July 2005 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Strange /dev/hdc3 issue
by Greg Freemyer 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

With SuSE 9.2: I have a drive (sitting on the shelf_ that I'm trying to verify is the drive I think it is and that it contains the data I think it does. I connected it to a test machine of mine that I connect misc. drives to all the time. fdisk -l /dev/hdc shows that it has 3 partitions on it /dev/hdc1 /dev/hdc2 /dev/hdc3 Per fdisk they are NTFS, Linux Swap, and Linux respectively. I can mount (readonly) the NTFS partition as /dev/hdc1 and look around. Obviously the Linux Swap area will mean little to me so I skipped /dev/hdc2. When I try to mount /dev/hdc3, I get "special device /dev/hdc3 does not exist". I'm not getting any entries in /var/log/warn, so I'm curious what the issue could be. Thanks Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century

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Trying to make a near Perfect Backup System
by Dale L Roblin 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Hello all, I would like some advice on what would be considered as a "bullet-proof" backup system. The system I am currently using is as follows: some P4 5X 200GB HDD configured as an LVM using ReiserFS (2X SATA, 3X IDE) 1X 20GB HDD holding the OS: SuSE 9.2 Backup Software: Rsync-based shell script run from cron every 24 hours to backup the entire division. Most of the rsync script was gathered from: http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ I only backup our division, not the entire organisation - that is the IT department's problem. Currently we have no large-capacity tape drive for off-site storage, so that is an obvious MUST-HAVE. I am considering the HP Ultrium 100-200GB tape device for this, should I be going in another direction with tapes? The above PC works very well. However, it's greatest weakness is disk-failure. We recently had the backup system die due to disk failure (there were no spare 200GB disks available in our IT section at the time too :( ), and at the same time one of our most important data analysis pc's also had a disk failure. I could not recover data from the backup LVM, so we had effectively lost all data. Fortunately we were able to recover data from the analysis PC disk via a data recovery specialist. Since we have 40+ pc's in the division, the likelihood of both the backup system and a crucial PC failing at the same time is remote, but it happened. Not surprisingly I was immediately in the "hot-seat" to answer why it happened and why there was no plan for this etc... So, my questions on how do I make a "bullet-proof" backup system are these: 1. I need a tape device for off-site storage, are the LTO Ultrium devices good enough? 2. Should have a 'twin' of the above PC so I have a backup of the backup, since I can't fit more disks into the box? 3. Would a RAID system be better (I have not used RAID yet though) - would that need to be hardware RAID? 4. I have read a little on SUN Storedge systems, can these be used with Linux, and are they better than anything else? 5. So far I have only been using shell scripts for backup, should I be considering commercial packages, if so which are "in-favour" at present? Sorry for the epic posting, but the aforementioned disk failures have prompted the investigation into a "bullet-proof" backup system (and quite rightly so). Many many thanks for any assistance. -dale -- Dale Roblin Council for Geoscience South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 12 841-1492 Fax: +27 (0) 12 841-1424 Disclaimer Legal Notice: By having opened and read this electronic mail, you are deemed to have understood and accepted all disclaimers and conditions pertaining to electronic mail emanating from, and received by The Council for Geoscience, further detail of which may be viewed at the following hyperlink: http://www.geoscience.org.za/disclaimer.htm

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Network interface on SLES8
by Joe Zitnik 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

I installed SLES 8 on an HP Proliant server. The network interface is not working. In YAST, it shows an autodetected card, and it looks to be correct. On boot, it shows "Invalid interface name" when tring to start the network card. If I go to a terminal session, and do an ifup eth0 (which is what YAST shows the card as) it also gives me an "Invalid interface name" error. What up wit dat?

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Re: [SLE] Trying to make a near Perfect Backup System
by François Pinard 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

[Dale L Roblin] > I would like some advice on what would be considered as a "bullet-proof" > backup system. There is no such thing. :-) At one place I work, even if more expensive than tapes, we use a few external USB disk units, encrypted for security, and simply `rsync' to them, accross the network, from all our main hierarchies on various machines. We do not try to backup things installed out of CDs, the CDs are the backups. We carefully document configuration of each machine, which is something useful in itself. We chose to not backup our biggest databases, but rather keep them on a big, fast (and expensive) RAID file server, with UPSes and al. Yet I'm not sure I like that solution :-). When we add a new such an external disk unit in the circuit, we initialise it with a copy of another. Using initialised disks, `rsync' takes only a few minutes every day (even if it take a few days before a particular disk unit returns), and the backups are always guaranteed to be full. Very convenient. Restoring is also fairly easy, given the backups are indeed mountable disks, using similar hierarchies. Once `rsync' installed on all machines and `ssh' keys exchanged, the overall backup operations are controlled through a single Python script, accepting arguments for the common operations we need. P.S. - A former boss used to say that there are two kinds of computer people: those who lost data, and those who are going to lose data! -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca

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64-bit Matlab on SUSE Linux 9.3, Opteron CPU
by Alexandr Malusek 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Hi, Has anybody succeeded in running the 64-bit version of Matlab (7.0.4) on an Opteron machine running SUSE Linux 9.3? I get: $ /lw64/matlab/7.0.4/bin/matlab *** glibc detected *** malloc(): memory corruption: 0x0000000000598840 *** Aborted The 32-bit version seems to start OK. -- A.M.

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Re: [SLE] postfix?
by Markus Natter 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

On 7/14/05, jdd sur free <jdanield(a)free.fr> wrote: > Markus Natter wrote: > > > So, I think you could have commented out the local delivery line(s) in > > your master.cf > > which would explain this problem. > > not exactly, but this was the problem. as said in postfix > doc, I tried to comment out local, and in fact the only line > I see that was _not_ already commented was that one: > > > > > check your master.cf for these lines: > > > > local unix - n n - - local > > the following line was already commented > > > localhost:10025 inet n - n - - smtpd > > -o content_filter= > > > > > > hope this helps.. > > this helped really!! great thanks ! > > however, if I can ask a bit more. > > after uncommenting those lines, I received 7 (seven) > previously vanished mails. > > can you tell me where a they kept? I lokked for them in > /var/mail; /var/spool/postfix, /var/spool/mail, even in > various /tmp and didn't find them. > > thanks again > jdd > > > -- > pour m'écrire, aller sur: > http://www.dodin.net > http://valerie.dodin.net > http://arvamip.free.fr > mh.. I did understand you want to be able to receive local mail, and commenting these local lines would prevent you to this. Dependend on the stage mails are kept in the sub directories under /var/spool/postfix. e.g. if the opposit mailserver is unavailable and the mail has been deferred. I would expect mails in the /var/spool/postfix/deferred/.. folder structure. But, for a quick check, if the mails are still under control of postfix use the mailq command, as Sandy already said, to see in what state the mails are.

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Connecting USB serial port
by James Knott 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

I've recently purchased an "HL USB-RS232" adapter, for my ThinkPad. The package says it's Linux compatible, but there's no instructions for Linux (even the Windows instructions are weak). Does anyone know how I might set up this adapter? tnx jk

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Home network problem
by Kevanf1 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Apologies but this initial post is rather short on detail. Please if anybody can help let me know what you'll need and I'll post it up. My set up is as follows: I have one PC running Windows 2k. Standard onboard network card running fine. This then connects to a D-Link 504 modem router via ethernet cable (cat 5e) My second PC is running SuSE Linux 9.3 It has a 3com 10/100 network card (detected and working) again connected via ethernet to the above named D-Link 504 router. If I pop a Windows disk into the second PC I can access the network (ie my first PC situated upstairs). I mention this simply to eliminate the possibility of physical (cable) faults. Now, I can access the internet through the network card on the SuSE PC via my broadband connection from the router. No matter what I try I cannot access the Windows workgroup/domain on the Windows PC. I was able to do this with SuSE 9.2 I hve set up SAMBA in the same way as I had it with 9.2 but this does not seem to work. I have a feeling it is something to do with the SuSE firewall but I really am unsure of what to look for. I spent a few hours (about 4) last night reading and re-reading my 9.3 Admin manual. I could not glean the information I needed hence my plea on here :-) Could anybody give me some pointers of where to look, what to check? If I need to post up log files please let me know but tell me exactly what I would need to show. I'm starting to flounder now :-| I haven't posted minute details about the PC as I didn't believe them to be relevant. -- Take care. Kevan Farmer 34 Hill Street Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR

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Booting problem with external disk (USB)
by Raul Lapitzondo 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Hi all. I'm instaled SuSE 9.3 in a external disk (usb) in my laptop. I 've an hda (DVD/CD), HDC (Internal disk whith 2 windows partition hdc1/hdc2) and an external disk (usb) which was reconigzied as SDA. In the previous mentioned booting order. SuSE did by default: sda1 - FAT sda2 - SWAP sda3 - ext3 When the system reboots after instalation it does'nt find any partition. I try the safe mode with not result . any idea ? best regards Raúl H. Lapitzondo

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you have a mail
by Mitja 14 Jul '05

14 Jul '05

Hi! Again me with SuSE 9.3... I like to receive a system messages to the user as mail. On earlier versions this works but now i don't now how to configure. Mitja

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