Archive for December, 2018

3 results.

oh2019 bindings and coils

Dec31
by catz on December 31, 2018 at 15:07 and modified on December 31, 2018. at 15:10
Posted In: life the universe and everything

Greetings this penultimate day!

In any event, we received out RASC Observers Handbook 2019, a backbreaking 352 pages with narrow margins.

As usual, we take it to Staples to get the binding cut, and a spiral coil installed, such that, as displayed in the attached image, one can lay the book flat. Which we often do whilst observing… lay it flat at the page of interest for reference purposes.

We have asked that RASC print a small number with this coil binding but that was rejected.

So we do it ourselves and it used to be around $5 per book. Today it is now over $10. That and the fact that the margins are so narrow, when the binding is cut and the holes punched for the coil, they are so close to the edge that now I have pages coming loose.

Loose pages is a dealbreaker, so this may be the last year for this concept.

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linux fedora grub

Dec19
by catz on December 19, 2018 at 12:56 and modified on December 19, 2018. at 15:51
Posted In: tech

For many years now, one linux fedora server I maintain had issues with every dnf upgrade that involved a new kernel. It would not place configuration information into boot/grub2/grub.cfg and would not boot into the new kernel. One had to run this command to make it work:

root@S888:/n # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file …
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.9-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.8-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.6-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.5-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.4-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-25947e2761f2405084e99e0c2a4ea14f
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-0-rescue-25947e2761f2405084e99e0c2a4ea14f.img
device-mapper: reload ioctl on osprober-linux-sda3 failed: Device or resource busy
Command failed.
Even though the command failed, it did work and would reboot on command into the new kernel. The issue seemed to be with /dev/sda3 which is the root directory.

[root@S888 etc]$ cat fstab
# device-spec mount-point fs-type options dump pass
#dump seldom used=0 pass 0=donotcheck 1=1st 2=2nd
/dev/sda1 /boot ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 / ext4 defaults 0 1
#sda4 is extended partition
/dev/sda5 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda6 /web ext4 defaults 0 2
#
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/backup ext4 defaults 0 2

I think today we may have fixed this.

root@S888:/etc # os-prober
device-mapper: reload ioctl on osprober-linux-sda3 failed: Device or resource busy
Command failed.

vi /etc/default/grub and add line
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true
root@S888:/etc/default # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file …
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.9-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.8-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.6-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.5-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.4-300.fc29.i686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-25947e2761f2405084e99e0c2a4ea14f
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-0-rescue-25947e2761f2405084e99e0c2a4ea14f.img
done
No errors! Should be fixed!
reboot

It rebooted correctly.  The true test will be the next kernel update…

In the meantime we can manually remove some of the older kernels:

root@S888:/boot # dnf remove kernel-core-4.19.4

root@S888:/boot # dnf remove kernel-core-4.19.5

After this, an inspection of grub.cfg shows that these two entries have indeed been removed!

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ISS Pass

Dec17
by catz on December 17, 2018 at 16:04 and modified on December 17, 2018. at 16:05
Posted In: astronomy
International Space Station

This is a 15 sec exposure of the International Space Station on Monday evening, 2018 December 10 at 18:44 EST

This was a 71 deg pass overhead, coming from the NNW, moving from down to up.

Aboard is David Saint-Jacques.  He  is the third Canadian to complete a long-duration mission aboard the Station. He flew to space in December 2018 to spend six and a half months in orbit as a member of Expedition 58.

We tried to image the station while another spacecraft was approaching it to dock, but we have had cloud for months now and this was one of the only opportunities we have had since September.

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