Discuss December 2020

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157 participants
97 discussions

SSD for Centos SWAP /tmp & /var/ partition
by Keith Roberts 03 Sep '25

03 Sep '25

Has anyone actually used a SSD in a Centos setup? My little experiment with a s/h WD drive for /tmp and SWAP partitions kicked the bucket on Wednesday, when the poor WD drive caught the click-of-death. It was a s/h drive to start with and lasted about 4 months. But that was without the /var/log/ partition being written to it, as I mounted that back onto /var/log from the original drive. So I had to install another (WD) drive, and repartion it and rebuild my RPM package database, from the backed-up Packages file. That seems to be all OK now. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to use a new SSD for moving all the disk i/o to, that Linux likes to do so often. Plus putting SWAP onto a decent SSD should speed things up somewhat. Here's a short video of a laptop fitted with a SSD drive booting macOS, compared to a similar laptop booting from the standard HDD. The laptop with the SSD boots and loads some apps in 28 seconds. The other one takes twice as long. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro_6G/?utm_source=t… Kind Regards, Keith Roberts ----------------------------------------------------------------- Websites: http://www.karsites.net http://www.php-debuggers.net http://www.raised-from-the-dead.org.uk All email addresses are challenge-response protected with TMDA [http://tmda.net] -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Issues booting centos7 [dracut is failing to enable centos/root, centos/swap LVs]
by Yannis Milios 01 Feb '25

01 Feb '25

Hello, I'm having a strange problem booting a new centos7 installation. Below some background on this. [I have attached the tech details at the bottom of this message] I started a new CentOS7 installation on a VM, so far all good, o/s boots fine. Then I decided to increase VM disk size (initially was 10G) to 13G. Powered off the VM, increased the vhd via the hypervisor, booted from CentOS livecd, selected "recover my centos installation". Then I used the following sequence of commands to make the new vhd size "visible" to the o/s ... - ran fdisk /dev/sda and deleted partition 2. (This is the LVM partition where the o/s is stored. The first partition is /boot [xfs] partition *non lvm*.) - created a new partition with same starting sector as before deleting it, but a different ending sector (to reflect to the increased space). - set partition type to 8e (lvm), saved settings and exit. - ran pvresize and lvresize to make new space visible to the o/s.All good, I can see the space increase on 'lvdisplay centos/root'. - ran 'mount /dev/mapper/centos-root /mnt/root' to temporarily mount the o/s partition. - ran 'xfs_growfs /mnt/root' to resize the o/s fs to the new size. It was successful and I could actually chroot to the o/s and verify new disk size. - rebooted and tried to boot from hdd this time. Grub menu shows up and loads default kernel (3.10.0-862.9.1.el7.x86_64). - after initial kernel boot up process, booting continues to initrd and then it's where the problem starts... - looks like dracut has issues locating/enabling /dev/mapper/centos-root (lv) and as a result it cannot boot to the 'real' root fs (/). - while in dracut shell, I execute the following command sequence: 1. lvm lvchange -ay /dev/centos/root 2. lvm lvchange -ay /dev/centos/swap 3. ln -s /dev/mapper/centos-root /dev/root 4. exit ...and the o/s boots fine...so looks like the pv,vg,lv is detected properly while in initrd, but somehow dracut has difficulties enabling the root,swap LVs ? - While in o/s, I rebuild initrd by using: 'dracut -f -v -a lvm' Note, I have to use '-a lvm' as for some reason, if don't, the lvm utils (lvm,lvm_scan) are not being included to the initrd, not sure why this happens. After rebooting, same thing happens, I have to manually boot the system via dracut shell. I'm a bit stuck at this point, any clues what I'm doing wrong in here ? As I previously said, this is a new installation, so I could simply reinstall the whole thing, but I would rather try to find out some answer to why is this happening ... :-) [curiosity] Some additional details: ================== I've attached /run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt file [generated while in inird] here: https://privatebin.net/?fdc4052c0c402884#gdB/QYR3IeR55SxUbjfrkZPQfJ7jMxiUxq… o/s ver=CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core) [root@localhost ~]# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 13G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 500M 0 part /boot └─sda2 8:2 0 12.5G 0 part ├─centos-root 253:0 0 11.5G 0 lvm / └─centos-swap 253:1 0 1G 0 lvm [SWAP] [root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/default/grub GRUB_TIMEOUT=5 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)" GRUB_DEFAULT=saved GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=centos/root rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap rd.shell rhgb" GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

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MATE 1.20 test build for CentOS 7 available
by Greg Bailey 14 Oct '21

14 Oct '21

Hi everyone, There's been discussions in the past about updating MATE RPMs in EPEL-7: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1436260 https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2019-August/173154.html (and lots of others...) As a proof-of-concept, I've written some scripts that clone specific commits from the Fedora master branches, and then runs a tool to re-apply RPM scriptlets that are required by EL7 but removed from the Fedora .spec files. The scripts are available at: https://github.com/gebailey/mate-rpms/tree/master/1.20/el7 There's also instructions there if you want to try upgrading to MATE 1.20 w/o rebuilding them yourself. If these packages work for others, perhaps we can revisit the idea of updating the epel7 branches of the Fedora git repos and submitting an official update. There's nothing here (yet) about building MATE 1.22 (which might require a newer gcc for EL7), or building anything on CentOS 8, but thought the CentOS 7 users might find this helpful. -Greg

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Running script before reboot or shutdown
by Carlos Lopez 06 Jan '21

06 Jan '21

Hi all, I am trying to configure a script as a systemd service to run first when a shutdown or reboot is called. This script execute some scp commands to copy some files to other machines. My actual defined systemd’s file is: [Unit] Description=Remote copy some files before reboot/shutdown Before=poweroff.target halt.target shutdown.target reboot.target DefaultDependencies=no [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/bin/true ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/remote_copy RemainAfterExit=yes [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target But it doesn’t work. “remote_copy” is working when it is executed from root shell. I am using CentOS-8 fully patched release. Any idea what am I doing wrong? Regards, C. L. Martinez

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units command, crazy output
by Fred 31 Dec '20

31 Dec '20

whenever I use the units command from a script, e.g.: elapsed=86500 echo elapsed time: `units "$elapsed sec" hms` elapsed time: *Currency exchange rates from 2012-10-24* 24 hr + 1 min + 40 sec the man page even says it outputs that when run without arguments. My question is why in the world does it? certainly when run from within a script doing conversions of time using the "hms" option, I don't want that to be stuck in the middle of my output. Anybody know why it does that, or how to make it quit? (I know, I use sed to filter it out, but can't understand why I should have to. Thanks in advance! Fred

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Out of office: "CentOS Digest, Vol 191, Issue 26"
by mak＠jump.com.hk 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

Thank you for your email, our office will close from 1pm 24 Dec to 27 Dec and will resume on 28 Dec. Wish you a merry Christmas and happy new year.

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Gnote equivalent in CentOS 8
by Robert Nichols 27 Dec '20

27 Dec '20

In CentOS 8, is there an equivalent for the gnote application? -- Bob Nichols "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address. Do NOT delete it.

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Disk choice for workstation ?
by Nicolas Kovacs 27 Dec '20

27 Dec '20

Hi, My workstation is currently equipped with a pair of Western Digital Red 1 TB SATA disks in a software RAID 1 setup. Some stuff like working with virtual machines is a bit slow, so I'm thinking about replacing the disks by SSD. I'm hesitating between three different setups: 1) Use a relatively small SSD (120 to 240 GB) to reinstall the system on it. Keep the two SATA disks in a RAID 1 array and mount /home on it. 2) Use a larger SSD (500 GB to 1 TB), install everything (including /home) on it. Keep the two SATA disks in a RAID 1 array and mount them on /data for storage. 3) Get rid of the disks and go full SSD, with a 1 TB disk. Any advice from the hardware gurus on this list? Cheers, Niki -- Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables 7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : info(a)microlinux.fr Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32 Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12

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keepass for CentOS Linux OS
by Kaushal Shriyan 27 Dec '20

27 Dec '20

Hi, Are there any repos to download keepass password manager for CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)? I am getting Service Unavailable when I hit https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/keepass as per https://keepass.info/download.html Please suggest. Best Regards, Kaushal

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ansible dnf with stream
by Łukasz Posadowski 25 Dec '20

25 Dec '20

I wish You a Merry Christmas. Have a great time. Aside from that, I'm having a strange problem with dnf module on Ansible with CentOS Stream. I'm using Ansible 2.9 on RHEL 8. TASK [Install basic packages on RedHat-like systems.] ******************************************************************** skipping: [malinka.ping.local] skipping: [jezynka.ping.local] skipping: [aegis.ping.local] ok: [strategie.ping.local] fatal: [stream.ping.local]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failures": ["No package htop available."], "msg": "Failed to install some of the specified packages", "rc": 1, "results": []} changed: [python-cave.ping.local] ok: [outpost.ping.local] changed: [potemkin.ping.local] changed: [rawhide.ping.local] The task in question is: - name: Install basic packages on RedHat-like systems. dnf: name: - bash-completion - htop - mc - vim - mtr - tree - net-tools state: latest enablerepo: epel-modular, epel when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat' This task works on RHEL 8.3, CentOS 8.3, Fedora 33, but not in CentOS Stream 8. I can install above packages (including htop) with no problem by hand: sudo dnf --enablerepo=epel-modular,epel install htop Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8 Librepo version: 1.12.0 with CURL_GLOBAL_ACK_EINTR support (libcurl/7.61.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1g zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.6 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.4/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.33.0) Last metadata expiration check: 0:25:46 ago on Thu Dec 24 14:44:50 2020. Dependencies resolved. ======================================================================== Package Architecture Version Repository Size ======================================================================== Installing: htop x86_64 2.2.0-6.el8 epel 112 k [...] Installed: htop-2.2.0-6.el8.x86_64 I don't get it why a separate "dnf update" task is running fine and this is not. -- Łukasz Posadowski

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Discuss December 2020