Root Access

Psycogeek

22:03

That reminds me of the time i had a secure cordless phone (900mhz) I was walking my dog down the path after having finished a phone call on it. The phone rings, i pick it up, and it picks up off the neighbors base.

0

Q: How do I transfer PDF files to my iPad to take on a business trip

I'm preparing to go on a week long business trip where I will need access to dozens of PDF files which I have on my work PC. I want to take them on my iPad so that I can read and review them during my trip but I have the following constraints: All my PDF files are on my work PC I cannot instal...

so does anybody know what a wire is anymore?

Sneaker net?

jflory7

Hello all, I am in a bind where the file system on my server is misconfigured and I need to reimage the drive on a CentOS system. If anyone thinks that they could be of use for this topic, more details are here: superuser.com/questions/661484/…

Basically, each directory is limited to set amount of data and it cannot hold more than that amount, regardless of the total amount of available hard drive space

Jimmy Hoffa

22:23

@jflory7 Have you tried an industrial grade electromagnet? I hear reversing the polarity can help.

Hennes

A seperate / and /var sounds about right.

But that would be about different sized volumes, not different capacity per directory

jflory7

@JimmyHoffa Unfortunately, I do not have the convenience of having the system in front of me.

Hennes

In fact, that sounds as what I would recommend. OVH did the right thing.

jflory7

@Hennes: Yeah. That's just the problem – I have no idea how to reverse it

Wait, to put the capacity on individual directories?

Hennes

No, not on directories. On filesystems.

Think of / as your C: and /var as your D:

Oliver Salzburg

22:33

@jflory7 Your problem isn't related to directory, it's related to volumes

Hennes

Where C: en D: are different drives

jflory7

Ohhhh, right, I know exactly what you mean now.

Hennes

You always try to keep your OS separate. Both on Linux and on Unixes

Though I would use /usr/LOCAL/ as mount point for local data. Not /var

jflory7

But like in this screenshot, don't some of the directories still have limited capacities? i.sstatic.net/A2u7A.png

Oliver Salzburg

You should just clear out space on your root, you can use du -h --max-depth=1 to determine which folders use up a lot of space on the volume

Hennes

22:34

No and yes

If I have 20GB free on /var, and I create /var/test1 then I still can store all 20GB in the folder test1

jflory7

I need to put more than 20GB files on the volume, though. I will need to have at least 100GB in this directory

Hennes

Sio it has nothing at all to do with directories

jflory7

* volume, not directory

And okay, that makes sense.

Is there a way I can have it all in the root volume, though?

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 You may have a 120GB drive in SP2, but only 20GB allocated to the volume/partition

Hennes

Usually, when setting up windows you create at least two partitions. One for the OS (usually mounted as C:) and one for the data (often as D:\

jflory7

22:36

@OliverSalzburg: Am I able to change that?

Bob

@Hennes depends on the setup, really - that's not usually done

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 In general, yes

Hennes

On unices you usually create small partitions for /, if encrypted for /boot and one ore more for the rest. In your case they mounted the last one on /var.

Bob

there's some advantages to multiple partitions, but it also introduces a fair bit of complexity at times

Hennes

@Bob I never saw a firm do anything where OS and data are not seperated (devops are excused)

Bob

22:37

especially if you keep the root/system partition very small, and something large actually needs to be there

Jimmy Hoffa

@Hennes Think of /var as my horrified-face ?

Bob

@Hennes I was thinking more consumer machines.

Hennes

The advantage of splitting is that you can update/reimage/wipe the OS while keeping all the data

Bob

Come to think of it, my work machine only has the single partition...

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 You won't be able to extend any partitions while the system is running though. You would need some sort of rescue system where you can change the size of the root volume offline. To get your system operational again I would still recommend clearing out some space though

Hennes

22:38

On consumer things you wipe the shop installed image and do the same

Jimmy Hoffa

@Hennes It's so unnecessary sometimes... and dangerous. We have systems running the web app I work onwhere we put everything on the 300gb D drive, but they give the C drive 40gb and then every so often some secondary crap ends up logging to C, filling the drive, and taking the server down when if they had a 300gb C and no D, we wouldn't have the problem

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg: OVH has a weird rescue system. I am unfamiliar with how it works in my case. ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/systeme_rescue.xml

Bob

@jflory7 effectively, a network boot to a minimal OS

Hennes

They seem to have KVP over IP

Bob

not very weird at all

Jimmy Hoffa

22:40

it just creeps me out whenever I see critical systems with only 5 or 8 gb free on the OS drive, because that drive is not allowed to fill up or else....

Bob

@Hennes they do have KVM-over-IP, but it's separate from this, I think

Ariane

Fuuuuuuuck. No one warned me earlier when I said I was going to make a 5 GB partition for Ubuntu. Now it tells me out needs at least 5.9 GB of space. Is there something I can do short of starting everything over?

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 First of all, you should run fdisk -l to see which drives actually exist and what size they have

Hennes

Well, why should it fill? Assuming you have a well bahaved app and plenty of room on %tmp%

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ariane Have you tried harder?

Hennes

22:41

@OliverSalzburg I check the HW link. 2 SSD's. In RAID1

Bob

@Hennes You're making a lot of assumptions right there.

jflory7

@Hennes: They do, for $200. $189 setup, and an extra $10-$25 a month

Psycogeek

@JimmyHoffa my system is like that, i just toss out some garbage that didnt need to be there to begin with.

Oliver Salzburg

@Hennes I'm just confused that df only shows a 20GB volume

Jimmy Hoffa

@Hennes It's not our app that blows up, it's usually something else on the system that we don't maintain ends up logging to the 5gb of free C space and boom OS drive full system kerplunktorfunctor

Hennes

22:42

I used to allocate 20GB for server2003, and the rest for D:

Ariane

don't think insisting on the mouse clicks spike help.

Bob

e.g. Visual Studio requires several gigabytes be installed on the system volume

Oliver Salzburg

Oh, wait, there's /dev/md2

Hennes

That is with two small mirrored drives on the OS side. And different drivers for data storage

Jimmy Hoffa

@Psycogeek the key word in my statement was critical systems. On most hardware i could care less

Bob

22:42

@Hennes if you had anything to do with setting up the server I need to maintain now, I am very annoyed

(though, there's a whole host of other problems with it apart from the 20 GB system partition)

Hennes

2003 was nice and small. It just worked within 20GB

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg: Here is the fdisk -1. gyazo.com/3ccfcf8126e7bc8d465a82eb2a85d4c9.png

Jimmy Hoffa

@Hennes Until the WER queue filled the drive or something else then it came crashing down.

Hennes

Never happened to me.

Logs not on disk (not space but anti-hacking reasons): sotred on a log server

Bob

@Hennes until you install update upon update upon service pack followed by several GB+ antivirus definitions

Oliver Salzburg

22:44

@jflory7 Ok, so you have 95GB allocated to /var and the rest for the root. And the fact that your root is full right now is your core issue

Hennes

So '120' GB SSDs. three partions.
1) MD1 as / (20GB)
2) MD2 as /var (95GB)
Rest as swap (not in a mirror)

Bob

(that server hosts a local Symantec server, which just loves to dump crap in C:)

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg: Correct.

Oliver Salzburg

So you should primarily focusing on why your 20GB for the root are full and in the future look how you could prevent that by moving resources to /var

Hennes

I wonder why /dev/md2 got mounted as /var rather than /opt or /usr/local or /data, ...

Ariane

22:46

okay looks like windows has a shrink partition option. Let's try that.

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg: Okay, that makes sense. I just am not sure of how to do that.

Oliver Salzburg

@Hennes I agree with @Hennes here. Given that you seem to be a novice in this area (no insult intended) it would probably been have wise to have all space allocated to a single volume

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob you understand the pains I've seen... like I said earlier, I could care less normally, but for critical systems, why have the risk...

jflory7

I think that web panel I am using (Multicraft) is dependant on the files being in the root. I could very well be wrong

Hennes

@Bob ISn;t that configurable? I would expect it to dump to D:\program files\symtentac\my_data or to %tmp%

Bob

22:47

@Hennes haven't found a way to change it

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 Use du -h --max-depth=1 to see which folder in the current location uses up how much space

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg I am very much a novice, there's no denying that. And I would have much rather preferred to have all of the space allocated to a single volume, but this was the way it was provided to me.

Bob

ended up setting up a symlink, which feels dirty on a server

Hennes

Symlinks on windows feel weird. On unix it feels natural and clean

No idea why I feel like that about it.

jflory7

47M ./multicraft
4.4M ./parallels
8.0K ./.ssh
8.0K ./.autoinstaller
65M .

Bob

22:48

@Hennes as a hackish workaround to force something to dump on a different volume? it's dirty no matter the OS

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 Change into the root first cd /

jflory7

Oh, gotcha

Jimmy Hoffa

@Hennes Because the tools for doing anything with symlinks in windows are counter-intuitive and symlinks don't behave quite as well as on *nix

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 You might have to run it with sudo prefixed to avoid a lot of access denied messages cluttering up your console

jflory7

Uh-oh... this looks very bad.

Oliver Salzburg

22:49

@jflory7 That's almost to be expected

Change into /home and run the command again

Someone/something has allocated a lot of space in the home directory

Bob

symantec.com/business/support/…

greeeeeat

how about providing some method of changing the damn location

jflory7

[root@ns4007782 home]# du -h --max-depth=1
4.0K ./ftp
17G ./minecraft
17G .

Hennes

Wow. Someone has been ancient ISA card before making this anime series:

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 The minecraft folder is taking up 17GB of your 20GB quota on the volume. This is your issue

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg: All of the data in this directory is important for the purpose of my server. Is there a way I can stick it somewher else?

Oliver Salzburg

22:53

@jflory7 Yes. Can you shut down your Minecraft server gracefully?

jflory7

Yes, I believe. I know that the Minecraft-related processes aren't running, but rather, it is the Multicraft control panel I need to shut off

I'm not 100% on how to do that.

Oliver Salzburg

The important part here is that no data that is contained in the minecraft directory is currently being accessed by a running process

You could check that by running "sudo lsof | grep minecraft" probably

Which would list all open files on the system and then filter them down by those that contain "minecraft" in their path

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg Oh, there's a bunch of them. :/

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 Run ps aux | grep minecraft

I am assuming you're already logged in as root so there's no need for sudo

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg You assume correctly.

Alright, I ran it -- three things popped up. Want a screenshot, or did that command just perform an acction?

Oliver Salzburg

22:58

Screenshot or output would be helpful, yes

jflory7

Whoops, the Gyazo got in the way

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 The second column indicates the PID of the process. 3405 and 3435

You can try to exit those gracefully by sending a TERM signal: kill -s TERM 3405

I'm assuming 3435 was spawned by 3405 and might exit as well if you issue that command

Use ps aux|grep minecraft again after using kill to verify your results

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg Running now. If you don't mind my asking, what does this command do differently to exit it gracefully?

Yep, both were killed.

Now, it's just grep minecraft

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 It sends a signal to the process and requests it to terminate. An alternative would be to just not signal the process at all and just simply kill it

We don't want to resort to that unless we have to

@jflory7 That's great

Now we can move the data

jflory7

Right, makes sense. And awesome! How will we do that?

Oliver Salzburg

23:03

You can now move the whole minecraft folder to a directory on /var

Check if you have a directory named /var/opt using ls

If nobody disagrees with me, this would probably be a good place to store it

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg Indeed I do.

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 Then execute mv minecraft /var/opt/ from the directory that contains the problematic minecraft folder

jflory7

Moving.

Oliver Salzburg

I'm assuming you have a dedicated minecraft user on your system. Which would be the reason why you have a /home/minecraft folder. Does that sound reasonable?

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg If so, it would have to be used by the Multicraft process. This is where Multicraft seems to store a bunch of quintessential data, including the actual Minecraft data files.

Also, I presume this move should take a while because of its size.

Oliver Salzburg

23:06

@jflory7 My point is. There might be some references in your system that point to /home/minecraft. Those references will now be invalid and should be corrected

jflory7

@OliverSalzburg Is that automatic or will I need to do that?

Bob

wtf

online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2

Oliver Salzburg

You could check your user "database" for example with cat /etc/passwd | grep minecraft

Bob

Via CPU??

@JourneymanGeek ^

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 It would be a manual process

jflory7

23:07

I will be AFK for a little bit - I'll be back very shortly

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 The 2 major things that come to mind would be a users home directory (set in /etc/passwd) and possible cron jobs that automatically start your Minecraft server

I need to get some serious rep for this. Usually I charge serious cash for rescuing people's Minecraft servers! ;P

Ariane

Uhm, the Ubuntu install program showed Windows 8 as having been installed on my old bad backup hard drive, which really shouldn't be true no matter how I look at it. How can I make sure that C: is my SSD, etc. ?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob VIA's long from dead, they've just been rocking out in the embedded market for a very long time. It's only a matter of time before ARM reaches shelves especially when people start using ARM as just a driver of 10GPU CUDA arrays

@Bob though I found this part interesting "* contractual picture"

studiohack

hey @Simon!

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob You want a real blast from the past? Go dig up cyrix, you'll find 800mhz 486's are still made these days by them

Bob

23:13

@JimmyHoffa Heh, the only via chips I see nowadays are audio or video...

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob That's a company that had no business making consumer hardware

Ariane

Someone, no?

Jimmy Hoffa

ooo network based reverse polish notation, can't complain about that!

Ariane

Eeeeeeeeh. Okay. So. I installed Windows on my SSD, and for SOME reason it decided to create its "reserved" partition on my random, bad quality old HDD. What is that partition, and is this bad?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ariane Cryptic windows stuff. No one actually knows. Current theorys are that it's where the backup is stored from RAID42, no one has reached the point in the timeline where the backup becomes accessible yet though

Ariane

23:19

@JimmyHoffa But is that partition being used? 'Cause that drive is slow. It kind of beats the purpose of the SSD if somehow the really slow HDD ends up being used.

Bob

@Ariane It's the boot partition.

Would only affect startup, and even then not much (not much data on it)

but if you lose it then you won't be able to boot

Ariane

Can't be moved I suppose.

Bob

@Ariane it can, but can be difficult

easier to just reinstall if it was a fresh installation

Ariane

"Fresh" installation. To get to Windows 8.1 you have to go through looooong updates.

If it's doable and I won't destroy anything I'd like it if you could show me how.

Bob

to be perfectly honest, I don't know why it ended up on the other drive

might be safer to just disconnect the drive before installation

Paul

23:27

@Ariane, you could disconnect the hdd during installation and put it back afterwards.

Ariane

My hypothesis is that I filled the drive with partitions.

Bob

alternatively, if you choose to partition manually during installation, then it should let you choose

Ariane

Yeah but I don't wanna reinstall. It took me sooooo long.

jflory7

I went into `/etc/passwd` and opened it up, and I found three lines relating to the former directory that we just moved.

And I'd be more than happy to give you the accepted answer on my question once we get it all worked out!

Bob

@Ariane better to set it up correctly now than run into more problems down the road

Ariane

23:28

I partitioned manually, and all it told me was "Windows might create additional partitions. Maybe I missed something.

@Bob So it can't be moved properly?

Bob

@Ariane it can, but it's difficult and potentially problematic

Ariane

Siiiiiiigh

Bob

involves partition resizing, making and restoring images, possible partition moving, startup repairs, and hopefully that's enough to make it work

Oliver Salzburg

@jflory7 3 is weird. Every line relates to a single user

@jflory7 I've sent you an invitation to a new chat room

Ariane

I wish I could transform my DVD into a Windows 8.1 one. Now I'll need to redownload over 1 GB of Windows updates plus Windows 8.1 itself which is a couple of GB I think.

jflory7

23:30

@OliverSalzburg One seems to relate to the user itself, but the other two relate to the two Minecraft servers that I have installed on the server.

Alrighty.

Bob

@Ariane there was a recent question on installing 8.1 directly, I think

(keep in mind that any fresh installation is data-destructive by nature)

@Ariane maybe when you partitioned manually you took up all available space, I dunno

Ariane

Yeah that's probably what I did

Bob

6

Q: Windows 8.1 fresh install with Windows 8 licence

I purchased Windows 8 online from Microsoft a while ago. Today Windows 8.1 was released as a free update to Windows 8 users over the Windows Store. I was planning to do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 to have a clean system again and UEFI support because I got new hardware since the Windows 8 ins...

windows windows-8 windows-8.1

Ariane

You wouldn't have an idea for making the reinstallation process less painful? Like, NOT over an hour of updates?

Bob

^

just install 8.1 directly?

Ariane

23:32

The answerer points to Windows 8.1 Preview I think, no?

soandos

Anyone here have windows 8 Pro?

Ariane

<---

Bob

@soandos ya

soandos

@Bob do you see an option to download 8.1 from the store?

or is there another update mechanism?

Ariane

@soandos You need to do tons of Windows Updates for it to appear. Good luck. ._.

Or I'm presently considering another method.

Bob

23:35

@soandos I believe it's store only, lemme check

soandos

kk, thanks

@Ariane no updates found

Ariane

@soandos it's not an update, it shows up as a huge tile on home

Well, the home of the store.

Bob

@Ariane I don't think the answerer points to any link?

Ariane

@Bob Yeah bad vocabulary. "Is talking about". Because "placeholder keys" is what was used for the 8.1 iso.

soandos

@Ariane wow, that was sad. I was searching for it, and it doesn't show up on the search facepalm

Bob

23:37

@soandos I don't see it either

Ariane

@Bob The way you understand it, can I 1. install 8.1 Preview, 2. "upgrade" it to the real Windows 8.1 3. enter my Windows 8 Pro key?

soandos

@Bob it doesn't show up on search

Bob

@Ariane no, install the real 8.1

no mention of a preview anywhere

Ariane

Yeah but where?

soandos

you have to go th te store home screen

Ariane

23:38

Where d'ya take that "real 8.1" outside the Microsoft Store? I don't know of any ISOs of it.

Bob

@Ariane The link is in the question: windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-product-key-only

Journeyman Geek

heh

Ariane

@Bob "If you're updating to Windows 8.1, this PC must be running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 Preview. If you already have the latest version of Windows 8 installed on your PC, you can update to Windows 8.1 in the Windows Store for free."

Bob

@JourneymanGeek hm?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: curious. I believe via has a x86 licence at least until this year. Didn't know they were building anything other than ultra-crappy netbooks and mini itx boards you could almost never find retail

Bob

23:40

@Ariane scroll down to install windows 8.1?

not too sure :\

Ariane

I need an 8.1 key, but I have an 8 key, I'm almost sure.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: o0 dell has a via server?

Ariane

They say I MUST be running 7 or 8.1 preview.

Bob

@Ariane That's the whole point of that question

Ariane

Oooooooooooooooooh. I seeeeeeeeeeeeee.

o.o

Well, let's try it.

Journeyman Geek

23:42

@Bob: seems to be a 4 year old design too

Bob

@Ariane I'm not sure if it actually downloads an ISO or does something else, though :S

Journeyman Geek

looks like something else

Ariane

Install Box thing.

Let's see what it does.

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: did you go to the windows store and try upgrading? twas slow but it worked

Ariane

We cannot establish a connection for the moment. Check your Internet connection.

@JourneymanGeek Yeah that's what I did. But now i need to redo it and I don't feel like going through aaaaaall that again.

Nope, the WindowsSetupBox can't connect.

Can someone try it out for me? Do as if you wanted to install 8.1 and use the placeholder key XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB.

Bob

23:50

@Ariane same prob

Ariane

........ :/

Bob

either the download server is down (temporary) or the download server is down (permanent)

(or maybe it actually doesn't like the key, though that's weird)

@Ariane Do you have DreamSpark available?

Journeyman Geek

no she dosen't

Bob

o.O

Journeyman Geek

I've asked that before ;p

Bob

23:52

ah :P

Journeyman Geek

sigh I have the iso. I'm totally not sure if I can share it though ;p

else I'd stick it on my webserver

Bob

ya

Journeyman Geek

that said, if you need an md5 for the original windows 8.1 pro iso, ask ;p

Ariane

@JourneymanGeek 8.1 Preview ISO? 'Cause if it's that, I have it.

Journeyman Geek

no, the final release iso

Bob

23:52

I could go grab it right now if I wanted

Ariane

headbang

Bob

@JourneymanGeek though IIRC the DreamSpark/MSDN ones have slight differences that change the hashes?

Ariane

Saaaay.

It wouldn't happen to be possible to take my Windows Updates that I did on this installation and "copy them over" to the next installation so that I don't have to go through the pain of them?

Bob

They require external keys for MSDN activations now, don't they?

@Ariane The easy way would have been to do that before installing the updates

Ariane

Do what?

Bob

23:54

there's quite a few offline update distribution methods that would work

but with already installed updates? would be difficult at best

Ariane

So there's a way for my clean Windows 8 to be updated and able to receive 8.1 faster? Sounds nice.

Bob

wsusoffline.net

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: not as far as I know

@Bob:I was under the impression they're the retail version

Bob

@Ariane well, if you had downloaded the updates to an offline location before the first installation, then you could have used them as many times as you wanted

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: thanks for reminding me, I need to get windows XP patched downloaded in case I managed to talk my dad into swapping out his hard drive

Bob

23:56

I'm not aware of any method to extract already installed updates back into an installable form, however

Ariane

You're right. This wouldn't take any less time.

Shit, I say. D:

Journeyman Geek

oh it would take less time after the first time

Ariane

Why?

Journeyman Geek

because wsus offline updates downloads and keeps the updates? ;p

oh right

/me needs to check if the DOID is still working

Bob

@JourneymanGeek the problem here is that the first time after now should be the only time :P

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