Hi everyone,

Every now and again, a strange problem crops up with VMware Server. In this case, the VMs on one host began running with a very fast clock, even though the .vmx files contained the following line:

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

Apparently, this setting helps keep the VM clock from slowing down too much, but it doesn’t do much when it’s going 1.5x faster than it should - whoa, Nelly! Running ntpdate every few seconds showed the clock resetting backwards 5-10 seconds each time. That’s going to play havoc with everything - log file messages, email timestamps, Makefiles and many other things.

I searched around Google for solutions, and 99% of the posts say “set kern.hz=100 in your /boot/loader.conf for a FreeBSD guest OS“. That’s great if your clock is slow, but it doesn’t fix this problem. A quick check showed that I had already added that setting a long time ago.

After more and more in-depth searching, a solution emerged. The host OS is RHEL4, and it enables CPU frequency scaling by default with the cpuspeed service. The idea behind this service is great, as it saves power, but it just wrecks the VMware timekeeping accuracy. Disabling the service fixes the problem for good:

# /etc/rc.d/init.d/cpuspeed stop
# cd /etc/rc.d/init.d/
# /sbin/chkconfig --del cpuspeed

Easy!

One final problem - the VM clock still runs fast until you reboot the host and the VMs on it. To get around the problem temporarily if you are running a high-availability service, add the following lines to your VM /etc/crontab file:

*/5 * * * * root /usr/sbin/ntpdate -s us.pool.ntp.org

I hope this posting makes the solution easier for someone else to find in the future!

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

I just committed my first big changes to the FreeBSD ports tree. The
Earth still seems to be rotating, so that’s encouraging!

-Greg

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: cvs commit: ports/devel/cvs-syncmail Makefile
ports/devel/cvsbook Makefile ports/devel/cvschangelogbuilder
Makefile ports/devel/cvsstat Makefile ports/devel/cvstrac
Makefile ports/devel/eventxx Makefile ports/devel/gittrac
Makefile ...
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:05:20 +0000 (UTC)
From: Greg Larkin

glarkin 2008-07-18 21:05:20 UTC

FreeBSD ports repository

Modified files:
devel/cvs-syncmail Makefile
devel/cvsbook Makefile
devel/cvschangelogbuilder Makefile
devel/cvsstat Makefile
devel/cvstrac Makefile
devel/eventxx Makefile
devel/gittrac Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Access Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Hook Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Config Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Filter-Markdown Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Filter-Watchers Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Mirror Makefile
devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Snapshot Makefile
devel/patch Makefile
devel/pear-VersionControl_SVN Makefile
devel/ruby-cvs Makefile
devel/svntrac Makefile
graphics/GraphicsMagick Makefile
mail/smtptrapd Makefile
math/pecl-bitset Makefile
net/p5-Amazon-SQS-Simple Makefile
net/p5-Net-Amazon-EC2 Makefile
net/p5-Net-Amazon-MechanicalTurk Makefile
net/p5-Net-Amazon-Signature Makefile
net/p5-Net-Amazon-Thumbnail Makefile
net/rubygem-rightaws Makefile
net/rubygem-righthttpconnection Makefile
print/pdftk Makefile
security/phpdeadlock Makefile
textproc/fileshuffle Makefile
www/cakephp Makefile pkg-descr
www/cakephp-devel Makefile pkg-descr
www/codeigniter Makefile pkg-descr
www/dojo Makefile
www/dojo-shrinksafe Makefile
www/p5-Template-GD Makefile
www/prado Makefile pkg-descr
www/trac-customfieldadmin Makefile
www/trac-wysiwyg Makefile
www/webcalendar Makefile pkg-descr
www/webcalendar-devel Makefile
www/yahoo-ui Makefile
www/zend-framework Makefile pkg-descr
Log:
Changed my MAINTAINER address to
glarkin@FreeBSD.org.

Approved by: beech (mentor)

Revision Changes Path
1.2 +2 -2 ports/devel/cvs-syncmail/Makefile
1.14 +1 -1 ports/devel/cvsbook/Makefile
1.8 +1 -1 ports/devel/cvschangelogbuilder/Makefile
1.11 +1 -1 ports/devel/cvsstat/Makefile
1.13 +1 -1 ports/devel/cvstrac/Makefile
1.12 +1 -1 ports/devel/eventxx/Makefile
1.2 +1 -1 ports/devel/gittrac/Makefile
1.6 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Access/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Hook/Makefile
1.6 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Config/Makefile
1.3 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Filter-Markdown/Makefile
1.6 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Filter-Watchers/Makefile
1.4 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Mirror/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/devel/p5-SVN-Notify-Snapshot/Makefile
1.16 +1 -1 ports/devel/patch/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/devel/pear-VersionControl_SVN/Makefile
1.13 +1 -1 ports/devel/ruby-cvs/Makefile
1.4 +1 -1 ports/devel/svntrac/Makefile
1.22 +1 -1 ports/graphics/GraphicsMagick/Makefile
1.10 +1 -1 ports/mail/smtptrapd/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/math/pecl-bitset/Makefile
1.3 +2 -2 ports/net/p5-Amazon-SQS-Simple/Makefile
1.5 +2 -2 ports/net/p5-Net-Amazon-EC2/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/net/p5-Net-Amazon-MechanicalTurk/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/net/p5-Net-Amazon-Signature/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/net/p5-Net-Amazon-Thumbnail/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/net/rubygem-rightaws/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/net/rubygem-righthttpconnection/Makefile
1.23 +1 -1 ports/print/pdftk/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/security/phpdeadlock/Makefile
1.2 +2 -2 ports/textproc/fileshuffle/Makefile
1.12 +2 -2 ports/www/cakephp-devel/Makefile
1.3 +0 -2 ports/www/cakephp-devel/pkg-descr
1.11 +2 -2 ports/www/cakephp/Makefile
1.2 +0 -2 ports/www/cakephp/pkg-descr
1.8 +2 -2 ports/www/codeigniter/Makefile
1.3 +0 -2 ports/www/codeigniter/pkg-descr
1.4 +2 -2 ports/www/dojo-shrinksafe/Makefile
1.4 +2 -2 ports/www/dojo/Makefile
1.4 +2 -2 ports/www/p5-Template-GD/Makefile
1.3 +2 -2 ports/www/prado/Makefile
1.2 +0 -2 ports/www/prado/pkg-descr
1.5 +2 -2 ports/www/trac-customfieldadmin/Makefile
1.7 +2 -2 ports/www/trac-wysiwyg/Makefile
1.3 +1 -1 ports/www/webcalendar-devel/Makefile
1.13 +1 -1 ports/www/webcalendar/Makefile
1.3 +0 -2 ports/www/webcalendar/pkg-descr
1.6 +2 -2 ports/www/yahoo-ui/Makefile
1.17 +2 -2 ports/www/zend-framework/Makefile
1.2 +0 -2 ports/www/zend-framework/pkg-descr

–
Greg Larkin
http://www.sourcehosting.net/
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ - The Power To Serve

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi SourceHosting.blog readers,

I was recently received an invitation to become a FreeBSD committer in
the ports tree. Over the years, FreeBSD has become an integral part of
the SourceHosting.net infrastructure, and I have been gradually gaining
experience, adopting ports and submitting problem reports.

I plan to continue working on and expanding my knowledge of this great
operating system, and if you haven’t given it a try yet or created your
first port, feel free to contact me!

The attached message is my introduction to the other developers. In the
next day or so, I will likely commit my first changes (subject to
approval, natch) to the ports repository, and with any luck the
Intertubes will continue to function correctly!

-Greg

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Introduction: Greg Larkin
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:42:57 -0400
From: Greg Larkin
Reply-To: glarkin@FreeBSD.org
Organization: The FreeBSD Project

Greetings all,

I want to introduce myself as a new ports committer with xxxxx@ as my
mentor and yyyyy@ as co-mentor. I have been self-employed since 1996
and founded my current company, SourceHosting.net, LLC, in 2000. After
splitting my time between that company and freelance software
development work for a few years, I finally went full-time with the new
company in 2005.

I learned about FreeBSD from the folks at my former datacenter and liked
its simplicity and consistency after working with numerous Linux
distros. I created my first port (www/webcalendar - 3 years ago now!)
because I wanted to install the software and easily upgrade it with
future versions. Since then, I have created additional ports for
various PHP frameworks, CVS & SVN-related tools and Amazon AWS-related
modules. I’m very interested in the CVS->SVN transition for pcvs, and I
hope to assist in that effort.

I’m privileged to become a committer, and thanks very much to xxxxx,
yyyyy, zzzzz and everyone else for all of the advice and
support that brought me here!

Best regards,
Greg
–
Greg Larkin
http://www.sourcehosting.net/
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ - The Power To Serve

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

A while back, I made some blank VMware VMDK images available in various sizes. I am now making some pre-formatted VMDK images available that are even easier to use. Of course, these images are specific to the operating system you’re using, and as long as that’s FreeBSD, you’ll be fine.

I can make pretty much any size or operating-system-specific filesystem type, so what else would you like to see?

• 10Gb FreeBSD UFS2 (10Mb zipped - LSILogic SCSI VMDK)
• 20Gb FreeBSD UFS2 (20Mb zipped - LSILogic SCSI VMDK)
• 50Gb FreeBSD UFS2 (50Mb zipped - LSILogic SCSI VMDK)

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

I’m diving into some new work with virtual appliances, so I thought I would make a clean FreeBSD 7.0 VM available to you. This one has the following configuration:

• SCHED_ULE scheduler has been selected instead of SCHED_4BSD
• Other minor option tweaks in the new kernel config file vs. the GENERIC kernel config. The updated kernel config can be found here
• Root password is “password”
• LSI Logic SCSI virtual disks are used instead of IDE so the VM can be deployed to VMware ESX Server
• /usr/src and /usr/ports filesystems are packaged as separate downloads
• Two separate base systems are available - one for VMware Server 1.0 and one for VMware Player 1.0. Why these products use a slightly different VMX file format is beyond me!

I plan to use this vanilla VM as the base for future VM downloads, and by breaking /usr/src and /usr/ports into separate downloads, that will keep the overall size down.

All downloads are available from BitTorrent, and please consider seeding the files if you find them useful!

• FreeBSD 7.0 Base System for VMware Player 1.0
• FreeBSD 7.0 Base System for VMware Server 1.0
• FreeBSD 7.0 Base System /usr/ports Filesystem
• FreeBSD 7.0 Base System /usr/src Filesystem

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi all,

I just got a message on the FreeBSD-hackers mailing list about a new mailing list where “works in progress” will be detailed: FreeBSD-wip-status.  By subscribing to this mailing list, you will keep up with the cutting edge of FreeBSD development and learn about the many ways that FreeBSD is used out in the world.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

Hello everybody,

http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-wip-status
Subscribe today!!  Tell all your friends, co-workers and everybody you
know who’s interested in FreeBSD.  Post this on your blog!

LONG VERSION:

In order to improve this situation we have created a new mailing list that
should receive status reports from now on.
…
…

The full announcement can be found here: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2008-June/024836.html

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

I recently learned of the ElasticDrive application that implements a disk device backed by Amazon S3 and other kinds of storage services. To determine whether I could easily deploy an infinitely-scalable disk device on my FreeBSD servers, I downloaded ElasticDrive and proceeded to install it on a FreeBSD 7.0 virtual machine.

There are a few prerequisites, such as FUSE and Python setuptools, but those are easily installed with the FreeBSD ports system. If I can get ElasticDrive to work, it will be handy to package it as a port for one-command installation.
In the mean time, I installed it manually and edited the /etc/elasticdrive.cfg to point to my Amazon S3 account. I reduced the size of the S3 backing store to a 100Mb disk:

[drives]
#Path to fuse is the path to the device mount folder. NOT your fuse libraries
fuseblock|/mnt/elasticdrive="s3://mySecret:mySecretToo@aws.amazon.com/?bucket=myBucket&
stripesize=65536&blocksize=4096&blocks=25600&sizebyblocks=1"

After I fired up the tool, I saw my ElasticDrive file:

fbsd70# ls -al /mnt/elasticdrive
total 102403
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel          0 Dec 31  1969 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root  wheel        512 May  7 13:36 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  104857600 Dec 31  1969 ed0
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel        391 Dec 31  1969 stats
fbsd70# du -sh /mnt/elasticdrive
100M    /mnt/elasticdrive

Cool - this looks promising!

FreeBSD uses the mdconfig command to create a file-backed loop device, similar to the Linux losetup command. This is too easy:

fbsd70# mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /mnt/elasticdrive/ed0 -u 0
fbsd70# ls -al /dev/md0*
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 101 May  8 12:32 /dev/md0
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 106 May  8 12:32 /dev/md0a
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 107 May  8 12:32 /dev/md0c
fbsd70# fdisk /dev/md0
******* Working on device /dev/md0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=12 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=12 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 192717 (94 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
end: cyl 11/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
fbsd70#

Ok, let’s create a filesystem and test it out:

fbsd70# newfs /dev/md0a
/dev/md0a: 100.0MB (204784 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 4 cylinder groups of 25.00MB, 1600 blks, 3200 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
160, 51360, 102560, 153760
cg 0: bad magic number

Woops - what’s this now?! Looking at the newfs source code, this error is generated when data read back from the disk doesn’t match data written to the disk.

I’ve tried to figure out what the problem is using truss and other techniques, and I’ve contacted ElasticDrive to see if they have any ideas. So far, nothing has worked.

If anyone else has an idea how to troubleshoot this, let me know.

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

I just registered for the BSDCan 2008 conference in Ottawa, ON, Canada on 5/16 and 5/17. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the folks that I’ve exchanged emails with over the past couple of years while learning and using FreeBSD and maintaining some ports.

Is anyone reading this post going to be at the conference, too? If you want to meet up, drop me a line and let me know. I hope to leave the conference with a lot of new FreeBSD knowledge and hear about how others use it and what to expect in future versions.

I’m also just looking forward to getting back to Ottawa. We’ve mostly visited there in the winter for the Winterlude and cross-country skiing at Parc Gatineau. If you enjoy freezing your tail off in mid-February (-30F at night not unheard of!) and skating on the Rideau Canal with 50,000 other fun-loving souls, you’ve got to visit!

I imagine that the warmer months will be very nice as well, and I do hope to see some of the Tulip Festival while I’m there.

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

I updated the ports tree and repackaged the FreeBSD 7.0 VMware virtual machine that turned out to be corrupted in my earlier release. I apologize for anyone who was inconvenienced, and I still don’t know how part of one of the disks was corrupted, since the source image was fine.

Anyway, you can find the new download here: VMware 7.0 virtual machine with ZFS enabled

If you run into any problems, please contact me.

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC

Hi everyone,

In a previous post, I asked for assistance about getting a FreeBSD 7.0 virtual machine running on VMware Workstation on MS Windows Vista. Well, it turns out I didn’t need any help after all - the torrent file was corrupted!

Somehow, one of the 2Gb slices of the VM’s boot disk was truncated to ~1.4Gb. I don’t know how it happened - perhaps during the ZIP compression. It’s very odd, because the rest of the slices were fine.

Anyway, I’m preparing a new torrent, and I’ll post the link when it’s ready.

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC