Mar/100
Acronis True Image Home 2010 Freezes During Backup on Windows 7
Issue:
When running backup jobs in Acronis True Image Home 2010 under Windows Vista or Windows 7, the backup job appears to stall and the operating system becomes unresponsive. The system will encounter a bugcheck condition and recover with an unclean shutdown.
Cause:
From Acronis:
Because of the latest major changes in Windows Vista and Windows 7 native snapshot driver (VolSnap), there were some modifications introduced in Acronis True Image Home 2010 (starting from Build 6029). The Acronis native snapshot driver (snapman) was moved from UpperFilters to LowerFilters to avoid conflicts with VolSnap (which could have lead to backups failure or data corruption in backups). This change may sometimes manifest itself in a freezing Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating system on machines with rare software and hardware configurations.
Resolution:
Download an updated SnapAPI build from Acronis. Unpack it and install with the Disable Logging option set. See Acronis KB6529 for the appropriate link.
Commentary: My hardware configuration is not esoteric; my software configuration is equally banal: an Intel Core i7 X58 system with 6GB of RAM, RAID1 on an ICH10R, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
Reference: http://kb.acronis.com/content/6529
Feb/100
xinetd per_source limit issues
Issue:
Users note availability issues when accessing services backed by xinetd (subversion, rsync, etc.)
Identification:
Syslog on the affected server will present multiple lines containing daemon per_source_limit for 0.0.0.0.
Cause:
You have exceeded per_source_limit defaults imposed by your xinetd configuration. Many distributions include per_source limits that may not be suitable for your use case. Evaluate your needs carefully.
Resolution:
Modify the default setting for per_source in /etc/xinetd.conf or modify the service specific configuration (recommended) under /etc/xinet.d. per_source limits may be set as follows:
per_source may be set to an integer or UNLIMITED (the number represents the number of connections allowed per host). A sensible fixed value is always better than UNLIMITED.
Reference: xinetd.conf(5)
Feb/100
Reset The Windows Update Catalog
- Insert the Windows Vista installation disc in the disc drive, and then restart the computer.
- When you are prompted to restart from the disc, press any key.
- When you are prompted, configure the Language to install, Time and currency format , and Keyboard or input method options that you want, and then click Next .
- On the Install Windows page, click Repair your computer .
- On the System Recovery Options page, click the version of the Windows Vista operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next
- On the System Recovery Options page, click Command Prompt .
- Type cd C:\windows\winsxs , and then press ENTER.
- Type ren pending.xml pending.old , and then press ENTER.
- In Registry Editor, locate and then delete the following registry subkey:
- At the command prompt, type exit to exit Registry Editor. Press ENTER.
- Click Restart
HKLM\Offline Components\PendingXmlIdentifier
HKLM\Offline Components\NextQueueEntryIndex
Reference: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistawu/thread/13dec2a0-2694-4b11-9b0c-9b8fbe6162ee
Dec/090
Replace Pipes with Tabs in a Delimited File
Issue:
It is often necessary to replace delimiters in a file with a form the receiving party expects. sed is my favorite method of meeting the need.
Solution:
Replace double pipes with tabs
Note: If you find the tab key simply does not work, try CTRL+V+I from your terminal.
Reference: http://forums.devshed.com/unix-help-35/replacing-tabs-with-spaces-372623.html
Caveats:
Special consideration (and a regex) will be required for data where delimiters are present in the data itself. Consider your use case and apply appropriately.
Nov/090
Remove a Range of Unwanted ZFS Snapshots from the Command Line
Remove a range of unwanted snapshots, from the command line, if necessary.
In the following example, all automatic snapshots in the bash shell are removed.
One could add a secondary pipe and grep statement to filter on individual file systems.
Oct/090
Create a pidof command to find PID numbers easily
Most UNIX environments include the pidof command which is put to use whenever one needs to quickly determine, by name, the pid of a running program. Apple’s Mac OS X lacks the pidof command, however, one may approximate its function with the following shell script:
ps axc|awk "{if (\$5==\"$1\") print \$1}";
Save the script as /bin/pidof and be sure to set its executable bit:
Oct/090
Strip empty (null) lines from a file
sed meets the need; the recipe follows:
Oct/090
Disable Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
On occasion I need to process large volumes of text locally. Spotlight dutifully attempts to index this data, bringing my system to a crawl.
Proactively disabling Spotlight is a sure way to avoid such issues and here is how to do it:
Disabling Spotlight in Snow Leopard is pretty easy, launch the Terminal and type the following command:
This tells the Spotlight manager to disable all indexing on all volumes, the command will require your administrative password to execute.
Re-enabling Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is just as easy, just reverse the command to:
Now Spotlight indexing will be back on and work as usual.
NOTE: mds and mdsworker will persist in the process table; this is normal.
Oct/090
Device Manager does not display devices that are not connected to the Windows XP-based computer
Issue:
Device Manager displays only non-Plug and Play devices, drivers, and printers when you click Show hidden devices on the View menu. Devices that you install that are not connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus [USB] device or “ghosted” devices) are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you click Show hidden devices.
Workaround:
- Click Start, point to Run, and type cmd.
- Click Ok
- At the command prompt, type the following command and then press ENTER:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
- Type the following command at the command prompt and then press ENTER:
start devmgmt.msc
- Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager. NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Managers before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.
If you are a developer or power user and you want to be able to view devices that are not connected to your computer, set this environment variable globally:
- Right-click My Computer.
- Click Properties.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Click on the Environment Variables tab.
- Set the variables in the System Variables box.
NOTE: Use this method only for troubleshooting or development purposes, or to prevent users from accidentally uninstalling a required device that is not connected to the computer (such as a USB device or docking station that is not connected to a laptop computer).
Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539