user126715's questions

I run a PHP application that uses an Oracle 11g instance as it's backend. We currently connect with DEDICATED as our type but we're having trouble scaling.

As such, I suggested to the DBA we implement DRCP connection pooling as this seems to be best (only?) way to handle in a php environment.

Problem is other applications / vendors also connect to this same db and DBA is concerned with switching everyone to pooled as it'd be a big testing effort. Also we'd have different userids so I don't even think pooled makes sense in that context if we all had to be in the same pool.

So, my question is can the server simultaneously service clients that want to connect via DEDICATED and me via POOLED?

I have a 20-bay nas that uses Norco 5 in 2 hard drive cages.

It's been at about half capacity most of it's life, but I recently added 5 new drives too it and ever since I've just been having sporadic problems but nothing that S.M.A.R.T would report on. I've been swapping the drives around in different ports seeing if that made a difference (motherboard sata vs expansion on some ports), updating firmware, bios, drivers, etc. with little comfort it ever actually fixed the problem.

Today after another fix attempt, I noticed my top cage would no longer light up at all and I figured the cage itself might just be bad. Then it hit me that it might be a power issue. Looked at how I had them wired up and realized I had 15 drives all powered on the same lead from the power supply. I re-configured to split it up over multiple lines and ever since it's been very stable.

In all of this chaos though, I'm now getting one of the drives I was moving around reporting "Spin_Retry_Count" errors. The drive seems fine and I have a hot spare and proper backup strategy in place so I'm ok if it does keel over, but I'm fairly confident that this issue is related to bad power / swapping rather than the drive itself being a problem.

As such, I'd like to know if there is a way to reset this field so it won't bug me anymore on my smart reports.

Thanks for your help. A linux command line option would be ideal.

I work with a company that runs a hosted VOIP platform originally known as the Genband M6 acquired by Broadsoft a few years back. This system is going end of life March 2016 and will no longer be receiving vendor support of any kind at that point.

As such, we're looking at ways to ensure we can continue using the platform as is as long as we need to. It's a mature and stable platform at this point but there's concerns relative to hardware failure and what not.

I am not familiar with this hardware unfortunately so I'm hoping I can get some advice from an expert in the field if this is even a path worth considering.

Does anyone have experience with virtualizing this platform?

I have a server running Linux Mint 12 that I want to keep connected to a PPTP VPN all the time. The VPN server is pretty reliable, but it drops on occasion so I just want to make it so all internet activity is disabled if the VPN connection is broken.

I'd also like to figure out a way to restart it automatically, but that's not as big of an issue since this happens pretty rarely.

I also want to always be able to connect to the box from my lan, regardless of whether the VPN is up or not.

Here's what my ifconfig looks like with the VPN connected properly:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:22:15:21:59:9a  
          inet addr:192.168.0.171  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::222:15ff:fe21:599a/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:37389 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:29028 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:37781384 (37.7 MB)  TX bytes:19281394 (19.2 MB)
          Interrupt:41 Base address:0x8000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:1446 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1446 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:472178 (472.1 KB)  TX bytes:472178 (472.1 KB)

tun0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          inet addr:10.10.11.10  P-t-P:10.10.11.9  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:23 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:1368 (1.3 KB)  TX bytes:1812 (1.8 KB)

Here's an iptables script I found elsewhere that seemed to be for the problem I'm trying to solve, but it wound up blocking all access, but I'm not sure what I need to change:

#!/bin/bash

#Set variables
IPT=/sbin/iptables
VPN=`ifconfig|perl -nE'/dr:(\S+)/&&say$1'|grep 10.`
LAN=192.168.0.0/24

#Flush rules
$IPT -F
$IPT -X

#Default policies and define chains
$IPT -P OUTPUT DROP
$IPT -P INPUT DROP
$IPT -P FORWARD DROP

#Allow input from LAN and tun0 ONLY
$IPT -A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -i tun0 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -s $LAN -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -j DROP

#Allow output from lo and tun0 ONLY
$IPT -A OUTPUT -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -o tun0 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -d $VPN -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -j DROP
exit 0

Thanks for your help.