Inquisitor / News: Recent posts

After long 3-year development effort, we're pleased to announce new major version of Einarc - v2.0.

Einarc is a unified frontend to manage all the storage/RAID devices attached to a Linux system, including proprietary ones. New version sports lots of improvements:

New features

• Dedicated hotspare support ("hotspare add", "hotspare delete" methods)
• Getting physical disc SMART attributes in unified form ("physical smart")
• Adapter restart method to reset an adapter, stop all arrays and reinitialize them ("adapter restart")
• Listing logical discs now also shows their /dev entries, if possible
• Getting WWN and enclosure ID for physical drives (attributes "wwn" and "enclosure" for "physical" object, software only)
• Getting adapter's expanders ID and model (method "expanders" for "adapter" object)
• Log dumping support ("log dump", for lsi_megacli only)
• Enabling/disabling WriteCache support for logical and physical discs ("writecache" attribute for "physical" and "logical" object, software only)
• Disabling powersaving support for logical and physical discs ("powersaving" attribute for "physical" and "logical" object, software only)
• BBU support (arcconf)... read more

All repositories are converted from Subversion to Git and moved to GitHub.

After a long discussion, finally, Inquisitor project is ready to present new structure for its multiple repositories. All code base, documentation and web site were converted from Subversion to Git and are available at GitHub now:

• Main Inquisitor code repository, includes client, server and build system.
• Inquisitor web site repository, includes web site sources and official documentation.
• Einarc subproject, a storage management API & CLI... read more

Inquisitor project made an entry in Debian Census initiative.

The Debian derivatives census is an attempt to gather information about Debian derivatives that is useful to Debian, for integration of that information into Debian infrastructure and for the development of relationships between Debian and our derivatives.

For more information, see official Debian derivatives census announce.... read more

We've made a couple of adjustments that would benefit the project in long term.

• Official Inquisitor forums (gated with mailing lists) using Nabble embedded forum service should make it easier for some users to communicate.
• Inquisitor git mirrored repository at github simplifies collaboration on Inquisitor for git users.
• Updated contact form with captcha.
  link

We’re pleased to announce the second beta release of Inquisitor v3.1 Live CD. This is experimental build made with Debian package base.

This is a bugfix release that fixes numerous bugs, stability and usability issues in previous alpha and beta releases. We welcome all users who want to get the latest Inquisitor build to download it and try. Platform v3.1 really looks and acts better than dated v3.0 in many cases.

Release candidate of a new version of Einarc, a subproject of Inquisitor that provides unified interface to all proprietary RAID (storage) controllers, announced today.

Focus points that would be fully represented in final release:

* Support for post-build reconfiguration of proprietary CLIs and supporting modules. This allows Einarc to be supplied via usual binary packaging methods (rpm/deb): proprietary CLIs can be installed after binary package installation using special setup tool “einarc-install”.... [read more](/p/inq/news/2009/07/einarc-v14-release-candidate/)

Release candidate of a new version of Einarc, a subproject of Inquisitor that provides unified interface to all proprietary RAID (storage) controllers, announced today.

Focus points that would be fully represented in final release:

• Support for post-build reconfiguration of proprietary CLIs and supporting modules. This allows Einarc to be supplied via usual binary packaging methods (rpm/deb): proprietary CLIs can be installed after binary package installation using special setup tool "einarc-install".
• Experimental support for hardware RAID autodetection in both build-time (configure) and run-time (einarc-install).
• Many stability fixes and bug fixes.... read more

Inquisitor project took part in an international free/open source software contest Les Trophées du Libre. The final results were just announced: Inquisitor took 3rd prize in “Security & System administration” category.

Les Trophées du Libre is an international free/open source software contest. Candidates submitted their projects for a contest in January. 3 projects in every category were selected by the jury as a finalists in April. Project members were invited to visit Soissons, France, where the final stage of contest took place.... read more

Inquisitor project, a free/open-source hardware stress testing platform, took part in RootConf'2009 conference. Andrew Sapronov of Inquisitor team gave talk on Inquisitor usage in datacenter maintenance.

RootConf’2009 committee published full video version of talks that were held at the conference.

Thesis is available at http://rootconf.ru/papers2009/12065.html
Presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/Dolce727/2009-inquisitor-3?type=powerpoint
Streaming video is available at http://smotri.com/video/view/?id=v9870729960

Andrew Sapronov of Inquisitor team gave talk on Inquisitor usage in datacenter maintenance at RootConf'2009.

RootConf'2009 is a professional conference of system administrators held in Moscow, Russia in April 13-14th, 2009.

Andrew's talk discusses possibilities of using Inquisitor in the datacenter for managing life cycle of a computer equipment and possible interactions / integrations of Inquisitor with other systems for datacenter management, such as support center ticketing system, billing databases, monitoring, virtualization management systems, etc.... read more

After almost 8 months of hard work, Inquisitor team is pleased to announce first public alpha release on brand new Inquisitor v3.1 Live CD - a system dedicated to hardware stress testing and benchmarking. This version of Inquisitor includes 34 tests, 11 detection scripts, 8 monitoring scripts.

This is experimental build made with Debian package base.

Overview of new features in this Live CD build over 3.0 platform release:... read more

Einarc is a universal storage RAID command line interface and an API that provides management for various hardware/software RAID devices, uniting them all in a single paradigm. Einarc works as a translator that makes it possible for a user to control all these devices using simple terms like "physical disc", "logical disc", "adapter", etc., while transparently converting these requests to proprietary RAID paradigms.... read more

Inquisitor is a mature hardware diagnostics, stress testing,
certification and monitoring platform, running on GNU/Linux. It's
suitable for both enterprise and home use, customizable, modular and
available in standalone version, server-controlled network boot
production system and serverless Live CD format.

Inquisitor team is pleased to announce Inquisitor v3.0 - a first major
open-source version of the platform. After initial announcement of
Inquisitor branch 3.x in August 2007, it's a fruit of almost a year of
labor.... read more

Inquisitor is a mature and proven hardware testing and certification system, suitable for both enterprise and home use, customizable, modular and available in both serverless Live CD/DVD format and server-controlled network boot production system.

Today we’re proud to announce the release of Inquisitor v3.0-rc2. This would be last release candidate until the 3.0-final, which is scheduled to go gold on 2008-07-20.... read more

Yet again, new release of Inquisitor (v3.0-rc) is available to download using BitTorrents.

Inquisitor team is proud to release v3.0-rc today, both in source and LiveCD builds.

New features:

* Added new flavour: “standalone”. Inquisitor Standalone is packaged in normal rpm/dpkg to be installed and ran in normal running system. It is limited in functionality, but can be used to demonstrate Inquisitor principles well.

* Added monitorings API, server-side support and graphing support and one sample client-side monitoring: hdd-smart.... [read more](/p/inq/news/2008/04/inquisitor-v30-rc-release/)

We are ready to announce that Inquisitor 3.0-beta Live CD is available for downloading via BitTorrent network now, using LinuxTracker and ThePirateBay trackers.

Links are available at http://www.inquisitor.ru/download.html

The first public release of beta version of Live CD for Inquisitor v3.0.

WARNING! This is a beta quality software! Don’t use it in production systems and in systems where you have any valuable data. It can destroy both your data on hard drives and serious stress it places on hardware can destroy your hardware!

Einarc is a subproject of Inquisitor that provides unified interface to all proprietary RAID (storage) controllers.

Version 1.1 has following changes:

• Added documentation in the package
• Brand-new configure: now everything can be controlled from
  command-line parameters, individual modules can be enabled/disabled at
  compile time.
• Updated download/build mechanism: it asks for license agreement
  interactively. For non-interactive builds, just touch proprietary/agreed
  file.
• Bugfixes in lsi_megarc, adaptec_aaccli modules
• Compatibility with older Ruby (<1.8.6)... read more

Inquisitor is an open-source hardware testing and certification system, suitable for both enterprise and home use, customizable, modular and available in both serverless Live CD/DVD format and server-controlled network boot production system.

Full-fledged Inquisitor is still not quite ready, but we'd like to release parts of it that could already prove themselves useful. Today's release is Einarc. Einarc is a subproject of Inquisitor that provides unified interface to all proprietary RAID (storage) controllers.... read more