What I Learned Today

1. I'm learning more then I ever wanted to know about the as/400... We need a new one. So I went down the normal route of using IBM's developer program to get us a new box with a discount - but that ended up costing about $75K ... and considering we have about 2 customers on the platform, it doesnt make sense to spend that much on the hardware. So I went down the used route and found some of the old school (ie not a pseries) hardware for incrediably cheap. Currently we have a 170-2292 ( 220 cpw / 30 cpw interactive) and I'm looking at buying a 270-2434/1516(2350 cpw/ 70 cpw interactive). What I haven't figured out yet is if the extra horse power is going to help us at all. We only have two developers at most working on the system and they use it for interactive compiles our of product and they also use it for interactive compiles of our sample applications that use our product. There is no other work being done on the machine. I looked in the QSYSOPR message queue and didnt' find that we were running out of interactive cpw so I am unsure if we are even processor bound on the machine. If we aren't then I should probably spend the money on additional RAM and disk space as opposed to interactive cpw.

2. I also learned that we have a disk problem on our existing 400.. I was looking in the QSYSOPR message queue for any indication of interactive cpw issues and found a boat load of disk error messages. It seems that I have disk in the array that has died.. oh joy.

3. Last monday I found out that our building is killing the power on sunday morning (tomorrow) for eight hours ! Eight Hours ! Who has a battery powered UPS that can last for eight hours??
Since our website is actually located in my server room I was able to transfer it over to our ISP's hosting service and then get the DNS records updated for the weekend so that people will end up there instead trying to access my powerless "data center" (i use the term loosely). Our ISP also has an mx record for our domain so they will hang onto the incoming email while the exchange box is powerless. So all that is left for me to do is gracefully shut down the 25 development servers and 17 infrastructure servers, NAS, phone system, security system, and then go in Sunday afternoon and turn them all back on. Lucky Me !

1. I've move from interop hell to solaris patch help -- we have a customer that wants us to port our app to Solaris 64-bit w/SunStudio 10. Of course SunStudio 10 costs 3K even though SunStudio 11 is free. Anyway - I get the eval version of the product and install in on the our Sol 8 box. The developer runs into problems immediately and asks if all the compiler patches have been applied. So I checked the download page and there was no mention of additional patches available... curious. So I search the site and find the patch page for Studio 11.. but not ten. Turns out the magic search phrase was Sun Studio 10 patch page That lead me to a page that contained links to patches for all the Sun Studio products. This is where patching for Solaris / Sun studio starts to stink pretty badly -- compared to AIX and HP-UX.. and even red hat for that matter. I found a grocery list of patches that can be applied, each for my individual downloading and installing pleasure. There is no ability to bundle the patches, you simply must download the .zip file and copy to the machine and install it. So I start downloading the 15 or so patches that were recommended. Here is how I was able to "batch" install the patches

1. download patches to NFS mount
2. cp *.zip /tmp/patch ; cd /tmp/patch
3. unzip \*.zip ( the \ is required when using a wildcard for unzip ... doesn't work otherwise.)
4. ls > patches (unziping the patches creates a directory with the patch name for each patch, kicking those directory names into a file creates the list of patches we want to install for the next step)
5. patchadd -M /tmp/patch patches

its not pretty but it works --


2. I was thinking about my Mac interop problems and maybe I don't need OD at all. I was thinking I could just leave the user profiles local to the machine. So that way i wouldn't need "managed options" or whatever those mac fellas call it. As it stands now... the Xserv is still hosed up though - when i attempt to connect to an smb share on the box with a windows machine, I get "The account is not authorized to log in from this station" and when i try to connect via smb to the share with a mac client I get "invalid user name and password" . However, I can logon to the Xserv with my windows user name and password, so i know it is bound to the directory correctly its seems to be more of a samba issue.

1. I've been in interop hell... I really want a single directory for all the linuxes - unixes - windows and macs. Is that so much to ask ?

I bought an Xserv running Panther about a year and a half ago with the intention of consolidating all the random windows boxes running AFP as well as a few solaris boxes and putting all the storage on the Xserv. I want to have some security on the files so I need the xserv to be hooked into either the NIS or AD. Something that it is supposedly capable of. I ran into issues on both sides and just shelved the project. But now I find myself revisiting the project because I want to decommison an old Sol 7 box that happens to be running an AFP server (it is also running cvs, samba, ntp and nis). So I need to get the Xserv working. I heard that Tiger had better interop with AD -- so I thought I would upgrade to 10.4 -- wrong -- no upgrades to 10.4 so i need to spend another $1000 on a tiger license even though I never used the panther license... so lame. Anyway - I found a good Tutorial on setting something similar up on www.afp548.com but they want you to have two Xserv's one running Open Directory and the other acting as the fileserver. There is no way I'm going to buy another xserv. They say that 10.3 doesn't play well when it is the OD master and a member of the AD. So maybe I should just buy the dumb 10.4 license. On the NIS side of things I would love to have AD run as the NIS master, so then we could use LDAP for the linuxes that support it and use NIS for the older unixes that don't.

2. Oh yea.. when I rebooted my FC4 box that I setup as the nis slave.. ypserv didn't start automatically -- because the domain name wasn't set, despite the presence of the /etc/defaultdomain file. Turns out FC4 looks at /etc/sysconfig/network for the domain name so I had to add NISDOMAIN="dlogics.com" to get the domainname set correctly.

1. Setting up NIS on Fedora Core4

When i set the server up i swore that I selected server tools which included the ypserv package. However, after teh server was running, i serached and serached for ypinit and could not find it. So I hearde that these fancy new linuxes use somethign called YUM to manage software. So I do a yum search NIS command which yields a ton of results since "NIS" is part of "administrator" so I had to use VI to find teh pertainent info.I discovered that the package was called ypserv.i386. So i ran yum install ypserv.i386 It did some fancy things and a few seconds later it said it was installed. So i do a search on ypinit and find it in /usr/lib/yp /ypinit.

first i updated ypservers on the NIS master with name of the new slave.

ypcat -k ypservers > /tmp/ypservers
vi /tmp/ypservers
cd /var/yp
cat /tmp/ypservers makedbm - /var/yp/`domainname`/ypservers

then on the new server
set my domainname in /etc/defaultdomain
domainname dlogics.com
domainname > /etc/defaultdomain
then i turned ypbind on

service ypbind start

then i edited /etc/nsswitch.conf and added nis to the list

Then i ran

/usr/lib/yp/ypinit -s helios

then i started the ypserv

service ypserv start

then i created a new user on the master and ran make to propagate the map. then i went to one of my unix clients and edited /etc/yp.conf and changed the nis server to hera, the new server. tehn i restarted the ypbin service and logged out. then logged back in as the test user i just created. Viola! it seems to work.

2. i learned this last week but thought i would put it in here to remind myself.. regular blogs are time consuming !!

Well i thought i would try a "regular blog " today --

So I woke up this morning and got ready for work. Noah decided he wanted to join me so he got up as well. I decided to drive in so that Beth could get her sleep. I ended up leaving for work around nine. The car seems to being running fine, albeit rather loudly. Traffic isn't so bad that late in the morning so I was able to pull into the parking garage at 9:52 so I got the "early bird special" and only had to pay $18 to park. While in the elevator in the garage a gentleman asked me if my car had a diesel engine. When I replied, no - he said "wow- i think something is wrong with it.. you'd better get it checked out." ---Great--- I got to work and immediately went into the server room and printed out the weekly tape report and pulled the tapes out of the library that needed to go off site. I checked my email and saw the AS400 did not come back online after its weekly IPL. I looked at the green screen and everything seem to be functioning normally, but the TCP/IP service wasn't running. Since i really dont know much about the 400, I just IPL'd it again to fix the issue. Also in my email, i was notified that a server running FreeBSD was down and requested that investigate. I'm not responsible for this server, but its in my server room so I do try to help out where I can. Turns out that the server lost contact with its storage and hung. A reboot brought it back to life but I warned the admin that he might need to replace the array card. Then I received another email asking me to mount the NFS shares on the 400. Again, if i knew anything about the 400 I could get it to automagically mount the shares upon IPL, but I don't so I'm stuck manually doing it. I brought the tape case up to reception just as the tape guy arrived to take the tapes to the storage site. As I started to walk back to the server room I was stopped by the support manager and a developer who requested my presence in one of the conference rooms. I went along and they started asking our webserver and if they can see error logs from this morning. Turns out a customer was getting a 405 error when attempting to use one of our products on the site. So I had to delve into the logs and extract the correct entries, which is always a treat. Next, I get an email request to logon to our SuSe 9 box, which happens to share hardware with one of the Redhat boxes. When I initially set the Redhat and Suse instances up, neither were very important and it was logical that we could just shut one off so that we could use the other. As time passed, the redhat box that has become an important in the build environment, so I can't just shut it off for a while someone works on the Suse instance. So the answer is to setup another Suse9 instance somewhere - the obvious choice is use VMWare. I have VMWare v4 workstation running on a nice 4 way xeon box with some iSCSI storage. Only problem is that SuSe9 doesn't work with VMware4. I have another box running VMware server beta that does support Suse 9. As I start the install, I get another email saying that they want the new suse setup to be Suse 8.1 not Suse 9. Awesome. Turns out Suse didn't issue .ISO files for Suse 8, but they did allow FTP based installs. So I find the boot cd and load it up, then it prompts me for the IP address of the FTP server to download from. Oh bother, I don't know where I'm going to find a mirror that has that old version of Suse. So I start googling around and all the mirrors I see only have Suse9 and 10. After a long time i finally stumbled on to the ftp://ftp.suse.com site. Duh. Should have looked there first.. they have a folder named discontinued and in there is the 8.1 distro. So I point the install to the ftp site and after a little while, it bombs out. It says the ftp session was terminated. So I'll get back to that. I looked at my FC4 install that I'm trying to setup on a DL320 G3. It completed the install, but won't boot the OS, it just goes to a GRUB command prompt. Weird. So I re-run the install and this time just use a normal Ext3 file system and no fancy volume groups or anything, perhaps it will work. Then I get an email from a friend who was having scanner issues, so I call her to try to help out and as I 'm talking I remember that I need to send out a CD to my company's owner's wife out in Colorado. Her computer isn't working and I need to fix it so I am sending her a tools cd that will hopefully do the trick. So after I get off the phone I create the cd and walk to mailboxes etc to mail the package. $27 to get it to Colorado sometime tomorrow. At this point I eat some lunch. in the middle of lunch some people stop by and ask me if I've done something to one of the common area machines, as some of the folders are missing. Of course I hadn't touched it but it immediately becomes my responsibility to find out what happened. After a good bit of time it was determined that the missing files were in the Recycle bin as someone had been trying to rid the computer of all traces of a particular program for a test. Luckily that person hadn't emptied the bin and we recovered the files easily. I finish my lunch and then I tried using the suse FTP site with my web browser just to make sure that the connection was good. It kept timing out. Back to that later. Someone stops by and wants help with the 4o5 error received earlier in the day by the customer. The customer gets the error message when trying to print to a network printer, printing to a local printer works just fine. So I setup a new printer queue for the test and setup tighter security on the Queue to try to re-create the issue. Nothing for it, it still works. Then I remembered I needed to order a product manager a new laptop so I go out to my trusty CDW site and grab my standard laptop, memory and docking station config, then I try to remember what other sorts of things I need. I have about 10 on the order form so far, but I can't think of any more, I'll save that for later. Back to Suse, since the web browser didn't work , I tried logging in via a dos prompt. It worked for a lil bit but then timed out as well. So i figured that perhaps it was something with my internal network so I take the vmware machine and physically move it and attach it to my DSL line that is external to my production network. I try the setup there... it didn't time out but it didn't look like it was doing much. Well its quitting time so I leave the office at 5 -- the car starts fine and runs rather loudly all the way home, not much traffic and pulled in to the garage at 6:10.

Beth had a wonderful dinner ready and it was delicious. Then I took Noah and Anna to Jewel for a lil shopping excursion. I get the kids loaded up into the jewel "firetruck" and then realize what I thought was the shopping list in my coat pocket was actually the shopping the list from the last time I went shopping. Oh well. I will just try to remember what we needed. The kids were great and Anna proceeded to say "Hi, whats your name" to every person in the store. Back at the van, I found the real shopping list and saw that the only things I had forgot were 6 cans of green beans and low fat bread. So I figured we would go to the other supermarket down the street. After we finish shopping there I put the cart behind the van and put the kids in their car seats and get in the car and start to pull out-- then i hear an awful crash. Oh snap.. i forgot to move the cart from behind the van.. So i go back out there and see the huge Nascar looking shopping cart on its side with the groceries spilled all over the ground. Luckily it was just the beans and bread .. it could have been worse. The shopping cart fared well and was not damaged either. I survey the scene to see how many people got to witness my mishap and i lucked out as there wasn't a soul to be seen in the parking lot.. so i picked the cart back up and ran it into the nearest cart corral and took off. Once we got home Beth was still on her conference call so I gave the kids a bath. They have gotten much better in there now and most of the water actually stays in the tub as opposed to being splashed all over the bathroom. After bath time beth was still on her conference call so I got Noah dressed and let Anna dress herself, she did an excellent job and picked her own pjs out and put them on herself with no issues. After a snack and some milk it was bedtime for the kids. Once the kids were in bed we watched American Idol.. i agreed with simon on all his assessments and found miss Pickler particularly amusing. Then I started writing this thing and now its really late... So ya I'm blogged out.

Oh and to clarify - no way I am going to spend $1100 on 7" screens for the headrests ! .. my solution is to strap the laptop to the $25 case that is suspended between the seats. I think one 15" screen in the middle is better then two 7" screens on the side any ways :) Once the kids get older and we get a different van we will look into the integrated DVD thing..

1. It costs $1100 to have a two 7" screens installed in headrests in your car and that doesn't include installation in the vehicle or a dvd player...

2. It costs $25 for a carrying case that will attach between the two seats so that you can place a laptop or dvd player on it and both people in the back can watch.

3. It costs $45 for a power invertor to run ac power to one of my extra laptops that now sits on the carrying case.

1. When removing the default password complexity requirements in a Windows 2003 domain, you must leave the options "defined" and "disabled" -- not "undefined" - If you set it to "undefined" you will end up re-enabling the requirements. How lame.

2. When using the BACKUP command in VMS to transfer files from one located to another, you can't use a wildcard in the beginning of the location.. unless you don't mind losing all the security information. the command should look like this

BACKUP/LOG/VERIFY SHIVA$DKA400:[000000...]*.*;* BOPP$DKB200:[user5...]*.*;*

3. If you are looking to upgrade an existing 2003 server with SP1 already installed to vR2, then you only need the second disk. However I dont currently have a volume license key for R2, so if i wanted to upgrade to R2, I would need to re-install 2k3 w/SP1 from the first disk and use my MSDN key.