Saturday, October 30, 2010

Maintaining Repos in Kickstarted Machines After Install

After you've installed a machine, its install-time repository config in /etc/yum.repos.d is pretty much set.

Bah, I say! Bah! Just keep it updated.

Kickstart (cobbler):
#set yumconfcronfilename = "/etc/cron.daily/50-yum-config-stanza"
cat << EOECYCS > $yumconfcronfilename
#!/bin/sh
$yum_config_stanza

sed -ne '
        /^baseurl=/{
                s/baseurl=/repomd /
                s://:__:
                s:/: :
                s:__://:
                p
        }
        ' /etc/yum.repos.d/cobbler-config.repo \
          > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cobbler-config.list
EOECYCS
chmod a+x $yumconfcronfilename
If you're not running cobbler, set it into place by hand:
cat << EOECYCS > /etc/cron.daily/50-yum-config-stanza
#!/bin/sh
wget "http://archive/cblr/svc/op/yum/profile/centos5-i386-minimal" --output-document=/etc/yum.repos.d/cobbler-config.repo

sed -ne '
 /^baseurl=/{
  s/baseurl=/repomd /
  s://:__:
  s:/: :
  s:__://:
  p
 }
 ' /etc/yum.repos.d/cobbler-config.repo \
   > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cobbler-config.list
EOECYCS

chmod a+x /etc/cron.daily/50-yum-config-stanza
That's dereferenced for you. The actual profile's going to be way off, though, so don't use that one verbatim. Find your own:
awk -F/ '/^url/{print $NF}' anaconda-ks.cfg
As usual, watch carefully for the way in which the 'new', 'better' blogspot editor makes an artistic puree of the quoted stuff;  grain of salt, kids.

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Saturday, October 16, 2010

Gargoyle OpenWRT Router Management Utility Reviewed, Briefly

I stumbled across what looked to be another WRT54GL-compatible flash upgrade for routers.  Neat!  I've been looking for a new base, on which to build the minor customizations I do, for a while now.  Ever since OpenWRT went all Kamikaze and dropped NVRAM support, thus becoming valueless and useless to me, I've been in need of another source to tune.

Enter Gargoyle.  It's mainly a set of UI tools, like X-WRT, built on an OpenWRT 8.09 Kamikaze platfo--

F A I L

That was far too quick, and I'm disappointed they chose a platform that renders their product similarly valueless for me.  Its feature set looked really impressive:
  • easy QoS config with sensible throttle rules (and, new, improved monitor/throttle points, it seems)
  • easy monitoring of pipe drains, on a per-machine basis too
  • simplified bridging setup -- which is a potential pain in the ass they've totally alleviated
  • lazy?  Go buy a new router with Gargoyle installed.  Click, Buy, Sign for the Fedex.  How easy is that?
In all, to believe the (believable) brochure, it looks like a project in motion and active; just missing a market due to the reduced potential in the upstream product they're improving.  Hobbyists with 1-2 routers, probably at their own location so they're easy to reach and personally reconfigure after the upgrades render them non-routing vegetables, may find this useful.  Those of you who are either hobbyists with routers providing the routing at offsite locations, or those who have more than 1-2 routers total, may want to consider something which effectively uses the non-volatile RAM within the units to store settings in such a way that it survives the upgrade.

Unfortunately, basing their project on OpenWRT 8.09 limits their potential and cuts them out of a significant non-niche market.  SOHOs, branch offices, those who've grabbed a $50 router to use as a very capable $500 router, will find this product is not a suitable upgrade because of this early decision.  And the real pity here is that potentially a lot of work, by apparently a good and active bunch of very smart people, is rendered moot.

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Friday, October 15, 2010

vconfig, invalid arguments and Favouritism

So I'm messing with vconfig;  really I'm letting the system do most of it, but it backs onto vconfig.

Explain to me why I can't vconfig a new vlan to an interface:

# service network stop ; service network start
Shutting down interface eth2.2401:  Removed VLAN -:eth2.2401:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth2.2402:  Removed VLAN -:eth2.2402:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth2.2403:  Removed VLAN -:eth2.2403:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth2.2404:  Removed VLAN -:eth2.2404:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth0:                      [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth1:                      [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth2:                      [  OK  ]
Shutting down loopback interface:                  [  OK  ]
Disabling IPv4 packet forwarding:  net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up loopback interface:                    [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth0:                        [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth1:
Determining IP information for eth1... done.
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth2:                        [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth0.2401:                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth0.2403:  ERROR: trying to add VLAN #2403 to IF -:eth0:-  error: Invalid argument
ERROR: could not add vlan 2403 as eth0.2403 on dev eth0
                                                           [FAILED]
Bringing up interface eth2.2401:  Added VLAN with VID == 2401 to IF -:eth2:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth2.2402:  Added VLAN with VID == 2402 to IF -:eth2:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth2.2403:  Added VLAN with VID == 2403 to IF -:eth2:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth2.2404:  Added VLAN with VID == 2404 to IF -:eth2:-
                                                   [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface br1:                         [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface br3:                         [  OK  ]

That's not the weirdest part:
# ifconfig | grep HW
br1       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:00
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:00
eth0.2401 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:00
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:78:8F:9E
eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:14
eth2.2401 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:14
eth2.2402 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:14
eth2.2403 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:14
eth2.2404 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:5C:6D:14
tun0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
tun1      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
tun2      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
tun3      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
# vconfig add eth0 2404
Added VLAN with VID == 2404 to IF -:eth0:-
# vconfig rem eth0.2404
Removed VLAN -:eth0.2404:-
# vconfig add eth0 2403
ERROR: trying to add VLAN #2403 to IF -:eth0:-  error: Invalid argument
For some reason, that exact vLAN is the one I can't apply to that interface.  The preceding one goes fine;  so does the one after.  That one?  No go.

Riddle me that.  And, once again. sorry if the format absolutely sucks.  I just can't figure out how to make this editor not chew up my blockquotes.

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Wednesday, October 06, 2010

That and a Few Bucks Will Get You a Bus Ride

[Phoronix] A Gaming Mouse Vendor That Has Linux Drivers:
Stefan Achatz has been working with a vendor known as Roccat to improve their Linux support. Roccat manufactures [...]
  1. keyboards with the broken key layouts that move the [\] key around so it's non-standard
  2. mice with two equal-sized buttons and a bunch of mini-buttons and rollies and scrollies, and ...
.. but sadly, nothing I can use.  Nothing my peer group uses, if I can drag in the people I work with.

We use the third button, for gaming and for work.  We use the backspace or pipe key at times.  We use a regularly-sized backspace key.  We rather expect the key layout will not be arbitrarily fucked with, lest we become unable to use the corrupted layout or - worse - become accustomed to the corrupted layout and can no longer use regular gear.

Mice:
  • three equal buttons.  No?  Fail.
Keyboards:
  • regular backspace, pipe, enter, shift, space bar keys, and a regular wasd-layout arrow-key matrix.  No?  Fail.
Why is it so hard to find a working - as in can use to do work - mouse and keyboard set?  Right now, this very earnest and well-intentioned company cannot sell me a single thing, for my was-$15-in-1998 three-button first-gen Logitech First Mouse beats their pretty cadillac.  A lenovo thinkstation keyboard offers me speed, accuracy and keys where I need them;  the Roccat gear does not.

I could consider pretty, broken gear for gaming, or for fun pursuits, but I think I covered that in the "become accustomed to broken layout" comment above.  And I'm so disappointed that this company has no value for me, today, since it seems to be making a great effort to get its unusable gear out to everyone who wants to buy it.  A great company, potentially, that can't offer me something even if I waved a big bag o' money at it.

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