Re: [CentOS] Some basic LVM questions
On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 10:44 -0800, Monte Milanuk wrote: > M. Hamzah Khan wrote: > > There won't be any issue in doing this. The installer just tries to make > > things easier by creating one big volume group. > > > > I'd say that in some ways seperating the two disks in this case would > > actually be better. :) > > > My last 'serious' experience with Linux was some years ago... mostly > before LVM really became popular (it was out and about, but mostly only > in SuSE). I'm still 'stuck' in the mind set of a main drive or > partition for things like '/', possibly even /boot, /var, /usr, etc. and > then keeping /home separate - mainly so the user data in /home survives > upgrades and updates and such ;) I actually ran into this recently too! 3TB volume group, with very old backups, and no RAID. One drive failed, almost lost all of the data. I had to send the drives off to a data recovery center and get the data recovered professionally. > > With both drives in one big volume group, failure of one drive will > > (most likely) cause both the OS and data to be lost. > > > There in lies some of my confusion with this subject; correct me if I'm > wrong in my understanding here: with LVM, I can keep adding more drives > to a 'pool' and expand the size of the 'volume' that the OS sees > available to it... but if any drive in that volume fails, I'd probably > lose everything stored in that volume?!? Sounds like a somewhat risky > business to me, unless you *really* needed a storage volume that big > that you had to span multiple drives to do so. > That is correct. You can add more drives and expand the volume group in order to increase the size of your logical volumes. Losing one drive would indeed cause all your data in the volume group to be lost (although there are some situations where it isn't too difficult to recover some of the data). What I think most people do (and what I am doing now), is to setup RAID-1 or so behind the volume group. This way you will still be safe if one of the drives fail. Keep in mind that RAID is not a backup solution, and you should still create regular backups. :) > > Seperating them will mean that if your OS drive fails you can replace > > the dead drive, reinstall CentOS (or restore from a backup), and your > > data will be accessible again. > > > Kind of what I had in mind, as the 13GB drive is much older (circa 2005, > if its the original one put in when the previous owner built the box > from a bare-bones kit) than the 500GB SATA drive (earlier this year, > when I stuck it in there) so if I had to put money on one failing before > the other... ;) > ___ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Some basic LVM questions
On Sat, 2009-11-07 at 22:22 -0800, Monte Milanuk wrote: > Hello all, > > I've been 'away' from all things Linux in general and RH in particular > for a long while, so I've got some catching up to do ;) > > I've got a pretty fair collection of tabs reading on LVM and how it > works and why its such a great thing for enterprise use, etc., being > able to add storage to the pool and all that. LVM was just kind of > catching on when I moved away from Linux for a while, so it's a little > odd to me. > > What I have currently is an older PC that I'm hoping to use as a home > server / occasional 'workstation'. One 13GB main drive, and a 500GB > drive for network storage. The default install in CentOS 5.4 seems to > want to just lump everything together in one big volume. I was > thinking perhaps it'd be better to have two volumes (or pools, like I > said - still learning and not entirely confident of the lingo > involved)... one for the main or 'system' drive (the 13GB one with / > mounted on it), and another one for the 500GB sata drive on it - so if > I want to add another big drive for more storage, it'd go under that > group, ready to serve up storage to the WLAN. > > Is there anything particularly 'wrong' with that layout, as compared > to the default 'everything in one logical volume' approach that the > installer utilized? There won't be any issue in doing this. The installer just tries to make things easier by creating one big volume group. I'd say that in some ways seperating the two disks in this case would actually be better. :) With both drives in one big volume group, failure of one drive will (most likely) cause both the OS and data to be lost. Seperating them will mean that if your OS drive fails you can replace the dead drive, reinstall CentOS (or restore from a backup), and your data will be accessible again. Of course you would still have to create regular backups, or you would still be in a very unhappy situation if the data drive fails but it would still save you a lot of headache in the event that you encounter a situation in which only the OS drive fails. :) Regards Hamzah -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] IPSec VPN Under CentOS 5.4
On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 10:48 -0700, Geoff Galitz wrote: > > Openswan is your friend. I have it running (under OpenSUSE) and it is > quite easy. I tend to favor IPsec over SSL as I don't like to have > openssl as a dependancy. > > http://www.openswan.org > I second this. IPSec also has another advantage over SSL as it is compatible with non-linux devices (Cisco etc) which don't have support for SSL based VPNs, and is just as (if not more) secure. Regards Hamzah -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] CentOS 5.4 and BitTorrent
On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 22:17 -0400, Jim Wildman wrote: > On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Les Mikesell wrote: > > >> > >> Could someone describe to me what the rush is? I mean what drives > >> the need that you need to have it _right now_ ? > > > > There is always the risk that a critical security vulnerability will be > > discovered with the fix only made available in an update to 5.4. > > > > Obviated by the fact that these bits (or their very closely related > kin-bits) have already been in production (via RHEL) for at least a month. > > I was wondering the same thing earlier...why the rush? What new feature > is there that everyone MUST HAVE NOW!! KVM support could be one. Although I don't think thats THAT big of a deal to be making such a fuss about. > > -- > Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE j...@rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com > "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best > state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." > Thomas Paine > _______ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Updating an AntiVirus trougth a proxy (ERROR)
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:49 -0400, Alberto García Gómez wrote: > Here is my problem > > [r...@shannon CGPMcAfee]# ./updateDatFiles > CGPMcAfee DAT files update program version 2.2 > Local avvDAT version is 5726 > Connecting to 'update.nai.com' [72.247.238.178:80] via HTTP protocol... > *** failed to connect: socket error > > The problem is that I can't change the script and I'm under a proxy server, > but the updater ignore it. Same happen with others updaters > > WHAT CAN I DO? > I'm not sure if it'll work with that specific updater, but maybe try: export http_proxy="http://$USERNAME:$passw...@$proxy_address:$PORT"; Regards Hamzah -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] External Backup Systems?
On Sun, 2009-09-27 at 21:10 -0400, Robert Heller wrote: > At Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:40:17 +0100 CentOS mailing list > wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hey everyone, > > > > My home server just had a disk failure a few weeks ago and like a lot of > > people I haven't ever really made backups on a regular basis. So I was > > looking into backup solutions which will save me from this situation > > again. > > > > Now I have Bacula setup, and backing up my files onto my home server. > > > > Although this works great, I have one issue: The disk in my server was > > the one that actually failed, and so, even with RAID1, could fail again. > > So to get around this I wanted to backup to external media aswell. > > > > I don't really think external hard drives are that great considering > > they are just as reliable as internal hard drives which would be > > pointless as RAID1 should be reliable enough in that case. > > The point to using an external hard drive is that unlike the internal > one(s), the external one(s) would be 'idle' most of the time (only > active during the actual backup process, which would be a once every n > time units (once a day, once a week, whatever). Depending on the > technology in use, 'inactive' can mean unmounted, sleep mode, powered > off, disconnected, etc. Thats true. Although I wanted to avoid hard drives mainly because they seem to have a failure rate which I'm not too comfortable with. In the last 7 months, I've had to replace at least 9 disks, some due to a bad head which dropped and scrached a platter (although this was due to that model having a problem during manufacturing) and some due to bad sectors. Both of these issues can occur in external drives regardless of whether they are active or even switched off. I've actually had issues with external drives in the past too, and have heard alot storys from friends and family who have had such issues too with external drives. The additional to spin ups and spin downs and extra knocking around doesn't really help keeping data safe. :) I'm beginning to get the feeling that considering cost, storage space, and realiablilty the only really feasible solution would be to use hard drives in RAID5 or 6 with a large redundancy group. I guess the likelyness of more than two disks failing at the same time is quite slim, especially if I have a large redundancy group. I could always keep a spare disk so if one disk fails I can replace it ASAP, reducing the chances of data loss even more. > > > > Backing up to DVDs are quite unreliable too, a simple scratch could > > render the backup useless. Also it would require quite a lot of DVDs to > > backup my data (at least 500GB!). > > The clue here is 'Jewel Cases!' Keep your CDs and DVDs in Jewel Cases. > Don't store CDs and DVDs in sleves or on a spindle or other 'low cost' > option. Use a proper Jewel Case. I do use proper jewel cases, but even so I have found they aren't perfect at at keeping discs scratch free, besides using 63 dual layer DVDs to backup 500GB worth of data on a regular basis would really be a pain. :D > > > > The only other option I could think of is to use tapes, but this option > > can be quite pricy for a home user. > > Tapes are actually the worst option. All maner of failure modes, unless > you go to extreme measures to protect them (which talks it from a pricy > option to an imposibly pricy option). > > > > So I was wondering what you guys use for external backups for a home > > system containing at least 500GB worth of important data? > > I don't have disk that ginormous (and cannot imagine having disks that > size). I have a 73gig SCSI system disk, that I do monthly fulls and > daily incrementals to an enternal 120gig SATA 2.5" disk in an USB > enclosure. I run a cron job that uses dump and a Tower Of Hanoi > sequence. Monthly I manually burn DVDs of the previous months backups. I actually have 4x1TB disks, but only 500GB is important. The rest is historical stuff I keep for reference which although is unreplaceable, it would not be a huge loss if it were to be damaged. :) > > > > Regards > > > > Hamzah > -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] External Backup Systems?
On Sun, 2009-09-27 at 18:24 -0500, Eric Clark wrote: > NAS has actually gotten very effective > > You may want to take a look at the D-Links and Buffalo NAS Servers for > having the backup info on. > > > This may be a very good alternative over the long run as well becuase > the NAS will be on 24/7 and draw alot less electricity than a full > blown server.. Well my server will be on 24/7 anyway as it runs as my mail server and webserver anyway. Besides, a NAS is really just a glorified mini-server with a simplified management system. I could quite easily replicate all of its features on a Linux machine using standard tools. Thats not really what I wanted although so far it seems that this is the only real feasible route considering the amount of data that needs to be backed up. > > http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=nas+storage+dual > +bay&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=4947813462866442505&ei=FfO_Ss6BFdHj8AbEx8yuAQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=5#ps-sellers > > You can also pick up similar devices on ebay and the likes of buy.com > for alot less. > > The benefit is of course being able to use SATA II hard drives that > you already own, so you would cut down on cost there as well. > > I dropped 2x1TB into one of these babies and actually have it rocking > with 2 500GB partitions. *one for *(cough) movies and one of course > for files. > > One of the drives failed about 2 weeks ago, and I simply pulled it > out, and got a new one installed the same day, and it copied > everything back over. > > > It has RAID and a few other technologies like being able to continue a > download after you turn your PC or server off (connected to internet > of course). > > > Then also comes the benefits of less electricity usage to pay for. > That stuff aint cheap. Its a very smart solution for a growing > problem and the best factor that I have found with it is that it is > simple to setup, and easier to back up to knowing that it is always > online. > > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 6:14 PM, M. Hamzah Khan > wrote: > Hello Eric, > > I've actually looked into NAS, but I wanted to escape using a > hard drive > based solution. > > Besides using Bacula on my server is basically the same thing > as it > backs up all the machines on my network :). > > I guess I'll have to settle with using a hard drive based > solution if I > want to keep the price down, and storage space up, tapes are > really too > expensive and I guess using RAID1 on a few disks should be > reliable > enough I hope. :) > > Thanks anyway. > > Regards > > Hamzah > > > On Sun, 2009-09-27 at 17:47 -0500, Eric Clark wrote: > > For backups I would actually look at a NAS Server dual bay > or quad bay > > 1TB x 2 or 3 drives > > > > The NAS is pretty simple to setup and would require network > backups > > and accessibility however you could actually do them in NTFS > so that > > you could backup windows machines as well. > > > > http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=netgear+nas > > > > +storage&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=cuu_Sr6GHsKe8Abz1ZShAQ&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=7 > > > > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 5:40 PM, M. Hamzah Khan > > wrote: > > Hey everyone, > > > > My home server just had a disk failure a few weeks > ago and > > like a lot of > > people I haven't ever really made backups on a > regular basis. > > So I was > > looking into backup solutions which will save me > from this > > situation > > again. > > > > Now I have Bacula setup, and backing up my files > onto my home > > server. > > > > Although this works great, I have one issue: The > disk in my > > server was > > the one that actually failed, and so, even with > RAID1, could > > fail again. > > So to get around this I wanted to backup to external > media > > aswell. > > >
Re: [CentOS] External Backup Systems?
Hello Eric, I've actually looked into NAS, but I wanted to escape using a hard drive based solution. Besides using Bacula on my server is basically the same thing as it backs up all the machines on my network :). I guess I'll have to settle with using a hard drive based solution if I want to keep the price down, and storage space up, tapes are really too expensive and I guess using RAID1 on a few disks should be reliable enough I hope. :) Thanks anyway. Regards Hamzah On Sun, 2009-09-27 at 17:47 -0500, Eric Clark wrote: > For backups I would actually look at a NAS Server dual bay or quad bay > 1TB x 2 or 3 drives > > The NAS is pretty simple to setup and would require network backups > and accessibility however you could actually do them in NTFS so that > you could backup windows machines as well. > > http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=netgear+nas > +storage&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=cuu_Sr6GHsKe8Abz1ZShAQ&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=7 > > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 5:40 PM, M. Hamzah Khan > wrote: > Hey everyone, > > My home server just had a disk failure a few weeks ago and > like a lot of > people I haven't ever really made backups on a regular basis. > So I was > looking into backup solutions which will save me from this > situation > again. > > Now I have Bacula setup, and backing up my files onto my home > server. > > Although this works great, I have one issue: The disk in my > server was > the one that actually failed, and so, even with RAID1, could > fail again. > So to get around this I wanted to backup to external media > aswell. > > I don't really think external hard drives are that great > considering > they are just as reliable as internal hard drives which would > be > pointless as RAID1 should be reliable enough in that case. > > Backing up to DVDs are quite unreliable too, a simple scratch > could > render the backup useless. Also it would require quite a lot > of DVDs to > backup my data (at least 500GB!). > > The only other option I could think of is to use tapes, but > this option > can be quite pricy for a home user. > > So I was wondering what you guys use for external backups for > a home > system containing at least 500GB worth of important data? > > Regards > > Hamzah > -- > M. Hamzah Khan > RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 > Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com > URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com > > ___ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > > ___ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com Mobile: +44 (0)7525663951 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
[CentOS] External Backup Systems?
Hey everyone, My home server just had a disk failure a few weeks ago and like a lot of people I haven't ever really made backups on a regular basis. So I was looking into backup solutions which will save me from this situation again. Now I have Bacula setup, and backing up my files onto my home server. Although this works great, I have one issue: The disk in my server was the one that actually failed, and so, even with RAID1, could fail again. So to get around this I wanted to backup to external media aswell. I don't really think external hard drives are that great considering they are just as reliable as internal hard drives which would be pointless as RAID1 should be reliable enough in that case. Backing up to DVDs are quite unreliable too, a simple scratch could render the backup useless. Also it would require quite a lot of DVDs to backup my data (at least 500GB!). The only other option I could think of is to use tapes, but this option can be quite pricy for a home user. So I was wondering what you guys use for external backups for a home system containing at least 500GB worth of important data? Regards Hamzah -- M. Hamzah Khan RedHat Certified Engineer Number: 804005539516829 Email: ham...@hamzahkhan.com URL: http://www.hamzahkhan.com signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
