Who the fdisk?

Found another cool time saver tip. For me I find myself looking for partition mount points. So I usually do:

fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4982.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

I would do this for all drives, or if I didn’t know what device, I could run through the alphabet. Most recently I was searching for a USB thumb drive I just plugged in. So here is my time saver tip just learned today:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 30.0 GB, 30000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3647 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 3647 29294496 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdc: 20.4 GB, 20409532416 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39546 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 39546 19931152+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdd: 22.5 GB, 22527590400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2738 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 2738 21992953+ 8e Linux LVM

Looky looky, all my drives that make up my boxtop backup server. Will have to post the pic of that here soon.

Vaio Wrestling

I somehow got “voluntwisted” into fixing a coworkers Sony laptop. Well okay maybe it was my own doing. I love to recover data from presumed dead hard drives. His had been dead and powered up for so long, I presumed it was toast like so many laptop drives usually are. Much to my surprise it was mountable using an old Live Knoppix disk. So I simply plugged in my USB drive and with MC I did mass copies to it. Since it was a bad disk it did take about 8 hours to move about 2GB of data (music and pictures).

So next the coworker produced a replacement drive. One dilemma though… he didn’t have his recovery CD’s since he just moved here and having a tough time finding anything really. So I thought I’d try using my home Dell PC. OEM CD’s tend to require you to use their own hardware to do the installs so my XP Home disk would have to be installed using my PC. Ordered a laptop to IDE converter from RadioShack online; as they don’t carry them in the stores. All is well. Got that installed and next I plopped it back in the Sony. No go. CRAP! It’s an AMD. I used an Intel PC not to mention possible disk parameter differences. Back to the drawing board.

Now the coworker produces the CD’s! Well actually he produced them before I put the drive back in the laptop, but I already had finished the install with all the updates and transferred his data in at that point. They would be handy I’m sure.

So I booted up with the Vaio System Recovery Utility CD and get some dll sys file error. Doing a little research on the exact code I find other related pointing at the RAM. Others had simply re-socketed it but that did not fix my problem. I have an old copy of W2KPro so I stuck that on in hopes to prove the drive was ok and the CD drive was working fine. I attempted to copy the Recovery CD’s to the drive and it failed to read. So the disk is bad? I put the laptop drive back in my Dell PC and boot with the Recovery CD and it read fine but soon failed with a “blue screen of death”. Most likely because it wasn’t Sony hardware. Back to the drawing board again.

So I have a faulty CD drive, Original Sony Recovery disks, and no way to get it going.

Next I used the Live Gparted CD and smacked it clean. I created a small 2GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Using my USB DVD drive I copied the Recovery disks to the FAT partition and set it with a boot flag. Tried to boot but it complains it can’t find a bootable OS. CRAP! Something I’m missing about the way CD’s are bootable I’m sure. BTW, this is new enough P4 but can’t boot from USB. I have since re-partitioned and re-formatted using Gparted and re-installed W2KPro and find that it fails to boot on the first reboot after installing to the Gparted NTFS. So make a mental note of this. BTW letting the installer do the format (which takes a good hour or two!) proves the Gparted NTFS is not perfect.

So what is next? Running out of options. I found a retail version (I believe) XP Home CD but doubt it’s English. I guess I need to call Sony to see what they have to offer.

The Match is Over

This afternoon I went in search of speaking to a Sony support tech. and found they have chat support. The first guy read my request and promptly forwarded it on to another. Then the java based chat seemed to wig out on me so I had to kill Firefox and try again. This time I got a third guy and I noticed the exact same canned greeting and responses. Even the reply to some questions seemed robotic. Saying “no I don’t have the laptop with me” prompted a “Sorry about that” response.

My goal in talking with them was to find out if there was an alternative to using the boot CD. Hoping maybe there was a floppy alternate. Also to find out if the non working CD required the hidden Sony partition or not. None of which I believe the techs understood. This is a bit goofy too: the hours are from 8am to 3am EST. Why not just be 24/7?

This evening I couldn’t help but to try booting the OEM disk again to no avail. I guess if anything just to record the exact error messages this time. One think the tech mentioned; and pissed me off about was his suggestion to “purchase” the CD’s. As if I didn’t already tell him I have the CD’s already. But this got me to think “maybe I’ll just recreate them”. Using Linux of course and ‘dd if=/dev/cdrom of=vaio-cd1.iso’. Then burn the iso to CD-R. BINGO! That did the trick but not without a last jab back at me. I didn’t have to create all CD’s; just the first one. After finishing the installation, the reboot fails to just a black screen and a blinking cursor. No error or drive activity. Then I remember there was an option to do it custom or more advanced options method. After peeking at the partitioning using Gparted, I noticed the same scheme I previously set possibly untouched. So the second install I chose the custom method which let me choose partition size control and this time I stuck it to the mat.

Stranger Here

Yes it has been weighing on me that I have not posted is a long while. Thoughts of even giving it up came to mind. I think it is the thought of needing to fill in the gap in a huge effort to catch up. That is just not going to happen tho.

I have been trying to get a raise the past couple months. Seems I may have met my challenge in proving my worthiness. Also just that thought of having to prove myself may not be the point and that my boss may have a different idea of what I am worth to him. IMHO, he doesn’t reward based on your efforts but by your loyalty and social status. May be a sad mis-diagnosis of a fellow Christian… I know. However I will not stand down without a stiff answer. Seems as if business has kept us from meeting since my initial inquiry. That and the lack of courage and preparedness. So I suck!

I’m hoping that we will once and forever lose Made2Manage. The latest stunt is a stiff price for doing our customization. Somewhere about $67k and the kicker is the no liability warranty sticker to go with it! For just a bit more… $87k we can go with a much better IMO, ERP package called Abas. This includes our training, customization, setup, installation, and product. This is a German company and has thoroughly impressed me. Problem is I found this company without much effort. This may be bad based on the lack of research into other companies. My search was narrowed by Linux requirements tho. The next bet was an OpenSource project, but I just didn’t want to back it. If I had a team of supporters here in the office it would be different.

Serving at the church has been picking up too! I am now a “Small Group Connector” who finds a group for individuals looking for Community Groups or Men’s Breakfast/Mentoring groups and such. I also have been helping out with a ToolBox project with the church website. Won’t be helping too much with this as they insist on using Microsoft products. So they are mostly interested in my direction I guess. The other thing is I have been meeting with two mentors quite regularly. Doing some workgroup type studies including some memory verse practice. I also have been helping out with Wednesday evening 4th grader classes. Tonight I have them by myself as the main teacher is out of town. I’m hopping next year I will have my own class. I like the 4th grade too. Not interested in moving up with my class. Still seeking an answer from the Lord on what to do about helping out with Summer Camp next month. It is looking more and more in favor tho!

I have been working on my old hard drive once again. I had been playing with some new partitioning tools from various CDs and ended up using the old standby fdisk for Linux. The trouble had been creating the same partitioning scheme I had written down at the time it was working. I have since figured out how to do this but also figured out a more damaging concept that may be the last straw… c/h/s. Cylinder/Heads/Sectors geometry. Seems I even documented this in the working stage before I doused it. What I wrote down was not the manufacture geometry shown on this drive. So I assume the geometry was changed about three times in the midst of all this. Testing on the documented and recommended geometries didn’t work. What doesn’t work is that I can’t mount the drive. It won’t recognize the system file type. This has not been formatted since either so there may be some extra levels I just don’t comprehend about it needing it. IMO that would be the last straw… in a sense wiping the drive.

This week I have tightened the noose on the spammers. I have been building a blacklisted.rules file that is now up to about 200 IPs and networks that have been blacklisted. With the rampant viruses and spyware out, this is a difficult task. Mutation through the networks seems to be never ending.

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow…

Talk about falling behind… I had that lat blog in the queue for another few days before just now posting it. Lets see if I can get this out the door sooner.

No luck in recovering my /home partition on the work computer. Not the first time I have caused disastrous data loss to myself. Think I’d learn. We yes I do learn! Most people don’t even mess with this level of the hard drive. So I have tried several things: using Ranish partitioning utility, I tried reconstructing the tables, Linux’s fdisk; wrote down the current mapping at this point. Problem seems to be that I killed Partition Magic while it was shifting partitions over and when I was trying to mount the old /home, it complained that it looked like swap. So it seems my data landed on/in swap. Today I may have blown it all away by doing a mkfs.ext2 on this partition. I can mount it now! No data there tho. :-/

You should take a look at Ranish’s partition utility… it has a lot of potential. I have used it in the past. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use it to fix any of my severe problems. What I did with it today was recreate the /home table based on data I wrote down while viewing the print out in fdisk. Although now that I think about it… that was just after the damage was done… so recreating the damage scene wouldn’t fix anything! :-/ Hmm… well maybe one more shot at it.

In the mean time I have set up another Red Hat 8.0 install server at work and used it to do my workstation over with a new 80GB drive. I may use the install server on three new Dell servers I’m using to create a VPN out of. Depends on the timing of Red Hat 9 now I guess. They must feel a bit behind in the version names because other distros such as Mandrake are in the 9 series.

On the home front, I got mySQL synced to my other server I’m migrating to. Was planning to have some virtual hosted sites to go live before others, but I thought wrong about Apache’s virtual hosting abilities. I guess it’s not so easy to have Apache do some kind of NATting. It can however do dual/multi-homed virtual serving, but all from the same server. Maybe someone reading this could direct me in the right direction. By then I’d be fully migrated, but for search purposes you could post a reply…

Got Patience?

Already missing a few days of blogging! Lots of stuff these past couple days… where to begin?

Tuesday I installed the bosses computer at his mansion. Had some trouble connecting to our existing AS/400 server from his house. Sound Wave installed the wiring and Linksys DSL/Cable router for their AT&T cable connection. I suspect there must be some firewalling blocking this IBM telnet client at some point. Will be going back again soon to finish tucking the web of wires into a cabinet.

Created a Red Hat Install server at my home. Using NFS I got my athlon box a new installation. Planning to migrate my existing RH 7.2 out soon. The installation was very smooth! Very fast! Opposed to using CD’s… it was much faster. After setting up the partition scheme and packages, it only took 8:05 minutes!

Taylered three new Dell workstations simultaneously yesterday in the conference room. Was much smoother than the bosses did. But I guess learning the correct sequence of installing Made2Manage helped. Been trying to troubleshoot installing it on an existing workstation of our programmer/analyst’s. It seems to be giving me the same fit as when I installed the bosses last week. May be related to having msSQL installed previously on the same box. Now M2M wants me to reinstall the SQL server on that workstation and point M2M back to itself to see if it helps. Ball is back in my court I guess.

Today in my adventure to test a M2M install on an existing M2M box, I chose my own Windows partition. Before I was to do this I wanted to clean Windows up of it’s needless programs. I need to mention here that I get side-tracked very easy. I decided to trim Windows from 14GB to oh lets say… 5GB. Using Partition Magic, I shrink Windows and attempt to pass the excess to my /home partition. A total of 6 operations to complete this. I always hold my breath while doing this. Well I must have took a breath… it locked up on the third operation. After a reboot with the Partition Magic disk, I get a big ‘ol yellow block with an error #110 or something like that :-[ So now I have been trying to salvage at least my /home partition.

Another success day finally!

Out of the woods! Had lots of troubles installing our Made2Manage software to the bosses new Dell last Friday. After verifying that I did not hose the SQL server service pack or other, I tested a new install at another workstation flawlessly. After that I tried some restore feature in XP but that didn’t bring me any success. So out came the Partition Magic disk and I axed the NTFS partition leaving the factory 30MB Dell util partition. Booting with the XP install CD and I was on the way back to success. I actually did more in one day from scratch than from a head-start with Dell’s pre-installed OS/CRAP!

Sadly the only Linux items I really got to do today was grepping our web server logs for a Taiwanese. Hey I found them! Dumped it to a file and sent it to one of our sales guys. Oh and I guess I took a two minute stab at my migrating web/email server’s email server. What?! Yeah, I had been trying to get Postfix going but seemed to be spinning my wheels and since I know Sendmail better, I switched it back to the default Sendmail. Got a little traction, but still have some bugs to work out with relaying.