I have two identical servers running Windows 2008 R2. I am using DFS Replication to keep a few shares in sync between the two servers. Each server is a Domain Controller and each server can function in the event the other becomes unavailable including DHCP, DNS, and a number of other things we rely on.

We also have a remote workstation that creates a series of output files and places them up on a share using DFS namespace. It's essentially for backup purposes and reporting.

I have a batch job I can schedule to run each night that examines these files, does a number of things with them and then deletes backup files older than 30 days (if not processed) as one of the final tasks. It's a single script.

I would like this task to run only once on one of the servers but then run on the other server if the "preferred" server is unavailable. Is this capability possible? Can two or more WIN2K8 servers handle this situation?

I could run the job on both servers each night as it's reentrant safe but if I did so, I would probably cause DFS replication headaches; the share in question is in a full mesh configuration.

If not possible any clever tricks to make this work or are there any 3rd party tools.

One idea is to simply run the job from the workstation where the data files are created and copied to the servers. The only problem in doing this is that it's a user's workstation and they sometimes forget and power off the machine at night preventing the daily reports from getting processed.

Been reading (here) and other about GLUSTERFS.

Anyone have first hand experience going with DFSR vs. GLUSTERFS or switching between the two?

DFSR = Microsoft's Distrubted File System Replication or DFS on top of their file system replication technology.

The application is not web based. It's traditional file server role; clients are all Windows7 64bit currently accessing an Linux + Samba3 + OpenLDAP system in a DOMAIN role so machines and workstations are authenticated...

I have budget to get two new 2970s with following specs: RAM: 8GIG, maybe 16GIG, 6 Disks (2 in RAID1 for OS, 3 in RAID5 for files, & 1 hot spare for either raid volume).

Files are mostly office type files (Word, Excel, JPG, PDF). Approximately 30 clients attached to current Linux file server today. Roughly a million files or so; they are attempting to go paperless for a portion of their operations and moving all company prints (they make things from prints) to an online retrieval type setup (in case this matters -- point being they have many small files). On a somewhat realted note, we notcied that SMBD processes are consuming higher memory presumable due to the number of files and directories under a common share. One of the other tasks we're doing is scattering the document files into a more tree-like layout under the share to reduce the memory load.

Presently we rsync between file server and a stand-by server but fail-over is manual.

Goal is to get a more automated fail-over/fail-back scenario if possible without much more expense than the hardware we are budget to purchase.

both servers will be in same physical IT room attached to same switch. Switch is a GigE Cisco.

I'm interested in hearing any real world feedback on your use or testing with GLUSTERFS in a similar setup or DFSR. And would be exstatic if you have feedback going between these two technologies and what prompted the switch.

=============================

as a follow up:

We wound up going the Microsoft solution with DFS replication in a full-mesh configuration and I just have to say it works very well. I had my doubts; I've long hated Microsoft but this work very well. The thing that sealed the deal was an article written by a non-Microsoft person who spent considerable time in researching a similar setup and found with Win2K8 R2, specifically, major enhancements were done to speed up DFSR and posted a number of registry hacks to take advantage of the latest DFSR performance tweeks. Out of the box, everything worked rather well. The only pitfall I got myself into was copying all the old data over to the new DFSR shares without first staging it. I got greedy. There were a number of shares to be copied ranging from a few 100 MB to several GB. I did a couple 15GB copies no problem but one that was close to 300GB just tanked and eventually timed out & server became unresponsive over the network. I had to kill the copy and just copy to a non replicated directory and then "copy" not "move" the finished result into the replicated share; deleting the staged data when I was done.

I may look at GLUSTERFS when budget doesn't permit but if anyone wants any details, hit me up.

Trying to install Slackware 13.1 on a Dell 2950. I have a Perc5 RAID card and my kernel sees it as /dev/sda for the raw device.

I've created 3 partitions:

/dev/sda1 -- /boot partition type=82
/dev/sda2 -- swap partition  type=83
/dev/sda3 -- my LVM partition type=82

Here are the steps I've been using:

1.  pvcreate /dev/sda3 (is this necessary since the partition already exists from fdisk?)
2.  vgcreate vg00 /dev/sda3
3.  lvcreate -L 20G -n root vg00
4.  vgscan --mknodes
5.  vgchange -ay

I then install Slackware 13.1 as usual, picking /dev/vg00/root for root (/) and /dev/sda1 for (/boot) and /dev/sda2 for the swap.... All goes well.

After the install I then run these commands to make my initrd image.

chroot /mnt

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.33.4 \
-m jfs:uhci_hcd:ehci_hcd:usbhid:hid:megaraid_sas:bnx2 \
-f jfs \
-r /dev/vg00/root \ (also tried /dev/mapper/vg00-root)
-L

This command runs without any errors and I do get an initrd.gz and initrd-tree in /boot

The relevant parts of my /etc/lilo.conf looks as follows:

boot=/dev/sda

image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.33.4
  initrd = /boot/vg00/root
  label = linux
  read-only

When I reboot the computer, I get the LILO boot manager. Kernel loads but it appears that the LVMs never come up. I get an error that there is no /root partition and that device /dev/vg00/root could not be found.

I've been using Linux for many years but I've never dealt with mkinitrd so I'm a bit unfamiliar with process and how the drivers are extracted. I do see the lvm binaries in the /boot/initrd-tree/sbin directory. (dmsetup, lvm, vgchange, vgscan; the latter two are sym linked to lvm)

I also tried to unzip and mount the initrd to have a look-see but could not figure that out either using mount -o loop -t ramfs /dev/boot/initrd /tmp

any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

I have an Apache server that serves up binary files to an application (not a browser).

The application making the request wants the HTTP Content-MD5 header in HEX format. The default and only option within Apache is Base64. If I add "ContentDigest on" to my VirtualHost, I get this header in Base64.

So I wrote a perl script, md5digesthex.pl, that gives me exactly what I want: MD5 in HEX format but I'm struggling with the RewriteRule to get my server to send the result.

Here is my current Rewrite recipe:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap md5inhex prg:/www/download/md5digesthex.pl
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/download/(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*) %{REQUEST_URI} [E=HASH:${md5inhex:$1}]
Header set Content-MD5 "%{HASH}e" env=HASH

The problem is that I can't seem to set the HASH environment variable based on the output of the md5inhex map function. It appears this behavior is not supported and I'm at a lost as to how to formulate this...

I have Microsoft Exchange 2010 running on Windows 2008R2 - 64 Bit.

I had Microsoft Outlook 2007 clients connected and logging in just fine. Some time has passed and now my outlook clients are not able to connect. I've tried removing and recreating outlook login and when I do so and open outlook and try to expand the Inbox related to the Exchange server I get the following error:

The set of folders cannot be opened. Microsoft Exchange is not available. Either there are network problems or the Exchange computer is down for maintenance.

There are no network problems. Everthing is on same network switch and outlook can ping the Exchange server by hostname and FQDN. Again, this was all working. I do have Norton antivirus and tried disabling that.

I went down several rabbit holes on this one. I read an article about chimney effect/bug, default gateway bug for outlook (registry fix) and none of these things corrected my issue.

Lastly, I tried setting up outlook without using offline files and without using Exchange cache mode. Under the account set up under Control Panel -> Mail, under the General tab I changed the connection to "Manually control connection state" and from automatic and set it to "Connect with network". Under same dialog box but under Advanced, I removed the check mark next to "Use cached Exchange mode" and clicked the offlinne folder file settings and disabled offline use.

I still get strange behavior. Now when I run outlook and try to expand the Inbox related to exchange, I get:

The set of folders cannot be opened. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your offline folder file.

I also deleted all .OST and .PST files and restarted outlook with no luck.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I asked this question on stackoverflow and realized I might get better responses here.

Attempting to set up Samba + OpenLDAP using nss_ldap uner Linux. Alls software is compiled by me from source so no RPMs, YUM, etc...

Using Pozix Linux which is our own distribution - vanilla login system meaning out of the box the distro relies on standard /etc/passwd, /etc/group.

Installed all necessary software to convert system to an LDAP based system which seems to work with other software such as SSH except SAMBA.

Was able to join Windows7 to Samba stand alone PDC, I can not login with a domain account unless that account is also added to the /etc/passwd file.

I get: user in passdb, but getpwnam() fails!

Everything I've read points to an NSS_LDAP issue. Here is a list of things I've done:

1. getent passwd shows users perfectly fine
2. I am able to ssh into the same Linux host using a user account that is only in the LDAP database.
3. id test (test is my test account only in LDAP) that works
4. ./pdbedit -Lv test works
5. ./net rpc rights list accounts -Uroot works, I see root has all necessary rights
6. per suggestion from stackoverflow, I changed my nsswitch.conf file from (files ldap) to (ldap files) which essentially changed the dump order of getent passwd & didn't resolve the issue.
7. commented out rootbinddn and add the bindpw with clear-text version of the password to eliminate any questions with ldap.secret
8. smb.conf has ldapsam:trusted = yes
9. smb.conf and ldap.conf both have ssl off a
10. Not running nscd

Everyting on the samba.org site chapter-5 about making users happy works except for:

./smbclient //tsrvr/test -Utest

This produces the subject error message in log.smbd and ldap debug log shows a query for test with no errors and a successful return value.

If I put 'test' into /etc/passwd, then it works!

It's as if the relationship between nss_ldap and smbd is broken and I stress relationship because LDAP appears OK (slapcat, ldapsearch, etc... all work)... It appears that nss_ldap library is getting a return value that when handed back to smbd, it somehow is not understood.

I would really appreciate any suggestions. I see this problem listed often. Often related to PAM but I'm not using PAM.

Additionally, if I crack open the /etc/passwd file and add a line for the user in question, I can then login.

I'm not using PAM. I added the two Windows7 registry updates required per the Samba.org site.

Software stack is as follows: Samba 3.5.3 OpenLDAP 2.4.21 nss_ldap 264

---------------------[ update ]---------------------

I began looking at Samba source code.

I found this function in samba3/auth/auth_util.c (about line 580)

auth_serversupplied_info *result; 
const char *username = pdb_get_username(sampass); 
pwd = getpwnam_alloc(result, username);

pwd evaluates to NULL even though username is valid. getpwnam_alloc allocates memory for result structure and fills it with the Unix UID, primary GID, etc...

Everything I read says that this call uses NSS. I hope someone from Samba team who has knowledge of this than I can chime in.

---------------------[ update ]--------------------- Examining samba source code here is what I'm discovering:

The failure is happening in auth/auth_util.c (line 580) with a call to getpwnam_alloc

getpwnam_alloc attempts to do some sort of caching and if the username is not found in recent cache the code falls through with a call to:

sys_getpwnam found in lib/system.c which is just a wrapper for getpwnam

Documented here: http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908775/xsh/getpwnam.html

Doesn't appear as of Samba checks the errno described; will add some debug and report back.

Definitely a failure to the OS library implementing getpwnam but not sure what yet.

Hoping someone here has seen this similar issue and can offer soem advise...

I have an HP DAT72x6 auto loader tape backup unit. The external kind, here is a link to an owner's manual I found of it.

http://www.dectrader.com/docs/set2/emr_na-c00070400-1.pdf

I purchased the unit used about 6 months ago. The unit stopped working after 3-4 back-ups, it's used one day a month to do a monthly backup of another system. Suffice it to say the unit gets very little usage.

There is an amber light on the front of the unit called the OAR (Operator Attention Required). The manual states to call for service when this light comes on and stays on.

I've tried a few things to resolve but none are working. I've tried power cycling, re-securing the SCSI cables at both ends.

Unit was used so I didn't pay much ($500) and so I don't want to spend a lot to have it fixed; might as well buy something new one if fixing this is going to cost more than $100-$150 bucks.

I'm curious to see if anyone here has been around these devices or possibly is an HP repair person that can give me some things to try to resolve. The manual states that a solid amber OAR light indicates a hardware failure.

When I power cycle the unit I see one of two scenarios so far.

1. The unit powers up, shows self test in the LCD, then LCD changes to show all possible images and the OAR light comes on.

2. The unit powers up, LCD is completely blank, the green lights go through some sort of process of going on and off and later the amber OAR light comes on and stays on.

If it's a simple misalignment issue, I may be able to fix myself but not knowing what could cause the OAR light to come on gives me no where to even start. Google around gave no help either.

I hoping someone here has experience with this and can help or point me in the right direction.

Also, I don't have the HP Diagnostic tools mentioned in many manuals. The unit is connected to a Linux box. The 3-4 backups I've done with it so far have had no issues. We run amanda backup. Before this incident the unit was backing up and reading tapes fine.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Here is the problem: From any IP address not belonging to your mail server:

telnet me.myemailserver.com 25  

helo me.someserver.com
mail from: <[email protected]>
rcpt to: <[email protected]>
data
This is spam.  Buy my stuff.
.

I'm using Postfix. I'm having a problem finding a solution to requiring SMTP-AUTH for email claiming to be from mydomain.com.

Googling around, this guy has identified the same problem (where I cut-n-paste with some modifications) the above example from: http://www.smartertools.com/forums/t/13182.aspx

This link http://marc.info/?l=postfix-users&m=122814832915131&w=2 gets close to a solution but it has a side effect of requiring SMTP-AUTH for mail not from mydomain.com. For mail not claiming to be from mydomain.com, I would do the usual RBL and Spam filtering.

In short, I want to reject mail to local domains (mydomain.com) from outside/unauthenticated clients claiming to be from local domains (mydomain.com).

This is what I tried: I've tried both permit and reject as the default. Here is exact excerpt from my main.cf:

smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unauth_pipelining,
                           permit_sasl_authenticated,
                           check_recipient_access pgsql:/etc/postfix/pgsql-recipient.cf,
                           reject_unauthenticated_sender_login_mismatch,
                           reject_unauth_destination,
                           reject_unlisted_recipient,
                           check_sender_access pgsql:/etc/postfix/pgsql-sender.cf,
                           reject_unlisted_sender,
                           reject_invalid_hostname,
                           reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
                           reject_non_fqdn_sender,
                           reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
                           reject_unknown_sender_domain,
                           reject_unknown_recipient_domain,
                           reject_rbl_client cbl.abuseat.org,
                           reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org,
                           reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org,
                           reject_rbl_client bl.spamcop.net,
                           reject_rbl_client dnsbl.njabl.org,
                           reject_rbl_client blackholes.wirehub.net,
                           reject_rbl_client relays.mail-abuse.org,
                           reject_rbl_client dialups.mail-abuse.org,
                           reject_rbl_client blackholes.mail-abuse.org,
                           reject_rhsbl_sender dsn.rfc-ignorant.org,
                           (reject and permit both tried here)