Posts Tagged ‘bit’

Simple bash shell Script to easy and quickly automate deploy RHEL Linux Virtual Machines on KVM Virtualization

Friday, November 3rd, 2023

how-to-install-a-kvm-guest-os-from-the-commandline-easily-with-script-virt-install-logo

Earlier I've blogged in about howto build KVM Virtual Machine RHEL 8.3 Linux install on Redhat 8.3 Linux Hypervisor with custom tailored kickstart.cfg as one of the Projects i was involved in my work duty as system administrator, we had the task to build
a KVM virtual machines and build a High Availability Linux  PCS Corosync / Pacemaker / haproxy cluster on it to save some money for the company from purchasing VMWare licenses.

The setup of the KVM Virtual machine on a first glimpse is relatively simple and I thought, this can be done just for 2 / 3 days but it turned out to take up 2 weeks or so to properly prepare the kickstarter file and learn a bit about basic virt-install KVM options and experiment with them until
we can produce a noral working Virtual machines. 

The original developed simple script that I used to bring up a new KVM virtual machines in a bit easier way virt-install-kvm.sh looked like so:
 

#!/bin/sh
# Script to build a new VM based on a kickstart.cfg file template
# with virt-install
# Author Georgi Georgiev hip0
# hipo@Pc-freak.net

KS_FILE='kickstart.cfg';
VM_NAME='RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine';
VM_DESCR='CentOS 8.3 Virtual Machine';
RAM='8192';
CPUS='8';
# size is in Gigabytes
VM_IMG_SIZE='70';
ISO_LOCATION='/vmprivate/rhel-server-8.3-x86_64-dvd.iso';
VM_IMG_FILE_LOC='/vmprivate/RHEL8_3-VirtualMachine.img';

virt-install -n "$VMNAME" –description "$VM_DESCR" –os-type=Linux –os-variant=rhel8.3 –ram=8192 –vcpus=8 –location="$ISO_LOCATION" –disk path=$VM_IMG_FILE,bus=virtio,size=$IMG_VM_SIZE –graphics none –initrd-inject=/root/$KS_FILE –extra-args "console=ttyS0 ks=file:/$KS_FILE"

 

The script basicly did what it was aimed for but modifying the kickstarter ks.cfg every time with multiple additional parameters, like network configurations as well some additional modifications to ks.cfg for VM parameters was annoying.

Recently as we had to repeat the same task again in order to migrate old customer containing a Linux OpenVZ Virtual machines to a newer  OS installed RHEL versionb with KVM virtual machines, i've took some hours and scripted a small script that would easiy our task to build new KVM Virtual Machines
from scratch relatively easy, if we have to repeat the Linux OS build operation again and again.

Before proceeding to use the script of course one has to use LVM and setup the partitions on the Host which will be the Hypervisor where the KVM VMs will be installed as well you need to download an ISO image of Redhat Enterprise Linux / CentOS / Fedora or whatever kind of RPM based Linux
you would like to setup as well as do the basic configurations regarding the emulated Hardware node "Power" of the new Virtual Machine (CPU / Memory / Disk Partition) as well as choose a proper meaningful VM name (preferrably following some good meaningful crafted naming convention, that will talk a bit about what is inside the KVM VM container).

The script that automates a bit the KVM VM installation which you find below you can also download from here virt-install.sh

 

#!/bin/bash
virt_install_path=$(which virt-install);
vm_host='vmname01';
boot_iso='/vmprivate/rhel-8.7-x86_64-dvd.iso';
os_version='rhel8.7';
vm_cpus_count='4';
vm_ram='6144';
vm_img_location='/vmprivate/NAME-of-VM.img';
vm_machine_description='Name Production system';
ks_file_location_template='/root/ks.cfg.templ';
ks_file_location='/root/ks.cfg';
ks_vm_read_loc=$(echo $ks_file_location |sed -e 's#root/##g');
vm_main_ip='192.168.23.52';
vm_netmask='255.255.255.192';
vm_gateway='192.168.23.33';
vm_nameserver='172.30.50.2';
#–ip=192.168.233.52 –netmask=255.255.255.192 –gateway=192.168.233.33 –nameserver=172.20.88.2

echo "Checking if defined $vm_host image $vm_img_location is not already present";
if [ ! -f $vm_img_location ]; then
echo
else
echo 'Exiting $vm_img_location is present';
echo "To destroy exiting VM image $vm_img_location run manually cmds:";
echo 'virsh list; virsh destroy $vm_host; virsh undefine $vm_host –remove-all-storage';
exit 1;
fi

alias cp='cp -f';
/usr/bin/cp -rpf $ks_file_location_template $ks_file_location;

echo "Setting  VM Main IP: $vm_main_ip";
echo "Setting  VM netmask: $vm_netmask";
echo "Setting  VM Gateway: $vm_gateway";
echo "Setting  VM Nameserver $vm_nameserver";
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e "s/ip=a1.a2.a3.a4/ip=$vm_main_ip/" $ks_file_location
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e "s/netmask=b1.b2.b3.b4/netmask=$vm_netmask/" $ks_file_location
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e "s/gateway=c1.c2.c3.c4/nameserver=$vm_nameserver/" $ks_file_location
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e "s/nameserver=d1.d2.d3.d4/gateway=$vm_gateway/" $ks_file_location
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e "s/vm-hostname/$vm_host/" $ks_file_location

echo "Running VM install:";
echo $virt_install_path -n $vm_host –description "$vm_machine_description" –os-type=Linux –os-variant=$os_version –ram=$vm_ram –vcpus=$vm_cpus_count –location=$boot_iso –disk path=$vm_img_location,bus=virtio,size=90 –graphics none –initrd-inject=$ks_file_location –extra-args "console=ttyS0 ks=file:$ks_vm_read_loc"

$virt_install_path -n $vm_host –description "$vm_machine_description" –os-type=Linux –os-variant=$os_version –ram=$vm_ram –vcpus=$vm_cpus_count –location=$boot_iso –disk path=$vm_img_location,bus=virtio,size=90 –graphics none –initrd-inject=$ks_file_location –extra-args "console=ttyS0 ks=file:$ks_vm_read_loc"
 

 

Modify the script to insert the required parameters of the new VM in the script header session, you will have to provide below options.

 

vm_host='vmname01';
boot_iso='/vmprivate/rhel-8.7-x86_64-dvd.iso';
os_version='rhel8.7';
vm_cpus_count='4';
vm_ram='6144';
vm_img_location='/vmprivate/NAME-of-VM.img';
vm_machine_description='Name Production system';
ks_file_location_template='/root/ks.cfg.templ';
ks_file_location='/root/ks.cfg';
ks_vm_read_loc=$(echo $ks_file_location |sed -e 's#root/##g');
vm_main_ip='192.168.23.52';
vm_netmask='255.255.255.192';
vm_gateway='192.168.23.33';
vm_nameserver='172.30.50.2';

The automatic Build virtual machine script is tested and works with Redhat Enterprise Linux and of course is pretty primitive as there is so much available online that would do similar, but still I like it because it works for me 🙂

You will need also the ks.cfg.templ file which has the basic kickstarter configuration that will bring up the Virtual machines according to predefined configurations.
Here is the ks.cfg.templ and ks.cfg files as well, you will have to place them under /root/ or some other directory.
Of course this script is just a basic one, it can be easily updated to accept its variable options as arguments if you need to bring up a multitude of virtual machines relatively quickly with few minor modifications. 

Hope the script is helpful to some sysadmin out there. If so don't forget to donate me for a beer in my Patreon account found in the widgets section 🙂

How to Create New Windows 10 NTFS Drive partition from new empty ( Unallocated ) space with Windows Disk Management or diskpart command

Thursday, November 18th, 2021

Windows-10-paritioning-with-disk-management-diskmgmt.msc

As mentioned in previous article, I've been setting up a new PC that is a bit old a 11 years old Lenovo ThinkCentre model M90P with 8 GB of Memory, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU         650  @ 3.20GHz   3.19 GHz, Intel Q57 Express Chipset.

After the installation was successful on the new Desktop PC attached SSD, I was curious to see how Windows detects the 521 GB Solid State Drive Samsung  Disk, as well as to assign all the SSD Disk space, so I don't have unused parts of the drive hanging around.

To get the exact type of SSD installed on the Lenovo ThinkCentre, it comes to a simple PowerShell command (note that the PowerShell command has to be executed as Administrator).

 

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Try the new cross-platform PowerShell https://aka.ms/pscore6

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk

Number FriendlyName               SerialNumber   MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage            Size
—— ————               ————   ——— ——- —————– ———— —–            —-
0      SAMSUNG MZ7LN512HAJQ-00000 S3TVNX0MC04330 SSD       True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 476.94 GB


PS C:\Windows\system32>
 

 

PowerShell-Get-PhysicalDisk-command-print-exact-SSD-type-attached-to-a-Windows-computer 

During the Windows installation, I did installed Windows on a 110GB partition that was left behind from my attempt to copy another 120GB ssd drive as, I've described in my previous article.
Cause of that big part of the SAMSUNG MZ7LN512HAJQ-00000 SSD was left unpartitioned ( unallocated ) and respectively the space did not show in Windows, hence to work around this I was supposed to 
create new Windows Drive and format it either in VFAT (FAT32) or NTFS. Through the years when I had to do such an operations I often either booted from some bootCD and did the desired partitioning or if
partitioning had to be done on a LivePC without reboot, I've used Windows Partitioning Software, such as:

  • The Industry Standard Partition Manager ( Acronis Disk Director ) 
     
  • EaseUS Partition Manager


Using a Good partition manager is a great thing if some complicated partitioning operations needs to be done,  however for such a trivial stuff such as mine in that case – Creating a new NTFS filesystem from unallocated space is a bit of nonsense, thus this time I've decided to use the Windows Standard tool for Partitioinng
 

  • Disk Management

To run the tool you need to run Computer Management tool first either by just looking it up in the Search bar near Start menu (Windows 10 flag icon) or by invoking command line start window, by pressing together

Windows Button + R and runnining command:

C:\Users\Emilian> compmgmt.msc

 

From there on navigate to

Storage -> Disk Management

windows-computer-management-screenshot

Go over box Unallocated (365.15 GB) and Press Right Mouse Button and select

-> New Simple Volume

new-simple-volume-screenshot

Next steps are quite self explanatory, had to just follow the New Simple Volme Wizard steps

windows-computer-management-screenshot

windows-computer-management-screenshot-3

windows-computer-management-screenshot-4

I Prefer to use NTFS because it is quicker and kinda of a standard since Windows 8+ onwards, besides that this computer will be used as a simple web browsing station and there is no plans the disk will ever have to be attached to a different OS like UNIX / LInux..However always keep in mind for compitability reasons VFAT Filesystem is usually not a bad idea. 

windows-computer-management-screenshot-5

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/new-ntfs-volume-F-drive-windows-10-screenshot

As you can see the drive is prepared and now accessible from Windows Explorer under Drive F:\. If you wonder why the drive is not D:\, it seems to create the D:\ the unallocated space is supposed to be be on a separate Disk which waas not the case with this PC setup.

After installing the SSD drive and setting the proper partitions another good practice is to use Disk Defragmenter Win tool to optimize the Drives for speed. Another useful feature of disk degragmenter is you can use it to check what kind of hard drive you have installed e.g. SATA or SSD, as well as check if the installed SSD is NVME (Non-Volatile-Memory-Express), e.g. of a faster type.

To run Disk Degrafmenter do  Win key + R
 


C:\Users\Emilian> dfrgui

 

dfrgui-command-screenshot-windows-1

Below is what dfrgui reports on the ThinkCentre after running Disk Optimize for each Drive – (Optimize All) option.

dfrgui-partitions-on-lenovo-thinkcentre-windows-screeshot

Just to show you what you can see with dfrgui, here is the dfrgui screenshot from another PC that has attached both SATA disk and NVME SSD Drive.

dfrgui-command-screenshot-windows-2

 

How to do partitioning from Windows console with diskpart command (useful for scripting)

 

If you're coming from Linux world and you're pretty used to fdisk / cfdisk etc. to do partitioning daily, then you'll be most happy to hear about existence of the diskpart command in Windows, which is a kinda of an equivalent tool.
The tool is perfect for domain administrators which need to do some dynamic partitioning operations on multiple computers at once.

 To use diskpart you need Administrator command prompt, there is much you can do with diskpart, below is how to create another NTFS partition on a secondary

C:\Windows\System32> diskpart

diskpart-win-screenshot-1

DISKPART> list disk

diskpart-win-screenshot-2

DISKPART> select disk 2

diskpart-win-screenshot-3

To clean all the content (e.g. delete everything on hard drive) e.g. all files and directories

!!! BEWARE NOT TO DELETE BY MISTAKE YOUR DATA DON'T BLAME ME IF YOU JUST COPY PASTE IRRESPONSIBLY WITHOUT THINKING.
AFTER ALL IT IS YOUR COMPUTER !!!

DISKPART> clean

 

diskpart-win-screenshot-4

Next lets, create a partition, in below screenshot you can see how to use help and what are the supported partition types in Windows 10 as of year 2021.


/diskpart-help-create-partition-type-screenshot
 

DISKPART> create partition primary

diskpart-win-screenshot-6

To format new assigned primary partition as NTFS

DISKPART> format fs=ntfs

diskpart-win-screenshot-7

Once formatted to assign Drive letter that is the next available free one in order

DISKPART> assign

 

diskpart-win-screenshot-8

If instead of auto assigning a letter to new formatted partition, you would want to assign a specific Drive letter, lets say F:\> as it was in our case with the Graphical Windows Disk Management tool earlier in article.

DISKPART> assign letter=F


Using diskpart it is pretty easy to do much stuff from command line such as formatting a new attached empty unallocated drive, or formatting and setting a desired filesysteem of external attached Hard Drive. Note that the disk list arguments will list any externally attached Supported Storage and you can use disklist similarly to do quick format / repartition / wipe out data or whatever.

Further on just for fun I've run CPUID which is a great Windows freeware tool to report System Information, pretty much like the good old Everest such as exact CPU type, MainBoard, Graphics Card and Mainboard type of the certain hardware you have on running.

cpuid-screenshot-windows-10
 
That's all folks Hope this article, helped you learn something new.

Cheers 😉

 

ASCII Art studio – A powerful ASCII art editor for Windows / Playscii a cool looking text editor for Linux

Monday, June 28th, 2021

This post is just informative for Text Geeks who are in love with ASCII Art, it is a bit of rant as I will say nothing new, but I thought it might be of interest to some console maniac out there 🙂

ascii art studio aas program windows xp professional drawing program screenshot

While checking stuff on Internet I've stumbled on interesting ASCII arts freak software – >ASCII Art Studio. ASCII Art Studio is unfortunately needs licensing is not Free Software. But anyways, for anyone willing to draw pro ASCII art pictures it is a must see. Check it out;

Isn't it like a Plain Text pro Photoshop ? 🙂 Its a pity we don't have a Linux / BSD Release of this wonderful piece of software. I've tried with WINE (Windows Emulator) on Linux to make the Ascii Art Studio work but that was a fail. It seems only way to make it work is have Windows as a worst case install a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox / Vmware and run it inside if you don't have a Windows PC at hand.

Of course there are stuff on Linux to ascii art edit you can use if you want to have a native software to edit ASCIIs such as Playscii. Unfortunately Playscii is not an easy one to install and the software doesn't have a prepared rpm or deb binary you can easily roll on the OS and you have to manually build all required python modules and have a working version of python3 to be able to make it work.

I did not have much time to test to install it and since I faced issues with plascii install I just abandoned it. If some geek has some more time anyways I guess it is worse to give it a try below is 2 screenshots from PLAYSCII official download page. 

playscii_shot1-official.

As you see authors of the open source playscii whose source is available via github choose to have an amazing looking ascii art text menus, though for daily ASCII art editing it is perhaps much more complicated to use than the simlistic ASCII Art Studio

playscii_shot2-official

There is other stuff for Linux to do ASCII Art files text edit like:
JaVE (this one I don't personally like because it is Java Based),  Ascii Art Maker or Pablow Draw Linux (unfortunately this 2 ones are proprietary).

Deny DHCP Address by MAC on Linux

Thursday, October 8th, 2020

Deny DHCP addresses by MAC ignore MAC to not be DHCPD leased on GNU / Linux howto

I have not blogged for a long time due to being on a few weeks vacation and being in home with a small cute baby. However as a hardcore and a bit of dumb System administrator, I have spend some of my vacation and   worked on bringing up the the www.pc-freak.net and the other Websites hosted as a high availvailability ones living on a 2 Webservers running on a Master to Master MySQL Replication backend database, this is oll hosted on  servers, set to run as a round robin DNS hosts on 2 servers one old Lenove ThinkCentre Edge71 as well as a brand new real Lenovo server Lenovo ThinkServer SD350 with 24 CPUs and a 32 GB of RAM
To assure Internet Connectivity is having a good degree of connectivity and ensure websites hosted on both machines is not going to die if one of the 2 pair configured Fiber Optics Internet Providers Bergon.NET has some Issues, I've rented another Internet Provider Line is set bought from the VIVACOM Mobile Fiber Internet provider – that is a 1 Gigabit Fiber Optics Line.
Next to that to guarantee there is no Database, Webserver, MailServer, Memcached and other running services did not hit downtimes due to Electricity power outage, two Powerful Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS)  FPS Fortron devices are connected to the servers each of which that could keep the machine and the connected switches and Servers for up to 1 Hour.

The machines are configured to use dhcpd to distributed IP addresses and the Main Node is set to distribute IPs, however as there is a local LAN network with more of a personal Work PCs, Wireless Devices and Testing Computers and few Virtual machines in the Network and the IPs are being distributed in a consequential manner via a ISC DHCP server.

As always to make everything work properly hence, I had again some a bit weird non-standard requirement to make some of the computers within the Network with Static IP addresses and the others to have their IPs received via the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and add some filter for some of the Machine MAC Addresses which are configured to have a static IP addresses to prevent the DHCP (daemon) server to automatically reassign IPs to this machines.

After a bit of googling and pondering I've done it and some of the machines, therefore to save others the efforts to look around How to set Certain Computers / Servers Network Card MAC (Interfaces) MAC Addresses  configured on the LAN network to use Static IPs and instruct the DHCP server to ingnore any broadcast IP addresses leases – if they're to be destined to a set of IGNORED MAcs, I came up with this small article.

Here is the DHCP server /etc/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf from my Debian GNU / Linux (Buster) 10.4

 

option domain-name "pcfreak.lan";
option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;
max-lease-time 891200;
authoritative;
class "black-hole" {
    match substring (hardware, 1, 6);
    ignore booting;
}
subclass "black-hole" 18:45:91:c3:d9:00;
subclass "black-hole" 70:e2:81:13:44:11;
subclass "black-hole" 70:e2:81:13:44:12;
subclass "black-hole" 00:16:3f:53:5d:11;
subclass "black-hole" 18:45:9b:c6:d9:00;
subclass "black-hole" 16:45:93:c3:d9:09;
subclass "black-hole" 16:45:94:c3:d9:0d;/etc/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf
subclass "black-hole" 60:67:21:3c:20:ec;
subclass "black-hole" 60:67:20:5c:20:ed;
subclass "black-hole" 00:16:3e:0f:48:04;
subclass "black-hole" 00:16:3e:3a:f4:fc;
subclass "black-hole" 50:d4:f5:13:e8:ba;
subclass "black-hole" 50:d4:f5:13:e8:bb;
subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        option routers                  192.168.0.1;
        option subnet-mask              255.255.255.0;
}
host think-server {
        hardware ethernet 70:e2:85:13:44:12;
        fixed-address 192.168.0.200;
}
default-lease-time 691200;
max-lease-time 891200;
log-facility local7;

To spend you copy paste efforts a file with Deny DHCP Address by Mac Linux configuration is here
/home/hipo/info
Of course I have dumped the MAC Addresses to omit a data leaking but I guess the idea behind the MAC ADDR ignore is quite clear

The main configuration doing the trick to ignore a certain MAC ALenovo ThinkServer SD350ddresses that are reachable on the Connected hardware switch on the device is like so:

class "black-hole" {
    match substring (hardware, 1, 6);
    ignore booting;
}
subclass "black-hole" 18:45:91:c3:d9:00;


The Deny DHCP Address by MAC is described on isc.org distribution lists here but it seems the documentation on the topic on how to Deny / IGNORE DHCP Addresses by MAC Address on Linux has been quite obscure and limited online.

As you can see in above config the time via which an IP is freed up and a new IP lease is done from the server is severely maximized as often DHCP servers do use a max-lease-time like 1 hour (3600) seconds:, the reason for increasing the lease time to be to like 10 days time is that the IPs in my network change very rarely so it is a waste of CPU cycles to do a frequent lease.

default-lease-time 691200;
max-lease-time 891200;


As you see to Guarantee resolving works always as expected I have configured – Google Public DNS and OpenDNS IPs

option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;


One hint to make is, after setting up all my desired config in the standard config location /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf it is always good idea to test configuration before reloading the running dhcpd process.

 

root@pcfreak: ~# /usr/sbin/dhcpd -t
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server 4.4.1
Copyright 2004-2018 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Config file: /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
Database file: /va/home/hipo/infor/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases
PID file: /var/run/dhcpd.pid
 

That's all folks with this sample config the IPs under subclass "black-hole", which are a local LAN Static IP Addresses will never be offered leasess anymore from the ISC DHCP.
Hope this stuff helps someone, enjoy and in case if you need a colocation of a server or a website hosting for a really cheap price on this new set High Availlability up described machines open an inquiry on https://web.www.pc-freak.net.

 

Report haproxy node switch script useful for Zabbix or other monitoring

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

zabbix-monitoring-logo
For those who administer corosync clustered haproxy and needs to build monitoring in case if the main configured Haproxy node in the cluster is changed, I've developed a small script to be integrated with zabbix-agent installed to report to a central zabbix server via a zabbix proxy.
The script  is very simple it assumed DC1 variable is the default used haproxy node and DC2 and DC3 are 2 backup nodes. The script is made to use crm_mon which is not installed by default on each server by default so if you'll be using it you'll have to install it first, but anyways the script can easily be adapted to use pcs cmd instead.

Below is the bash shell script:

UserParameter=active.dc,f=0; for i in $(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1|grep -i 'Node ' |awk '{ print $2 }'); do ((f++)); DC[$f]="$i"; done; \
DC=$(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1 | grep 'Current DC' | awk '{ print $1 " " $2 " " $3}' | awk '{ print $3 }'); \
if [ “$DC” == “${DC[1]}” ]; then echo “1 Default DC Switched to ${DC[1]}”; elif [ “$DC” == “${DC[2]}” ]; then \
echo "2 Default DC Switched to ${DC[2]}”; elif [ “$DC” == “${DC[3]}” ]; then echo “3 Default DC: ${DC[3]}"; fi


To configure it with zabbix monitoring it can be configured via UserParameterScript.

The way I configured  it in Zabbix is as so:


1. Create the userpameter_active_node.conf

Below script is 3 nodes Haproxy cluster

# cat > /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d/userparameter_active_node.conf

UserParameter=active.dc,f=0; for i in $(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1|grep -i 'Node ' |awk '{ print $2 }'); do ((f++)); DC[$f]="$i"; done; \
DC=$(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1 | grep 'Current DC' | awk '{ print $1 " " $2 " " $3}' | awk '{ print $3 }'); \
if [ “$DC” == “${DC[1]}” ]; then echo “1 Default DC Switched to ${DC[1]}”; elif [ “$DC” == “${DC[2]}” ]; then \
echo "2 Default DC Switched to ${DC[2]}”; elif [ “$DC” == “${DC[3]}” ]; then echo “3 Default DC: ${DC[3]}"; fi

Once pasted to save the file press CTRL + D


The version of the script with 2 nodes slightly improved is like so:
 

UserParameter=active.dc,f=0; for i in $(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1|grep -i 'Node ' |awk '{ print $2 }' | sed -e 's#:##g'); do DC_ARRAY[$f]=”$i”; ((f++)); done; GET_CURR_DC=$(sudo /usr/sbin/crm_mon -n -1 | grep ‘Current DC’ | awk ‘{ print $1 ” ” $2 ” ” $3}’ | awk ‘{ print $3 }’); if [ “$GET_CURR_DC” == “${DC_ARRAY[0]}” ]; then echo “1 Default DC ${DC_ARRAY[0]}”; fi; if [ “$GET_CURR_DC” == “${DC_ARRAY[1]}” ]; then echo “2 Default Current DC Switched to ${DC_ARRAY[1]} Please check “; fi; if [ -z “$GET_CURR_DC” ] || [ -z “$DC_ARRAY[1]” ]; then printf "Error something might be wrong with HAProxy Cluster on  $HOSTNAME "; fi;


The haproxy_active_DC_zabbix.sh script with a bit of more comments as explanations is available here 
2. Configure access for /usr/sbin/crm_mon for zabbix user in sudoers

 

# vim /etc/sudoers

zabbix          ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/crm_mon


3. Configure in Zabbix for active.dc key Trigger and Item

active-node-switch1

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on Toshiba Satellite L40 14B ACPI problem ACPI loading problem and workaround

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

As you have noticed in my previous posts I'm playing a bit with Toshiba Satellite L40 14B updates this days. I've came across an ugly problem with ACPI on Ubuntu Jaunty. It's really a big issue because acpi stalls and keeps loading the system on 100% leaving it with 0% idle all the time. The solution I’ve found is suggested on the following Ubuntu bug launchpad . As it describes the solution comes to this:

1. rm -f /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-on

2. rm -f /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-2

the next two steps are added by meto prevent some problems caused by acpidupgrades.

3. touch /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-2

4. touch /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-on

Unique MenuetOS – Free Software 32 / 64 bit OS entirely written in assembly language

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

 

unique operating-system menuetos written-in-assembler-programming-logo

Something very unique, I stumbled on some time ago and worthy to mention and recommend for everyone to test is MenuetOS. Can you imagine, someone might write an operating system entirely from scratch in 32 / 64 bit Assemler? Idea sounds crazy and impossible but in fact developers of MenuetOS already achieved it!

Unique OS - menuetos asm free os start-menu screenshot

Normally every modern operating system nowadays is based on some kind of UNIX / Linux / or NT (Windows) technology or at least follows some kind of POSIX standartization.
 The design goal of MenuetOS since the first release in year 2000, is to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS. The more the layers more complicated the programming behind is and therefore this creates bugs more bugs. MenuetOS follows the idea of KISS model (Keep It Simple Stupid). Its amazing what people can write in pure asm programming!! 64 bit version of menuet is also backward compatible with 32 bit. MenuetOS supports mostly all any other modern OS does. Here is list of Supported Features:

 

 

 

 

  • – Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, multiprocessor, ring-3 protection
  • – Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1920×1080, 16 million colours
  • – Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
  • – SMP multiprocessor support with currently up to 8 cpus
  • – IDE: Editor/Assembler for applications
  • – USB 2.0 HiSpeed Classes: Storage, Printer, Webcam Video and TV/Radio support
  • – USB 1.1 Keyboard and Mouse support
  • – TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
  • – Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
  • – Hard real-time data fetch
  • – Fits on a single floppy, boots also from CD and USB drives

MenuetOS has fully functional Graphic interface (environment). Though it is so simple it is much more fast (as written in assembler) and behaves more stable than other OS-es written in C / C++.
Its bundled with a POP3 / Imap mail client soft

menuetos assmebly OS mail client
As of time even some major legendary Games like DoomQuake, Sokoban and Chess are ported to MenuetOS !!!

doom2-id-games-running-on-menuetos-operating-system-in-assembler-from-scratch

MenuetOS Doom

quake legendary game running on Menuetos asm free OS

Quake I port on MenuetOS

Below are some more screenshots of Apps and stuff running

Maniac Mansion running on MenuetOS assembler build free Operating system

The world famous Maniac Mansion (1987)

Prince of Persia running on 32 64 bit assembler written GPL free-OS

Arcade Classic of 16 bit and 8 bit computers Prince of Persia running on top of dosbox on MenuetOS

For those who like to program old school MenuetOS has BASIC compiler, C library (supports C programming), debuggers, Command Prompt.

It even supports Networking and has some  most popular network adapters drivers as well as has basic browsing support through HTTP application.

unique-os-menuetos-browsing-with-httpc-browser

You can listen music with CD Player but no support for mp3 yet.
To give MenuetOS a try just like any other Live Linux distribution it has Bootable LiveCD version – you can download it from here
MenuetOS is a very good for people interested to learn good 32 bit and 64 bit Assembler Programming.
Enjoy this unique ASM true hacker OS 😉

SuperMarket Psychology or how the super markets are built to cheat you to buy more

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

super-market-psychology-or-how-supermarkets-are-built-to-cheat-you-to-buy-more-or-legally-lie-make-you-spend-more

Recently I blogged on The Color Psychology and how it affects us

In my continous research on color programming I have come across an interesting interview with a Marketing Manager, who explains a few bits on why the super markets and big stores are designed the way they are.

Have you noticed the big super markets are a bit like a maze and you often when you go inside a such you feel a bit lost there, this is on purpose and is connected with Trauma Based conditioning and Pavlov's early days neural conditioning experiments

Another typical things in super markets is the flower on the front doors, trying to make the impression to the customer of freshnes and mood UP. Then it comes the other things like the positioning of products. Many supermarkets put the fresh fruits and vegetables, either near the entry where the client walks in or at the end of the supermarket (this depends on the kind of customers targetted) and company policy and top managerial decisions.

As the short movie I post below mentions the baby products are positioned on a bit secluded place the reason is to invoke old time feelings to adults. Nowdays many supermarkets include also TVs playing cartoons so parents can leave the kids watch the cartoons and spend more time "pondering" what they have to buy for home and therefore buy more of goods (the reason is the kids are a common distractor and they could be a reason for the parent to buy quickly and leave the shop) and what actually is targetted in the shop is to customer to spend more time inside.

Longer stays in the shop means often more purchases and more money for the store. What really shocked me in the video is that as of time of writtings many shop chains have even an eye tracking devices with which they aim to track where the clients is watching (e.g. based on the feedback the shop can products can be re-ordered in a way to generate more sales profit).

The lightning in the shop is very important also the scent many shops have intentionally a separate department chopping meats or yellow cheese in front of the walking customers. Seeing fresh food makes the customer feel hungry so he might buy more.

The result of this secret tricks designed to make us consume more makes us a dumb un-thinking consuming society.

SuperMarket Psychology Entrances layout and Shelving

The science of "psychology in supermarket" is more developed in the west and we the Eastern Europeans were less exposed to buyer behaviour modification due to our belonging to the USSR communist Union and the existing of the "cold barrier" between communistic and democrats free economies.

Its my personal belief that more and more people should get aware of what is happening in super markets. I personally have never been a fan of super-markets since they're connected with amalgamation of business and always when I can I do buy food and goods from small district grocery stores.

It is my firm believe that buying from Malls and supermarkets is in future time to create more problems than goods since by doing so one helps the large business to become even larger and helps the merging of companies and therefore helps the creation of one new global communism based not on government ruling but on a tiny number of companies to own the world product creation distribution and selling …
 

Super Market Psychology – Few tips on how to shop "budget" friendly"

GNU / Linux Widgets (gdesklets, screenlets) – Apple MacoSX / Microsoft Vista like Widgets

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Screenlet Widget
I’m staying in a friend’s place for few days. Nasko a friend of mine has apple pc and showed me some nice features of the apple MacBook’s Mac OS X. One of the features I liked was the Apple Widgets which are helpful in facilitating the work with your pc. The same widgets are also included in Windows Vista (I always disabled that when used Vista).
Anyways I wondered if there is a way to have the same shiny widgets running on my Debian GNU/Linux.
I first found Gdesklets which basicly is a collection of Widgets for the Linux Gnome desktop written in Python. To run the gdesklet after installation
I had to issue the command:
$ gdesklets .Then in the tray a small tray puzzle icon appears. I sort of wondered a bit until I figured out how to add some gdesklet widgets.
To do that I had to select
“Manage Desklets” and through the gdesklets shell
to click twice the widget I would like to add to the desktop and thendrag it to the exact desktop place I would like it to have it positioned.
I have to emphasize gdesklets widgets are very, very buggy. Many of the widgets I tried crashed the whole application.
After which I had to manually kill the gdesklets app
and delete all it’s temporary files located in
~/.gdesklets directory. Many of the apps that didn’t crashed the gdesklets that required extra data from lmsensors never worked even though I have working version of lmsensors.
I suspect some of the widgets which failed to gather data from lmsensors cause
My notebook is Lenovo Thinkpad R61 and uses some custom features from the thinkpad_acpi kernel module
. Another possible reason for the crashes and misworkings of some components of gdesklets could be because I’m currently running Debian Unstable.

After being a bit disappointment from gdesklets experience.
I went looking further for some Linux widgets alternative.
Next widget related gnome prog I stucked on was jackfield . This one is said to have worked with Apple’s Widgets I don’t believe it does any more since it’s not actively developed anymore.
I tried the jackfield python program with no luck. The untarred archive of it was really messy and what was even worse was it lacked any documentation.
Hence I continued my quest for widgets just to came across a real working Gnome widget application.
Just to find Screenlets! .
I’ve red somewhere that Screenlets is based on jacfield.
The current release of Gnome Screenlets which by the way is officially part of gnome-look.org is 0.1.2. I was pleased to find the application worked pretty decent.
Screenlets includes many, many widgets:
Here is a link containg a list of all the screenlets widgets
.If you like to have a general idea of how screenlets looks like please check out the screenlet in action screenshots
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