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How to extend LVM full partition to bigger size on Linux Virtual machine Guest running in VMware vSphere

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

lvm-filesystem-extend-on-linux-virtual-machine-vmware-physical-group-volume-group-logical-volume-partitions-picture

Lets say you have to resize a partition that is wrongly made by some kind of automation like ansible or puppet,
because the Linux RHEL family OS template was prepared with a /home (or other partition with some very small size) on VMware Vsphere Hypervisor hosting the Guest linux VM and the partition got quickly out of space.

To resolve the following question comes for the sysadmin

I. How to extend the LVM parititon that run out of space (without rebooting the VM Guest Linux Host)

II. how to add new disk partition space to the vSphere hypervisor OS.

In below article i'll shortly describe that trivials steps to take to achieve that. Article won't show anything new original but I wrote it,
because I want it to have it logged for myself in case I need to LVM extend the space of my own Virtual machines and
cause hopefully that might be of help to someone else from the Linux community that has to complete the same task.

I . Extending a LVM parititon that run out of space on a Linux Guest VM

1. Check the current parititon size that you want to extend

[root@linux-hostname home]# df -h /home/
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg00-home
4.7G 4.5G 0 100% /home

2. Check the Virtualization platform

[root@vm-hostname ~]# lshw |head -3
linux-hostname
description: Computer
product: VMware Virtual Platform

3. Check the Operating System Linux OS type and version

In this specific case this is a bit old Redhat -like CentOS 6.9 Linux

[root@vmware-host ~]# cat /etc/*release*
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)
cpe:/o:centos:linux:6:GA

4. Find out the type of target filesystem is EXT3, EXT4 or XFS etc.?

[root@vm-hostname ~]# grep home /proc/mounts
/dev/mapper/vg00-home /home ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0

Filesystem is handled by LVM thus

5. Check the size of the LVM partition we want to exchange

[root@vm-hostname ~]# lvs |grep home
home vg00 -wi-ao—- 5.00g

6. Check whether free space is available space in the volume group ?

[root@vm-hostname ~]# vgdisplay vg00
— Volume group —
VG Name vg00
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 2
Metadata Sequence No 15
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 10
Open LV 10
Max PV 0
Cur PV 2
Act PV 2
VG Size 128.99 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 33022
Alloc PE / Size 30976 / 121.00 GiB
Free PE / Size 2046 / 7.99 GiB
VG UUID 1F89PB-nIP2-7Hgu-zEVR-5H0R-7GdB-Lfj7t4

Extend VMWare space configured for additional hard disk on Hypervisor (if necessery)

In order for to extend the LVM of course you need to have a pre-existing additional hard-drive on VM (sdb,sdc etc. attached )

– If you need to extend on Vmware Vsphere Hypervisor:
Extend additional harddrive by entering the new size and Validate.

If you have previously extended the size of the Virtual Disk from VMWare to make the Linux guest vm find out about the change
you have to rerun rescan for the respective device that was grown on the HV.

7. Rescan on Linux VM host for changes in disk size from Hypervisor

Rescan disk for new size :

[root@vm-hostname ~]# echo 1> /sys/block/sdX/device/rescan

(where sdX is the extended additional harddrive)

8. Resize LVM physical volume

[root@vm-hostname ~]# pvresize /dev/sdX

9. Enlarge Logical Volume size

[root@vm-hostname ~]# lvextend -L+5G /dev/mapper/vg00-home
Extending logical volume LogVol00 to 10.77 GiB
Logical volume LogVol00 successfully resized

10. Enlarge LVM hosted filesystem size

Filesystem is ext3 or ext4 :

[root@vm-hostname ~]# resize2fs /dev/mapper/vg00-home

– If the filesystem is not ext3 / ext4 but XFS you have to use xfs_growfs to let the FS know about the change.

Filesystem is XFS :

[root@vm-hostname ~]# xfs_growfs /dev/mapper/vg00-home

11. Check the additional filespace is already active on the Linux Guest VM

[root@vm-hostname ~]# df -h /home/
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_cloud-LogVol00
10G 4.2G 4.9G 48% /home

12. Verify the extension of filesystem completed without errors

Check of system log:

[root@vm-hostname ~]# grep -i error /var/log/messages
…

Check if filesystem is writable.

[root@vm-hostname ~]# touch /home/test

[root@vm-hostname ~]# ls -al /home/test
-rw-r—– 1 root root 0 Sep 20 13:39 /home/test
[root@vm-hostname ~]# rm -f /home/test

II. How to add additional sdb drive to a Linux host from vSPhere HV lets say (sdb)

1. On VSphere GUI interface

-> Select New hard drive and click Add

Enter the desired size for the new disk then unpack the disk parameters to choose Thin provision. Validate and Apply the recommendations.

basic-lvm-create-volume_group-diagram-on-linux-explained

2. On Linux system VM guest host to detect the new added sdb available space

Discover new disk :

[root@vm-hostname ~]# echo "- – -"> /sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan && echo "- – -"> /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan && echo "- – -"> /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan

See if discovered disk is found in /var/log/messages :

[…]
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: scsi 2:0:2:0: Direct-Access VMware Virtual disk 1.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: scsi target2:0:2: Beginning Domain Validation
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: scsi target2:0:2: Domain Validation skipping write tests
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: scsi target2:0:2: Ending Domain Validation
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: scsi target2:0:2: FAST-40 WIDE SCSI 80.0 MB/s ST (25 ns, offset 127)
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sdb] 2097152 512-byte logical blocks: (1.07 GB/1.00 GiB)
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sdb] Cache data unavailable
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 8 17:33:26 bict4004s kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[…]

3. Create new LVM Physical Volume

[root@vm-hostname ~]# pvcreate /dev/sdb

4. Enlarge LVM Volume Group to the max available size of /dev/sdb

[root@vm-hostname ~]# vgextend vg00 /dev/sdb

Enlarge LVM Logical Volume

[root@vm-hostname ~]# lvextend -L+10G /dev/mapper/vg00-home

5. Enlarge filesystem to max size of just created LVM

If Filesystem is ext3 or ext4 :

[root@vm-hostname ~]# resize2fs /dev/mapper/vg00-home

Again if we work with XFS additionally do:

[root@vm-hostname ~]# xfs_growfs /dev/mapper/vg00-home

6. Checking filesystem extension completed correct

[root@vm-hostname ~]# df -h /home
…

7. Check filesystem is writtable and no errors produced in logs

Check of system log:

[root@vm-hostname ~]# grep -i error /var/log/messages
…

Check if filesystem is writable.

[root@vm-hostname ~]# touch /home/test
…

Tags: again, cause, dev, disk full lvm, echo 1, extend disk, extend partition, Filesystem Size Used Avail Use Mounted, growfs, home, howto, kernel, Linux Virtual, logical group, lvextend, LVM, lvs, mapper, New, resize, vmware, Vmware Vsphere Hypervisor, vsphere
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »

List and fix failed systemd failed services after Linux OS upgrade and how to get full info about systemd service from jorunal log

Friday, February 25th, 2022

I have recently upgraded a number of machines from Debian 10 Buster to Debian 11 Bullseye. The update as always has some issues on some machines, such as problem with package dependencies, changing a number of external package repositories etc. to match che Bullseye deb packages. On some machines the update was less painful on others but the overall line was that most of the machines after the update ended up with one or more failed systemd services. It could be that some of the machines has already had this failed services present and I never checked them from the previous time update from Debian 9 -> Debian 10 or just some mess I've left behind in the hurry when doing software installation in the past. This doesn't matter anyways the fact was that I had to deal to a number of systemctl services which I managed to track by the Failed service mesage on system boot on one of the physical machines and on the OpenXen VTY Console the rest of Virtual Machines after update had some Failed messages. Thus I've spend some good amount of time like an overall of a day or two fixing strange failed services. This is how this small article was born in attempt to help sysadmins or any home Linux desktop users, who has updated his Debian Linux / Ubuntu or any other deb based distribution but due to the chaotic nature of Linux has ended with same strange Failed services and look for a way to find the source of the failures and get rid of the problems.
Systemd is a very complicated system and in my many sysadmin opinion it makes more problems than it solves, but okay for today's people's megalomania mindset it matches well.

1. Check the journal for errors, running service irregularities and so on

First thing to do to track for errors, right after the update is to take some minutes and closely check,, the journalctl for any strange errors, even on well maintained Unix machines, this journal log would bring you to a problem that is not fatal but still some process or stuff is malfunctioning in the background that you would like to solve:

root@pcfreak:~# journalctl -x
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak CRON[17887]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17887]: USER_END pid=17887 uid=0 auid=0 ses=340858 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:session_close grantors=pam_loginuid,pam_env,pam_env,pam_permit>
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17888]: CRED_DISP pid=17888 uid=0 auid=0 ses=340860 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:setcred grantors=pam_permit acct="root" exe="/usr/sbin/cron" >
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak CRON[17888]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17888]: USER_END pid=17888 uid=0 auid=0 ses=340860 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:session_close grantors=pam_loginuid,pam_env,pam_env,pam_permit>
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17884]: CRED_DISP pid=17884 uid=0 auid=0 ses=340855 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:setcred grantors=pam_permit acct="root" exe="/usr/sbin/cron" >
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak CRON[17884]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17884]: USER_END pid=17884 uid=0 auid=0 ses=340855 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:session_close grantors=pam_loginuid,pam_env,pam_env,pam_permit>
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17886]: CRED_DISP pid=17886 uid=0 auid=33 ses=340859 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:setcred grantors=pam_permit acct="www-data" exe="/usr/sbin/c>
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak CRON[17886]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user www-data
Jan 10 10:10:01 pcfreak audit[17886]: USER_END pid=17886 uid=0 auid=33 ses=340859 subj==unconfined msg='op=PAM:session_close grantors=pam_loginuid,pam_env,pam_env,pam_permi>
Jan 10 10:10:08 pcfreak NetworkManager[696]: [1641802208.0899] device (eth1): carrier: link connected
Jan 10 10:10:08 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx
Jan 10 10:10:08 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Down
Jan 10 10:10:19 pcfreak NetworkManager[696]: [1641802219.7920] device (eth1): carrier: link connected
Jan 10 10:10:19 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx
Jan 10 10:10:20 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Down
Jan 10 10:10:22 pcfreak NetworkManager[696]: [1641802222.2772] device (eth1): carrier: link connected
Jan 10 10:10:22 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx
Jan 10 10:10:23 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Down
Jan 10 10:10:33 pcfreak sshd[18142]: Unable to negotiate with 66.212.17.162 port 19255: no matching key exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diff>
Jan 10 10:10:41 pcfreak NetworkManager[696]: [1641802241.0186] device (eth1): carrier: link connected
Jan 10 10:10:41 pcfreak kernel: r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx

If you want to only check latest journal log messages use the -x -e (pager catalog) opts

root@pcfreak;~# journalctl -xe
…
Feb 25 13:08:29 pcfreak audit[2284920]: USER_LOGIN pid=2284920 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg='op=login acct=28696E76616C>
Feb 25 13:08:29 pcfreak sshd[2284920]: Received disconnect from 177.87.57.145 port 40927:11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Feb 25 13:08:29 pcfreak sshd[2284920]: Disconnected from invalid user ubuntuuser 177.87.57.145 port 40927 [preauth]

Next thing to after the update was to get a list of failed service only.

2. List all systemd failed check services which was supposed to be running

root@pcfreak:/root # systemctl list-units | grep -i failed
● certbot.service loaded failed failed Certbot
● logrotate.service loaded failed failed Rotate log files
● maldet.service loaded failed failed LSB: Start/stop maldet in monitor mode
● named.service loaded failed failed BIND Domain Name Server

Alternative way is with the –failed option

hipo@jeremiah:~$ systemctl list-units –failed
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
● haproxy.service loaded failed failed HAProxy Load Balancer
● libvirt-guests.service loaded failed failed Suspend/Resume Running libvirt Guests
● libvirtd.service loaded failed failed Virtualization daemon
● nvidia-persistenced.service loaded failed failed NVIDIA Persistence Daemon
● sqwebmail.service masked failed failed sqwebmail.service
● tpm2-abrmd.service loaded failed failed TPM2 Access Broker and Resource Management Daemon
● wd_keepalive.service loaded failed failed LSB: Start watchdog keepalive daemon

LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
7 loaded units listed.

root@jeremiah:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# systemctl list-units –failed
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
● haproxy.service loaded failed failed HAProxy Load Balancer
● libvirt-guests.service loaded failed failed Suspend/Resume Running libvirt Guests
● libvirtd.service loaded failed failed Virtualization daemon
● nvidia-persistenced.service loaded failed failed NVIDIA Persistence Daemon
● sqwebmail.service masked failed failed sqwebmail.service
● tpm2-abrmd.service loaded failed failed TPM2 Access Broker and Resource Management Daemon
● wd_keepalive.service loaded failed failed LSB: Start watchdog keepalive daemon

To get a full list of objects of systemctl you can pass as state:

# systemctl –state=help
Full list of possible load states to pass is here
Show service properties

Check whether a service is failed or has other status and check default set systemd variables for it.

root@jeremiah~:# systemctl is-failed vboxweb.service
inactive

# systemctl show haproxy
Type=notify
Restart=always
NotifyAccess=main
RestartUSec=100ms
TimeoutStartUSec=1min 30s
TimeoutStopUSec=1min 30s
TimeoutAbortUSec=1min 30s
TimeoutStartFailureMode=terminate
TimeoutStopFailureMode=terminate
RuntimeMaxUSec=infinity
WatchdogUSec=0
WatchdogTimestampMonotonic=0
RootDirectoryStartOnly=no
RemainAfterExit=no
GuessMainPID=yes
SuccessExitStatus=143
MainPID=304858
ControlPID=0
FileDescriptorStoreMax=0
NFileDescriptorStore=0
StatusErrno=0
Result=success
ReloadResult=success
CleanResult=success
…

Full output of the above command is dumped in show_systemctl_properties.txt

3. List all running systemd services for a better overview on what's going on on machine

To get a list of all properly systemd loaded services you can use –state running.

hipo@jeremiah:~$ systemctl list-units –state running|head -n 10
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.automount loaded active running Arbitrary Executable File Formats File System Automount Point
cups.path loaded active running CUPS Scheduler
init.scope loaded active running System and Service Manager
session-2.scope loaded active running Session 2 of user hipo
accounts-daemon.service loaded active running Accounts Service
anydesk.service loaded active running AnyDesk
apache-htcacheclean.service loaded active running Disk Cache Cleaning Daemon for Apache HTTP Server
apache2.service loaded active running The Apache HTTP Server
avahi-daemon.service loaded active running Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack

It is useful thing is to list all unit-files configured in systemd and their state, you can do it with:

root@pcfreak:~# systemctl list-unit-files
UNIT FILE STATE VENDOR PRESET
proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.automount static –
-.mount generated –
backups.mount generated –
dev-hugepages.mount static –
dev-mqueue.mount static –
media-cdrom0.mount generated –
mnt-sda1.mount generated –
proc-fs-nfsd.mount static –
proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.mount disabled disabled
run-rpc_pipefs.mount static –
sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount static –
sys-kernel-config.mount static –
sys-kernel-debug.mount static –
sys-kernel-tracing.mount static –
var-www.mount generated –
acpid.path masked enabled
cups.path enabled enabled

root@pcfreak:~# systemctl list-units –type service –all
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
accounts-daemon.service loaded inactive dead Accounts Service
acct.service loaded active exited Kernel process accounting
● alsa-restore.service not-found inactive dead alsa-restore.service
● alsa-state.service not-found inactive dead alsa-state.service
apache2.service loaded active running The Apache HTTP Server
● apparmor.service not-found inactive dead apparmor.service
apt-daily-upgrade.service loaded inactive dead Daily apt upgrade and clean activities
apt-daily.service loaded inactive dead Daily apt download activities
atd.service loaded active running Deferred execution scheduler
auditd.service loaded active running Security Auditing Service
auth-rpcgss-module.service loaded inactive dead Kernel Module supporting RPCSEC_GSS
avahi-daemon.service loaded active running Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack
certbot.service loaded inactive dead Certbot
clamav-daemon.service loaded active running Clam AntiVirus userspace daemon
clamav-freshclam.service loaded active running ClamAV virus database updater
..

4. Finding out more on why a systemd configured service has failed

Usually getting info about failed systemd service is done with systemctl status servicename.service
However, in case of troubles with service unable to start to get more info about why a service has failed with (-l) or (–full) options

root@pcfreak:~# systemctl -l status logrotate.service
● logrotate.service – Rotate log files
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/logrotate.service; static)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2022-02-25 00:00:06 EET; 13h ago
TriggeredBy: ● logrotate.timer
Docs: man:logrotate(8)
man:logrotate.conf(5)
Process: 2045320 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 2045320 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 2.479s

Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| WARNING: For now we will assume you meant to write /32
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| ERROR: '0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0' needs to be replaced by the term 'all'.
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| SECURITY NOTICE: Overriding config setting. Using 'all' instead.
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| WARNING: (B) '::/0' is a subnetwork of (A) '::/0'
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| WARNING: because of this '::/0' is ignored to keep splay tree searching predictable
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak logrotate[2045577]: 2022/02/25 00:00:06| WARNING: You should probably remove '::/0' from the ACL named 'all'
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak systemd[1]: logrotate.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak systemd[1]: logrotate.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak systemd[1]: Failed to start Rotate log files.
Feb 25 00:00:06 pcfreak systemd[1]: logrotate.service: Consumed 2.479s CPU time.

systemctl -l however is providing only the last log from message a started / stopped or whatever status service has generated. Sometimes systemctl -l servicename.service is showing incomplete the splitted error message as there is a limitation of line numbers on the console, see below

root@pcfreak:~# systemctl status -l certbot.service
● certbot.service – Certbot
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/certbot.service; static)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2022-02-25 09:28:33 EET; 4h 0min ago
TriggeredBy: ● certbot.timer
Docs: file:///usr/share/doc/python-certbot-doc/html/index.html
https://certbot.eff.org/docs
Process: 290017 ExecStart=/usr/bin/certbot -q renew (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 290017 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 9.771s

Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: The error was: PluginError('An authentication script must be provided with –manual-auth-hook when using th>
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: All renewals failed. The following certificates could not be renewed:
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.pcfreak.org-0003/fullchain.pem (failure)
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.eforia.bg-0005/fullchain.pem (failure)
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: /etc/letsencrypt/live/zabbix.pc-freak.net/fullchain.pem (failure)
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: 3 renew failure(s), 5 parse failure(s)
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen systemd[1]: certbot.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen systemd[1]: certbot.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen systemd[1]: Failed to start Certbot.
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen systemd[1]: certbot.service: Consumed 9.771s CPU time.

5. Get a complete log of journal to make sure everything configured on server host runs as it should

Thus to get more complete list of the message and be able to later google and look if has come with a solution on the internet use:

root@pcfrxen:~# journalctl –catalog –unit=certbot

— Journal begins at Sat 2022-01-22 21:14:05 EET, ends at Fri 2022-02-25 13:32:01 EET. —
Jan 23 09:58:18 pcfrxen systemd[1]: Starting Certbot…
░░ Subject: A start job for unit certbot.service has begun execution
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: https://www.debian.org/support
░░
░░ A start job for unit certbot.service has begun execution.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 5754.
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: Traceback (most recent call last):
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/_internal/renewal.py", line 71, in _reconstitute
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: renewal_candidate = storage.RenewableCert(full_path, config)
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/_internal/storage.py", line 471, in __init__
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: self._check_symlinks()
Jan 23 09:58:20 pcfrxen certbot[124996]: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/_internal/storage.py", line 537, in _check_symlinks

root@server:~# journalctl –catalog –unit=certbot|grep -i pluginerror|tail -1
Feb 25 09:28:33 pcfrxen certbot[290017]: The error was: PluginError('An authentication script must be provided with –manual-auth-hook when using the manual plugin non-interactively.')

Or if you want to list and read only the last messages in the journal log regarding a service

root@server:~# journalctl –catalog –pager-end –unit=certbot
…

If you have disabled a failed service because you don't need it to run at all on the machine with:

root@rhel:~# systemctl stop rngd.service
root@rhel:~# systemctl disable rngd.service

And you want to clear up any failed service information that is kept in the systemctl service log you can do it with:

root@rhel:~# systemctl reset-failed

Another useful systemctl option is cat, you can use it to easily list a service it is useful to quickly check what is a service, an actual shortcut to save you from giving a full path to the service e.g. cat /lib/systemd/system/certbot.service

root@server:~# systemctl cat certbot
# /lib/systemd/system/certbot.service
[Unit]
Description=Certbot
Documentation=file:///usr/share/doc/python-certbot-doc/html/index.html
Documentation=https://certbot.eff.org/docs
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/certbot -q renew
PrivateTmp=true

After failed SystemD services are fixed, it is best to reboot the machine and check put some more time to inspect rawly the complete journal log to make sure, no error was left behind.

Closure

As you can see updating a machine from a major to a major version even if you follow the official documentation and you have plenty of experience is always more or a less a pain in the ass, which can eat up much of your time banging your head solving problems with failed daemons issues with /etc/rc.local (which I have faced becase of #/bin/sh -e (which would make /etc/rc.local) to immediately quit if any error from command $? returns different from 0 etc.. The logical questions comes then;
1. Is it really worthy to update at all regularly, especially if you don't know of a famous major Vulnerability 🙂 ?
2. Or is it worthy to update from OS major release to OS major release at all?
3. Or should you only try to patch the service that is exposed to an external reachable computer network or the internet only and still the the same OS release until End of Life (LTS = Long Term Support) as called in Debian or End Of Life (EOL) Cycle as called in RPM based distros the period until the OS major release your software distro has official security patches is reached.

Anyone could take any approach but for my own managed systems small network at home my practice was always to try to keep up2date everything every 3 or 6 months maximum. This has caused me multiple days of irritation and stress and perhaps many white hairs and spend nerves on shit.

4. Based on the company where I'm employed the better strategy is to patch to the EOL is still offered and keep the rule First Things First (FTF), once the EOL is reached, just make a copy of all servers data and configuration to external Data storage, bring up a new Physical or VM and migrate the services.
Test after the migration all works as expected if all is as it should be change the DNS records or Leading Infrastructure Proxies whatever to point to the new service and that's it! Yes it is true that migration based on a full OS reinstall is more time consuming and requires much more planning, but usually the result is much more expected, plus it is much less stressful for the guy doing the job.

Tags: active, check, daemon, daemons, fix, fixing, haproxy, hipo, Journal, journalctl, kernel, libvirtd.service, list, log, log messages, lsb, Main, msg, PAM, pcfreak, properly, rc.local, root, root server, strange errors, Suspend Resume Running, systemctl, systemd, uid
Posted in Linux, Migration, OS Update, System Administration | No Comments »

Get dmesg command kernel log report with human date / time timestamp on older Linux distributions

Friday, June 18th, 2021

If you're a sysadmin you surely love to take a look at dmesg kernel log output. Usually on many Linux distributions there is a setup that dmesg keeps logging to log files /var/log/dmesg or /var/log/kern.log. But if you get some inherited old Linux servers it is quite possible that the previous machine maintainer did not enable the output of syslog to get logged in /var/log/{dmesg,kern.log,kernel.log} or even have disabled the kernel log for some reason. Even though that in dmesg output you might find some interesting events reporting issues with Hard drives on its way to get broken / a bad / reads system processes crashing or whatever of other interesting information that could help you prevent severe servers downtimes or problems earlier but due to an old version of Linux distribution lets say Redhat 5 / Debian 6 or old CentOS / Fedora, the version of dmesg command shipped does not support the '-T' option that is present in util-linux package shipped with newer versions of Redhat 7.X / 8.X / SuSEs etc.

-T, –ctime
Print human readable timestamps. The timestamp could be inaccurate!

To illustrate better what I mean, here is an example from the non-human readable timestamp provided by older dmesg command

root@web-server~:# dmesg |tail -n 5
[4505913.361095] hid-generic 0003:1C4F:0002.000E: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Device [SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.3/input1
[4558251.034024] Process accounting resumed
[4615396.191090] r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Down
[4615397.856950] r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx
[4644650.095723] Process accounting resumed

Thanksfully using below few lines of shell or perl scripts the dmesg -T functionality could be added to the system , so you can easily get the proper timestamp out of the obscure default generated timestamp in the same manner as on newer distros.

Here is how to do with it with bash script:

#!/bin/sh paste in .bashrc and use dmesgt to get human readable timestamp
dmesg_with_human_timestamps () {
FORMAT="%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y"

now=$(date +%s)
cputime_line=$(grep -m1 "\.clock" /proc/sched_debug)

if [[ $cputime_line =~ [^0-9]*([0-9]*).* ]]; then
cputime=$((BASH_REMATCH[1] / 1000))
fi

dmesg | while IFS= read -r line; do
if [[ $line =~ ^\[\ *([0-9]+)\.[0-9]+\]\ (.*) ]]; then
stamp=$((now-cputime+BASH_REMATCH[1]))
echo "[$(date +”${FORMAT}” –date=@${stamp})] ${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
else
echo "$line"
fi
done
}

Copy the script somewhere under lets say /usr/local/bin or wherever you like on the server and add into your HOME ~/.bashrc some alias like:

alias dmesgt=dmesg_with_timestamp.sh

You can get a copy dmesg_with_timestamp.sh of the script from here

Or you can use below few lines perl script to get the proper dmeg kernel date / time

#!/bin/perl
# on old Linux distros CentOS 6.0 etc. with dmesg (part of util-linux-ng-2.17.2-12.28.el6_9.2.x86_64) etc. dmesg -T not available
# workaround is little pl script below
dmesg_with_human_timestamps () {
$(type -P dmesg) "$@" | perl -w -e 'use strict;
my ($uptime) = do { local @ARGV="/proc/uptime";<>}; ($uptime) = ($uptime =~ /^(\d+)\./);
foreach my $line (<>) {
printf( ($line=~/^\[\s*(\d+)\.\d+\](.+)/) ? ( “[%s]%s\n", scalar localtime(time – $uptime + $1), $2 ) : $line )
}'
}

Again to make use of the script put it under /usr/local/bin/check_dmesg_timestamp.pl

alias dmesgt=dmesg_with_human_timestamps

root@web-server:~# dmesgt | tail -n 20

[Sun Jun 13 15:51:49 2021] usb 2-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 9
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] usb 2-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1c4f, idProduct=0002, bcdDevice= 1.10
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] usb 2-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] usb 2-1.3: Product: USB Keyboard
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] usb 2-1.3: Manufacturer: SIGMACHIP
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] input: SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/2-1.3:1.0/0003:1C4F:0002.000D/input/input25
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] hid-generic 0003:1C4F:0002.000D: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.3/input0
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] input: SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard Consumer Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/2-1.3:1.1/0003:1C4F:0002.000E/input/input26
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] input: SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard System Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/2-1.3:1.1/0003:1C4F:0002.000E/input/input27
[Sun Jun 13 15:51:50 2021] hid-generic 0003:1C4F:0002.000E: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Device [SIGMACHIP USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.3/input1
[Mon Jun 14 06:24:08 2021] Process accounting resumed
[Mon Jun 14 22:16:33 2021] r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Down
[Mon Jun 14 22:16:34 2021] r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth1: Link is Up – 100Mbps/Full – flow control rx/tx

Tags: bin, command, dmesg, Human, kernel, linux?, older, report, SIGMACHIP, syslog, timestamp, USB, use
Posted in Bash Scripting, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

Linux Bond network interfaces to merge multiple interfaces ISPs traffic – Combine many interfaces NIC into one on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS / Fedora / RHEL Linux

Tuesday, December 16th, 2014

Bonding Network Traffic (link aggregation) or NIC teaming is used to increase connection thoroughput and as a way to provide redundancy for a services / applications in case of some of the network connection (eth interfaces) fail. Networking Bonding is mostly used in large computer network providers (ISPs), infrastructures, university labs or big computer network accessible infrastructures or even by enthusiatst to run home-server assuring its >= ~99% connectivity to the internet by bonding few Internet Providers links into single Bonded Network interface. One of most common use of Link Aggreegation nowadays is of course in Cloud environments.

Boding Network Traffic is a must know and (daily use) skill for the sys-admin of both Small Company Office network environment up to the large Professional Distributed Computing networks, as novice GNU / Linux sys-admins would probably have never heard it and sooner or later they will have to, I've created this article as a quick and dirty guide on configuring Linux bonding across most common used Linux distributions.

It is assumed that the server where you need network boding to be configured has at least 2 or more PCI Gigabyte NICs with hardware driver for Linux supporting Jumbo Frames and some relatively fresh up2date Debian Linux >=6.0.*, Ubuntu 10+ distro, CentOS 6.4, RHEL 5.1, SuSE etc.

1. Bond Network ethernet interfaces on Debian / Ubutnu and Deb based distributions

To make network bonding possible on Debian and derivatives you need to install support for it through ifenslave package (command).

apt-cache show ifenslave-2.6|grep -i descript -A 8
Description: Attach and detach slave interfaces to a bonding device
This is a tool to attach and detach slave network interfaces to a bonding
device. A bonding device will act like a normal Ethernet network device to
the kernel, but will send out the packets via the slave devices using a simple
round-robin scheduler. This allows for simple load-balancing, identical to
"channel bonding" or "trunking" techniques used in switches.
.
The kernel must have support for bonding devices for ifenslave to be useful.
This package supports 2.6.x kernels and the most recent 2.4.x kernels.

apt-get –yes install ifenslave-2.6

Bonding interface works by creating a "Virtual" network interface on a Linux kernel level, it sends and receives packages via special
slave devices using simple round-robin scheduler. This makes possible a very simple network load balancing also known as "channel bonding" and "trunking"
supported by all Intelligent network switches

Below is a text diagram showing tiny Linux office network router configured to bond ISPs interfaces for increased thoroughput:

Internet | 204.58.3.10 (eth0) ISP Router/Firewall 10.10.10.254 (eth1) | -----+------ Server 1 (Debian FTP file server w/ eth0 & eth1) 10.10.10.1 +------------------+ --- | | Gigabit Ethernet |------+------ Server 2 (MySQL) 10.10.10.2 | with Jumbo Frame | +------------------+ |------+------ Server 3 (Apache Webserver) 10.10.10.3 | |------+----- Server 4 (Squid Proxy / Qmail SMTP / DHCP) 10.10.10.4 | |------+----- Server 5 (Nginx CDN static content Webserver) 10.10.10.5 | |------+----- WINDOWS Desktop PCs / Printers & Scanners, Other network devices

Next to configure just installed ifenslave Bonding

vim /etc/modprobe.d/bonding.conf

alias bond0 bonding
options bonding mode=0 arp_interval=100 arp_ip_target=10.10.10.254, 10.10.10.2, 10.10.10.3, 10.10.10.4, 10.10.10.5

Where:

mode=0 : Set the bonding policies to balance-rr (round robin). This is default mode, provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
arp_interval=100 : Set the ARP link monitoring frequency to 100 milliseconds. Without option you will get various warning when start bond0 via /etc/network/interfaces
arp_ip_target=10.10.10.254, 10.10.10.2, … : Use the 10.10.10.254 (router ip) and 10.10.10.2-5 IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when arp_interval is > 0. This is used determine the health of the link to the targets. Multiple IP addresses must be separated by a comma. At least one IP address must be given (usually I set it to router IP) for ARP monitoring to function. The maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16.

Next to make bonding work its necessery to load the bonding kernel module:

modprobe -v bonding mode=0 arp_interval=100 arp_ip_target=10.10.10.254, 10.10.10.2, 10.10.10.3, 10.10.10.4, 10.10.10.5

Loading the bonding module should spit some good output in /var/log/messages (check it out with tail -f /var/log/messages)

Now to make bonding active it is necessery to reload networking (this is extremely risky if you don't have some way of Console Web Java / VPN Access such as IPKVM / ILO / IDRAC), so reloading the network be absolutely sure to either do it through a cronjob which will automatically do the network restart with new settings and revert back to old configuration whether network is inaccessible or assure physical access to the server console if the server is at your disposal.

Whatever the case make sure you backup:

cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.bak

vim /etc/network/interfaces

############ WARNING ####################
# You do not need an "iface eth0" nor an "iface eth1" stanza.
# Setup IP address / netmask / gateway as per your requirements.
#######################################
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
address 10.10.10.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
gateway 10.10.10.254
slaves eth0 eth1
# jumbo frame support
mtu 9000
# Load balancing and fault tolerance
bond-mode balance-rr
bond-miimon 100
bond-downdelay 200
bond-updelay 200
dns-nameservers 10.10.10.254
dns-search nixcraft.net.in

As you can see from config there are some bond specific configuration variables that can be tuned, they can have positive / negative impact in some cases on network thoroughput. As you can see bonding interfaces has slaves (this are all other ethXX) interfaces. Bonded traffic will be available via one single interface, such configuration is great for webhosting providers with multiple hosted sites as usually hosting thousand websites on the same server or one single big news site requires a lot of bandwidth and of course requires a redundancy of data (guarantee it is up if possible 7/24h.

Here is what of configs stand for

mtu 9000 : Set MTU size to 9000. This is related to Jumbo Frames.
bond-mode balance-rr : Set bounding mode profiles to "Load balancing and fault tolerance". See below for more information.
bond-miimon 100 : Set the MII link monitoring frequency to 100 milliseconds. This determines how often the link state of each slave is inspected for link failures.
bond-downdelay 200 : Set the time, t0 200 milliseconds, to wait before disabling a slave after a link failure has been detected. This option is only valid for the bond-miimon.
bond-updelay 200 : Set the time, to 200 milliseconds, to wait before enabling a slave after a link recovery has been detected. This option is only valid for the bond-miimon.
dns-nameservers 192.168.1.254 : Use 192.168.1.254 as dns server.
dns-search nixcraft.net.in : Use nixcraft.net.in as default host-name lookup (optional).

To get the best network thorougput you might want to play with different bounding policies. To learn more and get the list of all bounding policies check out Linux ethernet Bounding driver howto

To make the new bounding active restart network:

/etc/init.d/networking stop
sleep 5;
/etc/init.d/networking start

2. Fedora / CentOS RHEL Linux network Bond

Configuring eth0, eth1, eth2 into single bond0 NIC network virtual device is with few easy steps:

a) Create following bond0 configuration file:

vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=10.10.10.20
NETWORK=10.10.10.0
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=10.10.10.1
USERCTL=no
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes

b) Modify ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth0 files /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

– Edit ifcfg-eth0

vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
BOOTPROTO=none

– Edit ifcfg-eth1

vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

DEVICE=eth0
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
BOOTPROTO=none

c) Load bond driver through modprobe.conf

vim /etc/modprobe.conf

alias bond0 bonding
options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100

Manually load the bonding kernel driver to make it affective without server reboot:

modprobe bonding

d) Restart networking to load just configured bonding

service network restart

3. Testing Bond Success / Fail status

Periodically if you have to administrate a bonded interface Linux server it is useful to check Bonds Link Status:

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.5.0 (November 4, 2008)

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
Primary Slave: None
Currently Active Slave: eth0
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth0
MII Status: up
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:1e:0b:d6:6c:8f

Slave Interface: eth1
MII Status: up
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:1e:0b:d6:6c:8c

To check out which interfaces are bonded you can either use (on older Linux kernels)

/sbin/ifconfig -a

If ifconfig is not returning IP addresses / interfaces of teamed up eths, to check NICs / IPs:

/bin/ip a show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 brd 127.255.255.255 scope host lo
inet 127.0.0.2/8 brd 127.255.255.255 scope host secondary lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000
link/ether 00:1e:0b:d6:6c:8c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000
link/ether 00:1e:0b:d6:6c:8c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
7: bond0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,MASTER,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP
link/ether 00:1e:0b:d6:6c:8c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.239.15.173/27 brd 10.239.15.191 scope global bond0
inet 10.239.15.181/27 brd 10.239.15.191 scope global secondary bond0:7156web
inet6 fe80::21e:bff:fed6:6c8c/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

In case of Bonding interface failure you will get output like:

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.5.0 (November 4, 2008)
Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 200
Down Delay (ms): 200
Slave Interface: eth0
MII Status: up
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:xx:yy:zz:tt:31
Slave Interface: eth1
MII Status: down
Link Failure Count: 1
Permanent HW addr: 00:xx:yy:zz:tt:30

Failure to start / stop bonding is also logged in /var/log/messages so its a good idea to check there too once launched:

tail -f /var/log/messages
Dec 15 07:18:15 nas01 kernel: [ 6271.468218] e1000e: eth1 NIC Link is Down
Dec 15 07:18:15 nas01 kernel: [ 6271.548027] bonding: bond0: link status down for interface eth1, disabling it in 200 ms.
Dec 15 07:18:15 nas01 kernel: [ 6271.748018] bonding: bond0: link status definitely down for interface eth1, disabling it

On bond failure you will get smthing like:

Dec 15 04:19:15 micah01 kernel: [ 6271.468218] e1000e: eth1 NIC Link is Down
Dec 15 04:19:15 micah01 kernel: [ 6271.548027] bonding: bond0: link status down for interface eth1, disabling it in 200 ms.
Dec 15 04:19:15 micah01 kernel: [ 6271.748018] bonding: bond0: link status definitely down for interface eth1, disabling it

4. Adding removing interfaces to the bond interactively

You can set the mode through sysfs virtual filesystem with:

echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode

If you want to try adding an ethernet interface to the bond, type:

echo +ethN > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

To remove an interface type:

echo -ethN > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

In case if you're wondering how many bonding devices you can have, well the "sky is the limit" you can have, it is only limited by the number of NIC cards Linux kernel / distro support and ofcourse how many physical NIC slots are on your server.

To monitor (in real time) adding / removal of new ifaces to the bond use:

watch -n 1 ‘cat /proc/net.bonding/bond0′

Tags: backbone, Bonds Link Status, Debian Ubuntu Fedora, dns server, hosting company, inet, ISPs, kernel, Linux Bond, log messages, make, rhel, routers, USERCTL, vim, virtual filesystem, working
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »

How to determine which processes make most writes on the hard drive in GNU / Linux using kernel variable

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

how-to-determine-which-processes-writes-most-to-hard-drive-Linux-Kernel
In Linux there are plenty of tools to measure input / ouput – read / write server bottlenecks. Just to mention a few such are, the native part of all Linux distributions IOSTAT – which is a great tool to measure hard disk bottlenecks. However as iostat requires certain sysadmin skills for novice sys-admins, there is also ofcourse more interactive tools such as DSTAT or even better GLANCE which monitors not only disk writes but memory use, CPU load and Network use.

This tools can help you measure which processes are writting most (a lot) to hard disk drive but there is another quick and efficient way to track disk i/o by directly using the Linux kernel this is done via kernel parameter :

/proc/sys/vm/block_dump

To enable block_dump kernel logging:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump

To later track in real time output from kernel interactively on which running process calling the kernel is writing to server hard drive

tail -f /var/log/syslog

The output looks like so:

Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701056] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293496 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701059] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293504 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701062] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293512 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701066] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293520 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701069] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293528 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.701072] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293536 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:51 pcfreak kernel: [1075037.702824] kjournald(297): WRITE block 482293544 on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:52 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.219288] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 3571740 (_index.html.old) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:52 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.436133] mysqld(22945): dirtied inode 21546676 (#sql_c0a_0.MYI) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:52 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.436826] mysqld(22945): dirtied inode 21546677 (#sql_c0a_0.MYD) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.662832] mysqld(22945): dirtied inode 21546676 (#sql_c0a_0.MYI) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.663297] mysqld(22945): dirtied inode 21546677 (#sql_c0a_0.MYD) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.817120] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 3571754 (_index.html) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.819968] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 3571740 (_index.html_gzip) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075039.820016] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 3571730 (?) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075040.491378] mysqld(22931): dirtied inode 21546676 (#sql_c0a_0.MYI) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:53 pcfreak kernel: [1075040.492309] mysqld(22931): dirtied inode 21546677 (#sql_c0a_0.MYD) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:54 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.551513] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 1474706 (_index.html_gzip.old) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:54 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.551566] apache2(3377): dirtied inode 1474712 (_index.html.old) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:55 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.769036] mysqld(22941): dirtied inode 21546676 (#sql_c0a_0.MYI) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:55 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.769804] mysqld(22941): dirtied inode 21546677 (#sql_c0a_0.MYD) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:55 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.985857] apache2(3282): dirtied inode 4063282 (data_9d97a7f62d54bc5fd791fba3245ba591-SMF-modSettings.php) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:55 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.987460] apache2(3282): dirtied inode 29010186 (data_9d97a7f62d54bc5fd791fba3245ba591-SMF-permissions–1.php) on sda1
Nov 13 12:25:55 pcfreak kernel: [1075041.988357] flush-8:0(289): WRITE block 51350632 on sda1

Using the kernel method to see which processes are stoning your server is great way especially for servers without connectivity to the Internet where you have no possibility to install sysstat package (contaning iostat), dstat or glance.
Thanks to Marto's blog for this nice hack.

Tags: apache2, echo 1, hard disk drive, How to, kernel, kernel parameter, make, MYD, MYI, mysqld, pcfreak, WRITE
Posted in System Administration, Various, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Install VMWare tools on Debian and Ubuntu Linux – Enable VMWare Fullscreen and copy paste between OS host and Virtual machine

Wednesday, May 28th, 2014

install-vmware-tools-on-debian-gnu-linux-and-ubuntu-howto

If you need to use Virtual Machine to run some testing on heterogenous Operating Systems and you have chosen VMWare as a Virtual Machine. You will soon notice some of Virtual Machines functionality like copy between host operating system and Virtual Machine, true fullscreen mode and most importantly Copy paste between your host operating system and VMWare is not working. I'm not too much into Virtualization these days so for me it was truely shocking that a proprietary software like VMWare, claimed to be the best and most efficient Virtual Machine nowadays is not supporting copy / paste, fullscreen and copy between host and guest OS. For those arguing why I'm using VMWare at all as it is proprietary and there is already free software Virtual Machines like QEMU and Oracle's VirtualBox its simply because now I have the chance to install and use VMWare 9 Enterprise on my work place at HP with a free Corporate license – in other words I'm using VMWare just for the sake of educating myself and would always recommend VirtualBox for those looking for good substitute free alternative to VMWare.

Before trying out VMWare, I tried Virtualbox to emulate Linux on my HP work PC running Windows with VirtualBox I was having issues with keyboard not working (because of lack of support of USB, no full screen support and lack of copy / paste between OS-es), I've just recently understood this is not because Virtualbox is bad Virtualization solution but because I forgot to install VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack which allows support for USB, enables copy paste and full screen support. The equivalent to Virtualbox Oracle VM VirtualBox in VMWare world is called VMWare-Tools and once the guest operating system is installed inside VMWare VM, its necessary to install vmware-tools to enable better screen resolution and copy paste.

In Windows Virtual Machine installation of vmware-tools is pretty straight forward you go through VMWare's menus

VM -> Install Vmware-tools

install-vmware-tools-on-linux-guest-host-os-debian-redhat-screenshot

follow the instructions and you're done, however as always installing VMWare-tools on Linux is little bit more complicated you need to run few commands from Linux installed inside the Virtual Machine to install vmware-tools. Here is how vmware-tools is installed on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint and rest of Debian based operating systems:

1. Install Build essentials and gcc You need to have this installed some developer tools as well as GCC compiler in order for the vmware-tools to compile a special Linux kernel module which enables extra support (integration) between the VMWare VM and the installed inside VM Linux distro

apt-get install --yes build-essential gcc ...

2. Install appropriate Linux headers corresponding to current Linux OS installed kernel

apt-get install --yes linux-headers-$(uname -r) ....

3. Mount CD (Virtual) Content to obtain the vmware-tools version for your Linux

Be sure to have first checked from VMWare menus on menus VM -> Intall Vmware Tools
This step is a little bit strange but just do it without too much questioning …

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/ umount /media/cdrom0/ mount /media/cdrom mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom/ mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/

Note that /dev/sr0, might already be mounted and sometimes it might be necessary to unmount it first (don't remember exactly if I unmounted it or not)

4. Copy and Untar VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz

cp -rpf /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz /tmp/ cd /tmp/ tar -zxvvf VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz ...

5. Run vmware-tools installer

cd vmware-tools-distrib/ ./vmware-install.pl

You will be asked multiple questions you can safely press enter to answer with default settings to all settings, hopefully if all runs okay this will make VMWare Tools installed

Creating a new VMware Tools installer database using the tar4 format.
Installing VMware Tools.
In which directory do you want to install the binary files?
[/usr/bin]
What is the directory that contains the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/)?
[/etc]
What is the directory that contains the init scripts?
[/etc/init.d]
In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?
[/usr/sbin]
In which directory do you want to install the library files?
[/usr/lib/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/lib/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes]
In which directory do you want to install the documentation files?
[/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program
is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you
want? [yes]
The installation of VMware Tools 9.2.0 build-799703 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".
Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure it by
invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you want
this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]
Initializing…
Making sure services for VMware Tools are stopped.
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Guest operating system daemon: done
Unmounting HGFS shares: done
Guest filesystem driver: done
[EXPERIMENTAL] The VMware FileSystem Sync Driver (vmsync) is a new feature that creates backups of virtual machines. Please refer to the VMware Knowledge Base for more details on this capability. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no]
Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed…
make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel
Searching for GCC…
Detected GCC binary at "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6".
The path "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6" appears to be a valid path to the gcc binary.
Would you like to change it? [no]
Searching for a valid kernel header path…
Detected the kernel headers at "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include".
The path "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include" appears to be a valid path
to the 3.2.0-4-amd64 kernel headers.
Would you like to change it? [no]
The vmblock enables dragging or copying files between host and guest in a
Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no] yes
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmblock-only'

No X install found.
Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
Checking acpi hot plug done
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Switching to guest configuration: done
VM communication interface: done
VM communication interface socket family: done
File system sync driver: done
Guest operating system daemon: done
The configuration of VMware Tools 8.6.10 build-913593 for Linux for this
running kernel completed successfully.
You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take
effect.
You can now run VMware Tools by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd" from the
command line or by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox" from the command line
during an X server session.
To enable advanced X features (e.g., guest resolution fit, drag and drop, and
file and text copy/paste), you will need to do one (or more) of the following:
1. Manually start /usr/bin/vmware-user
2. Log out and log back into your desktop session; and,
3. Restart your X session.
Enjoy,
–the VMware team
Found VMware Tools CDROM mounted at /mnt. Ejecting device /dev/sr0 …

.To make sure vmware-tools compiled modules are loaded into Linux kernel inside VM, restart the Virtual Machine. Once Linux boots again and you login to gnome-terminal to check what is vmware-tools status (e.g. if properly loaded) run:

service vmware-tools status vmtoolsd is running

install-vmware-tools-on-debian-gnu-linux-and-ubuntu-virtual-machine-screenshot

This method of installing works on Debian 7 (Wheezy) but same steps should work on any Ubuntu and rest of Debian derivatives. For Redhat (RPM) based Linux distributions to install vmware-tools after mounting cdrom drive following above instructions you will have an rpm package instead of .tar.gz archive so all you have to do is install the rpm, e.g. launch smth. like:

rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.i386.rpm
Cheers 😉

Tags: checking, copy paste, Debian, Debian Ubuntu Linux Mint, directory, fullscreen, host, kernel, mount dev, need, operating systems, proprietary software, running, testing, usr bin, virtual machines, working
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »

How to detect failing storage LUN on Linux – multipath

Wednesday, April 16th, 2014

detect-failing-lun-on-linux-failing-scsi-detection

If you login to server and after running dmesg – show kernel log command you get tons of messages like:

# dmesg

end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:2: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:2: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0

In /var/log/messages there are also log messages present like:

# cat /var/log/messages ...

Apr 13 09:45:49 sl02785 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Apr 13 09:45:49 sl02785 kernel: klogd 1.4.1, ———- state change ———-
Apr 13 09:45:50 sl02785 kernel: sd 0:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
Apr 13 09:45:50 sl02785 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
Apr 13 09:45:55 sl02785 kernel: sd 0:0:0:2: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
Apr 13 09:45:55 sl02785 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0

This is a sure sign something is wrong with SCSI hard drives or SCSI controller, to further debug the situation you can use the multipath command, i.e.:

multipath -ll | grep -i failed _ 0:0:0:2 sdc 8:32 [failed][faulty] _ 0:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [failed][faulty] _ 0:0:0:0 sda 8:0 [failed][faulty]

As you can see all 3 drives merged (sdc, sdb and sda) to show up on 1 physical drive via the remote network connected – LUN to the server is showing as faulty. This is a clear sign something is either wrong with 3 hard drive members of LUN – (Logical Unit Number) (which is less probable) or most likely there is problem with the LUN network SCSI controller. It is common error that LUN SCSI controller optics cable gets dirty and needs a physical clean up to solve it.

In case you don't know what is storage LUN? – In computer storage, a logical unit number, or LUN, is a number used to identify a logical unit, which is a device addressed by the SCSI protocol or protocols which encapsulate SCSI, such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI. A LUN may be used with any device which supports read/write operations, such as a tape drive, but is most often used to refer to a logical disk as created on a SAN. Though not technically correct, the term "LUN" is often also used to refer to the logical disk itself.

What LUN's does is very similar to Linux's Software LVM (Logical Volume Manager).

Tags: code, dev, dmesg, How to, kernel, Linux, log, Logical Unit Number, LUN, SCSI, sda, sdb, sdc, sector, sign
Posted in System Administration | No Comments »

Linux: Add routing from different class network A (192.168.1.x) to network B (192.168.10.x) with ip route command

Friday, July 12th, 2013

adding routing from one network to other linux with ip route

I had a Linux router which does NAT for a local network located behind a CISCO router receiving internet via its WAN interface routing traffic to Linux with IP 192.168.1.235. The Linux router has few network interfaces and routes traffic for networks; 192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.10.0/24. Another Linux with IP 192.168.1.8 had to talk to 192.168.10.0/24 (because it was necessary to be able access ISCO's router web interface accessible via a local network interface with IP (192.168.10.1). Access to 192.168.10.1 wasn't possible from 192.168.1.8 because routing on NAT-ting Linux (192.168.1.235) to 192.168.10.0/24 network was missing. To make 192.168.1.8 Linux communicate with 192.168.10.1, had to add following routing rules with ip command on both the Linux with IP 192.168.1.235 and Linux host behind NAT (192.168.1.8).

1. On Server (192.168.1.235) run in root shell and add to /etc/rc.local

# /sbin/ip r add 192.168.10.0/24 via 192.168.1.235
And then copy paste same line before exit 0 in /etc/rc.local

Its good idea always to check routing, after adding anything new, here is mine:

# ip r show

192.168.5.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.5.1
192.168.4.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.4.1
192.168.3.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.3.1
192.168.2.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.2.1
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.235
192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.1
192.168.10.0/24 dev eth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.10.2
default via 192.168.10.1 dev eth1

2. And also on Second Linux host (192.168.1.8)

# /sbin/ip r add 192.168.10.0/24 via 192.168.1.235
To make routing permanent again paste in /etc/rc.local before exit 0

After above rules, I can normally ping and access hosts on class C network 192.168.10.1-255 from 192.168.1.8.

Tags: cisco, cisco router, hosts, kernel, Linux, linux router, local network, network interface, network interfaces, root shell, ting, traffic, wan interface, web interface
Posted in Linux, Networking, System Administration | No Comments »

Fix FTP client error 425 Unable to build data connection: No route to host (Cause and Solution)

Monday, July 8th, 2013

ftp fix client 425 unable to-build data connection no route to host Linux
I just configured new dedicated server. One of requirement was dedicated server to support connections via FTP transfer protocol and few users to have access via it.
I added users with required permissions to directory structure and went on to test it with Linux ftp command, i.e.:

hipo@pcfreak:~$ ftp remote-host-name

Connected to remote-host-name.com
220 ProFTPD 1.3.3a Server (Matusala) [xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xx]
Name (Matusala:hipo): testing-user
331 Password required for testing-user
Password:
230 User testing-user logged in

Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.

ftp> ls

200 PORT command successful
425 Unable to build data connection: No route to host

ftp> exit

221 Goodbye.

As you see from above FTP paste even simple commands like "ls" failed to work with error:

425 Unable to build data connection: No route to host

I thought somehow I have configured on server some paranoid firewall, so tested same connection with iptables rules flushed, e.g.: matusala:~# iptables -F matusala:~# iptables -t nat -F

Even after flushing firewall message persisted, so I googled around to see the what causes the error. The same error was hit by many users, and as I read, understand what causes is FTP server host is located behind some DMZ or firewall (as it was not my firewall I suppose, the dedicated provider has some firewall rules which are blocking FTP traffic on standard FTP TCP / UDP ports, port 20 and 21 ).
Fix is to enable in Linux kernel ip_nat_ftp or in newer Linux kernels module nf_nat_ftp:

matusala:~# modprobe ip_nat_ftp matusala:~# modprobe nf_nat_ftp
or
To make ip_nat_ftp load permanently on Debian and Ubuntu servers:

matusala:~# echo 'ip_nat_ftp' >> /etc/modules matusala:~# echo 'nf_nat_ftp' >> /etc/modules
One important note to make here is if you're testing the connection between two Linux servers it is possible the server from which you're running the client to have missing nf_nat_ftp loaded, so if error persist and you're testing remote FTP server from local ftp client on linux load same modules on localhost and you're done 🙂

Tags: binary mode, client error, dedicated server, directory structure, firewall rules, ftp command, host name, kernel, Linux, linux ftp, matus, modprobe, Protocol, server host, udp ports
Posted in Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

Linux webcam take pictures from tty console or terminal / How to make pictures of yourself using plain console and web-camera

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

how to take webCAM console / terminal pictures on gnu linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora)

I'm a great command line enthusiast, I share the believe of many other command line geeks thinking keyboard is the quickest way to access a computer. Historically keys were first and mouse second and I think there is definitely a good reason for that. Thus today I was curious if it is possible to take pictures from my external web-camera on my Debian GNU / Linux? I did a quick research and this little article springed out as result.

The answer is YES! It is possible and besides that there are many ways to take a webcamera picture using the console; Lastly it is very easy to achieve even for novice Linux buddies 😉 My little research on the topic show me there are 4 straightforward ways one can use to use his extended or embedded WebCam to take pictuers – using (vlc, mplayer, camshot, fswebcam and ffmpeg).

1. Taking a webcam picture using vlc

Invoke vlc with following arguments:

# vlc -I dummy v4l2:///dev/video0 --video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path /home/hipo --scene-prefix webcam-taken-picture-prefix --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1

I've prepared a little wrapper script, for the sake of simplifying the long and hard to remember vlc options. Below is the script;

#!/bin/sh # This little script will take picture whilst in gnome-terminal / mlterm or any console tty # As program uses vlc you need to have vlc properly configured and installed # as well as the webcam video be properly working (detected by Linux kernel) # licensed under GPLv2 script modified by hip0 14.12.2012 # Path where to store taken snapshots STORE_PATH=/home/hipo # Device locatation of webcam many webcams have default device in /dev/video0 WEBCAM_DEV=/dev/video0 # Stored grabbed picture filename prefix FILE_NAME_PREF=image_prefix # gets the current date and adds to set filename prefix date_cur=$(date +%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//'); vlc -I dummy v4l2://$WEBCAM_DEV --video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path $STORE_PATH --scene-prefix $FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1 echo "WebCam picture taken and stored in $STORE_PATH/$FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur*.png"; echo ''; echo "To view picture in Gnome with Eye of GNOME type: eog $STORE_PATH/$FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur*.png";
You can also download copy of the webcam_take_picture_from_console.sh script here.

As you see the script uses, vlc's (dummy interface), and –video-filter-scene option to make the snapshot. The script can be stored in let's say /usr/local/bin/webcam_take_picture.sh and aliased through ~/.bashrc with some short alias, i.e.:

alias console-picture='/usr/local/bin/webcam_take_picture.sh'

Then at any time, when you run console-picture you will have a short way to make pictures of your room, your friends or whatever needed. One good application of script is whether you're in coffee with friends and you want to take a snapshot of them without them realizing (assuming, the webcam is embedded) 🙂

Another great application is whether you want to take a snapshot of the WebCam, from another shell script or little application using dialog ncurses interfaces etc.

Even just for the sake of fun it is so nice to take a picture from webcam, whether in plain tty console bash shell 🙂

One small note to make here is webcam_take_picture_from_console.sh should be run as non-root user (for security reasons vlc developers made smartly VLC this way), running it as root drops an err:

>VLC is not supposed to be run as root. Sorry.
If you need to use real-time priorities and/or privileged TCP ports
you can use /usr/bin/vlc-wrapper (make sure it is Set-UID root and
cannot be run by non-trusted users first).

By default, vlc resolution used is the automatically set to the maximum supported to the camera, with mine this is 640×480 SRGB
The quality of pictures taken is a bit low but my camera is a cheap one and even with some GUI program snapshot taking programs like GNOME's cheese, taken pictures are with low quality (though I think the brightnes of the ones taken with vlc is a bit poorer than the ones done with cheese).

Happily it is possible to correct picture brightness and lightning with v42l-ctl (v42l-ctl is not installed by default and on Debian you will have to install deb pack v4l-utils), e.g.:

apt-get install --yes v4l-utils ....
Further, check out the possible options available with:

v4l2-ctl -L - (list all possible options)

and to set a concrete option do:

v4l2-ctl -c <options>=<value> (set an option)

I don't have a BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) at hand, but with a working supported Webcam, correct location to the webcam /dev/ and installed VLC from ports :

vlc -I dummy v4l2:///dev/video0--video-filter scene --no-audio --scene-path $STORE_PATH --scene-prefix $FILE_NAME_PREF.$date_cur --scene-format png vlc://quit --run-time=1

should be working fine as well.
If someone has access to a BSD with a working installed webcam, please test it and drop a comment to confirm if working …

2. Creating pictures from WebCamera using mplayer cmd

Theoretically mplayer, should be able to take snapshots from the Cam with:

mplayer -vo png -frames 1 tv://
There is possibility to pass output webcam picture (resolution) dimensions too:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:device=/dev/video0:width=320:height=240:outfmt=rgb24 -frames 1 -vo jpeg

With my "NoName" (Eltron Technology) webcam the produced images were filled up with solid green color (maybe due to bug of my webcam used driver). Normally it should be working; I've seen many posts around claiming using both of above cmd lines to produce pictures normally, but not for me.

3. Making pictures with WebCamera (camshot) console tool

I've seen around also another tiny tool (camshot) especially written to take pictures from webcam. The tool is available only to be compiled from source (whether source is fetched through Subversion repo (SVN)). I took a minute to test it as well, e.g.:

hipo@noah:~Desktop$ svn checkout http://camshot.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ camshot-read-only

hipo@noah:~/Desktop/camshot-read-only$ make .... hipo@noah:~/Desktop/camshot-read-only$ ls arguments.c arguments.o camera.h camshot image.h main.c Makefile shmem.h shmem_test.c arguments.h camera.c camera.o image.c image.o main.o shmem.c shmem.o


	hipo@noah:~Desktop/camshot-read-only$ ./camshot 

Letting the camera automaticaly adjust the picture:..........Done.

Command (h for help): h
	Commands:

    x    Capture a picture from camera.

    h    Prints this help.

    q    Quits the program.

Command (h for help): x Command (h for help): q

Don't know why, but for me camshot did not produce, any output picture from webcam. Maybe my Webcam which is a cheap (all OS) compatible one is not detected fine by the tool? As you see from above help output there are not many options so it is definitely something with webcam detection or just it needs some kind of little "hack" in the source to make it working, I was lazy to further investigate so I leave it.

4. Making pictures from terminal using fswebcam

fswebcam is not so popular as vlc and mplayer, but is existent from default repostiries on both Debian and Ubuntu Linuces. Here is it how it is described when pkg info requested with apt-cache:

apt-cache show fswebcam | grep -i descrip -A 8 Description: Tiny and flexible webcam program Fswebcam is a tiny and flexible webcam command-line program for capturing images from a V4L1/V4L2 device. It accepts a number of formats, can skip the first (possibly bad) frames before performing the actual capture, and can perform simple manipulation on the captured image, such as resizing, averaging multiple frames or overlaying a caption or an image. Homepage: http://www.firestorm.cx/fswebcam/ Tag: implemented-in::c, role::program

To use it first install it with apt-get or yum (yes it is available also for RedHat based Linux distros via yum).
Depending whether on Debian or Fedora etc. do:

apt-get install --yes fswebcam .....

yum -y install fswebcam ....

fswebcam's syntax is much easier than all of rest cmd tools available around; to create picture from webcam;

# fswebcam -r 640x480 --jpeg 85 -D 1 web-cam-shot.jpg --- Opening /dev/video0... Trying source module v4l2... /dev/video0 opened. No input was specified, using the first. Delaying 1 seconds. --- Capturing frame... Captured frame in 0.00 seconds. --- Processing captured image... Setting output format to JPEG, quality 85 Unable to load font 'luxisr': Could not find/open font Disabling the the banner. Writing JPEG image to 'web-cam-shot.jpg'.

I liked supports, saving in multiple formats, can set resolution and is probably the number 1 choice for anyone looking for high level of customization of cam taken picture.. Saying this I think fswebcam is definitely the tool of choice as it is written with the one and only aim to take webcam pictures from console.

5. Capturing picture from Webcam using ffmpeg

With ffmpeg, there are plenty of things possible;
Just to mention few interesting ones, I've written about earlier, ffmeg is capable of;

– convert .OGG vorbis to MP3
– convert .FLV to .AVI and .AVI to .FLV
– convert .AVI .MP4 and .FLV to OGG Vorbis (Free Format)
– convert .OGG video to .FLV Video
– extract sounds / music from .FLV to a MP3 / MP4
– Add .SRT and .SUB files subtitles to Flash Videos

Along with all this, interestingly ffmpeg can get content using command line from WebCamera (nomatter if it's a VIDEO stream or just a Picture snapshot).

The syntax to take a picture with it is:

ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -i /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-Etron_Technology__Inc._USB2.0_Camera-video-index0 -vframes 1 output-picture.jpeg

The precise /dev/(v4l – video 4 linux) assigned to different cameras will differ so in order to find what kind of /dev, to use ls it:

# ls -al /dev/v4l/by-id/*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Dec 14 22:40 /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-Etron_Technology__Inc._USB2.0_Camera-video-index0 -> ../../video0

The picture resolution taken on my Eltron Technology Webcam is same like with vlc – the cam optimum 640×480, the quality and brightness gamma is also identical to pics taken using VLC.

Therefore if you're wondering if one tool, might make a better pictures from command line than the other the answer, according to my tests is they produce identical quality and all can be customized easily for different set of resolution. It is possible thought, this is not so with other Web Cam models, if you happen to read this post and take the time to try taking pictures with 5 methods and some of the 5 progs is making superior pictures, please drop a comment with the tool you used and the WebCam exact version as detected in dmesg or lsusb.

As a sort of Outtro, from purely functional / usability point of view I think fswebcam is probably be the tool of choice for mostly all as it is most simple, easily customizable and especially crafted for creating webcam console shots. That's all Enjoy, taking pics from GUI terminal or console 🙂

P.S. – I know there are plenty of people who have written on the topic, so this article is nothing new under the sun, but as I couldn't find a post synthesizing in one all of the 5 methods I've come up with this little article. Feedback is mostly welcome

Happy picturing 😉

Tags: current date, debian gnu, default device, external web, format png, Gnome, good reason, kernel, keyboard, Linux, snapshots, terminal 2f, video filter, web camera, webcams
Posted in Entertainment, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Various | 9 Comments »

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Posts Tagged ‘kernel’

Linux Bond network interfaces to merge multiple interfaces ISPs traffic – Combine many interfaces NIC into one on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS / Fedora / RHEL Linux

How to determine which processes make most writes on the hard drive in GNU / Linux using kernel variable

Install VMWare tools on Debian and Ubuntu Linux – Enable VMWare Fullscreen and copy paste between OS host and Virtual machine

VM -> Install Vmware-tools

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Posts Tagged ‘kernel’

I . Extending a LVM parititon that run out of space on a Linux Guest VM 1. Check the current parititon size that you want to extend

2. Check the Virtualization platform

3. Check the Operating System Linux OS type and version

4. Find out the type of target filesystem is EXT3, EXT4 or XFS etc.?

5. Check the size of the LVM partition we want to exchange

6. Check whether free space is available space in the volume group ?

Extend VMWare space configured for additional hard disk on Hypervisor (if necessery)

7. Rescan on Linux VM host for changes in disk size from Hypervisor

8. Resize LVM physical volume

9. Enlarge Logical Volume size

10. Enlarge LVM hosted filesystem size

11. Check the additional filespace is already active on the Linux Guest VM

12. Verify the extension of filesystem completed without errors

II. How to add additional sdb drive to a Linux host from vSPhere HV lets say (sdb)

1. On VSphere GUI interface

2. On Linux system VM guest host to detect the new added sdb available space

3. Create new LVM Physical Volume

4. Enlarge LVM Volume Group to the max available size of /dev/sdb

5. Enlarge filesystem to max size of just created LVM

6. Checking filesystem extension completed correct

7. Check filesystem is writtable and no errors produced in logs

1. Check the journal for errors, running service irregularities and so on

2. List all systemd failed check services which was supposed to be running

3. List all running systemd services for a better overview on what's going on on machine

4. Finding out more on why a systemd configured service has failed

5. Get a complete log of journal to make sure everything configured on server host runs as it should

Closure

VM -> Install Vmware-tools

425 Unable to build data connection: No route to host

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I . Extending a LVM parititon that run out of space on a Linux Guest VM

1. Check the current parititon size that you want to extend