Oracle: Unbreak my Linux Heart

Dell has released a statement about ubuntu 11.10 on Dell PowerEdge . Dell lists that Ubuntu should work where the previous versions also worked and is currently re-certifying most PowerEdge and PowerEdge-C servers. Check Canonical's hardware certification page for details. Also good to know is that OpenManage (OMSA) has been released for Ubuntu , although it is not officially supported.

pxeconfig : 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

Howto convert a LiveCD image to a PXE Boot image . 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 PXE booting in general .

I 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. I knew you can use something like: fdisk /dev/sda 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 use of sfdisk from scripts . While I don't know if sfdisk is less reliable than fdisk or parted, or how to handle byte-aligning disks [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] from these scripts, it's a good place to start and I wanted to document it here.

Now 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 kickstart options and parameters that you can now use in RHEL (and OEL) 5.4.

Puppet from Reductive Labs : "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." Based on a tip from yo61.com.

At 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. 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. 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 ca...

Just received notice that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta has been out since October 28th... Sjeez! Why didn't I know that sooner...? Anyway the bèta will last until January 9th, 2009, so when I get from holidays, I'll have my work cut of out for me. RHEL 5U3 brings many, many virtualization (Xen) improvements. A new kernel (kernel-2.6.18-120.el5), rebased versions of monitoring tools (lm-sensors, net-snmp, openIPMI, openldap), new versions of yum and rpm, updated Kerberos subsystem, newer SAMBA (3.0.32) with support for Vista and Windows Server 2008, a ton kernel fixes and features, new hardware drivers (bcm43xx, bnx2/bnx2x, cpufreq, e1000/e1000e, mptscsi, qla24xx, etc.) and some interesting Technology Previews! dm-multipath install, which should allow anaconda to install Linux on systems with 2 or more HBAs. Support for ext4 file systems. CIFS (aka SAMBA) enhancements in the form of kernel DFS support and Kerberos security. Check the complete Release Notes for a full upda...

Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. With a simple series of commands, network installs can be configured for PXE, reinstallations, media-based net-installs, and virtualized installs (supporting Xen, qemu, KVM, and VMware Server). Cobbler uses a helper program called 'koan' (which interacts with Cobbler) for reinstallation and virtualization support. Cobbler can also optionally help with managing DHCP, DNS, and yum package mirroring infrastructure -- in this regard, it is a more generalized "provisioning" server, rather than just dealing specifically with installations. It has a command line interface, a web interface, and also several API access options. That sounds like a lot, but it's really pretty simple.

A discussion on the Dell poweredge mailing list on a Dell Warranty check , resulted in a small tidbit to discover the Dell service tag from the Linux command line. :) Using dmidecode | grep -i serial , with or without using sudo or changing to root, you get the service tag of your bare metal Linux server. Using this service tag, you can query Dell support to find out if you still have a warranty.

" Oracle Validated Configurations are pre-tested, validated architectures with software, hardware, storage, and networking components with included documented best practices for deployment. Oracle and its strategic partners offer and recommend these configurations to enable end-users to deploy fully tested solutions to achieve standardization with high performance, scalability, and reliability while lowering infrastructure costs."

I tried to image our Linux servers, taking a "golden image" from one of our bare metal servers. I wanted to have a quick restore available in case I seriously cripple a serever during testing. In earlier runs, the restore worked but the Linux image had become unusable. GRUB wouldn't produce anything beyond its first 4 letters, so I created another server and imaged that. Same thing... Turns out I am using a Dell Poweredge 2950 with a local disk in RAID1 (mirror). I only use the local disk as swap area, creating a big LVM Volume Group (VG) on it called VGinternal. The actual boot disk is a LUN on the SAN. It also uses LVM and I have a VG in the LUN called VGsystem. VGsystem holds the actual system partitions /, /var and /tmp. When Altiris images this, it uses raw mode to capture the LVM partitions. Upon deploying the image containing LVM disk info, you must tell the DS to use the Linux environment . Not the WinPE or DOS modes... Testing it later...