.pQd – Page 6 – .pQd's log

ghettoVCB failing randomly on larger VMs

2017-04-29 by .pQd

at work we’re using happily ghettoVCB.sh to back up and restore VMWare ESXi VMs. since a few weeks we’ve started to experience occasional failures of backups, only for one – larger VMs. in the logs produced in /tmp/ghettoVCB-2017-04-xxx.log we got: or after some head scratching, watching at iostat -x 1 and ifstat -b 1 -i ... Read More

simplistic gatekeeper limiting access to apache2-based proxy

2017-02-052017-02-05 by .pQd

i had to expose some web-based application hosted on a windows server to the internet. i don’t put too much trust in the developers of that particular application so i did not want to make it reachable from the public internet. while i could not use ip address based whitelist i could count on the ... Read More

posting a file from command line with CURL

2017-02-022017-02-04 by .pQd

i needed to write a .bat script for windows to upload a log file. quick and nasty hack.. on the sending end: looks straightforward, worked when i tested; but failed to upload in the production setup. on the http server/PHP i was getting: turned out that the log file was growing. curl at the beginning ... Read More

extracting attachments from unix mail files

2016-12-30 by .pQd

i log some of the messages passing by Postfix-based relay using always_bcc = bcc@somewhere.com in main.cf. Sometimes – to track spam or problems – i need to check content of the attachments. this comes handy if content is embedded inline i have to edit the file and replace or just add the 2nd part if ... Read More

2 hikes in Hong Kong

2016-12-182016-12-18 by .pQd

i was in HK again; just for a week, but there was enough time during the weekend to hike again in the wildness. High Junk Peak at first i did not enjoy this route at all – just after living the last buildings behind: there was ~25 min of walking up the narrow concrete stairs ... Read More

bind9 on debian jessie ignores -4 in /etc/default/bind9 and tries to make lookups via ipv6

2016-11-012016-11-01 by .pQd

while checking one of the servers running debian jessie i’ve noticed that logs are full of: strange… didn’t i put “-4” in the /etc/default/bind9 ages ago? apparently i did but ps shows that it was ignored: a bit of googling told me it’s a known problem with systemd [sic!] – the /etc/default/bind9 is ignored. workaround? ... Read More

sphinx search 2.2.11 – column count does not match schema (expected 3, got 2)

2016-09-07 by .pQd

i have a real-time sphinx that was configured in this way:\ it was updated using REPLACE INTO myrt VALUES(?,?)… until the day i’ve upgraded to 2.2.11. the update command started to give me: after a bit of investigation i’ve discovered that: with RT index it’s obligatory to have at least one attribute [not id], even ... Read More

dlink DXS-1210-12TC – web interface hanging

2016-07-262016-07-26 by .pQd

i’ve made a mistake again and bought a ‘cheap’, smart-managed network switch. dlink DXS-1210-12TC with 12 10gbase-t ports. and i got punished nearly immediately – the web interface of the device would hang on me after few days of uptime. sometimes it wasn’t even possible to log in, other times – i could log in ... Read More

“operator or administrator has refused the request (0x800710E0)” in the windows task scheduler

2016-06-302016-07-25 by .pQd

at work we have a Windows 2012 server [ more than one. sadly… ]. one of them had few nightly batch jobs started from the task scheduler. a certain task would fail occasionally and give us the “operator or administrator has refused the request (0x800710E0)” error. googling did not help much – it’s a server, ... Read More

tuning spmassasin to treat more harshly mails with forged sender’s address claiming to come from us

2016-05-132016-09-05 by .pQd

once in a while we get e-mails with spoofed sender’s address claiming to come from @ourorg.com. this can fool some of our users; outlook displaying an image of sender solely based on the From: field does not help here. some of those messages have different Return-Path pointing to @someotherscammy.site, other have it also pointing to ... Read More

drac5 / 6 with latest java 1.8.73

2016-03-032016-09-30 by .pQd

new java – new problems. “Error when reading form SSL socket connection” showed again after the upgrade to new java follow the steps from the earlier post and edit those in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_73\lib\security\java.security: also: go to the Control panel > java in the General tab: Settings > Delete files – mark all the ... Read More

Tenerifa

2016-02-172016-02-17 by .pQd

i’ve spent two weeks traveling around Tenerifa with my parents. we’ve seen a bit of the commercial-heavy south near Los Cristianos, rocky west coast in Los Gigantes, semi-rural areas of Icod de Vinos, a bit of Puerto de la Cruz and post-volcanic Teide and Puerto de Guimar. our hiking routes – below.

Dell’s 10gbase-t network cards on Intel’s x540 chips

2016-02-122016-03-03 by .pQd

we’re upgrading few servers at work to have 10gbit/s connectivity. to keep things familiar i’ve decided to stick with [power hungry and latency-inducing] cat7 copper cabling and 10gbase-t. there are few dell poweredge r620 and r630 to be upgraded. currently those have proprietary broadcom-based daughter-cards with 4x 1000base-t ports. i preferred to replace them with ... Read More

audible / drm

2015-12-202023-04-30 by .pQd

i’ve made a mistake of buying an audiobook from audible.com. before doing it i’ve briefly checked if the file will be provided in mp3; according to audible.com/sh yes. in reality – no.

mounting partitions from within of the vmware’s .vmdk file or kvm’s qcow2

2015-12-012022-12-13 by .pQd

i’m taking backups of vmware esxi vms weekly using ghettovcb. it has been working greatly for many years. once in a while i need to recover a particular file from particular backup. there’s quicker way than just restoring the whole vm!

Gadowski – geneza ISIS

2015-11-122015-11-14 by .pQd

swietny wyklad Gadowskiego, polecam pierwsze ~60 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxGl4n91MUY

10 days in Albania

2015-11-012015-11-01 by .pQd

i’ve spent nearly two weeks traveling around Albania. i’ve started and ended the journey on a Greek island – Corfu [ i could not find any reasonably-priced flight from Berlin to Tirana ] and from there travelled with a ferry to Sarandë.

esxi 6.0: “create virtual machine snapshot” “a general system error occurred”

2015-10-312015-10-31 by .pQd

i’ve upgraded from esxi 5.5 to 6.0 a couple of servers. soon after i’ve discovered that ghettoVCB would fail on some of VMs while it worked fine on the others. i’ve started poking around and found out that for those VMs where backup failed i creation of snapshot would fail with the following error: while ... Read More

“Waiting for TUN/TAP interface to come up” in OpenVPN logs under windows 10

2015-10-102023-01-23 by .pQd

i run windows 10 on one of the computers, it also has a ‘dial up’ openvpn – started from openvpn gui. it worked fine for a few days but then i started to see repeting in the logs and tunnel would not get up for 20-60 seconds. and sometimes even after that the right entries ... Read More

drac5 / 6 with latest java 1.8.60

2015-09-242015-09-24 by .pQd

new java, new headaches. but my colleague figured a way how to get the ip kvm working again with the latest java. here are his findings: ingredients: windows 8.1, j2se 1.8.60, firefox 41 or chrome 45.0.2454.99: go to the Control panel > java in the General tab: Settings > Delete files – mark all the ... Read More