VirtualBox snapshots using the CLI

oracle-virtualbox-logoThis is how I use the VirtualBox snapshot option on my headless server. I use this feature for creating a restore point for a critical mail server upgrade I will soon post about. Because I will use this option more often it comes handy when recorded somewhere.

Specs:

  • Debian 6.0.6 “Squeeze”
  • Virtualbox 4.1.22-80657

See the Virtualbox snapshot syntax below

VBoxManage snapshot         <uuid>|<name>
take <name> [--description <desc>] [--pause] |
delete <uuid>|<name> |
restore <uuid>|<name> |
restorecurrent |
edit <uuid>|<name>|--current
[--name <name>]
[--description <desc>] |
list [--details|--machinereadable]
showvminfo <uuid>|<name>

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Multipath with HP LeftHand on RHEL

HP has acquired LeftHand networks and re-branded the LeftHand storage product to the HP P4000 storage series. This is a iSCSI SAN product targeted at entry level businesses. We are using this product for various projects, where our Oracle RAC cluster is one of them. For this cluster where are setting up MPIO. Because we are using interface bonding at the moment the LUN’s are configured already and don’t have to be created.

Quick environment specs:

  • RedHat EL5.8
  • 2 NIC’s in the storage network (eth3 and eth4)

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Bash autocompletion for ssh and scp

Bash autocompletion is really something you can get used to very quick if *nix is part of you daily routine. It comes with a ton of auto complete features, but one of them really stands out. It’s ssh and scp autocomplete, where scp goes one step further. When using scp with autocomplete it will not only complete the hostname you are about to copy files from, but it will also login in the background and autocomplete directories and files on the remote host. This last function will only work when using ssh key based login.

$ sudo apt-get install bash-completion

When on Ubuntu don’t forget to turn of hashed hostnames in the ssh known_hosts file by creating or editing ‘~/.ssh/config’.

HashKnownHosts no

I stumbled upon this by accident, and using it since then. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Sensors on Intel DQ67EP

On my previous board I was using the information from lm-sensors for Cacti and phpSysInfo, so after upgrading to a new system board it turned out lm-sensors did not work out of the box for my Intel motherboard DQ67EP. A sensors-detect gave me the following information:

Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.

Driver `to-be-written':
* ISA bus, address 0x290
Chip `Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Note: there is no driver for Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors yet.
Check http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices for updates.

Doing some research it turned out I had to install a separate driver as kernel module on my Debian 6.0.6 (Squeeze) system. You can find the driver on this website.

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VirtualBox UUID mismatch

Today I experienced a fine VirtualBox error when I tried to start one of my virtual machines. I know it’s not good to run my machines under root privileges, but that’s still something I need to figure out. The error message gives a pointer to the machine it’s storage medium, as you can see below:

# VBoxManage startvm vm04-zca8 --type headless
Waiting for VM "vm04-zca8" to power on...
VBoxManage: error: UUID {e4676691-0855-4cd9-bcb0-060067659b14} of the medium 'vm04-zca8/zca-8.0.0.0-1147-system.vmdk' does not match the value {d2d3284b-6ccb-452b-8567-1a35842eb866} stored in the media registry ('/root/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml')
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component Medium, interface IMedium, callee

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Upgrading to Zimbra Appliance 8

After doing some testing on the recently released Zimbra Appliance version 8 I decided it was good enough to make the step from my current Zimbra Appliance running version 6.0.14 to the newly release version 8.0.0_GA_5434 (build 20120907144730). Although announced there is no version of the Appliance for Zimbra 7.

The most important thing for me was the availability of the Active Sync (EAS) feature in this release for my mobile devices. A quick test with my HP Pre3 showed it works flawless. It appears EAS protocol version 12.1 is used, so HTML mail is supported. This was not the case with the previous Zimbra Appliance release where I had the make use of the Z-Push connector to enable HTML mail on my webOS devices.

I have described the installation steps below. As a prerequisite have VirtualBox 4.1 installed.

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Downgrading Debian package

It is very rare upgrades of Debian stable break functionality. It happened recently with asterisk, so my PBX was out of service. Due to bug #688053 I had to rollback the asterisk packages to restore service. This is how I proceeded, by just installing the previous version from the local filesystem.

# dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/asterisk_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_amd64.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/asterisk-config_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/asterisk-doc_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_all.deb dpkg: warning: downgrading asterisk from 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 to 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5.
(Reading database ... 55833 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace asterisk 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 (using .../asterisk_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_amd64.deb) ...
Stopping Asterisk PBX: asterisk.
Unpacking replacement asterisk ...
dpkg: warning: downgrading asterisk-config from 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 to 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5.
Preparing to replace asterisk-config 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 (using .../asterisk-config_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement asterisk-config ...
dpkg: warning: downgrading asterisk-doc from 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 to 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5.
Preparing to replace asterisk-doc 1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze7 (using .../asterisk-doc_1%3a1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement asterisk-doc ...
Setting up asterisk-config (1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5) ...
Setting up asterisk-doc (1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5) ...
Setting up asterisk (1:1.6.2.9-2+squeeze5) ...
Starting Asterisk PBX: asterisk.
Processing triggers for man-db ...
#

Install Aladdin eToken on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Today I did a new install on my workstation at work going from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I am using a Aladdin eToken which comes with proprietary software. Because the previous version of the software was outdated and the documentation stated not to work on newer kernels I needed to install the latest SafeNet Client Authentication package to support this eToken.

Install dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install pcscd libccid libhal1 opensc

Install the eToken software:

$ sudo dpkg -i SafenetAuthenticationClient-8.1.0-4_i386.deb
Selecting previously unselected package safenetauthenticationclient.
(Reading database ... 143516 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking safenetauthenticationclient (from SafenetAuthenticationClient-8.1.0-4_i386.deb) ...
Setting up safenetauthenticationclient (8.1.0-4) ...
Adding Token security provider....done
Please reboot to run Token PKI service.
SafeNet Authentication Client installation completed.
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
$

Because ‘/etc/ld.so.conf.d/wwwwetoken-ld.conf’ was empty the PKIMonitor program in the Ubuntu startup applications did not start at boot. I needed to add ‘/usr/lib/eToken’ to it.

The new startup method for pcscd did not work for me. It is described on this page of the author. I commented out the exit 0 in ‘/etc/init.d/pcscd’ on line 43.