Bellman

Bellman is a Mini-ITX server / desktop

Bellman functions as a server, but also has an LCD monitor / keyboard / mouse so it can function as a desktop / web browser machine as well. It is on a UPS and lives in my electronics lab.

History

2013-12-29 - returned from X-Mas and discovered Bellman won't boot. Snarks about a degraded RAID. Darn.

2013 Mar - Installed Linux Mint 14 so that I could use Makerware with my new Replicator 2

2013 Jan - Seagate Barracuda 2TB Green drive died. ST2000DL003 S/N 5YD77CTE Replaced with a Barracuda 2TB mirror

2011 Dec - Been doing PostGIS experiments so I upgraded it.

2010 Jan - I just started this section but I have had this machine online for at least a couple years now.

2013-12-29 Rescue from boot fail

I no longer need a desktop environment on the small server, because I moved my main desktop next to the 3D printer. I am probably going to put Debian back on the server again. So I am going to try a Debian rescue image.

Diagnosis

Step 1. Build rescue thumbdrive. Download from http://debian.osuosl.org/ and copy image to thumbdrive

sudo cp debian-live-7.2-amd64-rescue.iso /dev/sdX
sudo sync
sudo eject /dev/sdX

where X is the appropriate drive letter, do NOT use the wrong letter!

Step 2. Boot Bellman with the thumbdrive

Step 3. Look around

Using hdparm -i

• sda Vertex SSD S/N OCZ-9UDI676M56Z4IR8P
• sdb Seagate 2TB ST2000DM001-9YN164 S/N Z240BVP5
• sdc Seagate 2TB ST2000DM001-9YN164 S/N Z240A0H1
• sdd rescue drive

# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0009c7c9

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   218460159   109229056   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       218462206   234440703     7989249    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       218462208   234440703     7989248   82  Linux swap / Solaris

sdb and sdc don't have partition tables as they are used in a RAID (see 2013 Jan entry)

See LVM page

cat /proc/mdstat 
Personalities : [raid1] 
md126 : active raid1 sda[1]
      117218240 blocks [2/1] [_U]
      
md127 : active raid1 sdb[0] sdc[1]
      1953514496 blocks [2/2] [UU]
      
unused devices: <none>

mdadm --detail /dev/md126
/dev/md126:
        Version : 0.90
  Creation Time : Thu Feb 21 06:23:36 2013
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 117218240 (111.79 GiB 120.03 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 117218240 (111.79 GiB 120.03 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 1
Preferred Minor : 126
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Thu Feb 21 06:30:49 2013
          State : clean, degraded 
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 9f48e120:81a0f612:edd8d016:611227ea
         Events : 0.12

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       0        0        0      removed
       1       8        0        1      active sync   /dev/sda

mdadm --detail /dev/md127
/dev/md127:
        Version : 0.90
  Creation Time : Mon Jan  7 04:12:45 2013
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 1953514496 (1863.02 GiB 2000.40 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 1953514496 (1863.02 GiB 2000.40 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 127
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Mon Dec 30 17:21:21 2013
          State : clean 
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 462f6c0c:68770b3a:b268e686:64f77a36
         Events : 0.131

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       16        0      active sync   /dev/sdb
       1       8       32        1      active sync   /dev/sdc

Looks like there are 2 RAID's, and md126 is the broken one. It should be the SSD and something else? Time to open the box and see what's in there.

2013 Jan data mirror build

apt-get install mdadm lvm2
mdadm --create --metadata=0.90 --level=mirror --raid-devices=2 /dev/md0 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
cat /proc/mdstat 
pvcreate /dev/md0 
vgcreate vg_mirror /dev/md0 
lvcreate --verbose --extents 100%FREE -n lv_mirror vg_mirror
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg_mirror/lv_mirror 
mount /dev/vg_mirror/lv_mirror /green
dd if=/dev/zero of=/green/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=1048576

2013 Mar Linux Mint rebuild

Had to install mdadm and lvm2 but then it recognized the LVM drives All I had to do was mount the RAID on /green.

sudo apt-get install ssh mysql-server phpmyadmin ntp winbind smartmontools netatalk

Re-install dropbox

Re-install squeezeboxserver from Logitech.

Set up cups again

Need AFP support for Apple Timemachine.

Install makerware! What we did this for in the first place.

December 2011 upgrade

Bellman had an Intel Little Falls Atom 230 mini-itx main board + 2GB RAM until Dec 2011. Bellman used to be an Athlon desktop system, I recycled the name because I like it. I no longer use any full-size desktop systems at home.

Hardware

• ASRock E350M1/USB3 AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core) AMD A50M Hudson M1 Mini ITX Motherboard $125
• Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9K2/8G $35
• OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $99
• Case: brand name?? need to look it up. Cost about $50 250W power supply
• /dev/sdb Seagate Barracuda 2.0TB Model=ST2000DM001-9YN164, FwRev=CC4B, SerialNo=Z240BVP5
• /dev/sdc Seagate Barracuda 2.0TB Model=ST2000DM001-9YN164, FwRev=CC4B, SerialNo=Z240A0H1
• in USB enclosure: "Green" WD Caviar 500 GB drive. WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0 s/n WD-WCASU2227103

Video drivers

The ASRock card has an onboard AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics chip. Therefore I need to follow these instructions: http://wiki.debian.org

% lspci -v | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9802 (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

Flags: bus master, VGA palette snoop, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64

Dang but the aticonfig --initial command fails, unsupported hardware!

Maybe getting the driver from AMD support page will do it but I don't have time right now to deal with this.

See http://www.sensicomm.com/main/linux/acer_5253/index.shtml

Software

Linux Mint 14

Media server: it hosts my music collection. I keep the files in MP3 format, having transferred them from my CD's using grip. Music collection

File server: I keep my home directory here and NFS mount it on the desktop machine Raven. Bellman also runs Samba so that my laptop can access files on it.

VMWare Workstation: Since it's in my electronics lab, I can run Windows XP on this machine in a virtual machine, so that I can do development work using Microchip's MPLab PIC tools. More and more though the tools available under Ubuntu are making this less necessary.

For Python I have Komodo IDE I also have the wxPython stuff loaded. I edit files with emacs23

I use eagle to view and edit schematics and circuit boards.

Makerware

For Linux Mint 14, this is a condensed version of the instructions. For Mint 15 you would use "precise" instead of "quantal".

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://downloads.makerbot.com/makerware/ubuntu quantal main'
wget http://downloads.makerbot.com/makerware/ubuntu/[email protected]
sudo apt-key add [email protected]
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install makerware