Ubuntu Kickstart and the corrupt Packages message

If you get a "Debootstrap warning http://server/dists/lucid/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages was corrupt" error message during your PXE / Kickstart installation, just create the file manually on your install Server ( #touch path_to/dists/lucid/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages ). The installer seems to have a problem unpacking a 0 size file for whatever reason....

how to restart a HP iLO 2

login via ssh/telnet

type: reset map1

enjoy a workig ilo :)

It has been a loooooong time

And much happened :) Got a new job, moved to a new place and bought a Macbook (even if I said I'll never buy an Apple product again :) ).

I'll try to update this blog from time to time with some technical posts.

Converting VMWare Server to ESX 3.x

Yesterday, I had to relocate 4 VMWare Server machines to an ESX. A Windows Server VM, 2 Linux installations with LVM and one without LVM. Normally, you just copy the vmdk to the ESX machine, open a console and type

vmkfstools -i {vmserver.vmdk} {vmesx.vmdk}

and it will convert your VMWare Server VM to a format ESX can use. After that, just create a new VM on the ESX Server and add the converted vmdk file as a harddisk. So far so good... the problem is, it won't work as soon as you use LVM :-( So we have to use some magic in form of dd.

• Create a new VM on the ESX Server, the Harddisk must have the same size as the one your VMWare Server VM uses.
• Start the ESX VM and boot from a Linux Live-CD, I suggest you use Backtrack.
• Now start the VMWare Server VM but instead of booting from the HD, use the Linux Live-CD too.
• After both systems have started with their live cds, make sure Backtrack hasn't mounted your Harddisk. Use [mount] to check this and [unmount] anything that isn't necessary.
• On your target machine (ESX), type the following command:
• nc -l -p 55555 | dd of=/dev/sda
• And on the source machine (VMWare Server):
• dd if=/dev/sda | nc {IP_TARGET_VM_ON_ESX} 55555
• Now you have to wait until the system has finished copying, which, depending on your network speed, may take a while.
• As soon as dd has finished, you can restart your VM on the ESX Server and boot from HD instead of the live-cd.

If everything went right, you'll have a old new system running :-)

it's a big ad

great commercial for an australian(?) brewery.

Debian 3.1 and SunFire X4100

There's an excellent article about installing Debian Linux on a SunFire X4100 and X4200. Debian isn't a supported OS on this machine thus SUN only delivers the SAS1064 RAID controller drivers for Windows, Red Hat ES, SLES and Solaris 10. The X4100 and X4200 uses Serial Attached SCSI HDDs and the drivers aren't built in into the Kernel Debian 3.1 uses. You have to install it on a IDE HDD first and copy the whole thing over to the SAS HDD, after you compiled a new kernel which includes the drivers (you can download a 2.6.8 kernel from the website, mentioned above, which already includes the driver).
I gonna build a Kernel for the 64bit version of Debian Etch as soon as I have time :)

Saturday was a good day :D

And I wasn't there :(

/me does not like KDE

I use Ubuntu Linux as my Desktop OS of choice at work and haven't tried KDE for years now. After the recent Gnome bashing from Linus Torvalds, I decided to take a look at KDE again (hey, maybe he's right, you never know!) so I installed the latest Kubuntu version on my personal Notebook and frankly, I (still) didn't like what I've seen. The icons are just too, well, toonish....
Gnome has it's flaws, but I still think it has the cleaner interface and it does what I want it to do ^^

[Listening to: Wildfire - Sonata Arctica - Reckoning Night (4:36)]