07.06.2020
Replace the root disk
Recently the disk holding the root (/) filesystem on one of my linux systems started to report increased SMART raw read error rates, seek error rates and ECC recovered hardware errors.
As these are early indications of a failing disk, it became time to replace the disk.
Normally replacing a disk comes down to plugging in the new one, coyping over the data, umount the old disk, mount the new one in place, unplug the old disk.
But when it is the disk with the root filesystem a couple extra steps are needed.
The steps below worked for my Debian system without problems (even used the opportunity to upgrade to an SSD :-)
(source is this thread on StackExchange)
The following makes some assumptions:
- All commands ran as root when possible
- You are on a physical console to the host (need to type in grub commands to boot up the new disk!)
- You want an ext4 files system
- You are loosely familiar on a basic level with all commands run
- You are NOT booting from a RAID device
So here we go.
- Physically install new disk into computer and connect to available port leaving old disk in existing position.
- Boot computer into old OS.
- Prepare and mount new disk; first identify new disk
fdisk -l
- Partition new disk
fdisk /dev/(newdisk)
Make partition primary partition with type "83" file system type.
- Create filesystem
mkfs.ext4 /dev/(newpartition)
- Mount new filesystem
mkdir /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)
mount /dev/(newpartition) /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)
- Copy disk:
/sbin/init 1 (drop to single user mode)
rsync -avxHAX / /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)
- Update FSTAB on newdisk
blkid (note UUID of new partition)
vi /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)/etc/fstab
Replace existing UUID of / in FSTAB to new disk UUID
- Configure grub and install to new disk boot loader:
grub-mkconfig
update-grub
grub-install /dev/(newdisk)
- Copy grub.cfg from old disk to new
cp -ax /boot/grub/grub.cfg /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
- Open grub.cfg on new disk and replace all UUIDs with new disk
vi /mnt/(newpartitionmountpoint)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Replace all old UUIDs with the UUID of the new disk
- Shut down computer
shutdown
- Physically move the new drive to the 1st drive location and remove old drive
- Start computer and grub should present:
error: no such device: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
GRUB rescue>
- Manually boot new OS from grub; first identify the drive and partition of the boot files
ls [to identify your drive and partition options]
ls (hdx,p)/ [to identify which partition has the /boot folder]
- Then, you can load the boot menu manually from the drive and partition you found above. Typically this would be (hd0,msdos1).
set prefix="(hdx,p)/boot/grub"
set root="(hdx,p)"
insmod normal
normal
- Login to OS on new drive
- Configure grub again
fdisk -l (note dev of newdisk)
grub-mkconfig
update-grub
grub-install /dev/newdisk
And that should be it!
10:58 | Linux | Permalink
24.05.2020
rkhunter CRLF confusion
On my Linux hosts I'm running rkhunter. On a newly configured host it lately reported the following warning:
Warning: The SSH and rkhunter configuration options should be the same:
SSH configuration option 'PermitRootLogin': no
Rkhunter configuration option 'ALLOW_SSH_ROOT_USER': no
On first sight the warning does not seem to make much sense, as both configuration options seem to be set to the same value (no).
But digging further reveals that they are stored slightly different:
# file /etc/rkhunter.conf
/etc/rkhunter.conf: ASCII text
# file /etc/ssh/sshd_config
/etc/ssh/sshd_config: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
Turns out that rkhunter is also checking the line terminators as part of the configuration values, and warns because they are different.
Knowing this, the fix is simple: run dos2unix on the CRLF file
11:22 | Linux | Permalink
21.05.2020
ipaddr CLI tool
While doing some maintenance on my server, I got tired of searching through the output of ip addr show to find the IP addresses configured on the interfaces.
Thus I wrote a simple CLI tool to display the information I needed in a concise and human friendly form: ipaddr
$ ipaddr
lo 127.0.0.1/8
ens5 198.51.100.160/24
tun24008 10.123.199.78/32
tun71991639 10.200.123.5/32
tun26724 10.100.100.235/32
tun3883710 10.123.111.7/32
A nice side-effect of writing this in Go is that it works out-of-the-box also on non-Linux systems :-)
19:38 | Networking | Permalink
18.04.2020
Poor man's reboot notification
Sometimes you need to be notified about reboots of a machine without having the luxury of a proper monitoring system.
The following crontab entry triggers an e-mail when the host has been rebooted in the last 5 minutes.
*/5 * * * * [ $(sed -e 's/\..*//' /proc/uptime) -lt 540 ] && echo "Host has been rebooted! Uptime: $(uptime)"
15:03 | Linux | Permalink
12.04.2020
Cottage cheese Avocado Crostini
Inspired by this recipe, I made some yummy Crostini using Cottage cheese (instead of Ricotta cheese) and Avocado with some drops of Aceto balsamico.
19:16 | Food | Permalink
28.03.2020
Ein Lied für Jetzt
08:53 | Music | Permalink
21.03.2020
ip_compact and ip_diff
Somehow I always end up working with lists of IP networks and needing to minimize and compare them.
Some of my Perl scripts for this might still be hidden in a corporate source repository, and somewhere in the backups of my old Linux laptop should be even earlier attempts in Bash.
Both of them are not very useful to me where they are, thus I've written yet another version.
This time in Go using the ipaddr package.
Say hello to ip_compact and ip_diff :-)
15:18 | Networking | Permalink
17.03.2020
#StayTheFuckHome
Stay The Fuck Home!
19:33 | Music | Permalink
20.12.2019
This Page is Designed to Last
This Page is Designed to Last — a manifesto from Jeff Huang for preserving content on the web, where he advocates to keep content on the web available and pledges to keep his site available for the next 10 years.
Having my content in this weblog online since 2002, I can very much relate to this initiative and additionally would like to point to the efforts of archive.org (aka. The Internet Archive).
The wayback machine of archive.org allows to see old versions of websites, even when the website itself is no longer available.
For me personally this became critically useful when the database of my weblog vanished with no current backup and I then used the archived versions from archive.org to restore the missing content.
Thus I would like to encourage everyone to support the efforts of archive.org with a donation.
09:56 | Misc | Permalink
02.11.2019
The Comet Is Coming
The Comet Is Coming is a 21st century style Jazz band.
Discovered at the Jazznojazz festival :-)
11:04 | Music | Permalink
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