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!’

Or if you are to lazy, you are welcome to download the ppc binaries I compiled.

It works, but it’s not getting faster.

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

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”
- Brian W. Kernighan.

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.

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]

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

unused devices:


Don’t reboot until all devices has rebuilt.

Kære Venstre,

Hvordan kan jeg tage det her alvorligt?

Jeg læser om nye regler dagligt. Om det er multimedieskat, familiesammenføring eller partikkel filtre “i miljøets hellige navn” er ligegyldigt. I kører i den forkerte retning. Drop millimeter retfærdigheden og keep it simple.

Det har været nogle drøje år som medlem af Venstre. Håber I kan rette ind og igen fremstå som et borligt parti, som sætter personlig frihed og ansvarlighed øverst.

#!/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:{} \;