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Author Message
25 new of 547 responses total.
cross
response 279 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 15:05 UTC 2003

The last time I did an OpenBSD install into RAIDframe, I think I did
something like the following:

        (1) Installed onto a single drive.
        (2) Recompiled the kernel and tested it.
        (3) Booted single-user.
        (4) Dumped /usr, /usr/local, /var and all the
            partitions I was RAID'ing to temp space
            somewhere.
        (5) Reclaimed the space of all the partitions
            I wanted to RAID'ify into one big partition
            using disklabel.
        (6) Configured and started up RAID.
        (7) Edited the RAID set disklabel and set up my
            partitions.
        (8) Rebuilt the new RAID set's parity (which went
            surprisingly quickly).
        (9) newfs'ed the new partitions and mounted them.
        (10)restored the earlier dumps to the new, RAIDed
            partitions.

This is slightly more complex, but I think you could do something similar
to get RAID working on the SCSI disks.  Certainly, installing onto the
IDE disk gives you the manueverability to bootstrap the SCSI drives.
Of course, that doesn't resolve the issue of deciding on an optimal
configuration.

Some more suggestions: Use RAID level 5.  You only have three disks;
if you had four, I'd suggest using 1+0, that's out.  Anyway, RAID 5 will
give decent performance (particularly if coupled with soft updates on all
partitions), will protect against dropping a disk, and won't waste *too*
much disk space.  With only three disks, you don't have much else in the
way of choices for RAID levels.  Striping won't but you any reliability,
RAID 4 is just dumb, and you don't have enough disk for mirroring.

The last real question is how big to set the interleaves.  I'd say 64KB,
and the reason for that is that 4.4BSD's FFS implementation defines a
weak concept of an ``extent''; basically, it'll try to read or write up
to 64KB in a single burst from/to the disk, if it can.  A 64KB interleave
size matches up with that idea of an extent as used by the filesystem,
and should give pretty good performance.
cross
response 280 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 15:06 UTC 2003

Oh, PS- Didn't remmers donate an OpenBSD machine that could be used
for software porting and things of that nature, leaving time to get
the nextgrex configuration right?
janc
response 281 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 16:09 UTC 2003

Yup, he did.

Well, ran into another snag in the OpenBSD install.  OpenBSD can't find
a network interface.

During the boot up, when it is polling the PCI bus, it lists:

  Broadcom BCM5702X rev 0x02 at pci0 dev 8 function 0 not configured.

That means it sees it, but doesn't have a driver for it.  On th list of
supported hardware it says:

  # Broadcom BCM570x (a.k.a. Tigon3) based PCI adapters (bge): (A) (B) (C)

The (A) (B) (C) business means that the driver isn't on any of the install
floppies.

I think this means I need the CD to do the install.  I can't very easily do
an ftp install without a network driver.
cross
response 282 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 18:38 UTC 2003

Wait; if you burn a CD with the CD-ROM boot image on it, does that have
the driver?  You should be able to boot with it and perform an installation
from there.
cross
response 283 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 18:39 UTC 2003

(PS- to Clarify.  The CD boot image is different from the OpenBSD CD
distribution, and can be downloaded from the OpenBSD web site.  Given
that there's a CD burner in Nextgrex, it shouldn't be hard to do.  The
URL for the CD-ROM image is: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.3/cdrom33.f
s
janc
response 284 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 19:06 UTC 2003

Right.  Unfortunately, I blew away the Windows98 install Mark did on Next
Grex, so I'd need to first install something on NextGrex that can fetch
that file over the network and can burn a CD.  I have a number of different
old OS's on CDs that I could try, but none are painless.  I don't have another
computer with a CD burner.

The real live OpenBSD 3.3 bsd was shipped from Alberta on Tuesday, apparantly.
It should arrive in the next few days.  There are also probably lots of people
who could make me a CD with that file on it.  Either of these two paths seem
much easier than reinstalling Windows98 on NextGrex.
aruba
response 285 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 19:20 UTC 2003

We don't know for sure if our CDs shipped Tuesday, only that our credit card
was charged then.  I sent mail to the shipping guy at openbsd.org to ask if
they really did ship.

But anyway, dang offered to make Jan a CD, and he'll bring it over tonight.
remmers
response 286 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 19 22:24 UTC 2003

Re #280:  My machine is still online and available to any staffer who
wants access.  It's currently running OpenBSD 3.2.  If it's going to be
used to test out software, I should upgrade it to 3.3.  If I have time
to do that in the next couple of days I will, but to be honest free time
is in somewhat short supply this week.  I'll see how it goes.  Dang
installed a CVS server on it, the idea being to use that to document
our work.  The CVS server hasn't been used yet, and nothing much else
has been done with the machine yet either, so it might not be too
unreasonable to use the OpenBSD CDs, when they arrive, to install 3.3
from scratch on my machine, then ask dang politely to re-install the
CVS server...
janc
response 287 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 00:49 UTC 2003

Turns out Valerie can burn CD's.  I should have known that.  So I've got a
working boot CD now.

I tried logging into John's machine and failed.  I should give him a call and
see what I've got wrong.
janc
response 288 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 01:54 UTC 2003

Hmmm.  Got it installed on the disk, but boot from the disk seems to be
hanging when the kernel tries to initialize the audio drivers.  I'll
investigate more later tonight and report back.
aruba
response 289 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:11 UTC 2003

I had a little trouble with the audio in Windows 98, actually.  It mostly
worked, but occasionally produced static when it should have been playing a
sound. I figured it was because I needed a different version of the driver,
or it needed to be reinstalled.
other
response 290 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:22 UTC 2003

Why are we worrying about making the audio drivers on the next Grex 
machine work?
janc
response 291 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:31 UTC 2003

OK, some details.  As the kernal starts up, it prints out lots of messages
describing the various devices.  When booting from the CD or floppy, it finds
the audio device, but doesn't have a driver for it (of course, since this is
a install disk and it doesn't need audio), so it says:

 "VIA VT8233 AC97 Audio" rev 0x50 at pci0 dev 17 function 5 not configured

When we boot from the hard disk, it finds the device, and has a driver, but
the driver seems to fail to initialize.  It types the following, and then
hangs forever with the cursor at the end of the line:

  auvia0 at pci0 dev 17 function 5 "VIA VT8233 AC97 Audio" rev 0x50_

It should go on to finish the line by typing something like

  auvia0 at pci0 dev 17 function 5 "VIA VT8233 AC97 Audio" rev 0x50: irq 9

We never get the ": irq 9" part.  (It is IRQ 9, according to the bios).

One fix would be to build a kernal without the audio driver.  It's not like
Grex needs audio.  Any better ideas?
janc
response 292 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:39 UTC 2003

Eric slipped in.  I don't care very much about making them work.  Right now
they are keeping us from booting, which I do care about.  I'd slightly prefer
to know what is causing it to fail.  

We are going to have to do an OpenBSD install on this machine every year or
so.  We need to figure out how to do it smoothly.  It's worth a little effort
to find the *best* way to deal with problems, not just some workaround kludge.
cross
response 293 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:42 UTC 2003

Hmm; can you disable the onboard audio in the BIOS?  It sounds like
it's hanging in the probe routine; perhaps it's having difficulties
disambiguating the audio device from something else it might share
an interupt line with?  Maybe there's a bug allocating an IRQ?
Weird.
janc
response 294 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 03:45 UTC 2003

Found this:
  http://www.netsys.com/openbsd-misc/2003/01/msg00734.html

Appears to be someone having the same problem.
janc
response 295 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 04:26 UTC 2003

The discussion of this problem above didn't find any sensible solutions, so
I'm willing to just disable the device.  Looks like there are two ways to do
this without recompiling the the kernal.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=boot_config&sektion=8&arch=i38
6

To make this work, you need to tell it to boot "/bsd -c" instead of /bsd.
However, it doesn't prompt for a kernal to boot, and I don't know how to
make it do so.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=config&sektion=8&arch=i386

To make this work, I need a reasonably running system.  Booting off the
CD and mounting the / partition under /mnt doesn't do it.  The config program
is not on the install CD and the copy on the hard disk wants ld.so which it
can't seem to find while booted off the CD.  I might be able to figure out
how to make this work, if I was less sleepy.

Either way, I just need to do "disable auvia" and that should kill the
audio card.

I'm going to bed.
lk
response 296 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 07:00 UTC 2003

Maybe you'll dream up another solution, like disabling the audio in the
BIOS so OpenBSD will never see it in the first place...?

(I suppose it could be a jumper on the motherboard if not a BIOS option.)
janc
response 297 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 11:24 UTC 2003

Yeah Leeron!  There is a thing in the BIOS to disable the Audio Controller,
and with that turned off, we can boot.

I'd still like to know how to tell OpenBSD to boot off something else.
It seems to sometimes show a "boot>" prompt briefly, and if you type
something then it won't fill it in itself.  However, when I started
booting off the CD, typed "boot wd0a:/bsd -c" at the boot> prompt,
it went ahead and booted off the CD anyway.  Well, I'll get plenty more
chances to experiment with this.

In the true OpenBSD spirit, after all this work, it greets me by telling me
I'm an idiot:

    Don't login as root, use su

Root's the only account on the system, and that's a comma splice, you idiots.
Sorry, I have personality conflicts with OpenBSD.
cross
response 298 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 12:49 UTC 2003

Most of the world has personality conflicts with OpenBSD.  Hey, disabling
the audio device in the BIOS; I said that in #293!

Comma splices are bad, use semicolons.
cross
response 299 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 12:51 UTC 2003

So Jan, just so I can be sure I understand what's going on; a minimal
OpenBSD installation is on the IDE drive, and it's seeing all the
devices now?
janc
response 300 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 14:45 UTC 2003

Yup.  Staff has been informed, John Remmers has successfully logged in.
My next step is to write some little scripts to copy data around fiercely
on the three SCSI disks, just to increase my confidence that the controller
really is working right with multiple drives.

Yeah, you did say that didn't you?  I was way too sleepy last night.
remmers
response 301 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 14:50 UTC 2003

Yep, I logged in and created myself a "remmers" account.
janc
response 302 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 15:42 UTC 2003

Thought I'd so a survey of suid/sgid programs, many of which might have to
be moved if we do an /suidbin directory.  There's a number of them, but many
don't actually need to be SUID on Grex (the ones marked 'X' in the list
below should probably lose their suid bits or not be moved to suidbin).

SUID files:

 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /sbin/ping
 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /sbin/ping6
 X  -r-sr-x---  1 root  operator  /sbin/shutdown
    -r-sr-xr-x  3 root  bin       /usr/bin/chfn
    -r-sr-xr-x  3 root  bin       /usr/bin/chpass
    -r-sr-xr-x  3 root  bin       /usr/bin/chsh
 X  -r-sr-sr-x  1 root  daemon    /usr/bin/lpr
 X  -r-sr-sr-x  1 root  daemon    /usr/bin/lprm
    -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/bin/passwd
 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/bin/rsh
    -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/bin/su
    -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/bin/sudo
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_chpass
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_krb4
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_krb4-or-pwd
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_krb5
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_krb5-or-pwd
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_lchpass
 ?  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_passwd
    -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/libexec/lockspool
    -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/libexec/ssh-keysign
 ?  -r-sr-sr-x  1 root  authpf    /usr/sbin/authpf
 X  -r-sr-xr--  1 root  network   /usr/sbin/ppp
 X  -r-sr-xr--  1 root  network   /usr/sbin/pppd
 X  -r-sr-xr--  1 root  network   /usr/sbin/sliplogin
 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/sbin/timedc
 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/sbin/traceroute
 X  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root  bin       /usr/sbin/traceroute6

SGID files:

 X  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  crontab   /usr/bin/at
 X  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  crontab   /usr/bin/atq
 X  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  crontab   /usr/bin/atrm
 X  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  crontab   /usr/bin/batch
 X  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  crontab   /usr/bin/crontab
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  kmem      /usr/bin/fstat
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/bin/lock
 X  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  daemon    /usr/bin/lpq
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  _lkm      /usr/bin/modstat
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  kmem      /usr/bin/netstat
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/bin/skeyaudit
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/bin/skeyinfo
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/bin/skeyinit
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  _sshagnt  /usr/bin/ssh-agent
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  kmem      /usr/bin/systat
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  kmem      /usr/bin/vmstat
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  tty       /usr/bin/wall
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  tty       /usr/bin/write
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/atc
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/battlestar
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/canfield
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/cfscores
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/cribbage
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/hack
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/robots
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/sail
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/snake
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  games     /usr/games/tetris
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  _token    /usr/libexec/auth/login_activ
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  _token    /usr/libexec/auth/login_crypto
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  _radius   /usr/libexec/auth/login_radius
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  auth      /usr/libexec/auth/login_skey
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  _token    /usr/libexec/auth/login_snk
 ?  -r-xr-sr-x  4 root  _token    /usr/libexec/auth/login_token
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  smmsp     /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
 X   -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  daemon    /usr/sbin/lpc
 X  -r-xr-s---  1 root  daemon    /usr/sbin/lpd
    -r-xr-sr-x  1 root  kmem      /usr/sbin/pstat
janc
response 303 of 547: Mark Unseen   May 20 15:43 UTC 2003

You know, this is the next Grex hardware item.  I should probably move
future comments to a "software" item.
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