Pio@Work

Increase A VMware Disk Size (VMDK) Formatted As Linux LVM ~ Mattias Geniar

2012-01-06T10:17:00.001Z

Increase A VMware Disk Size (VMDK) Formatted As Linux LVM

Posted on Friday, August 27, 2010 by Matti

This is a very well written and concise article on extending an LVM drive. Well done Matti!

Posted via email from Pio's work related musings

Android apps #3: llama

2011-11-01T12:25:00.001Z

Modern smartphones are great. All those apps, connected to the internet, retrieving information and letting you know about it with beeps and bongs.

The only downside is the inevitable beep in the middle of the night that wakes you up.

Enter Llama. It's designed to change the ringer and notification volumes depending on the time and where you are.

Previously I used Foxyring, but that used GPS data which sucks the battery dry, so I ended up just using the timers.

Llama however has a trick up its sleeve - passive scanning of cell towers (already known by the phone unless you've put it in flight mode). By using this instead of GPS, you can have some really nifty rules.

For instance I have my phone go louder when I leave home, and very loud when I'm working in the noisy Datacenter, but quiet at work and at home, and silent overnight.

It's highly configurable but the defaults are pretty useful.

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Android apps #2: Catch notes

2011-10-27T12:59:00.001+01:00

For note taking I like keeping things simple such add just using a text editor, but there are occasions when it's useful to keep a photo (such as when you're at the datacenter and need to remember which nics you've just plugged in the back of a server) and text only just won't cut it.

That's where Evernote and my favourite Catch notes come in. They also have the added bonus of syncing with the cloud so it's easy to get the content when you're back at your desk again.

I prefer catch mainly because it can be moved to sd card (which breaks widgets) and it has a small lightweight widget for quick notes.

Well designed, easy to use and rather useful.

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Android apps #1

2011-10-25T22:23:00.001+01:00

The first in probably infrequent series with the best free apps for Android phones. I've pretty much got "an app for that" and all of them free.

So kicking everything off is Jota, a text editor. Advert free, it does everything you want from a text editor in windows, let alone on a mobile phone.

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Macrium Reflect FREE Edition

2011-07-20T12:31:00.001+01:00

via macrium.com

The first in an intermittent series of posts for my top free PC tools concerns Macrium Reflect.

It's a great imaging tool (similar to Ghost) that can even do bare metal restores via a linux or WinPE boot disk (depending on hardware compatibility fo course).

The best news is they offer a freeware version, so there's no reason not to get it...

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Error: "The resource vswif0 is in use" when changing service console IP

2011-05-20T11:12:00.001+01:00

When you try to change a service console IP from DHCP to Fixed, you'll get this error.

A simple workaround is to add a second service console with a new IP and delete the original.

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Checking DFS replication status

2010-11-19T08:36:00.001Z

On windows 2003 R2 and Windwos 2008, Distributed File System replication is handles by the new DFSR service.

You can check the status of replciation using the DFSRDIAG command, but if you're on a windows 2008 server, be careful to run this as Administrator otherwise you'll get an error "[ERROR] Access is denied when connecting to WMI services".

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Netstat tips and tricks for Windows Server admins

2010-11-16T09:09:00.001Z

What process is running on the open port: Tracking down which process identifier (PID) has a port open is quite easy when netstat is run with the -a -n -o combination of parameters

via blogs.techrepublic.com.com

A useful article explaining the netstat command parameters, especially the example I'm always looking for which shows the process name.

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Serial ports created during a P2V process & why you should delete them asap

2010-11-12T12:03:00.001Z

A quick tip for machines that have just been P2V'd with vConverter:

Make sure you remove the TTY / serial devices which are automatically created.

These are class as mapped host devices but unlike a mapped host cd drive, they cannot be disconnected without powering off the new VM.

As a result you can't vMotion the new VM and hence it stops DRS from being able to migrate the VM and also you can't put the host into maintenance mode (such as during a host update patch process)

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VMWare iSCSI access policy in vSphere ESX4.1

2010-11-12T10:20:00.001Z

The iSCSI access policy is the method VMware uses to leverage multiple paths to iSCSI storage.

By default even if you have multiple paths from VMWare to your storage, it will use an active/passive configuration, usually meaning that you'll have a 1Gb/s bottleneck (unless you're fortunate enough to be using 10Gb/s networking.

To change the policy in older versions of VMware, you updated the properties of each volume on each server and changed the drop down to the value you want (usually Round Robin). The change was instantaneous meaning a misclick of the list actually changed the value.

In ESX 4.1 this behaviour has been changed by adding a button next to the drop down. You need to make sure you click this button for the change to be applied, otherwise you'll be wasting your time.

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Sysprep in Windows 2008

2010-04-13T16:48:00.001+01:00

One of the most often used tool of sysadmins who need to deploy large numbers of similar hardware is the sysprep tool. This Microsoft tool anonymises key system components so that cloned machines end up unique rather than duplicates of each other which can cause a wide range issues when they are networked together. There are many different versions of sysprep available for the various versions of windows and the different flavours of service pack which can make it a nightmare to find the correct version.

Thankfully microsoft in their wisdom have made the process simpler since the release of Vista, by incorporating sysprep into the OS installation as standard. Assuming you've deployed windows to the default directory you'll find the tools in c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe

The options are also much simplified, with the option of "Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)" in combination with the "Generalise" tickbox giving the required options for cloning the system.

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Unknown status for servers in ITAssistant

2010-04-07T09:12:00.001+01:00

ITAssistant often seems to give unknown status to servers for no apparent reason. The usual fix for this is just to refresh the inventory of the unknown servers (annoying but quite quick to do).

However sometimes servers go unknown and won't respond to an inventory, even if you bounce the ITAssistant services or the SNMP services on the remote server.

The first step is to try the troubleshooting tool in ITAssistant...

and run the SNMP connectivity test...

The result should show a list of SNMP agents installed on the server. A healthy Dell Openmanage report will list the OpenManage Server Agent, plus any additional components that were selected (such as storage management.

If the OpenManage SNMP agent isn't showing you'll probably only see a couple of agents.

e.g.
1) A problem server
Connected to the agent software(s) - [broadcom, NA], [mib2, NA]
2) An OK server
Connected to the agent software(s) - [broadcom, NA], [cminventorysnmp, NA], [drac3, NA], [mib2, NA], [OpenManage Server Agent, 5.8.0], [storagemgmt, NA]

If the server responds with an output similar to the problem server (1) above, then you need to reinstall SNMP. The good news is that this can be done without rebooting the server.

This usually requires the unzipped files for the installed service pack and the windows installation CD, so make sure you have the media available

1) Uninstall Dell OpenManage
2) Uninstall SNMP
3) Reinstall SNMP
4) Reinstall Dell OpenManage

Finally go back into ITAssistant and re-run the troubleshooting tool to make sure you get the full SNMP output for OpenManage and if this is ok, re-inventory the server in OpenManage and your unknown status should clear.

Of course if you take the opportunity to upgrade OpenManage you may find your firmware is out of date and you get a warning status, but that's a different subject...

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Dell iSCSI Tape Library devices not appearing

2010-02-12T14:54:00.001Z

The Dell TL2000 and TL4000 tape libraries both have the option to be used with iSCSI. This comes in the form of a SAS to iSCSI bridge which installs in the unit. The SAS ports are then connected to the Bridge card with an adapter cable (supplied) and the network ports on the card are connected to your iSCSI network.

The microsoft iSCSI initiator is used to connect to the iSCSI bridge which presents the tape library hardware as a series of targets.

At first glance the first target appears to be duplicated but do not be fooled (like I was). These are actually the first tape drive *and* the robotic library itself.

Once all the devices are logged on, you should see the Robotic library and all the drives in your changer in backup exec although you may need to rerun the device detection wizard in BE first.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Removing old hidden devices

2009-11-06T07:54:00.001Z

Usually this is an issue when you change a network card and want to reuse the original IP. The old driver and device is still registered in windows even though it's gone from device manager even if you select show hidden devices, so windows winges about duplicate IPs. It'll still work mind, but it's not the neatest way to keep your windows.

The answer, in a command prompt, run the command set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 then start the device manage snap-in devmgmt.msc. Then when you show hidden devices it'll also show devices that are no longer in the system.

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Monitoring VMware vSphere ESX4 with Dell ITAssistant with SNMP

2009-10-21T12:26:00.001+01:00

This is a howto for setting up SNMP on VMware vSphere ESX4 to work with ITAssistant, written because there's precious little documentation on the matter and what documentation exists is quite often misleading or plain wrong! Vmware in their wisdom have completely changed the way SNMP is configured in vSphere ESX4 (note not ESX4i which is a completely different kettle of fish and covered elsewhere). This means (young padawan) you have to unlearn everything you knew and any documentation for pre-vSphere can be pretty much thrown out of the window. The version used was 4.0.0 but should apply to future versions too.

Install Openmanage 6.1.x or higher

This is done the same way as on older vmware servers or linux systems.

1) download and unzip the Openmanage redhat package (OM_6.1.0_ManNode_A00.tar.gz) from the dell website to someone on in your vmware service console.

gzip -d OM_6.1.0_ManNode_A00.tar.gz
tar -xvf OM_6.1.0_ManNode_A00.tar

This will give the following files/volders:
COPYRIGHT.txt
docs/
license.txt
linux/
setup.sh

2) Run setup (as root) and select the first 3 options
sh setup.sh

##############################################

Server Administrator Custom Install Utility

##############################################

Components for Server Administrator Managed Node Software:

[x] 1. Server Administrator Web Server

[x] 2. Server Instrumentation

[x] 3. Storage Management

[ ] 4. Remote Access Core Components

[ ] 5. Remote Access SA Plugin Components

[ ] 6. All

Enter the number to select a component from the above list.

Enter q to quit.

Then select i to install

3) start the Openmanage services
srvadmin-services.sh start

4) Open the vmware firewall to allo access to the openmanage web interface

/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -o 1311,tcp,in,OpenManage

Make sure you test it so you know openmanage is working and can see your hardware. If you can see the disk systems, memory, cpus etc, then fix openmanage first.

Setup passive polling from ITAssistant

Passive monitoring is where the ITAssistant polls the server at a regular interval. Supported methods in ITAssistant are CIM, SNMP and IPMI. SNMP with the "get" string is the usual method and what this howto covers. The ITAssistant documentation recommends creating a new readonly string for use with ITAssistant.

1) Edit the snmp conf file
/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

2) Locate line 41 which should contain this string:
com2sec notConfigUser default public

3) Change the value from public to your string used with discovery in ITAssistant.

4) Append the following to the bottom of the file
smuxpeer .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1
This allows the snmp service to also serve out the Dell MIB information.

5) Restart the SNMPD service
/sbin/service snmpd restart
It often shows "failed" for the stop part but you can ignore that.

6) Restart the Dell Openmanage services for good measure
srvadmin-services.sh restart

7) Open up the SNMP service on the vmware firewall:
/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -e snmpd

7) Test SNMP with the troubleshooting tool in ITAssistant (tools->troubleshooting tool). Select the SNMP connectivity test and click the configure button to change the get string to your string (if you're not using

Alternatively use snmpwalk on the Dell MIB Tree
snmpwalk -v2c -c <your-string> 127.0.0.1 .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1
This should produce alot of scrolling text as it prints all the snmp output.

I'm still ironing out the quirks with active alerts (SNMP traps) and hope to have a definitive guide soon!

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Google Reader's "Send to" Feature

2009-08-14T09:13:00.000+01:00

Google Reader's "Send to" Feature: "Google Reader added a new feature that lets you share posts in other services: Twitter, Facebook, Digg. The feature is opt-in, so you need to go to the settings page, click on the 'Send to' tab and pick your favorite services.

After selecting an item, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+T to quickly open the 'send to' menu. Google Reader opens a new tab when you choose one of the 'send to' options and most of the necessary information it's already pre-filled.

If your favorite service is not included in Google Reader's list, you can add it from the settings page by clicking on 'Create a custom link'. Here's how to add a 'send to' option for Google Bookmarks.

Name: Google Bookmarks
URL: http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&output=popup&bkmk=http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-readers-send-to-feature.html&title=Google Reader's 'Send to' Feature
Icon URL: http://www.google.com/favicon.ico

And here's how to use AddToAny, a service that lets you select between many social sites.

Name: Add to Any
URL: http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-readers-send-to-feature.html&linkname=Google Reader's 'Send to' Feature
Icon URL: http://www.addtoany.com/favicon.ico

Google Reader added two other options: you can now subscribe to sites added to your contacts' profiles and mark as read items older than a day, a week or two weeks. The second option is useful if you have a lot of unread items and you only want to read the recent news. As you probably know, Google Reader automatically marks as read the items that are older than a month and this can't be changed.

Restarting a list of servers

2009-08-12T09:35:00.001+01:00

Windows 2003 has an enhanced shutdown command which allows shutdown of
multiple servers.
Running shutdown -i brings up a dialog box where you can enter the
list of servers.
Remember it's always good practice to put shutdown comments the mean
something so looking back in the future you'll know what was done.

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Resolving port conflicts

2009-08-08T18:14:00.001+01:00

If you ever need to find out which process is holding a port open use:
netstat -b

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Posterous

2009-08-08T14:37:00.001+01:00

Just found a new blogging site called posterous. It's main feature is making blogging easy by having entries all sent via email. While some people are used to having a web connection all the time, I find often I'm out and about and just want to do something quick and simple on my phone so being able to upload posts, photos, videos somewhere just by sending an email from the gmail client on my phone sounds great.

The only downside is it posts signatures too :)

Lets see if this works then...

Posted via email from Pio's work related musings

Using ESEUTIL to recover and repair exchange databases with dirty shutdown state

2009-05-14T11:14:00.001+01:00

There are plenty of guides on using eseutil but getting the parameters right always seems to be a case of trial an error, so here's a quick howto:

1) Copy all the original database and log files to somewhere safe. Then also copy them into a working directory. Eseutil will modify the files in situ so if it goes wrong you don't want your original files modified.

You need to have a copy of the database files (*.edb and *.stm) plus the transaction logs (Exx*.log where xx is a number relating to the information store). The location of the files is available from exchange system manager, but you really should know where they all are anyway.

I'm going to assume the temp directory for the database files is e:\temp\data and they're called exchdb.edb, exchdb.stm. If they reside in the 1st storage group, the transaction logs will be called E00.log (this is the most recent base file) and E00xxxx.log etc (these are the old logs). Lets assume these are copied to e:\temp\logs. You need to replace these with your own paths/filenames of course.

2) Check the database state and expected log files with

eseutil.exe /mh e:\temp\data\exchdb.edb

The output will show a line State: which will be either clean or dirty shutdown. If it's clean, then you don't need this article :)

It will also show which logs are required e.g. which hadn't yet been played into the database when the dirty shutdown occured. If you have any missing then you will have lost email. This generally only occurs if you lost a log drive and have replicated copies of the logs you can use.

3) "Recover" the database. This replays missing transaction logs into the database file - run:

eseutil.exe /r E00 /d"e:\temp\data\exchdb.edb"

You might receive an error that there is an outstanding database attachment. In this case use the /i switch in the command

eseutil.exe /r E00 /d"e:\temp\data\exchdb.edb" /i

4) recheck the database state with the command in 2). If it still shows dirty shutdown you need to repair the database with:

eseutil /p e:\temp\data\exchdb.edb

5) Recheck the database once more and it should show clean shutdown. At this point you should defrag the database

eseutil /d e:\temp\data\exchdb.edb

6) The file is now in a clean state and is ready to be put back into exchange so copy it back to the original location on your exchange server but don't yet mount the file. The last step before mounting the file is to get rid of any remaining errors using isinteg.exe. This tool requires the database to be in the original location on the original exchange server. It needs to be run several times until it no longer reports any errors.

7) Once the database file has no more errors you can now remount it in exchange.

Verifying that bulk file copy

2009-02-11T09:00:00.000Z

If you copy a bunch of files/folders from one disk to another and want to verify they have all copied correctly without corrupting, you can use cygwin and md5sum to verify them.

In cygwin run the following commands:

cd /cygdrive/[drive letter]/[path]
e.g. cd /cygdrive/c/test. This is the source path to generate the MD5 hashes from.

find . -type f 2>/dev/null -exec md5sum {} \; >/cygdrive/c/temp/test.md5
This generates the md5 file which is a plain text file containing the MD5 hashes. Depending on the size of files to verify this might take a while. There may also be issues with files over 2GB in size (I haven’t tested this).

cd /cygdrive/[drive letter]/[path]
e.g. cd /cygdrive/d/destination. This is the destination where you copied the files to.

md5sum –c /cygdrive/c/temp/test.md5 | grep –i failed >/cygdrive/c/temp/test-result.log
This checks the copied files against the md5 hashes and filters the output through grep to only include failed files. c:\temp\test-result.log will contain the results of the verify.
The result is either “ok” or “failed” but you’re probably only interested in the failed files.

Wake on LAN problems - Dell 2950 servers and Broadcom NICS

2008-09-30T14:33:00.001+01:00

Although I've been using vmware for over 3 years through various incarnations, I've only just been in a position to exploit the power-saving features in v3.5.

At first glance it looks pretty straight forward - click the "enter standby" option and sit back and watch. No.

First off, you need to have Wake on LAN (WOL) supported on your vmotion NIC. This isn't necessarily something you think of when setting up the patching of the virtual server - Intel PT1000 Quad Port NICs only support WOL on the first port (Dual ports also). Others in the range might be different, but the VT1000 NICs have their own issues in vmware depending on the version of vmware installed.

Most of the servers I work on are Dell x9xx series which have Broadcom 5708 onboard NICs. Looking in Virtual Center at the NIC configuration shows whether VMware thinks WOL is available. I was a bit confused when I found for some servers it was available and for others it wasn't. Dell support went through the usual steps - update the firmware, update the NIC firmware, etc. - to no avail.

I tested the WOL feature anyway with the AMD Magic Packet utility and the MAC address of the NIC and lo! it woke up. Curiouser and curiouser.

After more research by Dell, one of their engineers discovered source of the issue (hurrah!) in the version of the Ethernet Controller Hardware. an lspci command (run as root) reveals the version number:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (rev 11)

Rev 11 is the culprit and Rev 12 servers correctly show WOL available in vmware. Dell have escalated the issue to vmware so hopefully there will be some kind of resolution soon.

So in summary:

Make sure vmotion is enabled on a NIC that supports WOL
Check your broadcom NICs are Rev12 and above.
Put your Host in a Cluster
At least one other Host in the Cluster must be on (this does the wakeup on the others that are in standby)
Enable WOL in the NIC boot bios

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Setting up wildcards with Exim4 and virtual domain

2008-07-01T09:12:00.000+01:00

This is a quick howto for setting up Exim4 with:
1) several incoming (virtual) domains
2) some local users
3) wildcard catchall accounts to collect the emails not matching the local users

Setup the virtual domains in the dc_other_hostnames variable in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf. These are the domains considered local by this installation of Exim4. Any other domains will be routed as remote mail either through the IP defined by dc_smarthost, or direct delivery through DNS lookup of the MX records, or a hubbed_hosts definition file if it exists which overrides the DNS lookups.
Create the local users with adduser
If required, create the local user sending addresses (for the From: header) in /etc/email-addresses (otherwise the local user will be stamped with the mail hostname defined in /etc/mailname)

#/etc/email-addresses
user1: user1@domain1.com
user2: user2@domain2.net

Define the catchall accounts in a new a wildcard aliases file /etc/aliases_wildcards

# /etc/aliases_wildcards
#*@domain1.com: domain1-catchall-user
#*@domain2.net: domain1-catchall-user

Create a new router directive to process the wildcard aliases - the first 3 digits of the filename define which order routers are processed by Exim4. This needs to be after the local_user router which is by default 900 so any value higher than 900 will work. I've chosen 999. /etc/exim4/conf.d/router/999_exim4-config_system_aliases_wildcard

# This router handles wildcard aliasing using a /etc/aliases_wildcards file
# /etc/aliases_wildcards must exist as it is a non-standard file
system_aliases_wildcards:
debug_print = "R: system_aliases_wildcards for $local_part@$domain"
driver = redirect
domains = +local_domains
allow_fail
allow_defer
data = ${lookup{*@$domain}lsearch*{/etc/aliases_wildcards}}
file_transport = address_file

Check the routing works as expected

exim4 -bt user1@domain1.com
exim4 -bt notauser@domain1.com
The first command should show email routing to a local user using the local_user router.

R: system_aliases for user1@domain1.com
R: userforward for user1@domain1.com
R: procmail for user1@domain1.com
R: maildrop for user1@domain1.com
R: lowuid_aliases for user1@domain1.com (UID 1001)
R: local_user for user1@domain1.com
user1@domain1.com
router = local_user, transport = maildir_home

The second command should show email routing to the catchall account again using the local_user router:

R: system_aliases for notauser@domain1.com
R: system_aliases_wildcards for notauser@domain1.com
R: system_aliases for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
R: userforward for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
R: procmail for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
R: maildrop for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
R: lowuid_aliases for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com (UID 1000)
R: local_user for domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
domain1-catchall-user@localsystem.com
<-- notauser@domain1.com
router = local_user, transport = maildir_home

A good source of information on which config file does what in Exim4 can be found here

Cool free software - Proxmox

2008-06-27T10:31:00.000+01:00

We're living in a virtual IT world where everything is not as it seems. This has always been the case - Windows its drivers hide the hardware from applications and RAID has been with us for years, making several disks/volumes look one big one - but the last few years has seen an explosion in different virtualisation technologies.

At the forefront is VMware. Their main enterprise offering doesn't run on an OS such as windows, it *is* the OS. In ESX v2 this was a highly modified version of redhat, but in v3 it can be considered native (this isn't strictly true but it's a good enough description for now).

Microsoft soon woke up and released virtual pc and virtual server, and more recently hyper-v, all of which of course require a windows installation to run, although the big selling point of hyper-v is that it will run on the new Windows 2008 Core Server and Microsoft are going to be selling it very cheaply with clustering out of the box.

VMware responded to Virtual PC going free and introduced first the VMplayer, and then the free VMware server (effectively their GSX server product) available for both Windows and Linux Host operating systems. The ESX server and the management tools are where VMware make their money but this market is coming under more and more pressure.

Step in Proxmox Server Solutions! They are in beta with a product that looks suspiciously like VMware ESX v2, and installs onto bare metal and unlike other solutions is available on a GPL licence. I'll be watching this one closely...

Dell Small Business 360 - 10 Essential Blogging Tools

2008-06-26T15:52:00.000+01:00

First post of my new work blog is an article on what else? Blogging. Useful tools and tips for getting your blog out there.

Dell Small Business 360 - 10 Essential Blogging Tools