Categories
Sys Admin

BMC Updating… Please Do Not Shutdown or PowerCycle System!

We have been having an issue with our HP DL160 G5 servers lately. After a BIOS update (and on one occasion it occurred without any other updates, just a power outage and a reboot) when the server boots the system fans spin at top speed (sounds like a jet engine) and the server screen shows

BMC Updating… Please Do No Shutdown or PowerCycle System!

Categories
Linux PostgreSQL Sys Admin

pg_standby triggering unexpectedly

I have been having a problem with my redundant PostgreSQL setup over the last couple of weeks. I run two Postgres servers with a WAL Logging Warm Standby system using pg_standby from 8.3. When the master server is under heavy load and generating a lot of WAL traffic the secondary server has been tripping and going active.

After checking all the logs and putting pg_standby in debug mode there was still no clue as to why this was happening.

Categories
Linux Postfix Sys Admin

Postfix/SASL/Courier AuthDaemon Cannot connect to Courier authdaemond: No such file or directory

I have a Ubuntu Virtual Server handling all my mail, recently after an apt-get upgrade I was unable to send email using my Postfix Virtual User setup through Courier and SASL.

I kept getting the following error in my logs:

Aug 18 07:53:53 marvin postfix/smtpd[23938]: warning: SASL authentication
  failure: cannot connect to Courier authdaemond: No such file or directory
Aug 18 07:53:53 marvin postfix/smtpd[23938]: warning: localhost[127.0.0.1]:
  SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure

After consulting with Google for at least an hour i finally hit upon a page that helped me.

Categories
PostgreSQL Sys Admin

PgFouine Automatic Report Setup with PostgreSQL & Logrotate

Monitoring & analysing your PostgreSQL server logs with PgFouine provides you with a way to see which queries are performing badly and need optimisation. It can also provide insight into busy periods and give some basic query stats such as the number of INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, and SELECT operations.

Categories
Cacti Mitel Sys Admin

Mitel Bandwidth Management Graphs for Cacti

When running a cluster of Mitel PABX’s it is likely that you will have them interconnecting in one way or another. If you send calls over your WAN connection then these graphs are for you.

There are two graphs added:

Bandwidth – Shows the current set bandwidth limit and usage figures for a Zone Access Point
Calls – Shows the number of calls both accepted or rejected by Bandwidth Management