Ubuntu on System Overlord

PSA: Typos in mkfs commands are painful

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:19:40 +0000

TL;DR: I apparently typed mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 at some point. Oops.

So I rarely reboot my machines, and last night, when I rebooted my laptop (for graphics card weirdness) Grub just came up with:

Error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue>

WTF, I wonder how I borked my grub config? Let’s see what happens when we ls my /boot partition.

grub rescue>ls (hd0,msdos1)
unknown filesystem

Hrrm, that’s no good. An ls on my other partition isn’t going to be very useful, it’s a LUKS-encrypted LVM PV. Alright, time for a live system. I grab a Kali live USB (not because Kali is necessarily the best option here, it’s just what I happen to have handy) and put it in the system and boot from that. file tells me its an x86 boot sector, which is not at all what I’m expecting from an ext4 boot partition. It slowly dawns on me that at some point, intending to format a flash drive or SD card, I must’ve run mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 instead of mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1. That one letter makes all the difference. Of course, it turns out it’s not even a valid FAT filesystem… since the device was mounted, the OS had kept writing to it like an ext4 filesystem, so it was basically a mangled mess. fsck wasn’t able to restore it, even pointing to backup superblocks: it seems as though, among other things, the root inode was destroyed.

Linode Rocks!

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Wed, 18 May 2011 03:13:28 +0000

As you may know, my site is hosted by Linode, one of the older Linux VPS providers. I was excited when Linode announced native IPv6 support in some of their data centers, but then disappointed when I saw "No ETA" for the Atlanta datacenter where my site was hosted. I had been running my node with Hurricane Electric's IPv6 tunnel service, but I prefer a native solution when I can get it.

Announcing NetStatUI: A PyGTK interface for network statistics

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:06:48 +0000

NetStatUI is my first significant FOSS release. It’s also my first significant Python project and my first use of GTK+. Yes, that’s a lot of firsts all at once, so I apologize if I’ve done things sub-optimally. I’m still learning some of the wonderful niceties of Python (a subject of a later post) and so I may have done some things “the other way.” NetStatUI is a program to display statistics and information about the IP connections currently on your system. It is an attempt to provide a usable NetStat work-alike for the desktop user. Many new users are shy of the command line, and having a graphical version may be useful.

1 OS, 2 Servers, 5... days?

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:34:09 +0000

At work, we're switching a number of our LAMP stack applications to be hosted on Ubuntu Server. Because of its increased stability, we generally run the LTS editions, so we're currently on Lucid Lynx (10.04). In this particular case, we're moving our Drupal CMS hosting over from RHEL 5.4 to Ubuntu Server on two new servers to be configured for high availability. Turns out it took 5 days to do what would normally be done in a half a day.

Android Development on Ubuntu 10.04

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:56:26 +0000

If you've been trying to use the Android SDK on Ubuntu 10.04, you might be getting an error like:

No command line parameters provided, launching UI.
See 'android --help' for operations from the command line.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no swt-gtk-3550 or swt-gtk in swt.library.path, java.library.path or the jar file
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.C.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.showMainWindow(Main.java:265)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.doAction(Main.java:249)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.run(Main.java:94)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.main(Main.java:83)

Review: The Art of Community (Jono Bacon)

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:55:24 +0000

I had the privilege of receiving an early copy of The Art of Community by Jono Bacon for review. It's taken a little longer than I had hoped to get through it, but that's by no means a reflection of the book.

"The Art of Community" tackles a very difficult question in the Open Source world: how do you build a strong community around your project? Jono addresses this by using anecdotal evidence of good community organization, and discussing the facets that apply to community development. Jono's varied experiences are shown through anecdotes about the Ubuntu community and other communities he has participated in. The stories he shares are concise and clear, but demonstrate their points effectively and thoughtfully. Jono's writing skills are first-rate, with strong points made clearly. He builds the community idea from grassroots to the enterprise and shows how community participation can help -- and harm -- at each step along the way. It's obvious that Jono knows what he's talking about, and he communicates it well. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the dynamics of a community or any project leader looking to build from the ground up.