digitalammo

I normally dread having to open a console session on a linux box in vSphere. For two reasons. 1) Normally something really bad has happened.  2) Characters being repeated.
Where I work we need to make multiple hops from your desktop to the actual vCenter server. Because of this there can be latency, which seems to be the cause the character repeat problem.

The solution, add the following parameter to your virtual machine.

In vSphere client, right click and “Edit Settings” *Machine must be powered off.
Click on “Options” tab “Advanced -> General” then click the “Configurations Parameters…” button.

Click  ”Add Row” and enter the following:
Parameter Name: keyboard.typematicMinDelay
Value: 3000000  *Minimum, you can set this higher if you need.

Trying to configure a new sendmail.mc and when trying to generate your sendmail.cf you get the following error:

[root@syslog-01]# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc:10: m4: cannot open `/usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4': No such file or directory

The reason you are seeing this error is you are missing the sendmail-cf package. On a RedHat based system install the following.

[root@syslog-01]# yum install sendmail-cf

Hope this helps!

Quick how-to extend a LVM volume. This was a done using a Netapp LUN, using their powermt software.
Not that it should matter, but I spoofed the UUID’s.

First lets double check the settings of the current Volume Group.

# pvdisplay
PV Name               /dev/emcpowerb
VG Name               datavg
PV Size               1000.00 GB / not usable 4.00 MB
Allocatable           yes (but full)
PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              255999
Free PE               0
Allocated PE          255999
PV UUID               j3lfld-sDxn-eqdG-nx0A-heVF-2Lzh-wxOqld

 

# lvdisplay
— Logical volume —
LV Name                /dev/datavg/odata
VG Name                datavg
LV UUID                fe5hpd-f79U-x8DF-DOc9-N5Jc-HFTz-SuBGL4
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                1000.00 GB
Current LE             255999
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     256
Block device           253:6

Let’s also double check that the new LUN is properly connected.

# powermt display dev=all
Pseudo name=emcpowerc
CLARiiON ID=APM00101010101 [server1]
Logical device ID=01010101010101010101010101010101 [LUN 95]
state=alive; policy=CLAROpt; priority=0; queued-IOs=0
Owner: default=SP B, current=SP B       Array failover mode: 1
============================================================
———- Host ———   – Stor –   — I/O Path –  – Stats —
###  HW Path                I/O Paths    Interf.   Mode    State  Q-IOs Errors
============================================================
0 lpfc                      sdb       SP B0     active  alive      0      0
0 lpfc                      sdd       SP A0     active  alive      0      0
1 lpfc                      sdf       SP B1     active  alive      0      0
1 lpfc                      sdh       SP A1     active  alive      0      0

So our new LUN in emcpowerc.  So using all this info above we can extend the Logical volume.

Start by creating a new Physical Volume:

# pvcreate /dev/emcpowerc
Physical volume “/dev/emcpowerc” successfully created

Now that that LUN in in LVM, we can add it to our existing Volume Group.  As seen above that VG name is datagv.

# vgextend datavg /dev/emcpowerc
Volume group “odatavg” successfully extended

We now have have two physical devices in our Volume Group. Now to extend the size of the Logical Volume.
In this case it will be 100% of the disk available in the VG to the LV

# lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/datavg/data
Extending logical volume odata to 1.10 TB
Logical volume odata successfully resized

So at this point the Logical Volume has been extended. However to use it, you will need to resize the file system to take advantage of this space.  I’m using ext3 which allows this to be done online.
I was able to do this while an oracle database was running on this file system.

# resize2fs /dev/datavg/data
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)Filesystem at /dev/datavg/data is mounted on /data; on-line resizing required
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/datavg/data to 294385664 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/datavg/data is now 294385664 blocks long.

Quick and easy way to mount iDisk in Linux.
If your running Gnome. On the Gnome menu bar click on Places –> Connect to Server…
Then use the following settings:

Service Type: Secure WebDAV (HTTPS)
Server: idisk.mac.com
Port: <blank>
Folder: <your username>
User Name: <your username>
*Add a bookmark if you like.

For a more in depth way, via the /etc/fstab check out the following site: http://www.chrisdanielson.com/2009/08/13/mounting-mobileme-idisk-using-webdav-and-linux/