The Lone Sysadmin

I now have a cluster of ESX 4.0 hosts running with EVC enabled, in “Intel Xeon Core 2″ mode. It’s been working okay so far (there are some rough edges here and there, nothing showstopping) and this morning I decided to convert a couple of my VMs to the new ESX 4 hardware format, “VM Version 7.”

As soon as I upgraded the virtual hardware the VMs in question stopped being able to VMotion at all giving me the error:

“Host CPU is incompatible with the virtual machine’s requirements at CPUID level 0×1 register ‘ecx’.”

no matter where I tried to VMotion it to (even the same CPUs on a different machine). Not cool. These were VMs that were working flawlessly as VM Version 4. One support case later and a gentleman named Rob pointed me to KB article 1008315, suggesting that I check my .vmx file for CPU mask information and remove it.

Sure enough, somewhere along the line my .vmx files grew some unwanted cruft, in the form:

cpuid.1.ecx = "R----R----R--R-0-----------H-R--"
cpuid.1.ecx.amd = "R---------------------------R---"
cpuid.80000001.ecx.amd = "------------------RR-RR---------"
cpuid.80000001.edx = "----R---------------------------"
cpuid.80000001.edx.amd = "--------------------------------"

and now EVC, though it should ignore that extra stuff, doesn’t seem to anymore with VM version 7.

Via vCenter, I edited the settings of the VM, went to the Options tab, then to “CPUID Mask” and clicked the “Advanced” button. Clicking the “Reset All to Default” button did the trick.

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This doesn’t look good:

This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers

It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:

You seem to have crawled into a hole … and this is not acceptable.

You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.

You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.

You have, it seems, sole ‘Founders’ rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.

When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept ‘Lines are temporarily busy’ for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.

Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.

Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.

Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the ‘centos.org’ domain.

It’s too bad that the only way to find out that your leader is a megalomaniac & a control freak is through experiences like this. No project this size should ever operate where one person has sole control of things like funds, domains, IRC channels, etc. That’s a big warning sign.

If I were using CentOS I’d be watching this closely, and taking a serious look at options for when the project dies.

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• Google Search Appliance virtual edition
  This is pretty cool, index up to 50K documents with the test appliance. (via Scott Lowe)

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• Google Search Appliance virtual edition
  This is pretty cool, index up to 50K documents with the test appliance. (via Scott Lowe)
• The Crow Paradox : NPR
  Interesting that crows can hold grudges for years…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Heck yeah, I was approved to go to VMworld 2009 today.

In case you’re still trying to convince someone you should go, here’s the approach that has worked for me for the last three years, amidst constant budget problems and skepticism about virtual environments:

1. VMworld is the best opportunity & best value for VMware software training in the United States during the year. There are hundreds of sessions, labs, and other hands-on opportunities. You’ll learn better ways to do what you’re already doing, good ways to start doing things you want to do (like implementing vSphere 4, SRM, Lab Manager, View, etc.), and be able to talk to people who are already doing it to find out how well it really works. It’s also a great place to see what the future directions are for virtualization.

2. On top of the conference sessions itself the vendor showcase is very useful. See new product releases from vendors, learn about options for storage, networking, hardware and software to make your virtual environments even better.

3. Virtualization is the way that all future IT operations are going to be run. As such, a trip like this is an investment in your company’s IT future. Additionally, compared to the cost of hiring a consultant, a week of VMworld can be quite inexpensive. It also keeps the knowledge in-house. Not saying consultants aren’t handy, because they can be very knowledgeable and useful, but I’m always a fan of the local IT guys being the long-term experts on their own systems. VMworld helps with that.

4. The airfare is quite inexpensive from most places in the U.S., and with San Francisco there isn’t the perception of some lavish trip to exotic places to play golf. If you’re coming from outside the country the exchange rate is probably still quite favorable, too. And if your significant other wants to go, but doesn’t want to get stuck with a bunch of dorks talking about Extended VMotion Compatibility and HBA queue depths, Scott Lowe’s wife Crystal is organizing some touring, too. Plus, it’s the long Labor Day weekend, it’ll be awesome!

5. Networking with VMware staff, VMTN & Communities celebrities, and all those vExpert rock stars is handy. The virtualization community, while it’s growing rapidly, is still pretty small, and you can meet and buy beer on your expense account for all those folks whose blog and forum posts have saved your duff all year long.

Okay, #5 probably isn’t super useful in your justifications. But I do owe a lot of people beer. And there’s lots of great beer in San Francisco… Now to just find an expense account…

So get it together, people! Get registered, get your flights, and get moving!

Popularity: 2% [?]

“Hey Bob, check out mailing list X from yesterday.”

As many of you have figured out I work at a University. There’s a mailing list with a lot of IT folks on it from around campus, intended for discussions and peer-to-peer assistance. Signal to noise isn’t terribly high on the list so I filter it to a mailbox. I would unsubscribe except for the occasional gem that filters through, pointed out by my coworkers.

“What, did you want me to see the message that just has ‘help’ in the body? That is a little odd, I agree,” I replied. How did he get that through? Damned if the list manager doesn’t filter out half of my messages with words like “error” in the subject. Try being a tech on a mailing list and not being able to put “error” anywhere in the subject line…

“Yeah, that’s part of it, Joe’s ‘help’ message. But did you see the one where the other Ed asked if anybody knew if Joe was okay?”

“Like 17 hours after the original message. Glad I’m not in distress. Wasn’t Joe just trying to get help docs from the list manager software?”

“Yeah, to unsubscribe or something. Here’s the thing, though: Ed, thinking he needed help, called 911 and the police went to find Joe.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, apparently Ed called Joe’s desk phone, Joe didn’t answer, so he assumed the worst and called the police.”

“Did they find him?”

“Of course. He wasn’t dead or anything, was just out of his office working on stuff. He was fine.”

“See, this is exactly why I will never be a cop.”

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• Flank Steak Stir-Fry with Asparagus and Red Pepper Recipe | Simply Recipes
  Going to try this tonight — props to Jeremy Zawodny for finding it. I love excuses to fire up the wok.
• Pest Control – Moles, Gophers, Burrowing Rodents @ Rodenator
  Blowing up burrowing pests one tunnel at a time. Cool!

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It looks like Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 changes the way IPv6 works. Perhaps others can corroborate my experiences, or tell me I’m nuts.

I’ve been running SP1 with a fully-configured IPv6 stack for some time. I installed SP2 today and two things happened:

1. It appears that the Teredo tunnel now takes precedence over an actual, working IPv6 stack. I was unable to connect via IPv6 to local resources and “ping” returned insanely long response times (300 ms vs. the 1 ms it should have been).

To disable this from the command prompt I issued the command:

netsh interface teredo set state disabled

This smells like a bug to me, and at the very least it’s annoying if you have IPv6 connectivity.

2. It appears that the IPv6 privacy settings get reset, so if you have a static IP you won’t end up using it, but instead will use a rotating IPv6 IP. To disable this from the command prompt:

netsh interface ipv6 set privacy state=disable

You’ll have to restart after setting this (at least I did).

I’m a Linux & UNIX guy, and really don’t count myself as a Windows expert, as I know just enough to be dangerous. :-) If someone can add to this (and not just MS bashing[0]) please leave a comment.

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[0] Every OS vendor has situations like this where a patch changes the behavior of a component. In my experiences Microsoft isn’t even close to being the worst offender.

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