HughesTech Labs:

Restore system backup RAQ3 and RAQ4 files. As all users of Cobalt Raq 3 and Raq 4 internet appliances know, the internal Backup system is very poor for large an small sites.

Our Engineers discovered that an entire website went missing on a Raq4 Server, meaning the directory (/home/sites/site6/web) was gone and of course all sub-directories of “web” were also missing.

No problem, we have the website backed up right?  Wrong, the backup file we had archived ( xxxxxx.xxxxxx.com_complete_20090523-1010.raq ) was 1.9gb compressed.

The Engineers tried restoring the file via the “Selected Restore” process within the “Admin” Control Panel, but the restore.cgi quit before unpacking the file that was sent via the web browser, then the web browser timed out.

Panic has now set in, this how our Engineers did it:

Our Engineers copied the above listed file to another Cobalt Raq4 under the directory of “/home/sites/home/users/admin”  cd /home/sites/home/users/admin, then  they downloaded a file called “stripheader.pl“, chmod 755 stripheader.pl next they ran it:

./stripheader.pl xxxxxx.xxxxxx.com_complete_20090523-1010.raq

The perl script then generated a file called: out.tar.gz

Our Engineers wanted site6 extracted from the compressed tar file:

tar -zxvpf out.tar.gz /home/sites/site6  -C /home/sites/home/users/admin

This un-compressed and un-tarred /home/sites/site6 into /home/sites/home/users/admin/home/sites/site6/(entire site)

We had 100% recovery, but in the wrong server and wrong directory (what we wanted), now the engineers simply cd home/sites/site6

tar -cvf recovered.tar * this tarred the entire site (/site6/*)

Our engineers copied this new recovered.tar file to the /home/sites/site6 directory  on the correct server and un-tarred it  there: tar -xvf recovered.tar

Like I said 100% recovery but what a pain, the root cause is thought to be from over-heating due to both fans failing.

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HughesTech Labs:

HughesTech Engineers discover the root cause for Hard Drive crashes on DELL Server running Linux. One of our DELL Servers would have a major hard drive crash about every seven (7) days.

The Server would just reboot, scan the Hard Drive, wait a few seconds for a root login at the console, then repeat the cycle.  Our Engineers would login at the console, run the ext2 fsck and repair the Hard Drive.

One Engineer while logged on as root, noticed the system time under Linux was off by about 4 hours, so he reset the time in linux, rebooted the server and set the time in the bios setup (cmos battery), everything was fine for another seven (7) days.

After the seven (7) days we had another hard drive crash on the same DELL Server, so the Engineers repeated everything the same way again, and again noticed the time was off by 4 hours, they replaced the cmos battery (CR2032) for the Real-Time Clock, reset the time and that was the fix!

Image that, a cmos battery that costs about $1.00 taking down an entire server!

We thought we would share this, for others that may be having the same issues.

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HughesTech Labs:
The Truth About P2P (peer-to-peer) File-Sharing and How to block It!

Routers and Firewalls can not block P2P (peer-to-peer) traffic, System Administrators think they are stopping it, but they are not!

Even the U.S. Government can’t block it, That is why President Obama’s Marine One blue-prints were found on a computer in Iran!

There is only one product that can stop the new wave of  P2P file-sharing and that is Clouseau!  Remember that name when your thinking about Computer Security!

HughesTech Lab’s Engineers have tested Clouseau for over three (3) months and found Clouseau by: SafeMedia Corp. Boca Raton, Florida to be the only Network Security System, that can truly block Peer-to-Peer (p2p) File-Sharing for private and public Networks.

Our Engineers found the shocking truth that Routers, Firewalls and other unified, threat management systems and packet  shapers could not block many of the peer-to-peer Networks especially encrypted peer-to-peer!

Once Clouseau was installed, all security breaches were halted instantly!

Our hats off to SafeMedia Corp.  for developing such a fine network security  device as Clouseau.

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