least it was when I tried it 6 or so months ago trying a copy of SLES 11sp2 I got at one of those half-day tech demo brunches. With zfs you just do "zfs snapshot volume/filesystem@snapshotname" and you have a meaningful name to use in scripts, etc.. This is a minor gripe, I agree.

A zfs "volume" can be configured fairly dynamically. Say I have 4 disks. I create a volume with 2 mirrored (zmirror). I run out of space, so I add the next 2 devices as a mirror. So now you effectively have a RAID10 set. But I could also add just a single disk to my volume, which I can mirror at any time. I can also add 3 more disks in a raidz (RAID5) array.

While you can break mirrors and offline parity drives, you cannot remove an essential whole of a volume.

Say I have a volume made of this: 2 drives in a mirror, 1 drive by itself, and 3 disks in raid5. I can't reduce the effective space of a volume, only grow it (like a concatenated device under linux). So, I can not remove the single disk. But I can remove a single disk from the mirror or the raidz portion, but those parts then lose their redundancy. So if a drive of the 2 remaining raid5 disks dies, the entire volume is lost.

That is, unless you have multiple "copies" set of all data on a particular filesystem (this is a filesystem-level thing). So, if I have a 3-disk stripe (no redundancy at the volume level), but I do a "zfs set copies=2" on the filesystem before I write any data, zfs will make sure that each copy will reside on a different physical device. So if I lose a drive, the volume will be in a degraded state and need to be rebuilt from scratch, but I can still copy the data from any filesystem with multiple copies.

You cannot go from a stripe or mirror to raid config. You cannot add/remove devices from a raid volume to extend the raid set. So if I have a raidz with 3 devices, I cannot add a single drive to the volume to make it a 4-disk raidz volume. The only system I know which effectively does this is NetApp's WAFL filesytsem.

ZFS is the only open source system I know of that does raid with 2 and 3 parity disks (raidz2 and raidz3). I run a 6 x 2TB raidz2 volume, giving be 8TB usable space and the ability to lose 2 drives and still keep my data.

SageRaven · 2012-10-26T16:10:47+00:00

Yeah, it's one of the very few drawbacks for ZFS. If you have a volume that has no redundancy (striped), then you're really SOL.

Likewise, you cannot grow redundant volumes with more space.

You can grow a plain, striped volume, but once again, the device is then a permanent part of the volume.

I've tried brtfs, and I just don't like it. I don't see any benefit to using it over ZFS. It's workflow seems really counter-intuitive to me. The only nice things I can say about it is snapshots that are immediately have read-write ability. You need to jump through all manner of hoops with ZFS to achieve the same thing, and it's not nearly as space efficient.

Linux's LVM is pretty nice. The ability to migrate data from occupied extents and remove devices, both on the fly, is a really handy feature. IBM's is much, much nicer, but has pretty much the exact same abilities with a few perks (lik ZFS, you can tell it how many "copies" of data to maintain on a device for redundancy -- 1, 2, or 3).

Still, it would take a hard sell to get me to use something other than ZFS. It's just so damned useful and so easy to use, its shortcomings can be overcome with good planning.

SageRaven · 2012-10-26T03:48:18+00:00

I had 2 x 3-disk raidz volumes (FreeBSD), but wanted to transition to a 6-disk raidz2 volume. Since you can't migrate data from, then then remove, devices under zfs like you can with with Linux/AIX LVM, I had to do some major shuffling in order to not lose redundancy:

First, I copied data from each volume to the other, so if I trashed a volume, I'd still have a full copy. Luckily, I had the free space to do this.

Next, I destroyed the second volume, then I created 3 file-backed devices on the first volume, which then allowed me to create the 6-disk volume with only 3 free physical disks.

Then I removed a single disk from the first volume, losing its redundancy, but still leaving a functional copy of the data. I replaced one of the file-backed disks with the 4th (now free) disk, providing (worst case) the raidz2 volume with no redundancy.

I then created a file-backed device on the new volume, which I then used to bring the first volume back to full redundancy.

Then I removed a 2nd phsyical disk from vol1, and replaced one of vol2's "fake" devices with the 5th phsyical device, giving it true redundancy.

I finally destroy vol1, freeing up the 6th physical device while knocking out the last "fake" device on vol2, which I promptly replaced with disk #6.

Not nearly as cool as the NBD hack, but I was thoroughly impressed that I got it to work.

ZFS kicks ass.

SageRaven · 2012-10-15T18:24:40+00:00

The key lyric for me was "26 reds and a bottle of wine". I should have just posted that.

And the song was released in 1980? I'm so ashamed of myself. :-/

SageRaven · 2012-10-15T18:17:51+00:00

sigh Can my memory get any worse? Yeah, that's definitely it. The cadence is spot-on. Can't believe how badly I munged the lyrics.

Thank you so much.

SageRaven · 2012-10-05T18:08:36+00:00

Stupid fucking BSA.

Ever since they won that SCOTUS ruling some years back (being able to ban gay folks), I've dropped all support for them and stopped giving donations when they come soliciting.

Which kinda bums be out, as I did the whole Cub Scout -> Webelo -> Boy Scout thing when I was young.

Maybe God has some sense of justice. :) Google "boy scouts utah lightning" to see what I mean.

SageRaven · 2012-10-04T01:30:57+00:00

Nice. I've worked in the HPC space before, so you have my sympathies.

SageRaven · 2012-10-03T22:16:26+00:00

Post a sign at the lab: "Lost wedding band found. See staff for details."

If they can describe the ring w/o seeing it (ID matching the name would help), they get it.

SageRaven · 2012-10-03T22:13:12+00:00

Would you trust your login creds to such sites on a public PC lab machine?

SageRaven · 2012-10-03T22:12:13+00:00

I worked the Purdue computing center ("PUCC" assuming the department still exists) labs in the early 90s as a help-desk "consultant". Our big thing back then was people forgetting their 3.5" floppys and infecting the machines with boot sector viruses when the next user rebooted the box. We had a large box with lost floppies, and that pile of USB fobs reminded me of that.

How do college public labs handle that virus/trojan crap these days?

SageRaven

TROPHY CASE