The Danesh Project

Server time slow

Another issue that popped up tonight. The time on a payroll server seem to be slower then usual. Futher troubleshooting on the box revealed that it took 4 seconds to move 1 second on the server. This caused the payroll servers to stop communicating between each other as time sync was part of a security measure built into the payroll software we run here.

Some googling later it seem to be a BUG with the kernel. The fix, suggested to either update the kernel, recompile the kernel or add some kernel parameters in GRUB to fix the issue. I decided to go with the kernel parameters because this was a production server and the downtime window was very slim.

The fix,

1. vi /etc/boot/grub.conf
2. Add to the end of the kernel line. “clock=pit noapic nolapic”
3. reboot and check time. “watch date”

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How to boot RS6000 in single user mode

We had a DC shutdown last night, been in the office for almost 20 hours now. I’m sleepy,tired,sticky,red eyed and the damn 10 year old RS6000 box running AIX 4.3 decided to stay down.

The box was trying to connect to a NFS share on the network before the network services came up. This cause the RS6000 to stall at boot up.

The fix the below fixed the problem.

1. Restart the machine.
2. Wait the the AIX splash screen to come up. Devices begin to initialize here.
3. When you see the [keyboard] word on screen hit the F5 button or the 5 key depending on your console.
4. Choose “single user mode” when the maintenance screen comes up.
5. Edit the /etc/filesystems file and remove the NFS entries.
6. Reboot.

Hitting F1 or the 1 key will take you to the SMS (System Management Services) menu where you can access system configurations liek the network settings, boot sequence, firmware update and others….

Source: Sys Admin Pocket Survival Guide

How to restart sendmail in AIX

I had to work with an AIX box today which was having some issues with the mailq getting filled up frequently. The issue was not with the AIX box but the out SMTP box. Damn those spammers!!

Anyway, I had to restart the sendmail daemon on the AIX box. Walk through below,

1. Verify if sendmail is running. “ps -ef | grep sendmail“.

This should show: root 5704 1 0 11:08:42 – 0:00 sendmail: accepting connections on port 25

2. Stop sendmail. “stopsrc -s sendmail” or “kill -1 `cat /etc/senamail.pid`.

3. Verify if sendmail is running. “ps -ef | grep sendmail“.

No process should be returned.

4. Start sendmail. “startsrc -s sendmail -a “-bd -q30m”“.

-bd will start the sendmail as a SMTP mail relay router.

-q will the the interval in which the sendmail daemon will process save messages. If none is provided the daemon will default to instant processing.

5. Verify if sendmail is running. “ps -ef | grep sendmail“.

This should show: root 5704 1 0 11:30:23 – 0:00 sendmail: accepting connections on port 25

Are you a geek?

This is me,  a Linux geek and a RC geek.

Scott Johnson is working on a geek poster which currently has 57 different types of geeks on it. This poster will keep growing as new geeks get added so if you don’t find your geek now chances are you will down the road.

He has the full poster on Flickr and and individual geek avatars made available through Flickr too.

So, what kind of geek are you?

Source: HongKiat

Source: ScottJohnson

Defensio Anti Spam 1.2 released

The latest update for the Defensio Anti Spam WordPress was released today.

This update fixed all the issues me and other Defensio users were experiencing recently. The previous version broke and caused the plugin editor and theme editor to stop working. Bug Report

I have the latest version installed and running now. So far nothing seems to be broken.

Source: Defensio Anti Spam