There must be something useful here…

Have you ever been working on an SVN server and had to ask yourself, “Why in tar-nation is this file not commiting???!! And who is Joey to be so important to lock a file.” For which you gather all your rage and ask Joey why he had the audacity to lock the files you needed to commit? He tells you he didn’t lock them, nor is he working in the same area of the code. Then you discover that by some way he accidentally locked 1/4 of all the files scattered throughout the repository. Since you are very smart you went to the server command line and did:
svnadmin lslocks [path to repo]
And it told you all the locks in the system.

Now you should be thinking, how can I take that list and then unlock the whole server? I too faced this same problem. This is how I dealt with it. First don’t mess with svnadmin rmlock… I couldn’t make it work to save my life. The setup is like this, we are going to grep out some keywords from the svnadmin lslocks to get only paths, then we are going to use awk to help us build perfect paths, then we are going to use the svn client to finish the job. And it all fits on one line.
*Important: Make sure your local copy is updated to the latest revision.
svnadmin lslocks /usr/local/svn/repos/[repo-name]/ |grep Path | awk '{print "file:///usr/local/svn/repos/[repo-name]" $2}' | xargs svn unlock --force

Thanks to some nifty piping, you have just unlocked your whole SVN. Let me explain some key points here, “Path” next to grep will draw out something that looks like this:

Path: [Path to locked file]
Here is a really quick run down of awk, basically it takes any white space and then seperates the information into variables starting with $0 being the whole line, $1 being the first, $2, the second, etc. $1 would be the word “Path:” and $2 is our path. But that is not enough because we have to make it a qualified repo path, and since I am doing it on my local server I can use the “file:///” prefix. After that we send it to xargs and then use svn unlock and xargs will apend the argument to the end of the line. –force is also important because that will make sure you steal the lock in the unlock process.

FINE PRINT aka Caution: SVN locks were designed to protect files while a person is working on those files so no one else could over write them while they were developing on those files. The idea is that someone can get exclusive access to the files, change them, commit them, and then release the lock when the work is completed. If you are using this type of idea for your system, please send the list of locks to all of your developers and then have them manually unlock the locks they set. Otherwise you can ruin and destroy work in progress if you are not careful. Now if you do not care about locks and know what is being developed, by all means use the function above.

If you have a better way to unlock your svn repository I’d love to hear it, I created this method from my own knowledge of the shell. If you need some help or have questions, post a comment and I’ll get back with you.

Cheers,

-m

I have been hitting my head against the wall trying to set the bridge priority of a few radios involved in spanning tree. It is easy to log in to the radio and change the priority with the brctl setbridgeprio br0 . But what if you want to change it on boot and automatically? I dug through the Ubiquiti forums only to find bits and pieces that lead me to the final solution.

There are a number of key files that don’t exist by default, but can be setup to provide the scripting functionality you may need.


/etc/persistent/rc.presysinit
/etc/persistent/rc.postsysinit

/etc/persistent/rc.prestop
/etc/persistent/rc.poststop


If you have read any of my other posts you will see that I am a huge supporter of VIM, and will assume you are using it. You can simply do vi /etc/persistent/ and then write your script. For my example, I will give you a copy of my bridge priority script:


#!/bin/sh
brctl setbridgeprio br0 7000
brctl setpathcost ath0 10


In a previous post I talked about the command that makes your /etc/ directory and changes to it persistent.


cfgmtd -w -p /etc/


This command will write the changes to /etc/ to flash and then you will be able to reboot the system and the new script will take effect. Hopefully you found this helpful.

Cheers,

-Mike

I was trying to communicate with a serial device today and found that Linux is much more resourceful than M$oft products (Obviously). I plugged in my USB to serial adapter, and typed in dmesg and saw it there in the list, ready to use. But now, how to use it?

First determine where you USB device is located. You can ls /dev/ and look for it… Since there are 700+ items there, I’ll give you a hint: ttyUSB is what it should start with. Mine was /dev/ttyUSB0.

I found a tutorial of a little program called minicom. Minicom is a lightweight terminal client that is quiet cool in my opinion. Start minicom with the following:

minicom -s

This will put you in interactive configuration mode. Change your port information to what you discovered above and make sure to set the baud rate and other parameters. Now choose to save the config as dfl (default) and away you go.

Thanks again Linux for being awesome!

-Mike

Recently we have been tasked to provide SVN support with Bluehost.  Initially I was reading and found it was not possible to complete.  After a bit more searching I found that it was possible.  The steps here are not as simple as “apt-get install svn”, we actually have to compile it from source.  Since I have been extremely busy lately, I tasked my friend Henry for the job and then told him I could provide support when needed.

With the tutorial in hand, he went to work.  Here is the steps outlined in the tutorial:

cd ~
mkdir src
cd ~/src
wget http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/apr/apr-util-1.2.12.tar.gz
wget http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/apr/apr-1.2.12.tar.gz
wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.5.4.tar.gz
wget http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.28.0.tar.gz
tar -xzf apr-util-1.2.12.tar.gz
tar -xzf apr-1.2.12.tar.gz
tar -xzf subversion-1.5.4.tar.gz
tar -xzf neon-0.28.0.tar.gz
cd ~/src/apr-1.2.12
./configure --prefix=$HOME LDFLAGS="-L/lib64"
make
make install
cd ~/src/apr-util-1.2.12
./configure --prefix=$HOME --with-apr=$HOME LDFLAGS="-L/lib64"
make
make install
cd ~/src/neon-0.28.0
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=$HOME LDFLAGS="-L/lib64"
make
make install
cd ~/src/subversion-1.5.4
./configure --prefix=$HOME --without-berkeley-db  --with-ssl LDFLAGS="-L/lib64"
make
make install

After making it through all of the above configuring and compiling, the binaries are sitting in ~/system/bin ready for use.

Now to add a new repo, type:

svnadmin create /[dir]/[repo name]

Now import files to the repo:

svn import /[dir]/[repo name] [svn string, starting with svn://]

Now the repo is ready to add files or to check them out. But, you will soon learn that you need to add somethings to the path in order to properly execute. Once I added the things to the path, it still didn’t work. I found out that bluehost doesn’t allow execution of the .bashrc if it is a single execution item. I found a work around:

First you will have to add a public key to the .ssh/authorized_keys from your system so that you can login without using a password.  If you need help with that, here is an awesome tutorial that works very well! SSH Key Tutorial

Add the following before your rsa key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

command="/home/USERNAME/system/bin/svnserve -t" ssh-rsa [KEY REMOVED]

Now you should be able to login using the CLI for the system that you have added the key for and use SVN.

Now that you have everything else setup, it is time to get TurtoiseSVN client up and running.

First install Putty, if you need help with that, click here.

For those that didn’t click the link, click it for fun .

Next you are going to need to get WinSCP or Filezilla or some other program that can do file transfer over SSH.  I prefer Filezilla because it is Filezilla.  If you don’t have either of those, simply Google them and you’ll find them.

Ok, now you will need to log in to your Bluehost server with Putty.  Once you have logged in, type the following:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

This will create 2 files id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in the .ssh/ directory. First you will want to copy the public key to make it so you can use this key on this server, type the following:

cp .ssh/id_rsa.pub .ssh/authorized_keys

Now I will assume you are using Filezilla. Open Filezilla and then for the hostname, use “sftp://[domainname.com]” and your username and password. Navigate to the ~/.ssh directory and download id_rsa to a directory on your computer of your choosing.

When you downloaded putty, you should have also downloaded PuttyGen. Open PuttyGen and then select the Conversions menu and select Import Key. Find the id_rsa file you just downloaded and import it. After it is imported select the “Save Private Key” button and export the .PPK file to your choosing.

Now we are going to open Putty and save a new session with our newly created key. Once Putty is opened, go to SSH and then to AUTH and then select the private key you exported above. After that go back to the sessions option and type the whole domainname (including .com/.net/.whatever) as the “Saved Session” and push the Save button. It is important to save the session because Tortoise will use this in just a bit.

You can test your SSH login to make sure it doesn’t ask for a password and you will know that you are on the right path.

Next up, we have to make some changes to your Tortoise config file located at C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_LOCAL_USERNAME\Application Data\Subversion\config
If you have Vista or Win7, it will be located here:
C:\Users\YOUR_LOCAL_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\config
Now find the section called [tunnels] and add the following:

ssh = c:\\Program\ Files\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoisePlink.exe

Link in Linux, you have to escape the backslashes with a backslash.

Ok, you should be ready to rock at this point. Time to install Tortoise if you haven’t already. Download it here. Follow the installer, should be easy.

Time to check something out. Try to checkout a repo now by right clicking in Windows Explorer and choosing “SVN Checkout.” Use the following string but add your own info:

    svn+ssh://youraccount@[domain]/home/[your account]/[repo path]/[Project]

Hopefully everything worked, if it didn’t, hit me up and I’ll help out.

Mike

I stumbled across Trixbox some time ago and thought it was an excellent replacement for Shortel and Switchvox. Trixbox is a PBX system that is built on top of Asterisks. It is much like Switchvox with its web interface and ease of use. The nice thing is that the Community Edition (CE) is completely free, unsupported, but free. For this adventure, I have been working with an Openvox TDM card, Trixbox on a USB Stick, and SATA RAID. The reason I am using a USB stick is that when the RAID is active, you can not hook up a CDRom to the SATA controller. Ok, this seems fine, but when you choose IDE for SATA in BIOS, it breaks the RAID and according to the controller, it must be “Rebuilt.” I was able to get Trixbox to load onto a USB stick thanks to the people at Pendrivelinux.com and their MultibootISO application. This application uses Grub4Dos to emulate a CD-Rom drive from an ISO file. The only issue I had was when Trixbox installed the bootloader (Grub), it installed it to the MBR of the Flash drive. I was able to get Trixbox to boot off of the Hard drive by using the kernel (hd0,0)/[dir to kernel] and initrd (hd0,0)/[dir to initrd]. Once I had it booted up, I was able to modify /etc/grub.conf to remove the Flash drive. After that, I had to edit /boot/grub/menu.1st with the changed HD info. I was able to fix the MBR by using the grub-install command on the SATA Raid device, which was in a strange place. I think it was /dev/mapper/[name of RAID]. Once I referenced that, I was able to get Trixbox booting all by its self.

Now it was time to configure the TDM card and the extensions. I looked in the system config for the TDM card, but I didn’t see it. For some reason, it was not recognized as Zaptel. I am not entirely sure I understand the difference between the 2 device drivers/emulators, but all I knew is that the guide I was working from said I needed zaptel. Openvox has Zaptel drivers on their website, but I didn’t feel like compiling from scratch.

When I was on Openvox’s website, I noticed that the extra power connector on the TDM card was only needed for FXS ports. The reason is that FXS provides voltage across and FXO receives voltage. This helped explain why the all FXO card was being recognized as FXS. Once I rebooted the system, the TDM card was not being recognized by Asterisk. I tried to run the first_run scripts from Trixbox (/var/Trixbox/first_run…), but they couldn’t initialize the card. Modprobe was failing with a FATAL message meaning it can’t find the driver.

I tried to compile the driver from source, but not all of the Linux-Kernel Header files were included when I got the development files. I then tried to uninstall Trixbox with ‘yum remove [trixbox package]‘ but that wasn’t very successful. I tried to re-install Trixbox with Yum using the repository. I had a bunch of issues and dependencies issues, but eventually got Trixbox installed and running again. Now the only issue was that the system still didn’t recognize the TDM card. Now I am going to do a fresh install from USB and then start from there.

Wish me luck.

Mike