Category Archives: Sys Admin

Material related to systems administration.

Installing Kubuntu

Posted on by

So basically I want to run KDE Plasma under Ubuntu and this can be called Kubuntu.

This article is a little bit cargo-clutish. I.e. “I did this and it seemed to work.” and “I don’t do this because it didn’t seem to work.”

I have a pretty heavy reliance on Salt Stack for system configuration. My salt config is all built around Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

When I need to install a Kubuntu desktop, this is how I do it:

  1. install Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS from live installer
  2. apt update && apt dist-upgrade && apt autoremove && reboot
  3. apt install kubuntu-desktop && reboot
  4. apt install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 && reboot
  5. apt install salt-minion
  6. vim /etc/salt/minion_id
  7. vim /etc/salt/minion.d/minion.conf
    • master: salt.staticmagic.net
  8. service salt-minion restart
  9. salt-call state.highstate

Note that if your Kubuntu install is a VirtualBox guest you need to start it with a normal start if you want the shared clipboard to work. If you start headless or detachable the shared clipboard will not work (in my experience).

If your Kubuntu install is not a VirtualBox guest you can skip the virtualbox-guest-* package installation above.

Shared clipboard for Ubuntu 18.04 guest in Ubutnu 18.04 host under VirtualBox 6.0

Posted on by

My shared clipboard wasn’t working for my Ubuntu 18.04 guests running on my Ubutnu 18.04 host under VirtualBox 6.0.

To fix first make sure that the shared clipboard is enabled in VirtualBox for the VM. The setting for that is under General -> Advanced -> Shared Clipboard.

Then try running these commands in the guest:

  • sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11
  • sudo reboot

These steps (or something similar) got the shared clipboard working for me. Hooray!

Note that these instructions will vary if you’re running a HWE kernel.

Zabbix server out of memory issue

Posted on by

So I found an issue in my syslog like the below. I edited the /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf file and changed CacheSize=8M to CacheSize=16M.

Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: Starting Zabbix Server. Zabbix 4.4.10 (revision 4db30afc70).
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: ****** Enabled features ******
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: SNMP monitoring:           YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: IPMI monitoring:           YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge systemd[1]: Started Zabbix Server.
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: Web monitoring:            YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: VMware monitoring:         YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: SMTP authentication:       YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: ODBC:                      YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: SSH support:               YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: IPv6 support:              YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: TLS support:               YES
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: ******************************
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: using configuration file: /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: current database version (mandatory/optional): 04040000/04040002
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: required mandatory version: 04040000
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: server #0 started [main process]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: server #1 started [configuration syncer #1]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: __mem_malloc: skipped 0 asked 24 skip_min 18446744073709551615 skip_max 0
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: [file:dbconfig.c,line:94] __zbx_mem_realloc(): out of memory (requested 24 bytes)
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: [file:dbconfig.c,line:94] __zbx_mem_realloc(): please increase CacheSize configuration parameter
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: === memory statistics for configuration cache ===
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: min chunk size: 18446744073709551615 bytes
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: max chunk size:          0 bytes
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: memory of total size 8388232 bytes fragmented into 70489 chunks
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: of those,          0 bytes are in        0 free chunks
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: of those,    7260424 bytes are in    70489 used chunks
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: ================================
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: === Backtrace: ===
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 11: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](zbx_backtrace+0x4e) [0x55803bd6662b]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 10: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](__zbx_mem_realloc+0x160) [0x55803bd619af]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 9: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](+0x18c453) [0x55803bd27453]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 8: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](+0x19889b) [0x55803bd3389b]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 7: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](DCsync_configuration+0x12d7) [0x55803bd34de6]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 6: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](dbconfig_thread+0x116) [0x55803bbeb021]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 5: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](zbx_thread_start+0x37) [0x55803bd74862]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 4: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](MAIN_ZABBIX_ENTRY+0x996) [0x55803bbdca4e]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 3: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](daemon_start+0x2ff) [0x55803bd65d8c]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 2: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](main+0x305) [0x55803bbdc0a2]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 1: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe7) [0x7fd8e5ea1b97]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2784]: 0: /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [syncing configuration](_start+0x2a) [0x55803bbdb11a]
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: One child process died (PID:2784,exitcode/signal:1). Exiting ...
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: syncing trend data...
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: syncing trend data done
Jul 22 20:27:35 knowledge zabbix_server[2778]: Zabbix Server stopped. Zabbix 4.4.10 (revision 4db30afc70).

Remove Boot Text On The Raspberry Pi For Noobs

Posted on by

Today I read Remove Boot Text On The Raspberry Pi For Noobs:

vim /boot/cmdline.txt

You will see a single line with all the boot options. Scroll along and change the following making sure not to add any linebreaks:

  • Replace console=tty1 to console=tty3 to redirect boot messages to the third console.
  • Add loglevel=3 to disable non-critical kernel log messages.
  • Add logo.nologo to the end of the line to remove the Raspberry PI logos from displaying
vim /boot/config.txt
  • add disable_splash=1 at the end of the file.