Under the Solaris 10 system – or the open Solaris as well,
the service management have been upgraded, and there are great new tools to handle the sysadmin
work on the services.

The long detailed explanation can be found here:
Solaris Service Management Facility – Quickstart Guide

But for the fast paced sysadmin – here is the short version

To see the detailed boot sequence with all the services notices use:

boot -m verbose

Stopping and starting services

stop a running service as well as make sure it wont come back after booting the server:

svcadm disable service_name

Bring the service back up and make sure it starts after boot as well:

svcadm enable service_name

The new and improved services system will also watch over the service, and restart it if it suddenly stop.
but don’t worry – if the service loops and can’t start, after a couple of time the SMF will stop trying to bring it up, and will send you an error for the service.

To stop or start the service temporarily without impacting the startup status of the service use:

svcadm -t enable/disable service_name

Getting information about the services

List all active services:

svcs

List all available services:

svcs -a

List all failing services:

svcs -x

to get more details on a specific failing service, use:

svcs -x service_name

to add verbosity to the svcs commands just add “-v”

the services logs are located at:
/var/svc/log
or:
/etc/svc/volatile

List all the processes this service is running, even if they have a different name:

svcs -p service_name

Viewing Dependencies

List all the services this service is depended upon, if any of these services fails, our service will fail too:

svcs -d service_name

List all the services that depend on our service, if our service fails, they will fail too:

svcs -D service_name

Service Names

the explanation for the service names im taking straight from the SUN bigadmin site:

Solaris uses a URI string called an FMRI (Fault Managed Resource Identifier) to identify system objects for which advanced fault and resource management capabilities are provided. Services managed by SMF are assigned FMRI strings prefixed with the scheme name “svc“, as shown in the following examples for the Solaris service syslogd(1M):

• svc://localhost/system/system-log:default
• svc:/system/system-log:default
• system/system-log:default

Notice that these service FMRIs used by SMF can be expressed in three ways: first as an absolute path including a location path such as “localhost“; second as a path relative to the local machine; and third as simply the service identifier with the string prefixes implied. The SMF administrator tools described in the rest of this document typically describe services using the third form, as they are assumed to be operating on local services. Other management tools that operate on multiple types of resources or across machine boundaries may use one of the other forms to describe services. The SMF tools in the current release of Solaris can only manage services on the local host.

Solaris RunLevel

There are no longer run levels setting on the Solaris server, now this is called milestones.
Milestones are a group of services, which defines a state the server is in – just like single user, or multi user.
you can bring the server into a specific milestone with:

svcadm milestone milestone/single-user:default

to permanently set the server in a specific mile stone , use:

svcadm milestone -d milestone/single-user:default

and again – to list what services should be running to reach a specific milestone, use:

svcs -d milestone_name

and that’s the short explanation

next time ill explain how to add a service of your own to the system.

In this age when all our information is exposed to the world,
our images are floating everywhere and you don’t know anymore where and what is written about us,
the good people at HoHli have created a new search page that will gather all your information at one place,
showing you details about yourself or anyone else from many social networks and search engines at once.

output comes from:

• Blogger
• Myspace
• Google Images and search
• Yahoo Images and search
• Digg
• Twitter
• and more …

Searching for yonitg information:

A little scary seeing all that information out there.

Go ahead, search for your name at:  http://analyser.hohli.com/people

put a comment here with how much details you found about yourselves that you didn’t know was out there

Technorati Tags: Online Tools, statistics

There are main 2 major software companies that supply free vnc server and vnc cllient,
the first is realvnc and the second is tightvnc , from the tighvnc site:

TightVNC is a free remote control software package. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer. TightVNC is:

• free for both personal and commercial usage, with full source code available (GPL-licensed);
• useful in remote administration, remote customer support, education, and for many other purposes;
• cross-platform, available for Windows and Unix, compatible with other VNC software.

So these are 2 options for you to download a good free vnc viewer.

Solaris VNCserver configuration

and I say only viewer because now the Solaris 10 build 5 comes with the vncserver alredy inside.
all you need to do is to configure it.

This page on the SUN site will give you the detailed explanation on how to do things and what security patch you need to install fisrt ,but the instructions can be summed up in 4 lines:

mkdir -p /etc/dt/config

cp /usr/dt/config/Xservers    /etc/dt/config/Xservers

edit this file “/etc/dt/config/Xservers” and add these lines at the end:

:1  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :1 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
:2  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :2 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
:3  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :3 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
And reboot the server.

The lines with the :1 :2 etc at the beginning, are the virtual displays you wish to server to have available for connections, you can add more by changing the numbers to :4 :5 etc.

when connecting to the server with the vnc viewer you need to express to which virtual display you want to connect by adding it to end of the server’s name or ip:

10.10.10.1:3

If you want to connect to virtual display number 3.

A security note – this configuration will allow passwordless access to the vnc screen – if someone logs in and leaves it open – the next user can just enter without a login.

A safer configuration is to require a password by using the -SecurityTypes VncAuth parameter. The Xvnc(1) man page describes password requirements.

VNC and Security

The vnc as a general is clear text, for a more secure connection there is a method of tunneling the vnc through a ssh session.
2 nice tutorials for vnc through ssh can be found here and here.
the second tutorial is using putty for the ssh connection – putty is another great freeware,
its a free ssh client for windows to connect to ssh servers.

If the server you wish to connect to through vnc is located withing your lan,
and you are relaxed about security for the users on it – if its a training server etc ,
you can just setup the vncserver without any safeguards,
but if you are connecting through an unsecured medium (AKA the internet)
you better add the ssh layer to it.

Technorati Tags: desktop, Linux, network, Solaris, windows

A fresh install of windows 7 might have a problem with samba shares,

if you setup samba logging you will see errors like this:

[2009/08/26 09:15:53, 3] smbd/connection.c:yield_connection(76)
yield_connection: tdb_delete for name  failed with error Record does not exist.
[2009/08/26 09:15:53, 3] smbd/server.c:exit_server(614)

although the user was able to connect from a different PC with a different operating system.

I found this great solution for the samba connection problem,

and to break it to a few simple steps:

1. from the run command or from a cmd window run secpol.msc
2. go to “Local Policies” -> “Security Options” -> “Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level”
3. change to “LM and NTLM – use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated”
4. Press the OK button

This solution worked just fine on a fresh windows 7 install.

Technorati Tags: desktop, samba, windows

Finding information about the hardware installed on your Linux server is easier then you might think.
The Linux server comes installed with some very nice command line tools to help you list all the linux hardware information you need.
lets start with the basic tool: dmesg

Startup Log

you can either run the command dmesg or read the log itself at: “cat /var/log/dmesg”

this logs will show you the bootup process messages your Linux server had sent out in its last boot, and all the hardware it had recognized. a lot more info is listed – for example the network card running state:

[root@localhost /]# dmesg | grep eth
eth0: registered as PCnet/FAST III 79C973
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

this command gives you the network card status and if its in full or half duplex mode, for example.

List PCI Devices

the command lspci will list your PCI devices on your system – mainly information about which motherboard is installed, what is your network card maker and which video device.
sample output:

[root@localhost /]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX – 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH VirtualBox Graphics Adapter
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] (rev 40)

List Bios Info

the command dmidecode will list the SMBios info,
which should give you a lot of details on the installed Bios – but its not 100% reliable,
it wont only tell you what exactly is installed, but it might also tell you whats the fastest CPU that can be attached to the mother board, not what really is there.
a sample output:

Handle 0×0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes.
BIOS Information
Vendor: innotek GmbH
Version: VirtualBox
Release Date: 12/01/2006
Address: 0xE0000
Runtime Size: 128 kB
ROM Size: 128 kB
Characteristics:
ISA is supported
PCI is supported
Boot from CD is supported
Selectable boot is supported
8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
ACPI is supported

List All Your Linux Hardware Devices

a very thorough listing of all the devices attached to the computer including the Plug-n-Play devices is listed through the command lshal, for example everything you wanted to know about my mouse and more:

udi = ‘/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pnp_PNP0f03′
info.udi = ‘/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pnp_PNP0f03′  (string)
linux.subsystem = ‘pnp’  (string)
linux.hotplug_type = 1  (0×1)  (int)
info.product = ‘Microsoft PS/2-style Mouse’  (string)
pnp.description = ‘Microsoft PS/2-style Mouse’  (string)
pnp.id = ‘PNP0f03′  (string)
info.linux.driver = ‘i8042 aux’  (string)
info.parent = ‘/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer’  (string)
info.bus = ‘pnp’  (string)
linux.sysfs_path_device = ‘/sys/devices/pnp0/00:04′  (string)
linux.sysfs_path = ‘/sys/devices/pnp0/00:04′  (string)

Test Harddisk Transfer Speed

this cute command line will tell you whats your hard-disk speed is, of course you need to know what hard-disks you have first:

[root@localhost /]# hdparm -t -T /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads:   7680 MB in  1.99 seconds = 3868.01 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  148 MB in  3.00 seconds =  49.33 MB/sec

USB Devices

just like lspci the command lsusb will list your USB devices:

[root@localhost /]# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

So these are some good command line tools to list all you Linux Hardware info, but check out my post about Linux Server Information which explains how to use cfg2html to easily extract all this information and more at once.

Image by Jeff Kubina

Technorati Tags: Command line, Hardware, Linux

in some of these application you can setup this through the app switches itself, but simpler apps just use the system network settings.

to fix this you can first check what current settings you have now with:

ENV | grep -i proxy

this should show you the current proxy settings you have.

to add your own settings do:

export http_proxy=”http://<proxy-server-ip>:<port>”
export ftp_proxy=”http://<proxy-server-ip>:<port>”

for example:

export http_proxy=”http://192.168.0.10:8080″

after that, just run your command line app, it should pick up and use these settings.

Technorati Tags: Command line, Linux, network, proxy