Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

With the help of a couple of friends, we’ve put a 4.5T RAID-5 machine on our network and I’m trying to figure out how to share the storage with the rest of the hosts. In the past, I have used NFS and CIFS/Samba to provide access to remote hosts. This has generally worked okay so long as the server stays online.

I don’t know if the results are going to be much different, but I am now trying a different approach. I plan to run an iSCSI server, and I’ve already configured AoE (ATA over Ethernet). I’ve exported a block device on the network segment and mounted it on a remote host. This was pretty easy to configure. There is a bit of documentation on the internet already, but I’ll give another quick overview.

I gave the storage server the unoriginal name ’san0′. This host is running debian lenny. I am testing the configuration from my debian sid development host, which has the similarly unoriginal name ‘dev0′. So, think server when you see ’san0′ and client when you see ‘dev0′.

I assume that you’ve already got an LVM volume group set up. Mine is called ‘vg0′. Correct the following examples to account for any differences. You can use disk partitions instead of LVM logical volumes.

Create a logical volume to be exported:

cjac@san0:~$ sudo lvcreate /dev/vg0 -n e0.1 -L 5G

Load the AoE kernel module:

cjac@san0:~$ sudo modprobe aoe

Install the package containing the vblade block device export server:

cjac@san0:~$ sudo apt-get install vblade

Export the block device. Note that the ethernet bridge on which I export the device is called ‘loc’:

cjac@san0:~$ sudo vbladed 0 1 loc /dev/vg0/e0.1

Install the AoE discovery tools on the client:

cjac@dev0:~$ sudo apt-get install aoetools

Load the AoE kernel module:

cjac@dev0:~$ sudo modprobe aoe

Probe for exported AoE devices:

cjac@dev0:~$ sudo aoe-discover

Verify that our exported device was discovered:

cjac@dev0:~$ test -e /dev/etherd/e0.1 && echo "yep"
yep

You can now treat /dev/etherd/e0.1 as you would any other block device. You can format it directly, or partition it and format a partition, use it as a device in your software RAID array, use it as swap space (ha), or something completely different.

Now to figure out this iSCSI stuff…

Tags: colliertech, debian, free software, linux, networking, software, washington state ubuntu loco

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Hello, google. I would like to introduce you to our chat logs. Chat logs, google. Google, chat logs.

We will discuss things here such as Mono, GNOME and Debian. We may even use it to talk about work on the DLR project stuff.

Tags: colliertech, debian, dlr, freenode, gnome, irc, ironpython, ironruby, linux, mono, python, washington state ubuntu loco

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

This is the gist of it:

$ cd /usr/src/
# $ sudo chmod a+rwx .
$ wget ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/SLE11_BRANCH/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39-0.0.0.25.15a4c6f.src.rpm
$ alien -tg kernel-source-2.6.27.39-0.0.0.25.15a4c6f.src.rpm
$ cd kernel-source-2.6.27.39
$ tar xfj linux-2.6.27.tar.bz2
$ for f in patches.*.tar.bz2; do
tar xfj $f || break;
done
$ for p in $(./guards x86_64 < series.conf); do
patch -d linux-2.6.27 -p1 < $p || break
done
$ cd linux-2.6.27
$ fakeroot make-kpkg debian
$ fakeroot make-kpkg build
$ sudo make install modules_install
$ cd /usr/src
$ hg clone http://xenbits.xen.org/xen-unstable.hg
$ cd xen-unstable.hg/unmodified_drivers/linux-2.6
$ XEN=/usr/src/xen-unstable.hg/xen XL=/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 ./mkbuildtree x86_64
$ make -C /usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 M=$PWD modules
$ sudo make -C /usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 M=$PWD modules_install

Tags: debian, free software, linux, novell, software, virtualization, xen

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t used Xen HVM until recently. When I was at Amazon and
hanging with the Xen provisioning folks, I recall complaints about the
performance of network drivers on HVM instances. I’ve recently
discovered that this was due to the use of the ioemu virtual interface
(vif) system. In paravirtualized environments, Xen vif devices are
more efficient because the guest kernel can talk to the hypervisor to
schedule I/O. In hardware virtualized environments, the hypervisor
emulates the back end of a common network driver and the guest uses it
as if it is the real thing.

The Xen team (or was it RedHat?) patched the 2.6.18 kernel such that
HVM guests got the best of both worlds. The guest ran in a HVM
environment, but also had a way of talking with the hypervisor by way
of the xen-vnif kernel driver
(kernel/drivers/xenpv_hvm/netfront/xen-vnif.ko).

I may not be looking in the right places, but I can’t seem to find
such a paravirtualized network driver for any kernels more recent than
2.6.18. This has recently become a bit of an issue, since karmic (and probably sid)
depends on udev 145, which depends on signalfd, and thus won’t run on
kernels before (something like) 2.6.25.

Unless I miss my guess (which is quite possible =]), this means one of
the following needs to happen:

• signalfd needs to be back-ported to the 2.6.18 xen kernel
• xen-vnif needs to be forward-ported to >= 2.6.25

Has this already happened? Am I missing something?

Tags: debian, hardware, linux, virtualization, xen

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Hey all!

I’m sorry I haven’t been very active with my packages recently. I all-of-a-sudden started grad school and have been swamped with studying. I also started a contract and have been busy trying to learn a new codebase while contributing something other than snark.

I promise I’ll get back to packaging IronRuby and IronPython on Mono for Debian as soon as things start settling down. Getting an A in the class is higher priority, though, sorry…

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you ;)

Cheers,

C.J.

PS, I am implementing a Perl library to exercise my understanding of the class. You can follow along at the search.cpan.org page for Lingua::HPSG or by cloning the git repo:

$ git clone git://karma.colliertech.org/colliertech/langparser

Tags: c.j. insider, debian, free software, git, ironpython, ironruby, language, mono, perl, software

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Thanks to Meebey!

Sorry for the being out of touch thing and the not posting anything recently thing. A vacation took me by surprise and clocked me right upside the head.

Next on the TODO list:

• Update the dlr-languages package to indicate dependence on the new release
• make sure it builds correctly on my sid box
• present changes to doko
• ???
• profit

Tags: debian, dlr, free software, irc, ironpython, ironruby, linux, mono, software

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

It looks like the upload of the Iron* languages to Debian is imminent. We’ve gotten the debian/watch file downloading a tarball of the git tag we’ve chosen for this release. This was the last bit meebey needed in order to present it to the maintainer of ironpython in lenny. He has agreed to let the Debian CLI Libraries Team adopt ironpython under the conditions that our packaging doesn’t suck and that he remains in the uploaders list.

Now that we have a package suitable for review, we have now presented it for said review.

Let me take a moment to mention how excited I am to be involved in packaging for Debian one of the first pieces of DFSG-compliant software sponsored by Microsoft. This is a true community effort with great work done by a lot of hard-working contributors. I believe that Microsoft has put its money where its mouth is with this project.

I have spent a fair amount of time criticising Microsoft for its “embrace and extend” sort of monopolistic actions. Having the somewhat unique experience of being a Debian GNU/Linux early-adopter and growing up in Microsoft’s back yard has given me the opportunity to bring up the concerns that the Free Software community has with the development practices of the 800-pound gorilla. To my surprise, the blue badger engineers with whom I have spoken have been responsive and even proactive in addressing the issues that have made Microsoft so combative toward the F/OSS development community. I see this as a very important step toward reconciling some poignant differences in the community.

Tags: cli, colliertech, debian, dlr, free software, git, ironpython, ironruby, journalism, linux, microsoft, mono, software

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legal-list/2009-August/msg00017.html

In addition, IronRuby/IronPython/DLR may make it in to FC 13, thanks to Brett.

Tags: c#, debian, dlr, free software, ironpython, ironruby, linux, mono, software

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

An update on recent changes to the IronRuby packaging.

1. We’ve changed the name of the source package because
2. We’re packaging IronPython as well as IronRuby (thanks doko!)
3. I’ve added the wrapper scripts (irake, igem, etc.). Maybe this is showing that I’m not a heavy user…
4. After building meebey’s packages and installing them:

   $ cat /etc/debian_version && apt-cache show mono-xbuild | grep '^Version' | head -1
   squeeze/sid
   Version: 2.4.2.3+dfsg-1~pre1
   

5. After installing my build of IronRuby:

   $ apt-cache show ironruby | grep ^Version
   Version: 0.9.0+dfsg-1
   

Tags: cli, colliertech, debian, dlr, free software, ironpython, ironruby, microsoft, mono, software

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ sudo dpkg -i ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package ironruby-cil.
(Reading database ... 67034 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ironruby-cil (from ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb) ...
Setting up ironruby-cil (0.9.0+dfsg) ...
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ which ir
/usr/bin/ir
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ ir
IronRuby 0.9.0.0 on Mono 2.4.2.3
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

>>> exit

Tags: c#, cli, colliertech, debian, dlr, free software, git, ironruby, linux, mono, software