Philipp's braindump

ESXi and iSCSI Setup

philipp — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:02:12 +0000

Today I learned that with iSCSI you should set proper NICs to the iSCSI vmk’s.

Regarding http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_esxi_server_config.pdf Setting Up and Configuring Software iSCSI Adapter on page 91 you need to connect a physical NIC to the vmkernel interface which does the iSCSI traffic:

esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk2 -d vmhba37

ESXi and SSH authorized keys

philipp — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:14:48 +0000

When using ESXi, after every reboot the authorized keys are lost.

If you add them to the oem.tgz file which gets deployed each reboot, you’re fine:

Copy the existing oem.tgz from the ESXi server:

scp your.esxi.server.ip:/bootbank/oem.tgz .

create a new directory:

mkdir oem

change into that dir:

cd oem

extract the content of current oem.tgz:

tar xvfz ../oem.tgz

add your .ssh/authorized_keys file:

cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys .

create a new tar file:
tar cvfz ../oem.tgz etc lib sbin usr var .ssh

and finally copy the new oem back to the server:

scp ../oem.tgz your.esxi.server.ip:/bootbank/oem.tgz

ESXi 4.1 and Etherchannel

philipp — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:42:50 +0000

Today I had an issue with ESXi 4.1 and Etherchannel.

Some googleing found me this post:

vim-cmd hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy -–nicteaming-policy=loadbalance_ip vSwitch0
and
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/portgroup_set –-nicteaming-policy=loadbalance_ip vSwitch0 ‘Management Network’
and for good measure
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/refresh

If you have a german keyboard (like me) and have issues with the Remote Console of your Server, try setting the language to english:

setxkbmap us

return to german via:

setxkbmap de

Make Thunderbird 3 look & act like Thunderbird 2

philipp — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:49:30 +0000

Backup for me from http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/make_thunderbird_3_look_act_like_thunderbird_2:

Here are some tips for making TB3 look & act like TB2:


(1) Switch to "All Folders" view. Use the little left and right arrows in the header bar at the top of the folder tree pane. Or go to Help --> Migration Assistant and then select 'use "all folders" mode'.
(2) Switch to the old, familiar toolbar. Go to Help --> Migration Assistant and then select "use original toolbar".
(3) Turn off indexing. Go to Tools --> Options --> Advanced --> General (tab) and uncheck the "Enable Global Search and Indexer" box.
(4) Open messages in new window (not a tab). Go to Tools --> Options --> Advanced --> Reading & Display (tab). Change the "Open messages in:" selection to "A new message window".
(5) Hide tabs when there is only 1. Go to Tools --> Options --> Advanced --> General (tab) and click the "Config Editor..." button. If a cautionary dialog box pops up then click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button. Start typing in the filter line of the small window that opens. Type "mail.tabs.autoHide". You will see a seeting with this preference name in the list below. Double click it to change it to "true".

Doing both (4) and (5) will (mostly) turn off tabs.

My Thunderbird Extensions

philipp — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:25:11 +0000

Just a reminder for myself:

Enable debugging with last Skype4Py

philipp — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:32:04 +0000

With last Skype4Py Arek changed a bit the logging. To enable it now you need to put the following in your script:

import logging logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)

Linux Skype: Participate in Pulic Chats

philipp — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:28:03 +0000

Today I got some hint how to implement joining public chats via API in linux Skype.

So I added those few lines to my action-handler script and now you can also join public chats from linux:

Grab the newest version at: http://www.kolmann.at/philipp/linux/skype_action_handler/

Debian Lenny Xen StepByStep

philipp — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:29:37 +0000

on a plain Lenny with Grub as Boot Manager (Lilo doesn’t work with xen ):

apt-get install xen-hypervisor-3 xenwatch xen-tools linux-image-2.6-xen-amd64
/etc/xen/xend-config.sxp: "(network-script network-bridge)"
Edit /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf
time xen-create-image --hostname=test --ip=10.0.0.11 --arch=amd64 --role=udev

List hardware of your server

philipp — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:55:49 +0000

Recently I wondered which hardware I am using in a remote root server. A friend of mine came up with the following command:

dmidecode

This even works on ESX 3.5 Hosts. You see really detailled which hardware is in the box.

VMware ESX: Create depot and install patches from there

philipp — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:42:38 +0000

Today I have made 2 scripts which ease ESX 3.5 patch management for me.

First script (getpatch) is to download all needed patches onto a local server and extract them. The second (patchesx) is run on the ESX server to install the patches.

In getpatch you need to set the PATCHDIR to the proper location. In patchesx you need to set the DEPOT-path according to your webserver.

getpatch
patchesx