Debian: dmesg output contains “Error: Driver ‘pcspkr’ is already registered, aborting…”
by Ali on Jul.03, 2009, under Debian
Here is what’s transpiring: the boot sequence attempts to load two different drivers for the integrated PC speaker. To solve the problem install alsa-base package:
aptitude install alsa-base
And then execute the following command:
echo blacklist snd-pcsp >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist
Debian: open-iscsi, use iSCSI initiator to connect to a SAN
by Ali on Jun.22, 2009, under Debian, Linux
Actually it’s quite easy as long as your kernel is 2.6.16 or newer. Debian supports fibre channel out of the box, and for iSCSI you only need to install the open-iscsi package (you can easily taylor this for your distro):
aptitude install open-iscsi
Once the package is installed restart the initiator:
/etc/init.d/open-iscsi restart
To find out the indentifier name a look at initiatorname.iscsi file:
cat /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi
You can find the initiator identifier towards the bottom of the file… mine is InitiatorName=iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:61ddbbf82a70. Once you found the name you should be able to discover the target with the following command (my LeftHandNetworks iSCSI SAN IP is 192.168.1.70):
iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 192.168.1.70
Make a not of the record ID (mine is iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian) and connect to it using the following command:
iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian --portal 192.168.1.70:3260 --login
Once you initiated the command your iSCSI target will become visible to the OS as an SCSI disk (/dev/sda). You can now partition, format and then mount the LUN just like any other storage device. Add the target to your fstab and it should be auto-mounted everytime your system boots.
nano /etc/fstab
and add:
/dev/sda1 /iscsi ext3 _netdev 0 0
To have the LUN mounted to /iscsi directory. It didn’t work that well in my case… fstab mounts devices early during the startup stage before iscsi ini, and the OS couldn’t find the target to mount. I ended up scripting the initiator and mount… created a file “initiscsi” in /etc/init.d directory and added the following lines:
iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian --portal 192.168.1.70:3260 --login
sleep 5
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /iscsi
I’m sure there is a proper way to have the session initiated before the mount, but I didn’t care enough to figure it out. Init and mount script will do just fine in my case since my LUN is just a storage device.
That sleep command is to make sure the LUN is visible to the OS before it’s mounted. I added the script to my startup sequence after making it executable:
chmod a+x initiscsi
update-rc.d initiscsi defaults
This is of course for Debian starup.
If you are using CHAP you will need to edit your iscsid.conf file:
nano /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf
and update it with correct authentication info:
node.startup = automatic
node.session.auth.username = username
node.session.auth.password = password
discovery.sendtargets.auth.username = username
discovery.sendtargets.auth.password = password
Save and close the file, then initiate discovery.
Misc: UltraSurf 9.4 and 9.5b
by Ali on Jun.22, 2009, under Misc
UltraSurf 9.4 and 9.5 beta, proxy avoidance software for my fellow Iranians.
http://download.insanelabs.com/misc/ultrasurf95.zip




