the nine to five. or eight to six. sometimes twenty-four by seven…
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Useful for mounting the same directory in multiple places, particularly in chroot jails I hear.
# mount –bind olddir newdir
Mount a directory olddir as a mount point newdir (of course, mount point must exist!). Check using mount -l to see that it is in fact (rw,bind).
In /etc/fstab to mount on boot:
/path/to/olddir /path/to/newdir none rw,bind 0 0
My boyfriend is moving in today! This makes me a very happy camper! Now the interesting part (and I suppose relevant) is how we’re going to coexist happily when we’re both nerds with our own ideas of what is good (he likes MSSQL. Enough said.)
My grand plan involves a network that can support:
It all sounds relatively easy, and given that we already have a wireless router at hand it shouldn’t be too hard to set up. I hope to share my experience here particularly with anything that comes up unexpectedly and how we resolve issues… even the personal differences 
Part Two follows on from my previous blog post, so if you haven’t seen that you might want to check it out first. This post is purely from my own experience installing Dell OMSA on ESX which I did solely to gain access to the config printing and modifying tools for the lights-out card (DRAC).
There is a full set of instructions available in PDF from Dell, but they encompass other versions of ESX I haven’t used for a long time (2.5 and thereabouts) – I can say only that I’ve installed on a select number of VMWare builds.
Anyway, to cut to the chase. Firstly check the build version of ESX.
# vmware -v
# VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 build-153875
Awesome. This means that the patch level supercedes the warning notice in the PDF (if you choose to read it) which states:
NOTICE: On ESX 3.5 systems, Patch ESX350-200802412-BG needs to be installed prior to the
OpenManage Installation. This patch addresses an issue related to event reporting in Dell OMSS.
This patch may be downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches_35.html.
For further details, refer to http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003459.
Basically what the patch 200802412-BG does is fix a problem with reporting in the OpenManage service. I don’t think it would have affected us anyway.. but just to be cautious it’s worth installing if you’re running an older version of ESX, I’d say.
Step 2. Find a copy of OpenManage. Whether this is the DVD that came with your server, downloaded from http://support.dell.com, or an ISO image, you will have to mount it since it’s just way too hard to figure out what RPMs and dependencies you’ll need (at least it was in my opinion!). Mount it on the Service Console, then do the following:
cd /mnt/cdrom (or wherever you mounted it to)
cd SYSMGMT/srvadmin/linux/supportscripts
Install OpenManage. Note the flag -r for a DRAC server. (The others are: -b base install; -w web interface; -s OpenManage Storage Management (OMSM) which I’m not sure of.)
./srvadmin-install.sh -b -w -r -s
Start OpenManage services, or reboot here:
srvadmin-services.sh start
Then configure the ESX server firewall to allow connections to the web console of OMSA.
esxcfg-firewall -o 1311,tcp,in,OpenManageRequest
Don’t forget to unmount the CD when you reboot.
Turns out the shrink-wrapped CDs you get with new Dell servers are actually useful! Fancy that. Typically we throw them in storage for the possibility that we may need to check a BIOS revision or run some hardware diagnostics.
The useful disk out of the lot is the Dell Systems Management Tools and Documentation DVD. The version I installed for a PowerEdge 2950 is Version 5.5 (Rev A00, October 2008), but I’m not sure whether earlier versions will work on newer hardware, or if this will work on PE2850s and earlier.
The DVD by default includes (I am reading off the label):
The one I’d like to draw your attention to today is the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator, which is quite possibly the only way to check and modify your Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) without rebooting the server. In the environment that I work in where it’s often difficult to get approval to reboot servers, and where a lack of process often causes such things as remote access and remote management to get thrown out the window during the build phase, this is some kind of godsend.
Basically you installl the OpenManage software on your operating system of choice (from what I can tell, Microsoft Windows and RPM-based Linux is supported) and then you have a set of utilities from which you can, well, remotely manage your remote management tools. Very nifty.
Install Process (Linux)
The install is pretty easy. Stick the DVD in, mount, and execute the installer script. I had a look at downloading just the packages you need (The DellLinuxWiki has a repository of OpenManage software, for example) but it’s a lot easier to just run the script. Steps are:
rpm –import /mnt/cdrom/SYSMGMT/srvadmin/linux/RPM-GPG-KEY
cd /mnt/cdrom (or whereever you mounted the disc)
cd SYSMGMT/srvadmin/linux/supportscripts
sh srvadmin-install.sh –express (or -x)
It will run a prerequisite checker and warn you if you are missing packages. You’ll need to install these from install media, although the DVD contains a set of these in SYSMGMT/srvadmin/linux/RPMS.
Note: If you are running a 64-bit version of Red Hat, you’ll also need the 32-bit drivers, as OpenManage is a 32-bit application. So install the packages with “i386″ in their filename.
Output will look like:
Installing the selected packages.
Preparing… ########################################### [100%]
1:srvadmin-omilcore ########################################### [ 6%]
To start all installed services without a reboot,
enter the following command: srvadmin-services.sh start
2:srvadmin-syscheck ########################################### [ 13%]
3:srvadmin-deng ########################################### [ 19%]
4:srvadmin-omauth ########################################### [ 25%]
5:srvadmin-omacore ########################################### [ 31%]
6:srvadmin-jre ########################################### [ 38%]
7:srvadmin-ipmi ########################################### [ 44%]
8:srvadmin-hapi ########################################### [ 50%]
9:srvadmin-isvc ########################################### [ 56%]
10:srvadmin-rac5-component########################################### [ 63%]
11:srvadmin-cm ########################################### [ 69%]
12:srvadmin-iws ########################################### [ 75%]
13:srvadmin-omhip ########################################### [ 81%]
14:srvadmin-racadm5 ########################################### [ 88%]
15:srvadmin-racdrsc5 ########################################### [ 94%]
16:srvadmin-storage ########################################### [100%]
You will then need to start the Server Administrator services by running
sh srvadmin-services.sh start
Using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator To Manage Your DRAC
There is an easy way to find out the current IP, or to set the IP, subnet or gateway of the DRAC card. The tool to use is called “racadm”.
racadm getniccfg will identify the current state of the NIC, its IP address, subnet mask, and gateway.
racadm setniccfg -s 192.168.1.1 192.168.255.254 255.255.255.0 will set the NIC’s IP to 192.168.1.1, with a gateway of .254.
racadm racreset will reset this config.
The command I’m using to check that DST will change at the right time reads out of the tzdata file:
zdump -v Australia/Sydney | grep 2008
It returns output like so:
Australia/Sydney Sat Apr 5 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Apr 6 02:59:59 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Australia/Sydney Sat Apr 5 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Apr 6 02:00:00 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney Sat Oct 4 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Oct 5 01:59:59 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000Australia/Sydney Sat Oct 4 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Oct 5 03:00:00 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Good for checking that your clocks are in order!
One of those things I find really annoying because I forget exactly what the lines are.
/etc/sysconfig/network:
NETWORKING_IPV6=NO
/etc/modprobe.conf
alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off
Reboot.