SCSI Hard Drive Failures

SCSI Hard Drive FailuresSCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. It is the second-most popular hard disk interface used in PCs today. Many companies use SCSI hard drives because the interface allows for much faster data transfer speeds. One of the main differences with a SCSI hard drive and an ATA hard drive is a SCSI disk must have an independent controller for it to communicate with the operating system.

Although SCSI controller has many benefits, it still adds another layer, another chance for failure and data loss. Unlike the IDE counterparts, SCSI disks operate through their own SCSI BIOS. When the computer is powered up, the SCSI BIOS sends a “Start Unit Request” command to the SCSI devices under its control. If the drive fails to start correctly, the SCSI drive will (often) power down and the error “Start Unit Request Failed” is displayed.

Which caused the SCSI drive failure?
Power down / power up
: SCSI drives are often found in machines that “never” switch off. When eventually these machines are powered down, getting the SCSI drives to restart can often be difficult

Electronic Failure: Failure of the electronic circuitry on the hard disk will prevent the drive from starting, fortunately drives with this type of failure are often recoverable

Mechanical Failure: Often characterized by a clucking sound or high pitched whine, SCSI hard disk mechanical failures are often the worst type of failure these drives can suffer. The noises, though not always apparent, are indicative of an internal mechanical failure or head crash.

All the usual failures that can be found on hard disk drives e.g. bad sectors, logical corruption etc.

Read More

Linux User Management

ac        Print statistics about users’ connect time.
accton        Turn on accounting of processes. To turn it on type “accton /var/log/pacct”.
adduser        Ex: adduser mark – Effect: Adds a user to the system named mark
chage        Used to change the time the user’s password will expire.
chfn        Change the user full name field finger information
chgrp        Changes the group ownership of files.
chown        Change the owner of file(s ) to another user.
chpasswd        Update password file in batch.
chroot        Run command or interactive shell with special root directory.
chsh        Change the login shell.
edquota        Used to edit user or group quotas. This program uses the vi editor to edit the quota.user and quota.group files. If the environment variable EDITOR is set to emacs, the emacs editor will be used. Type “export EDITOR=emacs” to set that variable.
faillog        Examine faillog and set login failure limits.
finger        See what users are running on a system.
gpasswd        Administer the /etc/group file.
groupadd        Create a new group.
grpck        Verify the integrity of group files.
grpconv        Creates /etc/gshadow from the file /etc/group which converts to shadow passwords.
grpunconv        Uses the files /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to create /etc/passwd, then deletes /etc/shadow which converts from shadow passwords.
groupdel        Delete a group.
groupmod        Modify a group.
groups        Print the groups a user is in
id        Print real and effective user id and group ids.
last        Display the last users logged on and how long.
lastb        Shows failed login attempts. This command requires the file /var/log/btmp to exist in order to work. Type “touch /var/log/btmp” to begin logging to this file.
lastcomm        Display information about previous commands in reverse order. Works only if process accounting is on.
lastlog        Formats and prints the contents of the last login.
logname        Print user’s login name.
newgrp        Lets a suer log in to a new group.
newusers        Update and create newusers in batch.
passwd        Set a user’s pass word.
pwck        Verify integrity of password files.
pwconv        Convert to and from shadow passwords and groups.
quota        Display users’ limits and current disk usage.
quotaoff        Turns system quotas off.
quotaon        Turns system quotas on.
quotacheck        Used to check a filesystem for usage, and update the quota.user file.
repquota        Lists a summary of quota information on filesystems.
sa        Generates a summary of information about users’ processes that are stored in the /var/log/pacct file.
smbclient        Works similar to an ftp client enabling the user to transfer files to and from a windows based computer.
smbmount        Allows a shared directory on a windows machine to be mounted on the Linux machine.
smbpasswd        Program to change users passwords for samba.
su        Ex: su mark – Effect: changes the user to mark, If not root will need marks password.
sulogin        Single user login.
ulimit        A bash builtin command for setting the processes a user can run.
useradd        Create a new user or update default new user information.
userdel        Delete a user account and related files.
usermod        Modify a user account.
users        Print the user names of users currently logged in.
utmpdump        Used for debugging.
vigr        Edit the password or group files.
vipw        Edit the password or group files.
w        Display users logged in and what they are doing.
wall        Send a message to everybody’s terminal.
who        Display the users logged in.
whoami        Print effective user id.

Read More

Free Data Recovery

Case:When the user starts to find that the hard disk cannot be recognized normally, the system prompts F1 next.The customer notified the Network Management Office at the time that the administrator checked that the computer was unable to recognize the hard disk and caused the physical failure.Immediately notify the cooperative unit data recovery center engineer….

Read More

Why you Should Have a Disaster Recovery Plan in Place

There is something that is inevitable. You never know when an entire system is going to crash or another disaster may come about. You have to be prepared for these things. If you’re not, then everything will be chaotic. No one will know what to do. In other words, everyone will be running around asking each other, “What do we do now?” And no one is going to have an answer.

What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is that protocol in which your employees follow when a certain disaster comes about. You have to evaluate everything that could go wrong within your business and have a recovery plan for each one of those situations. Since not one situation is the same, there has to be a protocol for each. From there, your employees have to study it and know what to do immediately. This means they need to memorize. There are many disasters that do not allow time for someone to pull out a manual and read what needs to happen. They have to act immediately.

But why have a disaster recovery plan in place?
You should have one in place because you need to conduct business in the best manner possible for your customers. Your customers expect seamless service no matter what, so you have to try to make things as convenient for them as possible. If you don’t, then you risk losing their business.

Your disaster recovery plan will include dealing with data loss during a natural disaster, dealing with a system meltdown, power surges, and so much more. It depends on what sort of business you are in as to what kind of plans you use. Just make sure that you cover all of your bases and that you also have a master plan so that you can take care of something that may not have a plan. You just never know what could happen.

Statistics
Statistics have shown that businesses with a disaster recovery plan are amongst those that recover better. Those who have experienced some sort of disaster that lasts for more than 10 days will never recover financially. 50% of those companies without a disaster recovery plan will spend so much time making up for lost cash that they will most likely be out of business in 5 years. That is not something you want to have to deal with. The cost of an outage that lasts only a few days is already bad enough. Contracts can be broken, credibility can be lost, and even future customers will never be acquired. These are extreme losses.

So take these statistics to heart so that you know why it is you need a disaster recovery plan. Not one more business needs to go out of business due to an outage, so you need to be on top of things. You need to realize that anything that prohibits you from carrying out your business practices can do irreparable damages. Your customers expect for you to be there for them whenever they need you. There is nothing more frustrating to them than trying to resolve an issue that you can’t resolve because of an outage. If their request is not fulfilled, then they may suddenly become your competitor’s newest customer.

Read More