Author: MD1032

  • collectd libvirt plugin build dependencies

    When configuring collectd using ./configure –prefix=/usr/local –enable-libvirt , the modules section that’s displayed after configuring on my machine shows: libvirt . . . . . . . no (dependency error) The solution here is to install the libxml2-dev package in addition to libvirt-dev, since that is needed by collectd to parse the XML VM configuration…

  • Airport Extreme: update dynamic hostname through BIND

    If you are the owner of an Apple Airport Extreme base station, you may have wondered if it is possible to assign a static hostname to your dynamically changing ADSL IP address. Many other routers offer this feature through one of the popular dynamic DNS services such as DynDNS. Apple however decided not to support…

  • Script to convert a SYMPA mail archive to mbox format (sympa2mbox)

    Export the mail archive using the SYMPA web interface, extract the zipfile and run the following script over the mail directory. You need to have “formail” installed. #!/bin/bash # This scripts takes a sympa email archive and converts it into a # single mbox file path=”$1″ dest=”$2″ function die() { echo “$1” exit } #…

  • Remove failing VMs in OpenStack

    Occasionally OpenStack VMs fail to spawn or fail to terminate and cannot be removed from the VM list. Deleting the VM using the command line or web interface has no effect, they are stuck in the “spawning” or “deleting” state. To get rid of these zombie entries I remove them from the database using the…

  • Force library refresh on Nook Simple Touch

    If you have rooted a Nook Simple Touch e.g. using http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1343143, you may want to run some scripts to download some books directly onto your device. The problem is that these books you saved to /media or /sdcard only show up in the library after you reboot the Nook. To force a library refresh, create…

  • RAID5 array of 6 SSDs Performance Evaluation

    I’ve got six Crucial m4 SSDs with 256GB in a RAID5 array, resulting in 1.2TB useable disk space.The SSDs are connected via SATA3 to a Gigabyte 990FX UD7 board. I’m running 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 server. The following two articles offer some good ideas on performance tuning the SSD RAID: http://h3x.no/2011/07/09/tuning-ubuntu-mdadm-raid56 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives The chuck size on…

  • How I built my custom Mac

    Here’s a list of the parts: Intel Core i7 2600K $335.00 Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 $149.00 Antec Sonata IV with 620W $187.00 Crucial M4 SSD 256GB $439.00 LG CH12LS28 12X BD-R Blu-ray DVD Combo Drive $69.00 Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CO CPU Cooler $59.00 Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 Motherboard $165.00 First I had to…

  • Mounting Drobo b800i on Linux using iSCSI

    iSCSI support in the new Drobo is a really neat feature. Here’s how to mount the Drobo as a block device in Linux: install some hard disks and connect the Drobo via USB cable to a Windows or Mac computer open the Drobo Dashboard and create a volume. I recommend to set it to 16TB…

  • XBMC & Lirc & Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric

    After upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10, my MCE remote stopped working in XBMC. Since XBMC did not get an update (it’s coming from a separate PPA), I assume the LIRC button naming for the “mceusb” driver has changed in the new lirc package. It doesn’t match the “mceusb” section in XBMC’s Lircmap.xml anymore. What I had to…

  • Openfire & Ubuntu & more than 1000 XMPP users

    Openfire on Ubuntu may get into a state where it doesn’t accept incoming connections anymore. The process is still there, the log files do not give any hints, but new XMPP clients just hang at the connection attempt. The reason for this behaviour may be a limit on a user’s maximum number of file descriptors.…