This article could be called a continuation of the article I posted yesterday about creating mirrors in SVM, only this time I am talking about replacing failed drives in those mirrors we just created. Take a look and see some options for dealing with failed drives, and how to make Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) happy with it!
Author Archives: Laz
RIAA Goofs Again
This isn’t a technical post per se, but I found it interesting because the big behemoth that is the RIAA is using technology (inappropriately in my opinion) to go after everyone it can even remotely think is sharing files. They really don’t seem to care about the privacy of the person that is in their sights, nor do they seem to do a whole lot of work to validate their claims. It seems to me they simply load the scatter gun and start firing away. I think this article over at ars technica shows some good examples of their approach. I don’t think they are even good enough that I can call it a methodology.
New article on disk mirrors and SVM
Ok folks, for any of you out there that manage Solaris machines (or want to), I have written up an article detailing one of the fundamental and basic things you do a lot of. Creating disk mirrors with SVM or Solaris Volume Manager. Now, this article does more than just tell you how to create the mirror, although it does do that. In addition, I tried to explain what was going on so that you could get an understanding of what was happening when you were running the commands. In the near future, we’ll have more articles dealing with SVM on such topics as how to replace a failed drive, and even other RAID options. For now though, we dig in to the area of mirrors. Check it out, I hope you find it useful!
Finding the right RDNS blacklist from SANS
Anyone reading this post, that also runs a mail server should immediately know what I am talking about. Reverse DNS blacklists for mail servers to stop spam. What are these lists? Well, these are lists of known bad senders (open relays, spambots, spamfriendlies, whatever) that are maintained and setup to act like a DNS server. When you configure your mail server (and some clients too! Mailwasher anyone?), you can tell it to check all incoming mail senders against the blacklist, and then what to do if they are on it, like bouncing, deleting, tagging, etc. Basically, it works by doing a reverse DNS lookup agains’t the blacklist server, if the address in question is found (i.e. it resolves), then it’s a match and the mail is dealt with. These are very handy for helping slow the flow of spam. Here is an article from SANS about how to pick a good one, and some things to look out for. This is a good read from a good place, check it out.
Google using too much energy?
This is actually kind of funny, at least I got a chuckle out of it. There is an article on Slashdot that talks about Google and how the folk at Nature Climate Change is arguing that Google’s white background is using too much electricity to display on all of our monitors, and that if they would just change to a black background it would save the world, end global warming, feed your dog, and make your girlfriend come back. Sounds kind of silly to me, but then again, look at how many tons of weight they shaved off of the space shuttle by not painting that big fuel tank!
Super Network Tool Bundle
Need a bundle of network tools? I mean one application that can ping, traceroute, nslookup, whois, and more? With advanced features like SMTP open relay checking and DNS zone transfers? A tool that doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars? The list goes on, have I enticed you enough? Good!
I found this app a long time ago, and it is steadfastly entrenched in my kit to this day. It’s called Sam Spade, and it’s named after the famed detective to be sure. The folk that wrote it offer it up for free, and it’s a very handy tool for anyone that ever needs to do network type work. Spend a few minutes reading up on it, and going through setting the settings, it’s worth it although it’ll work out of the box. I think you’ll find it a valuable tool too.