Author Archives: Bastiaan van Leeuwen

Configuration of NVRAM and drives mismatch (normal mismatch).

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Configuration of NVRAM and drives mismatch (normal mismatch).

After a harddisk crash the NVRAM can be screwed up of a Dell PERC controller. To set the configuration from the disks to the nvram, do the following:

1. Run the BIOS utility (CTRL+M) to see the configuration,
2. Select Configure,
3. View/Add Configuration,
4. Select the desired Configuration,
5. If this is the configuration you want to use, escape and select Save.

After restarting the nvram has the latest config written to it.

ESX3.5i on bootable USB key

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  1. Download ESX Server 3.5i Installable ISO
  2. Extract INSTALL.TGZ from the root directory of the ISO image using an IZArc
  3. Extract /usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 from INSTALL.TGZ using IZArc
  4. Extract VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd from VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 using IZArc
  5. Attach the USB flash drive and make sure you no longer need the data on it
  6. Use WinImage to transfer VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd to the USB flash drive
    1. Disk->Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive…
    2. Select the USB flash drive (Warning: If you select the wrong disk you will lose data!)
    3. Select the image file VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd
    4. Confirm the warning message
    5. Wait for the transfer to complete
  7. Unplug the USB flash drive (Warning: If you forget to unplug the flash drive from the PC you might lose the data on your hard drives the next time you boot!)
  8. Attach the USB flash drive to the machine you want to boot (Warning: If ESX Server 3i recognizes local drives, you might lose the data on it, so make sure you don´t need it anymore or unplug all hard drives!)
  9. Turn the machine on and make sure the USB flash drive is selected as boot device
  10. Watch ESX Server 3i boot
  11. Configure
  12. Enjoy!

Adding a physical disk to LVM in Redhat/CentOS

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Source

Problem:

My computer only has 20GB of disk space. I just have 1 partition. I want to add another disk (40GB). I don’t want to add another partition (and I really don’t want to reinstall the whole system), I want to increase the size of the root partition to 60GB. i.e. I want the root partition to span across two physical disks.

Solution:

  1. Add new physical disk. Boot.
  2. # pvscan 

    This will show you the current physical volumes.

  3. # fdisk /dev/sdb 

    Add the disk to your machine as a primary partition. Partition type: “8e (LVM)”. Obviously /dev/sdb may be different on your system.

  4. # pvcreate /dev/sdb1 

    This creates a new physical LVM volume on our new disk.

  5. # vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sdb1 

    Add our new physical volume to the volume group: VolGroup00. Again, this group name may by different for you, but this is what Redhat & CentOS assigns by default when you install your system.

  6. # pvscan 

    You should see the new physical volume assigned to VolGroup00.

  7. # lvextend -L+40G /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    This increases the size of the logical volume our root partition resides in. Change the -L flag as appropriate.

We’ve just added 40GB to the logical volume used by the root partition. Sweet as. Now we need to resize the file system to utilize the additional space.

  1. Reboot into rescue mode using your CentOS CDROM. 

    From memory this involves typing linux rescue as your boot option.

  2. When prompted, skip the mounting of system partitions.
  3. # lvm vgchange -a y 

    This command makes your LVM volumes accessible.

  4. # e2fsck -f /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    Run a file system check, the -f flag seems necessary. No idea what we do if the returns an error?

  5. # resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 

    Without any parameters resize2fs will just increase the file system to the max space available.

Reboot and your root partition is now 40GB lager, spanning multiple disks.

Viewing Ghost Hardware after P2V

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After converting a physical machine to a virtual machine, you need to remove the “old” hardware. Sometimes this hardware is not shown in the device manager. To do this you will need to follow the Microsoft KB article 241257 or 269155.

Abstract:
Device Manager displays only non-Plug and Play devices, drivers, and printers when you click the Show hidden devices command on the View menu to enable it. Devices that are installed but are not currently connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device or “ghosted” devices) are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you use the Show hidden devices command.

To work around this behavior and display phantom devices when you use the Show hidden devices command:

  1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
  2. At the command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after each line
    set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    cd\%SystemRoot%\System32
    start devmgmt.msc

    where %SystemRoot% is the folder in which Windows 2000 is installed.

  3. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager, as required.NOTE: You must first select show hidden devices on the Device Manager View menu before you can see devices that are no longer present in the system.
  4. When you are done troubleshooting, quit Device Manager, and then close the Command Prompt window. Closing the window clears the variable you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you use the Show hidden devices command.

NOTE: When you quit Device Manager and close the Command Prompt window, the set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable is turned off so you cannot see the phantom devices.

VMware server 2 and Vista problem

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When installing VMware server 2 on a vista ultimate 32/64bit machine you get the following error when trying to logon:

The VMware Infrastructure Web Service at “http://localhost:8222/sdk” is not responding (Connection Refused)

Turns out that in my Vista Ultimate 64 installation the host file entry for localhost has been reduced to  the IPV6 lookup only:

::1             localhost

Adding back the usual:

127.0.0.1     localhost

Fixed the problem!

Restoring SQL database into other database with TSM

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Problem(Abstract)
SQL database restore back to the same SQL Server without overwriting the original database when using the Data Protection for SQL client  
   
Resolving the problem
The Data Protection for SQL will allow for a restore to an alternate location on the same SQL Server.
When using the Data Protection (DP) for SQL to restore a database to an alternate location (into a new database) on the same machine, both the RELOCATE and the RESTORE INTO parameters must be used.
The RELOCATE is used to determine what file on the hard drive will be used to hold the data. This will need to be changed to have a different name and/or location to be something different (test) than the production database.
The RESTORE INTO is used by the SQL Server to identify the database. This should be a new name so that the SQL Server will be able to differentiate between the production database and this second (test) copy of the database.

To use the Data Protection for SQL GUI client, the following steps can be used for this alternate restore.
1. Launch the DP SQL GUI.
2. Click on the Restore Databases tab.
3. Make sure that both boxes are checked for the Wait for Tape Mounts (for both the Restore and for File Information).
4. Depending on which database backup is being restored, it may be necessary to check the Show Active and Inactive box.
5. On the left-hand side, under SQL Servers, open the list to see the SQL Server and databases.
6. In the main restore window, select the database to be restored ( the box next to the database should be yellow and have a red check mark).
7. Right click on this selected database and 3 options will be displayed: Restore Into, Relocate, Standby Server Undo File.
8. Both the Restore Into and Relocate options will need to be configured.
Select the Restore Into and enter the alternate name for this database on the SQL Server.
Then select the Relocate, wait for the dialog box to appear that contains the information regarding the file location/name for the database backup and update these to be different than the existing database files. If the metadata containing this information must wait for a tape mount on the TSM Server, it may be some amount of time until the dialog box is populated. It is not possible to update the Relocate information until after the box has been filled in with this File Information metadata.
9. Then click the Restore button to complete the restore.

Command from here

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Run the register file and when you do a right click on a folder you get the extra option “command prompt”. When you select the option a dos box will open on that location.

Download [wpdm_file id=”2″] or save the following lines in a file (whith extension “reg”) and run it on you machine:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Prompt\Command]
@="Cmd.exe /k pushd %L"