Life

As I wrote before, I have been working on our AutoYaST setup. That entitles determining whether or not we’re currently inside a VMware environment. AutoYaST rules wise, that’s pretty easy (even though the MAC-tag is empty 😳): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 <!-- Addons: Install VMware Tools / KMP --> <rule> <custom1> <script> if ip a | grep "link/ether 00:50:56" >/dev/null ; then echo -n vmware fi; </script> <match>*</match> <match_type>exact</match_type> </custom1> <result> <profile>addons/@custom1@.xml</profile> </result> </rule> The hard part is figuring out ways, to make the VMware Tools installation as pain free as possible. One thing I can’t do, is running vmware-config-tools.pl … ...

A week ago (September 02nd), I received a mail detailing the release of IBM’s new multipathing device driver for the DS4x00 series, which finally works with SLES11 (the available software up till now doesn’t – as in fails with kernels > 2.6.26 iirc). ESC+ notification detailing the release There wouldn’t be any trouble, if IBM (or rather the vendor providing the driver – LSI) would actually release the driver … up till today, I have yet to see the new version appear on the download page. I already tried to notify IBM about the trouble, but as usual there is lack of ways to actually get this to the right person. ...

I spent yesterday afternoon upgrading our TS7530, and in my fad I also upgraded TSM to 5.5.3. Now, once I started TSM it quickly started complaining about the paths to the drives. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ANR8873E The path from source TSM1 to destination VTL1_DR03 (/dev/lin_tape/IBMtape03) is taken offline. ANR8873E The path from source TSM1 to destination VTL1_DR03 (/dev/lin_tape/IBMtape03) is taken offline. HBA_LoadLibrary: previously unfreed libraries exist, call HBA_FreeLibrary(). ANR8873E The path from source TSM1 to destination VTL1_DR07 (/dev/lin_tape/IBMtape07) is taken offline. ANR8873E The path from source TSM1 to destination VTL1_DR07 (/dev/lin_tape/IBMtape-07) is taken offline. I thought maybe this is a mere device problem (we have had them before), so I rebooted the boxes. But still no luck and I went home after about an hour of trying without any luck. In the morning, my co-worker called our trustworthy IBM service partner, and the TSM consultant said he had the exact, same problem yesterday. We would have two options: ...

If you remember back to July, I looked into some troubles I had with the IBM RSA II adapter’s Java interface and the latest JRE updates. I just noticed, that IBM released a new firmware yesterday for the RSA. The ChangeLog states this: Version 1.13, GFEP35A Problem(s) Fixed: * Suggested o Fix for Remote Control General Exception in JRE 1.6 update 12 and above. o Corrected a problem that DHCP renew/release may fail after a long time. o Corrected a problem that remote control preference link disapears after creating new key buttons. o Corrected a problem that cause event number shows only from 0 to 255 when views RSA log via telnet session. ...

One problem gone, another one turns up. When rpc.statd (nfs-common) tries to start before portmap, it’s gonna result in failure. Now, the logfile (/var/log/daemon.log) is gonna print a rather cryptic error message: 1 2 Aug 4 15:54:25 xen2 rpc.statd[3419]: Version 1.1.2 Starting Aug 4 15:54:25 xen2 rpc.statd[3419]: unable to register (statd, 1, udp). After fixing the start order (I really hate SUSE/Debian* for not having init-script dependencies – like Gentoo’s baselayout/Roy’s openrc does have), everything is like it should be and I’m able to put the /srv/xen mount into the fstab … ...

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m currently doing some project work. Said project includes InfiniBand technology. Apparently we bought a “cheap” InfiniBand switch, which comes without a subnet manager. So, in order to communicate between the nodes, you need to install the subnet manager (opensm in my case) on each node. 1 2 3 4 echo 'deb http://pkg-ofed.alioth.debian.org/apt/ofed ./' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openfabrics.list; aptitude update; aptitude install opensm In order to utilize the InfiniBand interface you need to do a few things first though: ...

Today, I had a rather troublesome morning. Once I got to work, Nagios was already complaining about the lin_taped on one of our TSM servers, which apparently failed due to too many SCSI resets. Additionally, I can’t login using the VE console (I can login however using SSH) so I ended up opening up a IBM Electronic Service Call (ESC+). Using SSH, I can get some information on the VE’s status: ...

I just converted one of my (old) templates, as I wanted to refresh the updates and the virus scanner. After converting, I was asked about the UUID (no clue why), and expected to be done with it. But after looking at the console, I got the following, completely cryptic message: Unable to connect to MKS After digging a bit deeper (that is looking at the vmware.log of the virtual machine, since the message of the GUI is real cryptic), I’m a bit wiser: ...

I just had yet another support call with IBM, concerning the Tape Console (or VE console, courtesy of Falconstor). My basic problem was/is, that I, as a german person, do have a german Windows Server 2003 installation. Now, if you do have german decimal number format selected in the regional settings, the display is gonna be kinda impaired and you’re gonna see something like this: VE console with german decimal number format ...

Tobi recently finished writing yet another book, which he also talked about in a blog post. Shortly after, I asked him a rather curious question. What exactly is the plant or animal on the cover of the book ? He was kind enough to send a voucher copy of the book my way. Praxisbuch Nagios He actually mentions it in the credits at the beginning of the book. Turns out it is an animal, a sea pen or sea feather (I’m guessing at Pennatula aculeata). ...