Paste di Mandorla (Almond Biscuits)

Ingredients

• 2 egg whites
• 200g caster sugar
• a few spoonfuls of icing sugar (for coating)
• 400g almond meal
• 1 teaspoon of almond essence
• 1 teaspoon of honey (preferably orange honey)
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• half a teaspoon of baking powder
• half a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste
• pinch of salt

Preparation

1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff
2. Add the lemon juice, the honey, the vanilla paste and the almond essence.
3. Whisk vigorously. The mixture will become much softer, but it should still be fluffy.
4. Add the caster sugar, the baking power, the sodium bicarbonate and the salt.
5. Whisk vigorously.
6. Add the almond meal.
7. No more whisking. This time use a spoon to mix everything. The result should be a soft and somewhat loose cookie dough that will hold whatever shape you want to give it.
8. Make small balls of about 4cm and roll them in the icing sugar. Then shape them however you like and put on a baking tray lined with baking paper (no need to grease it up).

Cooking


Bake at 180'C for 15 mins. The aim is to make thick cookies that are somewhat crunchy outside and soft and sligthly chewy on the inside, so bear in mind that any shape less than 2cm thick will cook quickly and get crunchy quickly.

After baking, you can use any leftover icing sugar to dust the lot, or you can just enjoy them 'au naturel'.


Enjoy!
M.

Marco's Pancakes

Makes 6-8 hand-sized pancakes.


Ingredients

• 1 cup of self-raising flour
• 1 cup of semi-skimmed milk
• 1/2 cup of almond meal
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of margarine
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• pinch of salt

Preparation
Put the margarine and the milk in a pan and warm them up slowly. The milk must be just warm, not hot, and the margarine should be all melted. Stir gently if needed.
While the milk is warming up, sift the flour and almond meal in a bowl, then add the sugar, the salt and the baking powder.
Beat the egg and the lemon juice lightly and leave it on the side.
When the milk is warm and the margarine has melted, add the beaten egg to the flour, then the warm milk and start whisking. If the milk is hot, the egg will start cooking immediately and the mixture will get lumpy. Whisk until you get a smooth dense mixture . If it's too liquid, sift more flour into it while whisking.
Leave the pancake mix to rest for a minute or two. 


Cooking
While the pancake mix is resting, you can use this time to start heating up a frying pan on a medium-high heat. If the heat is too high the pancakes will burn easily on the outside without cooking properly, so this might take a little bit of experimenting.
I use olive oil to cook the pancakes, but some people prefer butter or margarine. With olive oil, I use a few drops in the middle of the pan and then shake the pan vigorously so that lots of tiny droplets roughly cover the whole surface.
Gently pour the pancake mix in the middle of the pan and let it cook for just over a minute. You should see lots of little bubbles being produced, covering pretty much the whole pancake. After a minute, check the bottom of the pancake: if it's a bit brown it's time to turn it over and let it cook for another minute or less.


The size of the bubbles depends on how much baking powder you put in the mix, so if few or no bubbles appear you can try adding a quarter of a teaspoon of baking powder to the mix and whisk again throughly.


Enjoy.

RAIDers of the Lost Disk (again)

Here we go again. The NAS is not happy.
Just out of curiosity, I see if there is a hacked firmware based on a more recent image, and I find one based on version 3.4.90, with SSH of course.
So here we go. Let's check the RAID device...

~ # mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
    Device Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 1
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Fri May 22 15:20:30 2009
          State : clean, degraded
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
         Events : 0.525126

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       0        0        -      removed
       1       8        6        1      active sync   /dev/sda6

Again only one drive out of two.
Let's see what happened to /dev/sdb.

~ # /usr/sbin/smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdb
smartctl version 5.1-14 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log, version number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended off-line   Completed                     00%      7474         -
# 2  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      50%      7466         -
# 3  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      50%      7379         -
# 4  Short off-line      Completed: read failure       50%      7334         0x00032141
# 5  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      7334         -
# 6  Short off-line      Completed                     00%      7330         -
# 7  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      7330         -
# 8  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      5973         -
# 9  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      5396         -
#10  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      5393         -
#11  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      5376         -
#12  Short off-line      Completed                     00%      4687         -
#13  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      4687         -
#14  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      4003         -
#15  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      3819         -
#16  Short off-line      Completed                     00%      3659         -
#17  Short off-line      Completed                     00%      3659         -
#18  Short off-line      Completed                     00%      3655         -
#19  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      70%      3652         -
#20  Short off-line      Aborted by host               70%      3652         -
#21  Off-line            Interrupted (host reset)      00%      3651         -

Ouch! LBA_of_first_error = 0x32141 (= 205121 in base 10)
Let's check also the SMART attributes.

~ # /usr/sbin/smartctl -A /dev/sdb
smartctl version 5.1-14 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 32
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   168   162   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       18676
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   210   210   000    Old_age   Always       -       20884
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   253   253   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0027   247   243   187    Pre-fail  Always       -       41160
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   232   232   000    Old_age   Always       -       7559
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x002b   253   252   157    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x002b   253   252   223    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       76
189 Unknown_Attribute       0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Unknown_Attribute       0x0022   056   039   000    Old_age   Always       -       959119404
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0032   046   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       44
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x000a   252   210   000    Old_age   Always       -       37129
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0008   199   199   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate    0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
202 Unknown_Attribute       0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
203 Unknown_Attribute       0x000b   253   252   180    Pre-fail  Always       -       11
204 Unknown_Attribute       0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
205 Unknown_Attribute       0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
207 Unknown_Attribute       0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
208 Unknown_Attribute       0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
210 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
211 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
212 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

Not too bad after all, since
Current_Pending_Sector = 0
Offline_Uncorrectable = 0

Now let's find which partition has the problem.

~ # fsck.ext3 -nv /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/sdb1: clean, 3045/64256 files, 24511/64252 blocks

~ # fsck.ext3 -nv /dev/sdb2
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
Warning!  /dev/sdb2 is mounted.
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem check.
/dev/sdb2 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? no

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong (39452, counted=39449).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (61113, counted=61112).
Fix? no


/dev/sdb2: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********


    2887 inodes used (4%)
      13 non-contiguous inodes (0.5%)
         # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 156/0/0
   24548 blocks used (38%)
       0 bad blocks
       1 large file

    2309 regular files
     175 directories
      47 character device files
      40 block device files
       0 fifos
       8 links
     308 symbolic links (308 fast symbolic links)
       0 sockets
--------
    2887 files

/dev/sdb3 is a swap partition, so we can skip that.
/dev/sdb4 is an extended partition, so we can skip that too.

~ # fsck.ext3 -nv /dev/sdb5
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
Warning!  /dev/sdb5 is mounted.
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem check.
/dev/sdb5 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? no

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong (118269, counted=118286).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (126523, counted=126537).
Fix? no


/dev/sdb5: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********


      69 inodes used (0%)
       4 non-contiguous inodes (5.8%)
         # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0
    8235 blocks used (6%)
       0 bad blocks
       1 large file

      32 regular files
      14 directories
       0 character device files
       0 block device files
       0 fifos
       0 links
       0 symbolic links (0 fast symbolic links)
       0 sockets
--------
      46 files

~ # fsck.ext3 -nv /dev/sdb6
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/sdb6: clean, 93575/60899328 files, 56875141/121776688 blocks

So the errors are on /dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb5
Let's see where they mount to.

~ # mount | grep /sdb
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/__mxo_sdb1 type ext3 (rw)

~ # cat /proc/mounts | grep /sdb
/dev/sdb5 /tmp ext3 rw 0 0

~ # cat /proc/cmdline
console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sdb2 rw

Are we booting from /dev/sdb2?

~ # mxoparam -h

Maxtor mxoparam version 1.0
-a         show all maxtor params
-b         get wait for button status
-c [0-1]        set wait for button 0 = Off 1 = On
-d         show max number of drives
-e         enable watchdog in uboot
-f         disable watchdog in uboot
-g         set led solid green
-h         show help
-k         kick watchdog
-p         get boot partition
-q [part]  set boot partition
           0 = drive 0 partition 1
           1 = drive 0 partition 2
           2 = drive 1 partition 1
           3 = drive 1 partition 2
-r         reset partion fail count
-s         get serial number
-t [sn]    set serial number
-v         show version
-x         disable watchdog now
-w         enable watchdog now
-y         set led solid yellow

~ # mxoparam -p
Boot partition is 3

Looks like the system is booting from the second disk, second partition (/dev/sdb2)
This means we can't unmount it, and we need to unmount it before we can fix it.
Therefore, we need to make the system boot from /dev/sda2 otherwise we won't be able to fix /dev/sdb*

First of all, let's make sure /dev/sda2 is exactly the same as /dev/sdb2

~ # dd if=/dev/sdb2 of=/dev/sda2

~ # mount -n /dev/sda2 /mnt/__mxo_sda2 -t ext3

~ # cp -a /mnt/__mxo_sdb2 /mnt/__mxo_sda2


Now let's set the new boot partition





~ # mxoparam -q 1
REBOOT!
...
Let's check it's booting up from the right place now.





~ # cat /proc/cmdline
console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda2 rw
Right! We're ready to fix /dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb5 now!





~ # fsck -v /dev/sdb2
fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/sdb2 has gone 384 days without being checked, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? yes

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/sdb2: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

    3157 inodes used (4%)
      14 non-contiguous inodes (0.4%)
         # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 159/0/0
   24622 blocks used (38%)
       0 bad blocks
       1 large file

    2317 regular files
     179 directories
     246 character device files
      84 block device files
       0 fifos
       7 links
     321 symbolic links (321 fast symbolic links)
       0 sockets
--------
    3154 files


~ # fsck -v /dev/sdb5
fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/sdb5: recovering journal
/dev/sdb5 has been mounted 35 times without being checked, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? yes

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/sdb5: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

    2939 inodes used (2%)
      28 non-contiguous inodes (1.0%)
         # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 159/0/0
   26690 blocks used (21%)
       0 bad blocks
       1 large file

    2345 regular files
     189 directories
      47 character device files
      40 block device files
       0 fifos
       8 links
     308 symbolic links (308 fast symbolic links)
       0 sockets
--------
    2937 files
Now we can rebuild the RAID array.







~ # mdadm --manage --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdb6
mdadm: hot added /dev/sdb6
NAS:~ # mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
    Device Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Sat May 23 14:39:50 2009
          State : clean, degraded, recovering
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 1

 Rebuild Status : 0% complete

           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
         Events : 0.541445

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       0        0        -      removed
       1       8        6        1      active sync   /dev/sda6

       2       8       22        0      spare rebuilding   /dev/sdb6

~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdb6[2] sda6[1]
      487106752 blocks [2/1] [_U]
      [>....................]  recovery =  1.5% (7396736/487106752) finish=145.1min speed=55092K/sec
unused devices: [none]
Good... 
2.5 hours later...






~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdb6[0] sda6[1]
      487106752 blocks [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: [none]
Reboot again and we're done!

Maxtor Shared Storage II - LED Codes

I just want to write this for future reference, since the relevant link on the Seagate support website has already changed a couple of times and I don't want to keep wasting time looking for it next time it changes.

Back Panel LED Codes

LED	Definition	Status
Power LED (located in center of the power button)	Power Switch	Illuminated    - Power On Not Illuminated    - Power Off
Ethernet LED (located on bottom side of Ethernet connector)	Shows if the drive is connected through a 10/100 or a 1 Gb Ethernet connection. Left Green    - 10/100 Mbps Ethernet connectivity Left Amber    - 1 Gbps Ethernet connectivity	Illuminated    - Power On Blinking    - Network communication is occurring Not Illuminated    - Power Off
Activity LED (located on top side of Ethernet connector)	A flashing Activity LED indicates that the network connection is functional and that packets are being transmitted or received.

Front Panel LED Codes

LED	Definition	Status
Top	Power Activity	Illuminated    - Power On Blinking    - Drive is either powering up or shutting down Not Illuminated    - Power Off
Center	Hard Disk Activity	Illuminated    - Power On Blinking    - Data is being transferred to/from the drive Not Illuminated    - Power Off
Bottom	Network Activity	Illuminated    - Power On Blinking    - Network communication is occurring Not Illuminated    - Power Off

Front Panel LED Error Codes

Green LED - Number of Blinks	Amber LED - Number of Blinks	Status
1	4	/share file system error
1	3	Boot Error - Attempting to boot from disk 0
2	3	Boot Error - Attempting to boot from disk 1
1	2	HDD S.M.A.R.T. Error - Attempting to boot from disk 0
2	2	HDD S.M.A.R.T. Error - Attempting to boot from disk 1
1	1	RAID Error

Software Engineering Wishlist #1

This is just the beginning of a wishlist for my software engineering and development world. Things I would like to be able to do, technology trends etc. I expect this wishlist to be continuously expanding, so this is only part 1.

I want to be able to...
...check my continuous integration status and logs from FaceBook.
...get my continuous integration results via SMS.
...update Bugzilla/Jira/whatever discussion threads via Twitter
...do some pair programming with something like Google Docs
...do some pair programming with a some kind of real-time plugin for Eclipse
...bring online and shut down continuous integration nodes with Google App Engine
...bring online and shut down full QA stacks with Amazon EC2
...manage user stories with my smartphone
...write actual code with my smartphone on the train and upload/synchronise it later
...use my smartphone as a code repository for small projects
...use my smartphone's voice recognition capabilities to actually dictate code to it
...perform code reviews with some kind of real-time plugin for Bugzilla/Jira/whatever

More to come.
M.

RAIDers of the Lost Disk

A few years ago I decided it was a good idea to have a dedicated file server in my home. After a bit of looking around, I set my mind on a Maxtor Shared Storage II - 1TB. This has 2 drives of 500GB each inside, and it can be set up as a Raid-0 or Raid-1 device. It is configured via a simple web interface.
I bought one and configured it as a Raid-1 device. After a short while, I also decided to update the firmware with a version based on OpenMSS.

Shortly after the warranty expired, one of the drives failed badly. The clicking that was coming out of it was pretty loud but in a twisted way also quite pleasant, somehow clicking along with Bob Marley's "Redemption Songs". Anyway, I managed to replace the faulty drive and rebuild the array, and my file server has been living happily ever since... until yesterday.

It was either a power failure or a loose PSU connector, or both. As a result, the power light started flashing alternatively green (once) and amber (once). I went to the diagnostics page only to find that my device was functioning "within normal parameters". Hmmm... that can't be right.

~ # mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
    Device Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 1
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Tue May  5 11:18:29 2009
          State : active, degraded
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
         Events : 0.515034

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       22        0      active sync   /dev/sdb6
       1       0        0        -      removed

What??? Removed??? How???

~ # mdadm --examine /dev/sda6
mdadm: cannot open /dev/sda6: No such file or directory
mdadm: cannot find device size for /dev/sda6: No such file or directory

Hmmm...

~ # ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda   /dev/sda3  /dev/sda6  /dev/sdb1  /dev/sdb4  /dev/sdb7
/dev/sda1  /dev/sda4  /dev/sda7  /dev/sdb2  /dev/sdb5
/dev/sda2  /dev/sda5  /dev/sdb   /dev/sdb3  /dev/sdb6

~ # cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8    16  488386584 sdb
   8    17     257008 sdb1
   8    18     257040 sdb2
   8    19     257040 sdb3
   8    20          1 sdb4
   8    21     506016 sdb5
   8    22  487106833 sdb6
   8     0  488386584 sdc
   8     1     257008 sdc1
   8     2     257040 sdc2
   8     3     257040 sdc3
   8     4          1 sdc4
   8     5     506016 sdc5
   8     6  487106833 sdc6
  31     0        256 mtdblock0
   9     0  487106752 md0

How exactly did my sda partitions become sdc? Reboot? Yes, reboot!
... [reboot] ...

~ # cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8     0  488386584 sda
   8     1     257008 sda1
   8     2     257040 sda2
   8     3     257040 sda3
   8     4          1 sda4
   8     5     506016 sda5
   8     6  487106833 sda6
   8    16  488386584 sdb
   8    17     257008 sdb1
   8    18     257040 sdb2
   8    19     257040 sdb3
   8    20          1 sdb4
   8    21     506016 sdb5
   8    22  487106833 sdb6
  31     0        256 mtdblock0
   9     0  487106752 md0

That's better, but how... ??? Anyway, let's check sda6.

~ # mdadm --query /dev/sda6
/dev/sda6: is not an md array
/dev/sda6: device 1 in 2 device mismatch raid1 md0.  Use mdadm --examine for more detail.

~ # mdadm --examine /dev/sda6
/dev/sda6:
          Magic : a92b4efc
        Version : 00.90.01
           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0

    Update Time : Fri May  1 20:10:03 2009
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0
       Checksum : 34c79134 - correct
         Events : 0.513042


      Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
this     1       8        6        1      active sync   /dev/sda6

   0     0       8       22        0      active sync   /dev/sdb6
   1     1       8        6        1      active sync   /dev/sda6

Mismatched, as I would expect, but it's clean. Good.

~ # mdadm --manage --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda6
mdadm: hot added /dev/sda6

~ # mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
    Device Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Tue May  5 11:22:02 2009
          State : clean, degraded, recovering
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 1

 Rebuild Status : 0% complete

           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
         Events : 0.515210

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       22        0      active sync   /dev/sdb6
       1       0        0        -      removed

       2       8        6        1      spare rebuilding   /dev/sda6

Rebuilding. Good sign, but why do I stil have device 1 - removed - in the list?

~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sda6[2] sdb6[0]
      487106752 blocks [2/1] [U_]
      [=>...................]  recovery =  9.8% (47870464/487106752) finish=114.8min speed=63713K/sec
unused devices: none

Under 2 hours to sync up. Time for coffee.
... [coffee] ...

~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sda6[1] sdb6[0]
      487106752 blocks [2/2] [UU]
unused devices: none

~ # mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Sat May  5 06:30:50 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
    Device Size : 487106752 (464.54 GiB 498.80 GB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Tue May  5 14:05:25 2009
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 7ff7415e:4719112d:d63dd33d:40ff685f
         Events : 0.515939

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       22        0      active sync   /dev/sdb6
       1       8        6        1      active sync   /dev/sda6

One last reboot and we're back on track.
Sorted.

Eclipsed by an Ant

I've been stuck on a web project for a while. Well, not really on the project itself, I've actually been stuck on running it with the GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse v1.2.

The bundle comes with two version of GlassFish: v2.1 and v3 Prelude. I never had problems running the project on v3, but every time I tried to use to v2.1 my Eclipse would get stuck during the publishing phase with this message: "Publishing to Bundled GlassFish, waiting for virtual machine to exit..."

It turns out that the difference in the publishing phase between the bundled GlassFish v2.1 and v3 is that the former uses Apache Ant. So I checked the Ant runtime home entries on Eclipse and found out they were messed up, pointing at the Axis2 plugin! I must have happened during the installation of the Axis2 Code Generator Wizard. Fixing the Ant home entries finally allowed me to publish the project to the bundled GlassFish v2.1

Here are the steps in Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede):

1. Click on Windows -> Preferences
2. Expand the Ant node and select the Runtime child node
3. In the Classpath tab, select Ant Home Entries from the list
4. Click the Ant Home button to bring up the folder browser
5. In the folder browser, navigate to the folder where Ant was installed
6. Click OK to go back to the Eclipse preferences dialog
7. Click Apply, then click OK

Done.
M.