last history on Solaris resets itself nightly

The fix to this problem is found in this SunSolve document:


http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-205225-1

Solaris 8 and above:

Edit the /usr/lib/acct/runacct script.

Find the "nulladm ${_wtmpx}" line and comment it out.

Solaris 10 and VMWare vmxnet ethernet driver

The problem that I had been experiencing was that I was unable to install the VMWare vxmnet ethernet driver onto a Solaris 10 x86 server running on a VMWare vSphere 4.0 server.

The solution to getting the vmxnet interface to work is as follows:

1) install stock e1000 ethernet interface on a Solaris VM
2) install the VMWare 4.0 tools on a Solaris VM
3) halt and power off VM
4) install a second ethernet interface onto a Solaris VM, using the vmxnet3 driver
5) ifconfig vmxnet3s0 plumb
6) ifconfig e1000g0 unplumb
7) mv /etc/hostname.e1000g0 /etc/hostname.vmxnet3s0
8) reboot

The trick is to have two ethernet interfaces (e1000 and vmxnet3) and just unplumb from Solaris the e1000 interface. Don't remove the e1000 interface from the VMWare host configuration.

Solaris syslog-ng error

If you get an error like:

# svcs syslog-ng
STATE STIME FMRI
maintenance 8:50:44 svc:/system/syslog-ng:default

# svcs -xv syslog-ng
svc:/system/syslog-ng:default (syslog-ng)
State: maintenance since Mon Dec 14 08:50:44 2009
Reason: Start method failed repeatedly, last exited with status 1.
See: http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-KS
See: man -M /usr/share/man -s 1M syslog-ng
See: /var/svc/log/system-syslog-ng:default.log
Impact: This service is not running.

# cat /var/svc/log/system-syslog-ng:default.log
[ Dec 14 08:50:42 Disabled. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:42 Rereading configuration. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:43 Enabled. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:43 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:52:06 Rereading configuration. ]

This has nothing to do with the configuration, merely a missing charset.alias file.

To correct:

# ln -s /usr/lib/charset.alias /usr/local/lib/charset.alias

# svcadm clear syslog-ng

# svcs syslog-ng
STATE STIME FMRI
online 8:59:38 svc:/system/syslog-ng:default

Change WMware vSphere IP Address

To change the IP Address of a vSphere 4.0 server:

1) check the service console:

# esxcfg-vswif -l

[will return the current IP information and the name of the Service Console, in most cases: vswif0]


2) run the esxcfg-vswif command with the new information

# esxcfg-vswif -i newipaddress -n newsubnetmask vswif0

3) check the following files:

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-vswif0

make sure the new information is in the file.

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network

4) restart the network -- this will disconnect you unless you are on a console:

# service network restart

You should be done at this point.

Citrix XenApp Server Application Installation Best Practice

Prior to installing an application on a Citrix XenApp server:

Start --> run --> change user/install

[install the applications and all updates]

Start --> run --> change user/execute

That will ensure that all of the registry settings will work under XenApp.

Astaro not updating

For Unified Threat Management at some of my sites I like to use the Astaro Security Gateway (ASG). Sometimes the update process gets wedged and new firmware won't download to the box.

There is a command line ssh access that will allow a user to get into the system, but it's disabled for security reasons. In order to fix the update problem, ssh must be enabled.

I won't go into how to enable ssh or how to log into the system, but I will detail the fix:

Once logged in as root, check the files in /var/up2date/sys -- if there are files there, remove them and then upload the new firmware via scp to /var/up2date/sys.

After the files have been uploaded, type the following commands:

audld.plx

auisys.plx --rpmargs --force

This will verify the digital signature of the update file and if correct, install the firmware update and reboot the ASG.

Problem solved.

VMware service console memory setting

I had been running vmware ESX server 3.5 with the default memory setting of 272MB. This caused a couple of host migration and snapshot timeouts.







VMWare's suggested value is 800MB. So you click on the Properties... link in the VIC or vSphere Client and change the number:












The setting won't take effect until the system is rebooted and the Memory Configuration now reflects that: