And it has a ton of old stuff in it, as near as I can tell the person who abandoned the unit was a PC Repair tech in the 80s and into the mid 90s. There are tons and tons of stuff in there that I figure some people on here would be interested in looking at.

Here are the pictures from my initial exploration: http://imgur.com/a/0rEIv

If I had the space I'd be repairing and running most of this stuff just to relive the glory days of computer, but alas I do not have the space, plus the SO would probably kill me if I dragged it all home with me.

So I will be trying to sell most, if not all, of it. But I am not too sure I want to have to ship the larger pieces. I plan on having a "Geek Garage Sale" the last weekend on April (if anyone on here is interested in buying anything let me know, or if you are interested in stopping by for the sale).

There is so much stuff, so far I've catalogued nearly 300 ISA cards, hard drives, floppy drives and peripherals, and I've not even started on the bigger things.

https://airtable.com/shraX3xyq3qjiGRVr - Expansion Cards

https://airtable.com/shrA7cS5ApaOun6gd - Drives, motherboards, CPUs etc.

I'm gonna be busy on this for some time.

Hi Everyone!

Ok, so about 2 years ago I posted on Spiceworks asking for advice on a backup solution for Xenserver. Well I am back asking again, but someone mentioned that this forum is a good place to ask about this.

Based on the feedback from the original post we ended up going with PHDVirtual, which worked very well. Since then they were acquired by Unitrends and the product has become completely unreliable (hitting maybe 38% success rate on daily backups). I even went so far as to completely redo the system from the ground up (fresh appliance, blank backup target NAS), but it looks like UEB is just not capable or reliable backing up Xenserver.

So here I am again, looking to evaluate some options for backup. I plan to take a deep look at Alike again, but was wondering what else may have popped up since the last time I looked. How do you guys that use Xenserver back them up?

Thanks in advance,

JRC

EDIT: I should mention that I need a solution that allows for de-dupping of the data backed up (so I can keep around 6mo of backups, and I'll need something that allows me to do a file level restores for my ~2Tb of data on my Fileserver).

With help from @anthonyh we were able to come up with a work around.

I set the user's home folder (/home/<user>) as the CHroot path, set that as root:root with 755 permissions. Then I created a bind mount to a subfolder called website (so /home/<user>/website is a bind mount for /var/www/sites/site.domain.com/<user>), then chowned that folder to <user>:root with 755 permissions.

Now they can SFTP in, and change to the website folder and put their stuff there. No more seeing all the other users and folders.

For the record here is my SSHD config lines:

#Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp

Match Group sftpgroup
        ChrootDirectory /home/%u # or %h either would work
        ForceCommand internal-sftp
        X11Forwarding no
        AllowTcpForwarding no

And the steps I used to get this working:

• Create the user:
  sudo adduser <user> --ingroup sftpgroup --shell /bin/nologin
• Create a folder to house their site and set the permission:
  sudo mkdir /var/www/sites/site.domain.com/<user>
sudo chown <user>:root /var/www/site/site.domain.com/<user>
• Create the bind mount for their CHRoot jail home
  sudo mkdir /home/<user>/website
sudo mount --bind /var/www/site/site.domain.com/<user> /home/<user>/website
• Set the permissions on the CHRoot jail
  sudo chown root:root /home/<user>
• Add the mount points to fstab so that they persist through reboots
  sudo nano /etc/fstab
  Add /var/www/site/site.domain.com/<user> /home/<user>/website none rw,bind 0 0

It's not as neat as I'd like it, but it works.

So the dude followed the instructions a little to closely and was fired due the results of that. F that noise. Not his fault at all.

No backup to restore? Also, not his fault.

Legal action against him, not bloody likely. If anything he has a case against them for wrongful termination.

Still with that much incompetence going around, and a supervisor who is gonna fire you rather than educate you and/or put the blame where it actually belongs, I think the guy is way better off staying fired and looking for a job at a company.

@scottalanmiller

The worst ticketing system ever made. Web based, looks right out of the 90s and confuses the hell out of everyone who uses it.

@RojoLoco

Yeah, the idea of a AMD Ryzen rig with a GeForce GTX1080 built into one of those roundish terminals is interesting.

@DustinB3403 said in Backup solutions for Xenserver:

Xen Orchestra is our current VM backup appliance of choice around here.

If you want to backup the Boot device, you'd just clone the bootable USB/SD card.

I thought Xen Orchestra was for managing Xen, not backing it up. I'll need to look into that. Does it do any de-duping? And file level restores?

@coliver said in Backup solutions for Xenserver:

Have you gotten in touch with Unitrends Support? That may be the first stop on investigating this.

Xen Orchestra has several decent options for backup.

Yes I have been working with them closely. However the latest UEB is just riddled with all kinds of bugs, and the Xen support is very much an afterthought for them. It's become very obvious that they only acquired PHD for their interface and would not be surprised if they drop Xen support all together once the various PHD contracts expire.

This may be a simple question, but can someone give me direction on how to resolve the fact that I have a shared SR for my 2 hosts (it's a SAN) that has 11Tb of useable space with just over 4Tb allocated, yet XenCenter says I am using almost 8Tb on it. There are no snapshots that I can find in Xencenter, so I am not sure what is eating up the extra 4Tb and I have no idea how to even go about finding it and clearing it. When I run the "reclaim freed space" it takes about 5 seconds to run and does nothing (at least nothing I can see).

So does anyone have some insight on how I can clean this up and release the 4Tb in question?

Xenserver 6.5 Update 8, with plans to install all the current updates this weekend.

Thanks in advance!

I think I may have worked it out. It would appear that the online coalesce for the VM in question keeps timing out on the specific VDI in question (the 6255... one), they go on to say this might be due to heavy load on the storage at the time it tries. I do not think this is the case here, but the suggested solution is to shut it down and do an offline coalesce with the command:

xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=<UUID of the pool master Host> plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=<uuid of the VM you want to coalesce>

I am going to try this tonight and see what happens.

A side question: How does one work out: 1. If your storage is too slow? and 2. What is the IOP speed your storage is capable of?

@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver Space Woes:

@jrc said in Xenserver Space Woes:

So my IOPs seem to be jumping between 0 and 900k fairly quickly. But the Queue size seems to stay between 0 and 1, with the latency very low (near zero) as well. Network traffic is well under 1MBps. This is from the performance meters on the Xen master host.

Basically what that is telling me is that you have plenty of IOPS in reserve and you are never demanding more from it than it can provide. Those numbers are basically showing your storage as "idle" and ready for whatever you want to throw at it.

Ok, so my gut on that was right. Then I need to work out why the leaf quiescence thingy is timing out, since it appears to not be a disk IO thing.

So for anyone else who may stumble across this, here is the concise solution that worked for me.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ./storage
sudo chmod -R 755 ./storage
This sets the owner and permissions for all the files in the storage folder for Snipe-IT.

Then run sudo -u www-data php upgrade.php

This still spat out a few errors, but they seem to be inconsequential, and everything is updated.

It finished, but with these errors:

Step 4: Cleaning up old cached files:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- No bootstrap/cache/compiled.php, so nothing to delete.
-- Deleting bootstrap/cache/services.php. It it no longer used.
-- Deleting bootstrap/cache/config.php. It it no longer used.
-- 
In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
                                                               
  Class 'PragmaRX\Google2FALaravel\ServiceProvider' not found  
                                                               

-- 
In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
                                                               
  Class 'PragmaRX\Google2FALaravel\ServiceProvider' not found  
                                                               

-- 
In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
                                                               
  Class 'PragmaRX\Google2FALaravel\ServiceProvider' not found  
                                                               

-- 
In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
                                                               
  Class 'PragmaRX\Google2FALaravel\ServiceProvider' not found 

And

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 5: Updating composer dependencies:
(This may take an moment.)
--------------------------------------------------------

-- We couldn't find a local composer.phar - trying globally.

Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache

<snip>

Generating optimized autoload files
> Illuminate\Foundation\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump
> @php artisan package:discover

In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
                                                               
  Class 'PragmaRX\Google2FALaravel\ServiceProvider' not found  
                                                               
<snip> 

Package manifest generated successfully.

But other than that it appears to have worked out just fine.

Are there any security concerns with the .git files now being owned by www-data with 755 permissions?

@JaredBusch

For some reason the FETCH_HEAD file was owned by root, and several other things in the .git folder, so I changed them all to www-data:www-data.

It is running now, and updating a bunch of things. Hopefully that will do it.

@JaredBusch

I'll take you word for that. The end result is it is not upgrading anything. I am still on 4.6.7 when it is done.

To be clear, you are saying that this is normal?

--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 3: Pulling latest from Git (master branch): 
--------------------------------------------------------

Git is installed. 
Already on 'master'
error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
-- No local changes to save
-- Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

And this:

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 5: Updating composer dependencies:
(This may take an moment.)
--------------------------------------------------------

-- We couldn't find a local composer.phar - trying globally.

Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Generating optimized autoload files
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies from lock file
Nothing to install or update
Generating optimized autoload files

@black3dynamite said in Snipe-IT Upgrade from 4.6.7 to 4.7.5 not working.:

sudo -u www-data php upgrade.php

That makes sense, and seems to have solved the backup issue and some of the permission errors, but now I am getting this:

Welcome to the Snipe-IT upgrader.

Please note that this script will not download the latest Snipe-IT 
files for you unless you have git installed. 
It simply runs the standard composer and artisan 
commands needed to finalize the upgrade after. 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!! If you have any encrypted custom fields, BE SURE TO run the recrypter if upgrading from v3 to v4. 
!! See the Snipe-IT documentation for help: 
!! https://snipe-it.readme.io/docs/upgrading-to-v4
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 1: Backing up database: 
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Starting backup...
Dumping database snipeit_data...
Determining files to backup...
Zipped 79 files...
Copying 2019-07-30-145900.zip (size: 806.26 KB) to disk named local...
Successfully copied .zip file to disk named local.
Backup completed!


--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 2: Putting application into maintenance mode: 
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Application is now in maintenance mode.


--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 3: Pulling latest from Git (master branch): 
--------------------------------------------------------

Git is installed. 
Already on 'master'
error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
-- No local changes to save
-- Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
-- --------------------------------------------------------
Step 4: Cleaning up old cached files:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- No bootstrap/cache/compiled.php, so nothing to delete.
-- Deleting bootstrap/cache/services.php. It it no longer used.
-- Deleting bootstrap/cache/config.php. It it no longer used.
-- Configuration cache cleared!
-- Cache cleared successfully.
-- Route cache cleared!
-- Compiled views cleared!

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 5: Updating composer dependencies:
(This may take an moment.)
--------------------------------------------------------

-- We couldn't find a local composer.phar - trying globally.

Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Generating optimized autoload files
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies from lock file
Nothing to install or update
Generating optimized autoload files




--------------------------------------------------------
Step 6: Migrating database:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Nothing to migrate.


--------------------------------------------------------
Step 7: Checking for OAuth keys:
--------------------------------------------------------

- OAuth keys detected. Skipping passport install.

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 8: Caching routes and config:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Configuration cache cleared!
Configuration cached successfully!
-- Route cache cleared!
Routes cached successfully!

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 9: Taking application out of maintenance mode:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Application is now live.


--------------------------------------------------------
FINISHED! Clear your browser cookies and re-login to use :
your upgraded Snipe-IT.
--------------------------------------------------------

Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS with all the latest updates (as of today).

I tried running php upgrade.php and got:

Welcome to the Snipe-IT upgrader.

Please note that this script will not download the latest Snipe-IT 
files for you unless you have git installed. 
It simply runs the standard composer and artisan 
commands needed to finalize the upgrade after. 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!! If you have any encrypted custom fields, BE SURE TO run the recrypter if upgrading from v3 to v4. 
!! See the Snipe-IT documentation for help: 
!! https://snipe-it.readme.io/docs/upgrading-to-v4
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 1: Backing up database: 
--------------------------------------------------------

-- Starting backup...
Dumping database snipeit_data...
Backup failed because The dump process failed with exitcode 2 : Misuse of shell builtins : sh: 1: cannot create /var/www/snipe-it/storage/laravel-backups/temp//snipeit_data.sql: Directory nonexistent
.
Backup failed because: The stream or file "/var/www/snipe-it/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied.

In StreamHandler.php line 107:
                                                                                          
  The stream or file "/var/www/snipe-it/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: f  
  ailed to open stream: Permission denied                                                 
                                                                                          



--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 2: Putting application into maintenance mode: 
--------------------------------------------------------

-- 
In StreamHandler.php line 107:
                                                                                          
  The stream or file "/var/www/snipe-it/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: f  
  ailed to open stream: Permission denied                                                 
                                                                                          



--------------------------------------------------------
STEP 3: Pulling latest from Git (master branch): 
--------------------------------------------------------

Git is installed. 
fatal: Unable to create '/var/www/snipe-it/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
fatal: Unable to create '/var/www/snipe-it/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
Cannot save the current index state
error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
-- -- -- --------------------------------------------------------
Step 4: Cleaning up old cached files:
--------------------------------------------------------

-- No bootstrap/cache/compiled.php, so nothing to delete.
-- Deleting bootstrap/cache/services.php. It it no longer used.
-- No bootstrap/cache/config.php, so nothing to delete.
-- Configuration cache cleared!
-- Cache cleared successfully.
-- Route cache cleared!
-- Compiled views cleared!

--------------------------------------------------------
Step 5: Updating composer dependencies:
(This may take an moment.)
--------------------------------------------------------

-- We couldn't find a local composer.phar - trying globally.

Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/repo/https---repo.packagist.org/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Cannot create cache directory /home/jcoombes/.composer/cache/files/, or directory is not writable. Proceeding without cache
Generating optimized autoload files
^C

You can see I killed it at the end there. So I moved onto trying to update manually, so I started by running php artisan snipeit:backup and got:

Starting backup...
Dumping database snipeit_data...
Backup failed because The dump process failed with exitcode 2 : Misuse of shell builtins : sh: 1: cannot create /var/www/snipe-it/storage/laravel-backups/temp//snipeit_data.sql: Directory nonexistent
.
Backup failed because: The stream or file "/var/www/snipe-it/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied.

In StreamHandler.php line 107:
                                                                                          
  The stream or file "/var/www/snipe-it/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: f  
  ailed to open stream: Permission denied

So I am reasonably sure that this is a permissions issue, though I cannot for the life of me think how those got screwed up, and I am absolutely not sure what they should be set to.

Can anyone help me with this?

Here is the ls output for the folder:

ls -alh
total 1016K
drwxr-xr-x 16 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 15  2019 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root     root     4.0K Nov  1  2018 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  44K Nov  1  2018 .all-contributorsrc
drwxr-xr-x 17 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 app
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.7K Nov  1  2018 artisan
drwxr-xr-x  3 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 bootstrap
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  875 Nov  1  2018 bower.json
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 9.0K Nov  1  2018 c3.php
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  373 Nov  1  2018 codeception.yml
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 3.2K Nov  1  2018 CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 2.3K Nov  1  2018 composer.json
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 227K Nov  1  2018 composer.lock
drwxr-xr-x  2 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 15  2019 config
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  317 Nov  1  2018 CONTRIBUTING.md
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data   90 Nov  1  2018 crowdin.yml
drwxr-xr-x  5 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 database
drwxr-xr-x  2 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 docker
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 3.2K Nov  1  2018 Dockerfile
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data   67 Nov  1  2018 .dockerignore
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 2.8K Nov  1  2018 .env
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root     2.9K Jan 15  2019 .env.example
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.8K Nov  1  2018 .env.testing
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.8K Nov  1  2018 .env.testing-ci
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  536 Nov  1  2018 .env.tests
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  491 Nov  1  2018 .env.unit-tests
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.7K Nov  1  2018 gh-changelog.php
drwxr-xr-x  8 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 15  2019 .git
-rwxr-xr-x  1 www-data www-data   11 Nov  1  2018 .gitattributes
drwxr-xr-x  3 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 .github
-rwxr-xr-x  1 www-data www-data 1.1K Nov  1  2018 .gitignore
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  251 Nov  1  2018 .htaccess
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  956 Nov  1  2018 index.html
-rwxr-xr-x  1 www-data www-data  371 Nov  1  2018 install.sh
-rwxr-xr-x  1 www-data www-data  34K Nov  1  2018 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 441K Nov  1  2018 npm-shrinkwrap.json
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.8K Nov  1  2018 package.json
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1.1K Nov  1  2018 phpunit.xml
drwxr-xr-x  8 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 15  2019 public
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  45K Nov  1  2018 README.md
drwxr-xr-x  6 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 resources
drwxr-xr-x  3 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 routes
drwxr-xr-x  2 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 sample_csvs
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  567 Nov  1  2018 server.php
-rwxr-xr-x  1 www-data www-data  22K Nov  1  2018 snipeit.sh
drwxrwxr-x  7 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 storage
drwxr-xr-x 10 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 tests
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root     2.8K Jan 15  2019 .travis.yml
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 6.1K Nov  1  2018 upgrade.php
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 3.4K Nov  1  2018 Vagrantfile
drwxr-xr-x 51 www-data www-data 4.0K Nov  1  2018 vendor
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 2.1K Nov  1  2018 webpack.mix.js

EDIT: I just changed the permissions on everything in the /var/www/snipe-it folder to 755, and made sure that everything is owned by www-data and the group is www-data. I am still getting all these permission errors when trying to upgrade.

@scottalanmiller said in RAID - the king of the storage landscape or legacy?:

@jrc said in RAID - the king of the storage landscape or legacy?:

Also, isn't RAIN basically an array of RAIDs ??

No, that would be Network RAID.

That how would you define RAIN? Wouldn't each node be a NAS of some sort, and more than likely that NAS would be configured with RAID, or am I missing something?

Also, isn't RAIN basically an array of RAIDs ??

And there, I posted a comment for the author on his article.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding from this author about why RAID exists, and that is to offer some immunity to hard drive failure, nothing more, nothing less.

Reason being, you may have protection against hardware failure but when it comes to protection against corrupt files, errors or malicious activity, you have serious vulnerabilities.

Well no shit sherlock. RAID is purely to protect you against the first bit, a decent backup scheme protects against the second, it was never conceived of or designed to do more than protect against hardware failure.

Since there is an increased stress on the array when data bits are gathered to rebuild the failed and erroneous disc, there is the potential risk of double-disk fault and read error – hence the shift from RAID to more recent data storage mechanisms.

Umm, more recent data storage mechanisms? What, like RAID10? Any "mecahnism" that involves data spread out across lots of disks with some sort of redundancy is going to be a RAID array by definition. It is an Redundant Array (or collection) of Independent Disks after all.

What an idiotic out of touch (and date) article.

@tim_g

Ahh, gotcha. Yes it does supply a service. However the company that makes the software could care less about Windows client licensing, and as a franchisee they have zero options on using this software.

And running it on a server has proven to be very complicated, especially for support as their support guys are completely gun shy when they see the SBS logo on a remote session. 99.99% of their franchises merely run the software on Windows 7 (Was XP, until earlier this year).