Re: [Wp-mirror-list] Fresh Debian Wheezy install fails on 'nil' and hdparm

[Jason Cooper]

Kent (I presume?),

On Sun, Dec 08, 2013 at 09:26:20PM -0500, wp mirror wrote:
[snip very clear background on hdparm]
> 4) /bin/true
> 
> Your suggested hack is interesting but does not generate the output
> expected by wp-mirror.  In other words, wp-mirror fails to parse the
> non-existent output.  Hence the error message.

Right, I kinda figured.  Hence the email ;-)

> 5) kvm
> 
> It would help me very much if you could log into your virtual machine,
> execute the following command:
> 
> (root-shell)# hdparm -W /dev/vda2
> 
> and send me the output.  

address@hidden $ sudo hdparm -W /dev/vda2
[sudo] password for jason: 

/dev/vda2:
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

The last line is on stderr, so that's why wp-mirror gets the NULL
exception, it must be capturing stdout, and there's nothing after
/dev/vda2: in this case.

> An important design objective for wp-mirror is that it should work
> `out-of-the-box' with no user configuration.  Clearly this did not
> happen for your configuration, and I would like to fix that.

While I concur with the out-of-the-box ACID compliance, I think there
should be a non-default 'lighter' method for folks who understand they
could put up to 4T and a month's work in danger (ie non-mission
critical tinkering)

Detecting that it's in a VM could be the tell that indicates the user
isn't striving for ACID compliant or peak performance.  Although,
having the user explicitly set a config option is probably better.

Do you have the code is a git repo somewhere that I could patch against?
I didn't see any mention in the docs.  I don't mind submitting patches.

thx,

Jason.