Copying the /home file system on hydra ran until 4:28 this morning. The next
step would be to copy the individual files—maybe. After all, they were all backed up—maybe.
This morning's backup output failed:
*** Mail of at least 153911296 bytes could not be accepted
*** at hydra.lemis.com due to lack of disk space for temp file.
*** Currently, 150424 kilobytes are available for mail temp files
Admire the different units, almost obscuring the fact that the message was only just too
big. I wonder what it contained.
But in the meantime it occurred to me: I had run a full fsck on the root file system,
but I had only run the journal fsck on /home. I have an up-to-date copy of
the file system on my backup disk, so why not run a full fsck on /home? Even
with a fast SSD it took a while, and
I saved the output. That was worthwhile:
* Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
INCORRECT BLOCK COUNT I=295272877 (13248 should be 8064)
CORRECT? yes
That was the only inconsistency, and clearly it's the cause of the problems: the inode number was the same as in the panic
message, and since it's in the firefox hierarchy it explains the relationship. So I'm relatively confident
that there's nothing wrong with the file system now. And if there is, I have multiple
backups.
Still, time to complete the migration from eureka. There are a number of issues:
some configuration files in my home directory are dependent on the system, and I don't have
a general solution for that. And things like this diary need to be where they can be
accessed from the web server on eureka. In addition, the kludge RCS setup that I started
over 20 years ago gets in the way; time to unravel it. And finally, of course,
I really need to fix my window manager configuration.
I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, and I wanted to talk to him about the concerns about
weight loss I had last month. Yes, I can take my notebook, but this sort of things works best with a
graphical representation. Played around with Gnuplot, a program that really frustrates
me, and after a lot of RTFM and
comparison with the scripts I use for my weather pages, I was only able to come up with this
graph:
Still, that should be sufficient. It shows relatively constant weight up to about
21 March, coincidentally (or maybe
not?) the day of my first cataract operation, and then a steep descent followed by only a slight improvement.
Somehow I've never been happy with my huevos a la tigre recipe (a falsified version of Huevos a la flamenca). In
particular, the eggs still didn't come out correctly. Dammit, it should be something
between an omelette and scrambled eggs. It can't be that difficult. Here's what I ended up
with:
Yesterday's graph of my weight was compelling, but somehow it's a little short. It
started at the beginning of the year, but I've been recording my weight for over a year.
How about some more data points? Spent a while typing in the values for the last 4 months
of last year. And how about that, a completely different viewpoint. The first graph is the
second half of the second graph:
Oh. That's not at all what I expected, and it clearly shows the advantage of plotting
graphs. So it looks as if there's not that much wrong with me after all.
Into town to see Paul Smith, my GP. Very little to say. My
blood test results seem to be some of the best I've had, though the indications of
macrocytosis remain. I won
my bet about the MCV value: 103 fl. I had bet 104, Paul 101. About the only new
thing, apart from still more forms from Medicare to sign, was my waist
measurement. He says that 94 cm is the maximum, and I'm 98 cm. I don't see that getting
any better, and Paul doesn't seem overly concerned either.
On the way home stopped in at ALDI and looked around for inspiration. One thing that we needed was feta, which Yvonne usually buys at Woolworths (why, I
don't know). ALDI has some too—from Denmark!
Last month I had issues with hydra hanging while processing photos
with despise, a Microsoft VM. I suspected a network card issue at the time, and I
stopped using despise for a while. But then I tried again, and so far there were no
issues. Then today I reprocessed some old photos, a total of 159 images from ten years ago. And in the middle of
running “Perfectly Clear“, I got
another dreaded net hang.
Or was it? I had prepared for this eventuality with a vty logged in as root
and with only local file systems in its path. Switched to it. No keyboard input! Switched
to another vty. All was well. Back to my prepared vty. Keyboard works.
ping eureka? Unknown host. ping 192.109.197.137? Works fine. ping
eureka? Works fine. I had had a ping running in the opposite direction
on eureka, and it showed:
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=0.132 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=7438.541 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=6437.613 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=5435.655 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=4417.687 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.129: icmp_seq=30 ttl=64 time=0.134 ms
So yes, it's at least an issue with the network adapter, but something that I haven't seen
before, and the keyboard issue is also a question. I had another hang later in the same
batch, and recovery was similar. In each case it resulted in corrupted images, so it's not
ideal. I wonder if the vendor's driver would do better.
I still have my home directory spread across hydra and eureka, and it's
definitely not ideal. Today I wrote yesterday's diary entry on hydra and committed
it. It didn't show on the same file system on eureka. I've experienced consistency
issues with NFS in
the past, but it's been a while, and I've been doing things like this for a long time. What
has changed now?
That's the cat basket that Yvonne bought in advance of
Mona's arrival nearly a month ago. Up
to now, neither cat had used it at all.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days,
but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry
a day or two after I write it.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a
“blog”, and there is
deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle
for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to
reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do
send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate
whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise
I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
