Root Access

12:00 AM

Though interestingly, Windows servers set up without a GUI (which can be managed with PowerShell) do let you install the components that give them normal-ish GUIs

Journeyman Geek

Well, GUIs arn't the 'normal' thing in this case

and learning to use a CLI effectively is essential for good, easily maintained linux system administration

as is understanding your shell and OS are mostly decoupled

(even with windows, if you think about it)

Ben N

Yep, there are plenty of Windows servery things you can only do from a command line

Creating a managed service account is one that springs to mind

Journeyman Geek

12:24 AM

yup

Ben N

Fun fact: there is a GUI thing that looks like it'll do that, but it does it wrong

Bob

12:48 AM

@BenN rundll32 does, as of Vista :P

people kept using it incorrectly for that purpose, so Microsoft patched it to actually work correctly for it :P

Journeyman Geek

erm, I'm at the office. There is no one here

I'm going to wait maybe 10 minutes, text my boss, go home

Ben N

@Bob I remember they changed it to check for certain stack corruption, just enough to not crash horribly or deadlock, but does it actually deduce the correct stack layout from the command line? That would be impressive!

(source)

That REDACTED Guy

@JourneymanGeek We were all at the office today at lunchtime when the lights went off.

Instead of going home we had cake and food and an impromptu band and two fake marriages

Journeyman Geek

@ThatREDACTEDGuy this saturday work day for new employees is dumb

@ThatREDACTEDGuy only there was a cultural misunnderstanding and they're legal...

That REDACTED Guy

Not sure about that, one was two girls and the other was the "priest" who was marrying them.

Journeyman Geek

1:04 AM

So we're supposed to spend the day learning our jobs. 1) I know my job and am damn good at most of it 2) NO ONE SENIOR WORKS SO THERE IS NO ONE TO LEARN FROM.

That REDACTED Guy

@JourneymanGeek Wait, your workplace opens saturday but only new employees clock in?

@JourneymanGeek And leave the keys to the place in the hands of people who haven't proved yet to be totally trustworthy, what could go wrong?

Nothing personally against you, it's just that, well...

"Hey Generic Guy, you've been with us one week, here's the keys to the safe, you will be alone next Saturday here"

Journeyman Geek

naw, its with the cleaners

That REDACTED Guy

THEY FORCE YOU TO CLEAN THE PLACE!

:P

Journeyman Geek

the one who speaks nearly no english is in

and everyone else comes in at 10 sooo

one hour with only me

So every week, when I come in I play...

Bon Jovi - It's My Life

►

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

1:23 AM

@Rahul2001 OK

Ramhound

0

Q: laptop fan constantly running windows 10

I just bought a lenovo ideapad 310 15ikb couple of days ago and the cooling fan has never stops and it goes loudly with high speed all the time even though the CPU usage is at 10% maximum and the temp is 32c maximum. I'v tried a lot of solutions such as closing all background activities,updating ...

Email Trump,or Putin, maybe they can help, all I can suggest it to reinstall the OS with latest drivers. — Moab 20 mins ago

^^ Really?

Nick

2:11 AM

Hi, today is my last session at PyDev. I'll be showing them IRC (#PyDev on Freenode), SO Python room, SU Root Access and Sandbox. Please get the bots ready. Do we have any bots written in Python?

Timing: 9am - 10am IST

You can expect one or two of the students to pop in anytime between 9:30am to 12:30pm IST

Thank you :) Please make them feel welcome!

Journeyman Geek

nope, no bots in python here

We have them in JS, and broken half the time, like real devs

@DavidPostill @Mokubai ^ (in case ;p)

ugh decisions decisions.

So, need to stand up the new server. Decided to run it on ubuntu. Need to decide 1) whether to give into @Bob's peer pressure and do ZFS and LXD 2) whether to go for ubuntu LTS or a current release and upgrade more frequently

Nick

@JourneymanGeek That's fine. They know JS too, I taaught them during the free time. Could you link to an SOBot source I can link them all to.

Journeyman Geek

@Nick errrrrrr

Nick

@JourneymanGeek Try both.

Journeyman Geek

Beats me, I don't do the bots

Ben N

2:16 AM

github.com/Zirak/SO-ChatBot

Nick

@BenN Thank you :) I expect atleast one person to fork that :)

Journeyman Geek

@Nick its about the same. Big difference is how I'll end up doing server refreshes

and and at this point it feels like biannial server refreshes should be a thing

Nick

@JourneymanGeek Do you atleast know any IRC bot that was scripted using Python.

Ben N

github.com/sopel-irc/sopel

Journeyman Geek

@Nick I donno man, maybe google it

Nick

2:18 AM

All I know is Panavia-Fuchsia on dAMn (deviantart chat), that's too unpro to show off.

Ben N

Heh, I just Googled "python irc bot" and got that

Nick

@JourneymanGeek you don't have to tell me. I've been teaching people how to do that XD

@BenN I need a bot to automate your job. Infact, I need a bot to ask my own questions on my behalf XD

Journeyman Geek

@Nick you need to write a bot that writes a bot that writes a bot....

Nick

@JourneymanGeek YES!! YES!! YES!!

YEEESSSSS!!!

Journeyman Geek

and since its @BenN ... in powershell

Nick

2:40 AM

I'll google it myself, it's unlikely I'll get what I'm looking for tho

Ah, do you a script for that? Google results in powershell using python.

Ben N

github.com/Fleex255/PS-SE-ChatBot

That's a PS chat bot for SE, is that what you're asking about?

Journeyman Geek

he needs a PS bot that writes a PS bot that... eventually replaces you ;p

Ben N

Oh. Well in that case, it's his time to start porting some ML libraries to PS :p

Journeyman Geek

;p

Ramhound

taking names with Mathael this hero is really good

Bob

3:24 AM

@BenN I probably misremembered

@JourneymanGeek lol. ZFS! ZFS!

this room/building is horrible. I barely have HSPA, let alone LTE

is this what mobile internet in India was like, @JourneymanGeek? :P (it took 10 tries to send the last message)

Journeyman Geek

sounds about right

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek ZFS! LXD! join the cool kids!

afr0ck

hello,
i need some help about APICs and PCI interrupts handling, can someone help ?

allquixotic

@Bob so basically what I get on Verizon at Customer HQ -- the experience today with AT&T was the polar opposite; 45/6 with low ping and high reliability and full "bars" cellular signal

Journeyman Geek

how would I do the partitions tho? /root in a traditional FS and a ZFS partition?

Ramhound

3:36 AM

@afrock explain

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek you only really need one non-ZFS partition for /boot; your ZFS pool can be mounted on /, and you can boot directly off of that and your ext4 or xfs /boot

afr0ck

ok

allquixotic

actually I think with modern grub and UEFI you don't even need a /boot

you can have the kernel vmlinuz and initrd live inside your ZFS pool

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic can't really install straight to zfs on ubuntu right?

allquixotic

you'd need an ESP though

Journeyman Geek

3:37 AM

cause I'm pretty certain I'm running ubuntu server

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek not from the ISO without modifications, no

but I have it working on my box with a custom install

Journeyman Geek

I figure I'll do a 40gb or so root, and stick a second partition for this

allquixotic

there's a good gist by @Bob with the details (or maybe someone else and Bob linked to it)

Journeyman Geek

this will also likely mess up my current backup plans ;p

Bob

@allquixotic Vodafone is giving me one bar at EDGE (2.5G), Optus 2 bars at 3G (not 3.5), Telstra 1-2 bars at LTE(-A)

allquixotic

3:39 AM

wait, you have 3 carriers with you? omg

Bob

@allquixotic nah, I did it without efi on dedibox

you don't get ipmi. I literally installed from the running system :D

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek for my box, I have about a gig of important data out of about 1.2 TB of total data, so I have that backed up to rsync.net (cryptomalware-proof online backups) via rsync/crontab

Bob

pivot_root to a ramdisk

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic current webserver is backed up using veeam endpoint over samba - It works well, but practically won't work if you do anything funny.

@Bob 0_0 dediboxes do IPMI

Bob

@allquixotic new Ubuntu iso can do it, but low tier dedibox can't boot iso

Journeyman Geek

3:41 AM

Unless you got the suuuuuuper cheap shit

Bob

@JourneymanGeek they do serial console

not proper ipmi

allquixotic

@Bob you mean 17.04?

I don't put non-LTS on servers as a matter of policy, because lazy and security updates stop very soon after release

Bob

@allquixotic I think 16.04

Journeyman Geek

@Bob Pretty sure the XC 2016 does IPMI

allquixotic

nah, 16.04 can't install to ZFS, it just ships the ZFS kernel modules

Bob

3:42 AM

@allquixotic primary voda, Optus on second phone for data plan, Telstra (prepaid) on second (dual-sim) phone for backup/testing

allquixotic

and I thought I was a phone geek temporarily having a Verizon and AT&T phone in parallel then subsequently canceling to save money O_O

Bob

@JourneymanGeek you'll have to tell me how. if I click ipmi it gives me a serial console (gotty)

no video our iso access

That took forever to upload

afr0ck

From the very little knowledge i have, every PCI device has 4 interrupt pins. Pins from the many different PCI devices on the motherboard (Built-in or external devices) are routed to an IO-APIC (Advanced programmable interrupt controller) through a programmble interrupt router. So that was the topology.

As far as i know when an interrupt occur, the IO-APIC will be signaled and it will raise an INT to the CPU then magic happens and CPU starts executing an ISR (Interrupt Service Routine).

What was that magic ? i mean how does the CPU received the interrupt vector (is it a special PCI bus cycle ?) and through which data path ? ..what happened to the CPU at that moment when it received the INT? and what will happen if the the IRQ was shared by many devices ?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek basically I have a step by step for switching a running Ubuntu/debian to zfs :P

Ramhound

ummm the interrupt signal was the magic?

Bob

3:46 AM

@afr0ck "what will happen if the the IRQ was shared by many devices" you get an irq conflict. welcome to 1998.

afr0ck

What is the communication that should happen between the CPU and the IO-APIC to handle the INT ? and what Bus is used for that communication ? PCI bus or another special BUS between CPU and APIC ?

Ramhound

What Bus?

PCI

hence the reason its a PCI device.

afr0ck

@Bob i know that the kernel will load ane execute all ISRs of devices sharing the IRQ. But that means the when the INT happens some kind of a universal Interrupt routine is loaded first and executed rather than choosing one from the vector that should be provided by the APIC !!!

i read the specs of PCI / APIC, documents but still don't have a clear idea. Because there are different implementations and there is the past. Internet is full of overpassed technology.

Ramhound

I am pretty sure PCI has a IEEE standard

I know it has a standard.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob hm, odd

Ramhound

3:59 AM

I really need to find a financial advisor. I could make a small profit selling something but not entirely sure it's not worth waiting until it's price increases :$

LET IT RIDE!

Journeyman Geek

its now called "install over KVM" and it dosen't really seem to let me do IPMI

the old one did

Ramhound

LOL
I forgot the password to this encrypted archive :$

this sucks

lol

Journeyman Geek

anyway it lets me set the partitions so I just did root, swap and /mnt/zfs as ext3 for now

then I can add the other parition later

Bob

4:46 AM

@JourneymanGeek ...I don't have a KVM :\

@JourneymanGeek No root on ZFS? D:

c'mon :P

(no, seriously, root on ZFS is really nice for upgrades & rollbacks... and you don't have to worry about partitions running out of space)

@JourneymanGeek ... apparently there's no KVM on the 2016 models :S ozbargain.com.au/node/254522

Journeyman Geek

@Bob slightly tempted to keep my old one now

Bob

@JourneymanGeek hmm? why? o.O

Journeyman Geek

@Bob has ipmi

Bob

5:01 AM

@JourneymanGeek serial console kinda works for me

I've learned to basically treat the installed os as a livecd :P

Journeyman Geek

Eh I was expecting ipmi and doing a minimal install :p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek can do that. debootstrap :D

Journeyman Geek

5:23 AM

Ugh no

I think I can work with this and since the old server is still up, do it service by service

It is just annoying to have less options

Mokubai

@JourneymanGeek surely if they are going to be creating bots to spam each other then it would be better to keep the noise in their own private room or, better yet, on their own private website?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek heh. I can help you set it up if you want? :P

30 mins and you'd have a nice stable root on zfs :P

minimal/debootstrap if you prefer

Journeyman Geek

6:02 AM

@Mokubai I assume they will observe. Otherwise we can point @Nick at... I donno Bot Overflow?

@Bob eh, should be fine

Rahul2001

Fun Fact: Barcode scanners actually scan the white lines and not the black lines

Journeyman Geek

@Bob that was reasonably painless

Bob

@JourneymanGeek but your root's not on zfs :(

Journeyman Geek

eh, no

Bob

aww

Journeyman Geek

6:15 AM

but oddly, root dosen't really matter ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek hm?

It means you either run the risk of growing root too much to fit, or you reserve an unnecessarily large amount of space for it

Journeyman Geek

@Bob 40gb for now? meh I can live with that?

Bob

splitting a drive into multiple partitions is almost never a clean solution :\

root@amaterasu:~# zfs list
NAME                                                                               USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
tank                                                                              89.9G   809G   104K  /tank
tank/ROOT                                                                         2.60G   809G    96K  none
tank/ROOT/debian                                                                  2.60G   809G  2.22G  /
tank/datastore                                                                     408K   809G    96K  /tank/datastore

of which 2.6 GB is used (here) :P

Journeyman Geek

hmm

Bob

also it's at a 1.68x compressratio

Journeyman Geek

6:18 AM

I could redo it

Bob

which is surprisingly high o.O

Journeyman Geek

In theory, if I start with a seperate partition, I could then ass into the same pool right?

Bob

so I'm saving another 60% or so space on my root :D

@JourneymanGeek unfortunately, no. a zfs pool cannot be resized after creation

Journeyman Geek

ah

Bob

(well, technically it can, but you add an extra vdev and it's a mess)

Journeyman Geek

6:19 AM

or do a 2gb partition, install swapless and switch it to swap

Bob

that's why it's always been root on zfs or nothing, for me

@JourneymanGeek I did swap on zfs too :P

Journeyman Geek

0_0

Bob

it's effective!

also you can turn on the really cheap compression and your empty pages (filled with 0) never have to get written to disk!

Journeyman Geek

feeling messy ;p

hmm, seperate pool for swap maybe?

Bob

and I can trivially grow/shrink it

@JourneymanGeek why?

you don't split pools by purpose

you split pools by device

Journeyman Geek

6:21 AM

Trying to figure out how I can semi trivially do this ;p

Bob

you can create any kind of dataset for purpose on the pool

(and turn off caching for a swap dataset)

@JourneymanGeek wait, what's the goal now?

Journeyman Geek

(without IPMI)

Bob

@JourneymanGeek do what I did :P

Journeyman Geek

@Bob zfs root, without too much magic

What's your setup like? Seperate /boot and a pool?

Bob

create ramdisk and copy your root in, pivot_root into it, install zfs pool over entire drive (minus partition for boot), copy your root back onto it, reboot and \o/

@JourneymanGeek ya

Device          Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1        2048 1953508743 1953506696 931.5G Solaris /usr & Apple ZFS
/dev/sda2          34       2047       2014  1007K BIOS boot
/dev/sda9  1953508744 1953525134      16391     8M Solaris reserved 1

@JourneymanGeek apparently there kinda-sorta is a zfs resize o.O

TIL

@JourneymanGeek I'm gonna be kinda away for a few hours soon. But I'd be happy to walk you through the whole thing if you want.

Or I can dump my notes on you if you prefer to puzzle it out :P

Journeyman Geek

6:25 AM

lol I have a few hours now. but ehhh. I'd actually want to figure this out ,ostly on my own

Bob

hm. except apparently I didn't take specific notes for the dedibox

@JourneymanGeek so, basic process?

Journeyman Geek

hm. Since I am going to nuke this instance anyway...

shrug let me try blowing this up first

Bob

1. make yourself a 4 GB ramdisk: jamescoyle.net/how-to/943-create-a-ram-disk-in-linux

2. follow this to pivot_root over to it: unix.stackexchange.com/a/227318/33227

Journeyman Geek

also, no seperate /boot at the moment?

so that's something I assume I need to fix?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek you need separate /boot, yea. I'd suggest nuking the whole HDD. but you can use your current install to get into the pivot_root environment first

Journeyman Geek

6:28 AM

eh, I'll nuke the whole HDD

Bob

3. once you're in your pivot_root, reformat the HDD and follow github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-ZFS

use the BIOS boot, not UEFI boot

I skipped 3.3, which creates independent datasets for all the standard unix folders

it's not important and it overcomplicates things IMO

(and it wasn't in the older guides :P)

also, when you get to the debootstrap step, you can choose: either debootstrap, or copy your temp root back onto the ZFS root

Journeyman Geek

actually, I do have a seperate /boot

I might have an easier way, let me hit that first

Bob

IIRC you can then pivot_root back (following the unix.se link) and run the last few steps, instead of doing the chroot

afk a bit

Bob

7:46 AM

@JourneymanGeek how's it going? :P

Journeyman Geek

Did a reinstall. partitions were not what I wanted, did another reinstall... ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek just install and manually set up the partitions?

Journeyman Geek

8:11 AM

Not being able to see what is happening is a pain

Journeyman Geek

8:23 AM

@Bob so far, pretty terrible - it feels a LOT slower than my other dedi, I miss having IPMI, when stuff breaks it takes a pretty long time to get things fired back up...

Bob

@JourneymanGeek slower? o.O

Journeyman Geek

yeah

like I ssh in and its laggy

Bob

@JourneymanGeek serial console should work fine

Journeyman Geek

serial console seems greyed out

Bob

@JourneymanGeek o.O same DC?

Journeyman Geek

8:27 AM

yup

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ... want me to attempt installation? :P

Journeyman Geek

eh, actually tempted to

Bob

greyed out is weird

@JourneymanGeek if you feel like it... in about an hour? shouldn't take more than 30min. over gotty so you can see what's going on :P

Journeyman Geek

k

at worst, I'll give you the credentials over steam ppost walkies

Bob

the network lag though, is weird

@JourneymanGeek I'd rather you be able to see what's going on :P

oh, pick your base os and install a clean image of that first

debian and ubuntu work

home in a bit

Journeyman Geek

8:41 AM

Got Ubuntu now.

Might get dragged out by the parents.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek fresh?

@JourneymanGeek would there be a good time tonight? :P

Journeyman Geek

@Bob yup

@Bob if it's ssh I can keep an eye with my phone

I have an oddly good shape client

Bob

dinner, brb

Bob

9:19 AM

@JourneymanGeek yea, would be ssh. but would be good if you have about half an hour free sometime

Journeyman Geek

10:07 AM

Ah joy. My dad took out power to the apartment.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek o.O

In a "whoops, let's flip that back on" or "crap, gotta call the electrician/power company" way?

Journeyman Geek

10:34 AM

@Bob somewhere in between

@Bob I got a chunk of time now...

Burgi

11:16 AM

what does this say? स्मार्टकार्ड

DavidPostill

11:27 AM

@Burgi Apparently it is Hindi for Smart Card

Rahul2001

@DavidPostill @Burgi indeed

(@Avery Do you know where to submit bug reports?)

Avery

You disgust me /s

Gray for hand-doodles on images?

Zero taste.

Rahul2001

Yes, I dislike red on screenshots, hurts my eyes

Avery

Red or rage.

Rahul2001

Red is reserved for when I'm angry ;p

Avery

11:38 AM

@Rahul2001 that's the point

Rahul2001

@Avery -_-

Avery

@Rahul2001 duck.co/feedback/bug/-

Rahul2001

@DavidPostill btw, Hindi is amazingly phonetic. So is Bangla. And most Indian languages derived from Sanskrit

@Avery thanks

Avery

11:57 AM

for your random data needs: my room's heat index over the course of 24 hours

DavidPostill

12:11 PM

@Rahul2001 That doesn't help me when all I see is strange squiggles :)

Rahul2001

@DavidPostill You can always ask me to translate :)

DavidPostill

@Rahul2001 I have s3.Google Translator. It works even when you aren't here ;)

Rahul2001

@DavidPostill Meh, Google translator often messes up Indian languages

(speaking from terrible experiences)

DavidPostill

@Rahul2001 It worked just fine on the Smart Card :)

Rahul2001

@DavidPostill That's because it's just the same thing written in Hindi, pronounced the same way. But when you have different words, it'll often choose the incorrect meaning

DavidPostill

12:17 PM

Ah

Rahul2001

12:42 PM

FREEDOM