Server-Status

Fixing design issue – Expand Windows 2008 r2 – Drive C: partition size where Drive D has enough size available under Cloudstack

Situation:

A number of Windows 2008 server installations where designed to have 1 DISK with 100GB deviced in 50GB C and 50GB D. Unfortunately 50GB is too less if you run a server and want to apply all patches. (Previous downloaded patches are kept in a ‘storage’ and cannot be deleted, finally consuming a lot of HDD space.

To solve this: add a DATA DISK to the instance in Cloudstack. Please note: the DATA DISK will not be found / seen or identified automatically by the Windows Server

Through the managment panel within Cloudstack you need to attach an ISO: VIRTIO (Leaseweb does provide this)

Within the Device Manager an SCSI device has been found, but no drivers can be applied, therefore the ISO you need to attach so that the VIRTIO drivers can be applied to your machine.

Now the drive will become available and you can format etc..

To expand the C drive: remove all data from the partitions/drives not needed (D, E etc.) You can also copy the content to the new DATADISK you now have.

By default through the DISK MANAGER (under Server Manager) you  CANNOT expand the root / boot disk. You can try all kinds of freeware stuff: no go, it will all point you to version you have to pay $$ for.

The solution is to use DISKPART. As Administrator open a CMD window and enter:

DISKPART <Enter>
List Disk <Enter>
Select Disk 0 <Enter> (Assuming that Disk 0 is your boot/root disk)
Detail Disk <Enter>
Information about your disk is given, you see the volumes
Select Volume 1 <Enter> (or 2 depends what is your Volume with C)
Extend Size = 20000 (20000 gives you an expand of 20GB for your C drive).

Repeat some commands if not all storage is given to C ..

Exit <Enter>

Performance issues HP Microserver gen8 and VMWARE EXSI 6.5

upgraded ESXI to 6.5 U1 which is version 6.5.0 build 5969303

You are running HPE Customized Image ESXi 6.5.0 version 650.10.1.0.47 released on July 2017 and based on ESXi 6.5.0 Vmkernel Release Build 5310538

unfortunately the HP Microserserver Gen8 is than running with: HPE_bootbank_scsi-hpvsa_5.5.0.102-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820

As I was (and still am but as of writing I am in maintenance mode) seeing spikes in my CPU usages. It might be caused by the bad performance

checking with:
cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1
time dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=8k count=1000000

It took a very long time to see some output. (Very long time!)

than I tried to downgrade to the hpvsa-5.5.0-88.zip driver

guidelines:

  1. enter maintenance mode
  2. I do a reboot, but you can do it probably without
  3. copy the downloaded driver to /tmp/ and run the following command
  4. esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/hpvsa-5.5.0-88.zip
  5. the old driver will be removed and the 5.5.0-88 driver installed
  6. Now important: if you do reboot this way: you will not see your DataStores anymore, only your NFS datastores (in my situation) this is caused by VMWARE ESXI as it will be using vmw_ahci driver for the datastore.
  7. so disable the usage of this ‘default’ driver: esxcli system module set –enabled=false –module=vmw_ahci
  8. now you can reboot and your device will be using the 5.5.0-88 driver
  9. you can see this by using; cat /proc/driver/hpvsa/hpvsa0

update (taken from: https://homeservershow.com/forums/topic/9602-esxi-notes/)

When installing VIB you first need to un-install the old driver

How to downgrade the hpvsa driver in 5.5 and 6.0
The b120i driver from 5.5.0-90.0 to 5.5.0.98-1 has performance issues and requires a downgrade to 5.5.0-88.0. Newer versions may still be affected so check the forum or this thread for more details.

Download scsi-hpvsa-5.5.0-88OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib from the HP VIB depot and upload it to your datastore. It is the same driver for 5.5 and 6.0.

Enter maintenance mode and run the following command. You’ll need to reboot after changing the driver and then leave maintenance mode. Do NOT restart without reinstalling the driver after removing it.

important: remove the old driver !!

esxcli software vib remove -n Hewlett-Packard:scsi-hpvsa

install the NEW driver:

esxcli software vib install –viburl=/vmfs/volumes/[NAME OF DATASTORE]/scsi-hpvsa-5.5.0-88OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib

If you get an error saying bootbank cannot be live installed
The error will be similar to the following:

The transaction is not supported:
VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-base cannot be live installed.
VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-base cannot be removed live.
The bootbank is the system image that ESXi loads into a ramdisk and boots off.
It is only used during startup and during updates.

The error is generally due to two things.
First is corruption and second is if the boot device is not accessible for some reason.
On the Gen8 Microserver, doing an iLO update whilst the system is running may cause the micro-SD reader to temporarily stop working.
The solution is to shutdown the host, unplug the machine for 5 seconds, plug it back in and attempt the update again

the speed should have been returned.

 

The hassle of upgrading ESXI 6.0 to ESXI 6.5 on a HP Microserver gen8

Wauw ..

yesterday and today I tried to upgrade my HP Microserver Gen8 from VMWARE ESXI 6.0.0 to 6.5
what a trouble ..

Steps:
shut down all vms (hosts) and enter maintenance mode. If you do this there are a number of online blogs with help to install from online depots but in all my tests it was too slow or I was to impatient to wait to end. But in the end I always ended up with an system with errors:

the transaction is not supported: VIB Hewlett-Packard_bootbank_scsi-hpvsa_5.5.0-88OEM.550.0.0.1331820

Do not try to force the installation. You will end up with an system where it seems that your EXSI is updated to 6.5 but actually is is running in a ramdisk environment. Easy to see cause you have lost your datastores (NFS datastores are still mounted).

If you than reboot: you are back to 6.0.0 .. so how to solve this:

easy: when entering maintenance mode: reboot your machine. In many guidelines this part is not mentioned.

After I rebooted I first tried the online depot installation documentation but ended up waiting and waiting. I got a VMWARE image for update from VMWARE but I got all kinds of different issues again:

“The upgrade contains the following set of conflicting VIB” When using the standard image of VMWARE: many conflicting vibs a no go for me. So I read some blogs and I found out that it is best to keep using your HPE image vmware files. (So in short: if you used the HPE VMWARE ESXI ISO installing Esxi onto your HP Microserver Gen8 keep using the update files with HPE in it and not the plain VMWARE onces. It can give issues !

After I used the HPE image I only got 1 issue: one vib was still complaining. On this blog I read what I needed to do: remove this vib (partner supported, so not native).

After removing this VIB I could upload the various ZIP bundle files like

VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-5310538-HPE-650.10.1.0.47-Jul2017-depot.zip
VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-Update1-5969303-HPE-650.U1.10.1.0.14-Jul2017-depot.zip

with the command:
esxcli software vib install -d “/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/patch-directory/VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-5310538-HPE-650.10.1.0.47-Jul2017-depot.zip”

I was able to install finally the 6.5 version. Due to issues of Storage driver I immediately updated to the U1 update
with the command:

esxcli software vib update -d “/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/patch-directory/VMware-ESXi-6.5.0-Update1-5969303-HPE-650.U1.10.1.0.14-Jul2017-depot.zip”

the blog nxhut showed me some info that with the U1 version the storage speed performance issues should be over.

A simple test downloading a file towards a VM showed me a 18MB/s so the 10MB/s barrier was not seen.

A last reboot and get the machine out of maintenance mode. Finally I have a running 6.5U1.

 

If you want to connect to your local server what is behind openvpn and yourself are connected with a VPN to your local network

Yeah .. wierd title

So in my case: I am at location A and I am making a VPN to my local network what is at location B

I can access all my local servers and computers, but one !

“The One” is a server which has a dedicated openvpn connection to location C, when this is active my VPN from location A cannot access “The One” at location B. Only when the OpenVPN connection is terminated

Solution: add a static route on “The One”

check with: ip route show

and add the route like this: ip route add 10.10.10.0/24 via 10.1.1.1 dev eth0

where 10.10.10.0 is the VPN IP range what your local network is giving VPN users and via 10.1.1.1 is the IP of your gateway (router)

… easy peacy ..

Google vind iets .. probeer dat dan maar eens recht te zetten

Google zegt dat deze site mogelijk gehacked is ..

en laat dat nu eens niet het geval zijn

Deze site is mogelijk gehackt., zegt Google. Ja maar …. en dan ga je zoeken, testen en je weet me god niet waar je moet zoeken. Want .. tsja je krijgt wel een link, maar als je link naar de weblog sectie van deze site verwijst dan staan daar een x aantal berichten onder met wat ‘technisch’ karakter, maar dat is het dan wel .. heb dus totaal geen idee waar ik moet zoeken of wel stukje code wat ik getikt hebt een trigger is voor Alphabet’s Google ..

Mocht je iets vreemds bemerken, ik hoor het wel, tot die tijd blijven we ons afvragen wat er mis zou zijn .. (Ik heb het theme is al veranderd .. ) dus een theme hack sluit ik even uit

 

update: Na eerst 1 pagina aan te merken als iets wat niet goed zou zijn, vond Google dat dan de gehele site wel even geïnfecteerd was. Maar echte duiding wat er dan mis is: nope ..

Dus ..

update: diep in de spelonken van dit weblog was wel wat aan de hand met wat gemodificeerde bestanden maar zou niet zo 1-2-3 kunnen zien of dat Google zou signaleren .. maar goed , WordPress maar even waar nodig geheel verwijderd en opnieuw geïnstalleerd zodat er geen ‘historie’ van oude bestanden meer aanwezig was.

Tevens een aantal folders die niet meer gebruikt werden ook verwijderd zodat dat ook geen belemmering zou kunnen geven ..Zie hier . site is weer ok .. zegt Google dan ;)

PGOffline & MySQL

For many years I am using PGOffline, a tool to get all the content from yahoogroups.

PGOffline was using up to version 3 an Access Database but with the release of version  4 they went to an SQLite database.  Here came my problem.

For years I was inserting the data from the Access Database into an MySQL database so that with an PHP script I could search through more than 100.00 messages.

But after PGOffline went to SQLite I had an issue cause my ODBC connection was not working anymore. Due to some change in PC’s and notebooks I lost my access database with the ODBC and Queries as well (damn .. )

Altough the mailinglist is not that active anymore, there were some 6000 messages submitted in around 1,5 to 2 years. and I want to have them inserted in the MySQL database still ..

The issue I had was that the SQLite database of PGOffline contains a BLOB (Binary Object)  with the message and is not ‘simply’ readable.

for months I was trying and there was no solution for me to fix that. Until last weekend. And actually it was pretty easy. And I fixed it ..

1. Microsoft Access

2. Make sure you have access to your MySQL database and able to connect to it (do check my.cnf for the bind address (if you are on Linux) make sure you can connect to it from other machines) and make sure the firewall does not block its port (which I noticed after 15 minutes of trying or so)

3. install MySQL ODBC drivers in your environment

4. install SQLite ODBC drivers in your environment

In Access make sure you link to the database with linked tables.

the SQLite database is just the file. In my example its on the same computer as the Access database

The issue I had with the SQLite database and its linked tables was that the ODBC driver did not allow me to search with wildcards (select * from person  where person is like ‘a%’) . To make sure I have all subscribers I made an update query to a local table with all the persons, but in fact that is not needed.

Than I made sure I could read the messages

with this query: ‘StrConv([content],64)’ I was able to decode the BLOB.  and with some other InStr queries I removed the beginning and end of the start of the message as this is ‘garbage’ not needed, I added some HTML breaks.

Finally I created an update query inserting all the new messages from the SQL database not in the MySQL database, I even found that very old messages were not imported at all they were forgotten, now they were inserted as my Query statement request to insert all YahooMessageID’s not in the MySQL database ..

 

 

 

https voor aroundmyroom.com

Gisteren de website overgezet naar https, gewoon omdat het kan en omdat ik eea wilde uittesten met een certificaat op de website. Het werkt. Ik ben er dus blij mee. Certificaat werkt voor een jaar dus daarna zien we wel verder ;0)

Alleen krijg ik momenteel het niet voor elkaar om die www  eraf te halen (too many redirects) .. uhmm zal wel een foute plugin zijn ..

Munin help needed with renaming graph titles

[nerd mode] this article includes the update with solution ;-)

Does someone know how to configure Munin to change or rename graph titles of a smart switch with SNMP?

I have a smart Ethernet switch and I get my SNMP data, but the interface ports are called: interface port 1, interface port 2, interface port 3 etc.. But I want to have this renamed so that I can identify the various interface ports as: router, NAS, uplink, wireless, server1, server 2 etc.

Is it possible to configure this with munin?

I’ve looked in the docs, but cannot find anything about how to rename something.

Update, after long searching and looking through manuals/guides/how-to I have found what does the job [this was the entry telling me: hey that could be the solution]

in munin.conf select the config part where the device / node is configured

[highway1]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name no

Under use_node_name no you can put your manual ‘overrides’

Port one of my smart switch is called:

  • snmp_highway1_if_err_1 (for errors)
  • snmp_highway1_if_1.graph_title (for traffic)

So here I define the names of the interfaces:

snmp_highway1_if_err_1.graph_title [P1] Cable/Router Errors
snmp_highway1_if_1.graph_title [P1] Cable/Router Traffic
snmp_highway1_if_err_2.graph_title [P2] Smart Switch Boven Errors
snmp_highway1_if_2.graph_title [P2] Smart Switch Boven Traffic
snmp_highway1_if_err_3.graph_title [P3] AccessPoint/Switch Kamer Errors
snmp_highway1_if_3.graph_title [P3] AccessPoint/Switch Kamer Traffic

etc.

The magic is done with .graph_title, per interface you can define the graph title.

After 5 minutes of waiting my graphs are being updated and generated with the correct interface names so that you can remember what you have connected to which port of your smart switch (in my case).

networktraffic

Plesk 11 issue with options FollowSymlinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off …..

I use a number of ‘open’ directories on my server for years, but I switched servers and updated Plesk to version 11.

Suddenly my open directories where not open anymore and no content was visible. In my error.log I find this error:

Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden: /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/index.pl

I searched the internet and I could not find a good solution other than that I had to change my dir.conf where is stated: DirectoryIndex at_domains_index.html index.php index.html index.cgi index.pl index.xhtml index.htm index.shtml index.cfm

I even changed my vhost configuration what did not work either, it might helped finding the solution, so I will check if my changed vhost.conf is necessary.

in the end: changing dir.conf with the line about the indexes was the solution. I had to remove to remove at least the perl (.pl) one.

I now have:

DirectoryIndex at_domains_index.html index.php index.html index.htm

restarted apache with: service apache2 restart and issue was resolved