Note: access Honda sat-nav diag. menu

Posted on by mark

Honda Dealer wrote:

So, you arrogant beggars who know so much better than the Honda dealerships and who are so quick to rubbish them, don’t know everything after all?
OK, the official Honda method for forcing sat-nav to reset to older disc is as follows:
1. Start the engine.
2. error message appears on screen with old disc inserted.
3. Push ‘MENU’ and ‘ZOOM DOWN’ switches simultaneously for 2 seconds.
4. Screen turns to SYSTEM LINK page with a fanfare.
5. Press ‘NEXT’ switch (opens car staus page).
6. Press ‘NEXT’ switch (opens yaw rate page).
7. Press ‘NEXT’ switch (opens diagnosis menu page).
8. Select ‘UNIT CHECK’.
9. Select ‘FORCE DOWN LOAD’.
System will now start to download the old operating system firmware from the old disc, showing progress on a green bar gauge.
When finished the unit should be able to be started normally.

Now say ‘Thank You, to a Honda Dealer!’

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Gameboy (classic?)

Posted on by mark

Vi fandt Maria’s Gameboy den anden dag. Den havde været pakket ned og gemt væk i vel nok 15 år. Et sæt nye batterier var alt der skulle til for at få liv i den. Den er måske klodset og grafikken er primitiv, men Lisa har da fået lidt glæde af den nu. Det største problem er egenligt skærmen, som er meget utydelig (og sort/grøn) efter dagens standard.

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My first Python script

Posted on by mark

I have always avoided Python. I am not sure why, but I think it is mostly because of the syntax, with the needed indention. Well, today I wrote my first script, and I actually like the language a little.

I needed to lookup GPS coordinates for a long list of addresses, and didn’t like doing it manually. Using Google’s maps API, I solved the problem with this little script. It reads the addresses from stdin and writes addresss;latitude;longtitude to stdout.

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#!/usr/bin/env python
 
# Importing modules
import urllib
import json
import sys
 
# Configuration of main URL
URL = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?sensor=false&address='
 
# Read addresses from stdin
for address in sys.stdin:
    #print "Looking up: " + str(address)
 
    # URL Encode the address
    encoded_address = urllib.quote(address.strip())
    real_url = URL + encoded_address
 
    # Reset buffer
    buffer = ''
 
    # Fetch the json result
    try:
        fh = urllib.urlopen(real_url)
        for line in fh:
            buffer += line
        fh.close
    except Exception:
        print "Ops, caught an exception."
        sys.exit(1)
 
    # Try to de-serialize the json string
    result = json.loads(buffer)
 
    # Check status of result
    if result['status'] == "OK":
        #print "Results looks good, continue"
        for r in result['results']:
            lat = str(r['geometry']['location']['lat'])
            lng = str(r['geometry']['location']['lng'])
            print '%s; lat=%s; lng=%s' % (address.strip(), lat, lng)
 
# Finish
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Postfix reject_unknown_helo_hostname woes

Posted on by mark

Googling for some answers regarding why some mail-servers fail to identify themselves correctly, I found this amusing forum reply;

Unfortunately, “reject_unknown_helo_hostname” is not acceptable to use, because too many Exchange Servers are configured to identify themselves with something that only appears in their local DNS.

Apparently either Microsoft’s certification programs only produce people who can point and click and don’t know how anything about RFC standards, or their programs don’t allow a proper internet routable hostname to be set on the server for some reason, possibly having to do with clustering or other advanced things used in larger networks.

I’m not sure what it is, but I heard that a few of the issues preventing this sort of thing were removed in Exchange 2007 and 2010, but most Exchange admins will most likely not be aware of them.

It would be nice if this wasn’t an issue, because then we could all reject messages that don’t pass this test. For our tiny network, this would be at least 500 messages a day, which is a good chunk of all the spam we receive. Instead, these messages end up making it to Amavis+SpamAssassin where they waste our CPU time.

Oh well, I suppose it could be much worse…and it usually is with Microsoft Server OSes.

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Bootable Software RAID-1 on running system

Posted on by mark

This is tested on Debian Squeeze, but should work on most Debian derived distributions and on other Linux distributions with small changes. I have written almost the same guide some years ago, but I wanted to add an extra disk to my QNAP NAS and decided to write it down again.

Requirements; 2 identical disks

Installation

Partition and install Debian GNU/Linux onto first disk (sda in my case) if you don’t have a running system already.

Configure the system and make sure everything works.
Install the software raid administration tool ‘mdadm’
# apt-get install mdadm

Partition second unused disk (sdb) with same layout as first disk (sda)
sfdisk --dump /dev/sda | sfdisk --force /dev/sdb

Reboot into single-user mode to make sure partition table is re-read and to avoid having running services when copying data.

Plan your RAID devices

We will create a RAID device for each partition.
I have the following layout on my first disk:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 43 340992 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 43 182402 1464795137 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 43 773 5858304 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 773 1137 2928640 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 1137 1514 3022848 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 1514 1562 389120 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 1562 182402 1452592128 83 Linux

This means that I will end up with 6 different RAID devices:

/dev/md0 (sda1 + sdb1) mounted on /
/dev/md1 (sda5 + sdb5) mounted on /usr
/dev/md2 (sda6 + sdb6) mounted on /var
/dev/md3 (sda7 + sdb7) used for swap
/dev/md4 (sda8 + sdb8) mounted on /tmp
/dev/md5 (sda9 + sdb9) mounted on /home

Create RAID devices

Before we create any RAID devices, we should change the parition type from Linux/SWAP to ‘fd Linux raid auto‘. Do this with the fdisk command.

My /dev/sdb partition table looks like this now:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 43 340992 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb2 43 182402 1464795137 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 43 773 5858304 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb6 773 1137 2928640 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb7 1137 1514 3022848 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb8 1514 1562 389120 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb9 1562 182402 1452592128 fd Linux raid autodetect

It would not work if we created the RAID devices with both involved disk drives, but we have the possibility to create a failed RAID device with only the partition from the new unused disk. We use the word ‘missing’ in place of the partition on sda.

We create the first RAID device with:
# mdadm --create /dev/md0 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb1

And we create the rest of the RAID devices:

# mdadm --create /dev/md1 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb5
# mdadm --create /dev/md2 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb6
# mdadm --create /dev/md3 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb7
# mdadm --create /dev/md4 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb8
# mdadm --create /dev/md5 --chunk=64 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb9

Type ‘cat /proc/mdstat‘ to see the 5 failed RAID devices:

# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md5 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb9[1]
1452590968 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

md4 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb8[1]
389108 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

md3 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb7[1]
3021812 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

md2 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb6[1]
2927604 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

md1 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb5[1]
5857268 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

md0 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb1[1]
340980 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]

unused devices:

Format, Mount and copy RAID devices

Prepare and copy the root partition (md0 mounted on /mnt)

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0
# mount /dev/md0 /mnt
# cd / && find . -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt

Prepare and copy /usr partition (md1 mounted on /mnt/usr)

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/md1
# mount /dev/md1 /mnt/usr
# cd /usr && find . -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt/usr

Prepare and copy /var partition (md2 mounted on /mnt/var)

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/md2
# mount /dev/md2 /mnt/var
# cd /var && find . -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt/var

Prepare swap partition (md3)

# mkswap /dev/md3

Prepare /tmp partition (md4 mounted on /mnt/tmp)

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/md4
# mount /dev/md4 /mnt/tmp
# chmod 777 /mnt/tmp

Prepare /home partition (md5 mounted on /mnt/home)

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/md5
# mount /dev/md5 /mnt/home
# cd /home && find . -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt/home

Change fstab

Edit /mnt/etc/fstab and change all devices according to the new RAID devices
My /mnt/etc/fstab looks like this now

#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
/dev/md0 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda9 during installation
/dev/md5 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# /tmp was on /dev/sda8 during installation
/dev/md4 /tmp ext3 defaults 0 2
# /usr was on /dev/sda5 during installation
/dev/md1 /usr ext3 defaults 0 2
# /var was on /dev/sda6 during installation
/dev/md2 /var ext3 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
/dev/md3 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg and change root= so it points to /dev/md0.

Reboot on RAID devices

This worked the first time for me, without any console access :)
Run update-grub when you are logged in again.

Fix paritions types on sda

Now that we don’t use the partitions on our original system disk (sda) we can edit the partition table and set the partitions to type ‘fd raid autodetect‘. My sda partition table looks like this now:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 43 340992 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 43 182402 1464795137 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 43 773 5858304 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda6 773 1137 2928640 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda7 1137 1514 3022848 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda8 1514 1562 389120 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda9 1562 182402 1452592128 fd Linux raid autodetect

Add sda partitions to RAID devices

Now it’s time to add the unused partitions from sda to our failed raid devices.

# mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda1

We can see the RAID device (md0) rebuilding onto the new disk with ‘cat /proc/mdstat‘

Add the other partitions:

# mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sda5
# mdadm --add /dev/md2 /dev/sda6
# mdadm --add /dev/md3 /dev/sda7
# mdadm --add /dev/md4 /dev/sda8
# madam --add /dev/md5 /dev/sda9

To watch the rebuild, run
# watch cat /proc/mdstat

Every 2,0s: cat /proc/mdstat Mon Dec 6 19:55:04 2010

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid1 sda1[2] sdb1[1]
340980 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

md1 : active raid1 sda5[2] sdb5[1]
5857268 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 sda6[2] sdb6[1]
2927604 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
resync=DELAYED

md3 : active raid1 sda7[2] sdb7[1]
3021812 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
resync=DELAYED

md4 : active raid1 sda8[2] sdb8[1]
389108 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
resync=DELAYED

md5 : active raid1 sda9[2] sdb9[1]
1452590968 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
[>....................] recovery = 0.6% (9617600/1452590968) finish=268.3min speed=89629K/sec

unused devices:

Don’t reboot until all devices has rebuilt.

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Plesk 9.x to 10 migration – no IMAP subfolders – workaround

Posted on by mark

Had the “pleasure” of migrating a Plesk 9.5 Linux server to another running the brand new Plesk 10 panel. Apart from the new GUI interface in Plesk 10, the migration was fast and went smooth. Or so I thought. The first problem I noticed was missing .htaccess files. The other, more serious, problem was with IMAP/Maildir subfolders not being migrated. The quick solution was a loop of mail accounts and rsync over ssh. Change the SOURCE host to the IP/hostname of the “old” server, or some other server with a copy of the complete Maildir’s. Run the script on the “new” Plesk 10 host.

#!/bin/sh
 
### rsync app must be installed on source & destination
## apt-get install rsync
 
### This script should be run on the destination host (Plesk 10)
 
ROOT=/var/qmail/mailnames
DEPTH=2
SOURCE=old-plesk.server.tld
 
### Loop folders
for i in $(find $ROOT -maxdepth 2 -type d -print); do
        if [ -d $i/Maildir ]; then
                echo "Syncing $i"
                rsync -ar ${SOURCE}:${i}/Maildir ${i}/
        fi
done

A quick fix for the missing .htaccess files could be running the following on the “old” server. I have ssh keys installed and enabled agent authentication forwarding, so I won’t need to enter my password for each file.

find /var/www/vhosts/ -name '.htaccess' \
 -exec rsync -a {} root@new-plesk.server.tld:{} \;
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