Solaris find Serial Number of Sun Intel/Sparc Hardware

When you phone Sun support or third parties, they always ask for the serial number of the machine you need assistance with.

On Solaris 10 (or Solaris 8 from 4/01) on Sun Intel / Sparc hardware, you can now find the serial number of a remote piece of Sun hardware, from the command line.

This will obviously save you from visiting each machine in your inventory and finding the little lable on the chassis.....

sneep -a

also available from http://www.sun.com/sneep


IT Support London since 1990

Can't Remote desktop to Vista from Red Hat Linux ?

Until Vista arrived it was relatively straight forward to connect to microsoft server or PC's from Linux using krdc or rdesktop utilities.

Although XP and Windows 2003 can still be connected from standard yum updated versions of rdesktop, Vista doesnt work.

This is because Microsoft changed the encription and pixel levels in Vista mstsc, so to connect you need to upgrade your linux client

You normaly see the image of the vista remote PC quickly flash and disapear ( in krdc) or using rdesktop 1.4 something like
"rdesktop 192.168.1.5
ERROR: Modules len 0x108
ERROR: send: Connection reset by peer
Error Connection closed"


in Redhat RHEL5 list the current version of rdesktop installed

'yum list installedgrep rdesktop'
rdesktop.i386 1.4.1-6

if your version like above is not 1.5 or better 1.6 then you need to upgrade


go to http://www.rdesktop.org

Download the rdesktop-1.6.0.tar.gz file to /tmp


cd /tmp/rdesktop-1.6.0.

./configure
make
make install


Then run it “/usr/local/bin/rdesktop 192.168.1.5”

Vista console should now show on your Linux/rhel 5 server screen
(as long as all the usual remote settings have been made on vista remote pc, firewall 3389 enabled etc)


Have fun


Chris


IT Support London since 1990

Redirecting boot console RHEL5 and Xen

If your server/pc is recent enough to allow console redirection from the bios to a serial port or has a Fujitsu iRMC or ilo your need to change the /etc/grub.conf to allow bootup process to be monitored

Many manufactuers provide full console redirection at VGA resolution for an additional license fee around £200

But if you just want a serial redirection in an emergency you dont really new the full GUI especially if youve not install gnome Xwindows or KDE.
With text only display this should be available free of charge if you have iLO or iRMC or Sun XSCF

If you wanna use Redhat as the boot O/S you'll need to edit the grub.conf to enable the boot process to be displayed via a serial port ( tty)

in red hat rhel 5 , the example below shows com1 or tty0 redirection:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVolroot
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
serial --unit=0 --speed=57600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=5 console serial
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-128.1.10.el5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.1.10.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVolroot console=tty0 console=ttyS0,57600n8 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-128.1.10.el5.img

then if you connect via ssh to irmc port or via https and open redirected console window


However if your booting Xen kernels you need to change further lines

title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-128.1.10.el5xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-128.1.10.el5 com1=57600,8n1
module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.1.10.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVolroot console=tty0 console=ttyS0,57600n8 rhgb quiet
module /initrd-2.6.18-128.1.10.el5xen.img

Hey presto you then get a output like below !

Starting anacron: [ OK ]
Starting atd: [ OK ]
Starting jexec: Starting jexec services[ OK ]
Starting background readahead: [ OK ]
Starting libvirtd daemon: [ OK ]
Starting Red Hat Network Daemon: [ OK ]
Starting yum-updatesd: [ OK ]
Starting Avahi daemon... Bridge firewalling registeredvirbr0: [ OK ]
Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ]
Starting xend: xenbr0: feature.peth0: Promiscuous mode enabled.[ OK ]
Starting RHN Managed Xen Domains:[ OK ]
Starting smartd: [ OK ]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.3 (Tikanga)
Kernel 2.6.18-128.1.10.el5xen on an x86_64


if you now would like to connect to com1 via a cable or have an interactive login on tty0 remotely add the following to the bottom of your /etc/inittab

# allow interactive shell or serial cable connection com1 (ttyS0)
S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 57600 ttyS0 vt100

Quite useful

Chris

infrasup helping Business in London with I.T support since 1990

Vista , XP and Apple Immediate Remote I.T Support London

It maybe stating the obvious but Microsoft and Apple, both have built some cool devices into their desktops to enable you to get remote I.T support from Companies like infrasup Simply follow the instructions below, to enable us to log into your machine from our office and help you fix I.T issues.


Click on ‘Start’, ‘Help and Support’



Then ‘Windows Remote Assistance’

Then select ‘Invite Someone you trust to help you’

Select ‘Email invitation’

Type Password like ‘RemoteSupport2009’

After a brief pause you should see a window like this. Please use the email for us in the picture

Then after we receive this email and we run the attachment, you will be asked if you want to accept our connection, as we try to connect to your PC. Click on ‘Yes’

And then

Hey PRESTO! we should have full access to your desktop from our office

We hope you find this useful

infrasup helping Business in London with I.T support since 1990

SONY AIT 460V Tape drive on Rhel 5, tar fails mt OK

We've being having issues in the office with a SONY 460V IDE tape drive in a test Fujitsu Siemans Econnel 100, Red Hat RHEL 5.2 machine.

All the comands on Sonytape tool and mt ( mt-st yum rpm package) seem to work OK

However run tar -cvf /dev/st0 anyfile' or dd or cpio
the command stops after a few mins with:

'tar: /dev/st0: Cannot open: Input/output error
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now'

After this the device seems to be dropped and you can no longer see the drive

We found that
rmmod ide_scsimod
probe ide_scsi
got the drive working again, but tar never completed

After a lot of forum bashing , firmware uploads and trail and error this is the fix for the

Contary to what cruzeta says later on http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-145201.html this fix worked for us...............


remove DMA support from IDE

vi /etc/grub.conf

#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.18-92.1.22.el5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.1.22.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb ide=nodma quiet crashkernel=1728M@16M


also add modprobe-scsi to /etc/rc.local
#
touch /var/lock/subsys/local
# add for tape drive
modprobe ide-scsi

test with ./sonytape /dev/st0 -t ( should give you an ouptu file called nori_trace.txt )

then try
tar -cvf /dev/st0 /home/*

you should no longer see tar: /dev/st0: Cannot open: Input/output error
or anything in /var/log/messages

good luck