Archive

Archive for February, 2010

Replacing Cisco PIX battery

February 20th, 2010 lasseoe No comments

Today, while debugging a new 10/10Mbit broadband connection my trusty old Cisco PIX 515E decided it’d had enough or rather the lithium battery did. Bit of Googling didn’t yield any results on replacing it but I remembered that last time I had it open the battery did look quite plain, so I took it apart and found what appeared to be a standard “button cell” battery codenamed BR2032 3V. After scrambling around a bit in a drawer I found a CR2025 which is a bit thinner, .5mm to be exact, but it should fit just fine, the specs are the exact same except for the height but that’s not an issue as .5mm really isn’t much and it’s a real squeeze to fit it in the socket.. Guess what, it works beautifully.

Categories: Cisco, Networking Tags: , , , ,

XenServer “Midnight Ride” Beta

February 15th, 2010 lasseoe No comments

The good folks at Citrix have is working on a new release of XenServer codenamed “Midnight Ride”, and a public beta is supposed to surface in March 2010.

Some of the new features are, but not limited to:

  • Granular Role-based access controls within XenCenter
  • Dynamic Memory Control & Overcommit
  • Enhanced snapshots, including full system state and  one-click revert
  • Administrative logging and audit reports
  • Automation for Workload Balancing
  • Host Power Management
  • StorageLink Site Recovery for business continuity
  • Enhanced CPU comptibility for XenMotion
  • Streamlined XenCenter interface
  • Support for “Supplementary Packs” for hardware vendor-specific features (i.e. Dell, HP)

I’m particularly excited about memory overcommit, can’t wait to see how this will perform on a real live system.

For more information and a Webinar signup link, have a look at http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1861678

No more free Sun patches

February 12th, 2010 lasseoe No comments

Oracle has done it, without a paid support contract you cannot get ANY Sun patches, not even critical security patches. http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-203648-1.

I don’t believe this is the correct way to do business, sure they stand to make a bit more money but in the grand scheme of things I can’t see it making much of a difference, only thing that will happen is that a lot of current customers will get pissed off with the new policy, and new potential customers will go a non-Sun/Oracle route ie. Linux or Windows (MS still supply free security patches).

Here is an OpenSolaris thread on the subject.

Categories: Oracle, Sun Tags:

EMC inq utility

February 9th, 2010 lasseoe No comments

The EMC inq utility is a sought after little gem, a simple google search will quickly show you where to find it, yet a lot of people seem to struggle.

All versions ranging from 4.0.1 (2001) up to and including the latest 7.1.0.0 (Dec 2009) are available at ftp://ftp.emc.com/pub/symm3000/inquiry/ for free, there are various Linux versions, Solaris, HPUX, AIX and Windows.

Categories: Storage, UNIX Tags: , , , , ,

A Tribute to Sun Microsystems

February 8th, 2010 lasseoe No comments

For more than 27 years, Sun has led the way in network computing innovation. And while oftentimes taking the road less traveled, our journey has delivered some of the most revolutionary — and evolutionary — ideas, business practices, and products. From Solaris to Java, open standards to open source, high-performance computing to eco computing, and everything in between, we’ve created a vibrant culture and a rich history, both of which we’ve shared with our partners, developers, students, universities, and of course, our customers.

We asked Sun employees from around the world to share some of their favorite anecdotes about their experiences at Sun. Take a look back at some of our more memorable moments and celebrate the unique culture that is Sun.

This is a great site with lots of history about Sun Microsystems, how Sun made a difference to it’s employees and the world, it’s innovations throughout the years, jokes, pranks, t-shirts and all the things that made Sun special, go check it out!

http://www.thenetworkisthecomputer.com/
 

Compiling Apache HTTP server on OpenSolaris

February 1st, 2010 lasseoe No comments

This may not come as a surprise to many of you, especially the ones who have used OpenSolaris for a long time, but for myself who have only recently started tampering with the Indiana branch of OpenSolaris it took a few minutes to figure out what was going on.

When running Apache’s configure on OpenSolaris build 131 it would bomb out at:

Configuring Apache Portable Runtime Utility library...
checking for APR-util... yes
adding "-L/usr/lib" to LDFLAGS
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name...
configure: error: in `/root/httpd-2.2.13':

Checking config.log showed me that it failed at cc1: error: invalid option 't' Odd!
It didn’t immediately occur to me that it was using the OpenSolaris supplied APR-util which is using the SunPro compiler.

So, the solution is to run configure with the --with-included-apr option.