KVM too fast for plymouth-upstart-bridge

Kind of a hilarious bug, really… I recently installed another Ubuntu 14.04 server running inside a KVM with a rather fast storage backend, therefore the system apparently boots just a tiny bit faster than my other images have in the past. Problem is, apparently that slows down the boot process as init thinks something must be crashing and decides to respawn it for good measure…

[ 2.311174] input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input3
[ 2.811553] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process (191) terminated with status 1
[ 2.812789] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 2.874117] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process (210) terminated with status 1
[ 2.875167] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 2.904155] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process (217) terminated with status 1
[ 2.905289] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 2.928618] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process (221) terminated with status 1
[ 2.929713] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 49.975826] Adding 2093052k swap on /dev/mapper/[...]

Yep, that’s right – 47 seconds waiting and idling, doing nothing when the image could have booted in a fraction of that time.

To fix it, simply add a sleep 2 to your /etc/init/plymouth-upstart-bridge.conf

[...]
stop on (stopping plymouth
         or stopping plymouth-shutdown)     

console output

exec plymouth-upstart-bridge
sleep 2

Init won’t freak out anymore and starts the image as it’s supposed to:

[    1.225045] random: lvm urandom read with 16 bits of entropy available
[    1.281118] bio: create slab <bio-1> at 1
[    1.370262] EXT4-fs (dm-0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[    1.684687] tsc: Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 2500.001 MHz
[    2.153550] Adding 2093052k swap on /dev/mapper/[....]-swap_1.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:2093052k FS
[    2.169332] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro
[    2.190451] input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input3
[    2.408937] EXT4-fs (vda1): mounting ext2 file system using the ext4 subsystem
[    2.417990] EXT4-fs (vda1): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)
[    3.316769] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[    3.316778] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
[    3.495345] FS-Cache: Loaded

Way better….

Updating SmartArray controllers on 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04

Want to install a firmware update on one of your HP SmartArray controllers while running a 64-bit OS? Turns out, the binaries distributed by HP seem to be 32-bit only – running for example Ubuntu 14.04, here’s what you gotta do…

root@host:~#./CP021971.scexe 
./CP021971.scexe: 153: ./CP021971.scexe: pushd: not found
./CP021971.scexe: 158: ./CP021971.scexe: popd: not found
./ccissflash: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

 

But libstdtc++6 seems already installed, hmpf… 32-bit maybe?

root@host:~# dpkg --add-architecture i386
root@host:~# apt-get update
root@host:~# apt-get install libstdc++6:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gcc-4.8-base:i386 gcc-4.9-base:i386 libc6:i386 libgcc1:i386
[...]

 

Let’s try that again…

root@host:~#./CP021971.scexe                                                                                                                                               
./CP021971.scexe: 153: ./CP021971.scexe: ./CP021971.scexe: 158: ./CP021971.scexe: popd: not found
pushd: not found

        This program consists of two phases: device discovery and device update.
        No device will be updated until you answer.

Do you want to run device discovery?
(yes/no) yes
Finding hardware. This may take a few minutes.
Found 1 devices.

Do you want to upgrade the device that has older ROM?
(yes/no) yes
1 devices will be updated.
Updating: P410i Slot: 0 from [5.70] to [6.40]
Updating: P410i Slot: 0 from [5.70] to [6.40]

As part of the reboot process, you must power cycle the server and any external array storage devices.

Well, that was rather easy…

The roaring sixties

… when two regular furniture salesmen could just walk into Harrods and buy a lion cub to fool around with.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms-piPxEzbk]

Wikipedia has a page about the story/events here. At £3500 / USD 6000 today not exactly cheap and apparently not that uncommon back then, according to the 45-minute full length documentary (which actually paints a slighty different, more realistic picture – worth watching)

Fix check_hpasm for 3.x kernels

After upgrading one of my HP ProLiant servers to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (better late than never) the check_hpasm Nagios plugin broke, resulting in no regular checks of the internal arrays being performed.

Apparently that’s a known bug with the hpacucli utility doing the actual checks, which can’t uname returning a 3.x kernel version. You can manually fix this by running it like this:

Usage:
 setarch x86_64 --uname-2.6 [[program] [program arguments]]
Example:
 setarch x86_64 --uname-2.6 hpacucli ctrl all show

Therefore a quick and dirty fix for check_hpasm would be to open up /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_hpasm and go to the part that reads:

if [ -x "$hpacucli" ]; then
 for i in config status
 do
$hpacucli ctrl all show $i | while read line
 do
 printf "%s %s\n" $i "$line"
 done
 done
 fi

and replace the line (553 in my case) calling hpacucli with:

/usr/bin/setarch x86_64 --uname-2.6 $hpacucli ctrl all show $i | while read line

Worked just fine for me.

Grant Williams ASFA 2013 presentation

While this isn’t an economics or investment blog by any means, here’s a nice 30 minute presentation by Grant Williams recently given during the 2013 ASFA conference. Humorous as always and IMHO spot-on, outlining the current state of international financial markets, the current government bond bubble and equity rally of 2013… and how it’s all inevitably going to go down in flames. Very well worth watching, even if you aren’t a investor, trader or otherwise closely associated with the financial markets.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A3CoFyi2U8]