March 29th, 2010
Due to a change of jobs, my xDSL connection was terminated today. Luckily I have other means of Inet access, but given that I run my own server I needed some portforwarding in order to be a happy camper.
Getting access to the router using telnet was easy.
telnet 10.0.0.1 23023
It was harder (hence this post) to figure out to do port forwarding. Basic stuff first. What version of ZynOS?
ras> sys version
ZyNOS version: V3.40(AHX.4) | 05/02/2008
romRasSize: 1407100
system up time: 513:16:29 (b0380b6 ticks)
bootbase version: V1.06 | 1/20/2006
Using help I figure out that I needed to go for the ip section
ras> help
Valid commands are:
sys exit ether wan
ip bridge lan
But then I was lost
ras> ip
address alias aliasdis arp
dhcp dns httpd icmp
ifconfig ping route smtp
status udp rip tcp
telnet tftp traceroute xparent
tredir backup mcastChan igmp
policyrouting
Where was the portforward section?? I litteraly used an hour figuring out what to do. It turns out, that it is a leap of faith kind of thing:
ras> ip nat
hashTable server service resetport
incikeport session addrmap AOL-version9
Lo and behold, it is all there 
The rules are ordered in sets, where you edit a given rule in a set. When you get hold of the syntax it is actually quite easy
ras> ip nat server disp
Server Set: 1
Rule name Svr P Range Server IP LeasedTime
Active protocol Int Svr P Range Remote Host IP Range
--------------------------------------------------
1 DMZ default 0.0.0.0 0
No ALL 0 - 0 0.0.0.0 - 0.0.0.0
2 WWW 80 - 80 10.0.0.5 0
YES ALL 0 - 0 0.0.0.0 - 0.0.0.0
Then you load a set, edit the rules and write the set. Eg
# Load set 1
ras> ip nat server load 1
#edit rule 2
ras> ip nat server edit 2 forwardip 10.0.0.5
# save set 1
ras> ip nat server save
All done.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
March 11th, 2010
A customer asked me if it was possible to use non-hp drives in an HP MSA20 as they costed a lot less than HPs own drives. I honestly said that it would require a POF. The customer accepted the initial expense of single 1TB SATA drive. I fired up hpacucli to figure out what was up and down on this
=> ctrl ch="mirror" show config detail
....
....
physicaldrive 1:1
Box: 1
Bay: 1
Status: OK
Drive Type: Data Drive
Interface Type: SATA
Size: 1000.2 GB
Firmware Revision: HPG1
Serial Number: 9QJ2B4GD
Model: HP GB1000EAFJL
SATA NCQ Capable: False
As HP does not make harddrives, but uses OEM drives with custom firmware I had to figure out what types of drives was in there. The easiest solution would be to shut the box down and pull out a drive to inspect. Having dealt with HP quite a lot, I know that they also remark the drives, so I would probably not be able to see what types of drives was in there, leaving me with guessing if I choose to go that route.
Instead I opted for figuring out what type of drive it was likely to be based on the firmware. I googled a bit and found that the MSA20 could support up to 1TB disks. A bit more googling yielded this advisory from HP about upgrading firmware on Seagate drives to HPG6. Based on the age of the MSA20 in question, the age of the 1TB HP disks we already had in them, I decided it was most likely to be Baracuda 7200.11 drives that HP utilized for this and thus we ordered one of those.
Drive arrived. We put it in. Rescanned and lo and behold:
physicaldrive 1:6
Box: 1
Bay: 6
Status: OK
Drive Type: Data Drive
Interface Type: SATA
Size: 1000.2 GB
Firmware Revision: CC38
Serial Number: 9VP4D0ZA
Model: Seagate ST31000528AS
SATA NCQ Capable: False
A non-HP drive working. We have now placed an order for 19 x 1TB Seagate drives.
Your millage may wary if you try this. It is also worth mentioning that it would be an option to test non-seagate disks and/or bigger disks. Beware of the heat and power requirements though! HP themselves only sells the MSA20 with upto 1TB disks.
Finally for the record, it should be state that this was on an MSA20 with this firmware level:
MSA20 in mirror
Bus Interface: SCSI
Serial Number: PAAAC0PMQTR7V0
Chassis Serial Number: E01RMLJ17M
Chassis Name: mirror
RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Enabled
Controller Status: OK
Chassis Slot: 2
Hardware Revision: Rev A
Firmware Version: 2.08
Rebuild Priority: Medium
Expand Priority: Medium
Surface Scan Delay: 3 secs
Cache Board Present: True
Cache Status: OK
Accelerator Ratio: 50% Read / 50% Write
Drive Write Cache: Disabled
Read Cache Size: 56 MB
Write Cache Size: 56 MB
Total Cache Size: 112 MB
Chassis Slot 2 Battery Info
Battery Pack Count: 2
Battery Status: OK
Host Bus Adapter Slot: Slot Unknown
Host Bus Adapter Port: 1
SATA NCQ Supported: False
Posted in Hardware Projects, Linux, Work | 2 Comments »
March 1st, 2010
Well, then it happened. I quit Telia. I will surely miss my colleagues which are among the smartest and most dedicated people in Denmark, but it was time to move on to new worlds.
I look forward to work for NNIT. A title of Senior is new to me. Let us see, if I can lift the burdens put onto my shoulders.
Posted in Work | No Comments »
February 28th, 2010
I recently tried to reignite a server from another servers ignite recovery archive. At first I did not success. It threw this error in my face
The currently selected configuration does not contain any environments. You may want to select another configuration.
Debugging the error I found that the client did not have an config file in
/var/opt/ignite/clients/<name>/config
And thus lanbooting Ignite-UX threw the error above. I basically just copied over a config file from another server and edited it and all was fine again.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
I recently had an case, where I got
ERROR V-5-1-1198 Volume misc2prd_redo2vol has no CLEAN or non-volatile ACTIVE plexes
The plex associated with the volume was in RECOVER state. This can happend “if the plex content is out of-date with respect to the volume. This can happen if a disk containing one or more of the plex’s subdisks has been replaced or reattached”. In my case it was caused by a failing disk, that was brought online again later. To recover I did:
# Force the plex into offline state
sudo vxmend -g misc2prd_dg2 -o force off misc2prd_redo2vol-01
# Put the plex into stale state
sudo vxmend -g misc2prd_dg2 on misc2prd_redo2vol-01
# Put the plex into clean state
sudo vxmend -g misc2prd_dg2 fix clean misc2prd_redo2vol-01
# Start the volume
sudo vxvol -g misc2prd_dg2 startall
Posted in Unix, Volume managers, vxvm | No Comments »
January 22nd, 2010
To define do as you (almost) would do on HPUX 11.00+
sudo vi /etc/rc.config.d/netconf
RARPD=0
INTERFACE_NAME[0]=lan2
IP_ADDRESS[0]=10.17.137.227
LANCONFIG_ARGS[0]=ether
SUBNET_MASK[0]=255.255.255.0
DHCP_ENABLE[0]=0
INTERFACE_NAME[1]=lan2
IP_ADDRESS[1]=10.17.137.226
LANCONFIG_ARGS[1]=ether
SUBNET_MASK[1]=255.255.255.0
DHCP_ENABLE[1]=0
sudo /sbin/init.d/net start
To remove it again
sudo ifalias lan2 del 10.17.137.226
Posted in HP-UX, Unix | No Comments »
January 15th, 2010
As with other operating systems it is possible to bring multiple service ip-addresses online under one physical NIC under linux. This is just at brief howto on doing it.
ubuntu:
sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
# The first virtual interface
auto eth0:1
iface eth0:1 inet static
address 192.168.1.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
After you have edited that file, issue
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
RHEL (Redhat)/Centos:
cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
sudo cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:0
sudo vi ifcfg-eth0:0
cat ifcfg-eth0:0
> DEVICE=eth0:0
> BOOTPROTO=none
> IPADDR=192.168.1.100
> NETMASK=255.255.255.0
> GATEWAY=192.168.100
> ONBOOT=yes
After that, issue
sudo service network restart
Posted in Linux, Unix, Work | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2009
I recently helped identifying a problem with continuing calculations from a checkpoint file performed by desmond of the Schrödinger software portfolio. The error we got was
fail to extract simulation parameters from checkpoint file <filename>
It worked for a lot of people, but not for others. I searched high and low for differences:
- Different unix environment settings.
- Differnet MPI settings (intel mpi vs. gcc mpi vs. software mpi)
- Different permission settings on home dirs
- Differences in groupmembership between those who could continue calculations and those who couldn’t.
- Performing the calculations on different nodes in the calculation clusters.
As it turned out it was neither of these points that was responsible for problems. Instead it was the use of non-english chars in the comment field in the /etc/password file for the users who could not continue the calculations from a checkpoint file. The fix for this is simple:
usermod -c "new name, only english chars" <userid>
Everything was fine after that.
Posted in Unix, Work | No Comments »
November 4th, 2009
I was bitten lately by a problem of chaning passwords for users on a NIS master running RHEL 3. The actual error was
RPC: Can’t encode arguments
The password has not been changed on <nis master>.
passwd: Failed preliminary check by password service
I could not easily find anything on google about it. It took a while to figure out, so for reference I document my fix here. I merely removed the word ‘nis’ from /etc/pam.d/system-auth, and that seems to have solved the issue. It has worked previously with that word, so why it started to fail is beyond me, but who cares anyway.
Posted in Unix, Work | No Comments »
October 24th, 2009
Finally got my new laptop (the old one served me well), an HP elitebook 2530p. I had my doubts on the ability to be able to get suppport for every piece of hardware in this laptop under Linux, but it was doable. Not without issues, but still fairly easy.
I opted for the latest ubuntu, Karmic Koala (9.10), which on the time of writting was release candidate. The installation went smoothly. The windows partition got resized without issues and after a few clicks on the next button the system was up and running. With encrypted ext4 filesystem and all.
Working without a hitch:
- acpi (suspend, fan control, speedstep)
- sound
- graphic
- wired network
Working with some debugging
- Initially the wireless would not work with my wrt54g. It worked with other wifi hotspots. Symptoms were that the laptop could not a dhcplease from the router. Tried to flash the router with dd-wrt firmware instead of the tomato firmware. Did not help. Breakthrough came when I reset the router settings to “Default”. Then it worked with dd-wrt. I reflashed it with tomato and it still worked. So it is possible to enable “some setting” in the wrt54g router that cause problems with this laptop. My other laptops did not inhibit these issues. But then again. The laptop can not really be blamed.
- My external Huawai E180 did not work. After some googling, it turned out to be a bug introduced in a specific kernel release. The solution was to downgrade the kernel to a previous version. The only one available was 2.6.31-9-rt, which I choose and that works just fine.
- The built-in Qualcomm Gobi 1000 3G module requires a firmware and a firmware loader to function. The firmware loader can be found here. It is just a little .c program and a set of udev rules. After that you will need the firmware. That can be obtained from your windows partition. If you do not have the driver for the windows environment it can be obtained from hp. The Gobi chipset is a fullblown arm cpu which can function as a 3G modem for various types of 3G nets. Different firmwares allows access to different networks. This piece of information gives an overiew. For my part I needed the 6. th version of the firmware as I live in Europe/Denmark.
All in all a couple of minor issues. I am really satisfied with this latop and the way Linux works on it. Will hopefully be a good laptop for me in the next couple of years.
Posted in Hardware Projects, Unix, Work | 2 Comments »