One Stop LInux issues

VMWare ESX

2008-09-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

The following links are to download the pdfs for vmware.

Vmware ESX cheat sheet

ESX Maintenance Mode via Command Line

To enter Maintenance Mode, at the ESX console type:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

To exit Maintenance Mode type:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit

To display whether the ESX Server is currently in maintenance mode or not type:

vimsh -n -e"hostsvc/hostsummary" | grep inMaintenanceMode

MYSQL REPLICATION

2007-10-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

MYSQL REPLICATION CHEAT SHEET

USER REPLICANT CREATION:

Log into Master server as root and issue this sql statement

GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT
ON *.*
TO 'replicant'@'slave_host'
IDENTIFIED BY 'my_pwd';

Log into Slave server as root and issue this sql statement

GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT
ON *.*
TO 'replicant'@'master_host'
IDENTIFIED BY 'my_pwd';

Configuring the Servers

MASTER:

The only changes need to make in my.cnf are

server-id = 1
log-bin = /var/log/mysql/bin.log

SLAVE:

The only changes need to make in my.cnf are

server-id = 2

master-host = mastersite.com
master-port = 3306
master-user = replicant
master-password = my_pwd

log-bin = /var/log/mysql/bin.log
log-bin-index = /var/log/mysql/log-bin.index
log-error = /var/log/mysql/error.log

relay-log = /var/log/mysql/relay.log
relay-log-info-file = /var/log/mysql/relay-log.info
relay-log-index = /var/log/mysql/relay-log.index

Copying Databases and Starting Replication

Master Server:
mysqldump --user=root --password=my_pwd \
--extended-insert --all-databases \
--master-data > /tmp/backup.sql

*Copy the backup.sql file to slave server and follow the
Below commands.

Slave Server:

mysql --user=root --password=my_pwd < /tmp/backup.sql START SLAVE;

Automating Backups

A shell script to take automated backup of Database dump at slave server.

#!/bin/sh date = `date +%Y%m%d`
mysqladmin --user=root --password=my_pwd stop-slave
mysqldump --user=root --password=my_pwd --lock-all-tables --all-databases > /backups/mysql/backup-${date}.sql
mysqladmin --user=root --password=my_pwd start-slave

LINUX COMMANDS HISTORY

2007-06-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

Falling down is not defeat. Defeat is when you refuse to get up.

All the best for your all future assignments in your life and happy LINUX.

Any queries related to Linux can send to mailto:shankermcsa@yahoo.com

Trademarks: Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

UNIX History

First version created in Bell Labs - 1969

AT&T licenses source code for low cost

Trademarks UNIX name, "UNIX" name closely held
Licensees must create new name for their operating systems
Many UNIX "flavors" emerge

GNU Project / FSF

GNU Project started in 1984

r Goal: Create a "free" UNIX clone

r By 1990, nearly all required userspace applications created

r gcc, emacs, etc

l Free Software Foundation

r Non-profit organization that manages the GNU project

Linux Origins

l Linus Torvalds

m Finnish college student in 1991

m Created Linux kernel

l Linux kernel + GNU applications = complete, free, UNIX-like OS

Recommended Hardware Specifications

l Pentium Pro or better with 256 MB RAM or

l 64-bit Intel/AMD with 512 MB RAM

l 2-6 GB disk space

l Bootable CD

l Other processor architectures supported

l Itanium 2, IBM Power, IBM Mainframe

Virtual Consoles

l Multiple non-GUI logins are possible through the use of virtual consoles

l There are by default 6 available virtual consoles

l Available through Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6]

l If X is running, it is available as Ctrl-Alt-F7

The Xorg GUI Framework

l Modern, free implementation of X11

l Highly flexible framework for displaying graphical applications and environments

l Completely network-transparent client/server architecture

l System can be configured to present a graphical login screen on Ctrl-Alt-F7

The Xorg Graphical Environments

l Collections of applications that provide a graphical working environment with a consistent look-and-feel

m GNOME - The default desktop environment

m KDE - Environment based on the Qt toolkit

Starting Xorg

l Nothing needed if system boots to a graphical login. Just authenticate.

l If system boots to a virtual console login, Xorg must be started manually

m Run startx to manually start Xorg

Getting Help

Don't try to memorize everything!

Many levels of help

m whatis

m command --help

m man and info

m /usr/share/doc/

m Red Hat documentation

Extended Documentation

l The /usr/share/doc directory

m Subdirectories for most installed packages

m Location of docs that don't fit elsewhere

r Example configuration files

r Html/pdf/ps documentation

r License details

Some Important Directories

The home directories

m /root, /home/username

l The bin directories

m /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin

m /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/sbin

l Foreign filesystem mountpoints

m /media and /mnt

l /etc holds system config files

l /tmp holds temporary files

l /boot holds the kernel and bootloader

l /var and /srv hold server data

l /proc and /sys hold system information

l The lib directories hold shared libraries

m /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib

Absolute and Relative Pathnames

Absolute pathnames begin with a forward slash

l Complete "road map" to file location

l Can be used anytime you wish to specify a file name

Relative pathnames do not begin with a slash

l Specifies location relative to your current working directory

l Can be used as a shorter way to specify a file name

COMMANDS

If OS is not recognizing the SATA HDD

boot: linux all-generic-ide noapic noiapic

After installing the OS go to rescue mode and edit the grub.conf

#vi /etc/grub.conf

Root (hd0,0)

Kernel (vmlinuz-2.6.9-22.EL ro root=LABEL=/ linux all-generic-ide noapic noiapic rhgb quiet

Initrd /initrd-2.6.9.22.EL.img

Basic commands:

#echo $SHELL shows the default SHELL

#cat /etc/shells shows other existing Shells

#vi /etc/login.defs login information file

#chvt to switch to other terminal

#chage -l <username> to see the A/c policies.

#chage <username> to modify A/c policies

#chage -E -1 <username> to make account never expires.

#date --set "-----------"

Present Working Directory

#pwd

Listing Commands:

#ls

#ls -a

#ll

#ls -ld <filename>

#ll <filename>

#ls -al

Creating the Directory and Files

#mkdir <dir>

#mkdir <dir1> <dir1> <dir1>

#mkdir -p d1/d2/d3

Changing Directory

#cd <dir>

Creating a File

#cat > <filename>

Ctrl+d

#touch <filename>

Copy file

#cp <source path> <destination path>

Move and Renaming file

#mv <source path> <destination path>

Deleting file

#rm -rf <filename>

Append an existing file

#cat >> <filename>

Determining File Content

Files can contain many types of data

l Check file type with file before opening to determine appropriate command or application to use

l file [options] <filename>...

User & Group Admin

Authentication information is stored in plain text files:

o /etc/passwd

o /etc/shadow

o /etc/group

o /etc/gshadow

Changing Your Identity

To change your password, run passwd

m Insecure passwords are rejected

To start a new shell as a different user:

o su

o su -

o su username

o su - username

User Information Commands

Find out who you are

m whoami

Find out what groups you belong to

m groups, id

Find out who is logged in

m users, who, w

m last

Syntax:

#useradd <username> to create user

#groupadd <groupname> to create group

#useradd -u <uid> <username>

#groupadd -g <gid> <groupname>

#userdel <username> to delete user

#userdel -r <username> to delete user including home dir.

#passwd <username> to assign passwd

#passwd -S <username> shows passwd set to user or not

#passwd -d <username> to remove passwd

#id <username>

#finger <username>

Syntax: useradd <option> <username>

#usermod -G <groupname> <username>

#usermod -u <uid> <username>

#usermod -d <dir> <username> to change home directory

#usermod -s /bin/ksh <username> to change default Shell

#usermod -c "admin" <username> to put comments

#usermod -u <uid> -o <username> to change UID

#usermod -g <gid> <groupname> to change GID

#usermod -l <newusername> <oldusername> to rename user

#groupmod -n <newgroup name> <oldgroup name> to rename group

#gpasswd -a <username> <groupname> to add members of group

#gpasswd -M <username>,<username> <groupname>

#chown <new owner>.<new group> <file/dir name>

#chgrp <new group name> <file name>

#vi /etc/passwd (backup file: /etc/passwd-)

#vi /etc/group (backup file: /etc/group-)

#vi /etc/shadow (backup file: /etc/shadow-)

#tail <filename>

#head <filename>

Links

#ln <source file path> <destination file path> Hard Link

#ln -s <source file path> <destination file path> Soft Link

Permission of a File

Symbolic Notation: Read=r, Write=w and execute=x

Numeric Notation: Read =4, Write=2 and Execute=1

r w x (Where 1 = on and 0 = off)

1 0 0 =4

0 1 0 =2

0 0 1 =1

UMASK: Universal Mask is a value which is subtracted from the full permissions to generate the default permissions.

Root User Normal User

The full permission of a File is 666 The full permission of a File is 666

-rw- rw- rw- 666 -rw- rw- rw- 666

-rw- r- - r- - 644 -rw- r- - r- - 664

-------------------------------- -------------------------------

-w- -w- 022 (umask) -w- -w- 002 (umask)

The full permission of a Directory is 777 The full permission of a Directory is 777

-rwx rwx rwx 777 -rwx rwx rwx 777

-rwx r- x r- x 755 -rwx r- x r- x 775

-------------------------------- --------------------------------

-w- -w- 022 (umask) -w- -w- 002 (umask)

Syntax:

#umask to see the umask value

#vi /etc/bashrc to change umask value permanently

#chmod <numeric permission> <file/dir>

e.g. #chmod 777 <file/dir>

Special Permissions
SUID Value is 4
SGID Value is 2

Normally, files created in a directory belong to the default group of the user
When a file is created in a directory with the setgid bit set, it belongs to the same group as the directory

Sticky Bit Value is 1
Normally, users with write permissions to a directory can delete any file in that

directory regardless of that file's permissions or ownership

With the sticky bit set on a directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file

Example: /tmp

drwxrwxrwt 12 root root 4096 Nov 2 15:44 tmp

ACL
#mount -o remount,acl <mount point> enable the partition with ACL properties

#setfacl -m u:<uname>:<permission> <filename> applying acl to the user level

#setfacl -x u:<uname>:<permission> <filename> to remove the acl

#setfacl -m g:<gname>:<permission> <filename> applying acl to the group level

#getfacl <filename> to check the acl permission

Note: when applying ACL present working directorie must be acl directorie and to make it permanent write inside /etc/fstab

Attribute

#chattr +i <filename>

#chattr -i <filename>

#chattr +a <filename>

#chattr -a <filename>

#lsattr <filename>

Special Users
SUDO

#useradd admin
#passwd admin
#vi /etc/sudoers or #visudo put the admin user in sudo file.
#sudo su - to get the root privileges as a sudo user.

#grep sudo /var/log/secure

Network User
Usr Profiles
#vi /etc/default/useradd
# useradd defaults file
GROUP=100
HOME=/home
INACTIVE=-1
EXPIRE=2008-01-01
SHELL=/bin/bash
SKEL=/etc/skel (user profiles)

System Initialization

Boot Sequence Overview

BIOS initialization
Boot loader
Kernel initialization
init starts and enters the desired runlevel by executing:

/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
/etc/rc.d/rc and /etc/rc.d/rc?.d/
/etc/rc.d/rc.local
X Display Manager (if appropriate)

BIOS Initialization

§ Peripherals detected

§ Boot device selected

§ First sector of boot device read and executed

Boot Loader Components

Boot loader

First stage - small, resides in the MBR or a boot sector
Second stage - loaded from a boot partition

Minimum specifications for Linux:

Label, kernel location, OS root filesystem and location of the initial RAM disk (initrd)

Minimum specifications for other operating systems:

Boot device, label

GRUB and grub.conf

GRUB "the GRand Unified Bootloader"

Command-line interface available at boot prompt
Boot from ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, FAT, minix, or FFS file systems
Supports MD5 password protection

/boot/grub/grub.conf
Changes to grub.conf take effect immediately
If MBR on /dev/hda is corrupted, reinstall the first stage bootloader with:

/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

Starting the Boot Process: GRUB

Image selection

Select with space followed by up/down arrows on the boot splash screen

Argument passing

Change an existing stanza in menu editing mode
Issue boot commands interactively on the GRUB command line

The Chicken/Egg Module Problem and the Initial RAM Disk

To mount the root filesystem, the kernel typically needs to load modules

o Examples: ext3, jbd, raid1, scsi_mod

An initial RAM disk provides modules

o Compressed cpio archive containing modules, other material

o Created at install time

o Specific to a particular hardware and software platform

Made available to the kernel by GRUB

Use mkinitrd to rebuild

o Example:

o mkinitrd /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

Kernel Initialization

Kernel boot time functions

Device detection
Device driver initialization
Mounts root filesystem read only
Loads initial process (init)

init Initialization

init reads its config: /etc/inittab

initial run level
system initialization scripts
run level specific script directories
trap certain key sequences
define UPS power fail / restore scripts
spawn gettys on virtual consoles
initialize X in run level 5

Run Levels

§ init defines run levels 0-6, S, emergency

§ The run level is selected by either

· the default in /etc/inittab at boot

· passing an argument from the boot loader

· using the command init new_runlevel

§ Show current and previous run levels

/sbin/runlevel

/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

§ Important tasks include:

§ Activate udev and selinux

§ Sets kernel parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf

§ Sets the system clock

§ Loads keymaps

§ Enables swap partitions

§ Sets hostname

§ Root filesystem check and remount

§ Activate RAID and LVM devices

§ Enable disk quotas

§ Check and mount other filesystems

§ Cleans up stale locks and PID files

/etc/rc.d/rc

Initializes the default run level per the /etc/inittab file's initdefault line such that:
id:3:initdefault:

l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3 (default)
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6

Daemon Processes

·A daemon process is a program that is run in the background, providing some system service

·Two types of daemons:

o standalone

o Transient - controlled by the "super-daemon" xinetd

System V run levels

· Run level defines which services to start

o Each run level has a corresponding directory:

How-To: Image Windows XP with Ghost and Sysprep

2007-05-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

How-To: Image Windows XP with Ghost and Sysprep

I tend to install and reinstall operating systems quite frequently on my home system. With my hectic schedule, I don’t have time to sit down to reinstall and configure every last program. Although it is arguably easier to use a backup of my system for day-to-day mishaps, I tend to change out peripherals a lot and restoring a system that does not have certain drivers “cleaned out” tends to wreak havoc on a new configuration. To make this process go a bit faster, two years ago I created a “Ghost Image” of my hard drive after doing a basic install. Now, instead of it taking a few hours of toiling away to reinstall a system, I can do this all in about 15 minutes with only half a dozen quick mouse clicks. The trick is to use Norton Ghost or any other imaging software and Microsoft Sysprep.

Part 1: Install XP and Sysprep

Install Windows XP on a clean hard drive.
Do not install any drivers or other utilities that are hardware specific beyond what Windows itself installs.

This is necessary to make sure the image is as portable as possible across different types of systems. However, different storage controllers and different HALs (Hardware Abstraction Layers) make this harder to predict.
Most modern computers these days work fine with a standard ACPI HAL, but if this image is to be truly portable across multiple machines then it must be determined which specific HAL will be needed. Refer to Microsoft KB309283 if you are completely lost.
It is also important to determine if the target system uses a storage controller that normally requires a driver disc during a regular XP install. If this is the case, then the necessary paths to the drivers must be included in the Sysprep.inf file. These must be added to the [SysprepMassStorage] section in the form PCI\VEN_###&DEV_#### = PATH_TO_DRIVER_ON_IMAGED_DRIVE where VEN_#### should be replaced by the Vendor ID number (i.e. VEN_1234) and the DEV_#### should be replaced by the Device ID number (DEV_1234). This information can usually be found in the specifc driver INF files. Here is an example for adding the VMWare SCSI controller driver to sysprep.inf

[SysprepMassStorage]
….snipped out windows mass storage driver list….

PCI\VEN_104B&DEV_1040=C:\Drivers\Mass\VMWare\vmscsi.inf

Create a testuser account with administrative privileges. Use this account to install and configure all the software and policies on the system.
Remember to run Windows Update, Office Update and make sure all the rest of the software is up to date. You’ll probably end up rebooting a few times in between but keep going until everything is updated.
Copy all the start menu items from the testuser account to the Administrator start menu. (Note: This is necessary as some installers do not create start menu items in All Users but within the testuser profile only. This leaves some items missing on the Administrator start menu.)
Log out and log back in as the computer Administrator and then copy the testuser profile folder to the default user profile folder. This is done via Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> User Profile “Settings” then select testuser and click Copy to. Copy all of this to c:\Documents and Settings\Default User. If you don’t understand then refer to Microsoft KB291586.
Delete the testuser account. Make sure that c:\Documents and Settings\testuser has been deleted too.
Download Sysprep for XP SP2.
Extract the files to c:\sysprep.
Create the basic sysprep.inf file by running setupmgr.exe. This a tool Microsoft provides for creating an answer file so the restore doesn’t involving asking the normal setup questions. The basic steps are below:

Run setupmgr.exe
Click Create New
Click Sysprep Setup
Then choose whichever product you are using. In our example it would be XP Professional.
The next question asks: Do you want to fully automate the install? All this question determines is who is going to accept the EULA, you or the person restoring the image. Also, picking yes means that you must enter your Product Key. I pick no because this is for my own use and I don’t want someone to swipe my Product Key accidentally, but a large company or OEM may choose differently.
The next few sets of options are for you to enter in any information like your Name, Organization, Time Zone, Product Key (I leave this blank), Network Settings, etc.
I leave the Computer Name option set to Automatically generate computer name.
Once completed, a dialog box will ask where you want to save the file. c:\sysprep\sysprep.inf is the path we’re using in this example.
On the completion screen, click Cancel to close setupmgr.exe.

The process of creating a basic sysprep.inf file is now completed.

Before proceeding to the next step, create a custom hardware drivers directory for any drivers needed for the target system. Usually I use c:\drivers.
Open c:\sysprep\sysprep.inf in Notepad and add the following lines to the relavent sections (if the heading doesn’t exist, create it):

[Unattended]
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
UpdateInstalledDrivers=Yes
OemPNPDriversPath=drivers\hardware_cat\driver_dir\driver_inf;(repeat);

[SysPrep]
BuildMassStorageSection=Yes

[SysprepMassStorage]

Do not close the sysprep.inf yet! OemPNPDriversPath points to the c:\drivers directory created earlier. For organizational purposes, I split up my custom driver files based on category (i.e. hardware_cat in the example above). For example, all video drivers go under c:\drivers\video and network drivers under c:\drivers\network. In each of those directories, the specific driver bundles are placed with their driver inf files (i.e. driver_dir). For example, the latest nVidia drivers would go into c:\drivers\video\nVidia\. The last part is refering to driver_inf is just that, the name of the inf file. For example, for the latest nVidia driver, the path would be c:\drivers\video\nVidia\nv4_disp.inf. In sysprep.inf, the path would be written as OemPNPDriversPath=drivers\video\nVidia\nv4_disp.inf;. Do not forget the semi-colon as a separator. For the next driver, repeat the procedure by placing the path after the semi-colon without leaving a space. Once all the drivers are added, save the file.
Run c:\sysprep\sysprep -bmsd. This will build the Windows XP standard mass storage drivers section.
While editing sysprep.inf there is an option labeled InstallFilesPath which usually points to c:\sysprep\i386. I usually copy the contents of my XP CD’s i386 directory into c:\sysprep\i386. This isn’t necessary.
Add any custom Storage dirvers to the [SysprepMassStorage] section as detailed above.
Now run C:\sysprep\sysprep.exe.
Pick options Mini Setup and Detect non-plug and play hardware. If you don’t have a volume license and plan on just using this image for restoring the computer the image was made on, then pick the option Don’t regenerate security identifiers. If you have a volume license key and will be using this image for multiple machines then leave that option unchecked. Ensure that Shutdown is selected from the Shutdown mode drop-down menu and click Reseal.
If you left the SID option to regenerate, then a pop-up will ask you to confirm. hit OK to continue.
This will take a while and your system will shut down once the process is complete.

Sysprep is now complete. Part 2 contains instructions on imaging the partition.

Part 2: Norton Ghost Instructions

I’m using an older version of Ghost because the newer versions are trumped by Acronis True Image in terms of having less bugs and more features. However, DOS based Ghost has worked fine for me for most systems. If Ghost fails on your system for some reason, try imaging with Acronis True Image trial version. The basic idea is boot off a floopy or CD on the source system, start the backup program, backup the entire drive as an image file onto some other device (portable hard drive or another drive in the system) and then restoring (as necessary) from that image file onto a target system.

The basic Ghost process is as follows:

Note: You must do this on another machine that has Ghost installed. If you boot the Sysprep machine accidentally then you must go through the entire Sysprep checklist again. Trust me, I learned the hard way more than once.

A Ghost bootdisk must be created for the target system. In Ghost 2003, start Ghost from the Start Menu -> Programs -> Norton Ghost.
Click Ghost Utilities then click Norton Ghost Boot Wizard.
A wizard comes up. Since I plan on saving my image to a portable USB or Firewire hard drive I pick Standard Ghost Boot Disk. You may have to choose another option if you plan on saving the image to a network Ghost image server.
On the next screen, under External Storage Options click the check boxes for USB 2.0 Support or Firewire Support depending on your target backup device. If you are using an internal secondary hard drive, then you don’t need to pick anything.
On the next screen, click Use PC-DOS.
The next screen asks for the path of ghost.exe. The default path is usually fine.
Finally we are presented with a screen asking for the floppy disk drive letter and formating options. Pick the proper drive letter and leave the format options alone. Click next.
This is the Review screen. Make sure all the options are correct and insert an empty floppy into your drive. A format dialog will pop up with a warning that everything on the floppy will be erased. Hit Okay. Close it once it is completed. Ghost will copy the files over.
If you are using an external hard drive then make sure it is connected to the source machine prior to booting the Ghost floppy on the system. If you are using an internal hard drive (not the same one as the Sysprep’d drive) in the source system then make sure there is enough free space on it. Again, you cannot save the image onto the drive/partition you are imaging for obvious reasons.
Put your shiny new floppy into the Sysprep prepared machine and boot off of it.
Create the image following the on-screen directions.

Click Local.
Click Disk. I’ve assumed that we are imaging a single large NTFS partition encompassing the entire drive throughout this tutorial hence the need for either an external drive or different internal hard drive. This can all be done on a single drive with two paritions but I’ll leave for the end user to explore.
Click To Image. The next screen states Select local source drive by clicking on the drive number. Make sure you select the drive that contains the Sysprep prepared XP deployment! Check and double check this. Click Ok.
The next screen reads File name to copy image to. From the drop-down box pick either the external hard drive or internal drive (different from source drive) and then type a short name in the file name box.
The next screen will ask compression options. I usually pick High.
Ghost will image the drive on its own and alert you when it is done.

If you are sure the image was created successfully, you can now move the image onto a burnable DVD, network share, leave it on the portable or secondary hard drive and restore it as necessary. If there was a problem during the imaging process, then do not boot the source system. Just reimage it after addressing whatever caused the image process to fail.

The steps above are a very quick summary so I recommend that anyone truly interested in doing this to head over to Vernalex’s site for an in-depth Sysprep Guide. Along with a lot more detail of the entire process, he has various tools to make everything a little easier. The best utility on his site has to be the Sysprep Driver Sanner tool. It makes the process of adding hardware drivers much easier than the manual process above. Instructions on using it are on his site.

This completes the imaging process. Part 3 includes miscellaneous notes.

Update (2.24.2006): I’ve gotten some great tips from both the comments at Digg and below. Let me address a few of those.

Once Sysprep shuts down the computer, if you are able hook up the drive to another system as a secondary device then delete pagefile.sys and hibernat.sys to save a few hundred megs of space in the final image. Thanks master_of_fm.
I forgot to go in-depth on the Ghost process. I’ve included basic steps for Ghost 2003 but once the intial Sysprep deployment is made, any disk imaging program can be used. The basic priciples are the same but let me know if you have problems. Thanks hakujin & definiteform.
billyboobs34 asked if it is possible to make an image that is totally hardware independant. The quick answer (to be best of my knowledge) is no. The problem hinges on the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) in Windows XP being different on, for example, a uniprocessor and multiprocessor system. The Microsoft Knowledge Base article is linked above. If the HAL is not the problem then it sounds like there may be more of an issue of finding appropriate chipset and mass storage controller drivers for different motherboards. In the custom drivers section, adding in paths to the necessary drivers for other motherboards may mitigate this problem.

In my opinion, the best solution is to have one basic machine for each HAL to make all of your images from. Follow all the steps above but do not reseal the system. Drop down to Ghost (or whatever backup utility you are using) and create an image of the system. In the future, creating compatible images for newer machines would be as simple is restoring the almost-complete Sysprep image and adding in new drivers for the chipset, mass storage controller and anything else you need. Then resealing the system and imaging it for a viable deployment image. Again, I am not an expert so hopefully the Sysprep gurus can step in to address this one if I went wrong somewhere.

If you are presented a blue screen of death after restoring the Sysprep image to a target machine, then chances are that either the HAL is incompatible for the target machine, you forgot to build the mass storage driver section or you forgot to add a third-party mass storage driver. Refer to Microsoft KB309283 to confirm the source machine HAL is compatible with the target machine. Refer to Microsoft KB303786 if a Stop 0×7b blue screen is shown. This means that the mass storage driver section or third-party mass storage driver is missing.

Update (3.8.2006): If after rebooting, the install hangs at mup.sys or agp440.sys then it’s more than likely a HAL problem. Refer to the previous update to change your HAL. For most modern day single-processor machines make sure your HAL is changed from Uniprocessor ACPI to Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC. You can find this setting in Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> Device Manager -> click (+) next Computer -> right click the HAL shown and pick Update Driver -> Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) -> Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install. -> then pick the proper HAL -> hit next/okay until you finish. Now reboot and run through the Sysprep instructions again.

It took me a few tries to finally make an image that restored properly when I first started but, like riding a bike, it’s second nature now. Be ready to experience frustration but in the end it is worth having this knowledge. Again, read the comments below and at Digg to see how others have achieved this process. I don’t claim to be an expert (I’m just a med student by day) but I certainly hope this helps someone.

TOMCAT INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION

2007-03-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun under the Java Community Process.

Packages required

Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition v1.4.1-01 http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/java-linux-d2.html

Ant 1.6.5 http://ant.apache.org/

JavaBeans Activation Framework http://java.sun.com/products/javabeans/glasgow/jaf.html

Javamail http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/

jakarta-tomcat-5.X http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_tomcat-5.cgi

Installing Java 2 SDK

Untar/unzip j2sdk package

$cp j2sdk1.4.1 /usr/local/

$ln –s j2sdk1.4.1 j2sdk

set JAVA_HOME

$export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/j2sdk

add PATH for java binary

$export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

verify javac command gives some output

root@tux:~# javac

Usage: javac

where possible options include:

-g Generate all debugging info

-g:none Generate no debugging info

-g:{lines,vars,source} Generate only some debugging info

Installing ANT

Untar ant-.tar.gz by

$tar xvzf ant-.tar.gz

move untared directory this to /usr/local/ant

$mv ant- /usr/local/ant

set ANT_HOME

export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant

add PATH for ant binary

export PATH=$PATH:$ANT_HOME/bin

verify ant binary is on PATH

root@tux:~# ant

Buildfile: build.xml does not exist! (don’t worry about this message, this was just to check ant in on path or not)

Installing JavaBeans Activation Framework

$unzip jaf-.zip

$cd jaf-

copy activation.jar to /usr/local/j2sdk/lib

$cp activation.jar /usr/local/j2sdk/lib

set CLASSPATH for this jar

$export $CLASSPATH=/usr/local/j2sdk/lib/activation.jar

Installing Javamail

$unzip javamail-.zip

$cd javamail-

copy mail.jar to /usr/local/j2sdk/lib

$cp mail.jar /usr/local/j2sdk/lib

set CLASSPATH for this jar

export $CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/usr/local/j2sdk/lib/mail.jar

All set for tomcat

Just again verify all environment variables

$echo $JAVA_HOME

$echo $ANT_HOME

$echo $PATH

$echo $CLASSPATH

now we have two options to install tomcat

1. using source

2. using binary

Tomcat Installation from source

Untar source

$tar xvzf jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x-src.tar.gz

$cd jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x

start building source

this build process is controlled by build.properties

add this content to it:
# ----- Proxy setup -----
# Uncomment if using a proxy server.
#proxy.host=proxy.domain
#proxy.port=8080
#proxy.use=on

# ----- Default Base Path for Dependent Packages -----
# Replace this path with the directory path where
# dependencies binaries should be downloaded.
base.path=/usr/share/java

$ant build

Buildfile: build.xml

check.source:

check.source.depends:

once this is done without any errors, copy build to appropriate location

$cp jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x/jakarta-tomcat-5/build /usr/local/tomcat

Installation done from source

Tomcat Installation from binary

Download and untar jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x.tar.gz

$tar xvzf jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x.tar.gz

move untared directory to /usr/local/tomcat

$mv jakarta-tomcat-5.x.x /usr/local/tomcat/

Installation done using binary.

Configuring Tomcat

Optionally set CATALINA_HOME to /usr/local/tomcat/

$export $CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/tomcat/

make changes in configuration, go to conf dir

$cd /usr/local/tomcat/conf

to change port of tomcat edit server.xml Connector port="8080" tag

you can add various roles and assign these roles to different users by making changes in tomcat-users.xml

rolename="tomcat"/>

rolename="role1"/>

rolename="manager"/>

rolename="admin"/>

admin,manager"/>

you can write a init script for tomcat startup/shutdown

#!/bin/sh

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/j2sdk

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/j2sdk/bin/

case "$1" in

start)

echo -n "Starting tomcat: "

/usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

;;

stop)

echo -n "Shutting down tomcat: "

/usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

;;

echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"

exit 1

esac

exit 0

copy this content to /etc/init.d/tomcat.server

give execute permission

chmod +x /etc/init.d/tomcat.server

on debian do

$update-rc.d tomcat.server defaults

Testing setup

Start tomcat

root@tux:~# /etc/init.d/tomcat.server start

Starting tomcat: Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/local/tomcat

Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/local/tomcat

Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/tomcat/temp

Using JAVA_HOME: /usr/local/jdk

Check in process list for successful startup

1834 pts/6 S 0:15 /usr/local/jdk/bin/java -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/tomcat/common/endorsed -classpath /usr/loc

1835 pts/6 S 0:00 /usr/local/jdk/bin/java -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/tomcat/common/endorsed -classpath /usr/loc

1836 pts/6 S 0:01 /usr/local/jdk/bin/java -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/tomcat/common/endorsed -classpath /usr/loc

also verify it its listening on port specified in server.xml

root@tux:~# netstat -nap | grep java

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:8080 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11507/java

Shutdown tomcat

root@tux:~# /etc/init.d/tomcat.server stop

Shutting down tomcat: Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/local/tomcat

Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/local/tomcat

Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/tomcat/temp

Using JAVA_HOME: /usr/local/jdk

Next open a browser and type http://:

For eg http://machine:8080

You will see tomcat page

You can admin tomcat from http://:/admin

http://machine:8080/admin

manager url http://

give username/password specified in tomcat-users.xml with admin/manager role

rolename="manager"/>

rolename="admin"/>

admin,manager"/>

COMMANDS

2007-03-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

$(cat /etc/passwd|egrep zentyl\|sysadmin |cut -d":" -f6); do
$kill `ps auxww | grep pmta | egrep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`; service pmta start
$sar -r 60 2000|awk '{print $5}'|sed -e /^$/d|sed '/^%/d'|head -n1
$kill `ps auxww | grep perl | egrep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`; service mysql restart
$find /Public/ -name *.mp3 -exec rm {} \;
kill `ps auxww | grep perl awk '{print $2}'`

kill `ps auxww | grep mysql | egrep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`

du -h --max-depth=1 /Public/|awk '{print $1}'
search and replace all :1,$s///g
find /home -type f -iname '*.php' -exec grep -l -i "c99_buff_prepare" {} \;

Selinux:
setsebool -P ftpd_disable_trans 1

LINKS:
http://endor.clublinux.org/RHCE-16.html cronjob
http://prefetch.net/articles/checkcertificate.html
http://lena.franken.de/linux/create_certificate.html

RMSERVER

http://yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialRealVideoStreaming.html
http://epresence.tv/FreeSoftware/DocsHtml/Media_Installation_Guide32.htm#_Toc114284604
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/media_delivery.html
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/discreteserver/index.html
http://service.real.com/help/library/guides/helixuniversalserver/realsrvr.htm?page=htmfiles/new.htm%23ports

HACKER'S PAGE
www.xsharex.info - report24/default pass
http://www.security.nnov.ru/board4.html
http://www.webhostgear.com/61.html
http://www.rfxnetworks.com/apf.php
http://www.webhostgear.com/232.html
http://megaupload.com/?d=P5BSU0CQ
metasploit.com
http://www.theserverpages.com/20102/11/
http://www.hackingdefined.com/movies/see-sec-wmf-0day.rar
http://www.hackingdefined.com/movies/see-sec-demo.zip
http://www.hackingdefined.com/movies/see-sec-wepcrack.zip
http://www.hackingdefined.com/movies/see-sec-gre-sniff.zip
http://www.hackingdefined.com/movies/see-sec-ssh-dcom-tunneling.zip
http://byterage.hackaholic.org/kb/index.html
RooT66 - http://root66.nl.eu.org
ShellOracle - http://www.shelloracle.cjb.net
b0f - http://b0f.freebsd.lublin.pl
http://ussrback.com/distributed.htm
Hardbeat (petervd@vuurwerk.nl) just has a lame page at
http://www.dataloss.net/
http://packetstormsecurity.org/DoS/pjam.zip
http://www.elhacker.net/hacking.htm
http://www.nmrc.org/pub/faq/hackfaq/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
thc.org
http://www.linuxwidows.com/mirror/bucket/HFC/LEAP/img13.htm
http://lab.dyne.org/AsciiHackersLounge
http://www.packetfocus.com/web_hacking.html
http://www.elitehackers.info/
http://romaniainedit.3xforum.ro/post/11389/1/Hack_tools_books_la_cerere/
http://hackaday.com/
http://iptables-tutorial.frozentux.net/iptables-tutorial.html --iptablesx
http://linux.i-heart.co.kr/viewtopic.php?p=49&sid=2f34689f8c97dd0dc34a02f399979ba1 - apf
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/2003MostPopularHackingTools.htm
www.bo2k.com
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/013nov05/features/snort/
http://www.jpowered.com/php-scripts/php-gd.htm
http://egroupware.shanker.com/home/index.php
http://xoron.t35.com/c99.txt
http://www.rootshell-security.net/
http://www.lezr.com

Forensic:

http://webserver.arizona-gigapop.net/linux-forensics/penguinsleuth-07-05-2003.iso
http://www.net-security.org/dl/software/sleuthkit-2.06.tar.gz

Database:
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/
http://www.designmagick.com/category/10/Forum-Project

PHP:

http://byterage.hackaholic.org/kb/php-secure-coding.html
http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/
http://www.goodphptutorials.com
http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials.php
http://devzone.zend.com/public/view/tag/tutorials
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.unix.apache2.php
http://www.hostlibrary.com/installing_apache_mysql_php_on_linux

MOD_REWRITE

http://www.download.com/Ionic-s-ISAPI-Rewriting-Filter/3000-2648_4-10417963.html
http://urlrewriter.net/
http://cheeso.members.winisp.net/IIRF.aspx
http://www.petefreitag.com/item/286.cfm
http://todotnet.com/archive/0001/01/01/7472.aspx
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum47/1167.htm

AWSTATS:
http://www.allscoop.com/tools/awstats-log-format/index.php

shell scripting:
http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/sed/sed1line52.txt
http://puzzle.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/freenas/FreeNAS-0.671.iso

SSL Certificate generation:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out cybercells.key
openssl req -new -key cybercells.key cybercells.csr
https://certificates.godaddy.com/InstallationInstructions.go
https://certificates.godaddy.com/CSRgeneration.go

SNORT

User Name: report24@rediffmail.com
Password: hallticket
Oink Code: dedf1dbb630464a56cb5494b856a0ffc15df9d90

Example for snort 2.3:
Change: url = http://www.snort.org/dl/rules/snortrules-snapshot-2.3.tar.gz
to
http://www.snort.org/pub-bin/oinkmaster.cgi/5a08f649c16a278e1012e1c84bdc8fab9a70e2a4/snortrules-snapshot-2.3.tar.gz

How to use snort:

Network Intrusion Detection (NIDS) mode snort -dev -l ./log -h 192.168.0.0/24
Reading the Snort logfile: snort -r ./Piglet/logfile
Running Snort in Packet Logger mode: snort -dev -l ./Piglet
A Snort monitoring rule: content: [!] "content_string";
A non-payload detection rule: alert ip any any -> any any (ip_proto:icmp;)
A rule to detect a particular string: alert tcp any any -> any any 21 (content:"user root";)

Kernel upgradation:

www.kernel.org
make menuconfig
select the features u want in ur kernel
exit the menuconfig and come on to the shell saving the new configuration
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
ur new kernel is in the directory ./arch/i386/boot/bzImage copy it in the directory /boot/
edit ur bootloader so that u may boot the new kernel

1. Check current version of kernel on server using command uname -a, if
its 2.4 then download latest release for 2.4 please do not download 2.6
kernel.
You can download kernel from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/
if its 2.4 then http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/, you can
check latest stable release from http://www.kernel.org

2. wget kernel in /usr/local/src
3. untar it using tar -zxvf linux-2.x-xxxx
4. cd linux-2.x-x
5. make clean
6. make mrproper
7. If kernel is 2.4 then copy current version of config file from
/boot/config-’uname-r’ as .config in /usr/local/src/linux-2.x-xx, if
kernel is 2.6 then you do not need to make .config in current directory
8. make menuconfig, select and check if all required modules are selected,
also make sure that your kernel supports multiple cpu
you can check it and select from processor type, if it displays support
for more then 2 kernel then you do not need to modify anything there.
9. save configuration and exit
10. make modules if kernel is 2.4 then need to run make dep before running
make modules
11. make modules_install
12. make
13. if 2.4 kernel then need to run make bzImage and then make install, you
can directly run make install if kernel is 2.6
15. now make sure bootloader and modify default kernel accordingly
grubby –bootloader-probe if it displays grub then edit /etc/grub.conf and
if its lilo then edit lilo.conf and make compiled kernel as default kernel
16. If your boot loader is lilo then you need to run 9one more command
/sbin/lilo which will update lilo

17. now its time to reboot server

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUyLXTLiGS0 ( fedora)

MRTG Configuration in Linux Servers

2007-02-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

MRTG Configuration

Before configuring MRTG

Step # 1 : Make sure snmp server installed
Please note that snmpd configuration does not require using mrtg with remote network devices such as Routers and switches. If you just want mrtg graphs for router or switch then please refer to step # 4 (as all these devices comes preconfigured with snmpd software).
Run rpm commands query option to find out snmp server installed or not:
# rpm -qa | grep snmp
If snmp installed then please refer step # 2; otherwise snmp server and utils were not present and your need to install them using following steps (login as a root user):
(a) Visit rpmfind.net to get snmp server and utilities rpms. If you are fedora user then use yum command as follows to install it:
# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp
(b) If you are RHEL subscriber then use up2date command as follows to install:
#up2date -v -i net-snmp-utils net-snmp

Step # 2 : Determine if snmp server is running or not
Run 'ps' command to see if snmp server is running or not:
# ps -aux | grep snmp
Output:
root 5512 0.0 2.3 5872 3012 pts/0 S 22:04 0:00 /usr/sbin/snmpd
Alternatively, you can try any of the following two commands as well:
# lsof -i :199
Output:
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
snmpd 5512 root 4u IPv4 34432 TCP *:smux (LISTEN)
OR try out netstat command:
# netstat -natv | grep ':199'
Output:
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:199 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
If you found service is running or listing on port 199 then please see step #3; otherwise start service using following command:
# service snmpd start
Make sure snmpd service starts automatically, when linux comes us (add snmpd service):
# chkconfig --add snmpd

Step # 3 : Make sure snmp server configured properly
Run snmpwalk utility to request for tree of information about network entity. In simple words query snmp server for your IP address (assigned to eth0, eth1, lo etc):
# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public localhost IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex
Output:
ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.0.3 = 2
If you can see your IP address then please proceed to step 4; else it is a time to configure snmp server as follows (by default RHEL and RH 8/9 are not configured for snmp server for security reason):
Configure SNMP
(1) Edit file /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf using text editor:
# vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
Change/Modify line(s) as follows:
Find following Line:
com2sec notConfigUser default public
Replace with (make sure you replace 192.168.0.0/24 replace with your network IPs) following lines:
com2sec local localhost public
com2sec mynetwork 192.168.0.0/24 public
Scroll down bit and change:
Find Lines:
group notConfigGroup v1 notConfigUser
group notConfigGroup v2c notConfigUser
Replace with:
group MyRWGroup v1 local
group MyRWGroup v2c local
group MyRWGroup usm local
group MyROGroup v1 mynetwork
group MyROGroup v2c mynetwork
group MyROGroup usm mynetwork
Again scroll down bit and locate following line:
Find line:
view systemview included system
Replace with:
view all included .1 80
Again scroll down bit and change:
Find line:
access notConfigGroup "" any noauth exact systemview none none
Replace with:
access MyROGroup "" any noauth exact all none none
access MyRWGroup "" any noauth exact all all none
Scroll down bit and change:
Find lines:
syslocation Unknown (edit /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf)
syscontact Root (configure /etc/snmp/snmp.local.conf)
Replace with (make sure you supply appropriate values):
syslocation Linux (RH3_UP2), Home Linux Router.
syscontact Vivek G Gite
For your convenient, here is my /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file. Feel free to use this file. Make sure you make backup of your existing file if you use this file as it is.
Start your snmp server and test it:
(a) Make sure when linux comes up snmpd always starts:
# chkconfig snmpd on
(b) Make sure service start whenever Linux comes up (after reboot):
# service snmpd start
(c) Finally test your snmp server:
# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public localhost IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex

Step # 4 : Install mrtg if not installed
Mrtg software may install during initial installation; you can verify if MRTG installed or not with following RPM command:
rpm -qa | grep mrtg
If mrtg already installed please see step # 5; else use rpmfind.net to find MRTG rpm or up2date command to install MRTG software:
# up2date -v -i mrtg
Fedora Linux user can use yum command as follows to install MRTG:
# yum install mrtg

Step # 5 : Commands to Configure mrtg
(a) Create document root to store mrtg graphs/html pages:
# mkdir -p /var/www/html/mymrtg/
(b) Run any one of the following cfgmaker command to create mrtg configuration file:
#cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /var/www/html/mymrtg' --output /etc/mrtg/mymrtg.cfg public@localhost
OR (make sure your FQDN resolves, in following example i'm using rh9.test.com which is my router FQDN address)
# cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /var/www/html/mymrtg' --output /etc/mrtg/mymrtg1.cfg public@rh9.test.com
(c) Create default index page for your MRTG configuration:
# indexmaker --output=/var/www/html/mymrtg/index.html /etc/mrtg/mymrtg.cfg
(d) Copy all tiny png files to your mrtg path:
# cp -av /var/www/html/mrtg/*.png /var/www/html/mymrtg/

Step # 6 First test run of mrtg
(a) Run mrtg command from command line with your configuration file:
# mrtg /etc/mrtg/mymrtg.cfg

Step # 7 Create crontab entry so that mrtg graph / images get generated every 5 minutes
(a) Login as a root user or login as a mrtg user and type following command:
# crontab -e
(b) Add mrtg cron job entry to configuration file (append following line to it):
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mymrtg.cfg --logging /var/log/mrtg.log
Save file and you are done with MRTG config issues :)
Step # 8 Point to DNS Server
In local server :
1.# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
In DNS Server :
1.# vi /var/named.conf
2.# cd /var/named/domains

fedora Testing

2007-02-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

Smarter Password Management

2007-02-05T04:37:00.000-08:00

Your dog’s name... your anniversary... your childrens’ initials, birthday, or birth weight... your favorite hobby, or the name of your boat. Which one do you use for your password? Network Administrators and hackers know that most people choose passwords like these to protect anything from logging into web-based bulletin boards to buying things online.

Why does it matter? Identity theft... corporate espionage... loss of your data, or digital images. Do you want to risk these things? In many cases, a weak password is all that separates your data from anyone who wants to impersonate you online, or worse.

The problem with weak passwords

Passwords that are simply names of pets, names of children, common names of any type, are called “weak passwords.” Basically any word you can find in a dictionary or list of names makes for a weak password.

I don’t like to use fear to motivate people, but practicing safe password management is as important as locking your house when you leave. Only whenever you’re connected to the internet, it’s like having a house in the worst neighborhood in the biggest city around and if you don’t put a good lock on the door, you will get broken into, even if you’re home.

Practicing safe password management is as important as locking your house when you leave

The problem with strong passwords

If you work at a large company, they may not allow you to have a simple password based on any word you can find in a dictionary. E-Commerce sites that have good security require passwords at least 8 characters long. They group the characters you type into four groups: capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, and then require you to have at least three out of the four groups represented in your password. And then they make you change your password every two or three months. This type of password is called a strong password.

The problem is that you soon end up with many more passwords than you can possibly keep track of. You either forget your new password, requiring the administrator to reset it for you, or you start writing them down. Far too many people have their current passwords scribbled on a yellow sticky note attached to their monitor where anyone can see it.

With weak passwords, all an attacker needs to do to obtain them is go through your trash, or engage you in innocent conversation. With strong passwords, all he needs to do is visit your office. In either case, the attacker is engaging in a type of attack called Social Engineering, which is the easiest way to break into a system.

A strong password, if you write it down somewhere insecure, is not much safer than a weak password

Do I always need a strong password?

No. Strong passwords provide far more protection against different types of attacks, especially those considered Brute Force attacks. An example is something called a Dictionary Attack, where the attacker takes a list of words, sometimes an entire dictionary, and uses a special cracking program to try each word on your account. The dictionary used includes common animal and people names.

Many systems defeat these types of attacks by locking you out after a few failed attempts. But the real concern is what an attacker can do once they break into any particular system.

A weak password is all that separates your data from anyone who wants to impersonate you online, or worse

Assess your risks

There are low risk, and high risk computer systems. To avoid having 30 different passwords to remember, you can group together systems that have the same level of risk, and reuse your passwords. Many security experts would argue that this approach reduces security, but let’s be realistic here: if you don’t remember the password for a particular system, and then type in all of your “standard” passwords to try to log into it, you may have just compromised all of the systems that use any of those passwords.

There are many ways of grouping systems, but here’s what I recommend:

Low risk systems

If you never give your credit card, drivers license, social security number, or any other sensitive information to a web site, you probably don’t need to use a strong password. For sites like the New York Times, online bulletin boards, and the myriad of places that ask you to create an account before allowing you to post, use a throw-away, easy-to-remember password. The worst an attacker could do is impersonate you on a web site, a mild form of harassment, but nothing more serious than that.

You should realize that any time you type a password into a system that doesn’t immediately take you to an encrypted site, your password could be intercepted by all kinds of unknown people. Look for the lock or key icon in your browser’s status bar, and “https” in the web address. If these things don’t appear, or there’s a warning, don’t trust the site. Use a weak password, and consider it public. As long as you trust a site as being legitimate, I consider it fine to reuse the same weak password for all of these types of sites.

Medium risk systems

You might not agree, but I consider credit card information to be medium risk. To purchase things using a credit card at all, you have to take some risk: the waiter at the restaurant could copy your card when taking your payment; somebody could eavesdrop on your cordless phone when you give the number to the pizza delivery place; or somebody could look over your shoulder in line at a store.

Credit Card companies provide you with protection here—you’re usually only liable for the first $50 of any misuse of your credit card. For many credit cards, the bank takes full risk for online payments. You have to report charges you did not make in writing within 60 days, and these guarantees don’t apply to debit cards, but overall loss of your credit card amounts to a bigger hassle but not devastation to your identity. So I recommend grouping all web sites you use a credit card for into a “medium risk” group. If you give a web site a credit card, you’re already trusting them to not make bogus charges so you can probably trust them to not try to use your strong password on other sites.

Some cautions here:

Never send a credit card number, or any more sensitive information, through an email system that is not encrypted. If your email system is encrypted, you’ll know it: you’ll have to do quite a bit of work on both the sending and receiving end, so assume your mail is completely insecure, because it is.
Always make sure the web site is encrypted before typing in your password. Look for the lock or key icon in your browser window. In Firefox, the address bar (where you type the web address) will turn yellow if it’s properly encrypted.
Never use a public computer to make web transactions. Even if the web site is encrypted, there could be snooping software installed on the computer that could get your user account and password as you type it. Only conduct sensitive transactions on computers you trust and get the spyware off first!
Just because a web site is encrypted, doesn’t mean your data is protected. Many smaller companies have not invested in proper security to protect your password and credit card information.

As a general rule, never give your password to anyone, especially not a password you use in other medium or high-risk systems

High risk systems

Any system that contains your social security number, drivers license number, or other financial account numbers should be considered high risk. Systems that contain sensitive business information should be protected with a strong password, and if they’re connected to the internet, that password should be changed frequently.

For the most part, this means treating your laptop or workstation as a high-risk system so use a different password to log into it than you use for e-commerce or general use.

In most cases, you can get by with three passwords, using them on the appropriate level of system: a weak password for general, low risk systems; a strong password for e-commerce and medium risk systems, and a different strong password for any computer you use that has business or sensitive information on it. In some cases, this isn’t enough. If you have critical systems that contain personally identifiable customer data, or administrative access on customer machines, you may need to manage dozens of passwords. We'll cover how to securely manage dozens of passwords, as well as create strong ones, next month.

As a general rule, never give your password to anyone, especially not a password you use in other medium or high-risk systems. If you’re getting help from somebody who administers a service for you, they will be able to set your password to something else without knowing your password.

Regards
Shanker J
Linux & Oracle DBA Administrator
RHCE, MCSA, MCA.

MYSQL

2006-12-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Grant permission to user from remote or local location

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'69.xx.xx.20' IDENTIFIED BY 'camp1';

SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('Password');

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('Qua4rigadb') WHERE User='root';

SET PASSWORD FOR 'sugarcrm'@'localhost' = OLD_PASSWORD('Qua4rigadb');

HOW TO RESET THE ROOT PASSWORD

1 Stop Mysql
2 Start mysql with --skip
(#mysqld --skip-grant-tables --user=root&; mysql -uroot)

3 UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('Qua4rigadb') WHERE User='root';
4 FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

To backup all the mysql
# Dump all mysql databases
mysqldump --add-drop-table -A --user=root --password=Qua4rigadb > /backup/mysql/databases.sql

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'shanker'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'shanker123' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Veritas Volume Manager

2006-12-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

Veritas Volume Manager

1. Volume Manager Objects Printer Friendly

1.1 Disks

1.2 Disk groups

1.3 Volume Manager disks

1.4 Sub disks

1.5 Plexes

1.6 Volumes

1.7 Volume Manger Objects & their Relationship

2. Volume Manager Configuration ( options menu)

2.1 Add or initialize one or more disks

2.2 Encapsulate one or more disks

2.3 Remove a disk

2.4 Remove a disk for replacement

2.5 Replace a failed or removed disk

2.6 Mirror volumes on a disk

2.7 Move volumes from a disk

2.8 Enable access to (import) a disk group

2.9 Remove access to (deport) a disk group

2.10 Enable (online) a disk device

2.11 Disable (offline) a disk device

2.12 Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group

2.13 Turn off the spare flag on a disk

About Veritas volume manager:

Veritas Volume Manager is a software product from veritas Inc. and it is used to manage disk storage.

The main features of volume manager are following:

1. Allows creation of logical volumes spanning over multiple disks. This overcomes the physical limit of the disk.

2. Provides high availability storage solutions through RAID, Mirroring of disks .

3. Provides fail over features by providing transferable disk group ownership between systems.

4. Dynamic reconfiguration of disk storage in an online system state. what is veritas volume manager .

The following article describes the volume manager objects and configuration of these objects using a text menu based utility called vxdiskadm .

1.0 Volume Manager Objects

Disks

Disks are referred in volume manager by two terms - device name and disk name . The device name specifies controller , target id and slice of the disk . Disk name is the common name given to the device name as an easy to remember name .

For example device name c2t3dos2 represents controller number 2 , target id 3 , disk group 0 and slice 2 and disk01 may be its disk name . While device name is system dependent based on controller and disk id the disk name is user defined .

Disk groups :

A disk group is a collection of volume manager disks grouped together to hold the data . All the configuration changes made to a disk group are applied to the disks in that disk group only.
Volume Manager objects cannot span disk groups i.e. all the operations on a particular disk group remains confined to that particular group .
Disk groups enable high availability as these can be shared by two or more hosts but can be accessed by only one host at a time. In two hosts and a shared storage situation one host can take over the ownership of the disk groups and drives in case other host fails.

Volume Manager disks

Adding physical disks to the volume manager results in creation of public and private region in the disk by the volume manager .The public region is the disk space available for volume space and the private region stores the configuration information.
A Volume Manager disks are created from the public region of a physical disk that is under Volume Manager control. Each volume manager disk corresponds to one physical disk.
A volume manager disk is given a disk media name when it is added to a disk group which can be default or unique user defined..
Once a volume manager disk is assigned a disk media name, the disk is no longer referred to by its physical address of c#t#d#. The physical address of c#t#d# becomes known as the disk access record.

Subdisks

A subdisk is a subsection of a disk's public region and is the smallest unit of storage in Volume Manager.
A subdisk is defined by an offset and a length in sectors on a volume manager disk.
A volume manager disk can contain multiple subdisks but subdisks cannot overlap or share the same portions of a volume manager disk.
volume manager disk space that is not reserved or that is not part of a subdisk is free space. You can use free space to create new subdisks.

A subdisk is similar to a partition but with following differences :

The maximum number of partitions to a disk is eight.
There is no theoretical limit to number of subdisks that can be attached to a single plex, but it has been limited to a default value of 4096. If required, this default can be changed, using the vol_subdisk_num tunable parameter.

Plexes

A plex is a structured or ordered collection of subdisks that represents one copy of the data in a volume. A plex consists of one or more subdisks located on one or more physical disks.
A plex is also called a mirror. The terms plex and mirror can be used interchangeably, even though a plex is only one copy of the data. The terms "mirrored" or "mirroring" imply two or more copies of data.
The length of a plex is determined by the last block that can be read or written on the last subdisk in the plex.
The default naming convention for plexes in a volume is volumename-##. The default plex name consists of the volume name, a hyphen, and a two-digit number

Volumes

A volume is composed of one or more plexes not restricted by the physical size of the disk.
A volume can span across multiple disks.
Volume Manager uses the default naming convention vol## for volumes, where ## represents a two-digit number but can be user defined as per requirement.

Volume Manager Objects and Their Relationship

2.0 Volume Manager Configuration

Volume configuration consists of adding two or more disks to form disk group and create volume/s from this disk group. File system can be created on these volumes or these can be accessed as raw devices for some database applications. First step in volume manager configuration consists of adding and initializing disks under volume manager which creates a public region which is bulk of disk space available for volume space .Private region which is generally of a few megabytes stores the disk configuration information .

Most of the volume manager operation related to disks & volume can be performed by a character based menu utility call vxdiskadm

Following paragraphs describes the use of vxddiskadm to configure and manage volume manager.

#vxdiskadm

Typing vxdiskadm brings up a menu based utility (text) . The options , their explanation and screen shots are given below .Most of the options need a disk name , device name or disk group name and you can have this information by typing list in the vxdiskadm menu .The list menu option is used to display a list of disks attached to your system. This also lists removed or failed disks. Most useful to get a quick view of all disks or list details of a single disk - its name , volume association and status.

A disk needs to be formatted in order to be included in volume manager . volume manager will report unformatted disk as invalid and a will only recognize after formatting

By default all the available disks in the system are considered for inclusion as volume manager disk however to exclude certain disks, list the names of the disks to be excluded in the file /etc/vx/disks.exclude before the initialization or encapsulation. Similarly, you can exclude all disks on specific controllers from initialization or encapsulation by listing those controllers in the file /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude.

? & ?? options provide help about the menu item and menu system.

#vxdiskadm

Volume Manager Support Operations
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk

1 Add or initialize one or more disks
2 Encapsulate one or more disks
3 Remove a disk
4 Remove a disk for replacement
5 Replace a failed or removed disk
6 Mirror volumes on a disk
7 Move volumes from a disk
8 Enable access to (import) a disk group
9 Remove access to (deport) a disk group
10 Enable (online) a disk device
11 Disable (offline) a disk device
12 Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group
13 Turn off the spare flag on a disk
list List disk information

? Display help about menu
?? Display help about the menuing system
q Exit from menus

Select an operation to perform

2.1 Add or initialize one or more disks

The formatted disks can be added or initialized with volume manager . Disk groups needs to be given for making a new group or adding disks in existing group. Default disk group is rootdg and if none is specified the disks are added to volume manager and are kept as hot spares which can be used in place of a failed disk.

Select 1 (Add or initialize one or more disks) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Add or initialize disks
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/AddDisks

Use this operation to add one or more disks to a disk group. You can add the selected disks to an existing disk group or to a new disk group that will be created as a part of the operation. The selected disks may also be added to a disk group as spares. The selected disks may also be initialized without adding them to a disk group leaving the disks available for use as replacement disks.

More than one disk or pattern may be entered at the prompt. Here are some disk selection examples:

all: all disks
c3 c4t2: all disks on both controller 3 and controller 4,target 2
c3t4d0: a single disk

Select disk devices to add:
[,all,list,q,?]list

can be a single or more disks and/or controllers. If consists of multiple items, those items must be separated by white space.

list at the prompt displays a list of the disks available to the system, followed by a prompt at which you should type the device name of the disk to be added:

DEVICE DISK GROUP STATUS
c0t0d0 disk01 rootdg online
c0t1d0 disk02 rootdg online
c0t2d0 disk03 rootdg online
c0t3d0 - - online
c1t0d0 disk10 rootdg online
c1t0d1 - - error
.
.
.
c3t0d0 - - error
c3t1d0 disk33 rootdg online
c3t2d0 disk34 rootdg online
c3t3d0 disk35 rootdg online

Select disk devices to add:
[,all,list,q,?] c1t0d1

All disks attached to the system are recognized by the Volume Manager and displayed here.. Error status indicates disks not recognized by volume manager as part of volume manager and can be used to add in the volume manager .. Disks with a name , group and online status are present in volume manager in a valid volume manager disk group .One or more disks separated by space can be selected for adding into volume manager.

Here is the disk selected. Output format: [Device_Name]
c1t2d0
Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

You can choose to add this disk to an existing disk group, a
new disk group, or leave the disk available for use by future
add or replacement operations. To create a new disk group, select a disk group name that does not yet exist. To leave the disk
available for future use, specify a disk group name of "none".

Which disk group [,none,list,q,?] (default: rootdg)

Use a default disk name for the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Add disk as a spare disk for rootdg? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) n

The selected disks will be added to the disk group rootdg with
default disk names.

c1t2d0

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

The following disk device has a valid VTOC, but does not appear to have
been initialized for the Volume Manager. If there is data on the disk
that should NOT be destroyed you should encapsulate the existing disk
partitions as volumes instead of adding the disk as a new disk.
Output format: [Device_Name]
c1t2d0
Encapsulate this device? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) n
c1t2d0
Instead of encapsulating, initialize? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y
Initializing device c1t2d0.
Adding disk device c1t2d0 to disk group rootdg with disk
name disk39.
Add or initialize other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.2 Encapsulate one or more disks

This is used to bring the disk under volume manager , which are already present in the system with data but without volume manager . Data on these disks are not disturbed and if these disks meets certain volume manager requirements these are added under volume manager.

System needs rebooting if encapsulation is used for disk with mounted filesystem or running applications . Also the old device names needs to be changed in applications/scripts to reflect the new volume name.

vfstab information is updated automatically but it is worthwhile to check vfstab if changes are proper as any discrepancy in vfstab may cause system boot failure on next reboot.

Encapsulation preserves any existing data on the disk when the disk is placed under volume manager control. To reduce the

chance of encapsulation failure, make sure that the disk meets the following requirements:-

It has a small amount of free space (at the beginning or end of the disk) that does not belong to any partition
It has two free partitions
It has an s2 slice that represents the whole disk

One of the most common application is encapsulation of root disk to bring it under volume manager and then mirror it to have an alternate boot disk .

The EEPROM variable use-nvramrc? must be set to true and an alternate boot disk alias name needs to be defined to access the second boot disk by an alternate alias name in case primary disk fails.

ok>eeprom use-nvramrc?=true

Procedure for encapsulating a disk for volume manager use is as follows:

Select menu item 2 (Encapsulate one or more disks) from the vxdiskadm main menu and follow the prompts :-

Encapsulate one or more disks
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/Encapsulate

Use this operation to convert one or more disks to use the Volume Manager.
This adds the disks to a disk group and replaces existing

partitions
with volumes. Disk encapsulation requires a reboot for the

changes to take effect.

More than one disk or pattern may be entered at the prompt. Here

are some disk selection examples:

all: all disks
c3 c4t2: all disks on both controller 3 and controller 4, target 2
c3t4d0: a single disk

Select disk devices to encapsulate:
[,all,list,q,?] c2t5d0

can be a single disk, or a series of disks and/or controllers (with optional targets). If consists of multiple items, those items must be separated by white space.

Here is the disk selected. Output format: [Device_Name]
c2t5d0
Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

You can choose to add this disk to an existing disk group or to
a new disk group. To create a new disk group, select a disk group name that does not yet exist.

Which disk group [,list,q,?] (default: rootdg)
Use a default disk name for the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)
The selected disks will be encapsulated and added to the rootdg
disk group with default disk names.

c2t5d0

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y
The following disk has been selected for encapsulation. Output format:
[Device_Name]

c2t5d0

Continue with encapsulation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

The disk device c2t5d0 will be encapsulated and added to the disk
group rootdg with the disk name disk01.
The c2t5d0 disk has been configured for encapsulation.
The first stage of encapsulation has completed successfully. You
should now reboot your system at the earliest possible opportunity.
The encapsulation will require two or three reboots which will happen automatically after the next reboot. To reboot execute the command:
shutdown -g0 -y -i6
This will update the /etc/vfstab file so that volume devices are
used to mount the file systems on this disk device. You will need to update any other references such as backup scripts, databases,
or manually created swap devices.

Encapsulate other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) n

The disk device c2t5d0 will be encapsulated and added to the disk group rootdg with the disk name disk01.
The encapsulation operation failed with the following error:
It is not possible to encapsulate c2t5d0, for the following reason:

Hit RETURN to continue.

Encapsulation may fail if there is not enough free space available on the disk to accommodate volume manager. If this happens, the procedure above will end abruptly with an error message as above .

2.3 Remove a disk

This option is used to remove a disk from a disk group provided there is no active volume using this disk .. If there are some volumes using the disk the those have to be either moved to some other disk or removed if they are no longer needed.

However since a diskgroup must have at least one disk you can not remove all the disks from a disk group . To remove all disks from a diskgroup you have to disable the volume group with the exception of rootdg disk group which can not be disabled .

Select menu item 3 (Remove a disk) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Remove a disk
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/RemoveDisk

Use this operation to remove a disk from a disk group. This
operation takes, as input, a disk name. This is the same name
that you gave to the disk when you added the disk to the disk
group.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk01

Requested operation is to remove disk disk01 from group rootdg.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Removal of disk disk01 is complete.

Remove another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.4 Remove a disk for replacement

This option is used for removing the disk but retaining the name of the disk so that it can be used by the newly replaced disk . The replacement disk can be a newly added disk or already available disk in the other disk groups

Select menu item 4 (Remove a disk for replacement) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Remove a disk for replacement
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/RemoveForReplace

Use this menu operation to remove a physical disk from a disk
group, while retaining the disk name. This changes the state
for the disk name to a removed disk. If there are any
initialized disks that are not part of a disk group, you will be
given the option of using one of these disks as a replacement.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk02

Additional screens display if there are volumes associated with the disk you want to remove. You have to decide if data is needed or not needed and answer the prompts as asked .

The following devices are available as replacements:
c1t1d0

You can choose one of these disks now, to replace disk02.
Select "none" if you do not wish to select a replacement disk.

Choose a device, or select "none"
[,none,q,?] (default: c1t1d0)

Requested operation is to remove disk disk02 from group rootdg.
The removed disk will be replaced with disk device c1t1d0.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Removal of disk disk02 completed successfully.

Proceeding to replace disk02 with device c1t1d0.

Disk replacement completed successfully.

Remove another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.5 Replace a failed or removed disk

This option is used to replace a failed or removed disk . The new disk can be initialized or non initialized as this option does initialization .

Select menu item 5 (Replace a failed or removed disk) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Replace a failed or removed disk
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/ReplaceDisk

Use this menu operation to specify a replacement disk for a disk
that you removed with the "Remove a disk for replacement" menu
operation, or that failed during use. You will be prompted for
a disk name to replace and a disk device to use as a replacement.
You can choose an uninitialized disk, in which case the disk will
be initialized, or you can choose a disk that you have already
initialized using the Add or initialize a disk menu operation.

Select a removed or failed disk [,list,q,?] disk02

The following devices are available as replacements:
c1t0d0s2 c1t1d0s2

You can choose one of these disks to replace disk02.
Choose "none" to initialize another disk to replace disk02.

Choose a device, or select "none"
[,none,q,?] (default: c1t0d0s2)

The requested operation is to use the initialized device c1t0d0s2
to replace the removed or failed disk disk02 in disk group rootdg.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Replacement of disk disk02 in group rootdg with disk device
c1t0d0s2 completed successfully.

2.6 Mirror volumes on a disk

volumes can be mirrored to another disk with available space however it can not be used to mirror existing mirrors or mirrors spanning more than one sub disk .

To mirror volumes on a disk, make sure that the target disk has an equal or greater amount of space as the originating disk and then do the following

Select menu item 6 (Mirror volumes on a disk) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Mirror volumes on a disk
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/Mirror

This operation can be used to mirror volumes on a disk. These
volumes can be mirrored onto another disk or onto any
available disk space. Volumes will not be mirrored if they are
already mirrored. Also, volumes that are comprised of more than
one subdisk will not be mirrored.

Mirroring volumes from the boot disk will produce a disk that can
be used as an alternate boot disk.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk02

You can choose to mirror volumes from disk disk02 onto any
available disk space, or you can choose to mirror onto a specific
disk. To mirror to a specific disk, select the name of that disk.
To mirror to any available disk space, select "any".

Enter destination disk [,list,q,?] (default: any) disk01

Note - Be sure to always specify the destination disk when you are creating an alternate root disk. Otherwise, the volume manager will select space available in the disk group which might span disk and will result in boot failure from this disk.

2.7 Move volumes from a disk

This option is used in case the disk is to be replaced or removed and has active volumes on the disk. . Also volumes can be moved to different disk groups for better space , performance etc.

Select menu item 7 (Move volumes from a disk) from the from the from the from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Move volumes from a disk
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/Evacuate

Use this menu operation to move any volumes that are using a
disk onto other disks. Use this menu immediately prior to
removing a disk, either permanently or for replacement. You can
specify a list of disks to move volumes onto, or you can move the
volumes to any available disk space in the same disk group.

NOTE: Simply moving volumes off of a disk, without also removing
the disk, does not prevent volumes from being moved onto
the disk by future operations. For example, using two
consecutive move operations may move volumes from the
second disk to the first.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk01

You can now specify a list of disks to move onto. Specify a list
of disk media names (e.g., disk01) all on one line separated by
blanks. If you do not enter any disk media names, then the
volumes will be moved to any available space in the disk group.

Requested operation is to move all volumes from disk disk01 in
group rootdg.

NOTE: This operation can take a long time to complete.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Move volume vol3 ...
Move volume vol3-bk00 ...
Evacuation of disk disk01 is complete.

Move volumes from another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.8 Enable access to (import) a disk group

Used in enabling ownership of the other system to a disk group which has been deported by the other system. Used in failover configurations where the ownership of a shared disk/disk group is transferred to the other system in case of failure of current system.

Select menu item 8(Enable access to (import) a disk group) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Enable access to (import) a disk group
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/EnableDiskGroup

Use this operation to enable access to a disk group. This can be
used as the final part of moving a disk group from one system to
another. The first part of moving a disk group is to use the
"Remove access to (deport) a disk group" operation on the
original host.

A disk group can be imported from another host that failed without
first deporting the disk group. Be sure that all disks in the disk
group are moved between hosts.

If two hosts share a SCSI bus, be very careful to ensure that the
other host really has failed or has deported the disk group. If
two active hosts import a disk group at the same time, the disk
group will be corrupted and will become unusable.

Select disk group to import [,list,q,?] (default: list)
newdg
The import of newdg was successful.

Select another disk group? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.9 Disable access to (deport) a disk group

Disk group is deported if disks groups ownership needs to be transferred to another system or all the disks in a disk groups needs to be freed from group. Disks in a disk groups to be deported should not be active.

Select menu item 9 (Remove access to (deport) a disk group) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Remove access to (deport) a disk group
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/DeportDiskGroup

Use this menu operation to remove access to a disk group that is
currently enabled (imported) by this system. Deport a disk
group if you intend to move the disks in a disk group to another
system. Also, deport a disk group if you want to use all of the
disks remaining in a disk group for some new purpose.

You will be prompted for the name of a disk group. You will also
be asked if the disks should be disabled (offlined). For
removable disk devices on some systems, it is important to
disable all access to the disk before removing the disk.

Enter name of disk group [,list,q,?] (default: list) newdg

The requested operation is to disable access to the removable
disk group named newdg. This disk group is stored on the
following disks:
newdg01 on device c1t1d0s2

You can choose to disable access to (also known as "offline")
these disks. This may be necessary to prevent errors if
you actually remove any of the disks from the system.

Disable (offline) the indicated disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

Removal of disk group newdg was successful.

Disable another disk group? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.10 Enable (online) a disk device

Disks which are turned offline by volume manager , or which are to be imported can be enabled by this option. This operation causes disks to be scanned and find out the disk belonging to a disk group.

Select menu item 10 (Enable (online) a disk device) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Enable (online) a disk device
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/OnlineDisk

Use this operation to enable access to a disk that was disabled
with the "Disable (offline) a disk device" operation.

You can also use this operation to re-scan a disk that may have
been changed outside of the Volume Manager. For example, if a disk
is shared between two systems, the Volume Manager running on the
other system may have changed the disk. If so, you can use this
operation to re-scan the disk.

NOTE: Many vxdiskadm operations re-scan disks without user
intervention. This will eliminate most needs to online a
disk directly, except when the disk is directly offlined.

Select a disk device to enable [

,list,q,?] c1t1d0

Enable another device? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.11 Disable (offline) a disk device

This option disables all access to a disk which is not part of any disk group . This is used to remove disk from volume group. Some systems do not support disks that can be removed from a system during normal operation. On such systems, the offline operation is not very useful.

Select menu item 11 (Disable (offline) a disk device) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Disable (offline) a disk device
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/OfflineDisk

Use this menu operation to disable all access to a disk device
by the Volume Manager. This operation can be applied only to
disks that are not currently in a disk group. Use this operation
if you intend to remove a disk from a system without rebooting.

NOTE: Many systems do not support disks that can be removed from
a system during normal operation. On such systems, the
offline operation is seldom useful.

Select a disk device to disable [

,list,q,?] c1t1d0

Disable another device? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2.12 Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group

This is used to reserve the disk as an automatic replacement disk ( hot-relocation) in case of another disk in the disk group fails. Hot-relocation relocates redundant subdisks to other disks and restores the affected volume manager objects and data. If a disk has already been designated as a spare in the disk group, the subdisks from the failed disk are relocated to the spare disk. Otherwise, any suitable free space in the disk group is used.

Select menu item 12 (Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/MarkSpareDisk

Use this operation to mark a disk as a spare for a disk group.
This operation takes, as input, a disk name. This is the same name
that you gave to the disk when you added the disk to the disk group.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk01
Marking of disk01 in rootdg as a spare disk is complete.

Mark another disk as a spare? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Any VM disk in this disk group can now use this disk as a spare in the event of a failure. If a disk fails, hot-relocation should automatically occur .The failed disk needs to be replaced.

2.13 Turn off the spare flag on a disk

This is used to remove a VM Disk From the Hot-Relocation Pool & free hot-relocation spare disks for use as regular volume manager disks While a disk is designated as a spare, the space on that disk is not used as free space for the creation of volume manager objects within its disk group and this option makes this space available.

Select menu item 13 (Turn off the spare flag on a disk) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

Turn off the spare flag on a disk
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/UnmarkSpareDisk

Use this operation to turn off the spare flag on a disk.
This operation takes, as input, a disk name. This is the same
name that you gave to the disk when you added the disk to the
disk group.

Enter disk name [,list,q,?] disk01

Disk disk01 in rootdg no longer marked as a spare disk.

Turn-off spare flag on another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

After using the vxdiskadm for configuring disks and diskgroups next step is to configure volumes and then use them for storage operations . The second part of this article discusses this aspect of volume manager .

vxassist Printer Friendly

General
1. Creating a Volume
1.1 Creating a Concatenated Volume

1.2 Creating a Striped Volume

1.3 Creating a RAID-5 Volume

2. Extending a Volume
2.1 Extending a volume up to certain length,

2.2 Extending by a Given Length
3. Shrinking a Volume

3.1 Shrinking to a Given Length
3.2 Shrinking by a Given Length
4. Removing a Volume
5. Mirroring a Volume
5.1 Creating & Mirroring a New Volume
5.2 Mirroring an Existing Volume
5.3 Mirroring All Volumes
6. Removing a Mirror
7. Adding a RAID-5 Log
8. Adding a DRL Log
9. Removing a RAID-5 Log

10.Preparing a Volume for Online Backup
11.Displaying Volume Configuration Information

General

The vxassist utility in Veritas Volume Manager is used to create volumes, add mirrors and logs to existing volumes, extend and shrink existing volumes, provides for the migration of data from a specified set of disks, and provides facilities for the on-line backup of existing volumes.

The default behavior of vxassist is to create volumes in the rootdg diskgroup if diskgroup is not specified . The default length is taken as number of blocks but this can be specified in Kilobytes or Megabytes or Gigabytes.

vxassist command syntax :

vxassist

Commonly used options are given below (See man vxassist for complete list of supported options)

-g for specifying diskgroups

-b for background operation

-d file containing defaults for vxassist if not specified /etc/default/vxassist is used

Keywords used are make , mirror , move , growto ,growby ,shrintto ,shirnkby ,snapstart , snapshot ,snapwait

Attributes specify volumes layout disks controllar to include exclude etc

Device Nodes :

Default rootdg disk group.

Block Device Node /dev/vx/dsk/volume_name

Raw Device Node /dev/vx/rdsk/volume_name

Other DiskGroups

Block Device Node /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup_name/volume_name

Raw Device Node /dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup_name/volume_name

_______________________________________

1. Creating a Volume :

1.1 Creating a Concatenated Volume

By default, vxassist creates a concatenated volume using the space available on a disk or on the number of disks in a diskgroup if the volume size specified is more then the one available on a single disk.

Disks can be specified from a diskgroup for a volume group but if not mentioned available disks are selected by the volume manager.

Command syntax :

vxassist make volume_name volume_length

To create a new volume appvol of 100 MB in the default disk group rootdg with available disks:

#vxassist make appvol 100m

To create the volume appvol of 100MB on disk03

#vxassist make appvol 100m disk03

1.2 Creating a Striped Volume

A striped volume contains at least one plex that consists of two or more subdisks located on two or more physical disks.

Command Syntax :

vxassist make volume_name length layout=stripe

To create a striped volume appvol2 with the default stripe unit size on the default number of disks

#vxassist make appvol2 100m layout=stripe

To create a striped volume appvol2 100MB striped volume on three specific disks.

#vxassist make appvol2 100m layout=stripe disk04 disk05 disk06

1.3 Creating a RAID-5 Volume

A RAID-5 volume contains a RAID-5 plex that consists of two or more subdisks located on two or more physical disks. Only one RAID-5 plex can exist per volume. A RAID-5 volume may also contain one or more RAID-5 log plexes, which are used to log information about data and parity being written to the volume.

Command Syntax :

vxassist make volume_name length layout=raid5

To create the RAID-5 volume appvol4 with the default stripe unit size on the default number of disks with RAID-5 log,

#vxassist make appvol4 100m layout=raid5.

2. Extending a Volume

Caution : If you plan to use volume size change (grow or shrink ) on a volume with data make sure you have the good backup of the volume available before carrying out such operation .

2.1 Extending a volume up to certain length,

Command syntax

vxassist growto volume_name length

To extend vol3 upto 8000 sectors, type:

#vxassist growto vol3 8000

2.2 Extending by a Given Length

Command Syntax

vxassist growby volume_name length

To extend volapp by 1000 sectors, type:

#vxassist growby volapp 1000

3. Shrinking a Volume

Caution - Do not shrink a volume below the size of the file system. If you have a VxFS file system, you can shrink the file system and then shrink the volume. If you do not shrink the file system first, you risk unrecoverable data loss.

Always make sure you have a good backup of the data volume to be shirnked.

3.1 Shrinking to a Given Length

Shrink a volume to a specific length as follows:

vxassist shrinkto volume_name length

Make sure you do not shrink the volume below the current size of the file system or database using the volume. This command can be safely used on empty volumes.

To shrink volcat to 1300 sectors, type:

#vxassist shrinkto volcat 1300

3.2 Shrinking by a Given Length

Shrink a volume by a specific length as follows:

vxassist shrinkby volume_name length

To shrink volcat by 8000 sectors, type:

#vxassist shrinkby volapp2 8000

4. Removing a Volume

Removing a volume requires removing all references to the volumes to be removed like unmounting the volume if mounted and removing its reference from /etc/vfstab .

An active volume has to be stopped first to stop all the activities to the volume only then it can be removed

Stopping Volume :

Command Syntax

vxvol stop volume_name

To stop appvol1

#vxvol stop appvol1

Removing Volume

Command Syntax

vxedit -rf rm volume_name

To remove the volume appvol1

#vxedit -rf rm appvol11

5. Mirroring a Volume

Mirroring allow data to be written simultaneously to two disks so that in case of failure of one disk data is available from the other mirrored disk. Boot disks can be mirriored to provide alternate booting disk .

5.1 Creating & Mirroring a New Volume

Command Syntax :

vxassist make volume_name length layout=mirror

To create the mirrored volume, appvol22 of 100mb

#vxassist make appvol22 100m layout=mirror

To create a volume with Dirty Region Logging enabled

#vxassist make volume_name length layout=mirror,log

5.2 Mirroring an Existing Volume

Command syntax

vxassist mirror volume_name

Creating a mirror of volume vol44:

#vxassist mirror vol44

5.3 Mirroring All Volumes

To mirror all existing volumes to available disk space

/etc/vx/bin/vxmirror -a

6. Removing a Mirror

Removing a mirror involves first dissociating the plex from its volume and then removing the plex and any associated subdisks completely.The last valid mirror plex associated with a volume cannot be removed.

Dissociate and remove the plex from its volume as follows:

vxplex -o rm dis plex_name

vxprint -h shows the volume and associated plexes :

Disk group: rootdg TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0 v volm fsgen ENABLED 10240 - ACTIVE - - pl volm-01 volm ENABLED 10240 - ACTIVE - - sd disk01-02 volm-01 - 10240 0 - - - pl volm-02 volm ENABLED 10240 - ACTIVE - - sd disk02-03 volm-02 - 10240 0 - - -

To disassociate and remove volmir-02 from volmir, type:

#vxplex -o rm dis volm-02

The output of vxprint -h for volm now shows volume volm with only one plex::

Disk group: rootdg TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0 v volm fsgen ENABLED 10240 - ACTIVE - - pl volm-01 volmir ENABLED 10240 - ACTIVE - - sd disk01-02 volmir-01 - 10240 0 - - -

7. Adding a RAID-5 Log

A RAID-5 log maintains a copy of the data and parity being written to the volume at any given time. If a system failure occurs, VxVM can replay the RAID-5 log to resynchronize the volume. This copies the data and parity that was being written at the time of failure from the log to the appropriate areas of the RAID-5 volume.

RAID-5 log plexes are used to log information about data and parity being written to the raid volume. A log plex is created for the volume by default when a raid volume is created but additional ones can be added by following command .

vxassist addlog name_of_raid5_vol

8. Adding a DRL Log

Dirty region logging (DRL) is used with mirrored volume layouts. DRL keeps track of the regions that have changed due to I/O writes to a mirrored volume. Prior to every write, a bitmap is written to a log to record the area of the disk that is being changed. In case of system failure, DRL uses this information to recover only the portions of the volume that need to be recovered.

To put Dirty Region Logging into effect for a volume, a log subdisk must be added to that volume and the volume must be mirrored. Only one log subdisk can exist per plex.

The following example creates a log for the mirrored volume vol03:

#vxassist addlog vol03

When vxassist is used to add a log subdisk to a volume, a log plex is also created to contain the log subdisk, by default.

Once created, the plex containing a log subdisk can be treated as a regular plex. Data subdisks can be added to the log plex. The log plex and log subdisk can be removed using the same procedures used to remove ordinary plexes and subdisks.

9. Removing a RAID-5 Log

Removing a RAID-5 log involves first dissociating the log from its volume and then removing the log and any associated subdisks completely.

Dissociate the log from its volume as follows:

#vxplex -o rm dis plex_name

To identify the log plex, use the command:

vxprint -ht raid5_volume_name

To disassociate the log plex volrd-02 from volrd, type:

#vxplex -o rm dis volrd-02

The output of vxprint -h for volrd now shows:

Disk group: rootdg TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0 v volrd raid5 ENABLED 32 - ACTIVE - - pl volrd-01 volrd ENABLED 32 - ACTIVE - - sd disk01-02 volrd-01 - 32 0 - - - sd disk02-03 volrd-01 - 32 0 - - -

10. Preparing a Volume for Online Backup

Volume manager provides an easy way to take backup of the online data by creating an offline snapshot mirror of the volume .

The vxassist snapstart operation creates a write-only backup mirror, which is attached to and synchronized with the volume to be backed up and later detached and made offline by vxassist snapshot command . The snapshot volume can be used by backup utilities while the original volume continues to be available for applications and users.

The volume backup method described here does not apply to RAID-5 volumes.

Backing up a volume with vxassist involves the following procedure

Create a snapshot mirror

snapstart starts creating a online snapshot mirror of the volume using the available disk space . The snapshot is completed with vxassist snapshot command when offline snapshot volume is created with a userdefined name .

Command Syntax:

vxassist snapstart volume_name

To create a snapshot mirror of a volume called vol8, type

#vxassist snapstart vol8

Create a snapshot volume

Command Syntax

vxassist snapshot volume_name new_volume_name

To create a snapshot volume of vol8, type:

#vxassist snapshot vol8 snapvol8

You can now back up the snapshot volume by whatever means you prefer. To avoid wasting space, you can then remove the snapshot volume, which occupies as much space as the original volume

11 Displaying Volume Configuration Information

The vxprint command can be used to display information about how a volume is configured.

Display the volume, mirror, and subdisk record information for all volumes as follows:

#vxprint -ht

Disk group: rootdg

DG NAME NCONFIG NLOG MINORS GROUP-ID

DM NAME DEVICE TYPE PRIVLEN PUBLEN STATE

V NAME USETYPE KSTATE STATE LENGTH READPOL PREFPLEX

PL NAME VOLUME KSTATE STATE LENGTH LAYOUT NCOL/WID MODE

SD NAME PLEX DISK DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE

dg rootdg 759096729.1025.tweety

dm disk10 c1t0d0s2 sliced 559 1044400 -

dm disk20 c2t0d0s2 sliced 559 1044400 -

v pubs fsgen ENABLED ACTIVE 2288 SELECT -

pl pubs-01 pubs ENABLED ACTIVE 2288 CONCAT - RW

sd disk10-01 pubs-01 disk10 0 2288 0 c0t0d0 ENA

v vol8 fsgen ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 SELECT -

pl vol8-01 vol8 ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 CONCAT - RW

sd disk10-02 vol8-0 disk10 2288 20480 0 c0t1d0 ENA

where dg is a disk group, dm is a disk, v is a volume, pl is a plex, and sd is a subdisk. The top few lines indicate the headers that match each type of output line that follows. Each volume is listed along with its associated plex(es) and subdisk(s).

Display volume-related information for a specific volume as follows:

#vxprint -t volume_name

To display information about vol8, type:

#vxprint -t vol8

How to read the output of netstat -k

2006-12-04T01:52:00.000-08:00

One of the most powerful, yet least utilized options for netstat is the
-k flag. The "k" stands for kstat, a facility for perusing the kernel
statistics.

Early releases of Solaris (< 2.6) did not allow you to specify the inter-
face. However, with Solaris 2.6 and higher, you may specifiy the inter-
face on the command line. Below is a sample, as well as an explanation
of each variable in the output. I have expanded the description provided
by Sun when I felt it was less than self-explanatory.

example: netstat -k hme0

hme0:
ipackets 85402 ierrors 0 opackets 470 oerrors 0 collisions 1
defer 0 framing 0 crc 0 sqe 0 code_violations 0 len_errors 0
drop 0 buff 0 oflo 0 uflo 0 missed 0 tx_late_collisions 0
retry_error 0 first_collisions 0 nocarrier 0 inits 7 nocanput 0
allocbfail 0 runt 0 jabber 0 babble 0 tmd_error 0 tx_late_error 0
rx_late_error 0 slv_parity_error 0 tx_parity_error 0 rx_parity_error 0
slv_error_ack 0 tx_error_ack 0 rx_error_ack 0 tx_tag_error 0
rx_tag_error 0 eop_error 0 no_tmds 0 no_tbufs 0 no_rbufs 0
rx_late_collisions 0

ipackets packets received
ierrors malformed packets received
opackets packets sent
oerrors output errors
collisions transmit collisions for a given packet
defer deferred output transmissions ( but still sent )
framing packets seen with framing or alignment errors
crc packets received with CRC (checksum) errors
sqe SQE test errors
code_violations code violation errors
len_errors rx len errors (packet too large)
buff buffer errors recv packet sizes > buffer size
drop recv packets dropped
oflo number of recv overflow due to a busy backplane
uflo number of xmit underflow due to a busy backplane
missed input packets recv missed
tx_late_collisions late collisions recv
retry_error number xmit retry failures (for Ethernet, this is > 16
retries)
first_collisions first collisions
nocarrier carrier (link) lost since system boot
inits hardware has been initialized by an ioctl call
nocanput errors trying to send packets upstream, canput() failed
allocbfail times driver ran out of transmit buffers, allocb() failed
runt recv runt (packet size < 64 bytes) packets, often the pro-
duct of collisions
jabber jabber (improper electrical signal) errors
babble babble (host transmitting beyond the time limit) errors
tmd_error chained tx desc. errors
tx_late_error SBUS tx late error
rx_late_error SBUS rx late error
slv_parity_error slave parity errors
tx_parity_error tx parity errors
rx_parity_error rx parity errors
slv_error_ack slave error acks
tx_error_ack tx error acks
rx_error_ack rx error acks
tx_tag_error tx tag error
rx_tag_error rx tag error
eop_error eop error
no_tmds out of tmds
no_tbufs out of xmit buffers
no_rbufs out of recv buffers
rx_late_collisions recv late collisions, generally caused by exceeding the
maximum cable length dictates or faulty hardware