Wumple.com

I recently switched wumple.com’s boot partition to a RAID 1 array so I will be able to boot up even if the disk that had the original /boot partition failed. I generally followed the directions (with modifications for my setup and Fedora, and skipping unneeded parts) from the HOWTO Install on Software RAID (Gentoo).

At the end, I needed to grow my RAID 1 array from 2 devices to 3 so I could add the original /boot partition to the array. 

It was much easier than I expected.  Here is what I did:

1. Set up the partitions on the new disk as usual for RAID (including partition type fd, "Linux raid autodetect"
2. Expand the number of active devices in the array (md1 from 2 to 3 drives in my case): "/sbin/mdadm /dev/md1 –grow -n 3"
3. Add the new device (in my case /dev/sdc1) to the array: "/sbin/mdadm /dev/md1 –add /dev/sdc1"
4. Watch the array rebuild onto the new device: "watch -n 1 cat /proc/mdstat"
5. Followed the steps in the HOWTO to put grub back on the device

For some reason, in /etc/fstab I had to change /boot from "LABEL=/boot" to "/dev/md1" in /etc/fstab so the system could mount /boot during startup (and I know I gave the filesystem the label of /boot on creation).  Otherwise the failure to mount /boot when all local filesystems are mounted would stop the boot process.

I recently had a drive in my Linux software RAID 5 array begin to die.  When I went to install the replacement, I could not find any straightforward instructions on how to put the new drive in the array, so I thought I’d toss what I did here in case others find it useful.

My machine is running Fedora Core 6 using mdadm with a RAID 5 array (so one disk in the array can die without data loss).  For these directions, lets say the RAID array is /dev/md0, the bad disk is /dev/sdc, and the RAID partition on the bad disk was /dev/sdc1.
(more…)

Okay, so there is another part of the Fedora Core 6 Upgrade saga.  🙂

When starting X-11 using the default GNOME desktop, many icons were missing (replaced with large X’s) and an error about dbus-launch failing to start appeared.

To fix this error, I had to manually install the dbus-x11 package (which the upgrade did not install for some reason): "yum install dbus-x11"

Also, at first startx would fail with a font failure error message.  I then remembered I disabled startup of xfs (the X Font Server) a few years ago.  I temporarily started xfs with "/sbin/service xfs start" and it was happy.

I think this will be the last post about the upgrade of wumple.com to Fedora Core 6 from Fedora Core 2.

This post will cover RAID array monitoring with mdadm, and X-10 kernel module installation:
(more…)

Welcome to part four in the series about our upgrade of wumple.com to Fedora Core 6 from Fedora Core 2.  The closing of the Fedora Legacy project and thus no future security updates for FC2 spurred this upgrade.

Part 4 features cyrus-imapd, the IMAP email server which I use because it supports IMAP IDLE push email which I use with ChatterEmail on my Palm Treo 680.
(more…)

Welcome to part three in the series about our upgrade of wumple.com to Fedora Core 6 from Fedora Core 2.  This upgrade was precipitated by the closing of the Fedora Legacy project and thus there is no hope of security updates for FC2.

Part 3 features apcupsd UPS monitoring and yum and system updates.

(more…)

Here is part two in the series about our upgrade of wumple.com to Fedora Core 6 from Fedora Core 2.  This upgrade was precipitated by the closing of the Fedora Legacy project and thus there is no hope of security updates for FC2.

Part 2 features networking and SMART hard drive health monitoring via smartd.

(more…)

I finally upgraded wumple.com to Fedora Core 6 from Fedora Core 2 since the Fedora Legacy project has closed and there is no hope of security updates for FC2.

In case it helps others, here is part 1 (RAID array) of a multi-part series about the trials and tribulations an upgrade to Fedora Core 6 entailed.
(more…)