The Comms Room

can u point out some important things i should be knowing abt apache like SSI,or different mods that shud help me manage the VPS.i m comfortable with bash

WesleyDavid

I'm really not an apache guru, so I'd say just pick up a solid apache book and start administering a site and you'll pick stuff up on the way.

lovesh

thanks

@WesleyDavid i appreciate ur help

WesleyDavid

You're welcome!

lovesh

can i follow u on twitter so can have a reference ?

WesleyDavid

Sure, check me out: twitter.com/#!/Nonapeptide

lovesh

12:22 AM

followed

thanks again for the help

see u soon

WesleyDavid

later!

FFS @jcolebrand are you in enough stack exchange rooms? Geez... =)

Rebecca Chernoff

one can never be in too many rooms (:

returns to the shadows to lurk

jcolebrand

@WesleyDavid nope, keeps me well connected in case I need to take care of something ;)

also returns to the shadows of the corner of the room

Rebecca Chernoff

HEY THAT'S MY SHADOW! GET YER OWN!!

WesleyDavid

Now now children. No fighting or the Server Elf will zero out your MBRs.

Rebecca Chernoff

12:30 AM

):

jcolebrand

@RebeccaChernoff I did, I went to the corner. You just were in the shadow

Also, you two don't know what lurk means do you? Someone should @me to get my attention again :p

Rebecca Chernoff

haha

I had a sneaking suspicion you were still around (:

jcolebrand

I just saw Wes's comment about "now now"

fortunately this monitor is large enough to show me three rooms at a time

That's not saying much tho

WesleyDavid

@jcolebrand The attribute boils beneath the fellow parody.

jcolebrand

Hey I do have a Q for this room tho

WesleyDavid

12:33 AM

@jcolebrand The weapon tiles the dummy behind an applicable native.

jcolebrand

I need to boot a dead laptop, I don't have a burner handy, but I have a 2GB stick

WesleyDavid

@jcolebrand Whatever postage condones each rigorous concert opposite a lifestyle.

(You said to @ you, you didn't say with what)

jcolebrand

I would prefer to boot with something Windows based

@WesleyDavid so long as it's to get my attention when I'm lurking, it doesn't matter

However, I really just want to verify that I can read the HDD (as opposed to it needs to be replaced)

any ideas?

WesleyDavid

Hmm... 2GB bootable Windows-based USB... step 1) start drinking, step 2) cry deeply

jcolebrand

lol

WesleyDavid

12:35 AM

Yeah, you can wedge ubcd4win.com on a USB drive with xboot I think

jcolebrand

Do you have a SF Q or a walkthrough by chance?

or is that link enough?

I normally just wait until I have a burner handy, but thats' not an option here, sadly

Rebecca Chernoff

seems more SUish than SFish.

WesleyDavid

That link isn't enough, no. It's just for the windows based ubcd. As for wedging an image onto a USB drive, that should be just a search away. Lemme check

jcolebrand

@RebeccaChernoff except these guys are often wizards, and I like wizards

if it helps I have two USB sticks

WesleyDavid

hrm... bootable USB drives have always been tricky

►

Ta da! That guy's accent is thicker than me in a calculus midterm.

jcolebrand

12:40 AM

@WesleyDavid aye

WesleyDavid

Sounds like he's juggling ferrets with his tongue.

jcolebrand

Do you think I should go ask the SU folks as well?

WesleyDavid

I think it's a topic that is likely to be common there. I'd be surprised if there wasn't one that was definitive already. Lemme check

1

Q: Write bootable ISO to USB drive

Okay, existing answers list programs I do not want to use. I know that it's possible using only basic UNIX tools because I've done it. I know that I want to copy the iso to the pendrive using dd, but what do I do before that? I assume I need to make the drive bootable. How do I do it (in (g)parte...

Ohhh, make a PXE server so you can netboot everything you want.

Yes, that's a typical SysAdmin. Threading a needle with a rocket propelled grenade.

jcolebrand

lol

WesleyDavid

8

Q: Creating USB Disk from bootable CD

I have a recovery CD ISO image. As my CD drive is not working, I was wondering whether I can create a bootable pen drive out of that?

usb boot flash-drive

jcolebrand

12:44 AM

like I said, wizards ;)

I don't have a desktop box around right now, or I would have that in a VM on the localnet server

Only rolling with laptops atm, and ... yeah

I do what I can with what I have, ya know?

Ok, so now I'm tasked with I don't know if I have a Windows ISO handy ... :(

cos that microsoft tool looks really handy. Oh hard drive where be you

WesleyDavid

The ubcd4Win thing is the full ISO already there. It somehow skates around Windows licensing issues somehow

best to not ask too many questions

But after 6 or 7 years with no cease and desist orders, I'm confident enough to use it

jcolebrand

ok, so that has pretty much all I need, can it repair a bootloader on win7?

Also, the installer is free, it's the license that you have to have from Microsoft.

They generally make the ISOs freely downloadable, if you just ask.

Just most people don't realize that and try to skirt things

WesleyDavid

Oh heck, Windows 7 bootloader... unlikely. You'll need a Win 7 CD for that

Rebecca Chernoff

isn't the win iso > 2gb? also how do you not have anything bigger than 2gb?

jcolebrand

@RebeccaChernoff because I haven't ever needed a 4GB USB stick. But I'm always taking donations. Got any good swag over there at SE HQ?

I've already appeared in public leading a social group in a SE T ;)

@RebeccaChernoff I think some are smaller. I gotta go find my HDD

@WesleyDavid first I wanna make sure it's readable at all, so ... UB should work

Rebecca Chernoff

12:50 AM

@jcolebrand whistles innocently

jcolebrand

@RebeccaChernoff that's what I thought

WesleyDavid

@RebeccaChernoff Yeah, you sent me all those cool branded stickers, and pens, and hard drives, and laptops and things... you can surely spare a USB drive for poor, poor @jcolebrand

jcolebrand

See, you sent him a lap ... lap .. a whatnow @WesleyDavid?

I can see I need to break out my sad puppy dog face here

Rebecca Chernoff

@WesleyDavid we had a deal! you were never to speak of that!

jcolebrand

WesleyDavid

12:52 AM

@jcolebrand ...and a 30 inch Apple cinema screen and a Apple Air and an Ipad...

jcolebrand

@WesleyDavid lol

WesleyDavid

@RebeccaChernoff So... wait... I shouldn't mention the ServerFault Maserati either? D=

Rebecca Chernoff

you're gonna have to send it all back now.

Scott Pack

@WesleyDavid You sound like a Dean

Holocryptic

/quietly panhandles in the corner... next to the shadow

WesleyDavid

12:53 AM

You're gonna have to outrace me in it. =P

Rebecca Chernoff

ha

Scott Pack

1:11 AM

@WesleyDavid You didn't announce my twittance quite like that. Damn you!

WesleyDavid

But I did hire that singing bear-o-gram for you, so it's a wash.

Scott Pack

You did? Hm. Did you put a 'GA' or an 'OH' on the address?

Holocryptic

haha, I'm semi famous now

lovesh

@WesleyDavid hi just had one more doubt. In the disk space on vpszone they show 30 gb. does that include the OS installation space too?

WesleyDavid

1:47 AM

@lovesh That I believe is inclusive of your entire server, including OS files. So think of it as a 30GB hard drive that you then install your OS and other things on.

After the OS is installed you'll have... what... about 29.7 GB left? Something like that.

Holocryptic

Unless you install win2k8, then you'll have like .5 GB left

WesleyDavid

Where that list of privs that a SE user gets relative to his/her reputation?

Holocryptic

/reputation I thought

nope

WesleyDavid

No, but that does remind me to do my rep recalc

Holocryptic

serverfault.com/privileges

WesleyDavid

1:51 AM

lawlwut... first time I ever gained reputation for a recalc.

Thanks for the link. How'd you find it?

Holocryptic

I'm special and the world is my oyster

Go to your profile, and click on your rep amount

Aren't you supposed to be doing some WP hacking?

WesleyDavid

2:07 AM

Wow @Womble - you're hardcore. Hit the rep cap on 18 of the last 30 days.

lovesh

2:30 AM

@WesleyDavid wow the whole OS in 300 mb

@WesleyDavid VPSZONE says that they backup all my data so should i still backup data on my disk space? i mean r there any corner cases to that?

Chris S

WesleyDavid

2:46 AM

@lovesh Yes, always backup your own stuff. VPSZone backs up their stuff, but honestly I have no idea at what intervals and for how long nor do I know how fast a restoration is.

So rsync your stuff and test your backups.

Holocryptic

@ChrisS Is that a bat in a sombrero?

lovesh

thanks

Chris S

@Holocryptic Hedgehog wrapped in a t-shirt wearing a sombrero.

Holocryptic

@ChrisS Oh. That totally makes sense now.

@ChrisS You're here kinda late.

Chris S

I've got a 256MB UFD with Windows PE on it. Works great for booting an older computer to zero the hard drive.

Holocryptic

2:58 AM

ah, I love those lightweight PE images

jcolebrand

in Root Access, 58 secs ago, by jcolebrand

Does anyone know of an nLite/vLite for Win7?

Chris S

The one I PXE boot is getting fatter and fatter... Keep having to add new NIC and HBA drivers to it for new hardware. I think it's almost 300MB now.

Holocryptic

At my old company, the recovery console that was used for BM restores was a PXE environment with some skins added

It was a complete pain in the ass

Chris S

I use WinPE for BM ops. I like simply having a command prompt, stuff works just the same as opening a copy of cmd.exe, keeps things simple.

Holocryptic

Well, when you have custom exe's running in it that are necessary to perform the BMR, but that craps all over itself for lack of resources, especially when you're trying to debug it. Not fun. Educational, but not fun.

Chris S

3:13 AM

Yeah; nothing terribly odd. I take images using imagex (an MS utility, same one they use for making images for Windows Installer). Use SCDPM for backups, it's got a command line utli for restoring BM style (which I've never had to do other than practice).

Holocryptic

Hm, sounds very homebrew. I like it.

Chris S

It's a little home-brew... But it's just common stuff. If you sat down with the command prompt and messed with it a bit you'd figure it out right quick... How it should be, any god SA can figure it out without the documentation, and the documentation is there if they get stuck on something odd.

Holocryptic

Yeah, I need to get more familiar with the CLI. The few times I've had to do anything CLI heavy, I felt totally awesome after I got done with it.

whuf, I'm off to bed. I just hit a wall. 'Night @ChrisS. Don't stay up too late

Chris S

night

MikeyB

4:13 AM

We're psychic now.

0

Q: sfdisk + restore

I need to know if its right to perfrom sfdisk on "Extended" and "Linux swap" partitions? or maybe I need to remove the "Extended" and "Linux swap" lines from the c0d0-partition-info.sfdisk file? sfdisk --force /dev/cciss/c0d0 < c0d0-partition-info.sfdisk more c0d0-partition-info.sfdisk # pa...

restore

WesleyDavid

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100...

MikeyB

7, obviously.

Iain

6:33 AM

G'day

Chopper3

7:20 AM

hey

Anarko_Bizounours

7:42 AM

hi

Chopper3

8:07 AM

This question makes no sense to me, why are his VMs on different RDP ports? serverfault.com/questions/296538/…

Iain

I think that they are on different ports is unrelated to the issue he has. As to why - I guess he doesn't understand that the same port on different hosts is a different port

ITHedgeHog

8:52 AM

Morning

ITHedgeHog

9:03 AM

My rep is mocking me - I made a concious effort to get over 500 rep this week and its sitting at 499... and laughing

Iain

9:43 AM

I hope to get 10k for the year and 15k overall this week - gotta answer some questions though :)

Chopper3

My father-in-law died last February and since his wife died about 25 years ago he had 'discovered' his alternate sexuality, he never really spoke to us about it but it was quite clear he was gay and loving it. At his funeral about 50 very flamboyant strangers came to pay their respects, which was lovely actually. Anyway since we had his mail redirected to us we periodically get some staggeringly graphic post from various magazine/dvd/'product' companies in that arena.

so I always have to call/email/fax them to tell them he died and take him of their list. Well we just got a super 'out-there' catalogue from one company this morning, never seen or heard of some of the things in it (and I have a lot of gay friends) - so just had a very odd call to Amsterdam to change a mailing list :)

@Iain I'm hoping for about 52k by year end. But right now I'm more excited about another badge I've very close to :)

Iain

@Chopper3 would that be the Epic badge by any chance ? I was pleased by getting Generalist which I was surprised to find how close I was when I checked on data.sx recently. It made me do some work in areas where I'm weaker

Chopper3

might be

Anarko_Bizounours

I'M 400 \o/ a little victory for me!

I'm pleased!

Iain

@Chopper3 <Hong Kong Phooey> Could be </Hong Kong Phooey>

Chopper3

9:53 AM

:)

ffs! serverfault.com/questions/296598/… -sigh-

Anarko_Bizounours

10:08 AM

@Chopper3 duuuh, Did he forget that google exist for this kind of question?

Wonder if it must be flag as not a real question...

Chopper3

11:10 AM

Seriously great New Yorker article about the Bin Laden operation - newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/…

switched on a new storagetek SL8500 library this last night, turns out our symantec pre-sales muppet's not sold us the right licences (or not enough anyway) - so that's a new PO needs raising plus the delay in that going through the system before we can get the licences and make the bloody thing work :(

ITHedgeHog

Symantec sales are muppets

We don't back up some devices because we were sold the incorrect license, so they've always been if they die we rebuild

Chopper3

11:26 AM

that's balls isn't it - it's not like this was a small order for them, bit tired of kicking sales people in the bollocks recently

ITHedgeHog

Honestly, I feel we should be tough on Symantec and tough on the causes of Symantec

Chopper3

:)

Chopper3

11:50 AM

Oh well, time for a quick round of 'George Plimpton's Video Falconry'; newgrounds.com/portal/view/571422

Chris S

12:24 PM

@Chopper3 I really don't understand what you could possible like about that game...

Chopper3

it's shit, I like it because it's shit

and the hawk noise, that too

Anarko_Bizounours

12:43 PM

@Chopper3 very addictive...

Chopper3

far, far more than it should be right?

Transcript for