LRE's questions

I have a number of logs in c:\windows\log\windowsserverbackup that follow the pattern wbadmin.*.etl.

I have opened these files in the Event Log tool and can only see a large number of entries with GUIDs and nothing else in them. In fact, there seems to be no useful information anywhere in the logs directory.

Is there any way I can work out what the GUIDs mean or adjust the Backup settings to leave something meaningful in the logs with regard to what the backup process is up to? My main concern is to work out why the backup is running so slow (see below).

Some Background Info

This is for an SBS 2011 box running nightly backups to external media with Windows Backup.

Of late the backup process has mostly been running very slowly (~12hrs instead of the usual ~1 hr).

I've been working along a number of lines of inquiry and one of those lines is to see what the backup logs have to say. I want to see what's being backed up and how long it's taking.

In parallel with the logs investigation, I'm following leads around VSS, Exchange, Antivirus, full backup media etc - but I'll raise separate questions for those items as / when needed. Here I just want to get some meaningful logging.

Many thanks

UPDATE

per @joeqwerty's suggestion I had look at the event logs under Event Viewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Backup > Operational but there was very little in there apart from start & stop messages. Does anyone know how to get more information regarding the content being backed up and what's holding things up (or even if it's possible) ?

I was having a discussion recently regarding the fact that *nix doesn't use things like a registry (in the Windows sense) and how this means that everything related to an application (or anything for that matter) sits directly in the filesystem.

This got me thinking: if I wanted to backup an application install, is snapshotting the appropriate directories sufficient? The purpose here would be to allow me to wreck havoc on an application knowing that I can quickly roll back to a known good state.

So, rather than guessing just what the cause is (though my money's on the nvidia drivers), where do I start looking to pin down some facts?

I've been through /var/log on several occasions but there's a LOT of stuff in there and I can't (yet) spot the important bits.

Background: The Short Version

I moved from WinXP to Ubuntu Karmic just after it became available.

Since then I have had a series of seemingly random crashes that manifest as either:

• a spontaneous reboot
• a complete lockup with my USB keyboard and mouse becoming unresponsive (right down to he LEDs all turning off). Also I will typically be unable to ssh to the box when this happens.

I've done plenty of searching and Nvidia seems to be the prime suspect but I have no idea where to start looking to work out just what the real cause is.

Suggestions?

Background: The Long Version

At times, I can go an entire week without a crash then have 5 in 2 days.

Motivated by the desire to eliminate possible suspects, I've made a few changes over time to no avail:

• Originally I used KVM for virtualization, I now use VirtualBox OSE
• I had NFS running in the kernel but now use Samba
• I was using Compiz but have since turned that off
• I've rolled from 64-bit Karmic to 32-bit (for other reasons as well)
• I've tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. Same trouble each time.
• I rolled the Nvidia driver from version 185 back to version 96 (NVIDIA Linux x86 Kernel Module 96.43.13 Thu Jun 25 18:42:21 PDT 2009). This seems to have reduced the frequency of error.

In terms of what's running at the time, this can vary. The following are common but were not necessarily running for every crash:

• Firefox 3.5
• VirtualBox OSE with 1 or 2 Windows XP VMs
• Skype
• Rhythmbox or Exaile

My hardware is 2 - 3 years old:

• Core 2 Duo 6300
• 4GB RAM
• some breed of Intel motherboard of that vintage
• an Asus dual-head video card with Nvdia GeForce 7300 GS chipset
• 2 x SATA HDDs
• dual monitors (hence I rely on the proprietary nvidia drivers)

I've been keeping current with my system updates.

Hopefully the data above might prompt someone to suggest a specific type of log or config that would be worth investigating.

Updates
RAM seems fine
Per suggestion below will re-post on superuser

From time to time my Ubuntu desktop freezes. When this happens my usb keyboard and mouse stop responding so I can't get out to tty1 [ctrl][alt][f1] or do anything else from my input devices - also the lights on the kb & mouse go out suggesting that they're completely gone.

Setting aside the question of what could be causing this, I'd like to be able to restart the desktop without resetting the computer.

If I understand Wikipedia correctly, the xserver effectively takes over management of the keyboard and mouse so if the server crashes badly I lose usage of the input devices. Ideally I'd like to be able to run X with the input devices somehow being passed through the system (kernel?) instead.

edit : Connecting over SSH is sometimes an option with a laptop being nearby but this is not always the case

I've done some googling but it seems I'm too ignorant to come up with suitable search terms ;-(

So what I'd like to know is:

is there a way to configure X such that the input devices are system managed rather than managed by the xserver itself?

Alternately am barking up completely the wrong tree?

I've been trying to install a 32-bit app on my 64-bit Ubuntu Karmic box.

Whilst discussing it with a friend he stated that frankly 64-bit Ubuntu isn't quite ready in his opinion and I'd be better off going back to 32-bit. He cites stability as a prime concern.

Would you agree or disagree with that statement? Why?

I've just built a 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10 workstation. Love it.

Turns out an app I want is 32-bit only. I found a handy tutorial on installing and using 32-bit libraries in the 64-bit environment.

It nearly worked but I couldn't find one specific package (libeel2-2 if that matters). After much googling and screaming (I'm a linux noob) it occurred to me to search http://packages.ubuntu.com. No hits under Karmic but it does surface in the Jaunty (9.04) repository.

So, is it safe for me to add the Jaunty repository and install the Jaunty version of this library or am I out of luck?

Is is possible to set up a Linux + OpenVZ solution with one VE for a pptp client and another VE for a vpnc client?

What tips might you have?

What gotchas have hit you before?

Obviously I'm not (yet) tied to OpenVZ or either of the vpn clients I mentioned.

Background

Recently I asked several questions about various Linux equivalent solutions for several popular Windows-based vpn clients. This was driven by me migrating my workstation to Linux shortly and needing to still be able to connect to several different clients using up to 3 different vpn clients (windows, cisco, and symantec).

Several of my co-workers connect to these clients as well. We've occasionally had troubles in the past with having several of us connected to a given client at the same time.

After much thinking and reading on this site and others I've reached the conclusion that it would be desirable to have a dedicated "vpn client" machine through which we could all route traffic to desired customers.

My approach is to build a fairly lightweight Linux machine (might even be a virtual machine) that uses kernel virtualization such as OpenVE to create a separate VE for each client connection. With the right routing setup we could then maintain a separate, independent connection to each client as needed and have any number of us using those connections.

We aren't yet facing address conflicts with the different networks we're connecting to but that could yet arise. My guess is that we could NAT our way around that.

So, am I nuts or can this work?

I'm building a fresh workstation and want to use Linux alongside Windows. This seems like a good opportunity to get acquainted with with either Xen or KVM.

So I face a choice. In favour of using Xen I see a type 1 hypervisor with very clear delineation between domains. KVM on the other hand seems to be ahead in terms of currency with the latest kernel(s).

I googled "xen vs kvm" and pulled apart the first page of results. I've also been through several Server Fault searches and now have a jumble of facts bouncing around my head, not all of which will be current.

In short I'm not really sure which way to jump. What really matters to me is:

• stability, both in the hypervisor and in the guests
• reasonable performance, particularly for the Windows guest
• strong guest isolation
• ease of management
• USB pass-through to guests

With all that in mind, which do you think is the better option?


Update - several months later.

For the benefit of anyone with the same questions in the near future, this is how it all played out in the end:

• I started with Xen on OpenSuse 11.2, several days before 11.3 was due. I found the suse update channels to be very slow (dunno if that was just an issue for me specifically or not). I got Xen up and running quickly but had a lot of grief with the guest's network adapters.
• Ubuntu 9.10 was released as I was doing this so I decided to give that a try. The system itself was wonderful and KVM just plain worked out of the box. However I had the occasional stability issue that I felt might have been related to KVM (other suspects at the time were Compiz and NFS).
• To see if the stability issue was tied to KVM I decided to try VirtualBox and found it to be even easier to use with a nice interface and surprisingly good performance.
• The stability issue hasn't gone away yet so I guess KVM wasn't at fault but at the moment I'm staying with VirtualBox because it just feels nicer to use and has some good features combined with good performance.

This where I'm at today. Hope this is useful to someone.

I have several customers that I connect to via Cisco VPN Client (v5 if that matters) on Windows. I'm doing some tidying up and was wondering if there was a simple way to be able to connect to the same vpn endpoints from a Linux desktop.

It is our clients who have purchased Cisco equipment so I can't simply download the Cisco Linux client without a login. If need be I can ask one of our clients to do the download but I'd rather sort this myself if possible.

After some digging round in ServerFault I found some references to vpnc. Is this a suitable solution or are there some additional hoops to jump through?

I have a customer that I connect to via Symantec Client VPN (v9 if that matters) on Windows. I'm doing some tidying up and was wondering if there was a simple way to be able to connect to the same vpn endpoint from a Linux desktop.

Unfortunately I know nothing about their endpoint other than it being a Symantec product, so I guess the basic version of my question is:

"accepting that mileage may vary is it generally possible to authenticate with an Symantec vpn server from a Linux desktop"

I have a customer that I connect to via the built-in vpn client in Windows XP. Occasionally other co-workers do likewise from their workstations. I'm doing some tidying up and was wondering if there was a simple way to be able to connect to the same vpn endpoint from a Linux desktop.

All I know about their endpoint is that it's some breed of Windows server, so I guess the basic version of my question is:

"accepting that mileage may vary is it generally possible to authenticate with an MS vpn server from a Linux desktop"

Does anyone have an answer for the following?

1. Can an app supported for Solaris Sparc be reasonably expected to work on Solaris x86?
2. Can an app supported for Solaris 10 be reasonably expected to work on OpenSolaris?
   
   
3. (This is the important one) Can an app supported for Solaris Sparc be reasonably expected to work on OpenSolaris x86?

Some background:

I'm in the middle of setting up some fresh VMs on my x86 dev box and was looking at the system requirements for an application I'll be using. It stated that the app was supported for Solaris 10 on Sparc.

It's also supported on several flavours of Linux so I've got a fallback but this seems like an opportunity to get hands on with Solaris (OpenSolaris specifically).

I understand that I'll be unsupported but for the purposes of what I'm doing for now that's not a particularly big issue.

Also, I understand that my mileage may vary but what concerns me is whether it is worth trying in the first place.

I am having a small squabble at work with our admin regarding a colleague's laptop. The laptop is bordering on unusable. The admin tidied up some temp directories and defragged the HDD a few months back and that bought the laptop some time but things are back to normal (sloooow) service now.

Right from the start I pointed out that the laptop is several years old and on its' original Windows build (plus updates) and it would be advisable to back up the data and rebuild it from the recovery image.

My reasoning is based on an observation (backed up by others) that Windows degrades over time. I cite clutter in the system folder, the registry and temp directories as factors. Additionally this laptop has had a lot of software added and removed over that time.

Couple of specs, though my question is a bit broader than the specific machine:

• IBM Stinkpad R52 (I think)
• XP SP(2|3)
• 1 GB RAM

The thrust of my question is:

• can anyone confirm or refute the idea that Windows degrades over time ?
• if confirming, what factors contribute to the degradation ?

Setting aside the "why?" for a moment, would it be possible to install a Xen hypervisor and have a Solaris DomU with several Zones / Containers running?

Just one of those hypothetical questions that occurs at random times, not actually thinking of trying it out just yet.