Josh Olson’s Blog

Update: The current (173.14.09) stable NVIDIA driver works with Fedora 9. The following information is outdated and kept for archival purposes.

The latest stable NVIDIA drivers will not install when using the version of X.org that is distributed with Fedora 9. I was able to use NVIDIA’s beta 172.08 display drivers after a few manipulations.

Version 172.08 does not support ABI, so I placed the following in /usr/bin/startx

defaultserverargs="-ignoreABI"

I also commented the following from /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# Load "glx"

Fedora 9 and NVIDIA Drivers x86_64 Instructions

Download the appropriate beta driver

$ wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/
Linux-x86_64/173.08/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.08-pkg2.run

Run the installer

$ sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.08-pkg2.run

Edit /usr/bin/startx (for runlevel 3 users) and add the following:

defaultserverargs="-ignoreABI"

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and comment the following:

# Load "glx"

I upgraded my primary workstation to Fedora 9 this week. Although the upgrade was mostly uneventful, I did struggle with a few annoyances.

The latest revision of openbox lacks a specific functionality that’s vital to my coherent work flow. It lacks the ability to hold down the left mouse button on the title bar, and use the scroll wheel to migrate the currently held window to the next or previous desktop. It was easy to roll back to a previous version from the Fedora Core 6 Extras repository.

Another annoyance is that konsole removed the –noxft switch in their latest revision, this allowed me to prevent my terminals from having anti-aliased fonts. I use the font Terminus (highly recommended, by the way) within my terminals, and having that anti-aliased is just unacceptable. I could just disable anti-aliasing across all applications, but then my browser and mail client would look terrible. I was able to solve this issue with ~/.fonts.conf.

The last issue I had was with pulseaudio. Sound was very soft, even with the speakers and alsamixer set to 100%. I removed alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, and things started functioning normally.

I tried KDE again this week, and was dissapointed (as usual.) It was quite sluggish, and seemed very kludged together. Maybe someone will develop a feature-full window manager that doesn’t require big iron to run before I’m a gray-beard. They would then have to convince me that it is indeed better to have all that eye candy, yeah right.

A software raid group disk failed in one of my servers yesterday.

The kernel was spewing SCSI errors:

kernel: ata2: status=0xd0 { Busy }
kernel: SCSI error : return code = 0×8000002

# mdadm --display /dev/md0
# mdadm --display /dev/md1

both reported a failed disk sdb*

The procedure to rebuild the md groups is as follows:

Replace bad disk (sdb in this scenario.) Note that if you do not bring down the server to replace the disk, be sure to “remove” the disk from the raid groups using mdadm.

# mdadm --remove /dev/md0 /dev/sdb0
# mdadm --remove /dev/md1 /dev/sdb1

Read the good disk’s partition table (sda in this scenario.)

# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 14 19457 156183930 fd Linux raid autodetect

Install identical partition table on newly replaced disk. Create partitions that start and end on the same listed cylinders and are of type “fd.” Be sure to set the boot flag, and don’t forget to write the changes.

# fdisk /dev/sdb

Add partitions back to the appropriate raid groups.

# mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdb0
# mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdb1

Ensure the raid groups are rebuilding properly.

# mdadm --display /dev/md0
# mdadm --display /dev/md1

Friday night, good friends arrived with fishing gear in anticipation of our annual expedition. After a night of celebration (and not much sleep) we woke at 04:45 and drove to the Huron river in Skanee, MI. This was our first time fishing this popular area, so we were surprised to see the abundance of other fishermen. The weather was decent, but the water temperature was still too cold for the fish to “run” in full force. Although our party was fruitless, we saw five Steelhead caught over the weekend. With the rising water temperature, I expect the fish to be more prevalent by this weekend. I plan to try my luck at least once more.

This afternoon I was faced with searching a directory tree for large files that have rotated within the last 24 hours - a symptom of a problem we were experiencing with a service.

Here’s what I put together quickly:

# find -iname name-\*.log -mtime 0 -exec du -sh {} \;

Explanation of the switches (from the find man page):

-iname pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches case insensitive shell pattern pattern

-mtime n
data was last modified n*24 hours ago.

-exec command {} \;
run the specified command on the matched files


It’s not complex (and probably not post-worthy,) but someone may find it helpful.

In preparation for the bicycle purchase, I ordered a SIGMA BC 1606L DTS bike computer. I haven’t opened it yet, but it looks quite neat. I look forward to obsessing over my speed and distance, and will probably buy the add-on cadence monitor. No bike-shopping updates yet, I’ll be test-riding James’s 2006 Trek 1500 tomorrow after work.

Never have I felt the need to wear a helmet while riding on asphalt - until today. During lunch I experienced my first trip on a cyclocross bicycle, the Kona Jake specifically. I’ve been shopping for a new bicycle for almost a month and am now enticed by ‘cross bikes. The Jake was fast, responsive, and I felt comfortable riding it. I can’t wait to test the 2008 model. Cross country sports should have one built by the end of the month.

I’m open to suggestions.

Danielle & I stayed at the Value Motor Host Inn last night because it’s easier than trying to crash at a friends / parents place, plus we enjoy our own space / sleep hours / etc. Last night we hit the hot tub for about 20 minutes before crashing, it was nice.

I had my hair(s) cut this morning, and going to pick up my tux in 30 minutes at Image Formal Wear. They were kind enough to call me this morning and tell me that I need to call all of my groomsmen and schedule appointments for them to pick up their tuxes. I laughed at them. I’ve got people coming from all over the place and there’s no way I’m taking the time to coordinate that. We rented our tuxes from them (big mistake) because it saved us a bunch on our DJ from Taylored Entertainment. We’ve seen Mitch in action and were very impressed.

Dear Image Formal Wear,

If you wish to schedule appointments with my groomsmen, call them yourself. Also, that neat little “shipping charge” for not picking them up before 15:00 is total BS.

Danielle & I are getting married Saturday, 14 Jul, 2007 at St. Michael church in Marquette, MI. The reception will be held at Upfront & Company. We are expecting 255 guests, I am looking forward to seeing everyone. More information about the wedding can be found at http://www.olson-ventre.com.

I am in Marquette, and will be here until Sunday evening. We will drive back to Houghton for the night, and leave for Green Bay on Monday morning. I am without mail and mobile until 19 Jul(!)

Some of the jet direct emulation daemons on Kyocera Mitas are not compatible with the check_hpjd nagios plugin. I spent some time revamping our SNMP checks for certain printers - I have not yet fished, but am definitely making progress.

I ordered a server & rack extensions [plus round -> square hole converters] for one of our faculty members wanting to drop a Dell server in an instrument rack (25″ deep), this should be fun / interesting.

I’ve been spending a lot of time “putting out fires”, and resolving rt requests this week. Tomorrow night we’ll be migrating our storage from a local array to DCS network storage. This should be a major relief to our backup system.