VMWARE Free Tools

Here is the link for free VMWare tools:

http://vsphere-land.com/vinfo/free-tools

I like "rvtools" tool. It helps in reporting and installing or upgrading VMware Tools on Guest systems.


Have a nice day! 

pcieb: cannot load driver in Solaris

If you get thsi following error:
Rebooting with command: boot

Use is subject to license terms.
pcieb: cannot load driver
pcieb: cannot load driver
Cannot load drivers for /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@0/scsi@0/disk@0,0:d
Can't load the root filesystem
Type 'go' to resume
{0} ok

SPARC Enterprise



Recommended Action:

If the messages showed in are displayed, please edit both the

/etc/name_to_major file and the /etc/driver_aliases file by the

following procedure before rebooting the system.


1) Change the driver names in the /etc/name_to_major file as shown
below by using vi editor.

Before Changing - -  After Changing

-------------------------------------
pcieb - - px_pci
pcieb_bcm - - pxb_bcm
nulldriver - -  pxb_plx
-------------------------------------

# TERM=vt100
# export TERM
# cd /etc
# vi name_to_major

pcieb 242
^^^^^ Change to "px_pci"
pcieb_bcm 264
^^^^^^^^^ Change to "pxb_bcm"
nulldriver 265
^^^^^^^^^^ Change to "pxb_plx"

2) Change the driver names in the /etc/driver_aliases file as shown
below by using vi editor.

Before Changing - - After Changing
-------------------------------------
pcieb -  -  px_pci
pcieb_bcm - -  pxb_bcm
-------------------------------------

# cd /etc
# vi driver_aliases

pcieb "pciexclass,060400"
^^^^^ Change to "px_pci"
pcieb_bcm "pciex1166,103"
^^^^^^^^^ Change to "pxb_bcm"

3) Reboot system
# shutdown -y -i6 -g0

If are unable to do on a server, try rebooting the server with CD. Mount the root file system and do the above actions.

Have a nice day!

Set the Date and Time on Solaris

Setting the system date and time is fairly easy on solaris. Because you can easily set the time from the command line, you can set the time on a server remotely.


date mmddhhmmyy

The date command takes the syntax mmddhhmmyy, or “month day hour minute year”. You have to be superuser to set the time.

Example:

# date 1201010111

Fri Dec 1 01:01:00 PST 2011


Have a nice Day!

Enable and Disable a Service in Soalris 10

Take example of  ntp service:

Enable ntp


inetadm -e ntp

Disable ntp

inetadm -d ntp

More info

man inetadm

man svcadm
 
Its a small tip. Have a nice day!
 

Remove Old Hidden Devices from a VM after P2V Conversion

After you have converted a Windows server to a virtual machine, some redundant hardware devices may not be removed in the process. This also applies in disaster recovery scnario when the server is restored on a different/same hardware, some redundant hardware devices may not be removed.

I have seen this commonly with network devices. When setting the IP in a VM you may get and error saying a network card already has that IP assigned. But you couldn't find any other network devices. Well there might be, but there hidden and you just need to reveal them and remove them.

Open a command prompt on the Windows VM/Server (Start --> Run --> cmd).

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

devmgmt.msc

In the device management console (View --> Show Hidden Devices).

Uninstall the devices that are no longer required. Such as old network devices.
 
Have a nice day!

Linux Admin Tools

RedHat Admin Tools:

/usr/sbin/redhat-config-bind           /usr/sbin/redhat-config-packages
/usr/sbin/redhat-config-bind-gui       /usr/sbin/redhat-config-printer
/usr/sbin/redhat-config-kickstart      /usr/sbin/redhat-config-printer-gui
/usr/sbin/redhat-config-network        /usr/sbin/redhat-config-printer-tui
/usr/sbin/redhat-config-network-cmd    /usr/sbin/redhat-config-proc
/usr/sbin/redhat-config-network-druid  /usr/sbin/redhat-config-services

Suse Linux Tools:

YaST & YaST2

  Other Linux System administration tools are :

• Linuxconf http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf Linuxconf is a extremely large project. It is tremendously powerful and has large number of features. Linuxconf is the BEST KNOWN system admin tool for Linux!! It is available in all distros like Redhat, Debian, Suse, and others. The Linuxconf is the equivalent of SAM of HPUX and SMITTY of AIX. It runs on console window and as well as in GUI in X-Window. On Debian Linux to download and install just do 'apt-get linuxconf'.
• The Webmin is the most powerful and very popular system admin tool for Linux. Webmin is so popular and it was awarded the best System Administration tool for Solaris, BSD, Linux, HPUX, AIX, SCO and others. Webmin had been winning awards year after year for the past 5 years by many organisations, conferences and editors. Webmin can also be used for admin of other OSes like AIX, Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, BSD, SCO Unix, OSF, Darwin, Apple Macintosh Mac OS X and Cygwin. The best supported systems at the moment are Solaris, Linux (Redhat in particular) and FreeBSD. Webmin is written in Perl and Perl is universal like "C" and unlike "C" it is scripting language. Perl is "cousin-brother" of "C" language. But major drawback is that you need a X-Window system, Apache Webserver and Perl installed and running before using Webmin. And here is where Linuxconf fills the gap - you do not need X-Window and others to run Linuxconf. Linuxconf can run even in dumb text-terminal console with ncurses. The Webmin is at http://www.webmin.com . Go here and download the Webmin package.
  
  
  Have a nice day!
  
  Source: http://oss.sgi.com/LDP/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO/linux_admin_tools.html

Changing Host name and IP address in Solaris 10

Changing host name only:

Change the hostname in the following files:


/etc/nodename

/etc/hostname.*interface

/etc/inet/hosts

/etc/inet/ipnodes

and rename directory under /var/crash

# cd /var/crash

# mv oldname newname
then reboot the server.

Changing IP address:
To change an IP address on a Solaris system immediately, use the `ifconfig` command.

The syntax for `ifconfig` is:
ifconfig  "interface" "ip address" "netmask" "broadcast address"

If you don't know the names of your network interfaces, use the `ifconfig -a` command to list all of the available network interfaces.

Permanently Change an IP Address on Solaris:
To make this change permanent, you will need to edit one or more Solaris configuration files. If you do not, then your IP address will change back to the old address the next time you reboot the system.


You will need to edit the hosts entry in /etc/hosts.

If you have moved the system to a new network, you will need to change the default route in /etc/defaultrouter.

If you are using VLSM (Variable Length Subnet Masks), you may need to edit /etc/netmasks.

If you are using Solaris 9 or above, you may need to edit the IP address in /etc/inet/ipnodes.

You should then reboot the server to test your changes and ensure that they operate correctly

Vmware Suse Linux 32 bit server - Enable 16 GB memory

Recently I have ran an issue while installing and configuring 32 bit Suse Linux server on Vmware paltform. The Linux 32 bit systems couldn't recognise more than 4 Gb memory. The default kernel for Suse Linux 64 bit systems is bigsmp, which can read memory more than 4 GB. The default kernel for 32 bit Suse Linux systems is "smp", which can read up to 3 GB memory. Here I am discussing two tips to overcome this limit:

1. Install all physical RAM or assign total meory (like 16 GB)in Vmware settings before installing Suse 32 bit OS. It will take care of automatically and installs "bigsmp" kernel. You can see the total memory recognized by os with "free" commnad and it should be shown 16 GB.

2. If you want increase total memory after initial install of SuSe Linux 32 bit Os, you need to install "bigsmp" rpm from second or third OS dvd after installing physical RAM/allotting RAM in Vmware.

Have a nice day!

SusE Linux 32 Bit and 64 Bit Kerenel SHMMAX

Recently I have ran in an issue when installing Oracle on 32 bit Linux server and tried to setup kernel parameter "shmmax or seg size" more than 4 GB and it was showing shared memory as 0 bytes.

For 64 bit systems you can add this parameter in sysctl.conf
# vi /etc/sysctl.conf
add these lines
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 4294967296
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 1024
fs.file-max = 65536
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.core.rmem_default = 4194304
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

64 bit servers without above parameters, it will take default vaule for shmmax.
Problem occurs for only 32 bit systems, and you need to setup shmmax value less than 4 GB and here are the parameters to add sysctl.conf:

# vi /etc/sysctl.conf
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 6553600
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.core.rmem_default = 4194304
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

We need run "sysctl -p" to take changes immediately. You can use "ipcs -l" command for check affective parameters.

Have a Nice day!