I just rebooted kryten again. It was the usual NFS issue, possibly aggravated by my zombie-result cleanup procedure and the catchup from the past couple days of spotty uptime elsewhere on the network.

It was exhibiting bizarre behavior which we have seen before but have no idea what the heck is going on. The server gets into a state where its hostname suddenly and inexplicably changes from "kryten" to "--fqdn" (with two dashes and everything). This is what the "hostname" command returns. We all know what "fqdn" stands for, but does this hostname munging ring a bell with anybody? Maybe this is pointing to the crux of our NFS issues (i.e. bugs galore, or problems running a newer OS on old equipment). Upon restart the result disk array needed to be resync'ed. Argh! This isn't really affecting performance, and will wrap up in the background within a day or so (I hope).

Earlier on in the day our front page was broken for a half hour due to a bungled CVS checkout. Not my fault - don't kill the messenger.

I spent a chunk of the day today preparing for the boinc.berkeley.edu server OS/RAID overhaul. Getting temporary stub web servers in place, backing things up, etc. This will hopefully happen early next week.

Happening even earlier next week is more network reconfiguration which requires careful timing with the network team down on campus. If successful, I'll finally divulge what we're doing exactly. If not, then we'll have to fall back and wait a while as other projects in the lab are launching and we can't be screwing around with the network between tuesday and at least friday if not later.

This morning a very nice woman (who found my phone number via her own detective work) cold called me. She donated money and never got her green star. I didn't mind helping her, of course, since she generously gave to our project and did all the work to try to reach somebody. The transaction took ten minutes. I just did the math: If I gave ten minutes of tech support to 5% of our current active user base, this would take exactly one year of my time (I'm at the lab 32 hours/week - I'm not going to do tech support from my house). This has no bearing on anything - just some fun statistics.

- Matt

---

-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

I just rebooted kryten again. It was the usual NFS issue, possibly aggravated by my zombie-result cleanup procedure and the catchup from the past couple days of spotty uptime elsewhere on the network.

It was exhibiting bizarre behavior which we have seen before but have no idea what the heck is going on. The server gets into a state where its hostname suddenly and inexplicably changes from "kryten" to "--fqdn" (with two dashes and everything). This is what the "hostname" command returns. We all know what "fqdn" stands for, but does this hostname munging ring a bell with anybody? Maybe this is pointing to the crux of our NFS issues (i.e. bugs galore, or problems running a newer OS on old equipment). Upon restart the result disk array needed to be resync'ed. Argh! This isn't really affecting performance, and will wrap up in the background within a day or so (I hope).

Earlier on in the day our front page was broken for a half hour due to a bungled CVS checkout. Not my fault - don't kill the messenger.

I spent a chunk of the day today preparing for the boinc.berkeley.edu server OS/RAID overhaul. Getting temporary stub web servers in place, backing things up, etc. This will hopefully happen early next week.

Happening even earlier next week is more network reconfiguration which requires careful timing with the network team down on campus. If successful, I'll finally divulge what we're doing exactly. If not, then we'll have to fall back and wait a while as other projects in the lab are launching and we can't be screwing around with the network between tuesday and at least friday if not later.

This morning a very nice woman (who found my phone number via her own detective work) cold called me. She donated money and never got her green star. I didn't mind helping her, of course, since she generously gave to our project and did all the work to try to reach somebody. The transaction took ten minutes. I just did the math: If I gave ten minutes of tech support to 5% of our current active user base, this would take exactly one year of my time (I'm at the lab 32 hours/week - I'm not going to do tech support from my house). This has no bearing on anything - just some fun statistics.

- Matt

Thanks for the Post Matt . . . see BOLD

< note: found this from 1995

Host: fqdn

> may or may not be *relevant* - see other Messages in that Thread

This is a total shot in the dark...

Is the server named kryten or kryten.berkeley.edu ?

We all know what "fqdn" stands for, but does this hostname munging ring a bell with anybody?

Hi Matt: Actually if you could share the meaning of "fqdn" if it's not an acronym for something that is not suitable for posting (like RTFM..lol) I in my neanderthal state would appreciate learning something new.

Thanks

---

We all know what "fqdn" stands for, but does this hostname munging ring a bell with anybody?

I don't recall all the sordid details, but some time ago we had a Linux box that had some strangeness relating to the hostname command's response. It didn't return "--fqdn", but rather part of a line that was in /etc/hosts. It was tracked down to an entry in the /etc/hosts file that had something to do with the IPv6 entries, that were automagically added to the /etc/hosts file during an upgrade. (Too many beers ago for me to remember exactly) I'll see if any of the other guys remember more about just what happened.

Hi Matt: Actually if you could share the meaning of "fqdn"

My name's not Matt, but I hope I can be of service anyway. FQDN is short for "Fully Qualified Domain Name".

---

It was exhibiting bizarre behavior which we have seen before but have no idea what the heck is going on. The server gets into a state where its hostname suddenly and inexplicably changes from "kryten" to "--fqdn" (with two dashes and everything).

Check the configs of the programs running on the box for something like:

hostname=$(/bin/hostname --fqdn)

I found on google that way way way back in '97 a bug in a zmailer package had that setting in one of the .cf config files forcing the hostname to be set to "--fqdn" and that was the only instance where I found that that happend.

Maybe the same booboo was made in one of your config files.

Here is the link to the maillist where the problem was discussed:

http://www.zmailer.org/mhalist/1997/msg00459.html

< note: found this from 1995

Host: fqdn

From: Mike Braca <mb@ebt.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 06:20:23 +0500
Message-Id: <9510041020.AA06718@saskatoon.ebt>
To: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com, mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu


On Tue Oct 3 23:33:46 1995 mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Michael Shapiro) wrote:

> I looked at Mac/Windows/Unix
> gethostbyname() and the Unix version did not return the fqdn.

Most likely due to a broken /etc/hosts file. In my experience, many sys
admins put

192.1.1.1 foo foo.bar.com

in the hosts file instead of the correct form:

192.1.1.1 foo.bar.com foo

If you find the h_name is not qualified, you can increase the probability of
turning up a fqdn if you poke through the alias list for something with dots.

_Mike

> may or may not be *relevant* ;) - see other Messages in that Thread

This is a total shot in the dark...

Is the server named kryten or kryten.berkeley.edu ?

The server's name is kryten.

kryten.berkeley.edu would be what is called a Fully Qualified Domain Name. This is to distinguish it from other servers on the internet that may have the same server name. For example: I had a server named kryten. It was Domain Controller for a home network I called "heffnet". The Fully Qualified Domain Name was kryten.heffnet.local

Hazarding a guess, I'd say kryten at Berkeley is ready to have a mobo go down. :(

---

nobody: The problem there is that "hostname --FQDN" returns hostname instead of the FQDN because its set wrongly in the hosts file.

The problem here is that the hostname gets literaly set to "--fqdn" which is a command flag for the command "hostname" to display the FQDN of the system.

When the command is wrapped inside a "hostname = $" like the xmailer configs did in the example I posted the hostname literaly gets set to the phrase "--fqdn".

I spent a chunk of the day today preparing for the boinc.berkeley.edu server OS/RAID overhaul.

Do you need me to swing by Einstein again?

---

me@rescam.org

I just rebooted kryten again. It was the usual NFS issue, possibly aggravated by my zombie-result cleanup procedure and the catchup from the past couple days of spotty uptime elsewhere on the network.

Do you use AMD or automount for your NFS clients ?

---

nobody: The problem there is that "hostname --FQDN" returns hostname instead of the FQDN because its set wrongly in the hosts file.

The problem here is that the hostname gets literaly set to "--fqdn" which is a command flag for the command "hostname" to display the FQDN of the system.

When the command is wrapped inside a "hostname = $" like the xmailer configs did in the example I posted the hostname literaly gets set to the phrase "--fqdn".

> so whaT is the *exact* problem ?

< @ Jan_ thanx 4 thE rEply & wElCoME to thE boards (ps - most of thE *examples* [as in _not_ ] originated from 1995 UC Irvine archive ;)

Would this make a difference kryten.berkeley.edu vs kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu (or even kryten.setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu)?

Would this make a difference kryten.berkeley.edu vs kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu (or even kryten.setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu)?

They would be different machines, as far as networking is concerned. I haven't tried, but it's POSSIBLE that using Virtual Machine or a similar aplication, the same physical computer COULD have two different FQDN's, and therefore appear on two different subnets, but I doubt that would be the case.

---

Would this make a difference kryten.berkeley.edu vs kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu (or even kryten.setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu)?

They would be different machines, as far as networking is concerned. I haven't tried, but it's POSSIBLE that using Virtual Machine or a similar aplication, the same physical computer COULD have two different FQDN's, and therefore appear on two different subnets, but I doubt that would be the case.

Thanks LGM, I'm also a "student of IT". I used to work on an ISP helpdesk (Windows/Mac) in London for nearly 4 years dealing with home users. My UNIX knowledge is very slim.

ping setiathome.berkeley.edu

Pinging setiathome.SSL.berkeley.edu [128.32.18.152] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 128.32.18.152:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

ping setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

Pinging setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu [128.32.18.152] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 128.32.18.152:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
ping kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu

Pinging kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu [128.32.18.154] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 128.32.18.154:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

ping kryten.berkeley.edu

Ping request could not find host kryten.berkeley.edu. Please check the name and
try again.

might be of interest ?


kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu [128.32.18.154]

[Connected] Requesting the server's default page.

Error retrieving page from server: 10053 error 10053

> Virtual circuit is aborted because of time-out or any other failure.

Would this make a difference kryten.berkeley.edu vs kryten.ssl.berkeley.edu (or even kryten.setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu)?

They would be different machines, as far as networking is concerned. I haven't tried, but it's POSSIBLE that using Virtual Machine or a similar aplication, the same physical computer COULD have two different FQDN's, and therefore appear on two different subnets, but I doubt that would be the case.

The three names could point to 1, 2 or 3 systems with 1, 2 or 3 different IP addresses on 1, 2 or 3 different subnets.

I have systems at work that are on 3 different subnets.

I have other systems that can be accessed by multiple addresses on the same subnet.

I have many more systems that are registered in multiple domains.

---

kryten.berkeley.edu would be what is called a Fully Qualified Domain Name.

I believe that should be written “kryten.berkeley.edu.”—a FQDN is supposed to end with a period, as if to indicate that it belongs to the Universal Domain.

---

In light of recent issues with kryten, and a backlog of uploads and downloads, could you please extend the deadline? I discovered I had at least 10 or more workunits which were distributed on Feb 4-5th (took them a while to download, due to previous issues). The deadlines were February 9th, and I am still unable to upload those units.

---