While booting a virtualized cluster node I stumped upon a suspicious error message recently: Module DiskEarly power on failed to lock file In the VMware forums I found a hint that locking mechanisms might account for this issue. However the thread focussed on desktop products and not on vSphere. I found no lock files …

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Koukaam NETIO power outlets offer a network interface that can be used for controlling the particular ports comfortably. It would be even nicer to monitor them with Nagios or Icinga. 2012 I created a provisional bash script for monitoring the ports and time synchronization over NTP. This weekend I migrated the script …

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While testing a web application that uses PHP PDO to establish a connection to a PostgreSQL database I stumbled upon the following error message: 1Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[08006] [7] FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "user"' in xxx.php …

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Recently I stumbled upon various PHP errors while using the free analytics software Piwik: 1PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 2442473628 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 64 bytes) 2... 3Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in .../piwik/core/DataTable.php The solution is quite simple - the …

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After a recent update to CyanogenMod 12 (Android 5.x) I realized that the storage for apps is quite tight. The reason for this is that the recommended GAPPS (Google Apps) need a lot of space. Beyond some useful applications this package also includes much "crap" that is unnecessary. You might run out of space …

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Some applications still require Microsoft fonts under Linux. Some Linux distros dropped those fonts because of license difficulties. Microsoft offers those fonts for free but redistributing them is prohibited by the used license. Debian-based distros offer a package msttcorefonts-installer which downloads and extracts …

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When hard drive sizes are altered the Linux kernel isn't informed about these changes automatically. Rebooting the system is a possible solution - but often no option. Beneath the directory /sys/class/scsi_disk you will find additional files controlling some of the device's function depending on the SCSI id. Using the …

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During a server installation recently a local attached SSD wasn't recognized as SSD and therefore it was impossible to use it as vSphere Flash Read Cache. Not always the reason for this issue is a controller misconfiguration - sometimes ESXi just doesn't recognize the SSD as flash drive. In this case it is possible to …

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Hint from january 2015: the bug has been fixed in the meantime. I found out that it is currently (11/01/2014) impossible to run osad (Open Source Architecture Daemon) with SELinux enabled on EL6.6 and EL7 systems. The following error message can be seen while starting the service: 1# service osad restart 2Shutting down …

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The Apple App Store is not the only way to installation additional applications under OS X - another way is to install .pkg files (which have been created by the Apple Installer Framework). Unfortunately not all applications installed using these files are present in the "Programs" category inside Finder. …

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