Contributions Thread

[praeses]

I am in a similar situation to jhurd8025. On the DHCP server there are IP reservations for all the computers, and the rest of the addresses are blocked so they can only get the same address everytime and no unknown computers can easily pull an address from the DHCP server. My gateway and file server have different addresses however.

Currently they pull their correct address during the PXE stage, however PING fails to get anything other than an auto-configuration address (169.x.x.x). I was hoping to edit the pxelinux file as recommended however I am at a loss as I have never done it before. Are there any suitable references/guides available? I took a peak at the pxelinux/syslinux pages although I dont believe I have found what I was looking for. My other searches haven't turned up anything useful to date.

[Natan]

Hi there,
I'm pretty sure Jon has already customized PING so to make it easily...

Natan

[superdaz]

Hi Guys,

I have been using PING as a backup solution for some HP servers with smart array drives. The backup and restore work perfectly from external USB drive, however I was unable to successfully make a bootable CD. I had a poke through rc.ping on my restore CD and found what appears to be the problem. ie, The code that checks for an image on the disk doesn't account for the 'cciss' folder.
I hacked it as shown below. When I ran the hacked script it flagged the folder for restoration and went on the restore the image.
(Note I'm not a PERL hacker - there is probably a better way to do this)

The change was made at around line 242 in rc.ping

Code: Select all

#                if($F =~/^[hs]d[abcde]$/)
                if($F =~/^[hs]d[abcde]$/ || $F =~/cciss/i)
                {
                    LOG("  Found a [/mnt/cdrom/$F] file\n");


I'm hoping you can put something similar to this into the next release??

[Natan]

Hi Superdac,
you're perfectly right. Next release will replace the if(...) line by this :

Code: Select all

if($F =~/[hs]d[abcde]$/ || $F =~/(cciss|rd|ida|mapper)\/c\d{1}d\d{1,2}$/)

Thanks!
Natan

[superdaz]

Thank Natan, glad to help.

Another thing I noticed:
When I made the bootable CD I followed the user guide directions and downloaded the kernel and initrd.gz from the web site as directed. When I tried the bootable CD the OS did not recognise the drive that the CD booted from, even though it is recognised by the PING CD.
After scratching my head for a while I remade the bootable CD, but this time I used the kernel and initrd.gz that came with the latest PING download. This time the CD drive was recognised, so I guess that means I need the latest kernel for my CD drive to be recognised?
It might be time to update the other downloads on the site to reflect the current PING release. Another option would be to remove the other downloads and update the use guide to direct people to extract the required files from the latest PING iso.

I'll leave it with you....
Cheers,
Daz

[Natan]

Hi Daz,
I've just cheksumed both kernel files -- the one in the download directory, and the one contained in the iso. I've found the same result => 465ea6c4c0864e1cfc5ff78a83b9d3f6 -- and file's size is 4559008 bytes. Are you sure of your own result ?...

[superdaz]

Hi Natan,

It may be my mistake. When I think about it, I probably downloaded the kernel files when I was looking at an earlier version of PING, as I started playing with it a couple of months ago now.
Sorry to waste your time - I'll double check next time!

Cheers,
Daz

[Flow]

Hi there, been a little while since I checked the forums. See now your actively working on 3.0... love it so far! Natan your doing everyone a great service, thx a million!

I just had an idea about the image creation date. I just noticed when you restore an image there's a line for the image creation. I was thinking it might be a good idea to also input the version of Ping used when creating the said image. Just a thought.

Also, I like that you have added the question YES or NO for the user to be able to continue but it is really too much info for the average user (the huge text before the question). Is there some line to append a shorter version? That would be great for the automated process since it's an end user that will end up using it, the question is still very useful.

[Natan]

Hi Flow,
Thanks for the encouragements ! Yes, the warning text would even disgust a dog from a bone
But sure, you can have it skipped by setting param Dont_Warn_Me to Y.

The reason for the text is, there has been one or two average users who have lost some data, partly because of PING lacked safety nets, partly because they weren't familiar with system tasks (nor backups, btw). At least now, they are warned, can't say they weren't, and should face their responsibilities

Keeping somewhere the version used to make the image is not a bad idea. Maybe it should go to a info.txt file. Might store the date of creation as well. I didn't do it so far, because all versions of PING were backward-compatible (and still are, except for the .part files, but this is a detail), but really, why not, just in case.

Regards
Natan

[Flow]

Well for the warning I think it's fair that it should be there and also that you have the option to remove it, that's all good. What I mean is having a 3rd option, like a light version of it or maybe even access to modify this text on our own, this way we can have whatever we want in there. See what I mean? The reason is flexibility to use this tool into different environments, I know I would like to have users being asked a quesiton so they realize it's serious sh*t but if this text is too 'gebrish' to them they will just go 'ok whatever, next' you know how some people are.

[Natan]

Hi Flow,
well, it's always possible to edit the rc.ping script, and either modify the initrd.gz image, either compress an /etc/rc.d/rc.ping script into a addon-xxx.tar.gz archive (+ a Cmd_1 bash script to relaunch PING after it has unarchived the addon => kill -9 `pidof perl`;/etc/rc.d/rc.ping).

As for now
Regards
Natan

[Mark Phelps]

Ran into a serious problem trying to restore an Ubuntu installation using PING and wanted to pass along my experiences in case others have the same ...

Despite repeated attempts, was not able to restore from a PING backup. Symptom was that I would start the restore, get a brief blue screen (all blue, no lettering), and then the scrolling text telling me it would reboot in 10 seconds.

Examining the x.log file showed superblock errors on my Linux partition. I removed and reformatted it several times without improvement.

Then ... I removed it and the subsequent swap partition, added back the Linux partition -- and the restore worked!! Or so I thought. When I rebootet, I got the "no operating system" message. Booted using a system rescue CD, was able to determine that the partition HAD got restored. Then remembered that there are problems using GRUB with Vista.

Dug out my SuperGrub Disk, and the "Windows Erases Grub" post from the Super Grub Wiki, went through the process of reinstalling GRUB (actually, stage 1_5) and voila -- it worked!!

Link to wiki page:
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/WindowsErasesGrub

I then went in, again using the system rescue CD, resizes the Linux partition, added a swap partion, and now am OK.

So, for anyone not being able to boot using GRUB in a multi-OS machine with Vista present, check out this wiki and grab yourself a SuperGrub disk. It's not a PING problem; it's a Vista problem (so, what else is new?).

[Natan]

Hi people !
Sure, there's something to do with GRUB. Some day or another, we'll have to have PING recreate the boot sector from scratch, be it lilo, grub or ntfs. And the partition table, too. Until then, some grub tutos would certainly help...

Regards
Natan

[iconmatrix]

Hi There ...

This is my first post. I am not a programmer and my Linux experience is minimal. For PING, I managed to muddle through the various screens and prompts and after a few tries, I ultimately got it to work. In the end I was very impressed. But because of that, I also thought that it is a shame that some relatively minor user-interface issues are spoiling an otherwise great "user experience". So if anyone would like to work on that angle with me, then I'l take on the role of the "consumer guinea pig" by offering end-user advice while you ( the mighty wizard ) integrate the features into the program. Anyone who wants to try this out in a more serious collaborative manner, please send me a message !

IM

[JuanOlvera]

First off, just wanted to say that this is a great project. I picked up on it about a year ago and have been using it off & on since then, as it has given me some good practice with PartImage. Kudos to the creator.

In my attempts to use PING, I often had to refer to documentation but wasn't always around an Internet-connected PC to access the online HOWTO. Attempting to print it out turned out to be cumbersome, as pages are separate. This led me to search for a PDF copy of the HOWTO, but I could not find one. I spent this last weekend in OpenOffice piecing together the pages for a printer-friendly version of the PING HOWTO for personal use, and thought I would share with you all. Since it seems PDFs are not allowed as attachments, I'll go ahead and post a link to my tech documentation page (which this tech doc prompted me to create):

http://techdocs.mercedcitysns.org/

Edit: I know this isn't exactly a code contribution, but it's a contribution nonetheless and this thread seemed like the place to post it. If my assumption was wrong, please move post to the appropriate thread.