2011-05-03

SanDisk CF card as HDD for embedded PC

Purchased a 16GB SanDisk CF card as upgrade to a 4GB unit, for main drive in embedded PC (IDE-CF interface). First attempt to partition the card showed first available sector as being number 2048. Further research seemed to indicate that this might be a result of consumer and pro grade SanDisk CFs are shipped in "Removable Disk" mode, and I would need to convert it to "Fixed Disk" mode.

I was able to find a SanDisk conversion utility, but this required connecting the card via an IDE adapter and booting to DOS. While waiting for hardware, I tried just using dd to copy the entire drive image to a file; then using
this guide to resize the root partition with fdisk and parted; then dd'd the new image to the new card.

I was surprised to see that the partition table on the newly-loaded card appeared normal (no 2048 sector offset). And it booted fine.

Life is good.

2011-04-13

apcupsd with APC SmartUPS and AP9617 using PCNET

Clarifications, based on apcupsd 3.14 and AP9617 FW version 3.7.3:

- The DEVICE password in apcupsd.conf needs to match the "Authentication Phrase" in UPS->PowerChute->configuration

- The IP address of the host that is running apcupsd must be added to "PowerChute Network Shutdown Clients" in UPS->PowerChute->clients

- I have two SmartUPSs, one feeding each redundant power supply. I used the multiple UPS Example in the manual, but did not null-configure the shutdown scripts, so that either UPS failing would initiate a shutdown. Unfortunately, it seems the PCNET port number cannot be changed, and both apcupsd instances want to bind it.

2011-03-29

multilog patch update for daemontools

I found this useful patch to provide human-readable dates for daemontools multilog:

http://blog.endersys.com/2009/12/qmail-multilog-localtime-patch-for-daemontools-0-76/

Unfortunately, the time format that was chosen is not useful for navigating lengthy logfiles.

Here's my version that uses ISO-8601 date format.

2011-01-28

Dell OMSA: how to enable SNMP on openSUSE

Quite easy for openSUSE 11.3 . The only modification to normal procedure is to replace this line in /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf :

#rocommunity public 127.0.0.1
rocommunity public

2011-01-27

Dell OMSA: how to enable SNMP on Debian

This worked for me with Debian Lenny on a PE 2900. Reposting, since it took a bit of digging to find it. Credit to Bas Roos

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* apt-get install snmpd
* Edit /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
- Comment out 'com2sec paranoid default public
- Uncomment out '#com2sec readonly default public'
- Change 'default' into our management IP range in the previous
step (resulting in 'com2sec readonly 192.168.2.0/24 public')
* Edit /etc/default/snmpd
- Change SNMPDOPTS
- Before: SNMPDOPTS='-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -I -smux
-p /var/run/snmpd.pid 127.0.0.1'
- After: SNMPDOPTS='-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -p
/var/run/snmpd.pid 0.0.0.0' (this enabled smux and made snmpd listen on
all interfaces, instead of lo)
* /etc/init.d/dataeng enablesnmp (this should enable SNMP for both dataeng
itself, as it adds a line to /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf)
* /etc/init.d/dataeng restart (restarts dataeng and starts dsm_sa_snmp32d)
* /etc/init.d/snmpd restart

After this, SNMP seems to be working:
username at mgmt-server:~$ snmpwalk -v 2c -c public 192.168.2.71
.1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1.300.10.1.11.1
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.674.10892.1.300.10.1.11.1 = STRING: "
here>"