Kernel on BAFM

Rescuing a rebooting machine that's hanging

Sat, 24 May 2008 17:14:56 +0000

One of my co-worker approached me today with a weird problem. Yesterday he had a disk in a 900GiB array failing which he replaced. After that, he run a rebuild/verification, fsck’ed the file system and tried to mount the volume again.

Apparently the mount produced a kernel oops (guess what, the 900GiB is running reiserfs), thus leaving the kernel tainted (or what do they call it ?). So he tried to reboot the box but it didn’t reboot. It started rebooting but then hung (as in not continuing the reboot). He tried to ssh back to the box, and it worked just fine.

git-lkml for stupid people (like me)

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:06:43 +0000

OK, as Stephen recently asked why there is a double inclusion of in kernel/sysctl.c (and I asked Greg and Randy); I finally decided to write a patch to the LKML for possible inclusion.

But, git ain’t easy for people like me (who are used to the easiness of say - subversion or even cvs). So here’s what I did (thanks to Fernando for the help earlier today):

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$ vim kernel/sysctl.c
// change something
$ git checkout -b sysctl
// create a new branch from your changes, based upon the master repository
$ git commit -a -s
// commit the changes to your newly created branch
$ git format-patch master..sysctl
// Enter a subject and then a separate description
// and you should have a new file in the current working directory starting like 0001-*.patch

Now you should have a mailable patch, ready to be sent upstream that looks like this:

git-lkml for stupid people (like me)

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:06:43 +0000

OK, as Stephen recently asked why there is a double inclusion of in kernel/sysctl.c (and I asked Greg and Randy); I finally decided to write a patch to the LKML for possible inclusion.

But, git ain’t easy for people like me (who are used to the easiness of say - subversion or even cvs). So here’s what I did (thanks to Fernando for the help earlier today):

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$ vim kernel/sysctl.c
// change something
$ git checkout -b sysctl
// create a new branch from your changes, based upon the master repository
$ git commit -a -s
// commit the changes to your newly created branch
$ git format-patch master..sysctl
// Enter a subject and then a separate description
// and you should have a new file in the current working directory starting like 0001-*.patch

Now you should have a mailable patch, ready to be sent upstream that looks like this:

hardened-sources-2-6-18

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 23:56:45 +0000

Today (OK, it’s yesterday now, it’s again after 12:00) I had a little fun with pappy (Alexander Gabert) preparing 2.6.18 for prime time 😀

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$ ls -AGg 2.6.18
-rw-r--r-- 1 1593 Jan 25 23:25 1500_cvs-2007-1000.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 797 Jan 25 23:25 4000_deprecate-sk98lin.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 32192 Jan 25 23:25 4105_dm-bbr.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 125781 Jan 25 23:25 4300_squashfs-3.1.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 5710 Jan 25 23:25 4405_alpha-sysctl-uac.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 864955 Jan 25 23:25 4450_grsec-2.1.9-2.6.18.6-200611100917.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 910 Jan 25 23:25 4451_grsec-2.1.9-2.6.18.2-mute-warnings.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 1034 Jan 25 23:25 4452_selinux-avc_audit-log-curr_ip-grsec.patch
-rw-r--r-- 1 2097 Jan 25 23:25 4453_pax_curr_ip-fixes.patch

So far all patches are applying fine and according to Alexander it even works on his workstation. But I’ll wait for Steve/Ned to get back to me telling me if this release works for them or not (as they had serious issues with their hardened desktops - something about the cursor being stuck in the corners).

F*cking summer

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 09:56:21 +0000

Oh, yeah baby g. It’s finally hot f*cking summer and I really like it. We have now three weeks in a row sunny weather with no rain at all.

Everyone running around with less or nearly no clothes (heh, especially the girls) is also a nice present from above.

Personally I haven’t felt better the last two years. Maybe that’s depending on my previous depressions and the like (you know these thoughts .. ) but this summer is definitely going rock my life!