Author Archives: Hoosier

tar pipe

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No, not tar from a cigarette! tar as in the *nix Tape ARchive.

I needed to back up my test gentoo box at home so I could install RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 AS. Since I needed to repartition, the best way was to haul a tar file off to another computer, using ssh and a tar pipe, like so:

tar cf - * | ssh hostname "cat > /my/tar/directory/tarfile.tar"

About 20 minutes later, and I’ve got a 1.4 Gb tarball on my other linux box. Not quite sure how I’m going to get it BACK to the test box, but I’m sure I’ll find something.

Or even better:
tar cvf - /mnt/gentoo/* |ssh root@target 'cd /; tar -xpf -'

New Hardware

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So, my dad needed a faster computer to be able to do his part time winter job at home again this year (the software requires Windows XP and his 3 year old PIII 666 was getting tired).

So, I headed over to Dell Factory Outlet and for just over $1300 he gets a P4-2.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, CDRW, a DAMN NICE NVIDIA video card and a 17″ flat panel.

Nicer than what I’ve got on my desk at work. Well, except for the monitor.

This should last him longer than the last one.

Old Data be gone!

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So, we are getting ready to forklift a file server from old hardware to new.

Trying to reduce the amount of data we need to haul over, I went through and looked at what’s there. There were several database apps that hadn’t been used in years, for several gigabytes of data. And all this gets dumped to tape once a week.

Joy.

Local Kernel ‘sploit

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Nasty local linux kernel exploit based on some bad bounds checking in the kernel.

*UPDATE*: just emerge -uvp world, new gentoo-sources has been released.

To fix a gentoo box already running the latest kernel, you need to unmerge and re-emerge gentoo-sources:
mv /usr/src/linux/.config /usr/src
emerge --unmerge gentoo-sources
rm -r /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r8
rm /usr/src/linux
emerge gentoo-sources
mv /usr/src/.config /usr/src/linux/
cd /usr/src/linux
make dep && make clean && make bzImage
mount /boot
mv /usr/src/linux/arc/i368/boot/bzImage /boot
umount /boot

(Stolen from a forum post)

RedHat users should see the relevant errata.

tar anyone?

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I’ve got 2 nearly identical dell poweredge 2200 servers, both of which I’m getting up and going with gentoo.

One, I got up and going last week. The other, I started on today. After reading some forum posts, I decided to try tar‘ing up the existing one and moving it over to the new machine.

About an hour (and 750 MBs) later, I ran grub, installed on the boot sector and rebooted. Working, optimized, up to date install in record time.

On source:
tar --exclude='/proc/*' --exclude='/dev/*' -cvf /tmp/image.tar /
On target:
scp user@source:/tmp/image.tar /tmp/
cd /
tar -xvpf /tmp/image.tar

So nifty.

Dude, How Short?

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Either Dude, Where’s My Country: a) doesn’t have enought pages in it, or b) it’s a really quick read. I’m going with b.

And finishing this book just reinforces my previous beliefs: We are in a handbasket and Little Red Riding Dubya is skipping towards a place where the thermostat is always on high and the Micheal Bolton/Kenny G/John Tesh/David Hasselhoff musak never stops.

The following are stolen directly from the book:

  • Please, lets Rock the Vote in 2004.
  • No matter who you are voting for, try to take someone who wouldn’t normally vote with you.