Linux has a lovely software raid feature set with a ton of options and levels for just about any situation, however one thing that most people use it for is data retention when your hard disk does die (not if, when). With the new tools that are around these days, a lot of the documentation is out of date on how to check RAID arrays - and one of the worst things in the world is when you figure “it doesn’t matter that drive died”, whack in another clean disk and SURPRISE! you have another faulty disk!

So, how do you minimise the impact of failures?

1. Look at the smart tools. Take note of their values and get the drives to self-test on a regular basis

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smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/hda

2. Scrub your RAID array on a semi-regular basis. This forces the array to verify your array and make sure everything is ok.

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echo check > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action

3. Keep another backup. If your data is important, don’t rely on just a RAID array. Think about if the machine dies. Say a power supply dies and takes out your hard disks, your RAID is now useless. Invest in a good quality tape drive and have a regular backup schedule.

Nothing is 100% foolproof, but with a bit of thought before a failure can save you hours, sometimes days of stress and headaches. The server that this site is hosted on recently had a RAID1 fail. Most data was recoverable, however the system required 2 new HDDs. A nightly rsync run from this machine to another offsite system took the recovery time to 2 hours + data copying time. Very little was lost (I think we lost maybe 5 mailing list messages from the archives).

Oh, and if you need to repair your RAID array at any time, try using:

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echo repair > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action

Airservices Australia have recently published another batch of updates in line with the release cycle for the Aerodrome, Apron and Procedure IAL Charts. I’m running my batch scripts on these as we speak and the new PDFs will be available here shortly.

Every now and again a video comes along that just makes you burst out laughing.

This is it.

THE CSIRO has won another round in its lengthy battle in the US to collect millions of dollars in royalties for its 1996-patented Wireless LAN technology.

Last Friday, a US federal court granted the science agency’s application for an injunction to stop the Buffalo group of companies from infringing the CSIRO patent in the US.

The injunction prevents the sale of products using CSIRO-patented technology until a license is negotiated.

Hopefully this should see the start of the CSIRO starting to get some royalties for patents used in 802.11a/g based equipment that were researched and developed at CSIRO.

It seems Apple has been lagging behind releasing a general update for Java for OSX Tiger. Rumour has it that Leopard will include java 1.6, however some people need it now. The good news is that it can be installed on Tiger now with the following steps.

1. Go to connect.apple.com, and register/log in. You will need an account to do this.
2. Go to the downloads section and select “Java” on the right hand side menu
3. Download “Java SE 6.0 Release 1 DP6 (Disk Image)”
4. Once downlaod is complete, and launch the installer
5. Complete the steps in the installer
6. Launch Terminal, and issue these commands:

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# cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
# sudo rm CurrentJDK
(enter your password)
# sudo ln -s 1.6 CurrentJDK

This will set Java 1.6 to be your default java installation.