Downloading the Kernel Source for a different/older kernel than the latest one (RHEL/Fedora/CENTOS)

So I had the unfortunate task of installing a new kernel module that required the kernel source to build (insert sarcastic cheer here lol). When I went to run "./configure" the module kept barking about needing the kernel source. "No problem" I thought, "I'll just head over to the RHEL download site and download the kernel RPM file, rpm -ivh the file and Bob's your uncle right!!!"... wrong, very wrong.  After a bunch of fiddling around I found the solution (assuming your local satellite server/repo still has it).

yum -y --disableexcludes=all install "kernel-devel-$(uname -r)"

[Note: you may not need the --disableexecludes=all, but if your system blacklists such things, then there ya go!] 

~Enjoy!

Ubuntu directions for installing Linux on USB through OSX

Note: this procedure requires an .img file that you will be required to create from the .iso file you download.

TIP: Drag and Drop a file from Finder to Terminal to 'paste' the full path without typing and risking type errors.

1. Download the desired file

2. Open the Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/ or query Terminal in Spotlight)

3. Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil (e.g.,hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso)

4. Note: OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically.

5. Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices

6. Insert your flash media

7. Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)

8. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)

9. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./ubuntu.imgor ./ubuntu.dmg).

▪ Using /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk may be faster.

▪ If you see the error dd: Invalid number '1m', you are using GNU dd. Use the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.

▪ If you see the error dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the 'Disk Utility.app' and unmount (don't eject) the drive.

10. Run diskutil eject/dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes

11. Restart your Mac and press alt while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB-Stick

Enabling write when in rescue mode in Fedora

$mount -o remount, rw /

Mounting 13TB Raid

This is some quick info I learned while trying to mount a 13TB partition in RHEL 5.3. The main thing is that fdisk does not like to make partitions larger than 2.2TB because dos labels are not recognized. The second is that ext3 file system doesn't like anything bigger than 8Tb. So here is what I did to go around it. I had to used parted instead of fdisk to overcome that 2TB limit.

#parted /dev/sdd
#mklabel gpt
>mkpart primary 0 13000G
>quit
#yum install e4fsprogs
#mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdd1

To lay this all out I had to rename the label of the partition to gpt so I could use the larger partitionsize and then I installed support for ext4 and used that as the filesystem. Yes I know I punked out a bit but I am sick of trying to find work arounds for ext3.

APPENDED NOTE!!

You can't mount ext4 in RHEL just yet lol kind of important. I went back and did

#mkfs.ext3 -F /dev/sdd1 

and it took the filesystem

Setting IP addresses through terminal (RHEL)

For some reason this is something that will just not stick in my head and I always have to go searching for it. The way you permanently set/change the ethx ip address is to edit the following file:

nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx

In this file you can set the ip address, gateway, netmask and ipv6 stuff.

To change the DNS addresses you must edit the following different file:

nano /etc/resolv.conf

Once you have made the changes you need to restart the network service to use the changes

service network restart

!!Remember all these commands need to be done as either root or through sudo!!

Sad news for Ubuntu on SunBlade 100's with Condor Users

I had about 20 Sunblade 100 units sitting around the lab and decided with my team to make a static cluster using them. Well the install of Ubuntu went pretty well using Server 8.10 and Server 7.10. Even loaded the Ubuntu-Gnome desktop on a couple of them just to see it. So with all going well I tryied to load the ever complicated Condor Project to tie them together. Well after trying multiple versions, based on debian, rehl, sparc, and eventually even compiling from source code I can say that Condor on a Sun with Ubuntu using the SPARC processor just will not work. Sorry guys.

We ended up loading Solaris 10 and loading Condor. If anybody does find a way please feel free to leave a comment but I doubt it happening any time soon.

USB 3.0 Demo with 5 second Ubuntu boot!!