The Frosty Blog

Ubuntu, tagged VLAN Interfaces and bridges 101

2011-02-24T23:03:00.007+01:00

Just a quick and dirty HowTo configure Bridge Interfaces correctly using tagged VLAN Interfaces for your favorite KVM Setup:

Packages:

sudo apt-get install vlan bridge-utils

/etc/network/interfaces:

########### dot1q Trunk
iface eth1.8 inet manual
vlan-raw-device eth1

iface eth1.9 inet manual
vlan-raw-device eth1

iface eth1.10 inet manual
vlan-raw-device eth1

iface eth1.42 inet manual
vlan-raw-device eth1

auto br-vlan8
iface br-vlan8 inet manual
bridge_ports eth1.8
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off
up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE up || /bin/true

auto br-vlan9
iface br-vlan9 inet manual
bridge_ports eth1.9
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off
up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE up || /bin/true

auto br-vlan10
iface br-vlan10 inet manual
bridge_ports eth1.10
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off
up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE up || /bin/true

auto br-vlan42
iface br-vlan42 inet manual
bridge_ports eth1.42
bridge_fd 9
bridge_hello 2
bridge_maxage 12
bridge_stp off
up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE up || /bin/true

This creates unnumbered (no IP) bridge Interfaces (br-vlan9, Use a name that works best for yourself and yeah foobar1 would work aswell) that use the tagged vlan interface as physical uplink to the switch. This setup should work with all Interfaces that receive dot1q ("Cisco"-speak, or IEEE 802.1q for the rest of us) traffic.

Bridge Setup:

root@epic:~# brctl show
bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
br-vlan10 8000.001cc45fa1b0 no eth1.10
br-vlan42 8000.001cc45fa1b0 no eth1.42
br-vlan8 8000.001cc45fa1b0 no eth1.8
br-vlan9 8000.001cc45fa1b0 no eth1.9
vnet0
virbr0 8000.000000000000 yes

It's fairly simple to setup and all you need to do is point your Guest KVM's Interface to the according br-vlanX interface to separate their traffic.

Bonding (802.3ad link aggregation, port-channel, failover, etc.) should work (i have no test setup atm) the same way by changing eth1 in the vlan-raw-device statements.

------------cut----------
ifenslave-2.6 - Attach and detach slave interfaces to a bonding device
------------cut----------

CentOS/RHEL HowTo:
https://sites.google.com/site/ghidit/how-to-2/configure-bridging-on-centos

PuTTY and ^] (better known as Escape Character)

2010-11-17T11:00:00.006+01:00

Did you ever run into the Problem that, if you use PuTTY to SSH over to your favorite Linux Server and then use telnet to debug whether a TCP Port is open or not and it just hangs there forever.


root@idiot:~# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 idiot.dsw2k3.info ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)

Now would be the time to use telnet's "Escape Character" to get into the command mode and type "quit", but "OH NOES!" you're unable to send "^]" (Control-] or STRG-AltGr-9 on a German Keyboard layout) all it does is send "]".


root@idiot:~# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 idiot.dsw2k3.info ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
]]]]

So here is the Problem: the US Layout has a dedicated Key which is directly accessible unlike the German Layout which requires you to use the combination of "AltGr-9" to get a "]" so PuTTY is unable to recognize STRG-AltGr-9 (STRG = CTRL for those who don't know) as CTRL-] (or "^]").

This has been an Issue for me for years and left me unable to exit telnet or "virsh console" sessions unless I wanted to open another PuTTY session to kill that client process (or closing the PuTTY window losing my previous session completely).

The trick is you need to use STRG-+ ("+" on the Numpad didn't work for me, use the other one) which send a CTRL-] (or "^]") just fine and you're able to exit your session cleanly.


root@idiot:~# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 idiot.dsw2k3.info ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
root@idiot:~#

pxe-fetch: v0.2 released

2010-09-12T14:28:00.006+02:00

I've uploaded a new Version of pxe-fetch v0.2 (http://frosty-geek.net/scripts/pxe-fetch-0.2.tar.gz).

Changelog:


Sun Sep 12 14:23:03 CEST 2010 - v0.2 - Ralf Heiringhoff 
- Added $DOPXECFG which lets you configure if you want to update your pxelinux.cfg/default
- Added MENU LABEL entries

pxe-fetch: linux net installers & yourself

2010-09-08T23:14:00.006+02:00

I use netboot/netinstall Images regularly to install the various Linux Distro flavors that are out there. So I often find myself downloading the latest vmlinuz/linux + initrd.img/initrd files for ubuntu/debian/fedora/centos/"your distro here" and manually add those to pxelinux.cfg/default.

Trust me after awhile it gets old to do it over and over again just because ubuntu released a new version, and thus I've created a little script that does just that for you:

pxe-fetch v0.1 pxe-fetch-0.1.tar.gz

What it does is it downloads those kernel+initrd files from the official mirror and puts them in a local directory and updates your pxelinux.cfg/default config. You can then use your favorite DHCP / TFTP setup to bare-metal install the newest version of your beloved Linux Distro over and over again semi-manually.

Wait... You hate manual Installs? Well I do love to automate bare-metal pxe installations myself, but for those you still need to download the kernel+initrd files (unless of course your using netboot.me) and that's exactly what pxe-fetch does for you.

This was primarily written for myself, but feel free to use it as well.

OS examples included:


suse/11.2-x86_64
suse/11.2-i386
suse/11.3-x86_64
suse/11.3-i386

fedora/13-x86_64
fedora/13-i386
fedora/12-x86_64
fedora/12-i386

debian/squeeze-i386
debian/squeeze-amd64
debian/lenny-i386
debian/lenny-amd64

ubuntu/lucid-i386
ubuntu/lucid-amd64
ubuntu/maverick-i386
ubuntu/maverick-amd64

centos/4-x86_64
centos/4-i386
centos/5-x86_64
centos/5-i386

README:


Config Files & Usage:
---------------------

fetch.sh will download netinstall kernel & initrd files of various Linux
Distros and create PXElinux configs & boot menus.


$BASE/fetch.sh  - This does all the download magic & pxelinux.cfg generation.
                - MAKE SURE TO EDIT THESE:
                  BASE="/tftpboot/pxe-fetch"
                  PXECFG=${BASE}/../pxelinux.cfg/default

                  NOTE: We expect that the last part of ${BASE} is used in PXElinux
                        /tftpboot/pxe-fetch -> "kernel pxe-fetch/ubuntu/lucid-amd64/linux"

$BASE/DIST      - What DIST directories to look for
$BASE/$DIST/url - Mirror URL %ARCH% + %VERSION% will be replaced by fetch.sh
                  Example:
                  http://f.d.o/debian/dists/%VERSION%/main/installer-%ARCH%/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/%ARCH%/
                  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/%VERSION%/os/%ARCH%/images/pxeboot/

$DIST/ver       - What "codename" / "version" shall we download
$DIST/arch      - What "arch" shall we download
$DIST/kernel    - Name of the kernel-file
$DIST/initrd    - Name of the initrd-file

$BASE/pxe_header.txt
                - Header used for the PXElinux menu

example-boot.txt
                - Copy to /tftpboot/boot.txt
example-f2.txt
                - Copy to /tftpboot/f2.txt
example-pxelinux.cfg-default
                - Copy to /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
example-de.kmap
                - Copy to /tftpboot/de.kmap

Changelog:
-------------------
Wed Sep  8 23:08:46 CEST 2010 - v0.1 - Ralf Heiringhoff
 - Initial Release

MySQL InnoDB, and the growing ibdata pain...

2010-01-26T18:39:00.003+01:00

Ever noticed something similar on your Server?

[root@enyo:/var/lib/mysql#] ls -alh ib*
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 5.0M Jan 26 18:40 ib_logfile0
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 5.0M Jan 26 18:41 ib_logfile1
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 4.8G Jan 26 18:40 ibdata1

It's a huge pain in the behind that when you use InnoDB that all the data is written to a single file, which never shrinks even when you delete tables and there is no way to reclaim the space.

Well I found "innodb_file_per_table" (MySQL 5.1 Doc) very usefull, just add this to your [mysqld] section and new tables will create seperate files.

Reference: Reasons to use innodb_file_per_table

Disassemble & Reassembling Binary .deb Packages

2009-12-04T14:28:00.003+01:00

Say you have a binary 3rd party .deb package and for some odd reason they messed up the post install Script and the package doesn't install well.

You could either fix the post install (after it being partially installed), or extract the .deb, fix the contents and reassemble it. Here is how to do it:

!!File Ownership might be a problem, consider running this as root!!
Extract the data.tar.gz

$ dpkg-deb -x hello_2.4-1_i386.deb hello

Extract the control.tar.gz

$ dpkg-deb -e hello_2.4-1_i386.deb hello/DEBIAN

Now fix whatever you want to fix inside the package

Reassemble the .deb again

$ dpkg-deb -b hello myfixed-hello_2.4-1_i386.deb
dpkg-deb: building package `myfixed-hello' in `myfixed-hello_2.4-1_i386.deb'.

Check if it worked

$ dpkg -I myfixed-hello_2.4-1_i386.deb
new debian package, version 2.0.
size 61550 bytes: control archive= 655 bytes.
608 bytes, 16 lines control
103 bytes, 4 lines * postinst #!/bin/sh
74 bytes, 3 lines * prerm #!/bin/sh
Package: myfixed-hello
Version: 2.4-1
Architecture: i386
Maintainer: Santiago Vila
Installed-Size: 656
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4)
Section: devel
Priority: optional
Description: The classic greeting, and a good example
The GNU hello program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It
allows non-programmers to use a classic computer science tool which
would otherwise be unavailable to them.
.
Seriously, though: this is an example of how to do a Debian package.
It is the Debian version of the GNU Project's `hello world' program
(which is itself an example for the GNU Project).

Enjoy

Iceland Trip 2009

2009-10-15T09:46:00.000+02:00

„Ich mag verdammen, was du sagst, aber ich werde mein Leben dafür einsetzen, dass du es sagen darfst.“

2009-09-22T19:30:00.002+02:00

Selbst SPD Partei Mitglieder rufen zur Wahl der Piratenpartei auf siehe: Steffen Uebele's Blog

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Ich möchte Sie mit diesem Brief dazu aufrufen, bei der kommenden Bundestagswahl ihre Zweitstimme nicht der SPD zu geben, und auch keiner anderen der etablierten Parteien. Ich möchte Sie davon überzeugen, bei der Wahl zu Gunsten der Piraten-Partei zu stimmen. Warum, dass will ich Ihnen erklären: ich habe die Politik auf Bundesebene lange ertragen, doch während des aktuellen (relativ unsichtbaren) Wahlkampfes zeigen alle Parteien eine Ignoranz im Bezug auf manche Themen, so dass ich nicht länger schweigen kann.

Piratenpartei Propaganda

2009-09-16T18:55:00.000+02:00

Wie Polizisten über Polizisten denken...

2009-09-15T21:10:00.001+02:00

Wie Polizisten über Prügelpolizisten denken...

Prügelcopfreund 1: "Auch ein Sperren gegen polizeiliche Maßnahmen ist ein Widerstand, der selbstverständlich gebrochen werden darf/muss. Sieht nicht immer schön aus, aber manchmal sind auch Schläge erforderlich, um den Probanden locker zu machen."

Prügelcopfreund 2: "Was geht da zu weit? Es wurde ein Platzverweis ausgesprochen. Der Radfahrer trollte sich. (...) Er wurde am T-Shirt gepackt, zurückgezogen, zu Boden gebracht und festgenommen. Natürlich kurz und heftig, aber die Zeit zum Diskutieren war vorbei. Und dass der andere eins auf die Nase bekam, liegt wohl daran, dass er mit dieser zu weit vorn war. Man sollte seine Nase nicht überall reinstecken."

Prügelcopfreund 3: "Ist es so schwer sich an polizeiliche Weisungen zu halten und die Konsequenzen zu tragen, wenn man dagegen verstößt?"

Prügelcopfreund 2: "Der wurde mehrfach aufgefordert zu gehen. Provokant wollte er noch ne Dienstnummer, und die aufschreiben. Das sind dumme Provokationen. Und dann geht er, natürlich extra in die andere Richtung als ihm aufgetragen. (...) Deeskalation ist keine Einbahnstraße."

Prügelcopfreund 4: "VA werden auch mal mit Zwang durchgesetzt. Sieht manchmal nicht so hübsch aus und ist für den Einen oder Anderen auch mal unverständlich, das wird aber nichts daran ändern, dass die Polizei Zwang anwendet."

Prügelcopfreund 2: "Wir agieren nicht. Wir reagieren. Auch mal überzogen. Mag sein. Nicht desto trotz muss man nicht provozieren. Und wer es darauf anlegt auszutesten, wie weit er gehen kann, der geht bei dem einen etwas weiter und bei dem anderen gibts eine gesemmelt. Is eben so."

...

Rette deine Freiheit

2009-09-14T19:43:00.001+02:00

www.rettedeinefreiheit.de

Can you say "Police Brutality"?

2009-09-13T19:45:00.003+02:00

Regardless of what might have happened before the Video starts, in my opinion this behavior is unacceptable.

Update:

Ubuntu: Changing the Datadir for MySQL

2009-09-08T21:54:00.003+02:00

Okay first off,

apparmor will prevent you from just changing your mysql datadir from /var/lib/mysql to something else.

Here is what you have to do to change it to /data/mysql:

invoke-rc.d mysql stop
mv /var/lib/mysql /data/mysql
ln -s /data/mysql /var/lib/mysql
edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf and change to "datadir = /data/mysql"
edit /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld and duplicate the 2 lines "/var/lib/mysql/ r," and "/var/lib/mysql/** rwk," add as "/data/mysql/ r," and "/data/mysql/** rwk,"
invoke-rc.d apparmor reload
invoke-rc.d mysql start
check /var/log/syslog for possible errors

That's all I had to change really.

Linux: Should You Use Twice the Amount of Ram as Swap Space?

2009-08-29T11:31:00.004+02:00

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-swap-space.html

If Linux kernel is going to use more than 2GiB swap space at a time, all users will feel the heat. Either, you get more RAM (recommend) and move to faster storage to improve disk I/O. There are no rules, each setup and configuration is unique. Adjust values as per your requirements. Select amount of swap that is right for you.

I went with 16GB swap space for a final 32GB ram in my "dom0" (the Physical Hardware) Installation and no swap space at all for the "domU" (the Virtualized Hardware) Installation.

Ubuntu Homedir ecryptfs+ssh authorized_keys

2009-08-26T23:35:00.002+02:00

Okay so I installed this new Ubuntu Server with Karmic Koala Beta release as it has the best KVM Support atm and I thought it would be an awesome Idea to encrypt the User Homedirs by default...

Well guess what, if your whole User Homedir is encrypted with ecryptfs, sshd won't be able to read your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys when you SSH into the Server as it needs your User Password to unencrypt it, D'OH!

Here's my quick&dirty work-around as I don't care if my Homedir is unecrypted when I just want to use SSH to log into the Box:

cd /
/sbin/umount.ecryptfs_private
chmod 700 $HOME
# I left it at 700 as ~/.Xauthority needs to be written for X11-Forwarding
mkdir -m 700 $HOME/.ssh
echo $YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY > $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Enjoy.

Are you a Terrorist?

2009-07-29T15:42:00.001+02:00

Looks like I am one of "them"

http://www.dubistterrorist.de/

Rücktrittsbitte an Frau von der Leyen

2009-07-17T18:15:00.002+02:00

Sehr geehrte Frau Bundesfamilienministerin von der Leyen,

hiermit möchte ich Sie in aller Form, höflichst, darum bitten, von Ihrem Amte zurückzutreten. Wie hoffentlich aus meiner Wortwahl ersichtlich, geht es mir nicht darum, Sie in irgendeiner Form zu verunglimpfen oder zu beleidigen oder gar zu fordern. Ich appelliere vielmehr an Ihre Fähigkeit zur Einsicht und an Ihr Verständnis für meine Bitte, welche ich, so hoffe ich, schlüssig begründen kann.

Meine Bitte und die Einschätzung, dass Sie das Ihnen übertragene Amt nicht fachgerecht ausfüllen, basiert zum einen auf Ihren Äußerungen und Forderungen zu den "Netzsperren gegen Kinderpornographie", zum anderen auch darauf, dass seit 10 Jahren, 5 davon in Ihrer Amtszeit gelegen, Deutschland das "RIO-Fakultativ-Protokoll zur Kinderrechtskonvention" nicht razifiziert hat, was ich in Anbetracht Ihres Kampfes gegen Kinderpornographie für höchst bedenklich halte.

Doch der Hauptaugenmerk liegt bei mir auf Ihrem Verhalten in Bezug auf das "Zugangserschwerungsgesetz". Durch dieses Verhalten füg(t)en Sie dem Staat Deutschland, dem Bundesfamilienministerium sowie anderen Ländern schweren innen- bzw. außenpolitischen Schaden zu. Es ist leider derzeit nicht davon auszugehen, dass sich dies ändern wird, so dass ich es für unumgänglich halte, dass Sie Ihr Amt jemandem überlassen, der beginnt, kompetent, ruhig und vor allen Dingen ehrlich gerade auch die Schäden, die Sie verursach(t)en, wieder auszugleichen.

http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/5/141986

How to delete Auto-Fill entries in Firefox

2009-07-13T16:17:00.002+02:00

Removing single Auto-Fill entries in Firefox is very easy if you know how:

1. Double-click in the text field so the drop-down box of auto-fill options appears.
2. Hold your mouse over the option that you want to remove from auto-fill so that it's highlighted. Don't click on it.
3. Press shift-delete and Voila! the entry is gone.

Enjoy, It helped me to get rid of a misspelled eMail address which was bugging me.

Are you a Pirate?

2009-07-10T05:43:00.000+02:00

Amtlich: Ursula von der Leyen hat gelogen

2009-06-14T10:02:00.000+02:00

http://handelsblatt6.blogg.de/eintrag.php?id=2147

Command Line foo: convert unixtime to local

2009-05-27T09:47:00.002+02:00

Very quick and easy way to convert a unix timestamp into localtime:

ralf@geeko:~$ date -R -d @1242079810
Tue, 12 May 2009 00:10:10 +0200

Your Daily Pop-Up's: Gnome libnotify

2009-05-25T17:54:00.003+02:00

A pretty easy way to create Gnome Pop-Up using libnotify + notify-send

ralf@geeko:~$ cat ~/bin/send-notify.sh
#/bin/bash

export DISPLAY=:0 && \
export XAUTHORITY=~ralf/.Xauthority && \
notify-send -u critical -i ~ralf/.icons/notify.png 'Shell Triggered Notify' \
"$(date +'%H:%M:%S') - $*"

How to Boot a Floppy Image Using the Grub Bootloader

2009-05-11T15:39:00.004+02:00

Ever faced the Problem that either your Server doesn't have a floppy drive or you can't insert a floppy into it due to it being in the Datacenter and you can't get to it?

Well as long as you can access the Console you can still Flash your BIOS/Hardware Firmware using Grub. Here is how I flashed a HP NetRaid 1M BIOS Firmware using Grub:

Download the Firmware: MegaRaid 1M H.02.02 (03.09.2003 - fw_nr_1m2m_h0202_5.exe)
Create the floppy Image (VirtualBox worked fine)
Install syslinux (sudo apt-get install syslinux)
Copy /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk + your Floppy Image to /boot
Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Floppy Image Flash BIOS Netraid 1M/2M
root (hd0,0)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /netraid-1m-flash.img

Reboot your Server and Flash the BIOS of your Controller, and finally you can use your HP NetRaid 1M controller with Linux 2.6.26.

NOTE: The floppy image will be read-only; all changes will be lost when the computer is rebooted. It might be handy to create a small partition on your hard drive that the operating system can write to.

VIM & GnuPG: Handling encrypted Files on-the-fly

2009-04-24T19:42:00.003+02:00

VIM GnuPG : Plugin for transparent editing of gpg encrypted files.

This is pretty awesome and works like a charm, just download the latest version of gnupg.vim from the link above and copy gnupg.vim file to the $HOME/.vim/plugin directory.

Voila! It instantly works on filenames that have a ".gpg", ".pgp" or ".asc" suffix.

Are you daring to challenge frosty-geek?

2009-04-12T10:00:00.003+02:00

Feel Lucky, Punk?

Come and Fight me at http://frosty-geek.mybrute.com/