Archive for October, 2011|Monthly archive page

Fixing Master Boot Record on Windows 7

Posted October 15, 2011
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I recently removed the linux partition from my desktop. I had a linux partition, but it made sense to just use one windows partition and run linux in a vm.

Removing the partition is not a big deal. I just used the Windows Disk Management tool to remove the linux partition and expand the windows partition accordingly. I tried to fix the master boot record before rebooting, since GRUB was no longer required. Upon restart, however, I was met with a vague partition error followed by the grub restore prompt.

To remedy this problem so that windows would boot:

  • Boot from Windows 7 install disk.
  • Try Startup Repair (though it probably won’t work) in ‘Repair your computer’ > ‘System Recovery Options’.
  • Reboot – if it still doesn’t work, return to ‘System Recovery Options’ menu.
  • Open command prompt.
  • bootrec.exe /fixmbr
  • Reboot – it should boot directly to Windows 7.

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Monitoring RabbitMQ Queues with Zabbix

Posted October 9, 2011
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Recently I setup some monitoring on a RabbitMQ server using Zabbix. This process is by no means difficult, but I thought it was worth sharing.

I was looking for a solution that did not require additional plugins or packages, but would perform well. Some useful tools for monitoring include: the Management Plugin for RabbitMQ – works well, but provides more info than I needed; SNMP Statistics Plugin which looks promising; and the method below.

This assumes a zabbix server and agent(s) are setup, and a basic knowledge of zabbix.

Zabbix User Parameters

These user parameters pull all of the queue and exchange information out of rabbitmqctl for a particular queue and exchange.

I created a new file, /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.d/rabbitmq-server-stats.conf, which looked like the one below. It assumes rabbitmqctl is at /usr/sbin/rabbitmqctl.

After making the changes, bounce (restart) the zabbix-agent service on the rabbitmq server box.

Sudo Permissions

The parameters won’t work until the zabbix group is granted non-password sudo access. I chose to add a new file at /etc/sudoers.d/rabbitmqserverstats.

I added the following line to the end of /etc/sudoers:

/etc/sudoers.d/rabbitmqserverstats contains:

And with that, Zabbix should be able to monitor the some-queue and some-exchange statistics.

Update: Posted to RabbitMQ Server Stats template on ZabbixTemplates.com.

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