ESXi - Enabling SSH and Jumbo frames.

Enabling Jumbo frames on the ESXi server took me some time as most people suggest me to enable SSH and the login to the unsupported console and enable the jumbo frames. This is not supported by vmware. If you have a evaluation version running on a test machine you can try this.
We decided to go with ESXi installation on our Sun servers and HP servers and we enabled Jumbo frames on the switches and the Netapp storages. We enable on the real production machine through vSphere CLI.  I will write about that in next session.

1) Enable SSH on the ESXi hosts
  a) Go to the console of the ESXi host and press ALt+F1
  b) Type "unsupported" on the window, this text wont be echoed.
  c) Enter the root password, you will get the prompt ~ #
  d) Edit the file /etc/inetd.conf
         ~ # vi /etc/inetd.conf
  e) Remove the # from the line ssh.
   ssh     stream  tcp     nowait  root    /sbin/dropbearmulti     dropbear  ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i -K60

  f) Determine the process id of inetd from the command
           ~ # ps | grep inetd
  g) Restart the inetd
           ~ # kill -HUP

2) Enabling Jumbo frames

  a) Login to the server using SSH
  b) esxcfg-vswitch -l  , This will lists the current vswitches including the MTU sizes

~ # esxcfg-vswitch -l

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       64          3           64                1500    vmnic2

  PortGroup Name      VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  VM Network          0        0           vmnic2
  Management Network  0        1           vmnic2

  c) Set the Jumbo frames for the vswitch0

     ~# esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch0

  d) Check the changes
  
~ # esxcfg-vswitch -l
 
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       64          3           64                9000    vmnic2

  PortGroup Name      VLAN ID  Used Ports  Uplinks
  VM Network          0        0           vmnic2
  Management Network  0        1           vmnic2


  e) Verify that that the NIC has the new value

     ~ # esxcfg-nics -l

      vmnic2  41:00.00 bnx2        Up   1000Mbps  Full   18:a9:05:68:cd:d0 9000

Enabling Jumbo frames on nxge interface or on T5140 server

To enable jumbo frames on the nxge interface you need to edit the below file. There is option to enable frames per interface, but this didnt work out for me so I enable on all the interface.

/platform/sun4v/kernel/drv/nxge.conf

#------- Jumbo frame support ---------------------------------
# To enable jumbo support for all nxge interfaces,
 accept_jumbo = 1;
#
# To disable jumbo support for all nxge interfaces,
# accept_jumbo = 0;
#
# Default is 0.  See the example at the end of this file for
# enabling or disabling jumbo for a particular nxge interface.
#
#

root@husky # dladm show-link
nxge0           type: non-vlan  mtu: 9194       device: nxge0
nxge1           type: non-vlan  mtu: 9194       device: nxge1
nxge2           type: non-vlan  mtu: 9194       device: nxge2
nxge3           type: non-vlan  mtu: 9194       device: nxge3

Sendmail disabling help, vrfy, expn and version information.

We have a security audit and auditor asked me to disable the help, VRFY and EXPN  command  and  disable the version information displayed while login on the sendmail server.

1) To disable the version information from displaying, edit the sendmail.cf file. Make a backup copy of the file.

# vi /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

look for the line " GreetingMessage"
remove the " Sendmail $v/$Z " after $j. After editing the line looks like below.

O SmtpGreetingMessage=$j  $b

Restart the service

2) To disable the VRFY and EXPN ,look for  "PrivacyOptions" line in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file. Edit the PrivacyOptions line and append "novrfy,noexpn" to the line as below. Make sure you made a backup copy of the file before editing.

# privacy flags
O PrivacyOptions=authwarnings,novrfy,noexpn

Restart the service

3) To disable the help, go to /etc/mail/ , move the helpfile to helpfile.old and touch an empty helpfile

#pwd

/etc/mail

# mv helpfile helpfile.old

# touch helpfile

Restart the service

# /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

or

# svcadm refresh sendmail

After editing the configuration file telnet to port 25 will give the result as below
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# telnet myhost 25
220 myhost ESMTP Mon, 8 Mar 2010 09:15:21 +0300 (AST)
help
214 2.0.0 End of HELP info
vrfy
252 2.5.2 Cannot VRFY user; try RCPT to attempt delivery (or try finger)
expn
502 5.7.0 Sorry, we do not allow this operation
quit
221 2.0.0 myhost closing connection
Connection to host lost.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

vSphere iommu error on dell optiplex 760

Once the installation of the vSphere is completed I got the following error on the console.
While loading its shows "Failed to load iommu driver"

cpu1:....: Initialization for vtd failed with -1"

To fix this disable the VT for Direct I/O from the BIOS

1) Reboot the esx host, press F12 and go to BIOS

disable "Virtualization support --VT for Direct I/O"

save and reboot

vSphere on dell optiplex 760, Not enough memory to load vmkernel

vSphere required minimum 2GB of memory ti install. I had a dell optiplex 760 with 2GB installed. While installing vSphere the installer stops and throws errors like
" vmnix...
 there is not enough memory to load vmkernel. 2040384 KB of RAM
was detected. We require at least 2064384 KB of RAM to boot.
Aborting boot "

I swapped 1GB from other server and installed the vphere. Once the installation is completed you can edit the memory required meory value to desired value.

1) Login to the esx server through console or via putty and edit the below file

# vi /etc/vmware/init/init.d/00.vmnix

2) Find the below line and edit with required value

RequiredMemory=2064384

3) Shutdown the server and remove the extra 1gb memory added and boot the esx host

I'm yet to try on ESXi host. This is my test environment to study vSphere. I'm not sure about any other workaround.

Automating sftp with expect script

I got a request to automate the sftp process. I find it difficult with shell script. I find an easy way to do with
expect script.


The following packages need to be installed on the SUN server for the expect script. I downloaded the x86packages from sun freeware as I'm running the script from an x86 server.

tcl-8.5.3-sol10-x86-local
libgcc-3.4.6-sol10-x86-local
expect-5.43.0-sol10-x86-local


1)pkgadd -d tcl-8.5.3-sol10-x86-local

2)pkgadd -d libgcc-3.4.6-sol10-x86-local

The following packages are available:
  1  SMClgcc346     libgcc
                    (x86) 3.4.6
Installation of was successful.

3)pkgadd -d expect-5.43.0-sol10-x86-local 
 
The following packages are available:
  1  SMCexpect     expect
                   (x86) 5.43.0
Installation of was successful.

The expect will installed in the /usr/local/bin directory.

The script is as follows

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

#!/usr/local/bin/expect -f
#This is the expect script wrote to automate the sftp process to pull files from a server as per the date and #then push the files to another server.
set timeout -1
set DATE [exec date "+%Y%m%d"]
log_file  "/home/ftp/logs/sftp.log"
send_log --  "####-Starting  SFTP script-  [exec date] \n"
send_log --  "Today's date:[exec date] \n"
send_log --  "Downloading files through sftp \n"
spawn /usr/bin/sftp jim@172.20.1.86
expect "Password:"
#sleep 5
send "jim123\n"
expect "sftp>"
send "cd /export/home/jim \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "ls \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "get *.$DATE \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "quit \r"
sleep 5
send_log --  "Today's date:[exec date] \n"
send_log --  "Uploading files through sftp \n"
spawn /usr/bin/sftp jim@172.20.5.93
expect "Password:"
send "jim123\n"
expect "sftp>"
send "cd /export/home/jim \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "put *.$DATE \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "quit \r"
#END of SCRIPT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can shell script from expect script. I have another requirement to pull yesterdays file through sftp server. Thank god that was a Linux server and to get yesterdays date in Linux is easy :)

set DATE [exec /home/ftp/date.sh ]

The above line will call the date.sh script to get yesterdays date. 
date.sh script is as below

[root@]# cat date.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo $(date  --date='1 day ago' "+%Y%m%d")
#End of script

Installing Solaris x86 on HP DL385 G6

I had a hard time installing the Solaris u7 on the HP DL385 G6 server. The controller firmware is the issue.
OS installation is failing as its not able to find the disk. Below are the steps I followed for the successful installation

1) Download the driver from the HP support site for Solaris x86. The driver name is "CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz".

2) unzip the archive and burn the iso image(CPQary3.iso) inside the archive to a cd/dvd

3) Boot the machine from the Solaris OS and when the installation option appears choose option 5 (Applydriverupdates) for driver installation.

4) Eject the solaris media and insert the iso image burned media into the machine

5) Choose option C for cd/dvd and it will install the driver. This is only a temporary installation

6) choose option "e" to end and eject the media and resinsert the Solaris media and press enter

7)  Continue with the OS installation. While partition the OS make sure that /usr and /var is not a seprate partition. everything should be under / filesystem

8) once the installation complete, reboot the machine into failsafe mode and reinsert the iso image cd and do the following

9) # install-du
10 # install-recovery ( this will search for the installed OS instance)

11) You will be asked  to mount the root slice to /a  , say yes and enter

12) Eject the cdrom and burn a new cd with the CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz archive. You may face an issue that you wont see the full name, go ahead with the name there.

13) mount the cdrom to /mnt
 # mount -F hsfs -o ro,nrr,nomaplcase /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0 /mnt

14) cd /mnt ; cp CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz   /a/var/tmp

15) gunzip and untar the archive, you will get the directory CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.
     # gzcat  CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386 - | tar xvf -

16) #cd  CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386 ; ls
      you will find the package file there with name " CPQary3.pkg"

  Note: I'm getting the following errors when doing a pkgadd command
  pkgadd: ERROR: unable to open admin file No such file or directory


17) create a file with the following parameters
  # vi /tmp/admin
      instance=overwrite
      mail=
:wq!

18) cd to the directory CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.
     # pkgadd -a /tmp/admin -d `pwd`/CPQary3.pkg    CPQary3

you will get the message Installation of  CPQary3 was successful

19) cd /a ; touch reconfigure

20) init 6

Well I did this after a lot of trial and error, there may be some easy procedure avl I believe. i written what I did. If there is any easyway please comment here.