tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59612482574397646922011-11-28T02:11:30.074+01:00Blog about usage of Oracle's Enterprise Linux (OEL) aka "<em>Unbreakable Linux</em>" in a data center. Installation, configuration, tweaks, hacks, tips and tricks... whatever and all of the above, as we deploy Linux servers as the choice for all non-Microsoft servicesChristian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.comBlogger3011100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-37806153640401499762011-10-25T10:49:00.000+02:002011-10-25T10:49:55.714+02:00Dell has released a statement about <a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2011/10/17/ubuntu-server-edition-11-10-released-by-canonical.aspx">ubuntu 11.10 on Dell PowerEdge</a>. Dell lists that Ubuntu should work where the previous versions also worked and is currently re-certifying most PowerEdge and PowerEdge-C servers. Check <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/make/Dell/servers/">Canonical's hardware certification page</a> for details. Also good to know is that OpenManage (OMSA) has been <a href="http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/deb/latest/">released for Ubuntu</a>, although it is not officially supported.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3780615364040149976?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-89541647994828161562011-10-25T10:42:00.000+02:002011-10-25T10:42:22.932+02:00<a href="https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/pxeconfig">pxeconfig</a>:<br /><br />With pxelinux, which is a derivative of syslinux, you can specify with a PXE configuration file how the node must boot. This configuration is placed in, e.g. /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8954164799482816156?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-2679507153211835462011-09-07T09:55:00.000+02:002011-10-24T09:36:40.231+02:00Using sudoers in Linux to implement security is commonly done. Often administrators or operators allow themselves to 'sudo su -' to become root, without the need to know the root password. This is more comfortable as you don't need to type "sudo" in front of every command and your sudoers file becomes less exhaustive without the need to specify every command operators and sysadmins need.<br /><br />However, enforcing everyone - even sysadmins - to prepend every command with "sudo" creates an audit trail when sudo logs to a file. This often required for compliancy reasons. <br /><br />Now there is a command to playback sudo logs: <a href="http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/1.8.2/sudoreplay.man.html">Sudoreplay Manual</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-267950715321183546?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-29470431651996059072011-09-01T14:53:00.000+02:002011-10-24T09:37:06.639+02:00Dell TechCenter posted a very easy "how to get started" guide for <a href="http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/KVM+Virtualization+Made+Easy#fbid=xBVy8RgNwFt">KVM Virtualization</a> that you may find useful if you're just getting started and know little or nothing about virtualization (in Linux or elsewhere). It's good for the basics.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2947043165199605907?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-9881674808219964022011-08-31T11:22:00.000+02:002011-10-24T09:38:09.707+02:00Dell TechCenter has released a <a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2011/08/17/centos-based-livedvd-to-update-firmware-on-dell-servers.aspx">LiveDVD image with OMSA</a> to update firmware and BIOS on Dell hardware using a CentOS Linux distro.<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-988167480821996402?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-67639122044533005162011-08-31T11:10:00.000+02:002011-08-31T11:15:04.144+02:00Howto convert a LiveCD image to a <a href="https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/PxeBoot">PXE Boot image</a>. To convert the root of the ISO image to an NFS root and save on the RAM requirements when booting the image [RAM=2x(size of ISO in MB) + 60 MB], read this on <a href="http://www.planetgeek.ch/2009/08/03/pxe-boot-environment/">PXE booting in general</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6763912204453300516?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-49489768139639382382011-08-09T14:29:00.000+02:002011-08-31T11:15:53.249+02:00Dell's released the latest version of OpenManage <a href="http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/">6.5.1</a>. It provides drivers, BIOS and firmware updates from Linux when running Dell PowerEdge hardware.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4948976813963938238?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-88708122194046092352011-08-02T17:35:00.000+02:002011-08-31T11:16:26.504+02:00My OEL4 servers still have duplicate RPM packages on 64 bit servers. Libs for 32 bit and 64 bit are often installed, even though they may not always be used. When upgrading a package, such as glibc, you run into the error that yum won't touch a package because it finds duplicates.<br /><br />In this case you can try <a href="http://oapeon.blogspot.com/2007/02/removing-duplicate-rpm-packages.html">Removing Duplicate RPM Packages</a> or remove a package using an explicit architecture tag:<br /><tt>yum package.{i386,i686,x86_64}</tt> such as <tt>yum remove glibc.i686</tt>.<br /><br />If you have RHEL/OEL5 or higher, you're in luck because you can try to install the package yum-utils and run <tt>package-cleanup --cleandupes</tt>. yum-utils offer a bunch of useful tools for working with yum repos and so on.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8870812219404609235?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-36214389479247818502011-06-16T10:06:00.000+02:002011-08-31T11:17:01.190+02:00EMC (VMware) has a great technical webcast and PDF online about <a href="http://www.emc.com/events/2011/q2/06-09-11-virtualized-oracle.htm">Performance and Provisioning for Virtualized Oracle</a>. I highly recommend you listen to it or read the sheets. Very informative if you want to use virtualized Oracle databases in a production environment.<br /><br />Most set-ups of virtualizing Oracle databases on VMware fail because storage I/O becomes a bottleneck. It turns out, 50% of all surveyed set-up had storage configured wrong. The problems has to do with storage queues in the VM and subsequently on the ESX host. Additionally, vSphere 4.1 introduces features (<a href="http://www.vladan.fr/new-feature-in-upcomming-vsphere-4-1-sioc/">SIOC</a>) to optimize the I/O better to the SAN and para virtualized SAN drivers can further reduce latency and increase throughput. <br /><br />Then the webcast also mentions Oracle's "native" NFS client (<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/directnfsclient-11gr1-twp-129785.pdf">dNFS</a>, PDF) inside the database kernel. This reduces the CPU overhead and latency normally observed on NFS client in the OS. By using Oracle's native NFS client, you can use shared storage in a grid computing environment more easily and the same way on Windows as well as Linux.<br /><br />EMC VMAX SAN box has a feature called <a href="http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software2/symmetrix-fast.htm#/1">FAST VP</a> which can optimize and distribute your storage needs from all-SAN to a mix of SSD, SATA and SAN where and when needed.<br /><br />Very interesting read and much stuff to think about your own VMware set-up when using Oracle software.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3621438947924781850?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-54347983617290622422011-05-24T17:08:00.000+02:002011-08-31T11:17:32.416+02:00We had a strange issue during Oracle WebLogic development yesterday. Setting up a secure connection between a client and the WebLogic Admin server took really long on our shiny new hardware (Dell R710) compared the older servers (Dell 2950). After we made sure everything was exactly the same, people started to blame C1 and C1E states and other powersave or cpu throttling measures. However, given the different in setup times (2-6 sec vs 50-90 sec), I suspected it to be something else. Throttling down from 2.23 GHz to 1.6 GHz cannot cause such a great difference. Or at least be unlikely.<br /><br />Lo and behold, it turned out to be related to the seeding of the random number generator in Java. Normally this is linked to <tt>/dev/random</tt> but can be sped up by using <tt>/dev/urandom</tt>, which uses some entropy of your system. Still, the urandom device, while faster, still caused a 20-fold difference.<br /><br />As a workaround, you can tell your JVM which seed generator to use and prevent JVM from waiting or looking or whatever it does. See also the <a href="http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/security/jaas/JAASRefGuide.html">JAAS Reference Guide</a> for more information.<br /><br />If you call your JVM with the command line switch<br /><tt>-Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom</tt><br />it will go much speedier! And yes, there is a dot "." inside that path, in order to work around another bug. :)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5434798361729062242?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-78328445373744729412011-05-05T09:02:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:42:12.998+02:00The kind people of the German university of G&ouml;ttingen have mirrored the <a href="http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/dell/">Dell OMSA hardware and firmware repo</a> for us.<br /><br />This way, we have a European mirror available that is also much faster than Dell's native server.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7832844537374472941?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-12917920924540535182011-04-27T17:15:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:43:09.350+02:00Dell has released version 6.5 of their OpenManage <a href="http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/">repository</a>with firmware and BIOS updates as well as Linux monitoring of hardware found in Dell servers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1291792092454053518?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-81773651024299107502011-04-27T12:37:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:43:30.298+02:00At work we are in the process of upgrading our VMware infrastructure to vSphere with new Vmax storage from EMC. One of the new features is <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vstorage-apis-for-array-integration/overview.html">VAAI</a>, vStorage APIs for Array Integration. This abstracts certain aspects of storage to the SAN layer, where e.g. cloning can be a mere functional call that is then handled transparantly for the layer above.<br /><br />Yellow Bricks has a great post on <a href="http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/03/24/vaai-sweetness/">VAAI sweetness</a> collected from twitter and gathered or our convenience. Awesome!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8177365102429910750?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-4267617821897764752011-02-23T17:20:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:43:56.429+02:00Dell's OMSA is great for maintaining and updating a Dell server's firmware, if it works... Dell does a great job so far, but sometimes little quirks mess up small parts and suddenly OMSA will update all or nothing or only a few and then call it quits.<br /><br />pjwelsh has written a handy little summary of the various ways with which you can try to still get working, albeit manually: <a href="http://pjwelsh.blogspot.com/2011/02/failed-bios-update-on-r710-with-centos.html">Failed BIOS update on Dell R710 with CentOS 5.5 solved! (Worked around, really)</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-426761782189776475?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-76792996444340216552011-02-23T16:22:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:44:11.926+02:00Dell recently published a little more details about what Ubuntu Certified and Ubuntu Ready <a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2011/02/15/ubuntu-server-edition-hardware-certification-details.aspx">means</a>. Even though Dell does not officially support Ubuntu, their hardware is labelled as Certified by Canonical and they can also provide with paid support for Enterprises that require it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7679299644434021655?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-7544917236132679482011-02-23T09:53:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:44:39.451+02:00Besides having the option to <a href="http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux">download</a> installation media from Oracle (for which you must register), you can use the <a href="http://public-yum.oracle.com/">Oracle Public Yum Server</a> to get packages. For instance, to help solve ad-hoc dependencies. This alleviates you from the need to keep a local mirror available for all Linux releases.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-754491723613267948?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-20816638956040475992011-02-15T15:54:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:45:10.834+02:00Also found this great but slightly dated resource on <a href="http://www.r71.nl/kb/technical/102-tuning-journaling-file-systems">Tuning Journaling File Systems</a>.<br /><br />We had a crash of a VM recently with 3 million small files in a single directory. Tuning some mounts with <tt>noatime</tt> and <tt>dir_index</tt> helped a lot. Still tinkering with journaling options, though.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2081663895604047599?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-79593756457142451372011-02-15T15:52:00.002+01:002011-02-23T10:02:54.238+01:00A few days ago, Oracle followed suit by Red Hat and released OEL6. Here are the <a href="http://oss.oracle.com/ol6/docs/RELEASE-NOTES-GA-en.html">Oracle Linux 6 Release Notes</a>.<br /><br />At first glance, most notable changes are default ext4 file system. Better performance monitoring and tracking using <tt>perf</tt> and new user space "top" tools, and it no longer uses up2date but instead relies totally on yum. Yummie! Last but not least: the Unbreakable Kernel kernel-uek-2.6.32-100.28.5.el6 is installed and activated by default! This shouldn't matter much, unless you run the latest state-of-the-art hardware and use SSDs a lot. But 3rd party software vendors may like you stepping away from the Red Hat default kernel-2.6.32-71.el6 kernel. So check first!<br /><br />OL6 is the first Linux distribution from Oracle where they no longer patch the Red Hat kernel. Instead, they provide the Red Hat kernel as-is as an option to be configured for use in /etc/grub/menu.lst. The default kernel in OL6 is the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel that Oracle maintains itself. As far as I know, this kernel is an OEL5u5 kernel plus fixes and patches.<br /><br />Update: <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/linux/2011/02/oracle_linux_6_dvds_now_available.html">DVDs now online</a> too<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7959375645714245137?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-29999338372716013332011-02-03T10:43:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:50:37.482+02:00Linux uses 512-byte sectors. Hard disks used to too. The emergence of huge TB-sized disks has caused manufacturers to changed to 4096-byte sectors. This change can cause performance degradation on Linux as it's partitions may not be aligned with these bigger sectors. The additional overhead for the disk causes a performance drop.<br /><br />This raises the need for aligning your Linux partitions to the new sector size. However, many tools such as fdisk and parted are not yet doing this for you easily. IBM DevWorks has a great in-depth article on the topic: <a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/">Linux on 4KB-sector disks: Practical advice</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2999933837271601333?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-87264327683889488122011-02-03T10:11:00.001+01:002011-02-03T10:20:24.143+01:00I knew I could use fdisk in Linux to create partitions for me from a script. This can come in handy during kickstart for (re)deployment of a server and you don't want to let anaconda handle partitions for you. Or you simply want to be absolutely sure things go as you want, instead of relying on software with unknown bugs or quirks.<br /><br />I knew you can use something like:<br /><pre>fdisk /dev/sda << EOF<br />n<br />p<br />1<br /><br /><br />t<br />8e<br />q<br />EOF<br /></pre>to partition /dev/sda for you with one large partitions and give it type 8e (LVM). (The 'q' is so that those who simply copy this, don't immediately wipe some disk.)But I was looking for somewhat cleaner, more intuitive style. James Stephens pointed out the <a href="http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/wp/2006/03/17/scripting-partition-creation-in-linux-using-fdisk/">use of sfdisk from scripts</a>. While I don't know if sfdisk is less reliable than fdisk or parted, or how to handle byte-aligning disks [<a href="http://people.redhat.com/msnitzer/docs/io-limits.txt">1</a>] [<a href="http://www.sfnomad.com/?p=68">2</a>] [<a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/">3</a>] from these scripts, it's a good place to start and I wanted to document it here.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8726432768388948812?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-38780488182905194182011-01-28T09:57:00.000+01:002011-02-23T09:59:32.757+01:00Oracle Linux 5.6 makes Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel the default kernel after installation unless you perform a custom installation. Note that Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is available for the x86_64 platform only. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is delivered via the package <tt>kernel-uek</tt>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3878048818290519418?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-38059350878343361502010-12-01T09:57:00.002+01:002010-12-02T18:19:07.308+01:00Dell has made the source code to iDRAC6 available online, at least somewhat...You can find the code on&nbsp;<a href="http://support.us.dell.com/support/opensource/Default.aspx">Dell Support</a>. That is code only,&nbsp;no build environment or firmware image creation scripts as required by GPLv3.<br /><br />New versions of iDRAC can be found on&nbsp;<a href="http://ftp.us.dell.com/esm/">http://ftp.us.dell.com/esm/</a>. Many thanks to <a href="http://yo61.com/">yo61.com</a> for finding it and publishing it on the <a href="https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge">Dell Linux mailing list</a>.<br /><br />Update: Dell gave a better working Dell Support link.<br />Update: All official Dell <a href="http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/">DRAC manuals</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3805935087834336150?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-11312519847670021882010-11-23T10:00:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:46:28.193+02:00<a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2010/11/17/rhel-6-up-and-running-with-sr-iov-on-dell-poweredge-servers.aspx">Dell Community</a>: "RHEL 6 provides SR-IOV functionality on supported hardware which provides near native performance for virtualized guests.<br /><br />Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) specification, introduced by PCI-SIG details how a single PCIe device can be shared between various virtualization guests. Devices capable of SR-IOV functionality support multiple virtual functions on top of the physical function. Virtual Function is enabled in hardware as a light weight PCIe function. Operating System cannot discover this function as it does not respond to the PCI bus scan and requires support in the host’s driver. As in PCIe pass-through, a Virtual function of a SR-IOV capable card can be directly assigned to the guest operating system. A virtual function driver running in the guest manages this device."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1131251984767002188?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-82445985743312671222010-11-12T11:27:00.001+01:002010-11-12T11:59:11.265+01:00Just learned that <a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</a> Enterprise Linux 6.0 has been released. Find out <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/details/">What's New</a>...<br />And RHEL5 <a href="http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/5.6_Release_Notes/index.html">update 6</a> just went in to bèta<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8244598574331267122?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-23530189401158986332010-11-05T11:33:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:00:12.166+01:00For some reason I had a few copies of the same GPG key in my RPM key store and removing them was tricky.<br /><br />Normally, you list your key using <tt>rpm -qa gpg-*</tt> and can remove them using <tt>rpm -e gpg-pubkey-12345678</tt>. Just like anything installed with rpm, for that matter. But what if you have multiple keys? You'll get multiple matches...<br /><br />Easy! Just use <tt>rpm -e --allmatches gpg-pubkey-12345678</tt>. :)<br />Source: <a href="http://www.redhat.com/archives/rpm-list/2005-March/msg00050.html">Red Hat archives</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2353018940115898633?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-43397170038929213572010-10-26T13:15:00.001+02:002010-10-26T13:21:13.983+02:00Like many others, we are running into issues with Oracle licensing. Oracle charges a lot for its software and using state-of-the-art hardware you may even end up paying more, rather than less.<br /><br />The thing is, Oracle refuses to see VMware virtualization as "hard partitioned" but instead as "soft partitioned". That is, a single core VM may run on all cores that are available to it. So Oracle licensing requires you to factor in every core.<br /><br />Oracle's own Oracle VM (OVM) for x86 and SPARC (Xen-based) uses hard partitioning, but this comes at the cost of loss of overcommitment. That is, you cannot assign more cores than you have and increase the CPU utilization of your hosts. This is not necessarily bad, but means you can run less VMs on a given host.<br /><br />Reference: <a href="http://oraclestorageguy.typepad.com/oraclestorageguy/2010/05/oracle-license-costs-on-the-vmware-vsphere-platform.html">Oracle Storage Guy</a> and <a href="http://weinshenker.net/blog/2010/05/28/oracle-licensing-under-vmware-and-how-to-get-the-best-bang-for-your-buck/">Weinshenker.net</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4339717003892921357?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-79889234583783241922010-10-12T13:16:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:06:39.491+01:00<a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/uptake-of-native-linux-zfs-port-hampered-by-license-conflict.ars">Uptake of native Linux ZFS port hampered by license conflict</a>. But other than that, ZFS may soon arrive on Linux. See also <a href="http://zfs-fuse.net/">ZFS Fuse</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7988923458378324192?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-62596825554519508192010-09-29T17:29:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:46:50.739+02:00<a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2010/09/27/dell-poweredge-servers-certified-with-ubuntu-server-edition.aspx">Dell Community</a> notified us that you can now install Ubuntu Server Edition on its servers. While they won't factory-install it and Dell support itself will not support it, Dell has worked with Canonical for the past 2 years to support it. Canonical will be offering support for Ubuntu on Dell servers. To make support easier, Dell has built a <a href="http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2010/07/27/dell-openmanage-6-3-for-ubuntu.aspx">native .deb</a> package of OMSA 6.3 on Ubuntu 9.10.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6259682555451950819?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-16763594437090617912010-09-22T09:26:00.006+02:002011-05-05T09:48:57.458+02:00At OpenWorld, Oracle <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/173453">announced</a> an Oracle optimized Linux kernel that is upto 75% faster than the bundled Red Hat kernel. But what's the catch? Well, it's simply <a href="http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/09/21/145254/The-Real-Truth-About-Oracles-new-Kernel?from=twitter">a 2.6.32-based kernel</a>, tweaked and tuned for Oracle software. <br /><br />Here's <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2010/09/some_quick_answers_on_the_new.html">how to get it</a>, if you want to. And <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/406242/">LWN</a> has a more detailed technical description of the <a href="http://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=linux-2.6-unbreakable.git;a=summary">changes from the mainstream kernel</a>. Basically, the kernel optimizes communication: network (InfiniBand, 10Gb Ethernet), storage (SSD, Flash memory) and memory (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Uniform_Memory_Access">NUMA</a>). It optimizes drivers and reduces complexity in the kernel (i.e. remove unused drivers and so on).<br /><br />And considering the compatibility issue, here is Oracle's claim:<br /><blockquote>"Third-party applications that run on RHEL 5 should run unchanged on Oracle Linux with the <b>Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel</b>, while delivering significant performance and reliability improvements for end users."</blockquote><br />Good reads are <a href="http://www.cioupdate.com/news/article.php/3904411/Oracle-Unveils-Integrated-Systems-Linux-Kernel.htm">CIOupdate</a> and <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/205984/proceed_carefully_to_oracles_proprietary_linux_kernel.html">PCWorld</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1676359443709061791?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-20210863863839013852010-09-17T10:55:00.004+02:002011-05-05T09:48:57.461+02:00A recent article on Linux security showed that an <a href="http://xorl.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/cve-2007-4573-linux-kernel-ia32-system-call-emulation-vulnerability/">old backdoor (cve-2007-4573)</a>, patched in kernel 2.6.22.7, <a href="http://sota.gen.nz/compat2/">has resurfaced</a>.<br /><br />Using the leak, any user that has a local user account on a 64 bit server, can easily get root rights, using the compatibility layer. While I don't fully understand the workings, I do understand that all OEL4/OEL5 64 bit servers are potentially harmed as they have kernels 2.6.9 and 2.6.18, resp. So I logged a SR on Metalink to see if I have a big security issue in the data center.<br /><br />Update: CVE-2007-4573 has been renamed CVE-2010-3301 and RHEL <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/cve/CVE-2010-3301.html">states</a>:<br /><blockquote>This issue did not affect the versions of Linux kernel as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, 5, and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, as they do not contain the upstream commit d4d67150 that introduced this flaw.</blockquote><br />Update2: the issue is also listed as <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/cve/CVE-2010-3081.html">CVE-2010-3081</a>, which is slightly different and Red Hat does track this one, as it <a href="https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-40265">affects RHEL5</a>.<br /><br />Update3: Ksplice has <a href="wget -N https://www.ksplice.com/support/diagnose-2010-3081">a test</a> available to verify your system does not leave backdoors open, even after patching the exploit. Red Hat has <a href="https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-40265">issued a patch</a> for its affected 64 bit systems.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2021086386383901385?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-22625460774763876362010-07-22T11:01:00.000+02:002010-09-17T11:01:35.981+02:00Red Hat has released an update of <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/beta/">RHEL 6 b&egrave;ta</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2262546077476387636?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-59174273626029310272010-05-20T16:26:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:03:10.290+01:00I've had a long feud at work with business units who work with outside contractors who insist on writing web apps using the very latest version of PHP, Apache and MySQL. While I welcome the use of open source, state-of-the-art technology, the one thing these contractors often overlook is the need for stability and continuity in enterprise-grade applications. Even web applications.<br /><br />It's useless to use the latest greatest feature set in PHP or MySQL, if the organizations you're targeting are all running RHEL 4u8, 5u2 or even RHEL3! And many do. The Enterprise Distributions for Linux lag behind public version for up to 18 months! And they won't easily upgrade just because you ask or because your application was built using the most recent version of an open source package. The company may be able to give you a special server in some DMZ but you may lack access to certain key servers, because the security status of your app and server have not (yet) been approved.<br /><br />Instead, focus writing apps using a stable, common, proven API. Don't use a recent function just because it's there, but only if you need it or because it is simply very much more efficient in usage than using an older call, function or feature. <br /><br />That being said, I have always limited our customers to whatever PHP or MySQL version was bundled into our releases. As an exception they could use Oracle's patches from a more recent but supported channel. But never a fresh version built from source off of the Internet. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that Oracle offers some pre-built - unsupported - RPMs for OEL4 and OEL5 in case you need a more recent version than those in the ULN channels: <a href="http://oss.oracle.com/projects/php/">Oracle: PHP RPMs</a>.<br />It may also be good to know that Oracle now also <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/zend-server.html">bundles Zend</a> inside their ULN channels. Check that if you write heavy-use web application using a LAMP stack on Oracle Linux. In addition, Oracle has a PHP extension "<a href="http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8">PHP OCI8</a>" that is ready to go for using an Oracle database instead of a MySQL database, and a howto on <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/htdocs/inst_php_apache_linux.html">installing a LAOP stack</a> (Linux, Apache, oracle db, PHP).<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5917427362602931027?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-76939619595561111342010-05-18T09:38:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:47:25.087+02:00<a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/">Oracle&#39;s Virtualization Blog</a> informed me that they've expanded the use of Oracle VM (OVM) significantly by supporting <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/2010/02/the_oracle_vm_product_line_wel.html">visualization</a> on the SPARC platform.<br /><br /><blockquote>"Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture."</blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7693961959556111134?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-90825225039070225242010-04-22T13:57:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:01:20.162+01:00Robin at <a href="http://yo61.com/">yo61.com</a> found a great and handy way to discover the MAC addresses of the embedded NICs of your Dell (PowerEdge) servers. Instead of going through DRAC, logging in, starting Java, etc. you can also get the same using the RAC command line interface: racadm racdump. Read <a href="http://yo61.com/mac-addresses-of-embedded-nics-on-dell-servers-through-drac.html">the article on yo61.com</a> for complete details. Excellent! If only I could find a similar command for my 500 PE2950 servers with DRAC5...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-9082522503907022524?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-74300370739579783952010-04-07T13:23:00.001+02:002010-09-17T10:58:42.334+02:00Now that Red Hat 5 update 5 is out, we're gonna look at 5u4. Release Notes said kickstart was changed and enhanced from previous versions. Here is documentation of the <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html">kickstart options and parameters</a> that you can now use in RHEL (and OEL) 5.4.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7430037073957978395?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-53397505370295265002010-04-07T12:52:00.002+02:002010-04-07T13:15:16.578+02:00Been looking for a way to automatically update my subversion Working Copies (WCs) in Windows using TortoiseSVN. Since it was a GUI, I didn't bother to look for a CLI. :( Duuh!<br /><br />I can happily report that there is a command-line interface (CLI) to TortoiseSVN that let's you create a shortcut to update a given WC for you. If you'd place that in your startup folder, it would update your WC(s) upon login. Check <a href="http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-automation.html">Appendix D.Automating TortoiseSVN</a>.<br /><br />I created a shortcut svn_update in Windows to run <tt>TortoiseProc.exe</tt> from Program Files, using the WC as the start-up directory. And the entire command-line reads:<br /><tt>TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"c:\subversion\io_se"</tt><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5339750537029526500?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-44148694320323501662010-04-07T10:42:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:52:39.540+02:00Oracle has released an update to Unbreakable Linux, shortly after Red Hat released RHEL 5 update 5. Oracle's Linux portal <a href="http://linux.oracle.com/">ULN</a> should have <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2010/04/oel55_released.html">OEL5.5</a> available by now.<br /><br />Oracle's Linux OEL is <a href="http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux">downloadable</a> by anyone, provided you register first. Only updates cost money.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4414869432032350166?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-10321806297089896442010-04-02T10:57:00.001+02:002010-04-07T12:53:34.940+02:00Red Hat released <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/">RHEL 5.5</a>. More new hardware is supported, of course, and improvements for Virtualization and Interoperability have been incorporated. That really says nothing, so check details in the <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5/html-single/Release_Notes/">Release Notes</a> and <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5/html-single/Technical_Notes/">Technical Notes</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1032180629708989644?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-12066093273872008392010-03-09T10:00:00.001+01:002010-04-07T12:53:58.218+02:00<a href="http://subversion.wandisco.com/component/content/article/1/47.html">Using Subversion with Notepad</a> describes the use of a simple plugin for Notepad++ that will let you commit and revert code files from within Notepad. You do need TortoiseSVN installed, of course, but for quick fixes this can be great.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1206609327387200839?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-19266621106973031252010-03-04T19:18:00.001+01:002010-04-07T12:54:17.270+02:00Found some release notes and <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5.b1/html/Technical_Notes/">Technical Notes</a> on Red Hat's upcoming release of RHEL5.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1926662110697303125?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-4539579974278113532009-11-30T11:19:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:02:35.910+01:00A colleague of mine just found a hex dump utility for Linux. You may never need it, but when you do, you probably need it badly!<br /><br /><a href="http://linux.die.net/man/1/xxd">xxd</a> creates a hex dump of a given file or standard input. It can also convert a hex dump back to its original binary form. So you can use it similar to <a href="http://linux.die.net/man/1/uuencode">uuencode</a> and convert binaries to ASCII-safe attachments, or use it to patch binary files. We use it to check and see if disks are already used as ASM volumes or not. Just looking at the MBR or boot sector of a disk says enough.<br /><pre>dd if=/dev/sda count=1 2>/dev/null | xxd<br /></pre><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-453957997427811353?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-78274731401631063732009-11-24T12:51:00.001+01:002010-04-07T12:56:11.964+02:00There are at least 2 version of the new iDRAC, Dell's remote server management and monitoring vehicle. <a href="http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/idrac/idrac11mono/en/ug/html/racugc1.htm#wp51580">Documentation from Dell</a> lists the differences between the two and the older BMC interface.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7827473140163106373?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-41281491525826824232009-11-23T14:42:00.001+01:002009-11-23T14:57:20.156+01:00<a href="http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/">Puppet from Reductive Labs</a>: "Puppet is a model-driven open source framework designed to efficiently manage data center infrastructure. It’s the Sys Admin’s best friend, reducing error counts and downtime, saving countless hours and providing significantly higher service quality. Puppet lets Sys Admins spend less time on mundane tasks and instead focus on managing their infrastructure as a whole."<br /><br />Based on <a href="http://yo61.com/pre-generate-sshd-certificates.html">a tip</a> from yo61.com.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4128149152582682423?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-25674066372471792232009-11-23T14:13:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:52:39.543+02:00I've been diving a bit into the RAM configuration of our new R710 Dell servers. They have new memory configuration settings. "Memory Optimized" mode can yield a 50% performance improvement at no cost other than to place DIMMs in appropriate slots. Dell has a white paper detailing the options a bit more: <a href="http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/optimizing_ddr3_memory_settings">Optimizing DDR3 Memory Settings in New 11th-Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers</a>. It also lists trade-offs of choosing one configuration over the other or when to go for a balanced intermediate.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2567406637247179223?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-81600813247527863482009-11-19T10:10:00.002+01:002009-11-23T15:00:45.371+01:00I've started work on a <a href="http://drac.wikidot.com/start">DRAC wiki</a> hosted on wikidot.com. Since the <a href="http://linux.dell.com/files/drac5/">source code to DRAC</a> was discovered on Dell's servers, a recent flurry of activity on the <a href="https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge">PowerEdge mailing list</a> showed that there is great interest in this and a lot of confusion about how, what and where?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8160081324752786348?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-46819266268505651632009-11-19T09:18:00.002+01:002010-11-12T12:02:35.912+01:00Gavin Burns, from <a href="http://idolinux.blogspot.com/">I Do Linux</a> has a useful tip that you can use to upgrade of flash your servers BIOS and/or firmware. These utils are often DOS floppy images. Besides not having a floppy anymore these days, getting the server to boot a floppy image can present challenges too. Dell's DRAC often eludes me because the boot order won't choose the floppy (unless I hit F11 to get the boot menu, of course).<br /><br />From the article <a href="http://idolinux.blogspot.com/2009/10/create-dos-boot-disk-for-cd-or-grub.html">Create DOS Boot Disk for CD or GRUB</a> you'll learn to get the DOS floppy image and create a bootable ISO from it. You can burn the ISO to CD or use the boot image to add a GRUB menu option. Handy!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4681926626850565163?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-70415989882804874402009-11-17T14:59:00.002+01:002010-11-12T12:06:39.493+01:00In compliance with GPL license used by Dell to create DRAC, Dell finally made the source code of their web-based remote server management interface <a href="http://linux.dell.com/files/drac5/">available on their website</a>. It used to be available only after explicit requests. DRAC is built on <a href="http://www.busybox.net/">BusyBox Linux</a>, as reported here earlier.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7041598988280487440?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-14504897242086656062009-11-17T09:24:00.001+01:002009-11-23T14:59:11.691+01:00OraclePartnerNetwork has created a series of videos on YouTube about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/OraclePartnerNetwork">Oracle VM 2.2</a>. They vary from installing Oracle VM, creating a VM, to live migration, enabling HA, etc.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1450489724208665606?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-22229791199919553842009-11-16T17:08:00.003+01:002011-05-05T09:48:57.463+02:00I'm in the middle of creating a deployment image of OEL 5u3 (based on RHEL5u3) for new Dell PowerEdge R710 servers. After creating a generic and untested setup for the BIOS, my VMware guy came and informed me that vSphere 4 recommendations list to disable memory interleaving. Generally, letting <a href="http://practical-tech.com/infrastructure/numa-theory-and-practice/">NUMA</a> do its thing yields better performance. So I'm now checking whether or not use interleaving for my 32 GB servers or to use NUMA out-of-the-box on Linux 2.6.18 <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/release-notes/RELEASE-NOTES-x86-en.html">as shipped</a> with OEL5u3. <br />I could switch to "<a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2009-May/039329.html">Optimizer Mode</a>" for the 32 GB but I'll need to have all servers physically checked and DIMMs reseated. So I opted for Interleaving to hope and try to gain some performance increase. Now I find out NUMA could be better and it is supported from RHEL5, which each update improving on it.<br /><br />I'll have to run more tests to be sure but for now I'm glad I discovered I could <a href="http://www.appsinsight.net/2008/03/25/numa-optimization-with-oracle-database-11g-and-10gr2/">enable NUMA on OEL4u5</a> or higher as well, using a kernel option at boot time. Be sure to check <a href="http://linuxmanpages.com/man8/numactl.8.php">numactl</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2222979119991955384?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-68928972513766799162009-11-12T10:45:00.003+01:002010-11-12T12:03:10.292+01:00How does ordinary virtualization relate to virtualization used in a cloud computing environment? That was the topic of a talk at the <a href="http://cloudcomputingexpo.com/">Cloud Computing Expo</a> in Santa Clara last week. Is there a difference? Or is it merely a logical or organizational distinction but the techniques used are still the same? Adam Hawley <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/2009/11/virtualization_for_cloud_vs_tr.html">talked about this</a>, slides linked to in the article, and how Oracle's products do or will fit into this paradigm. Database services in the cloud, Application Server services in the cloud, middleware provisioning in the cloud for yourself and your customers, isolation, privacy, security, replication, disaster management. Everything is still the same yet different.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6892897251376679916?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-1642352614186349542009-11-10T11:17:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:02:35.916+01:00Once again I am running into the weird issue where at install time <a href="http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/NIC+Enumeration">my NICs are enumerated one way</a> and after a reboot another. This first happened to me in 2007, while installing Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 4u5 on a Dell PowerEdge 2950. The on-board NICs were numbered 'gb1' and 'gb2' but enumerated 'eth1' and 'eth0', respectively. Strangely, the problem went away silently and just now reappeared in OEL 5u3.<br /><br />Today I am using new R11 servers from Dell, the R710 with two dual on-board Broadcom NICs as well the quad-NIC add-on from Intel. At boot, my 'eth0' seems to be what I expect it but after a reboot it becomes 'eth4'. Found an updated white paper from Dell, listing a work-around: <a href="http://linux.dell.com/files/whitepapers/nic-enum-whitepaper-v4.pdf">nic-enum-whitepaper-v4.pdf</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-164235261418634954?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-53317553162763629062009-11-05T10:01:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:11:24.845+01:00On <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/11/zend_and_oracle_announced_tigh.html">Wim Coekaerts Blog</a> I read that Zend and Oracle are working closer together. This makes PHP/Zend Server more integrated with Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/zend-server.html">Zend Server</a> is a complete, Oracle-enabled, enterprise-ready Web application Server for running and managing PHP applications that require a high level of reliability, performance and security. Connectivity to Oracle databases is delivered out of the box. We have a long history of working with Zend and the PHP community to ensure that the latest and greatest Oracle features are available in the PHP database connectivity libraries.<br /><br />Oracle now hosts an rpm package on their ULN servers called <tt>zend-server-repo</tt>, which updates yum to also look at the software repositories hosted by Zend. (Note: you may need to use a proxy server to get to it, if you have ULN locally mirrored, or mirror the Zend repo as well!) When a user wants to install Zend Server, just a simple command will install the zend-server product directly. <br /><br />FYI, the zend rpm is located in the <tt>el5_addons</tt> channel. For more info and details, read the <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/11/zend_and_oracle_announced_tigh.html">original article</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5331755316276362906?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-28661427020091364402009-10-29T08:55:00.001+01:002011-05-05T09:46:50.742+02:00Where I had great difficulties trying to get OMSA to install let alone work in Oracle's Enterprise Linux 4 (u5 and above), I am happy to report that I got it working out-of-the-box after an install of my custom 5u3 image, following the instructions on the <a href="http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository">OMSA Repository Wiki</a>. A simple http proxy setting, the wget boot strap line to configure yum and the dependencies and I was in business! Excellent work, Dell!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2866142702009136440?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-44418511519073897152009-10-29T08:50:00.001+01:002009-10-29T08:52:12.867+01:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://digitalfreaks.org/~lavalamp/cp/albums/WhyDoesTheDell-LSI-PERC6-SuckSoMuch/normal_dsc06751.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 265px;" src="http://digitalfreaks.org/~lavalamp/cp/albums/WhyDoesTheDell-LSI-PERC6-SuckSoMuch/normal_dsc06751.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />On the Dell PowerEdge mailing list, someone complained in details about the performance of the PERC6 RAID controller that dell uses by default in all its servers. The guy makes a compelling case with ~30-50 Mbps performance to local disks where a comparable Arcea card reaches ~300-400 Mbps!<br />Anyway, long story short, he has <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2009-October/040420.html">detailed instructions</a> and <a href="http://digitalfreaks.org/~lavalamp/cp/thumbnails.php?album=52"> photos documenting his swap</a> online.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4441851151907389715?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-77268004207130199202009-10-28T13:19:00.002+01:002010-11-12T12:11:24.851+01:00Oracle's announced <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/10/oracle_vm_22_and_the_power_of_1.html">Oracle VM 2.2</a>, their latest Xen-based general purpose virtualization <del>technology</del> platform for their Red Hat-based Enterprise Linux version (OEL).<br />Coupled with a new ocfs2 version and a few enhancements, you get ThinProvisioning for VMs and snapshots on cluster-aware files systems. That means they can span across data centers or locations.<br /><br />Update: wording changed as suggested by comment<br />Update2: <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/2009/11/announcing_oracle_vm_manager_c.html">Oracle VM 2.2 CLI</a> available too<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7726800420713019920?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-76945832615113223752009-10-26T10:15:00.001+01:002009-11-10T11:23:59.371+01:00Subversion <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.6_releasenotes.html">v1.6.6</a> has been released. Most relevant <a href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/CHANGES">changes</a> (IMHO):<br /> User-visible changes:<br /> * fix crash during 'svn update' (r39673)<br /> * respect Apache's ServerSignature directive (r40008, -21, -31)<br /> * fix a crash in 'svn rm --force' (r37953)<br /> * handle tree conflicts involving replacements (issue #3486)<br /> * improve merge performance with implicit subtree mergeinfo (issue #3443)<br /> * make file externals work for binary files (issue #3368)<br /> * improve "tree conflict already exists" error message (r38872)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7694583261511322375?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-75832257072924645652009-10-20T17:52:00.001+02:002009-11-10T11:24:17.769+01:00If you write code on a regular basis (programs, scripts, tools or installers), chances are you will run into a case where you need to compare 2 or more versions of the same file and find out what their differences are.<br /><br /><a href="http://ow.ly/vrRR">Diffuse</a> may just save your day at that time!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7583225707292464565?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-43284578023381484912009-09-23T13:25:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:11:24.854+01:00While are many excellent tutorials about <a href="http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/02/05/logical-volume-manager-cheatsheet/">creating</a> and <a href="http://www.linuxconfig.org/Linux_lvm_-_Logical_Volume_Manager">using</a> LVM on Linux, not may show you how you can remove disks from LVM Volume Groups (VG) and reclaim storage or how to remove a Logical Volume (LV) from your LVM set-up.<br /><br />Here is what I did:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Use -t to TEST ANY LVM action first!</span><br />We are going to release 1 TB from LVM. The Volume group was extended with 1 TB storage to serve as a cheap NFS/CIFS file server when setting up our data center. It is now deprecated and replaced by a NAS so it's no longer needed.<br /><br />1) check LVM; note the four 256 GB LUNs <br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# pvscan -v<br /> Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices<br /> Wiping internal VG cache<br /> Walking through all physical volumes<br /> PV /dev/sdb1 VG vgdata lvm2 [50.00 GB / 0 free]<br /> PV /dev/sdc1 VG vgdata lvm2 [256.00 GB / 0 free]<br /> PV /dev/sdd1 VG vgdata lvm2 [256.00 GB / 0 free]<br /> PV /dev/sde1 VG vgdata lvm2 [256.00 GB / 0 free]<br /> PV /dev/sdf1 VG vgdata lvm2 [256.00 GB / 0 free]<br /> PV /dev/sdg VG vgdata lvm2 [10.00 GB / 5.00 GB free]<br /> PV /dev/sda3 VG system lvm2 [7.88 GB / 0 free]<br /> Total: 7 [1.07 TB] / in use: 7 [1.07 TB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ]<br />[root@server ~]# vgscan -v<br /> Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices<br /> Wiping internal VG cache<br /> Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...<br /> Finding all volume groups<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> Found volume group "vgdata" using metadata type lvm2<br /> Finding volume group "system"<br /> Found volume group "system" using metadata type lvm2<br />[root@server ~]# lvscan -v<br /> Finding all logical volumes<br /> ACTIVE '/dev/vgdata/lvuln' [54.99 GB] inherit<br /> ACTIVE '/dev/vgdata/lvshare' [1.00 TB] inherit<br /> ACTIVE '/dev/system/root' [4.03 GB] inherit<br /> ACTIVE '/dev/system/tmp' [1.84 GB] inherit<br /> ACTIVE '/dev/system/var' [2.00 GB] inherit<br />[root@server ~]#<br /></pre><br /><br />From the lvscan, we see that one separate Logical Volume (LV) lvshare was added to the VG vgdata and it holds the entire 1 TB.<br /><br />2) check the Volume Group <br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# vgdisplay /dev/vgdata<br /> --- Volume group ---<br /> VG Name vgdata<br /> System ID<br /> Format lvm2<br /> Metadata Areas 6<br /> Metadata Sequence No 10<br /> VG Access read/write<br /> VG Status resizable<br /> MAX LV 256<br /> Cur LV 2<br /> Open LV 1<br /> Max PV 256<br /> Cur PV 6<br /> Act PV 6<br /> VG Size 1.06 TB<br /> PE Size 2.00 MB<br /> Total PE 555002<br /> Alloc PE / Size 552443 / 1.05 TB<br /> Free PE / Size 2559 / 5.00 GB<br /> VG UUID 30mFGo-gcFZ-Dmx2-atLC-Wh44-qGL4-MCfwia<br /></pre><br /><br />The LVM is healthy; Note that vgdata is resizable, currently has 6 PVs associated with it, all of them in use; extends are 2 MB each and there are 550000 of them: that's 1 TB; currently 5 GB capacity is free<br /><br />Since vgdata contains 2 separate LVs, we can remove the LV lvshare.<br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# lvremove <span style="font-weight:bold;">-t</span> -v /dev/vgdata/lvshare<br /> Test mode: Metadata will NOT be updated.<br /> Using logical volume(s) on command line<br />Do you really want to remove active logical volume "lvshare"? [y/n]: y<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Found volume group "vgdata"<br /> Found volume group "vgdata"<br /> Releasing logical volume "lvshare"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Logical volume "lvshare" successfully removed<br /> Test mode: Wiping internal cache<br /> Wiping internal VG cache<br />[root@server ~]# lvremove -v /dev/vgdata/lvshare<br /> Using logical volume(s) on command line<br />Do you really want to remove active logical volume "lvshare"? [y/n]: y<br /> Archiving volume group "vgdata" metadata (seqno 10).<br /> Found volume group "vgdata"<br /> Removing vgdata-lvshare (253:4)<br /> Found volume group "vgdata"<br /> Releasing logical volume "lvshare"<br /> Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vgdata" (seqno 11).<br /> Logical volume "lvshare" successfully removed<br />[root@server ~]#<br /></pre><br />We've now deallocated the LV lvshare from the VG vgdata. <br />We still need to disassociate the 4 LUNs (PVs) from the VG:<br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# vgdisplay -v /dev/vgdata<br /> Using volume group(s) on command line<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> --- Volume group ---<br /> VG Name vgdata<br /> System ID<br /> Format lvm2<br /> Metadata Areas 6<br /> Metadata Sequence No 11<br /> VG Access read/write<br /> VG Status resizable<br /> MAX LV 256<br /> Cur LV 1<br /> Open LV 1<br /> Max PV 256<br /> Cur PV 6<br /> Act PV 6<br /> VG Size 1.06 TB<br /> PE Size 2.00 MB<br /> Total PE 555002<br /> Alloc PE / Size 28155 / 54.99 GB<br /> Free PE / Size 526847 / 1.00 TB<br /> VG UUID 30mFGo-gcFZ-Dmx2-atLC-Wh44-qGL4-MCfwia<br /><br /> --- Logical volume ---<br /> LV Name /dev/vgdata/lvuln<br /> VG Name vgdata<br /> LV UUID xrPs1G-nKkd-0Mxp-JOfB-QYIk-zJKz-MwI2V5<br /> LV Write Access read/write<br /> LV Status available<br /> # open 1<br /> LV Size 54.99 GB<br /> Current LE 28155<br /> Segments 3<br /> Allocation inherit<br /> Read ahead sectors auto<br /> - currently set to 256<br /> Block device 253:3<br /><br /> --- Physical volumes ---<br /> PV Name /dev/sdb1<br /> PV UUID HkcRpz-mDRN-3SBC-Dtq3-f2tj-x8QA-J7slPT<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 25599 / 4<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sdc1<br /> PV UUID WMYlf1-0LPe-yasi-jdeC-GVKl-hTeI-ttZzoC<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 131071 / 131071<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sdd1<br /> PV UUID MsoDqY-uflF-Rw30-JEMK-tZ8k-VmB2-F2wBfK<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 131071 / 131071<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sde1<br /> PV UUID e0c037-vSBy-ATdS-9Cd3-2X2p-yroz-2dBOD3<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 131071 / 131071<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sdf1<br /> PV UUID ntIMPv-A8Vs-p7wk-KbP3-IsKk-1oMS-BJvZp5<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 131071 / 131071<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sdg<br /> PV UUID v1mkgm-OvIW-RvS1-6Vnf-yvll-BSL1-wm3ZDw<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE 5119 / 2559<br /><br />[root@server ~]# vgreduce <span style="font-weight:bold;">-t</span> -v /dev/vgdata /dev/sdc1<br /> Test mode: Metadata will NOT be updated.<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> Using physical volume(s) on command line<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Removing "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Removed "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Wiping internal cache<br /> Wiping internal VG cache<br />[root@server ~]# vgreduce <span style="font-weight:bold;">-a</span> -t -v /dev/vgdata<br /> Test mode: Metadata will NOT be updated.<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> Using all physical volume(s) in volume group<br /> Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" still in use<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Removing "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Removed "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Removing "/dev/sdd1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Removed "/dev/sdd1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Removing "/dev/sde1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Removed "/dev/sde1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping archiving of volume group.<br /> Removing "/dev/sdf1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Test mode: Skipping volume group backup.<br /> Removed "/dev/sdf1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Physical volume "/dev/sdg" still in use<br /> Test mode: Wiping internal cache<br /> Wiping internal VG cache<br /></pre><br />Now for the real thing: we remove all unused PV from VG vgdata. Note how both sdb and sdg, both still in use by the LV lvuln, are skipped! <br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# vgreduce -a -v /dev/vgdata<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> Using all physical volume(s) in volume group<br /> Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" still in use<br /> Archiving volume group "vgdata" metadata (seqno 11).<br /> Removing "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vgdata" (seqno 12).<br /> Removed "/dev/sdc1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Archiving volume group "vgdata" metadata (seqno 12).<br /> Removing "/dev/sdd1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices<br /> Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vgdata" (seqno 13).<br /> Removed "/dev/sdd1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Archiving volume group "vgdata" metadata (seqno 13).<br /> Removing "/dev/sde1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices<br /> Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vgdata" (seqno 14).<br /> Removed "/dev/sde1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Archiving volume group "vgdata" metadata (seqno 14).<br /> Removing "/dev/sdf1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices<br /> Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vgdata" (seqno 15).<br /> Removed "/dev/sdf1" from volume group "vgdata"<br /> Physical volume "/dev/sdg" still in use<br />[root@server ~]#<br /></pre><br />Check our status: <br /><pre><br />[root@server ~]# vgdisplay -v /dev/vgdata<br /> Using volume group(s) on command line<br /> Finding volume group "vgdata"<br /> --- Volume group ---<br /> VG Name vgdata<br /> System ID<br /> Format lvm2<br /> Metadata Areas 2<br /> Metadata Sequence No 15<br /> VG Access read/write<br /> VG Status <span style="font-weight:bold;">resizable</span><br /> MAX LV 256<br /> Cur LV 1<br /> Open LV 1<br /> Max PV 256<br /> Cur PV <span style="font-weight:bold;">2</span><br /> Act PV <span style="font-weight:bold;">2</span><br /> VG Size <span style="font-weight:bold;">60.00 GB</span><br /> PE Size <span style="font-weight:bold;">2.00 MB</span><br /> Total PE 30718<br /> Alloc PE / Size 28155 / <span style="font-weight:bold;">54.99 GB</span><br /> Free PE / Size 2563 / <span style="font-weight:bold;">5.01 GB</span><br /> VG UUID 30mFGo-gcFZ-Dmx2-atLC-Wh44-qGL4-MCfwia<br /><br /> --- Logical volume ---<br /> LV Name /dev/vgdata/lvuln<br /> VG Name vgdata<br /> LV UUID xrPs1G-nKkd-0Mxp-JOfB-QYIk-zJKz-MwI2V5<br /> LV Write Access read/write<br /> LV Status available<br /> # open 1<br /> LV Size 54.99 GB<br /> Current LE 28155<br /> Segments 3<br /> Allocation inherit<br /> Read ahead sectors auto<br /> - currently set to 256<br /> Block device 253:3<br /><br /> --- Physical volumes ---<br /> PV Name /dev/sdb1<br /> PV UUID HkcRpz-mDRN-3SBC-Dtq3-f2tj-x8QA-J7slPT<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE <span style="font-weight:bold;">25599 </span>/ 4<br /><br /> PV Name /dev/sdg<br /> PV UUID v1mkgm-OvIW-RvS1-6Vnf-yvll-BSL1-wm3ZDw<br /> PV Status allocatable<br /> Total PE / Free PE <span style="font-weight:bold;">5119 </span>/ 2559<br /><br />[root@server ~]#<br /></pre><br />Note the new status of the Volume Group (VG):<br /><ul><br /><li>resizable</li><br /><li>only 2 PVs, both in use</li><br /><li>60 GB capacity, 5 GB free</li><br /><li>a few extends left on sdb1 and 2500 on sdg. Since extends are 2 MB, that's 5 GB</li><br /></ul><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4328457802338148491?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-77086088798652707692009-09-14T09:44:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:48:57.466+02:00Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 4 for x86 (32 bit) and x86_64<br />(64 Bit) architectures.<br /><br />This update includes the following kernel/driver changes:<br /><br />Bug Fixes added by Oracle <br /><br /> * Check to see if hypervisor supports memory reservation change <br /> [orabug 7556514]<br /> * Add entropy support to igb [orabug 7607479]<br /> * Convert ENETUNREACH to ENOTCONN [orabug 7689332]<br /> * Add xen pv/bonding netconsole support [orabug 6993043] <br /> * Shrink zone patch [orabug 6086839]<br /> * Fix aacraid not to reset during kexec [orabug 8516042]<br /> * Fix failure of file creation from hpux client [orabug 7579314]<br /><br />Fixes/Additions from the upstream distribution provider<br /><br /> * A new tunable parameter /proc/sys/vm/max_writeback_pages has been added<br /> to the kernel, allowing system administrators to change the maximum <br /> number of modified pages kupdate writes to disk per iteration each time <br /> it runs. It defaults to 1024 or 4MB so that a maximum of 1024 pages get <br /> written out by each iteration of kupdate.<br /> * A new option (CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING=y) has been added to kernel to <br /> assist in monitoring IO statistics per process.<br /> * The rd_blocksize option in kernel's ramdisk driver is removed.<br /> * This release adds the kernel version details to oops and panic output.<br /> * The serial_reg.h file is included in the kernel_headers rpm.<br /> * Functionality has been added to sysrq-t to display backtrace information <br /> about running processes.<br /> * This update increases the maximum length of the kernel key field from the<br /> arbitrary 32 character length set in previous kernels to 255 characters.<br /> * This update addresses the security concern arising from non-root users <br /> being able to create device nodes on filesystems exported using NFSD <br /> (Network File System daemon).<br /> * Added code to produce a signature file that GRUB performs a checksum <br /> against during the boot process.<br /> * Added code to change the DSA key from 512 bit to 1024 bit for module <br /> signing.<br /> * Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) support in device-mapper-multipath<br /> has been updated, adding explicit ALUA support for Clariion storage.<br /> * Added support for raw devices. the initscripts packages is updated to <br /> add functionality of raw devices.<br /> * The -fwrapv variable added to GCC CFLAGS in order to define wrapping <br /> behavior.<br /><br />Driver Updates<br /><br />The following portions of OpenFabrics Alliance Enterprise Distribution (OFED) have been updated to the upstream version 1.4.1-rc3<br /><br /> * Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) headers <br /> * Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol<br /> * Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) <br /> * SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) <br /> * IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) <br /><br />Additionally, the following OFED drivers have been updated to the upstream version 1.4.1-rc3:<br /><br /> * cxgb3 and iw_cxgb3 drivers for the Chelsio T3 Family of network devices<br /> * mthca-based InfiniBand HCA (Host Channel Adapter) <br /> * qlgc_vnic driver<br /><br />Network<br /><br /> * igb driver updated to version 1.3.16-k2. This update also enables GRO <br /> support for the igb driver.<br /> * igbvf driver updated to provide Virtual Function support for Intel 82576 <br /> Gigabit Ethernet Controllers.<br /> * ixgbe driver for Intel 10 Gigabit PBetaCI Express network devices updated<br /> to version 2.0.8-k2. This update also enables GRO support for the ixgbe <br /> driver.<br /> * bnx2 driver updated to version 1.9.3<br /> * tg3 driver updated to version 3.96.. This driver update adds support for<br /> 5785F and 50610M devices.<br /> * cnic driver has been added, providing Internet Small Computer System <br /> Interface (iSCSI) support for bnx2 network devices.<br /> * bnx2x driver updated to version 1.48.105.<br /> * bnx2i driver has been added, providing iSCSI support for bnx2x network <br /> devices.<br /> * cxgb3 driver updated to enable iSCSI TCP Offload Engines (TOE) and <br /> Generic Receive Offload (GRO) support.<br /> * Intel(r) I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel(r) I/OAT) updated to <br /> version 2.6.24.<br /> * forcedeth ethernet driver for NVIDIA nForce devices updated to <br /> version 0.62.<br /> * sky2 driver updated.<br /> * enic driver updated to version 1.0.0.933.<br /> * e1000e driver updated to the upstream version 1.0.2-k2.<br /> * bonding driver updated to the latest upstream version. With this updated <br /> driver, if IPv6 has been previously disabled (install ipv6 /bin/false <br /> line in the /etc/modprobe.conf file) the bonding kernel module will fail <br /> to load. The install ipv6 /bin/false line needs to be replaced with <br /> options ipv6 "disable=1" for the module to load properly.<br /> <br />Storage<br /> <br /> * bnx2 driver updated to support iSCSI .<br /> * bnx2i version included in this release does not support IPv6<br /> * md driver updated to provide support for bitmap merging.<br /> * scsi driver includes the upstream scsi_dh_alua module which enables <br /> explicit asymmetric logical unit access (ALUA) support with this release.<br /> To utilize the scsi_dh_alua module when using dm-multipath, specify alua <br /> as the hardware_handler type in multipah.conf.<br /> * rdac_dev_list structure now includes md3000 and md3000i entries.<br /> * resolved panic during iSCSI iBFT installations.<br /> * cxgb3 driver updated to support iSCSI TOE devices ( cxgb3i driver <br /> include doesnot support IPv6).<br /> * new mpt2sas driver which supports the SAS-2 family of adapters from <br /> LSI Logic.<br /> * aacraid driver updated to version 1.1.5-2461.<br /> * aic7xxx driver now features an increased maximum I/O size.<br /> * cciss driver has been updated to include upstream fixes affecting memory <br /> BAR discovery, the rebuild_lun_table and the MSA2012 scan thread.<br /> * fnic driver updated to version 1.0.0.1039.<br /> * ipr driver updated to support MSI-X interrupts.<br /> * lpfc driver updated to version 8.2.0.48.<br /> * MPT fusion driver updated to version 3.04.07rh v2.<br /> * megaraid_sas driver updated to version 4.08-RH1.<br /> * mvsas driver updated to version 0.5.4. This adds support for Marvell <br /> RAID bus controllers MV64460, MV64461, and MV64462.<br /> * qla2xxx driver updated to version 8.03.00.10.05.04-k, and now supports <br /> Fibre Channel over Convergence Enhanced Ethernet adapters. qla24xx and <br /> qla25xx firmwares included in the qla2xxx driver updated to <br /> version 4.04.09.<br /> * qla4xxx driver with improved driver fault recovery.<br /> * new qlge driver to provide ethernet support for QLogic FCoE 10GB adapters. <br /><br />General<br /> * i5400 driver updated with added support for Error Detection And Correction<br /> (EDAC).<br /> * i2c driver for the iic-bus interface updated to support the AMD SB800 <br /> Family of products.<br /> * i2c-piix4 driver updated to support the Broadcom HT1100 chipset.<br /> * hpilo driver has been updated.<br /> * dm9601 for Davicom Ethernet Adapters updated. <br /><br />*Software Accessibility*<br /><br />All packages are available via <a href="http://linux.oracle.com/">ULN</a>.<br /><br />Installable binary and source ISO images will be available at <a href="http://edelivery.oracle.com/"> eDelivery</a> shortly. <br /><br />If ISO images are needed before they are available on eDelivery, please request these via a <a href="https://metalink.oracle.com/">Metalink</a> service request.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7708608879865270769?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-67316072360734852102009-09-03T09:30:00.002+02:002009-09-03T09:30:58.169+02:00Red Hat released a new version of their Enterprise Linux OS. <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization/?intcmp=70160000000HxtvAAC">RHEL 5.4</a> features enterprise-grade KVM virtualization, optimizations for Intel® Xeon 5500 Series and AMD Istanbul platforms, network enhancements such as Generic Receive Offload (GRO) support the latest generation of NICs, and more.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6731607236073485210?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-18891840268522145062009-08-24T10:12:00.001+02:002009-08-31T15:27:03.225+02:00Want to move your legacy CVS repository into the next century but are afraid to loose information or damage your business-critical source code? Don't worry and please do as soon as you can!<br /><br /><a href="http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/source/browse/cvs2svn/tags/2.3.0/CHANGES?view=markup">cvs2svn</a> has released a new version. cvs2svn is a tool for migrating a CVS repository to Subversion, git, Bazaar, or Mercurial. The main design goals are robustness and 100% data preservation. Release 2.3.0 primarily improves the support for converting to git and Bazaar (including explicit cvs2git and cvs2bzr scripts). This release also adds a few other minor features and fixes a bug when converting to git with non-inline blobs.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1889184026852214506?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-6755405760783356312009-08-11T10:42:00.004+02:002009-08-11T11:10:16.493+02:00I've been playing a bit with the nscd now and want to share some tips related to tuning the nscd.conf file.<br /><br />To see how the DNS cache is doing, use nscd -g.<br /><pre><br />nscd configuration:<br /><br /> 0 server debug level<br /> 26m 57s server runtime<br /> 5 current number of threads<br /> 32 maximum number of threads<br /> 0 number of times clients had to wait<br /> yes paranoia mode enabled<br /> 3600 restart internal<br /><br />passwd cache:<br /> no cache is enabled<br />[other zero output removed]<br />group cache:<br /> no cache is enabled<br />[other zero output removed]<br /><br />hosts cache:<br /><br /> yes cache is enabled<br /> yes cache is persistent<br /> yes cache is shared<br /> 211 suggested size <====<br /> 216064 total data pool size<br /> 1144 used data pool size<br /> 3600 seconds time to live for positive entries <====<br /> 20 seconds time to live for negative entries<br /> 66254 cache hits on positive entries<br /> 0 cache hits on negative entries<br /> 215 cache misses on positive entries<br /> 150 cache misses on negative entries<br /> 99% cache hit rate <====<br /> 7 current number of cached values <====<br /> 28 maximum number of cached values <====<br /> 3 maximum chain length searched<br /> 0 number of delays on rdlock<br /> 0 number of delays on wrlock<br /> 0 memory allocations failed<br /> yes check /etc/hosts for changes<br /></pre><br />Check the cache hit rate.<br />If it's low, then if the '<span style="font-style:italic;">current number of cached values</span>' (here:7) is near the '<span style="font-style:italic;">suggested-size</span>' parameter (here:211), it means your cache is too small. Entries are being cached faster than they're being reused.<br />If '<span style="font-style:italic;">maximum number of cached values</span>' is near the suggested-size, there are periods when your system is caching a lot more than usual (check the current value) and you may need to tweak the <span style="font-style:italic;">suggested-size</span> to slightly larger.<br />Also, the time <tt>nscd</tt> retains cache entries will be of influence on performance (here:3600 seconds). A lower value means an entry is cached briefly before flushing it and rerequesting a host from the DNS server. A high value means an entry can get stale, but more so for passwords than for hostnames. Nonetheless, lowering the value could free up the cache for new recent hostnames, instead of keeping old entries in the cache.<br />Any non zero value for '<span style="font-style:italic;">memory allocations failed</span>' may indicate your data pool is too small or the persistent store is running out of space. Or your system may simply be low on memory.<br />If you have some '<span style="font-style:italic;">number of times clients had to wait</span>', you could increase the number of threads. However, creating more threads means you'll handle more requests and your statistics will change. Both for the better or the worse! So recheck the stats afterward!<br /><br />If you change parameters, it may be wise to clear (invalidate) the (persistent) cache using nscd -i {passwd,group,hosts}<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-675540576078335631?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-32817250877047043502009-08-03T14:08:00.003+02:002009-08-11T09:18:17.872+02:00Got a question about Linux name caching today. Some servers are requesting the same hostname to the DNS server every 2 seconds... <br />Looked into it and the name caching daemon is not running. Got all the answers I needed here: <a href="http://linux.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/alt.os.linux.redhat/2004-08/0019.html">alt.os.linux.redhat: Re: DNS cache on a RH9 system?</a>. Also found a separate package called <a href="http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dnscache.html">dnscache</a>. And a HOWTO for bind to <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO-3.html">create a local DNS cache</a> on your workstation or server. Simply starting <tt>nscd</tt> and editing <tt>nscd.conf</tt> seems sufficient for me now.<br /><br />BTW, here is my updated <tt>/etc/nscd.conf</tt>. If anyone has more pointers, please comment.<br /><pre><br />logfile /var/log/nscd.log<br /># use 1-10 for more verbose debugging into log<br />debug-level 0<br /># 3 minimum, 5 default<br />filethreads 5<br /># 32 is default<br />max-threads 32<br /># restart intervals may fail if non-root<br />server-user nscd<br /># user granted to check nscd stats using 'nscd -g'<br />stat-user nagios<br /># 5 is default<br />reload-count 5 <br /># restart periodically<br />paranoia yes<br /># restart every 4 hrs, default is 1 hour<br />#restart-interval 14400 <br /><br />enable-cache passwd no<br />enable-cache group no<br /><br />enable-cache hosts yes<br /># default in sec; prune hits after this long<br />positive-time-to-live hosts 3600 <br /># default in sec; prune misses after this long<br />negative-time-to-live hosts 20 <br /># entries in hash table, default 211, must be prime!<br />suggested-size hosts 211 <br />check-files hosts yes<br />persistent hosts yes<br />shared hosts yes<br /># 16 MiB in bytes<br />#max-db-size hosts 16777216 <br /></pre><br />Update: one more important thing, the <tt>suggested-size</tt> is the size of the hash table. Hashing works well if your table is <span style="font-style:italic;">sparsely populated</span>. I.e. your table should be larger than the actual number of entries it will have. So if you're caching 20 web server on the intranet, the default is fine. If you are caching 3000 IMAP userids and password (see <a href="http://markmail.org/message/yzjiyhocvahzzv6w">this example</a>), it needs to be a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_numbers">large prime number</a> about 5-10 larger than the 3000 userids.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3281725087704704350?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-42739067458606415082009-07-27T10:25:00.001+02:002009-08-04T09:36:27.038+02:00Oracle's virtualization solution, Oracle VM, now has a <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/05/oracle_vm_manager_cli_and_web_1.html">command line interface</a>. This is mostly important to Linux administrators and those who'd like to be able write their own scripts and tools for working with <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/index.html">Oracle VM</a> (OVM). The OVM CLI works with Linux and Mac OSX (through a work-around). Read <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/07/cli_is_available.html">Wim Coekaerts Blog</a> for details.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4273906745860641508?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-34618893263792943112009-07-27T09:41:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:48:57.468+02:00<a href="http://press.redhat.com/2009/07/02/red-hat-enterprise-linux-5-4-beta-now-available/?intcmp=70160000000HsmRAAS">Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 B&egrave;ta</a> is now available. Most interesting improvements, apart from the usual bug fixes, performance benefits and better hardware support, are the introduction of <a href="http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page">KVM</a> virtualization (in addition to regular Xen-based virtualization). New hardware support in virtual environments through SRIOV (<a href="http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/iov/">Single Root I/O for Virtualization</a>), utilities for management of FCoE cards over Internet, FIPS-140 security certification and a libvirt Perl interface for virtualization. Read the <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html-single/Release_Notes/">release notes</a> for full details. <br /><br />Better yet is this announcement: "<span style="font-style:italic;">An important feature of any Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is that kernel and user APIs are unchanged, so that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 applications do not need to be rebuilt or re-certified. This situation extends to virtualized environments: with a fully integrated hypervisor, the application binary interface (ABI) consistency offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux means that applications certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on physical machines are also certified when run in virtual machines. So the portfolio of thousands of certified applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux applies to both environments.</span>"<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3461889326379294311?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-1085882744427900732009-07-22T13:21:00.001+02:002009-07-23T15:52:42.709+02:00Anyone using a subversion server heavily needs good backups of their code. <tt>svnadmin dump</tt> is a good way to make regular backups. Or the mirroring method may work well for you.<br /><br />I found a really useful, simple, elegant and clean tool to backup SVN repos with: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/svnautobackup/wiki/svnbackupManpage">svnbackup</a> by Doug Hellmann (don't let the name fool you!). His script utilizes the existing tools but adds value, which is excellent in my book. He dumps the svn repo using <tt>svnadmin</tt>, splits the repo into commits sets (100 by default) and compress them in the process. The greatest feature, IMHO, is however the ability to let the scripts <tt>scp</tt> the backups to a different server! Genius! Works likes a charm in 30 seconds!<br /><br />Here is my daily cron job:<br /><pre><br />#!/bin/bash<br /># http://code.google.com/p/svnautobackup/<br /># create dump of main SVN repo(s)<br />/usr/local/bin/svnbackup.sh --scp userid@server:/data/users/userid /var/svn/repositories/svnrepo/<br />echo "***SVN io_se dumped" >> /var/log/messages<br /></pre><br /><br />If you have more than one repo, build in a for-loop to cycle all the repos. Brilliant! The wiki also has a restore command for your convenience.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-108588274442790073?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-16258249206378906152009-07-21T15:57:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:46:50.744+02:00Got a handy little reference on the PowerEdge Linux mailing list over at Dell.<br /><br />Someone mentioned the location of the OMSA MIB files that define what can be monitored, measured, etc. on a Dell server using IPMI. I was wondering where these MIBs were located because I might be able to use them myself for other purposes on that hardware. Anyway, the MIBs for <a href="http://linux.dell.com/monitoring.shtml">OMSA</a> <tt>/opt/dell/srvadmin/sm/mibs/dcstorag.mib</tt><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1625824920637890615?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-37806408121149873842009-06-25T11:13:00.002+02:002011-05-05T09:48:40.788+02:00We discovered a serious issue when rescanning the SCSI bus on (Oracle/Red Hat) Linux to discover newly added LUNs and I thought I'd mention it here.<br /><br />Our (old) Dell PowerEdge 2950 come with virtual media to allow mounting virtual floppy images (for driver disks, e.g.) and virtual CDs (great for ISOs). Dell adds these devices to the USB SCSI bus and therefore they show up as <tt>/dev/sda</tt> and <tt>/dev/sdb</tt>. I.e. before any regular (boot) media. While it makes sense, it creates a problem for us when adding new SAN LUNs to an existing Oracle database server, because we need to add some ASM disks.<br /><br />When doing the bus rescan <br /><tt>echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan</tt><br />the virtual media get enumerated again as <tt>sda</tt> and <tt>sdb</tt>, which throws off existing device mapping. Our boot LUN which was <tt>sdb</tt> is now <tt>sdd</tt> and that used to be an ASM disk. After initialization with ASM, my boot LUN gets wiped and things get ugly. No root device, read-only access and upon reboot grub fails because boot devices are lost. Enter panic mode!<br /><br />I can think of <del>two</del> three possible work-arounds:<br />1) rescan only the FC SCSI busses i.e. echo "1 - -" or something<br />2) Use <a href="http://driverdownloads.qlogic.com/QLogicDriverDownloads_UI/default.aspx">Qlogic's HBA utilities</a> to rescan and hopefully prevent the Dell virtual media from appearing<br />3) Using <a href="http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html">udev</a> to prevent disk IDs from getting "lost" as udev IDs are unique, always, by design.<br /><br />I'll let you know what happens... BTW, we are using OEL 4u5 x86_64 on our servers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3780640812114987384?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-54798194650077818552009-06-22T14:28:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:48:57.471+02:00Oracle Linux Tests are designed to verify Linux kernel functionality and stability essential for the Oracle Database. <a href="http://oss.oracle.com/projects/olt/">The Oracle Linux Test (OLT) kit</a>, which is distributed as a set of rpms, provides an automated mechanism to define, execute and analyze tests. The kit contains tools such as DBT2 and DBT3 workloads against Oracle single instance or clustered databases, as well as specialized workload simulators. OLT can be used for running tests on Oracle Enterprise Linux, RHEL and SLES distributions and a variety of topologies (storage attached network, network attached storage).<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5479819465007781855?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-45941224317426553282009-06-22T13:04:00.001+02:002009-06-25T13:05:49.120+02:00A few days ago we released Oracle VM 2.1.5 which is <a href="http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux">available for download</a> (registration free but required).<br /><br />This release contains the following :<br /><ul><br /><li>bugfixes on both Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM Server side</li><br /><li>the new webservices interface which I wrote a blog entry about, a few weeks ago</li><br /><li>external data-collector cronjob/thread moved into the Oracle VM Manager instance</li><br /><li>minor cosmetic improvements on the Oracle VM Manager side</li><br /></ul><br />This is a full CD release. So it is possible to do an install from scratch starting with 2.1.5, both the management and server side.<br /><br />Source: <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/06/oracle_vm_215_1.html">Oracle VM 2.1.5 (Wim Coekaerts Blog)</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4594122431742655328?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-23657054351163612202009-06-22T11:39:00.001+02:002009-06-25T13:05:31.759+02:00<a href="http://tortoisesvn.net/node/375">TortoiseSVN</a>: "A new version of TortoiseSVN is available: version 1.6.3, linked against Subversion 1.6.3. This is a bugfix/maintenance release only and includes many bugfixes in both TortoiseSVN and the svn library."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2365705435116361220?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-9899812092047386672009-06-18T11:38:00.003+02:002009-07-23T16:44:35.614+02:00I've been searching for an easy way to rename 38 mediawiki tables in MySQL using phpmyadmin, but I failed. You can rename databases but not tables. Copy yes, rename no. Weird.<br /><br />Anyway <a href="http://ruleant.blogspot.com">Pool of oblivion</a> provided me with a lifesaver PHP script to <a href="http://ruleant.blogspot.com/2009/03/rename-multiple-tables-in-mysql.html">rename multiple tables in MySQL database</a>. The script lists a way replace a pattern with a new pattern. So you need to change the line that builds the new table name if you just want to prefix or postfix a table name with a set string (as I did). I'll include that code here, for your convenience:<br /><pre><br /> // replacement<br /> $new_table_name = str_replace ( $pattern, $new_pattern, $table_name);<br /> //prefix<br /> //$new_table_name = $new_pattern . $table_name;<br /> // postfix aka suffix<br /> //$new_table_name = $table_name . $new_pattern;<br /></pre><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-989981209204738667?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-27565489277004184932009-06-17T12:58:00.006+02:002010-11-12T12:02:35.925+01:00Although I'm using Oracle's Linux in the data center at work, I still keep up with other distributions. Just to check out what's going on and keep up.<br /><br />Lately, I've been playing with a <a href="http://www.turnkeylinux.org/appliances/mediawiki">new MediaWiki virtual appliance</a> (VA) at work - where we keep most rough documentation and work-in-progress before moving it over to MS Word offial reports - and I must say <a href="http://turnkeylinux.org/">turnkeylinux.org</a> builds some mean VAs using Ubuntu JeOS. A 180MB ISO file is all you need. You create a VM, mount the ISO, boot, enter some root passwords and your set. It's integrated with Webmin, so you can completely configure the VM using your browser. No need to ssh into anything. :) Kudos!<br /><br />Anyway, I was going to install VMwareTools into the VM and remembered VMware had opened an <a href="http://packages.vmware.com/tools/index.html">apt-style repository for VMwareTools</a> for use with Debian-based Linux distributions. So I made a few changes to the VM and installed it using apt-get! Wow! I love Debian, did I mention that before. ;) Here is what I did:<br /><pre>wget http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub</pre><br />Create a new sources list for VMware:<br /><pre>vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vmware.list</pre><br />Add these two lines making sure to match the ESX version you are using. Don't know what happens if this mismatches. Use caution!<br /><pre>deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/3.5u4/ubuntu hardy main<br />deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/3.5u4/ubuntu hardy restricted</pre><br />Import the GPG key for apt:<br /><pre>apt-key add VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub</pre><br />Now update and install:<br /><pre>apt-get update<br />apt-get install [vmware-tools|vmware-tools-nox]</pre><br /><br />Use vmware-tools-nox to skip X11/x.org packages which you probably don't use anyway.<br />NB: You may need to install some additional packages needed for compiling. Check <a href="http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/general/20090614/step-step-installing-vmwaretools-make-gcc-etc-fresh-install-lamp-200902-hardy">this turnkey forum post</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2756548927700418493?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-48361075008609119752009-06-04T11:12:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:46:50.747+02:00Dell has released <a href="http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/hardware">OMSA 6.0.2</a> for monitoring and remotely managing Dell PowerEdge servers that run Linux. Plugins for Nagios, MOM and others exist, so you can tie your Linux servers to most corporate tools.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4836107500860911975?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-33442238168673853612009-06-04T09:51:00.002+02:002010-11-12T12:04:33.485+01:00At work I run a lot of Linux servers with Oracle Linux (OEL, Red Hat-derived) and our Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers have no problems with them. At first, OEL 4u5 had a terribly confusing issue with device enumeration where the first on-board NIC (labeled 1) would end up as eth1 and the other (labeled 2) would become eth0. That was fixed later on and I've reported on it here, 2 years ago.<br /><br />Lately, I've been playing with other Linux distos and seeing how well the (old) Dell servers hold up new distributions. I always used netimages where I install the OS over the network. For one, this greatly speeds up the ISO download and it also ensures I have an updated system after installation ready for testing. <br /><br />While Red Hat and SUSE-based distos are not a problem, Debian-based versions can be. This mainly has to do with the strict philosophy of their maintainers that non-free drivers and firmware should not be included in the image. In my case, the lack of built-in Broadcom (bnx2) drivers causes my system to be dead on the network. So you need to include a "driver disk". But how...?<br /><br />Debian fortunately has a nice way to do this: you include any or all your drivers on a floppy or USB disk (image, in case you're working remotely). Put the .tar.gz archives in the root of the device or inside a /firmware directory, connect it at boot time so the installer sees the device and you should be fine. Curious where you can get these <a href="http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/">drivers and firmware packages for Ubuntu or Debian</a>? Check this <a href="http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware">archive</a>. <br /><br />Oh and this also works with manufacturer's drivers, such as FC NICs, Intel NICs, Qlogic HBAs, and so on, should you be dissatisfied with the built-in drivers or require more recent drivers for specific functionality. More details and information can be found on <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/ch06s04.html.en">Loading Missing Firmware</a> from the Debian Lenny release notes.<br /><br />Update: Specifically for Debian Lenny on Dell hardware, you should also read this detailed <a href="http://www.ducea.com/2009/03/02/debian-lenny-pxe-installation-on-dell-poweredge-19502950-servers-bnx2-annoyances/">HOWTO perform unattended PXE installs with Debian Lenny</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3344223816867385361?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-89715739873101282732009-06-02T13:20:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:11:24.856+01:00An interesting read from Slashdot mentioned a company <a href="http://www.yippiemove.com/">YippieMove</a> who <a href="http://www.playingwithwire.com/2009/06/virtual-failure-yippiemove-switches-from-vmware-to-freebsd-jails/">switched from VMware to FreeBSD Jails</a> when their infrastructure ran into so many problems doing I/O that something had to change. Interestingly, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail">BSD Jails</a> resembles Solaris' Zones and Linux <a href="http://linux-vserver.org/Welcome_to_Linux-VServer.org">vservers</a>.<br /><br />Bottom-line is that, as the comments mention very well, you have to “know your workload before picking the technology.” Also, which hardware generation you run VMware on has a big impact. Newer hardware has a significantly better support for virtualization when compared to older generation hardware.<br />We've had similar I/O problems with NFS shares exported to various bare metals (BMs) and VMs and we choose to move to an ECM NAS instead (based on the number and the volumes of the shares). I doubt installing vSphere 4 on our old PowerEdge 2950 would make any difference as the old hardware is simply already stretched to its limits.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8971573987310128273?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-26492571858851748322009-05-14T17:28:00.003+02:002011-05-03T14:51:13.742+02:00An article on <a href="http://www.debian-administration.org/">Debian Administration</a> got my attention today, since it listed something my colleague just showed to me the other day.<br /><br />Often, when debugging network issues, you call up some support guy and he wants to know which switch ports your NIC is using. Often, you're in the office and the server is in a distant data center. So getting to the cables is next impossible or very time-consuming at the very least. And often, documentation is not trusted because you are having problems to begin with.<br /><br />Using <a href="http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Where_art_thou_-_CDPR">CDPR</a> or the less brand-specific <a href="https://trac.luffy.cx/lldpd/">lldpd</a> can become a god-sent tool. It allows you to monitor Cisco Discovery Protocol packets from the command line and tell the network admin exactly what he needs to know. :)<br /><br />Solaris admins have <a href="http://www.bga.org/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/man/solaris/snoop.1.html">snoop</a> to make use of. Linux guys can also use tcpdump:<br /><pre>tcpdump -nn -v -i <eth_nic> -s 1500 -c 1 ‘ether[20:2] == 0×2000’<br /></pre><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2649257185885174832?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-30454127760345944522009-05-05T14:40:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:04:46.894+01:00Never seen so many <a href="http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/">IPMI</a> messages flying around on the Dell Linux mailing list. It's an <a href="http://openipmi.sourceforge.net/">open standard</a> to monitor information of basic health parameters of a server. Here is a very good from by someone from Dell that <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2009-May/039144.html">sums up the usage and support of IPMI under Linux</a> on Dell PowerEdge servers.<br /><br />Basically, you only need ipmitool to issue power on/off the servers. If you want to do more, you need to install the IPMI packages (yum install OpenIPMI)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3045412776034594452?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-60079101992106581892009-05-04T14:05:00.001+02:002009-06-04T10:14:38.923+02:00<a href="http://tortoisesvn.net/node/369">Gurtle</a> is an IBugTraqProvider plugin for TortoiseSVN, dealing with the issue tracker of Google Project Hosting (aka Google Code).<br /><br />Gurtle just released a new version 0.4, and this time it comes with a nice installer so you don't have to build it yourself anymore. In case you don't know whether you need this tool, ask yourself two questions:<br /> * Are you using TortoiseSVN?<br /> * Are you hosting one or more projects on Google Project Hosting?<br />If you answered both questions with yes, then you need Gurtle!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6007910199210658189?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-30389401481572320072009-04-29T13:53:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:46:50.750+02:00Wouldn't it be great if you could use the LCD on a Dell PowerEdge to display the names of the VMs running on it? You may never to know where a VM actually, but if you do, you usually need it badly. Well Nickapedia wrote the script and the HOWTO for you: <a href="http://nickapedia.com/2009/01/03/dell-server-lcd-update-script/">Dell Server LCD Update Script</a>.<br /><br />It uses Dell <a href="http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/OMSA">OMSA</a> on ESX and IPMI to get access to the VM names and then outputs these on the LCD. Brilliant! See <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slm3MDMD7Dc">video on YouTube</a>!<br /><br />BTW: won't work on ESXi because OMSA is not supported there.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-3038940148157232007?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-44378978974896499702009-04-28T15:31:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:07:05.411+01:00Been testing my new Oracle Linux stack based on RHEL 5.3. We have a lot of problems with sysops and admins editing files to fix problems. Only recently we started using subversion for release management so we can check for specific versions and verify the (unmodifed) integrity on files. Subversion will also let those sysops and admins commit their changes back into subversion, so changes get documented, verified, discussed and distributed through bug fix releases. <br /><br />However, OEL/RHEL 5 comes bundled with <a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide.html">AIDE - Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment</a> and I've started running tests on my test servers.<br /><br />When you initialize the AIDE database as part of the final post installation steps, you run <tt>aide -i</tt>. This creates base reference database - aka snapshot - of all files that you use later on for any modifications. Using <tt>aide -u</tt> you update that db.<br /><br />Small problem is that you may a lot of <tt>lgetfilecon_raw failed</tt> errors. In my case, this had to do SELinux being disabled and aide checking for it. Editing the <tt>/etc/aide.conf</tt> file and removing all references to <tt>selinux</tt> there, then reinitializing the database fixed that. Don't forget to copy the newly initialized db!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4437897897489649970?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-25003537586231946662009-04-28T12:02:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:04:19.704+01:00There's a big discussion going on at my workplace about virtualizing Oracle databases. It used to be not done because of performance, but it offers many really useful features such as hardware independence, fail-over, VMotion and cloning, vmdk copies, etc.<br /><br />Oracle had previously told us they supported Oracle in VMs. When they announced <a href="http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Oracle+VM">Oracle VM Server</a> based on Xen, they retracted this statement. We weren't impressed. Microsoft tried to do the same things while they were working on Hyper-V and so on. Eventually, anti-monopoly laws forced them to support competitors in the same way as they support their own virtualization flavor. So I expect Oracle to do the same. In the mean time... we're playing with <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/index.html">Oracle Xen thingy</a> as well as investigating <a href="http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_ESX40_Oracle-TPC-C-eval.pdf">virtual databases running on VMware 4.0 aka vSphere</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2500353758623194666?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-56145703955851669402009-04-28T10:33:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:47:25.093+02:00<a href="https://launchpad.net/drizzle">Drizzle</a>: "The Drizzle project is building a database optimized for Cloud and Net applications. It is being designed for massive concurrency on modern multi-core architecture. The code is originally derived from MySQL."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5614570395585166940?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-45351957868726323252009-04-22T16:58:00.002+02:002009-04-29T14:04:28.938+02:00We are trying to create some common ground between Solaris and Linux environments. For example, auto mounting scripts of NFS file systems. One issue was that Sun uses the master map file called <tt>auto_master</tt> whereas Linux defaults to <tt>auto.master</tt>. <br /><br />Thankfully, you can tweak <tt>/etc/sysconfig/autofs</tt> and use MASTER_MAP_NAME to tell Linux to also <a href="http://linux.die.net/man/8/automount">use <tt>auto_master</tt></a>. Problem solved!<br /><br />Update: dont' forget to open <tt>/etc/nsswitch.conf</tt> and edit the line for <tt>autofs</tt>. I had to delete <tt>nisplus</tt>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4535195786872632325?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-78291220541370801482009-04-21T16:28:00.002+02:002009-06-04T10:15:12.787+02:00CollabNet has released binaries of <a href="http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2009/04/collabnet-svn-161-now-available-windows-rhel-solaris.html">Subversion 1.6.1</a> for all major platforms: Windows, Linux, Solaris and OS X. The Windows client is also already updated, other should follow soon.<br /><br />SVN 1.6 is a big step forward in the area of collaborative development as merging has been improved over 1.5 and very much so from 1.4. More tools building upon SVN are also appearing, expanding the functionality of the plain SVN server with things like <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/almsuite/">ALM</a>, <a href="http://www.clearvision-cm.com/products/unified-change-management-for-subversion.html">Agile support</a> and more.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7829122054137080148?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-65395711598275480702009-04-20T14:51:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:01:20.165+01:00<a href="http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/20/128246">Slashdot</a>: "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/018363">Oracle will acquire Sun</a> common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt."<br /><br />Note: Oracle's server is currently Slashdotted. LOL<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-6539571159827548070?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-17920835033624227762009-04-02T16:58:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:08:28.558+01:00Looking for Red Hat support but can't afford it? But into Oracle's Unbreakable support. Looking for Oracle's support but don't want to pay for it? Look into CentOS!<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/135599">CentOS 5.3 was just released</a>, bringing the Enterprise-style disto on par with RHEL 5.3 for the latest hardware and driver support with major manufacturers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-1792083503362422776?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-40140478051238826322009-04-01T09:31:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:06:28.310+01:00We currently use SVN to enable us to do release management of deployments. The SVN server holds all our kickstart, post installation and configuration scripts, as well as distribution scripts for software packages (Oracle database, application server, OEM, the OEM agent and more). The actual packages are not in SVN but on an NFS server. CollabNet released a new version of Subversion (SVN) a few days ago. And I'm excited! Subversion 1.6 introduces several new features, including improved <a href="http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2009/03/subversion-with-apache-and-ldap-updated.html">authentication</a> (Apache + LDAP) and file system storage as well as better handling of tree conflicts. Check the <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.6_releasenotes.html">release notes</a> for full details.<br /><br />The new version also introduces a new public way to <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.6_releasenotes.html#historical-uris">reference the history</a> of the repository. You can now read older versions of files through the web interface without the need for a SVN client. This enables 3rd party tools do innovative things through an easy to use interface into SVN.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4014047805123882632?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-82172349740672631322009-03-31T16:12:00.001+02:002010-11-12T12:05:53.112+01:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://oracleimg.com/technology/tech/linux/images/ubl-solo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 81px; height: 97px;" src="http://oracleimg.com/technology/tech/linux/images/ubl-solo.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Oracle has released the Linux base install repositories to the public. This means that, when you have obtained the ISOs for OEL4 or OEL5, you can install packages freely using yum. The so-called "base channels" are available for free and without support over Internet. This applies to Oracle VM (Xen) as well. All you need is their <tt>.repo</tt> files, yum check-update, and you're set.<br /><br />Updates and Patches require a support license. Check <a href="http://public-yum.oracle.com/">Oracle Public Yum Server</a> for details and howto.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-8217234974067263132?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-28572878234624993462009-03-31T11:23:00.001+02:002011-05-05T09:46:50.752+02:00<a href="http://www.hpccommunity.org/sysmgmt/">HPC Community - Systems Management</a>: "The Dell OpenManage Nagios Plug-in is a freely available, open source plug-in for the Nagios network monitor. By harnessing Dell OpenManage (OMSA), the plug-in provides the ability to monitor the overall health of supported Dell hardware models, all via the Nagios interface. Additionally, the Nagios notification mechanism may be used to provide alerts regarding system state based upon the information reported by the Dell OpenManage Nagios Plug-in."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2857287823462499346?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-42437453560797835982009-03-30T13:35:00.001+02:002009-04-29T13:58:37.771+02:00<a href="http://tortoisesvn.net/node/364">TortoiseSVN 1.6.0</a> introduces better ways of solving merge conflicts and introduces new kinds of conflicts (<a href="http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2009/03/subversion-160-and-tree-conflicts.html">tree conflicts</a>) as well as easier ways to solve them.<br /><br />While git is gaining popularity, I personally don't think most development teams are ready for decentralized code repositories and large corporations may be totally horrified by them. So Subversion is here to stay for a while.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-4243745356079783598?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-78937277940799424932009-03-15T22:35:00.001+01:002009-03-16T09:50:08.485+01:00<a href="http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/134483">heise online</a>: "A bug report posted in the bug tracker for the next version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) describes a massive data loss problem when using Ext4, the future standard file system for Linux, available as an option when installing Ubuntu 9.04. The report describes a crash occurring shortly after the KDE 4 desktop files had been loaded, resulting in the loss of all of the data that had been created, including many KDE configuration files." <br /><br />This may not be as relevant for a server setup but it could outline a major vulnaribility in ext4 for now. Read the article for details...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7893727794079942493?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-70044976181437449262009-03-09T15:37:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:02:35.929+01:00An age-old problem in mixed IT environments is that Windows servers can register themselves dynamically in a (Windows) DNS server and Unix/Linux servers can't (easily).<br /><br />Solaris has <a href="http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-5529/6jehkcs5a?a=view">a way to fix this</a> and I just discovered that Red Hat has one too. The <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Reference_Guide/s1-networkscripts-interfaces.html">RHEL 4 Reference Guide</a> mentions adding the parameter DHCP_HOSTNAME in the <tt>ifcfg-eth#</tt> files. That will tell the DHCP client to specify a hostname when acquiring an IP address.<br /><br />Another search led to the use of <a href="http://leo.unstable.be/wordpress/?p=66">nsupdate</a> which seems to register a Linux host using Kerberos in the AD so that it can update its hostname on future reboots.<br /><br />I haven't tested both methods yet, but I will soon and let you know.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7004497618143744926?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-50071426472639016122009-03-09T11:37:00.001+01:002009-03-09T11:39:58.255+01:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.zen6478.zen.co.uk/images/cap1.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.zen6478.zen.co.uk/images/cap1.png" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/">Xming</a> has been updated recently. It is an X server for Windows, so you can easily use your (corporate) Windows desktop to maintain your Linux/Unix servers.<br /><br />It is free and uses Putty to make an SSH connection to your *nix server. With a few simple commands the X11 client on Linux can transmit its output (i.e. screen/window) to the X11 server running on Windows. By using a secure SSH session, the process is pretty secure too and can be used from home, with or without a VPN connection.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5007142647263901612?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-21333469178775346232009-02-16T15:02:00.001+01:002010-11-12T12:03:26.019+01:00A Sun Solaris friend of mine looked at me in disgust when he saw my <tt>/etc/fstab</tt> file to mount NFS mounts, CDs and more. I was seriously hurt so when he explained the shiny happy possibilities of <tt>autofs</tt> on Solaris (and Linux), I was immediately convinced: <a href="http://www.autofs.org/">Configuration of the Automounter Autofs</a>... and all was well!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-2133346917877534623?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-59671371949723405542009-02-14T15:14:00.001+01:002009-03-16T09:51:26.462+01:00If you care about clustering and currently use VMware, you should read Wim Coekaerts' blog about <a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/wim/2009/02/vcenter_server_heartbeat_and_o.html">vCenter Server Heartbeat and Oracle VM Manager with Oracle Clusterware</a>... I was gonna look into Oracle VM (and Xen) later this year anyway, but may move it up because of this.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-5967137194972340554?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-9553285375409136522009-02-04T13:17:00.001+01:002009-02-04T14:02:27.182+01:00Just discovered a fabulous resource for installing and configuring Oracle databases on various OS platforms: <a href="http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/Articles.php">ORACLE-BASE</a>.<br /><br />Oracle 9i, 10g, 11g but also RAC on Linux, Microsoft, VMware, Xen, etc. Recommended!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-955328537540913652?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-4814367015317098422009-01-29T10:43:00.004+01:002009-02-18T15:26:39.808+01:00Testing my new kickstart file to install Linux on my old Poweredge 2950 dell servers is fine, but multipath presents me with a new problem. <br /><br />We boot from SAN, even though the servers have local disks available. Eventually we will move towards Blades, so the experience is useful. But each server has a different number of LUNs available to it. The boot LUN is always LUN id 0. Without <tt>multipathd</tt>, this gave me <tt>/dev/sdb</tt> as the boot device. With <tt>multipathd</tt>, this gives me <tt>/dev/mapper/mpathX</tt>, where X is the number of LUNs I have. You may see the problem:<br />The kickstart file must list the boot drive order and designate a place to put the MBR. However, I can't think of a way to tell kickstart to use the last mpath device... I wish there'd be a way to make <tt>/dev/mapper/mpath0</tt> the boot LUN...<br /><br />Update: Well, it seems to be a limitation of multipath support in anaconda. I've booted the OEL 5.3 DVD ISO on 3 different bare metals and each server has a different number of LUNs associated with it. Other than that, they are identical. <br />On a machine with one boot LUN only, the device name is <tt>/dev/mapper/mapth0</tt> and using that in kickstart works. On the second machine with 5 LUNs, the boot LUN becomes <tt>mapper/mpath4</tt> even though the LUNs are numbered starting at zero for the boot LUN. Another machine with various sizes of LUNs, in total 7, has the same issue: the boot LUN - irregardless of its LUN id - becomes mapper/mpath7</tt>. Hence, the name of the multipathed boot device is dependent on the number of LUNs associated at boot time and not related to the LUN Id numbering set on the SAN-side (EMC DMX-3 in our case). This means you can't specify it in a general kickstart script but must make one for each machine, or only deploy onto machines with only a single boot LUN and add additional LUNs later on.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-481436701531709842?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-74401178624575981812009-01-28T12:13:00.004+01:002011-05-05T09:48:57.474+02:00With Red Hat and Oracle Linux supporting multipathed installation from 5 update 2 on, I thought they should have changed the <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.3/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html">Kickstart Options</a> as well, so that anaconda can be given the right parameters.<br /><br />And I was right. <tt>ignoredisks</tt> has been added to let the installer ignore SAN disks as well as for cluster setups. <tt>multipath</tt> has been added to handle dual HBAs cases where the same disk will be seen over two different paths.<br /><br />Update: except <tt>ignoredisks</tt>, there is really not much you need to do but boot the Linux kernel with the option '<tt>mpath</tt>'. The multipath option lets you set/configure the <tt>multipath.conf</tt> configuration, I believe. Not used yet. In my case, I use this line to boot Linux and start a kickstart installation:<br /><pre>linux mpath text nousbstorage ksdevice=eth0 ks=http://server/mpathks.cfg<br /></pre><br />That's it. The first activates multipath-aware option in anaconda. The second uses text mode. The third parameter skips any USB devices in my PowerEdge 2950 (virtual floppy, disk and cdrom). The fourth selects a NIC to use during installation, otherwise you get a screen to select one from. <br /><br />I use a sample kickstart file from the <a href="http://wiki.oracle.com/">Oracle Wiki</a> that listed the <a href="http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Linux+installation+kickstart+for+Oracle+database">minimum required packages</a> for a working server that can run Oracle databases. I'm actively trying to maintain that file in the wiki. The original kickstart file only worked for OEL/RHEL 3/4. Some packages have disappeared in release 5 of the OS.<br /><br />Update: here is the Red Hat documentation of <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch-kickstart2.html">kickstart in Enterprise Linux 5.3</a><br /><br />Update2: There are also similar pages for kickstart options in RHEL <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html">5.4</a> and <a href="http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html">5.5</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7440117862457598181?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961248257439764692.post-74609813074207947122009-01-26T10:51:00.001+01:002009-01-26T10:52:27.275+01:00Dell's OpenManage tools keep some logs under /var/log and do not clean them up. You also can't turn them off and they contain important info from the PERC controllers.<br /><br />Anyway, the <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2008-October/037452.html">mailing list</a> mentions this often, so I thought I post a little solution using logrotate: <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2008-October/037643.html">Dell OpenManage and their TTY logs</a>.<br /><pre><br />/var/log/TTY_*.log {<br /> daily<br /> notifempty<br /> missingok<br /> rotate 7 # how many you want to save<br /> compress<br /> delaycompress<br /> sharedscripts<br /> postrotate<br /> /usr/sbin/invoke-rc.d dsm_om_shrsvc restart >/dev/null 2>&1 || true<br /> endscript<br />}<br /></pre><br />See also <a href="http://www.planetmy.com/blog/how-to-logrotate-omsa-tty-log-file-on-linux/">Planet Malaysia</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5961248257439764692-7460981307420794712?l=breakablelinux.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Christian Peperhttps://profiles.google.com/114225095150930556305noreply@blogger.com0