Having purchased a Transcend V15 16GB USB stick for a router-on-a-stick project, I was horrified to find out that it came preinstalled with some proprietary Antivirus software which only works under Windows, to make matters worse, the USB stick reports itself as read-only when plugged in under OS X or Linux, you can’t wipe it or even use it.
The proper unofficial and unsupported method (you’ll need Windows) is to download Transcend Online Recovery Tool, disable UAC by going to the User Control Panel (Start Menu -> Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety -> User Account. Set the controller to “Never notify” and reboot the machine. (you can and should change it back later)
Now insert USB stick, start tool and follow the instructions, but once it prompts you for the size of your USB stick you quit the tool. The USB has now been wiped and it’s no longer read-only.
The stick still contains two partitions, but that’s easily fixed under OS X or Linux.
I’d love to hear from people who have successfully wiped the entire USB key without using Windows, and I don’t mean stomping on it 
The good people at Vyatta have announced the immediate availability of Vyatta version 6.1 (VC6.1)
Vyatta Version 6.1 Highlights include:
IPv6 Ready
Vyatta Version 6.1 adds IPv6 BGP, IPv6 DCHP and IPv6 SNMP and this release completed IPv6 Forum IPv6 Ready Phase 2 certification
Cloud Bridging
For cloud providers and enterprises moving applications or servers to the cloud, Layer 2 cloud bridging allows physically separate networks to securely communicate with each other over the internet as if they were on a single Ethernet network.
Enhanced Security – Stateful Firewall Failover / Sourcefire VRT IPS Rules
Vyatta also continued its focused delivery on enterprise security advancements adding stateful firewall failover and enhanced intrusion prevention services through a partnership with Sourcefire.
Vyatta Version 6.1 enhancements include:
Vyatta Core 6.1
- Layer 2 Bridging / Cloud Bridging
- Stateful Firewall/NAT Failover
- LLDP – Link Layer Discovery Protocol
- QoS Input Interfaces
- Port Mirroring and Redirection
- BGP Hop Count Security
- DHCPv6
- IPv6 BGP
- IPv6 SNMP
- GTSM BGP
- More than 120 Bug Fixes
Vyatta Subscription Edition
- IPv6 Forum – IPv6 Ready Phase 2 Certification
- Configuration Replication
- Remote Access API Enhancements
- TACACS+ Enhancements
Vyatta Plus
- Vyatta Sourcefire VRT IPS Rules: Vyatta now offers the official Sourcefire/Snort VRT rule-base as a subscription service. This new add-on service allows customers to proactively protect systems by accessing updates to the Sourcefire VRT rule-base directly from Vyatta as new vulnerabilities are found.
See the full Release Notes and Reference Guides on the documentation page for more detail on each feature.
Download Vyatta Core Version 6.1 Software: http://www.vyatta.org/downloads
Posted in Networking, Vyatta
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Tagged vyatta
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It’s happend a number of times that I’ve had to install Citrix XenServer and have not had the Linux Guest Support CD with me, so I’ve later had to install it remotely, which is actually pretty easy.
- Transfer ISO file to XenServer using scp/winscp or similar tool
- Mount ISO
- Run installer
That’s it.
[root@bxs-phys01 ~]# mkdir /mnt/iso
[root@bxs-phys01 ~]# mount -o loop /root/XenServer-5.6.0-linux-cd.iso /mnt/iso
[root@bxs-phys01 ~]# /mnt/iso/install.sh
Warning: If you are in a pool, you must install this pack on all servers.
Starting installation of Linux Pack...
Verifying templates-debian...
Installing templates-debian...
Restarting XAPI...
Stopping xapi: .. [ OK ]
Starting xapi: .....start-of-day complete. [ OK ]
Linux pack installation complete.
[root@bxs-phys01 ~]# umount /mnt/iso
[root@bxs-phys01 ~]# rm /root/XenServer-5.6.0-linux-cd.iso
Virtualize and be merry.
All Ahsay OBS generated logfile timestamps use milliseconds since Unix epoch on January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT, it’s great for scripting and programming as it’s easy to do date math, but if you want to output a humanly readable date you need to convert it.
The below perl script will work for all Ahsay OBS logfiles, pretty much.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Usage:
# cat /usr/local/obs/system/SystemLog/2009-10-19.log | perl obslog.pl
#
# Converts Java timestamp to humanly readable
#
use Time
::localtime;
@wday=('Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat');
@month=('Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec');
sub epochToDate
{
my ($epoch) = @_;
$tm = localtime($epoch/1000);
return(sprintf("[%02d/%s/%4d %02d:%02d:%02d]", $tm->mday, $month[$tm->mon], $tm->year+1900,
$tm->hour, $tm->min, $tm->sec));
}
while(<STDIN>)
{
($date, $rest) = /^(\d+)\,(.*)/;
printf("%s%s\n", epochToDate
($date), $rest);
} Not exactly rocket science but hopefully someone will find it useful and it should work on Windows, Linux, Solaris and pretty much any system Ahsay OBS will run on.
Posted in Ahsay
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Tagged ahsay, epoch, java, obs, perl
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Storage can be very expensive, especially if you want a lot of it, want flexibility and expandability, but it doesn’t have to be!
I’m currently in the process of putting together a new storage system, but because we’re strapped for cash I’m limited to opensource and nearly off the shelf products.
The operating system will be OpenSolaris, the exact kernel is undecided as of yet, hopefully Oracle will come out with an update real soon. Filesystem will be ZFS, although it has issues with tens of millions of files it still offers me flexibility and manageability features which are very useful.
The parts are
Storage head
- Dell R610 w. 2 x E5620, 24GB memory and internal PERC H200 contr.
- LSI-9200-8e PCIe
- 1 x OCZ Vertex 2 Pro 100GB (L2ARC)
- *Perhaps 10GbE PCIe card
SAS2 JBOD
- SuperMicro SC847E26-RJBOD1
- 26 x 2TB SAS2 Seagate Constellation ES 3.5″ 7200rpm
- 2 x Intel X25-E 32GB (mirrored SLOG)
- SAS 2-port internal cascading cable
- 2 x LSISS9252 SAS-to-SATA interposer
Total capacity is currently 52TB if I was to stripe it all, but that wouldn’t give me any fault tolerance, so the 26 disks will be divided into 3 RAIDZ2 vdevs each consisting of 8 disks, the two leftover disks will become hotspares. This gives me roughly 36TB of useable space with room to grow (17 free out of 45 total). While it’s no S7310 system it’s not that far off either, the L2ARC SSD will sit on the storage head as a pass-through disk on the internal controller, and the SLOG SSD’s will sit in the SC JBOD array using LSISS9252 interposer cards.
I’ll post an update on the build process, including photos, once the hardware arrives.
Other posts with similar builds,
http://www.natecarlson.com/2010/05/07/review-supermicros-sc847a-4u-chassis-with-36-drive-bays/
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1508468
Posted in OpenSolaris, Storage
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Tagged dell, l2arc, lsi, OpenSolaris, raidz2, sas, sas2, sc847, slog, Solaris, ssd, supermicro, zfs
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The Vyatta project released VC6.1-2010.07.28 Beta a few days ago, besides a bunch of bug fixes it also contains a number of interesting new features.
New in this release
- Stateful failover for NAT and firewall
- LLDP support
- QoS input interface
- Port mirroring and redirection
- IPS enhancements
- BGP hop count security
- Layer 2 bridging
- Enhancements to image-based upgrade
- IPv6 BGP support
- DHCPv6
- SNMP for IPv6
And for those with a subscription you now get configuration syncronization.
Keep in mind, this is a beta release and it’s not recommended for production use at this stage, users are encouraged to download, test and report any bugs, issues or errors.
In later posts I’ll go through setting up Vyatta, configuring NAT, firewall and VRRP.
Posted in Networking, Vyatta
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Tagged vc6, vyatta
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Cross-posted from opensolaris.org
A number of the community leaders from the OpenSolaris community have been working quietly together on a new effort called Illumos, and we’re just about ready to fully disclose our work to, and invite the general participation of, the general public.
We believe that everyone who is interested in OpenSolaris should be interested in what we have to say, and so we invite the entire OpenSolaris community to join us for a presentation on at 1PM EDT on August 3, 2010.
You can find out the full details of how to listen in to our conference, or attend in person (we will be announcing from New York City) by visiting http://www.illumos.org/announce (The final details shall be posted there not later than 1PM EDT Aug 1, 2010.)
We look forward to seeing you there!
– Garrett D’Amore & the rest of the Illumos Cast
Although it is with some skepticism, I do applaud the guys behind this project, if it’s going to be a serious contender it will require an obscene amount of work, but if they’ve actually been able to get hold of the right people then it should be possible to deliver a good product. Seriously looking forward to the announcement and let’s hope they have some juicy details and a roadmap.
Again contrary to what has been said in the past, Oracle now supports Solaris on non-Oracle x86 systems as long as it’s listed as certified in the Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).
You can find more information on http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/non-sun-x86-081976.html, including links to all the relevant pages.
No real mention of OpenSolaris, but then again it’s in development and you really shouldn’t run it in production unless you’re capable of supporting it yourself.
Finally some good news from Oracle, and a speck of hope that OpenSolaris will continue on the same path as before. On July 29th Oracle announced in a press release that HP and Dell will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM on their x86 based hardware (presumably also storage).
It will be interesting to see what happens with regards to IBM who have recently dumped supporting Solaris.
When you as company are strapped for cash but need a full featured, flexible and redundant firewall/router setup, what do you do? 