Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Bind problems on Debian?

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

If your bind restart fails with the following symptoms:

dax:/etc/bind# /etc/init.d/bind9 restart
Stopping domain name service…: bindrndc: connect failed: 127.0.0.1#953: connection refused
failed!
Starting domain name service…: bind failed!

Check in /var/log/daemon.log - I suspect you’ll have something along those lines:

Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: loading configuration from ‘/etc/bind/named.conf’
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: listening on IPv4 interface lo, 127.0.0.1#53
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: listening on IPv4 interface eth0, 88.191.12.184#53
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: none:0: open: /etc/bind/rndc.key: permission denied
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: couldn’t add command channel 127.0.0.1#953: permission denied
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: none:0: open: /etc/bind/rndc.key: permission denied
Nov 12 13:08:22 dax named[25989]: couldn’t add command channel ::1#953: permission denied

That’s a known Debian bug (bug #500277), the fix is the folllowing:

rm -f /etc/bind/rndc.key
touch /etc/bind/rndc.key
chown bind.bind /etc/bind/rndc.key
chmod 640 /etc/bind/rndc.key
killall named
/etc/init.d/bind9 restart

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Flash Crowds in your garage…

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

AKA how to build a distributed web system on a budget…

Link here

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Installing the VMWare tools with Debian Etch

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Startup the guest Debian.

In VMWare, click on VM / Install VMWare Tools…

/dev/hdc must be unused !

Click on “Install”

VMWare will mount a virtual CD on your system. Copy VMwareTools-.tar.gz to your home directory

cd ~ && tar xzvf VMwareTools*

cd vmware-tools*

apt-get install gcc linux-headers-2.6-686

ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.18-6-686 /usr/src/linux
cd /usr/src/linux

apt-get source kernel-image-2.6-686./vmware_install.pl

Answer [ENTER] to all questions - should work :)

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Measuring a web server performance

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

This can obviously be done through the CLI using Apache Workbench.

Another nice interface is Apache JMeter.

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Home to make a Samsung PVR HR-737 zone-free?

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

This tricks only works if your DVD is in Zone 2.

  • Empty the DVD tray
  • Power off / Power On
  • Wait for the boot
  • Press 5 times 0 within 1 second
  • Press “Repeat”
  • Type: 57538
  • You should see a “2″ in the upper left corner of the screen
  • Quickly type 9

That’s it.

(Apparently if your DVD is Zone-2 then you should type 76884 instaed of 57538, but I couldn’t confirm it)

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High-performance websites

Monday, January 28th, 2008

… check Googletalk :)

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How many CPUs are on my FreeBSD box?

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

-bash-3.2$ sysctl -a hw.ncpu
hw.ncpu: 8
-bash-3.2$

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Optimizing bulk inserts in MySQL

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Link Here

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How to make a Höher H088 DIVX/DVD zone-free?

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Quite easy actually:

  • Plug in
  • Power on
  • On the remote, press “Open”
  • And press on 9 as many times as it takes to get a “9″ displayed on the screen

That’s it.

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WORM - aka how to write things in stone

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

WORM stands for Write Once, Read Many - it’s usually used for archival storage systems, and it’s actually sometimes a legal requirement (typically in SOX).

At least three solutions can be commonly found on the market:

  • Centera, by EMC, is a WORM solution featuring a retention policy
  • Network Appliance (NetApp) has a software solution which runs on their systems called SnapLock
  • HP sells WORM Tape Drives

But there is no Open Source filesystem doing this yet AFAIK…

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