SteveOH

This is an updated post to the previous post regarding the READ ONLY / WRITE PROTECTED VOLUMES IN SERVER 2008.

So the work-around presented in the previous post will get you by, but it’s not a solution.  I set up a script to run the diskpart script every hour, and still, I found that it was almost happening randomly. I noticed that it only happened on my Disk 2 which was on the built-in SATA controller using the JMircron chipset.  Interesting.  After I installed the new RAID array (here) I noticed that now my system drive was now listed as Drive 2, and that in fact it was being listed as read-only and my script no longer worked.  What a pain in the butt.  It was especially annoying since SQL Server and IIS would start failing since they couldn’t write to the system drive.  What a mess.

At this point you have to step back and consider the situation.  I just upgraded some hardware and the situation changed, but after numerous software changes the issue remained.  So what’s hardware related but lives in software such that it can tell the OS that a disk is read only?  The answer is, a driver.

Then began my quest in searching for a driver issues with the JMicron chipset.  Low and behold, it’s a known issue.  Once I installed an updated the driver, the issue that would bring my server to a halt VANISHED.

Link to JMb36X Windows Driver.

Make sure you research your set-up first before installing a random driver.  You’ll only make a bad situation worse.

I purchased 2 WDC WD20EARS-00M drives and raided them in a RAID 0 configuration (124 KB Stripe) for performance of non-crucial operations.  Meaning, anything I have on there I can live with losing OR have backed up at least twice elsewhere.  This includes virtual machines, movies and music.  Anyway, I wanted to post these benchmarks using HD Tach as there have been a ton of reports that these drives are no good in RAID configurations.  They’re probably true, especially since these drives have variable spin rates, which fluctuate independent of each other and can pose problems.

When I first set them up I noticed HUGE fluctuations and large differences in transfer speeds.  From 200+ MB/s to ~80 MB/s.  I could not duplicate them (not yet at least) but the HD Tach results are promising.  Let’s see how this works out.  I will update if I have any problems.

The first 3 images are the RAID configuration, with the last being a single drive.

NOTE: I was unable to utilize HD Tune Pro 3.5 to test the raid configuration as it only showed the drives at 2199 GB and reported read speeds of 12460.9 MB/s. There’s obviously something wrong there, probably caching on the RAID controller and within Windows Server 2008, and the fact it’s over 2TB.

UPDATE: I upgraded to HD Tune Pro 3.6 and it is able to benchmark the configuration.  It shows that performance ranges from 250 MB/s to 80 MB/s at the end of the drives.  Which is great, it’s roughly twice the performance of a single drive, which is what we expected.  I also posted the Random Access benchmarks for the single and raided drives.  You can tell which is which by the drop down list in the top left hand corner of HD Tune Pro.

The low IOPS on the RAID configuration shows that these drives are not intended for high I/O environments, such as a web server or SQL Server.  They do, however, work just fine for low – medium I/O file servers as the good sequential read speeds are perfect for that kind of work.

I will be doing this configuration on my test machine very soon since my previous guide (here) is a bit outdated.  For now you can follow the previous instructions and modify them per the instructions below:

From SuperUser:

I’ve done it but not exactly like in your link, because of some kind of problem (bug?) in Grub2 (tutorial is with grub “1″ but I’ve Grub2), specifically in this

title Windows Vista/Longhorn
rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive
chainloader (hd0,1)/truecrypt.mbr
boot

The problem is known and posted on many forums.

My solution was:

1. Encrypt Windows7 system partition using truecrypt, selecting Single boot and overwriting Grub2 loader with truecrypt loader
2. Boot Debian from Rescue CD and install grub2 bootloader NOT on MBR but on /dev/sda3 which is Debian / partition (so truecrypt loader was not overrided)

Now while booting truecrypt bootmenu is shown and if I’d access Win7 I’m entering password, but if I’d enter debian (via Grub2) I hit esc key and then truecrypt loader is searching all other partitions for boot loader and finding Grub2 which resides on /dev/sda3 and load system properly.

I think its the best way to do this for now (until sb find resolution for Grub2 to read /boot/truecrypt.mbr without errors).

Courtesy of Cain’s Brain.

1. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

2. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.

3. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

4. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file — and there are no undelete utilities.

Corollary: Deleting a file instantly removes all copies of said file from disks, memory, frame buffers and caches across all computers in the universe.

5. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

6. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.

7. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren’t labeled.

8. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.

9. Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY.

10. Whenever a character looks at a terminal, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.

11. Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.

12. (From Independence Day) No matter what kind of virus it is, any computer can be infected with it — even an alien spaceship’s computer — simply by running a virus upload program on a laptop.

13. (From Jurassic Park) A custom system with millions of lines of code controlling a multimillion dollar theme park can be operated by a 13 year old who has seen a Unix system before. Seeing an operating system means you know how to run any application on that system, even custom apps.

Note: What OS was it really running?

(1) “These are super computers”.  A CrayOS?

(2) “Quicktime movie, Apple logo, trash can.”  MacOS?

(3) “Reboot. System ready. C:\”  DOS?

(4) “Hey, this is Unix.  I know this”  Unix?

The computers in Jurassic Park were Cray supercomputers running the MacOS as a graphical shell of DOS all layered on top of a Unix base.

14. You cannot stop a destructive program or virus by unplugging the computer. Presumably the virus has it’s own built-in power supply.

15. You cannot stop a destructive program downloading onto your system by unplugging the phone line. You must figure out the mandatory “back door” all evil virus programmers put in.

16. Computers only crash if a virus or a hacker is involved.

17. All text must be at least 72 point.

18. Word processors do not have an insert point.

19. The only way to reboot is to shut off the main power to the building.

20. Passwords can be guessed in three and exactly three tries.  If you cannot guess the password in three tries, you must give up immediately.

21. Any task or program can be executed by simply pressing Enter, no matter which program or window is in the foreground.

22. All scanners, video cameras and digital cameras have a resolution of approximately 500 megapixels.  Any image can be infinitely magnified with no pixelization.

23. Security will not improve over time.  Nonaffialiated personnel can take over a space ship without needing an account or access control.  Corollary: Anyone can override access control lists in the future.

24. All hackers wear black T-shirts or Hawaiian shirts.

25. Incoming messages are displayed letter by letter.  Email over the Internet works like telegraphs.

26. Microsoft Windows doesn’t exist.  Macintosh has a 75% market share.

27. GUI operations, such as image selection and manipulation, can be handled easily and quickly via the keyboard.

28. If a robot’s eyes turn red, it becomes evil.

29. Cell phones and laptops have infinite battery life, until you need to call for help.

30. Latency does not exist.  Voice and data can be sent to Mars in real time.

12 days ago I recieved a notification from Plaxo stating that the SYNC feature of the application was going to be turned into a “Premium Feature”.  My question is, what’s not a premium feature? The SYNC was literally the only reason I had that application installed.  Mind you, I’ve been using Plaxo for at least 5 years and rely on it to sync my desktop and laptop computers, to then sync with my Windows Mobile phone.  If you take SYNC away… and I can back up own PST’s up (I do weekly), then why exactly would I pay?

I wouldn’t.  And I hope you don’t either.

I am now setting up Google Calendar Sync.  I can easily have my Desktop computer save my information to Google, and my Laptop download from Google.  And for how much?  You guessed it, for free.  Not that “free for a short while” free, but free-free.

Good bye Plaxo.  Hopefully you’ll die a quite death… I think you will, you’ve already picked out your coffin with that move.

My name is SteveOH, and I’m a former Plaxo user of 5 years.

1. Use Notepad to open the Web application Web.config file. By default, this file is in the following folder:

2. Add the following section at the end of the web.config file in the respective site:

  <system.webServer>
 <security>
  <requestFiltering>
   <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength=”1073741824“/>
  </requestFiltering>
 </security>
</system.webServer>

Where the number is in bytes.  This amount would allow you to upload 1024 MB (1 GB) and was calculated as follows (1024 B / KB * 1024 KB / MB * 1024 MB / GB).

Note This code sets the value of the maxAllowedContentLength property to 52428800. Therefore, the maximum file size of an uploaded file is 52428800 bytes. However, set the value of this property so that it is larger than the file that you are trying to upload. Also, set the value of this property so that it is larger than the maximum file upload size that you have configured in SharePoint. If you do not, users will not receive an error message that they are exceeding the size limit if they try to upload a file that is larger than the maximum file upload size that you have configured in SharePoint.

So I finally figured out what was causing my RAID 5 on my Windows Server 2008 box to always rebuild on reboot.  For a little background, since I am currently not offering any services to any clients that require the server to remain powered up 24 hours a day, I shut her down for about 6 to 8 hours in the evening (while I sleep, she sleeps).  Every morning I start her back up, and she would rebuild the Array.  BUT WHY!?  It was a graceful shutdown.  The logs showed nothing out of the ordinary.  So I started to poke around to see what was going on.

To my amazement, the Windows Search indexer was the problem.  This cranky service would not shutdown gracefully, and would actually be in the middle of a write to disk right before the system killed it.  So I tried to remove the RAID from indexing… but that didn’t help.  After looking I found that I had actually set the indexer to save the index on the array, which would have given the array an excuse to rebuild: indexer closed improperly and did not close the index files correctly.

My solution was to remove the array from the indexer’s allowed paths (do not index the array – I’ll wait the extra 10 seconds to find anything that I’m looking for) and I moved the index files to the system drive (yes it may cause minor performance degredation and maybe wear on the system drive, but not nearly as much as a 6 hour RAID rebuild EVERY DAY!).

I have been rebooting for the past 4 days with no issues.

I recently installed a new hard drive into my server running Server 2008.  Everything worked fine, until I rebooted.  I tried to copy a file to the disk and recieved an error that the drive, in my case E:, was write protected.  I don’t know how or why that happened, but the solution is fairly simple.  The steps are as follows:

1. Open a command prompt (ie. Start > Run > cmd) with administrative privledges
2. Type in the command: diskpart
3. Run the command: list disk
4. Look for the disk number that’s having the problem.  In my case I have a system drive, a RAID 5 configuration (1 logical drive) and then the new drive, so it was DISK 2.  I will continue to use it in the example but note that yours may differ.
5. Select the disk using the following command: sel disk 2
6. Enter the following command: ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
7. Exit diskpart with the command: exit

Then test by copying a file or folder to the drive.  It should be fairly instantaneous, but worst case you may have to reboot (I did not, however).

That’s about it.  It would be interesting to know WHY this happened, but then again, does it really matter?

Good luck.

If the boot loader to your Windows Server 2008 machine gets corrupted or deleted for whatever reason, it really is a painstaking process to get it fixed.  The boot loader to my machine got deleted somehow while I was resizing partitions.  After scouring the web, I could not find anything on rebuilding the boot loader for Windows Server 2008.  All I could find were instructions to restore a Windows Vista boot loader, but luckily, the process for Server 2008 is similar.

If you are getting a “bootmgr is missing” error upon startup or something similar, repairing the boot loader will probably fix the problem.

Due to the lack of recovery tools on the Server 2008 installation CD, the boot loader must be rebuilt manually.

For this guide, I’m going to assume your installation has a drive letter of C:.

Insert the Server 2008 installation CD into your DVD-ROM.  Restart your computer and boot from the CD.

Choose to repair your computer, then open the command prompt.

At the command prompt, use the following commands:

c:
cd boot
bootsect /nt60 c: /force /mbr
bootrec /rebuildbcd

After using the “bootrec /rebuldbcd” command, you will be prompted to accept a Windows installation.  Accept the installation, then wait for the process to finish.  Once it’s done, reboot your comptuer and you should have a boot loader ready to go.

sda1: Windows Vista encrypted with TrueCrypt
sda2: Ubuntu Hardy Heron /boot partition (not encrypted)
sda3: Ubuntu Hardy Heron encrypted volume with LVM inside and / and swap partions within LVM (to save partitions used overall incase it gets over 5 partitions)
sda4: Working on installing OSX Leopard on this partition currently.

The steps I used are as follows, in brief:
1) Installed Vista first (actually pre-installed on laptop)

2) Installed Ubuntu second using encrypted physical volume with LVM inside it and 2 partions / and swap inside the LVM(at this point, grub was in the MBR)

3) Ran full windows system encryption (not full disk encryption) through TrueCrypt and let it write its bootloader to the MBR. (obviously overwriting Grub in the MBR)

4) Booted with a live cd and copied the truecrypt bootloader from the MBR to a file in the /boot partition (sda2)
use these commands to do so:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/boot/truecrypt.mbr count=1 bs=512
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/boot/truecrypt.backup count=8 bs=32256

5)Reinstalled grub to the MBR using these commands:
sudo grub
install (hd0,1)/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0,1)/grub/stage2 0×8000 p

6) Added a chainloader to the menu.lst Vista entry to point to the truecrypt bootloader within the /boot partition like so:

title Windows Vista/Longhorn
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,1)/truecrypt.mbr
boot

The only partition not encrypted in the /boot partition so far, which is fine. After grub loads, no matter which OS I choose, I enter a passphrase and that OS starts.

For more detailed instructions which I pulled from but which are for XP instead of Vista, use this link:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=761530