Sunday, April 19, 2015

Installing Bodhi Linux on Lenovo T400

Used to run Centos on my T400.  Just want to rebuild the laptop with Bodhi Linux.  Try to install Bodhi Linux 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 but the CD only boots to command line for some reason.  Suspect it is the ATI card.  Some people have success with 32 bits.  However, I am only interest in 64 bits.  So, I try the new 3.0 and it works fine.  Boot up the machine with the Live CD first and start the Bodhi Linux Installation.

Hardware
This is a 5 yrs old laptop without SD card reader, webcam and bluetooth.  Only have builtin WiFi.  All hardware are detected correctly.  Wireless work fine however, I don't see a list of access point.  To correct that, I found this link.  It works after I complete step 3.

  1. turn on wireless switch
  2. in a terminal windows execute the below command sudo rfkill unblock wifi
  3. reboot
VMware Workstation 9 installation
After the installation, I add the following packages before installing VMware Workstation 9.
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Download VMware Workstation 9 and copy to my home folder.  Then, follows steps below to complete the installation.

chmod +x VMware-Workstation-Full-9.0.4-1945795.x86_64.bundle
sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-9.0.4-1945795.x86_64.bundle

Now, goto /usr/bin and start vmware with "vmware &"

However, you will see vmware failed to build the vmnet.  Search google and see it happens with VMware 10 on Ubuntu.

Download the patch in VMware Community (see post  https://communities.vmware.com/message/2327060.  I download the patch upload by WoodyZ).

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
tar -xvf vmnet.tar
patch vmnet-only/filter.c < ~/ws1001.vmnet.filter.c.313.patch
tar -uvf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
rm -r vmnet-only
/usr/bin/vmware&

Installation completes successfully.

Java Installation
All the hardware are detected and work fine.  Run the speaker-test to confirm sound card is working fine.  I plan to try the lightweight browser Midori.

To install Java, I run the following command.
sudo apt-get install default-jre  (java 1.7 is installed)
sudo apt-get install icedtea-plugin  (version 1.5 is installed as of today.  From Midori FAQicedtea6 version 1.8 and above has been known to crash midori)

Flash Installation
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Gdebi installation
sudo apt-get install gdebi

Foxit Reader installation
Foxit Reader is used to open Adobe document.  Download a copy and use Gdebi to install it.
sudo gdebi FoxitReader.deb

Office suite installation
Go to AppCenter and select the office you want to install.

VideoLAN installation
The last version I know that will work with rm file is 1.05.  After that, playing rm file with videolan will crash intermittently.  Not sure if it is fixed in version 2.  Find a 1.0.5 deb package but fail to install with dependency issue.  Eventually, install what's available in appcenter.

Disable auto-login
To disable auto-login, open up /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf with epad and comment out the line
#autologin-user=username

DIA installation
sudo apt-get install dia
 

Friday, April 3, 2015

Moving quorum to another node for Windows 2008 and 2012

Work on a SAN migration and need to move the quorum to the other node.  For Windows 2008, I find the post Windows Cluster: Moving Quorum Disk to Another Node 

To move it other node we have run below command.

cluster group "Cluster Group" /move 

In you have more nodes in your cluster and to move the 'cluster group' to a specific group use the below command.

cluster group "Cluster Group" /moveto:node5

For Windows 2012, actually, for some reason, the above command does not work.  Instead, I open to Failover Cluster Manager.  Right click on the initial cluster that was created when creating the cluster.  Select More Actions, Move core Cluster Resources and Select Node.  Now, you can failover the quorum to the other node.  



Saturday, March 21, 2015

VADP with NetWorker 7.6.x

I have talked about VADP with hotadd in previous posts.  Last month, I have completed testing on VADP with NetWorker 7.6.2.7.  Turn out I should upgrade to NetWorker 7.6.3.7 because of the following two issue.

NW138379 - VADP : Save does not honor the VSS:*=off flag in Windows 2008
This issue is seen if you proxy host is Windows 2008.

Event 16, source: volsnap, Logged: 1/17/2012 6:25:51 PM
The shadow copies of volume E: were aborted because volume, which contains shadow copy storage for this shadow copy, was force dismounted

Another anonying issue is NW139877 - VADP: nsrvadp_save incorrectly reports status as success for aborted backups

I have not tried NetWorker 7.6.4.  However, I have not encountered those issues after upgrading to NetWorker 7.6.3.7.

Whether virtual or physical proxy, you can consult the following page Nuts and bolts in NetBackup for VMware: Transport methods and TCP ports to decide which transport mode you plan to use.  I don't prefer SAN mode even though it is the fastest option.  Presenting a VMFS lun to a Windows 2008 proxy is not an option in some sites.  If you want to use SAN mode, make sure to control who can login to the proxy.  You don't want Windows signature written to a VMFS lun by mistake. 





Monday, January 5, 2015

NetWorker Block Based Backup failed

There is a new feature introduced in NetWorker 8.x called Block Based Backup.  It is completely rewritten.  So, it is not the same as SnapImage.  It supports Block Based Backup for Windows machine.  For some reason, backup is only successful with Full level backup.  I attempt to start synthetic full backup but it fails.  This is the first client we attempt to use Synthetic full.  We are trying to backup a drive with size of few TB.  Block Based Backup will save the backup time.  We make sure the OS is supported, and BBB is sent to the same media only.  Also, we have weekly full and rest of them are synthetic full.

Eventually, my colleague works with DataDomain and NetWorker support and confirm it is required to enable synthetic backup on DataDomain.  Just login to DataDomain and run the command below.

ddboost option set virtual-synthetics enabled

run the following command to ensure virtual-synthetics is enabled.

ddboost option show