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If you are typing a password or user name on a Blackberry, you may have encountered this frustration: the first ...   more »

My xen goto guy said he only knew to do the export from the windows xen center. This would have meant pulling 150GB through a 100Mbps network twice and I just didn't want to deal with that.

After a few weeks I found this post here:

************************************

Hi,

You can use the the CLI commands to achieve this. Please follow the below procedure :

1. On "host1", shut down the XenVM to be exported, either using Admin console or CLI

# xe vm-shutdown vm-name=<vm_name>

2. On 'host2' execute the following command to export VM from 'host1' to local directory '/mnt/vm_export' .

# xe vm-export -h <ip of host1> -u root -pw <root password of host1> vm-name=<vm_name> dir-name=/mnt/vm_export/debian

( <vm_name> is name of XenVM on 'host1' you want to export.)

The above command will create the directory /mnt/vm_export/debian & export the VM from 'host1' to it. The time taken to export depends upon the size of XenVM.

3. Now to import it to 'host2', execute the below command on 'host2'

# xe vm-import -h <ip of host2> -u root -pw <root password of host2> dir-name=/mnt/vm_export/debian



Just make sure that you have sufficient free space on host2 ( equivalent to disk size of XenVM to be exported ). For this you can add an LV & mount it to a directory where the exported VM's data will be copied.


*********************************

My situation was that I had a 500 GB sata with xen express 3.2 - and an old buggy windows vm that would no longer boot execpt in safe mode - which wouldn't allow connecting via terminal services and I was unable to get the whole c: drive sharing to work. Working through xen center was unbearably slow. So it was suggested that I export from 3.2 and import to 4.01... or be able to mount the vm as a file system from 4.01 if nothing else.

WARNING: The commands below are typed from memory and not pasted and not tested by me in this precise syntax. So study before you repeat what I did and always have a pristine repeatable backup for anything and everything that you can go back to.

I added a new 500 GB drive to my 3.2 system and brought it up. Used fdisk /dev/sdb and created a new primary partition (1) using all space, for a type 83, w to write, q to exit.

mke2fs -j /dev/sdb

mkdir /xen4

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /xen4/adlvm

xe vm-export host=localhost -u root -pw myrootpass vm-name=my_vm_name dir-name=/xen4/adlvm

It's still processing step 1 of 152 steps... I'll update this post once I get further.

**************** 36 hours pass by *********************

The processing of 152 steps is successful. During that time at about step 35 I may have plugged or unplugged something from a USB jack on the machine. This may have caused a message to appear on the console such as "assume write-through cache." I googled it and found it caused no harm and was informational. The processing continued without intervention. Because each step takes so long, I wouldn't really have known if it was still going.

Next I powered down. Removed the Xen 3.2 drive and attached the Xen 4.01 drive. I guess all this isn't necessary unless you want to preserve the ability to go back to what you had that may work ... since it is possible supposedly to upgrade the 3.2 to 4.01 with the cd.

I mounted my separate drive that contained the exported vm:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /xen4

The syntax for importing has changed between 3.2 and 4.01 dramatically. Also the way the 3.2 stored the export is not in one file but in many chunks in a dir named hda, and on that same level an xml file. Eventually I found the 4.01 documentation online, and this section giving the "vm" commands for xe:

http://docs.xensource.com/XenServer/4.0.1/reference/ch05s04.html#cli-xe-commands_vm

Here is the import command I used:

xe vm-import filename=/xen4/adlvm

There's no indication of progress on my screen - but then it could be slightly off to the left... I'm using a weird monitor where I can't see all the way to the left. No, there really isn't any way to fix it - it's borken... I could hook up a different one.

Note on the above 4.01 manual it says that I won't have any network interface in the imported vm using this method. (EERRRK???) And "if you need one" use vif-create and vif-plug. That syntax can be found here:

http://docs.xensource.com/XenServer/4.0.1/reference/ch05s04.html#cli-xe-commands_vif

I'd be happy if I could just read my files... mount this exported vm as a file system so I could get at my files at a decent speed. I've heard this is possible in 4.01 ... but I don't know if I have to first import it.

Will update when the import finishes....

I rebel against paying hundreds for an iPod - so I've tried out a few ultra-cheapie mp3 players. One I liked despite its laughable crappiness is the Emprex which I got from the equally laughable Fry's / Outpost. Basically if it works and keeps working and you got it cheap - you made out. But I wouldn't bother again imagining that I'd get a rebate from a Fry's / Outpost deal, or that if something didn't keep working, I should do anything other than throw it away. So anyway - the Emprex has an SD card slot - yay! For $15 I got a huge capacity mp3 player basically unlimited so far as swapping SD cards.

But this guide is about an MP4 player for $30 after rebate, from Tiger Direct. It's got quite a color screen, plays videos and does a lot of stuff beyond mp3. Here I will focus just on what you need to know to keep you from tossing this little gem into the ocean because you couldn't figure out how to make it play a song and do your bidding:

Leave power switch on side ON all the time unless you have it in your pocket and want to prevent it turning on by accident or something.

Turn on by pressing the play button 1 or 2 times. (the top button, right below the word ONYX)

Turn off by holding down the play button.

If the unit freezes or locks up when you are using it, they say turn the power button on the side to OFF for 10 seconds then back on, and power up by pressing the play button.

On the main menu, use the right / left arrow buttons to select the Music option if not already selected.

Then press the "M" button (round one in the middle) to get to the Music.

Use the right and left arrow keys to pick the song to play.

Press play to play a song. Press play again to pause the song.

Hold play down for 3 seconds to stop that song. If you hold down more than 3 seconds it will say Continue holding to Power Off ... just release the button and it won't power off.

To adjust volume, you need to be playing a song, then hold the VOL key down for a second or two - watch for the volume slider to appear in the lower part of the screen, then release the VOL key. Use the right and left arrow keys to make the adjustment. Press VOL key again when done adjusting the volume.


To change songs or scroll through a vertical list of all the songs, press M while in the Music mode. You get a white screen with a vertical list. Use the right and left arrow keys to scroll down or up the list. Press Play when you are on something you want to hear. Or if you just want to get out of that list, press VOL.

To just skip the current song or go one-by-one through the song list, use the right and left arrow keys in the music playing mode.

Fast Forward or Rewind while playing a song: HOLD down the right or left arrow keys.

To change the repeat mode:

Stop anything that is playing. Press the VOL button and watch for a tiny icon at the very top of the display to change:
Normal, Repeat 1, Repeat ALL, Shuffle ALL, Preview. See if you can guess what each of the weird icons means :).

Weird feature - you can repeat just a small portion or something - or large I guess - by marking a cut in point A with VOL while the song plays, then a cut out point B by the next press of VOL. Finally you can cancel the A-B repeat section by pressing VOL a third time. The main experience of this "feature" is where people accidentally activate it while trying to get to volume adjustment and then get frustrated and can't get out of it. So remember - to adjust volume - hold DOWN on VOL - until you get the slider on the screen.

When the music is paused or stop - if you hold down VOL it will start recording from the MICrophone. Press M to stop the recording.

Exit back to main menu: Press and hold M.

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The following applies to at least postgresql 8.1 "debian way" installs.

I have a large database and do not want ...   more »

After plugging in a third scsi drive, cfdisk could not see /dev/sdc. mke2fs also could not see the /dev/sdc. It was important to me not to have to re-boot to get the drive recognized.

By asking around in freenode.net IRC channels I got the clue that the scsi bus needed to be re-scanned. I installed scsitools but could not find a rescan as part of that. It was suggested to get the afacli from Dell:

http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml#megaraid but this did not work for me. After installing Alien in order to install the RedHat rpm Dell supplies on my debian box, the cli ran fine but didn't see any compatible controller on my system.

The solution turned out to be a bash shell script from sourceforge:
http://scsi-rescan.sourceforge.net/

Be very careful if you have a scsi device as your boot disk. I carefully used the shell script to determine the likely number for my third added drive (2) and rescanned only that scsi ID.

As the instructions relate, if I had rescanned all or scsi ID 0 - that would have affected my boot drive.

It took some time for the rescan shell script to find and recognize the new drive. After that, cfdisk worked as expected and mke2fs also worked as expected.

Locate your postgresql.conf

locate postgresql.conf

Assuming you are a highly skilled super user who fully understands and is responsible for all configuration changes s/he makes, edit postgresql.conf

vi postgresql.conf

Find the section with the log_min_duration_statement option:

/log_min_duration_statement

For the purpose of finding out what to improve, I set mine like this:

log_min_duration_statement = 250        # -1 is disabled, 0 logs all statements
                                                            # and their durations, in milliseconds.

A reload is all that is necessary to cause pg to use the new duration - at least after uncommenting the line. I used restart a few times and then successfully tried reload.

Since I am using Debian:

/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.1 reload

My postgresql logs are here:

tail -f  /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-8.1-main.log

After finding and fixing some long running queries, be sure to edit your postgresql.conf again and set the

log_min_duration_statement = -1

to turn off the function. Just commenting pg conf file settings out does not guarantee they will return to default, according to pg references I have read.

Be sure to reload and tail the log file to ensure that settings are back to performance mode.

See Power PostgreSQL website for more performance tuning info.

"... setting LANG=en_US then people post bugs to the GNU coreutils
about it claiming it is a bug. See the ...   more »

Yep tomorrow is my birthday. 44.

I would like a toaster and cds of the "Starseeds" and or William Orbit ...   more »

I use Cold Fusion to loop over a distinct query for the table that contains the duplicates. Note that your table needs to have OIDs, or a unique primary key.

column_a is the key field I want to eliminate duplicates on

SELECT distinct column_a
FROM table_a;

CFLOOP over the above query - query_a

DELETE FROM table_a
WHERE column_a = #query_a.column_a#
AND OID < (
    SELECT OID
    FROM table_a
    WHERE column_a = #query_a.column_a#
    ORDER BY OID DESC
    LIMIT 1
);

/CFLOOP

Many Internet access ISPs now block port 25. To access an outbound server other than your access ISPs, you can ...   more »

Should most technology that provides global scale benefit be provided through a "non-profit" organization?

Are non-profit organizations more ethical than for-profit organizations?

Do non-profits do a better job of maximizing the potential of technology for doing good in the world, than for-profits?

Why are some service offerings best suited to non-profit organizations?

****************
Case A: Cure for the Purple Plague in Perlivia

Let's say you uncovered a cure for a deadly malady "the purple plague" most prevalent in (fictional) third-world country Perlivia. Hundreds of thousands of victims die every year, mostly children, some with children they leave orphaned, mostly from families living below poverty level income.

The "users" most directly benefited by your technology are unable to pay for the services they need. Life and death is at stake; the opportunity for children to grow up unscarred is at stake, and the lifetime potential of these Perlivians to do good in the world is in jeopardy at best.

Individual philanthropists who may give you the money to distribute your cure - gain a dual benefit by giving you the money - only if your organization is structured as a non-profit. They do not have to pay taxes on the money they give you - and they can feel good about helping people less fortunate.

Corporations who may give you money to distribute your cure can use their involvement as a PR benefit, perhaps gaining customers by having people know they give money to some good causes.

Can you obtain sufficient revenue from those most directly benefited, to do an excellent job of getting this technology to the most people in the world who can use it?

Is it appropriate in this case to ask others (governments, private donors, corporate foundations) who don't directly benefit, to pay for those who do?

*************

Case B: Theft-proof Ink Pens

You've come up with a modification to ink pens that (magically) prevents them from leaving the area they were purchased for. The technology only works for writing instruments. It will add 1 cent to the manufacturing cost and have no impact on other costs associated with distribution of the product.

Both individuals and corporations use ink pens. So do non-profit organizations. However, of the billion (you can find out the real pen market size here: 2003-2008 World Outlook for Fountain Pens) ink pens bought per year, only a small number are mis-appropriated from private homes. For-profit corporations suffer the largest ink-pen-misappropriation cost. Non-profit organizations also "lose" ink pens - but dollar figure of the loss is orders of magnitude smaller than the loss to for-profit corporations.

Is the "user" who benefits most from your innovation able to pay for the enhanced product?

Corporations are losing a box of 12 pens for every pen that stays in the office for its useful life. Market tests show that corporations will gladly pay 12 cents more per pen - seeing the ROI on that decision as instant and worth many times the investment.

Manufacturers and distributors split 10.975 cents per pen - and your Magic Stayput R&D Lab gets 1/4th of one cent per 10 pens if you operate as a for profit. Several large knock-off pen makers also duplicate your innovation and pay you nothing. The knock-offs assume a 95% market position.

You find yourself smiling understandingly as you and your team cheer the creation of Magic Stay-Put R&D Lab's Sunbake waffler. The 1.2 million in annual revenue you get from the pen industry has allowed you to employ a fine set of ethical innovators and supply test equipment for making more products that make people's lives better.

Another option would be to form Magic Stay-Put R&D Lab as a non-profit. You could ask individuals to give to this good cause - whose primary direct benefitor is for-profit corporations who would lose fewer pens to employee theft. Or you could ask the ink pen industry to support your lab, perhaps with an annual membership at various sponsorship levels depending on size. Or you could ask the for-profit corporations (who will save through the use of your pen modification) to support your work with a sponsorship or membership annually. Or perhaps seek a government grant - the government is losing pens to employee theft too - and maybe law enforcement would be interested or counter-intelligence for possible applications in laser pens.

**********

Primary goal is getting the technology to the places it can do the most good.

Some services and products are primarily of use to businesses and organizations who are able to pay and will make money or save money by acquiring these services and products. What are the circumstances under which a non-profit organization is the most efficient way to create, deliver or sustain services that primarily benefit for-profit business?

Clearly if there is no need for "charity" - a charitable non-profit is not the appropriate form. There are not-for-profit industry associations. One purpose they may serve is to show no favoritism to any one company in the industry, and act as a unifying force or buffer for a variety of players in an industry to aggregate or exchange information.

Other services and products will require substantial funding to get them to people or organizations who cannot afford them. Here, a charitable non-profit may be an appropriate form.

In many cases, profit from sales to for-profits can be used to also support getting the technology to those who cannot afford it. The same technology can be sold to for-profits (who gain ROI from the purchase) and also distributed through a non-profit organization to those for whom paying doesn't make sense. Government, foundation, industry sponsorships and private giving can help fund the non-profit arm.

T or F: While pursuing investor dollars, innovators stay focused on making their product or service the best it can be and the thought they wake up with every morning is how to do better at helping people today  

 

T or F: As the innovation interacts with users and requirements inevitably shift as new ways to help people are illuminated - investors encourage innovators to mold the business model to what is best for helping people.

T or F: Once the product or service is succeeding at helping people, investors obtain their ROI in the way that is most supportive of the product or service continuing to help people.

   more »

If you get logged out of webmail - you can now log back in and click the Compose link to restore your work:



Click the OK button and the text you had typed so far will be restored.
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See http://ors.blogs4change.org, described as:

"... a non-proprietary and highly collaborative space for a group of people interested in an Open Reputation System for Email (or other name the group decides on.) "


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Sometime over a year ago, the Outbound Index started keeping a collection of data about domains and their name servers. We record new name servers, deleted name servers, IE changes to name servers. From this we could get churn rate as well as density per cidr block, and age of name servers.   more »

We do not make any distinction about how the sender got the RCPT address or if he has permission to send to it. We simply note that inherently - those without permission to send must constantly move and change or be blacklisted. Those with no reason to move and change rapidly are those whose mail is generally welcomed by the RCPT.   more »

We have a small hosting business for web and email serving several hundred domains and several thousand email accounts. Time is split between consulting for customers (web / database / Photoshopping / hand-holding / advising), hosting maintenance, and dev / maintenance of Outbound Index and related email tech.   more »

Setting aside the blogging/journalling features, Blogware is quite a nice CMS (Content Management System) for websites. CMS usually cost thousands, ...   more »

Your site visitors can just click on the attachment to hear your MP3. However, if they use ipodder software - they will automatically get your new podcasts when you add them to your site. Their software checks for new recordings at scheduled intervals and automatically downloads your podcast and adds it to their playlist.   more »

What is the one thing a fraud cannot copy?

Element 1. Something personal to the individual user.
Examples: a personal photo or a personal sound recording of their pet, child, loved one or self. Selected by the user, not by the software maker or application server, not by the third party trust authority.   more »

The bad news is that even if an SPF record helps get your mail delivered to Microsoft Hotmail or MSN email users - an SPF record may hurt your email's spamminess score elsewhere, at hundreds of thousands of non-Microsoft mail services.   more »

My primary goals are:

 - Make sure all revenue generating emails arrive to the business and get seen

 - Employees waste very little time each day on emails such as spam, viruses, scams - energy or actions which may harm or at least do nothing positive for the business

The Outbound Index was conceived and designed to function on a global scale. It has been in use for several years in the service of business customers   more »

VARA = Verified And Recipient Authorized, a simple, public domain concept with applications in anti-phishing and fixing the forwarding ...   more »

If you see a color and style you like on this page just click the radio button next to it and then click Change at the bottom of the page. If you prefer to put in your own color directly, read on.   more »

Get your entire website submitted to Google with what is likely to be the best priority you can get - by following our four step shortcut.   more »

Buried under many layers of new Google services is a gem for website owners - Google Sitemaps. Like several recent ...   more »

Ironically, efforts to block spam sometimes cost businesses revenue by preventing employees from seeing mail from legitimate contacts, including customers. ...   more »

Email signatures are a great subtle form of advertising, bringing you new business through personal networking. People who correspond with you usually need your web address, phone fax and mailing address, so it also saves a lot of typing.   more »