Category Archives: Technology

STRATUX – Add swap and logging partitions.

It’s back! The STRAUX project lives again. With a fresh build of Stratux, it’s time to re-configure the SD card for swap space (new!) and a large logging partition to keep a full filesystem from crashing the device.

Get Current Partition Information

Once logged into the Straux box, switch to the root user and interrogate the disk partitions.

pi@raspberrypi: sudo su -
root@raspberrypi: fdisk -l
[...]

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3700592 3569521 17.G Linux

The important aspects you will want to record as the End block ids for each partition, this is important in the next step, creating more partitions.

Creating the Extended Partition

First task is I want to create the extended partition that can be used for swap. This will eventually contain the swap and log partitions.

Running the fdisk tool, start to edit the partition. You will want to reference the base block of the device.. eg: /dev/mmcblk0

root@raspberrypi: fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Command (m for help): p

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3700592 3569521 17.G Linux

Command (m for help): n

Partition type
p primary (2 primary, 0 extended)
l logical (numbered from 5)
Select (default p): l

At this point, the tool threw an error adding partition 5…

Partition 5 is already defined. Delete it before re-adding it

Listing the partitions shows this:

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3700592 3569521 1.7G Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3 3700593 62333951 5863d359 28G Extended
/dev/mmcblk0p5 2191 4194446 4192256 2G Linux

Re-running ‘n option and letting it setup partition 6, got me where I wanted to be. This process didn’t seem like it worked right.. but the end result matches up with my goal of a huge partition and a smaller 2G to be used for swap:

Command (m for help): n

Partition type
p primary (2 primary, 0 extended)
l logical (numbered from 5)
Select (default p): l

Adding logical partition 6
First Sector: 4198400
Last Sector: 62333951

Created a new partition 6 of type 'Linux and a size of 27.7 GiB

Command (m for help): p
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3700592 3569521 1.7G Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3 3700593 62333951 5863d359 28G Extended
/dev/mmcblk0p5 2191 4194446 4192256 2G Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p6 4198400 62333951 58135552 27.7G Linux

Command (m for help): w

.. this is where the Ending block of your p2 partition number comes into play. The starting sector will be the ending number of your last partition (3569521) + 1 for next sector:


First Sector: 3700593
Last Sector: 62333951 (this was the default/max)

Created a new partition 3 of type 'Extended' and of size 28 GiB

Command (m for help): n

Partition type
p primary (2 primary, 0 extended)
l logical (numbered from 5)
Select (default p): l

Adding the largest partition, for log file storage

Now repeat this process to add the 2nd new partition, this one will consume the rest of the device, and eventually will be where the `/log` directory is mounted.

root@raspberrypi: fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Command (m for help): p

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3700592 3569521 1.7G Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3 3700593 7895039 4194447 2G Extended

Command (m for help): n

Partition type
p primary (2 primary, 0 extended)
l logical (numbered from 5)
Select (default p): l

First Sector: 4194448

STRATUX — Database Log Rotator

Space in the /var/log directory of a Stratux device, can quickly become consumed, if you don’t have a log management / rotation strategy.

I use a couple of mitigation methods, including a dedicated filesystem for /var/log (so the system does not become unstable and crash).

On the Stratux device itself, I use the following script to auto-rotate the sqlite database file every 24 hours, using a crontab entry.

crontab entry
PATH=/root/go/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin # Run the Stratux DB Rollover 5 6 * * * /root/stx-rollover.sh >> /var/log/stx-rollover.log
Rotation script

stx-rollover.sh

#!/bin/bash # Startup Settings STARTTIME=`date +%m-%d_%T`; TIMESTAMP=`date +%m-%d`; LOGPATH="/var/log"; OLDFILE="$LOGPATH/stratux.sqlite"; NEWFILE="$LOGPATH/stratux.sqlite.$TIMESTAMP"; echo "$STARTTIME === Stratux Rollover === " echo "Stratux STOP" service stratux stop echo "Check for $OLDFILE" ls -ltr $OLDFILE if [ -e "$OLDFILE" ] then echo "Moving $OLDFILE ==> $NEWFILE" mv $OLDFILE $NEWFILE else echo "ERROR - Unable to locate database $OLDFILE" fi ## Startup Stratux Now. echo "Stratux START" service stratux start if [ -s "$NEWFILE" ] then echo "Moved DB to $NEWFILE" ls -l $NEWFILE echo "Compressing $NEWFILE" gzip $NEWFILE else echo "ERROR - Unable to locate $NEWFILE" fi echo "Rollover Completed"

End result of this process, is a list of gzipped date stamped databases:

[...] 152905988 Nov 4 01:05 stratux.sqlite.11-04.gz 135434058 Nov 6 11:04 stratux.sqlite.11-05.gz 148176518 Nov 6 11:45 stratux.sqlite.11-06.gz 157341677 Nov 7 13:10 stratux.sqlite.11-07.gz [...]

In addition to this logfile rotation strategy, I also pull off these files on a daily basis and archive them to another *NIX based system in my local network. This process is handled using the rsync utility. This process is run every 24 hours, using a cron job on the archival system.

rsync file archiving process

download.dbs.sh

echo '======================================' date rsync -a --remove-source-files -e "ssh -l root" 192.100.0.21:/var/log/stratux.sqlite.*.gz /Development/STRATUX/sqlite-dbs/.

This should be a good starting point for your own Stratux logfile management strategy.

STRATUX – Hacking together a WiFi connected Ground Station

Following my initial vanilla setup of STRATUX, I decided to make some networking and file system modifications to turn it into a fix (ground) monitoring station.

The initial effort was quite successful; that is until I ran out of disk space and during my cleanup effort accidentally wrecked the source tree, rendering it mostly inoperable. So, I’m taking that opportunity to re-document the setup process I used to accomplish the following:

Imaging Stratux

The first step was performing a default STRATUX install to a micro SD card. I selected a 16GB card for this project, but Stratux will run on anything down to 4 GB, based on what I observed with the default file system (default size is under 2GB).

I won’t repeat the installation instruction here, since they might have changed since this article was written. The instructions I used, and link to the latest Pi Image are located here: [ STRATUX.me ]

Preliminary Work

Once the card was imaged, I plugged in an HDMI cable, keyboard, mouse and Ethernet cable to start work.

Stratux Pi preliminary setup

Once powered up and the boot sequence completes, your are challenged with a simple login prompt. The initial login is: pi and the password is raspberry.

Once you login, you’ll see this welcome screen (sorry for the crappy photo.. if I can figure out how to PiP the HDMI output to my Mac to snap a good screen shot, I’ll re-do this!

Stratux first login

You will WANT to change that default password first!

Changing Default Password

Switch user to root and change the pi user’s password. You do not NEED to be root to change your own password, but we’ll need to be root from here on out.. and why not just do it that way?


pi@raspberrypi: sudo su -

root@raspberrypi: passwd pi
Enter new UNIX password: enter your password here
Retype new UNIX password: re-enter your password here

Enable eth0 for wired LAN

Next step involves enabling eth0 and turning on it’s DHCP setting. Once this is complete, it should be possible to SSH into the pi and continue the modifications from your ‘master’ computer.


root@raspberrypi:~# cd /etc/network

root@raspberrypi:~# vi interfaces

At the top of the file you will see the line auto lo, below that add the following ‘auto eth0’. Then below the line iface lo inet loopback, add the line ‘iface eth0 inet dhcp’


auto lo
auto eth0

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
...

At this point I do not plan to try enable the WiFi, first want to verify that eth0 will come up with a LAN address.

Close the edited file, and then restart networking, then run ifconfig to verify that eth0 is up with and assigned IP address (my local DHCP range is 10.10.1.10 – 1.50).


root@raspberrypi:~# service networking restart

root@raspberrypi:~# ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:c3:eb:2e:72:a5  
          inet addr:10.10.1.11  
          Bcast:10.10.1.255  
          Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:236 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:96 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:36403 (35.5 KiB)  TX bytes:17092 (16.6 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:54364 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:54364 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2718200 (2.5 MiB)  TX bytes:2718200 (2.5 MiB)

At this point you should be able to ssh into the machine directly and continue the work. From your main computer (hopefully a *NIX variant), open up a shell and ssh to the Pi. You will receive a password challenge:


IngeniiGroup:STRATUX$ ssh pi@10.10.0.11

pi@10.10.0.11's password: _enter your password_

If the login was successful, you will see this welcome banner:

STRATUX welcome banner

Next, will be the modifications to disable the adhoc network and enable local WiFi connectivity.

Disable adhoc ‘stratux’ WiFi

Now that you are logged into the Stratux via ssh, assume root user and then cd to the networking directory again:


pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo su -

root@raspberrypi:~# cd /etc/network

root@raspberrypi:~# vi interfaces

Now, this time the interfaces file will be heavily modified to configure the eth0 and wlan0, along with some rational routing, using the ‘metric’ setting to prioritize route assignments.

Once again, at the top of the file another new line will be added:


auto lo
auto wlan0
auto eth0

iface lo inet loopback

Then replacing the entire eth0 and wlan0 entries with the following block of text. NOTE: The line `wireless-power off` will disable the power management for WiFi. If this is not done, I have found that the chip will shut down after a couple of hours and the device will become unreachable via wifi, until it’s rebooted. This discovery took no short amount of time to discovery and remedy.

iface lo inet loopback

iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet static
   metric 0
   wireless-power off
   hostname Stratux-wlan0
   wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
   address 10.100.0.21
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 10.100.0.1
   network 10.100.0.0
   broadcast  10.100.0.255
   dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

iface eth0 inet static
   metric 3
   hostname Stratux-eth0
   address 10.100.0.210
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 10.100.0.1
   network 10.100.0.0
   broadcast  10.100.0.255
   dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 

Restart networking and verify everything is working by logging back in.


root@raspberrypi:~# service networking restart

IngeniiGroup:STRATUX$ ssh pi@10.10.0.11
pi@10.10.0.11's password: _enter your password_
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo su -

If you were able to log in again, using the fixed IP address, then the first part of the static IP configurations are completed.

Configure the wlan0 WiFi

NOTE!: As of 14-MAY-2017 and Raspberry Pi 3b; 5.0GHz Wifi IS NOT SUPPORTED.

Now.. the really fun part.. connecting the Pi to your WiFi network. Obviously I will not be displaying my own real WiFi access credentials, so you will need to find the SSID you want to connect to and the password for that network before starting.

The networking configuration that you setup in the previous step contains this setting: ‘wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf‘. The next step is to create/configure that file.

The file is fairly simple, and with the SSID and Password you already obtained for your network (you did that already.. right?). You’ll simple fill that information into the blanks named _SSID_ and _NETWORK_PASS_.

Open the file and edit:


root@raspberrypi:~# vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

Add this block below the original lines, using your settings:

network={
        ssid="_SSID_"
        psk="_NETWORK_PASS_"
}

Save this file, restart networking, signal a daemon reload, and then, reboot of the device. While it is rebooting, unplug the Ethernet cable (from eth0). Once the networking is back up, check to make sure you are able to contact the machine via it’s WiFi connection.

root@raspberrypi:~# service networking restart
root@raspberrypi:~# ystemctl daemon-reload
root@raspberrypi:~# reboot

After 2-3 Min. the Pi should have completed restarting and you should be able to verify a successful WiFi login.


IngeniiGroup:STRATUX$ ssh pi@10.100.0.21

Increasing Root Filesystem Space

By default, the size of the disk partitions on the image is VERY small; less than 2GB. Most of that space is used by by the base Stratux install, leaving about 400MB of space to save logs (and your replay database if you turn it on). You can see this with the ‘df’ command:

root@raspberrypi:~# df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       1.8G  1.4G  324M  81% /
devtmpfs        459M     0  459M   0% /dev
tmpfs           463M     0  463M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           463M   12M  451M   3% /run
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           463M     0  463M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1   60M   20M   41M  34% /boot

This just isn’t enough space, especially for the ‘/var/log’ directory where a lot of transient/logging data is written. My solution is to create a disk partition and mount it to `/var/log`.

Locate the disk device

Instructions on the web are not exactly correct, some suggest /dev/sda as the main device, however my testing shows it’s actually this named ‘/dev/mmcblk0’.


root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk -l | grep Disk
[...]
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 14.5 GiB, 15523119104 bytes, 30318592 sectors

… with the following partitions:

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3887103 3756032 1.8G 83 Linux
Running fdisk

With the physical partition located.. start fdisk:


fdisk -u /dev/mmcblk0

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.25.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

First, order of business is to increase the size of the main partition, to give it a big more room than just 1.8GB. I like to bump it up to around 4GB to leave room for installing more system updates and tools. To do this you will need to know the starting and ending blocks of the partition. That is available with the ‘print’ command:


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 14.5 GiB, 15523119104 bytes, 30318592 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xe6a544c8

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 131072 3887103 3756032 1.8G 83 Linux

Now delete the partition. Yes.. feels VERY dangerous.. and it is.. but as long as the starting block is maintained, and the end block number is increased.. this will end up being a safe operation. Verify that you targeted the correct partition by using ‘p’ again:


Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1,2, default 2): 2

Partition 2 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 14.5 GiB, 15523119104 bytes, 30318592 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xe6a544c8

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 131071 122880 60M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

If this is correct, now recreate it with same number (2), start and type but with a bigger end (taking care not to overlap with other partitions). Try to align things on a megabyte boundary that is for end, make it a multiple of 2048 minus 1. Change the type if needed with t (for partitions holding an extX or btrfs filesystem, the default of 83 is fine). Then `w` to write and `q` to quit.


Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (2-4, default 2): 2
First sector (2048-30318591, default 2048): 131072
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (131072-30318591, default 30318591): 8451072

Created a new partition 2 of type 'Linux' and of size 4 GiB.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Re-reading the partition table failed.: Device or resource busy

The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8).

root@raspberrypi:~#

The partition table will have been modified but the kernel will not be able to take that into account as some partitions are mounted.

However, if in-use partitions were only enlarged, you should be able to force the kernel to take the new layout with:


root@raspberrypi:~# partx /dev/mmcblk0
NR START END SECTORS SIZE NAME UUID
1 8192 131071 122880 60M e6a544c8-01
2 131072 8451072 8320001 4G e6a544c8-02

If the command works the next step is to expand the filesystem. In my case I needed to reboot before the kernel picked up the new partition size, despite running partx to fill up this new space.


root@raspberrypi:~# init 6

Following the restart, execute `resize2fs` and run an on-line expansion of the filesystem, and finally verify it again with ‘df -h’


root@raspberrypi:~# resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
resize2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
Filesystem at /dev/mmcblk0p2 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
The filesystem on /dev/mmcblk0p2 is now 1040000 (4k) blocks long.

root@raspberrypi:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 3.9G 1.4G 2.4G 36% /
devtmpfs 459M 0 459M 0% /dev
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 463M 6.2M 457M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 60M 20M 41M 34% /boot

The next step is to add a 3rd partition which will then be mounted to `/var/log`

Creating a dedicated filesystem for logging / database

I ended up creating 3 primary partitions, the largest of which will be mounted to `/var/log`.


fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (2 primary, 0 extended, 2 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (3,4, default 3): 3
First sector (2048-30318591, default 2048): 8451073
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (8451073-30318591, default 30318591): 30318591

Created a new partition 3 of type 'Linux' and of size 10.4 GiB.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Re-reading the partition table failed.: Device or resource busy

The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8).

root@raspberrypi:~# partprobe

Checked to make sure the device was crated by checking the `/dev` directory:


root@raspberrypi:~# ls -l /dev/mmcblk0*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 0 May 15 15:11 /dev/mmcblk0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 1 May 15 15:11 /dev/mmcblk0p1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 2 May 15 15:11 /dev/mmcblk0p2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 3 May 15 15:11 /dev/mmcblk0p3

Next, put a filesystem on this new partition. Using df to determine the type of filesystem currently in use; I recommend that you stick with it for this most basic of operations:


root@raspberrypi:~# df -T

Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root ext4 4063680 1392604 2512268 36% /
devtmpfs devtmpfs 469688 0 469688 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 474004 0 474004 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 474004 6340 467664 2% /run
tmpfs tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs tmpfs 474004 0 474004 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 vfat 61384 20416 40968 34% /boot

Run mkfs to initialize the filesystem.


/sbin/mkfs -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p3

Creating filesystem with 2733439 4k blocks and 684096 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 94f004af-7008-4dbe-8805-3eb2d739436b
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:... this might go on for a bit..

Once completed.. mount this where the logs and databases live. To do this the first thing that needs to happen is to check your current fstab:


cat /etc/fstab
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
# use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that

My first order of business was to copy the current `/var/log` to a new location, create a new clean mount point for `/var/log` and then mount the new filesystem, and then verify it’s mounted using `df -h`


root@raspberrypi:~# mv /var/log /var/log2
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdir /var/log
root@raspberrypi:~# mount -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p3 /var/log
root@raspberrypi:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 3.9G 1.4G 2.4G 36% /
devtmpfs 459M 0 459M 0% /dev
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 463M 6.2M 457M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 60M 20M 41M 34% /boot
/dev/mmcblk0p3 11G 27M 9.6G 1% /var/log

Edit the fstab file to create a mount point for the new partition where the logs used to be written (added the orange line), and ran mount to verify that it will automount on a restart.


root@raspberrypi:~# vi /etc/fstab

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/mmcblk0p3 /var/log ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
# use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that

root@raspberrypi:~# mount -a

Restart and verify

Restart the little box and verify that the mount was preserved.


init 6

Log back in, and run df to check the filesystem health. It should now has the the main filesystem has some breathing room again:


pi@raspberrypi:~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 3.9G 1.4G 2.4G 36% /
devtmpfs 459M 0 459M 0% /dev
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 463M 6.2M 457M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 60M 20M 41M 34% /boot
/dev/mmcblk0p3 11G 27M 9.6G 1% /var/log

Setting Time with NTPD

If you do not have a GPS receiver attached to your Stratux, then it might not be able to determine proper system time. When this is the case, enabling ntpd will be your solution. Using national time sync services, it will keep your system clock correct. If you have your GPS plugged in, it’s getting really good timing signals already.. or the location function would not work at all! For the non GPS users:

Install ndptdate:


root@raspberrypi:~# apt-get install ntpdate
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
[...]
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Get:1 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie/main liblockfile-bin armhf 1.09-6 [18.2 kB]
Get:2 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie/main liblockfile1 armhf 1.09-6 [14.7 kB]
Get:3 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie/main ntpdate armhf 1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u2 [69.0 kB]
[...]
Setting up ntpdate (1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u2) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-18+deb8u3) ...

It should now start at bootup and resolve any timing issues you might have.

Update your Pi with the latest updates and security patches

Some might remember “Black Friday” when a worm created some serious disruption in the tech world.. including at hospitals in the UK. And it happened primarily because people are not applying their security patches! Although the risk of your Pi being botified and ransomed my not be high.. you should be updating it regardless! So, let’s do that now.


root@raspberrypi:~# apt-get install ntpdate
root@raspberrypi:~# apt-get dist-upgrade

Finish up with this command to clean up some of the used disk space. Since you’ve already bumped the numbers on your partitions in the previous steps.. this is not nearly as necessary, but why leave unused stuff lying around? Your mother taught you to clean up afteryourself, right?


root@raspberrypi:~# sudo apt-get clean

AND THAT DOES IT FOR THIS EPISODE!

Stratux Webserver – what’s behind the scenes?

Stratux has a rich community of forums, and a lot of information about debugging Strtux, but so far good hacking information is really hard to find. One of the things of most interest to me was “What is severing up this webpage?”

Every search was a dead end, so I went back to my *NIX system administration roots and thought.. “Well, if someone wont admit what’s serving up the stream.. I’ll find out for myself.

Who’s Your Server? — gen_gdl90

A couple of quick commands told me which PID was hanging onto Port 80 and from there which process was associated with the PID:


root@raspberrypi:~# fuser 80/tcp
80/tcp: 3110
root@raspberrypi:~# ps aux | grep 3110
root 3110 51.9 2.9 973132 27600 ? Ssl 15:19 47:03 /usr/bin/gen_gdl90
root 6606 0.0 0.2 4276 1904 pts/0 S+ 16:50 0:00 grep 3110
What files does it have open?

Once I had an idea of who’m I was looking for, running lsof with the port number gave me 60 entries… and bingo.. there was the nugget of gold I was looking for:


root@raspberrypi:~# lsof -p 3110
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
gen_gdl90 3110 root cwd DIR 179,2 4096 2 /
[...]
gen_gdl90 3110 root 35u IPv6 1849628 0t0 TCP StratuxWiFi.io:http->10.100.0.188:49157 (ESTABLISHED)
gen_gdl90 3110 root 36u IPv6 210216 0t0 TCP StratuxWiFi.io:http->10.100.0.188:64155 (ESTABLISHED)
gen_gdl90 3110 root 37u IPv6 1859641 0t0 TCP StratuxWiFi.io:http->10.100.0.188:49165 (ESTABLISHED)
gen_gdl90 3110 root 38u IPv6 1759876 0t0 TCP StratuxWiFi.io:http->10.100.0.188:65420 (ESTABLISHED)
gen_gdl90 3110 root 41u IPv6 1778784 0t0 TCP StratuxWiFi.io:http->10.100.0.188:65442 (CLOSE_WAIT)
gen_gdl90 3110 root 48r REG 179,2 146998 51146 /var/www/maui/js/angular.min.js
The Web Path

Once onto the trail of the web path, I see that this is an Angular based application (ugh.. I really despise Angular.. I just do.), and all based on some JS stuffs. I get it. for an app like this the two-way data binding of Angular is probably the right too; but I still do not (no do I have to) like it.


root@raspberrypi:~# cd /var/www/maui/
root@raspberrypi:/var/www/maui# ls -l
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 15 2016 css
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 15 2016 fonts
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 15 2016 js
root@raspberrypi:/var/www/maui#

What I was hoping to find was the location of the that status page.. but.. I believe that what I’m looking for now is the .JS file that manages that label. Initially this looked like a dead end…


root@raspberrypi:/var/www/maui# egrep -r Distance *
root@raspberrypi:/var/www/maui#

Realiazing this was some templating sub-directory, and the root was likely at /var/www, I ran another search that found the location of the desired string, and likely the location of the parts I’m looking for:


root@raspberrypi:~# cd ..
root@raspberrypi:/var/www# egrep -lnr 'Distance' *

plates/js/traffic.js
plates/traffic-help.html
plates/traffic.html

STRATUX – Filesystem Full; Managing disk space redux

Checking in with my Starux project this morning, I found it unresponsive. A physical check shows a flashing red light on the Pi… something has gone haywire, and I couldn’t SSH into the little thing, so a really hard cold restart was in order.

Following the restart I quickly shut Stratux back down to start performing diagnostics:


pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo su -

root@raspberrypi:~# service stratux stop

Diagnostics 101

Check Filesystem Health

The last time the little Stratux suddenly had problems it was a filesystem space issue ( previous article ). It turns out the boot drive space was OK but the new Logging partition was again, completely consumed:

Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        1815440 1391284    331164  81% /
devtmpfs          469688       0    469688   0% /dev
tmpfs             474004       0    474004   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs             474004    6340    467664   2% /run
tmpfs               5120       4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             474004       0    474004   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1     61384   20400     40984  34% /boot
/dev/mmcblk0p4   8125880 8109496         0 100% /var/log

Locate the Culprit

There are a number of ways to locate large file on a *NIX system. My favorite tool is find. First thing I want to do is locate any file that is larger than 1 Gigabyte, and sure enough it located a massive sqlite database file. The same one that ate up all the space on the boot drive. So.. this is going to require some more extrodinary measures to maintain 100% 24×7 operational status.


root@raspberrypi:~# cd /var/log
root@raspberrypi:/var/log# find . -size +1G -exec ls -l {} \;
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7463211008 Apr 29 21:48 ./stratux.sqlite
Start Solving

First order of business is to move aside the massive database, but try to preserve the data for examination. Since the filesystem is full, I can’t zip this thing in place, so first some space needs to cleared on the device. The things I’m least interested in go first.. like the zipped syslogs and any other ‘archived’ file (those with a .# suffix).

-rw-r----- 1 root adm      728756 Apr 25 06:25 syslog.5.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root adm     2552845 Apr 26 06:25 syslog.4.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root adm     2447263 Apr 27 06:25 syslog.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root adm     2498089 Apr 28 06:25 syslog.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root adm    33735478 Apr 29 06:25 syslog.1
-rw-r----- 1 root adm       54307 Apr 30 05:19 debug.1
-rw-r----- 1 root adm      380928 Apr 30 05:19 kern.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 root adm   332365824 Apr 30 06:18 daemon.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 root adm       48723 Apr 30 06:25 auth.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 root adm           0 Apr 30 06:25 syslog.1.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root adm     1032192 Apr 30 06:25 messages.1

root@raspberrypi:/var/log# rm -f *.gz *\.[0-9]

But.. that’s not going to doe the complete trick, especially if after deleting files df still shows 100% utilization. You need to figure out what is holding which deleted file(s).

Normallyh, the best way to do that on *NIX is with lsof. Much to my chagrin, it was not available on the OS… so I had to go grab it. Thankfully I had the main filesystem on a different partition that still had enough space to install more tools! Once lsof was installed, grep through the list of open file handles and find those marked for delete.. and those are the processes that have handles pointing to those files. However, this didn’t help me with Rasperian Jessie. I know that a reboot will recover the space so.. that was the next step.. a brutal warm-boot.


root@raspberrypi:/var/log# lsof
-su: lsof: command not found

root@raspberrypi:/# apt-get install lsof
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libperl4-corelibs-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libperl4-corelibs-perl lsof
...

root@raspberrypi:/var/log# lsof | grep deleted
root@raspberrypi:/var/log#

root@raspberrypi:/var/log# init 6

Archiving Massive SQLite Database

The first thing was to move aside the current database, and then restart stratux to verify it can created a new empty database for it’s purposes.. then shut it right back down again.


root@raspberrypi:/var/log# mv stratux.sqlite stratux.sqlite.1
root@raspberrypi:/var/log# service stratux start
root@raspberrypi:/var/log# ls -l
total 7291480
[...]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Apr 30 14:27 stratux.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7466160128 Apr 30 14:24 stratux.sqlite.1
[...]
root@raspberrypi:/var/log# service stratux stop

A new empty database file has been created [ 4096 Apr 30 14:27 stratux.sqlite ]. This tells me that moving aside the current database file on a periodic basis, compressing and then archiving it should be sufficient to maintain operational status.

Logging Insanity

Before restarting Stratux, I zerod out these log files. Running for first a few moments these files were already reading up a lot of space. Tailing one of them I see that Stratux, with my current settings is logging A LOT of data to these log files. I feel this was my first error.. enabling too much logging. My settings look like this:

With those settings enabled, there are a lot of GPS and other events that I don’t really have a use for, being dumped into the Statux log.


-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1361778 Apr 30 14:39 stratux.log

Turning OFF ‘Verbose Message Log’ made that insanity stop.

Replay logging is what is writing to the SQLite database. So the question is. how much of that data do I want to keep, and how much will I lose if I turn off the replay logs. I think that will be research for another day… right now the goal is to recover disk space by compressing the massive database file that was moved aside, and get Stratux stabilized again. Once compressed, check filesystem and file size!


root@raspberrypi:/var/log# gzip stratux.sqlite.1

root@raspberrypi:/var/log# df

Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        1815440 1392384    330064  81% /
devtmpfs          469688       0    469688   0% /dev
tmpfs             474004       0    474004   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs             474004   12272    461732   3% /run
tmpfs               5120       4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             474004       0    474004   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p4   8125880  681792   7008276   9% /var/log
/dev/mmcblk0p1     61384   20400     40984  34% /boot

root@raspberrypi:/var/log# ls -lktr --color --block-size=M stratux.sqlite*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643M Apr 30 14:24 stratux.sqlite.1.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8M Apr 30 15:21 stratux.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1M Apr 30 15:22 stratux.sqlite-shm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   5M Apr 30 15:22 stratux.sqlite-wal

With the file compressed, it could be copied elsewhere for analysis.

SQLite – get table schema

SQLite is a functional little SQL database that is often found used in embedded systems projects (such as one of my favorites, Stratux).

As far as I know, there are three ways to look at a table’s schema (the 3rd is just and extension of the 2nd).

.schema table_name

Running .schema will show you a ‘CREATE’ statement that can be used to build the database table. The issues I have with using this are that the command only shows the original CREATE, not any subsequent changes such as indexes, are worse yet, new fields! Regardless, here is an example:

.schema traffic
CREATE TABLE traffic (id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, Icao_addr INTEGER, Reg TEXT, Tail TEXT, Emitter_category INTEGER, OnGround INTEGER, Addr_type INTEGER, TargetType INTEGER, SignalLevel REAL, Squawk INTEGER, Position_valid INTEGER, Lat REAL, Lng REAL, Alt INTEGER, GnssDiffFromBaroAlt INTEGER, AltIsGNSS INTEGER, NIC INTEGER, NACp INTEGER, Track INTEGER, Speed INTEGER, Speed_valid INTEGER, Vvel INTEGER, Timestamp STRING, PriorityStatus INTEGER, Age REAL, AgeLastAlt REAL, Last_seen STRING, Last_alt STRING, Last_GnssDiff STRING, Last_GnssDiffAlt INTEGER, Last_speed STRING, Last_source INTEGER, ExtrapolatedPosition INTEGER, Bearing REAL, Distance REAL, timestamp_id INTEGER);

PRAGMA table_info

This is my favored by far. Format can actually be taken and dropped int a Wiki page, or JIRA case or any other similar document system.. but it’s still not the most ideal, as you can see:


PRAGMA table_info(traffic);

0|id|INTEGER|1||1
1|Icao_addr|INTEGER|0||0
2|Reg|TEXT|0||0
3|Tail|TEXT|0||0
4|Emitter_category|INTEGER|0||0
5|OnGround|INTEGER|0||0
6|Addr_type|INTEGER|0||0
7|TargetType|INTEGER|0||0
8|SignalLevel|REAL|0||0
9|Squawk|INTEGER|0||0
10|Position_valid|INTEGER|0||0
11|Lat|REAL|0||0
12|Lng|REAL|0||0
13|Alt|INTEGER|0||0
14|GnssDiffFromBaroAlt|INTEGER|0||0
15|AltIsGNSS|INTEGER|0||0
16|NIC|INTEGER|0||0
17|NACp|INTEGER|0||0
18|Track|INTEGER|0||0
19|Speed|INTEGER|0||0
20|Speed_valid|INTEGER|0||0
21|Vvel|INTEGER|0||0
22|Timestamp|STRING|0||0
23|PriorityStatus|INTEGER|0||0
24|Age|REAL|0||0
25|AgeLastAlt|REAL|0||0
26|Last_seen|STRING|0||0
27|Last_alt|STRING|0||0
28|Last_GnssDiff|STRING|0||0
29|Last_GnssDiffAlt|INTEGER|0||0
30|Last_speed|STRING|0||0
31|Last_source|INTEGER|0||0
32|ExtrapolatedPosition|INTEGER|0||0
33|Bearing|REAL|0||0
34|Distance|REAL|0||0
35|timestamp_id|INTEGER|0||0

Now.. for my favorite modifier:

PRAGMA table_info with headers!

By turning headers ‘on’ you will now get a tabular list of what each of these fields mean. Note that the first operator command does not use a terminating semi-colon.

.headers on
PRAGMA table_info(traffic);

cid|name|type|notnull|dflt_value|pk
0|id|INTEGER|1||1
1|Icao_addr|INTEGER|0||0
2|Reg|TEXT|0||0
3|Tail|TEXT|0||0
[... you get the idea ...]

35|timestamp_id|INTEGER|0||0

There you go.. three (OK two) ways to list a table schema in SQLite.