The usual IT babble
Posts tagged safekeeping
RPM spec: Installing a custom init-script
Mar 26th
Well, I’m sitting again here grinding my head on how to fix up a certain package. Now, I had to look it up again, so this time I’m writing it down!
Source1: ${name}.initd
...
install -o root -g root -m 755 %{S:1} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/etc/init.d/ndo2db
Windows: Running msconfig as non privileged user
Mar 25th
Well, the title is kinda misleading since you need administrator privileges to run msconfig in it’s full scope. But this is just a hint to myself on how to execute msconfig without logging out and then logging in as administrator.
runas /user:Administrator C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig.exe
TSM client: Backing up files with umlauts on SLES
Mar 2nd
In the past, I always had problems with SLES and our Tivoli Storage Manager client’s when backing up files with german umlauts. Well, today I looked a bit harder, and quite quickly found a solution.
sles9 root [0] > env | grep ^LC LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8
As you can see from the above, SLES9/10 ain’t setting LANG or LC_ALL (which I searched for first), but is setting LC_CTYPE.
So, simply changing the LC_CTYPE in the init-script and/or prepending the dsmc command line with a new LC_CTYPE fixes my umlauts problems!
sles9 root [0] > LC_CTYPE="en_US" dsmc incr
Well, I had a long’ish talk with one of my trustworthy IBM senior consultants the day after writing this …
He told me something along the lines of this:
If you would like to back up files with names containing characters with a code > 127 please ensure that you have chosen a SBCS character set for your locale. The default code page C or the code page POSIX supports characters up to 127 only. Files whose names contain special characters will be skipped if C or POSIX is used. It is strongly recommended to perform a system backup by using a SBCS character set to prevent any file or directory from being skipped. This behavior for different locales is intended.
And this:
The UTF-8 locale is default on some Linux platforms. However, TSM Client currently does not support running under UTF-8 locales (such as en_US.UTF-8 and ja_JP.UTF-8). Export your LANG and LC_ALL environment variables to the iso8859-1 or EUC versions of your locale and then start a new xterm (or mlterm) session prior to running TSM Client.
That basically means, at least for using the TSM Client Java Interface (dsmj) and the scheduler/client acceptor daemon you have to switch your locales to something _not_ UTF-8 capable.
He also mentioned, that IBM doesn’t have a real solution for this problem, as well that there is no real workaround. You need to invest some time into figuring out the “right” locale setting for your system(s), since after writing the above I came to the result that it ain’t enough ..
You need to do the following:
lang="de_DE@euro" export LC_CTYPE="$lang" export LANG="$lang" export LC_ALL="$lang"
After doing so, the scheduler and the command-line client works …
Nagios: NSclient++ in a clustered Environment
Feb 26th
Well, most of you already know that I’m a Nagios fanatic. I like to watch as many aspects as I possibly can. So, yesterday I started figuring out ways to watch our different cluster groups (housing a bunch — try above 20.000 — of file shares).
Now, my first tries failed horribly. I brought down a complete cluster group, resulting in a major annoyance. Now, today I went at it a bit smarter 
I cloned myself two VM’s off my Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 template, created a new cluster.
After that, I tried it on the test cluster again, same result. The resource is successfully created, but once I try to take it online, it breaks and moves the whole cluster group to the other node (as cyclic moving between the cluster nodes with no end).
After that, I figured something has to be wrong with the command I’m trying to use, the one as instructed by the NSClient++ wiki. I then tried the command on the command line, but as soon as hitting <TAB> (oooold bash habit ), it completed the path, but put quotes around it … Don’t ask me.
If I try the path without the quotes, no-joy at all. Once you put quotes around it, everything becomes honky-dory and the resource comes online without the slightest trouble!
Hint to self: When creating a NSClient++ cluster resource (or any application resource using a command that needs switches for that matter), use a quoted command line along the lines of this:
"Q:\_nsclient\nsclient.exe" /test
Linux: Getting information about an EXT3 filesystem
Feb 13th
You know, I’m not getting any younger. It’s getting harder remembering every damn command … so here is how you get information out of your EXT3 filesystem:
sles10sp2 ~ [0] > tune2fs -l /dev/sda2 | grep "^Filesystem"
Filesystem volume name:
Filesystem UUID: 8eec8235-4d9e-4b58-acf9-3c68c977d5ea
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal resize_inode filetype
needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem state: clean
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Filesystem created: Tue May 27 10:48:56 2008