Someone pointed out here that the image produced using the dd command piped through SSH is simply a filesystem, the contents of a partition, and as such no partitions or partition table are visible. To load the image in my new web server and mount it I did the following.

On the guest:

sudo modprobe acpiphp


On the host:

virsh attach-disk <guest name> </path/to/lvm logvol holding the image> vdc --driver phy


On the guest again:

sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo mount /dev/vdc /mnt/tmp


Done. Hope this helps someone else as well.

I used Linode for a while when they were running User Mode Linux, transitioned to shared web hosting for a while when my needs were not so sophisticated, and then came back to Linode for about three years, running at times 4-5 virtual servers.

Recently, I found good, local colocation, ran the numbers on running my own server, and am now running this site and many others from the one server. It’s a little scary running all this stuff myself and depending on it. I have some backups in place but once I settle in I will probably buy another server and set up some kind of failover. Ultimately, at this point in my life I’m doing HPC consulting and I know the hardware and software stacks used in enterprise computing, so I’m much better off than when I was running an FTP and webserver from under my bed in my dorm room on a Pentuim 100 MHz.

Nonetheless, I’m sure there will still be some glitches now and then as I work out the new setup. Here’s hoping they’re nothing major. Just in case, I’m dumping an image over SSH at this very moment from my old Linode to the storage on the new server. If I’m ever really stuck I can always push it back up there to a new account. I also have my account until the end of the month, so that’s a bit of a safety net.

I’ve always been very happy with Linode. It’s a polished operation and they really know their stuff. They don’t oversell their capacity or other shady things like that. The only complaint I have is their recent security issue with the Linode Manager, and I think they handled that pretty well. I’d readily recommend them to others or go back to them in the future if necessary.

So long, Linode!

First, I cloned the linux-stable git:


git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git


Then, after changing into the linux-stable directory, I checked the tag names available:


git tag -l | less


That showed me the formatting of the tags, namely v. So then the command to get the full changelog was:


git log --decorate v3.0.9..v3.0.32


I did find some commits that might have fixed my problem. I upgraded and so far, so good. Only time will tell.

This is here as much for my own reference as it is for yours, but I hope it helps you!

After a little spelunking of old mailing list entries (which I am trying to spare you with this post, dear reader), I discovered that the Ubuntu folks flipped around how the “nodelayacct” kernel boot parameter works for various arcane reasons. Here’s the short version of how to enable it.

1) Edit /etc/default/grub, adding “delayacct” as an option to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT entry. If you hadn’t already modified that line, it would go from


GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""


to


GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="delayacct"


2) Run “sudo update-grub”
3) Reboot, and you should be good to go

This is really suboptimal, though. There must be some sort of constructive geometry modeler out there like OpenSCAD that will do proper volume meshes. OpenSCAD is really for surface meshes, but it’s so very easy to make the shapes I want in it. To that end I’ve been searching for FOSS CSG software, and I’m now trying the first one I found that has promise — BRL-CAD. I’ll post more as I try it out.

EDIT: So far so good the MGED editor in BRL-CAD seems to be WAY more powerful than OpenSCAD, much as I love OpenSCAD. I will post some designs as I get the hang of it.

My MendelMax is built! Now I need the printrboard in the mail, and to wire it up, and then it’s printing time!