Running Systems

Every Linux admin is familiar with the long time running through a large directory tree (with hundred of thousands of files and more) can take. Most are aware that if you re-run the same run-through, it will be shorter.

This is caused by a short-valid filesystem cache, where the memory is allocated to other tasks, or the metadata required cache exceeds the available for this task.

If the system is focused on files, meaning that its prime task is holding files (like NFS server, for example) and the memory is largely available, a certain tunable can reduce recurring directory dives (like the ‘find’ or ‘rsync’ commands, which run huge amounts of attribute queries):

sysctl vm.vfs_cache_pressure=10

The default value is 100. Lower values will cause the system to prefer keeping this cache. A quote from kernel’s memory tunables page:

This blog is my extended memory, and as such, its task is to remind me things I tend to forget, saving me the time required to search them again. So here is another one of these things.

The network settings syntax for RHEL8/OEL8 or any of their compatible systems, when you want to pass these to Anaconda, as can be found here, are

inst.ks=http://url-to-ks.com ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:testsrv1:em1:none dns=10.10.10.253

These network settings works for static IP addresses, and would be constructed by these arguments:

ip=|IP address|::|gateway|:|netmask|:|hostname|:|interface|:|bootproto|

I find this syntax confusing, and so – I’ve kept it here to help me remember it.

Hope it helps.

My system provides DNS services, using dnsmasq, to several different subnets. I wish to log specific queries to different files – as I want to identify, and maybe even respond to certain DNS queries of the IoT network.

The (excellent) utility dnsmasq is unable to split the logging into multiple log files, or filter logging by expressions, so we need to combine the power of dnsmasq’s logging with rsyslogd’s expression matching.

Let’s assume I have two networks. One is 192.168.1.x – the home LAN, and the other is 172.16.1.x – the IoT network.

I have added to my /etc/dnsmasq.conf file the following lines:

log-facility=DAEMON
log-async
log-queries=extra

I have created a file called /etc/rsyslog.d/dnsmasq.conf with the following contents:

if $programname == 'dnsmasq' and $msg contains ' 192.168.1.' then /var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-lan.log
if $programname == 'dnsmasq' and $msg contains ' 172.16.1.' then /var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-iot.log
if $programname == 'dnsmasq-dhcp' then /var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-dhcp.log
if $programname == 'dnsmasq' then stop
if $programname == 'dnsmasq-dhcp' then stop

Of course – I need to create the directory /var/log/dnsmasq, and create a logrotate entry /etc/logrotate.d/dnsmasq as follows:

/var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-iot.log /var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-lan.log /var/log/dnsmasq/dnsmasq-dhcp.log {
  monthly
  missingok
  notifempty
  maxsize 5M
  rotate 14
  delaycompress
  # create 0640 dnsmasq root
  sharedscripts
  postrotate
    /usr/bin/systemctl kill -s HUP rsyslog.service >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
  endscript
}

Note that the DNS queries of the networks are kept in a dedicated per-network file (dnsmasq-lan.log and dnsmasq-iot.log) and all general (non IP specific) messages are kept in dnsmasq-dhcp.log file. Logrotate makes sure I do not overfill my directory, and I can later on identify which IoT (or home, for that matter) DNS query is sent and by whom.

There are two topics I would like to describe here, for later reference (by myself, of course. This blog is my extended memory). The first is about how to create a bootable ISO out of RHEL extracted ISO, and the other is about how to download only specific update, or make your own RHEL updates on-prem mirror.

Bootable ISO

From within the (modified?) extracted ISO of RHEL7.x (in this example. Match settings to your needs), in order to be able to boot the ISO both in legacy and uEFI BIOS – you can run this command:

genisoimage -J -T -o ../RHEL-7.9_`date +%F_%H-%M-%S`.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -J -R -l -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -eltorito-alt-boot -e images/efiboot.img -no-emul-boot -graft-points -V "RHEL-7.9 Server.x86_64" .

Create a local mirror of RHEL packages

This is a long one, so I will leave only a link to RedHat’s article about it. I hope you have access (you should, if you want to mirror their repository). If you don’t – it’s easy and free to open an account (even without subscribed systems), so you’ll have access to their articles. The article can be found here

I have had a problem with RPI Zero. The system was working fine, and then it did not. I am using Raspbery Linux (Debian-based) with kernel 5.10.17+. Once a while (usually with network load) the system loses connectivity. Everything seems to be fine, if you have a serial/USB console there, but the wireless network fails. This problem was also mentioned here.

My workaround was to create a script with a cron scheduling. I have identified that the fault lies with the wlan driver, and it needs to get reloaded. So cron calls this script every minute, like this:

*/1 * * * * /usr/local/sbin/check_connection.sh

And the script (/usr/local/sbin/check_connection.sh) has this in it:

#!/bin/bash
# DST is the network gateway
DST=192.168.230.1
if ! ping -c 5 -t 5 $DST > /dev/null
then
  #/usr/sbin/reboot
  /usr/bin/logger "Restarting wlan0 network driver"
  /usr/sbin/rmmod brcmfmac && /usr/sbin/modprobe brcmfmac roamoff=1
fi

Set this script to be executable, and your RPI Zero should work just fine. This is not a solution, but a workaround, of course, but it works well.