Work

After the last reinstallation of Windows (both at home and at work), I decided that from this day forth, I’d be working as unprivileged user (ie not as local administrator). Now, working as unprivileged user is some kind of relief (since not every program is able to wreak havoc within your computer), but also somewhat of a burden. Up until now, I had serious troubles burning CDs and/or DVDs as unprivileged user. Basically InfraRecorder refused to work at all. Only way that I had left, was copying the ISO to my local disk and then use runas in conjunction with InfraRecorder, to execute as Administrator. ...

Well, if you’re gonna update a SLES10 (or even a SLES11) VM, you created with Virtual Infrastructure, you’re gonna run into a snag (like I do). Grub (or rather the kernel itself) is gonna barf. Now, I searched for a while and didn’t find anything specific on the net, so I’m gonna write it down. Up till 3.5U4 the maximal resolution you’d be able to enter within a virtual machine was vga=0x32d (at least for my 19" TFT’s at work). But now, after the upgrade to vSphere that isn’t working anymore. ...

Disclaimer: I don’t take any responsibility for faults within the software, I just provide the RPM’s! Feel free to ask me about stuff concerning these RPM’s, but I ain’t accountable if your stuff goes kaboom! Oh, and those RPM’s aren’t recommended or supported by VMware! Since we recently upgraded our VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere, I finally had a chance to refresh the RPM’s for the KMP for 2.6.16.60-0.39.3-0.1 and 2.6.27.21-0.1. You can find the source RPM here. ...

Well, after I finished my first OCF agent back in October 2008, we have it running in production now for about ten months. During that time, we found quite a few points in which we’d like to improve the behaviour with that Linux-HA should handle TSM. Shutdown TSM nicely if possible (Cancel client sessions, cancel running processes and dismount mounted volumes) Better error handling So, after another week of writing and testing with a small instance, I present the new OCF agent for Tivoli Storage Manager. It still has one or two weak points, but they are negligible. I still need to write the documentation for it, but the script should just work …

Well, after yesterday’s episode with our tape library today continued to be a taxing day. After restarting a few exports that were hanging yesterday due to our library problems, something similar returned. TSM was unable to locate a few (two to be exact) tapes in the library. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ANR8300E I/O error on library LIB3584 (OP=00006C03, CC=314, KEY=05, ASC=3B, ASCQ=0E, SENSE=70.00.05.00.00.00.00.0A.00.00.00.00.3B.0E.00.C0.00-.04., Description=The source slot or drive was empty in an attempt to move a volume). Refer to Appendix C in the 'Messages' manual for recommended action. ANR8312E Volume 000400 could not be located in library LIB3584. ANR8358E Audit operation is required for library LIB3584. ANR8381E LTO volume 000400 could not be mounted in drive DR6 (/dev/rmt0). ANR1402W Mount request denied for volume 000400 - volume unavailable. ANR1410W Access mode for volume 000400 now set to "unavailable". Yet the library reported the tapes were still inventoried. 🤷 Here we are again, looking completely baffled. After a short while trying to figure out what to do, we went through the Data Cartridge inventory again. As it turns out, through putting the library in “Pause”-Mode and restarting TSM multiple times, TSM apparently completely forgot that it had these tapes put into drives. ...

Disclaimer: I don’t take any responsibility for faults within the software, I just provide the RPM’s! Feel free to ask me about stuff concerning these RPM’s, but I ain’t accountable if your stuff goes kaboom … Oh, and those RPM’s aren’t recommended or supported by Novell or IBM! After working with the novell-kmp solution, I think it’s actually rather easy to create a " Kernel Module Package". In the end, I created two additional KMP’s, one for the tools component of the VMware-Tools shipped with VMware ESX, and another for the lin_tape SCSI driver, used by our IBM TS3400 as well as the IBM TS7530. ...

Well, my co-worker just called on my cell (it’s Friday, 16:00), and asked me which start-up script he needed to change in order to restore the database. My first response was, “ummm, that’s gonna be hard, we’re using heartbeat”. Okay, so after a bit of asking I got out of him what he wanted to achieve by changing the start-up script. Apparently he did something to crash Tivoli Storage Manager (or rather repeatedly crash it) and wanted to restore the database. He talked to one of the systems partner we do have (and I’m happy we have them most of the time), who in return told him how to do it, but forgot a minute after he hung up the phone. ...

Well, I just stumbled upon something .. My Nagios at work wasn’t working anymore, and I went looking. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 nagios3 ~ [0] > tail -f /var/log/nagios/nagios.log [1238658394] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658403] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658413] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658423] SERVICE ALERT: tsm1;POWER WARN;OK;SOFT;4;-u OK - 0 [1238658423] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658433] SERVICE ALERT: tsm2;LOAD;WARNING;SOFT;1;WARNING - load average: 6.25, 5.72, 5.36 [1238658433] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658443] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658453] Error: Unable to save status file: No space left on device [1238658463] Error: Unable After that, zip - nada. Next thing, check whether or not the device is really full … Okay, df .. ...

Well, after some poking around I finally found some OID’s for the RSA’s (only through these two links: check_rsa_fan and check_rsa_temp). For Nagios, I dismissed the fans, since the fan speed is only passed on in percent values. So I only added this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 define hostgroup{ hostgroup_name rsa-snmp alias Remote Supervisor Adapter (allowing SNMP connections) } define service{ use generic-perfdata check_command check_rsa_snmpv1_public!.1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.51.1.2.1.2.1.1!45!60!°C!Temperature CPU0! hostgroup_name rsa-snmp service_description TEMP CPU0 } define service{ use generic-perfdata check_command check_rsa_snmpv1_public!.1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.51.1.2.1.2.2.1!45!60!°C!Temperature CPU1! hostgroup_name rsa-snmp service_description TEMP CPU1 } define service{ use generic-perfdata check_command check_rsa_snmpv1_public!.1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.51.1.2.1.5.1.0!29!35!°C!Temperature Ambient! hostgroup_name rsa-snmp service_description TEMP AMBIENT } Oh, and if anyone else is curious like me, here’s the list with the OID’s, courtesy of Gerhard Gschlad and Leonardo Calamai. ...

Well, I’m sitting again here grinding my head on how to fix up a certain package. Now, I had to look it up again, so this time I’m writing it down! 1 2 3 Source1: ${name}.initd ... install -o root -g root -m 755 %{S:1} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/etc/init.d/ndo2db