Archive
Posts from 2007
The value of an all-in-one storage stack
I have written several times about the Solaris Leadvilel storage stack. While debugging a problem on a Solaris 9 host that wasn't using the Leadville stack, I would wait and wait and wait for various commands to complete. Here is one such example: real 2:25.09 user 0.10 sys 0.45 After migrating the same host to Solaris 10 and the Leadville stack, I no longer had to wait for my commands to complete. Here is an example: real 0.11 user 0.05 sys 0.03 After doing a bit of debugging, I noticed that the Solaris 9 fibre channel stack (which was using a vendor supplied HBA driver) was enumerating each path to see if devices were present…
$ read more →Viewing tape devices on Solaris hosts
I have been repairing our backup environment for the past few weeks, and have encountered several nifty tools in the Netbackup volumen management bin directory. Once of these tools is the scan utility, which displays the robots and tape devices visible to a system: This utility is extremely useful for getting the device paths for a specific tape device, and for viewing the information returned from a SCSI INQUIRY command. Viva la scan!
$ read more →Concert review 311
I ventured out recently to see the The English beat, Matisyahu and 311. Based on some logistical issues, I didn't get to see The English Beat or Matisyahu, but I was able to to see the entire 311 show (311 is one of my favorite bands, so I was stoked I got to see their entire set). The boys from Omaha put on a great show, and Doug and Nick sounded awesome! If you haven't listened to 311 before, their music can best be described as a mix of hip-hop, funk and rock and roll…
$ read more →Logging su attempts and failed logins
As a conscientious Solaris administrator, I make every attempt possible to protect my servers from malicious users. This includes disabling all unneeded services, enabling strong password policies, configuring system auditing, enabling strong network defaults, applying system patches and configuring system logging. When I configure system logging, I like to configure the syslogd daemon to log everything to a centralized location. This is typically accomplished by adding an entry similar to the following to /etc/syslog.conf: *.debug @logserver.prefetch.net Additionally, I like to log each time a user logs into my systems, as well as all attempts to su to another user…
$ read more →Configuring Brocade switches to log to syslog
I manage a number of Brocade switches, and periodically they encounter hardware problems (bad SPFs, faulty cables, etc.). To ensure that I am notified when these problems occur, I like to configure the switches to log errors to a centralized syslog server. Configuring a Brocade switch to use syslog is as simple as running the syslogdIpAdd command with the IP address of the syslog server: switch1:admin> syslogdIpAdd "192.168.23.138" Committing configuration...done. switch1:admin> syslogdIpAdd "192.168.23.139" Committing configuration...done…
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