How To – Page 16 – Roo's View

How To: Migrate from Raid1 to Raid5

Recently I discovered that the iPhoto data was actually stuffed under a deleted user that existed as part of the Mac migration process, this meant it wasn’t being seen by my rsnapshot backup of the active user directory. Fixing the location of the iPhoto library was relatively easy to do, but having an extra 130GB of data to back up immediately ran me into storage problems.

I had setup a RAID1 system using two 1TB volumes, I had decided to split the 1TB mirrored volume into 300Gb/700Gb so I could limit the space used by backups to 300Gb. In hindsight this was a silly idea, and it also made the migration process more complicated. If I had placed the 300Gb volume second, it might have been feasible to move that data somewhere then expand the 700Gb volume to fill the remainder of the drive – but I had put the 300Gb volume first. One day someone will write the utility to allow you to shift the start of a volume to the left (towards the start of a drive).

Instead of sticking with a RAID1 setup, I decided to move to RAID5. While there is a little less redundancy with RAID5, the additional flexibility seems like a good trade off to me at this point. I’ll avoid getting into the religious debate over which type of RAID you should use, or if RAID makes sense at all with large sized drives. Also there are some good off the shelf solutions now such as Drobo or QNAP.

With a project like this it is a good idea to make a plan in advance, then log your steps as you go along. Migration of 100’s of Gb of data will take time, lots of time. I did the work over about 5 days, some of it while on a trip outside the country (remote access!). Here was my plan:

install new drive – ensure system is happy
break mirrored set – run in degraded mode
repartition new drive & unused mirrored drive
create degraded raid 5 (2 drives only)
copy data from degraded mirror onto degraded raid5
decommission degraded mirror & repartition
add volume to raid5 set

I also was careful to check that the new volume had the same capacity as the other two having been bit by that in the past. (I used fdisk -l /dev/sde to get the stats of the drive) Continue reading “How To: Migrate from Raid1 to Raid5”

BlackBerry Bold 9700: JVM Error 102

My brother in-law’s BlackBerry 9700 suffered a new problem this time JVM Error 102. A quick google search turns up more 600,000 results – so this is I assume a pretty common problem. In his case it seems entirely random – he had it plugged in to charge and when he went to unplug it, it was stuck on an all white screen with JVM Error 102 with one choice: reboot. It seemed the device was stuck in a reboot cycle, always hitting the same error.

I followed the instructions on this page, but I’ll also repeat them here to cover exactly what I did. Sadly this requires a Windows machine (I used XP).

If you don’t already have the BlackBerry Desktop Software installed and running, you’ll need that. If you’ve never had the BlackBerry connected to your Windows machine, it may also need to install some USB drivers, my Windows XP was able to figure out what was needed automatically. Hopefully you’ll be in a state as shown in the picture at the top of this post, able to see the device but not able to do anything.

Now you need the JL_cmder utility. The utility is just a script driving the JavaLoader program. With the BlackBerry Desktop Software running, also run this script. If you are having trouble with this part, I’d advise you to stop trying to solve this yourself and get some help. You’ll need to be comfortable with command line programs to succeed.

If you see some output like the following when using JL_cmder:

Then you’ve probably failed as I had to install the BlackBerry Desktop Software, or it isn’t running, or you’ve got a driver problem, or maybe there is a more serious problem with your BlackBerry. Once I had installed and was running the BlackBerry Desktop Software this problem went away for me.

Now you want to grab the eventlog. This will open a notepad with the contents of your log. In my case there had been many failed boots, so the error was repeated many times. Here is the last complete entry:

guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:System Startup guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:VM:FSNHv=1 guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:VM:CVER=5.0.0.351 guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:VM:PSIDv=266951 guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:CMM: verifyHash failed for net_rim_device_apps_games_wordmole_graphics_480x360-6(3437) guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:VM:+BORK guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:JVM Error 102 guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:Invalid code in filesystem guid:0x97C9F5F641D25E5F time: Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 severity:0 type:2 app:System data:JVM:INFOp=21e0b6b1,a='5.0.0.351',o='5.1.0.98',h=4001507

You can see there is a verifyHash failure in the log, I’ve marked the file name of the offending file in bold (your log won’t have the bold marking in it – that’s your job, to identify the problematic file). So there isn’t any good reason this file was corrupted and not another, but luckily it is clearly a non-critical file. I was amused by the appearance of the Unix epoc in the log file.

Now that we know what the problem is, we’ll just remove the file. I’ll stress that the filename is going to be unique to your problem. Reading the error log is a critical step. Using a command shell we’ll execute the following:

JavaLoader.exe -u erase -f net_rim_device_apps_games_wordmole_graphics_480x360-6

Doing this caused the device to reboot. If it doesn’t reboot on it’s own, you might need to manually reboot/reset the device. That’s it you’re done – you should have a working BlackBerry at this point.

Follow up steps – you should synchronize with the desktop software to back up your device. It may be wise to push a firmware upgrade to the device, even the same version you had (assuming you were fully up to date) – this will replace all other files which may have been corrupted. I didn’t do this, but I’d hope the desktop software makes this a straight-forward process.

OTA HDTV in Ottawa

I’m always a little amazed at how much people pay monthly for TV service. We ran for years with no TV at all, and all the money we “saved” I easily spent on DVDs (and more I’m sure). Several year ago we decided that some amount of TV wasn’t a bad thing, it also gave me a great excuse to build a PVR based on MythTV. After shopping around StarChoice (now ShawDirect) seemed like the right fit. The basic package was cost effective and gave us enough TV. I liked the fact that we got HDTV in the base package, and that meant high definition hockey games and special events like the Olympics.

ShawDirect has a great policy (pdf) that lets you schedule seasonal breaks in service. I’ve been using one of those to try out using over the air (OTA) TV as our only source. We haven’t really noticed the lack of TV, even through the Stanley Cup finals (but our team wasn’t in it).

To move to OTA I needed two things: 1) a PC capture device for HDTV and 2) a set top box to convert the signal for use with my projector. The PC side of things came along as a deal from Dell – the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-950Q was on sale one day ($54.99). This came along with a tiny little antenna which surprisingly pulled several stations. The projector has no HDTV tuner (unlike most HDTV flat panel sets) and so it was off to eBay to get a set top box. This was the first time I had used the “Make an Offer” option on eBay and I was quite pleased with the price we negotiated. The tv tuner is known by several different brands: Centronics ZAT 502 HD / RTC DTA1100HD / Digiwave DTV5000HD.

On the 2nd floor of the house I could easily pull in CBC to watch hockey using the dinky little antenna that came with the 950Q. To route the signal to the projector I needed to get a little creative and pull some RG6 from the attic to the basement, the MythTV box is also downstairs. In many situations almost anything will work as an antenna, and the simple bow-tie version I built with mostly stuff I had around already is pretty close to that.

My build was inspired by a write up I found using simple materials, the antenna I built is a Gray-Hoverman. I used a scrap of 1×3, some 14 gauge (2 conductor #14) electrical wire, some screws and fender washers. The only part I needed was a matching transformer. You can see the end result in the picture at the top of this post.

I have this antenna attic mounted, with 100ft of cable between it and the tv tuner. It works well, pulling in 5 HDTV stations all with little to no drop outs. I’d like to try to get PBS HD, but that may require a bigger antenna or an amplifier (a project for later).

Continue reading “OTA HDTV in Ottawa”