Short tip: Please reserve memory by passing 'crashkernel=X@Y' parameter to the kernel

Apr 29, 2015 · 1 min read · kurztipp ·

While configuring kdump on a system I recently stumbled upon the following error:

1Please reserve memory by passing "crashkernel=X@Y" parameter to the kernel

However, the parameter crashkernel was mentioned in the GRUB configuration file and kernel commandline:

1$ grep crashkernel /proc/cmdline
2ro …

Store kernel dumps using kdump on remote machines

Apr 28, 2015 · 3 min read ·

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If the Linux kernel crashes it is possible to create a memory image (also called vmcore) using a mechanism called kdump. Especially, this is useful if you plan to engage support to fix the reason for the issue. By default, the vmcore is stored under /var/crash. But if the kernel is not able to access the storage …
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Spacewalk 2.3 released

Apr 16, 2015 · 2 min read · red-hat-satellite spacewalk suse-manager ·

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After Red Hat Satellite 5.7 was released 3 months ago Spacewalk version 2.3 was published on 14th of april 2015 after 9 months of development. Like the commercial spin-off the recent management suite also offers a more modern web-interface. With version 2.2 this interface's user experience was overhauled by HTML5, …
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VM Tools for MS-DOS and Windows 3.x

Apr 1, 2015 · 1 min read · april retro ·

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VMware offers software packages including additional applications and drivers for the most support guest operating systems - these packages are also called VMware Tools. Beside recent operating systems also older releases are supported - e.g. there are also Tools for Windows NT. …
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Short tip: VMware vSphere "Module DiskEarly power on failed to lock file"

Mar 26, 2015 · 1 min read · esxi kurztipp ·

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While booting a virtualized cluster node I stumped upon a suspicious error message recently:

Module DiskEarly power on failed to lock file

In the VMware forums I found a hint that locking mechanisms might account for this issue. However the thread focussed on desktop products and not on vSphere. I found no lock files ( …

Short tip: Monitor Koukaam NETIO PDUs with Nagios / Icinga

Mar 8, 2015 · 1 min read · icinga nagios netio kurztipp ·

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Koukaam NETIO power outlets offer a network interface that can be used for controlling the particular ports comfortably. It would be even nicer to monitor them with Nagios or Icinga. 2012 I created a provisional bash script for monitoring the ports and time synchronization over NTP.

This weekend I migrated the script …

vRetro trip: MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 in 2015

Mar 6, 2015 · 12 min read · retro ·

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Because of a recent comment on this blog I stumbled upon an interesting Abandonware webseite. For me this was a reason for diving into a world of forgotten software (thank you very much for the hint, Frank!). While browsing the software archive I vividly recalled my first steps with the computer. Back then - in …
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Short tip: PostgreSQL error "SQLSTATE[08006] [7] FATAL: Ident authentication failed"

Feb 15, 2015 · 2 min read · kurztipp ·

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While testing a web application that uses PHP PDO to establish a connection to a PostgreSQL database I stumbled upon the following error message:

1Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[08006] [7] FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "user"' in xxx.php …

Oracle XE: reset locked users

Feb 13, 2015 · 2 min read · oracle ·

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If you haven't used an Oracle database for some time you might stumble upon the issue I just had: all internal user accounts were locked and I also didn't know the passwords.

By default login information of internal users are invalid after 180 days.

The following accounts are important to me on my Oracle 11gR2 Database …

vSphere 6: "Brave New IT"

Feb 8, 2015 · 9 min read · esxi vcsa ·

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This week VMware introduced plenty of new, long-awaited product versions during an online event. I also joined this event to see the further development that was taking place since VMworld 2014.

vSphere 6

The biggest highlight was vSphere 6 - in accordance with VMware this is the "biggest release ever". With …