Christian’s blog

I’m not sure whether or not I blogged about this before, but here it is just for me to actually remember what, in which order I need to do. If you got the list in form of a csv file, simply do the following:

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$ wget -q http://tinyurl.com/4atkz7 -O - | grep "(" | cut -d'(' -f2 | \
    cut -d')' -f1 | awk '{ print tolower($1) }' > retirements
$ for developer in $( < retirements )
    do retire.py --metadata $developer /cvs/gentoo-x86/ | \
    diffstat > ~/metadata.$developer
    done

That’ll give you a detailed list of which metadata.xml need to be changed.

Gentoo safekeeping

Okay, so we received a brand new x3650 the other day entitled to replace one (or better two) of our NAS frontend servers. We installed Windows on it the other day (had to create a custom Windows Server 2003 CD first, since the default one doesn’t recognize the integrated ServeRAID), and we prepped the box during the week with the usual things.

On Monday I started installing the “IBM StorageManager RDAC” MultiPath driver (since the box got two single port PCIe FC-HBA’s) and figured I’d be nice if we had this. I asked a IBM Systems Engineer of one of our partners, which told me generally there wouldn’t be a problem with Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) and the IBM MPIO driver. Only requirement would be that I’d install the new storport.sys driver (version 5.2.3790.4021) first (as in Microsoft KB932755).

Now, yesterday I finished the zoning, did the mappings on the storage arrays and then figured the box should see the hard disks. So I started adding another node to our existing Microsoft Cluster.

Result: Zip (as in MSCS telling me not all nodes could see the quorum disk)

Reason: a combination of two things. First, said IBM Storage Manager RDAC. The first time I installed it, I forgot about the storage mappings, thus the box seeing zero disks. After uninstalling it, I was seeing 121 (that’s right, one hundred and twenty one) new devices.

Visible volumes previous to installing the RDAC driver

That is basically a result of the zoning I did for this particular device, which has *all* controllers present in a single SAN zone, thus the HBA’s seeing devices eight (or nine) times .. Update: yes, I’m missing one controller …

SAN zoning for the box

Now, as I reinstalled the RDAC *after* the host discovered the volumes, it’s showing only a dozen drives.

Visible volumes after installing the RDAC driver

Now, as I figured this out, I told myself “Hey, adding the third node to the Windows Cluster should now work without a clue …” … guess what ?

It’s Microsoft and it doesn’t. Now why doesn’t it work ? ‘Cause the Cluster Setup Wizard is getting confused in Typical mode, as it’s creating a “local quorum disk” which naturally isn’t present in the cluster it’s joining. Now, switching the wizard to “Advanced (minimum) configuration” as suggested in Q331801, just works … *shrug*

Life IBM, MSCS, Multipath, RDAC, Windows Server 2003

Well, as I said in my previous post, I do have some weird things happening. Apparently adding the domain user to the local group “Administrators” makes everything just works fine, yet he can’t do administrator like stuff (like turning off the write protection, changing local user accounts, …).

Also, if you’re looking for a smart way of how to add a certain global group (as in Active Directory group) to a local group, try this:

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NET LOCALGROUP Administrators /ADD DOMAIN\GROUPNAME

That simple, doesn’t even need the usual credentials to lookup the object, it apparently bypassed that step *shrug*.

And yet another weird thing is: if I run a certain command from a deployment script, it gives me different result as a manual execution of said script would give me .. *shrug*

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NETDOM JOIN %COMPUTERNAME% /domain:barfoo.org \
  /OU:"OU=Thinclients,OU=Computers,DC=barfoo,DC=org" \
  /UserD:%ADMIN% /PasswordD:somepass \
  /User0: Administrator /Password0:Administrator
 
NET LOCALGROUP Administrators /ADD BARFOO\Domain-Users

If I put that into a rsp (that is Wyse Device Manager script), it ain’t working. Would I be executing it myself without the WDM, everything works like a charm … *yuck*

Life Active Directory, Thin Clients, Windows XP Embedded, Wyse Device Manager