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Sun Fire X2270 Can’t Boot Solaris

You’d think a brand new Sun box would be able to boot a freshly installed Solaris, wouldn’t you? Think again.

Last week I took delivery of two new Sun Fire X2270 servers. They sport dual quad core Intel Xeon 5500 “Nehalem” processes.

They are both missing the ILOM cards, because Sun are having quality issues with them – they’ll be shipped when they have a new firmware released which addresses whatever issues they’re having. This means there’s no graphics output, and no service processor to ssh to. I have to have the servers next to my desk hooked up to my mac via a serial cable. (I could put them in the data centre but without a service processor I wouldn’t be able to remotely power them on and off).

It would seem that they can’t boot Solaris from their local disks! They can do a network boot though, which is how I’ve been doing the installations as they don’t a CD / DVD drive. But once the installation is complete and they try to reboot, nada, just freezes.

I’ve tried the following builds of Solaris:

  • Solaris 10 Update 8 (10/09)
  • OpenSolaris 2009-06
  • SXCE (Solaris Express) b105

My most recent attempt was Solaris 10 Update 8. The tail end of the installation looks like this (from my serial console window):

Solaris 10 software installation succeeded

Customizing system files
- Mount points table (/etc/vfstab)
- Network host addresses (/etc/hosts)
- Environment variables (/etc/default/init)

Cleaning devices

Customizing system devices
- Physical devices (/devices)
- Logical devices (/dev)

Installing boot information
- Updating boot environment configuration file
- searching for UFS boot signatures
- no existing UFS boot signatures
- Installing boot blocks (c0t0d0)
- Installing boot blocks (/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0)

Installation log location
- /a/var/sadm/system/logs/install_log (before reboot)
- /var/sadm/system/logs/install_log (after reboot)

Installation complete
Executing SolStart postinstall phase…
Executing finish script “patch_finish”…

Finish script patch_finish execution completed.
Executing JumpStart postinstall phase…

updating /a/platform/i86pc/boot_archive
syncing file systems… done
rebooting…

Then it reboots and just leaves the following on the console, forever:

Speed : 2.00 GHz    Count : 2

Press F2 to run Setup (CTRL+E on Remote Keyboard)
Press F12 if you want to boot from the network (CTRL+N on Remote Keyboard)

I’m logging a call with Sun! I wonder if they’ll help given I have hardware only support.

Posted in General, Sun Hardware, Tech. Tagged with , , , , , .

By jesse
11/11/2009

4 comments

Getting SIPr going on Mac

I’ve been looking around for SIP test software, that I can use to test the integrity of our VoIP phone system. Every time we make a configuration change it seems to cause something else to break, so it seems to make sense to have a test suite we can run over our system from time to time, and for simple tests to be run every five minutes from Nagios to alert us if things break.

I’ve found a few things that look interesting:

  • SIPr – ruby, open source version, plus supported enterprise version
  • miTester for SIP – java, docs hard to find as main website is down - sourceforge page

miTester’s website has been down all evening which is a bit of a hindrance to finding out more about it, so that one will have to wait. In the mean time I’ve been looking to get SIPr installed on my Mac. SIPr’s supported platforms are Linux, Solaris and Windows, but their blog says you can manually compile the native SipperMedia executable and then install the SIPr gem. So this is what I did…

Download Sipper source:

svn co http://sipper.rubyforge.org/svn/ sipper

Build the SipperMedia binary:

cd sipper/media/SipperMedia
make

Test the binary runs:

cd Unix
./SipperMedia

Copy SipperMedia binary into bin/ folder:

cd ~/src/sipper
cp media/SipperMedia/Unix/SipperMedia bin/

Build the gem:

gem build sipper.gemspec

example output:

Successfully built RubyGem
Name: Sipper
Version: 2.0.0
File: Sipper-2.0.0.gem
Successfully built RubyGem
Name: Sipper
Version: 2.0.0
File: Sipper-2.0.0.gem
Hoorah. Now lets install it:
sudo gem install Sipper-2.0.0.gem
Splendid. Now lets run it’s tests:
Ren:sipper jesse$ ssmoke
Loaded suite /opt/local/bin/ssmoke
Started
< INVITE  > 100  > 200  < ACK  > BYE  < 200  .
Finished in 0.095137 seconds.
1 tests, 12 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors
Lovely. Now lets see what can be done with it. The SIPr book is looking like a good read.

Posted in General, Tech. Tagged with .

By jesse
4/8/2009

2 comments

iPhone on OS 3.0 GM seed can’t be restored with public 3.0

In an attempt to (re)unlock my iPhone, I’m trying to do a “restore” in iTunes, which I’m hoping would download the now publicly released iPhone OS 3.0 and install it, and then activate and unlock properly. But alas, when I try the restore I get the following error message.

“There was a problem downloading the software for the iPhone “fnord”. The requested resource was not found.”

Can't restore the OS of my iPhone (OS 3.0 GM seed)

Can't restore the OS of my iPhone (OS 3.0 GM seed)

I get this error message on other computers also with this iPhone.

Will I have to wait till 3.0.1 ? Or just till Apple tickle their activation servers?

Posted in General, Tech.

By jesse
18/6/2009

No comments

iPhone OS 3.0 GM has SIM-locked my iPhone

Darn it. I have previously paid Vodafone to have my iPhone unlocked, so I was able to use non Vodafone SIM cards in it. However, I have just installed the developer only release of iPhone OS 3.0 gold master and now I can only use Vodafone SIM cards in it. My Telstra and Three SIM cards yield no signal on the iphone, and the following message in iTunes:

iPhone OS 3.0 GM has SIM locked my iPhone

iPhone OS 3.0 GM has SIM locked my iPhone

Hurrumh! 3.0 locked my iphone!

I wonder if this is because Apple’s activation servers aren’t yet prepped for OS 3.0 activation and unlocking. I am hoping this is the case, and that when the public release of 3.0 comes out on Wednesday June 17 my iPhone gets unlocked again.

We’re heading off the day after for far north Queensland where there is only Telstra Next-G coverage, so I’m trying not to bite my nails.

Posted in General. Tagged with .

By jesse
13/6/2009

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Sourdough Breadmaking Goodtimes – Starting the Starter

I love sourdough bread, having been spoilt by bakeries such as Sonoma and Bourke St Bakery when we were living in Sydney. Recently I’ve been making some basic bread recipes, eg Jamie Oliver’s one, and the NY Times featured no knead bread recipe. My mother-in-law put two and two together and bought me a great new book for my birthday – Wild Sourdough by Yoke Mardewi.

This book is great. It tells you how to get your starter going from scratch – with just organic wholemeal rye and water. It has lots of info about the different grains, and I learnt lots of stuff eg spelt is really just a particular kind of wheat (triticum) and actually has more gluten in it than regular wheat flour.

The theory goes that the flour contains enough wild yeast under the bran in the grain to get the culture going, and also lactobaccilis bacteria that make the starter quite acidic with a ph of 3 or 4. After a week or more of developing the starter it arrives at a point where the yeast and lactobacillus are in symbiotic harmony. The acidity meaning that nothing else is likely to grow.

I only had some wholemeal wheat flour on hand when I started, and was impatient, so used this to get started. The ratio of flour to water was 1:1.125 (100g flour, 112g water). I initially used freshly collected rainwater (it was raining outside) for fear of chlorine and flouride in the water killing the wild yeasts. Since then I’ve used water out of our pura-tap water filter, and it’s all good.

Yoke recommends 25 to 28 degrees as perfect for getting starter culture started. It is the beginning of winter in Adelaide so our house is cooler than that, we heat it to about 22 degrees. I was worried it wouldn’t be warm enough but it was fine.

After two days the dough was all bubbly and so on, but had some brown stuff on the surface and some greyish watery liquid. I took the top layer off and fed it some more and kept going.

After another two days it was looking better, though it was going kind of purple on the top, which I was a bit alarmed by, but it is fine – seems to be the bran changing colour on the surface as it oxidises (or that’s my guess anyway). Again i took the top off and fed it some more, this time with organic rye wholemeal.

From then I kept feeding it every day or two and after about 10 days it was doing all the right things – doubling in size after 6 to 8 hours and looking very mouse-like.

I then made my first loaf with this starter, the ‘pain au levian’ from Wild Sourdough … it was awesome.

Posted in Sourdough. Tagged with , , , .

By jesse
8/6/2009

1 comment

Defining variables in Apache configs with mod_define

Rainer Jung has ported Ralf S. Engelschall and Christian Reiber’s mod_define to Apache 2.0 / 2.2. I find it exceedingly useful and convenient.

It’s an apache module that allows you to define arbitrary variables within your apache httpd configuration file and then use them *anywhere* in your configs. … Apache includes environment variables out of the box but you can’t use them inside Listen statements and the like.

mod_define references:

Install it like so: 
apxs -i -a -c mod_define.c

Posted in General. Tagged with , , , , .

By jesse
22/10/2008

No comments

Apple buggers up Novatel 3G Mobile Broadband for MacBookPro users once more!

It seems last week’s Mac OS X 10.4.10 update included the same “Apple WWAN Support Update” that tripped me up in March. All the same symptoms are happening again – menu bar icon display is constantly crashing and reloading when the UX870 wireless card is inserted, and the modem settings are gone so I can’t connect anymore.

This time I’m logging a bug report with Apple. Silly me, I should have done that back in March! But would it have made any difference? Hmmmm. Logged as Apple Bug ID# 5297776.

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By jesse
27/6/2007

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Apple WWAN Support Update 1.0 – Oh Dear

I held off installing this update for about a month figuring that it could intefere with my Novatel Merlin UX870 3G wireless card, and I made a note to go looking online for any problems before installing it. Well slackness and curiosity got the better of me and I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately my fears were realised.

I used to have my MacBook Pro set up to connect to the internet via the card using Three (Hutchison) Australia, however after the update my settings were blown away. Worse, my menu bar started having an endless fit, relaunching over and over. Briefly I would see a new icon from the WWAN Support Update appearing giving me signal strength before it crashed. Over and over. Removing the wireless card restored my menu bar to normality.

I see that some people had their airport connections stop working after applying this update, but this hasn’t happened to me. MacFixit have an article talking about this issue.

I’m also regularly astounded that Apple don’t supply any sort of software removal tool. They go to the trouble of packing their software and keeping the package descriptions under /Library/Receipts/ but there’s no automated way of removing a software update of software installation save finding all the files and deleting them manually, and hoping that the package only added new files…

So if you doubleclick on /Library/Receipts/WWANSupport_Update.pkg and then go to File -> Show Files, you can see a list of files it installs. You can then remove them by manually finding each and dragging it to the trash, or opening up Terminal and running the following commands:

cd /Library/Modem Scripts
sudo rm “WWAN Support”

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras
sudo rm -R WWAN.menu

cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns
sudo rm -R AppleWWANSupport.kext
sudo rm -R AppleWWANVerizon.kext

Now, download the driver again for the Merlin XU870 and install it, and then follow the instructions on that page to configure it up. For Three Australia you use a ‘phone number’ of “3NetAccess”, and leave Username and Password blank.

Posted in General. Tagged with , , , , .

By jesse
30/3/2007

No comments

Sun Fire X2100 M2 – service processor woes (aka LOM)

Goodness me, the new service processor (aka LOM – Lights Out Management) in the Sun X2100 M2 is appalling! It sounds great in the marketing material, ie:
* ssh access
* serial cable access
* web gui access including java based KVM / remote desktop type thing
* once on SP you can connect to the system console, power off and on the box, etc etc

Well, the first two work, but then getting onto the system console seems to be highly problematic, and the java / browser based KVM thing doesn’t work at all for me, on any of the browser / OS combinations I have available to me (Mac OS X, Windows 2000; Firefox, IE, Safari). The system console access seems to freeze up shortly after the Solaris 10 install DVD gets going. If you plug in an LCD monitor you can see that it keeps going and starts up an X windows GUI solaris install, even if you’ve selected “serial console ttya” or “serial console ttyb”. The machine is deeply confused.

The simple task of installing a fresh Solaris 10 6/06 on this box is not being at all simple. Note, so far I’m refusing to plug a keyboard into it as that would be admitting defeat. The box is supposed to make it easy to install OS’s remotely, but this just isn’t working out in practice.

So I have a call in to Sun about it, as we have gold support with this box. They have reacted promptly but one of the first suggestions was to “upgrade the firmware” because “heaps of bugs” have been fixed since the version we have, including heaps of bugs to do with getting console access working.

Good lord, what use is a service processor if it can’t reliably give you console access to your running OS? Did they test this thing at all?

And so I go to the firmware download page and select the latest version of their firmware cd (1.4 at the time of writing, they seem to come out every few weeks!) and what am I greeted with but: “Sorry, we’re down for system maintenance…” Haven’t Sun heard of high availability? Or is this an example of their high availability systems at work?

FWIW, the various versions of things that shipped with this box are:

Embedded Lights Out Manager Version: 1.70
BIOS Version: S40_3A05

/SP -> show /SP/SystemInfo/BoardInfo

  /SP/SystemInfo/BoardInfo
    Targets:

    Properties:
        BoardManufacturer = Quanta
        BoardMfgDateTime = 2006/11/01 07.09
        BoardProductName = S40
        BoardSerialNumber = 2029QTF0638MB0348
        BoardPartNumber = 375-3343-01
        BiosVersion = S40_3A05

And what is with the user-unfriendly syntax? Whereas in the old ALOM and RSC service processors you could simplay say console to start a console session, you now have to go:

start /SP/AgentInfo/console

And instead of saying poweron you now have to go:

set /SP/SystemInfo/CtrlInfo PowerCtrl=on

etc etc.

Still, this syntax will be better for scripts to do things, and probably corresponds more nicely with an SNMP heirarchical breakdown.

La de da …

EDIT 2007-02-28 01:06

Well, turns out that you have to upgrade the firmware, and then if you want Solaris 10 update 2 (6/06) you need to workaround a bug by going into the BIOS (furiously hitting F2 in your SP console session during boot-up) and setting the IPMI External COM Port to System (instead of BMC), and then choose the Solaris 10 Serial Console ttya option on the install DVD. You then have to connect something to the serial ‘com 1′ port on the back of the server and use that to do the interactive install. Aparently if you use update 3 (11/06) you don’t have this restriction and things work nicer, ie you can ssh to the service processor and gain access to the console to do the interactive install that way.

Posted in General, Sun Hardware, Tech. Tagged with , , , , , .

By jesse
27/2/2007

1 comment

Using Xserve G4’s serial port for outbound communication

When I stuffed up the config on my Cyclades console server, I plugged it’s console port into the serial port on the XServe so I could get in there and fix it up. However, you can’t use ZTerm or any other terminal emulation program to use the serial port unless you disable serial terminal support (ie the ability to log into your XServe via a serial cable). That is, you can only have it set up for oubtound serial sessions, or inbound. We want outbound, in this case.

Edit the following file:

vi /System/Library/StartupItems/SerialTerminalSupport/SerialTerminalSupport

Find the section that reads:

# To disable configuration of the serial port for use as a terminal,
# change the value for the line below to $FALSE. The default is $TRUE.
# This change will only affect server platforms.
ENABLE_SERIAL_TERMINAL=$TRUE

Just set that $TRUE to $FALSE and reboot.

Background, also from the same SerialTerminalSupport file:


# Serial Terminal Support
# -----------------------
# The status field in the following line in /etc/ttys is automatically
# set to 'on' thus enabling the serial port (tty.serial) for terminal
# access:
#
# tty.serial "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 off secure
#
# This behavior may be turned off by setting the ENABLE_SERIAL_TERMINAL
# variable below to $FALSE and setting the status field for tty.serial
# in /etc/ttys to 'off'.

Posted in General. Tagged with , , , , .

By jesse
20/2/2007

No comments

voip-o-rama

I have been trying for some time now to get a working software PBX working on a Mac, and so far no joy. I have been focusing mostly on OpenPBX.org, which is a collaborative effort to improve on Asterisk, having forked Asterisk a while back. However supporting Mac doesn’t seem to be much of a priority for them at the moment, and the current 1.2 rc3 version has a problem on Mac OS X (intel) where SIP freezes up after a short time of it running. I’m not sure if this affects PPC based Macs as well.

I have an Intel Mac Mini which I’m trying to get a software PBX onto. Given that OpenPBX.org won’t run nicely on it, I thought I’d try getting Linux installed on it, but I’ve had lots of problems with this as well. I tried the mactel-linux instructions for it, but I get to the end and try booting linux and it says “Missing operating system”. I’m now trying about six other linux distros to see if they are any better.

I’m also going to try both Asterisk and OpenPBX.org on Linux on Parallels on Mac OS X, just for the hell of it. Probably it’ll result in chopped up audio or something but we’ll see how we go. To this end I have installed trixbox (formerly Asterisk@Home) version 2.0 under Parallels, which is a custom-built version of CentOS with Asterisk, MySQL, FreePBX etc. I’ll post the Parallels disk image of this up here shortly.

Posted in General. Tagged with , .

By jesse
11/2/2007

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Sad MacBook Pro

My new MacBook Pro doesn’t handle being unplugged from a DVI monitor at all well. My old G4 PowerBook did this beautifully. :-(

video artifacts when waking from sleep after unplugging a DVI monitor

More pictures and description of the problem is to be found over here.

Update 16 Nov 2006:
I’ve now tried installing a fresh OS on a firewire drive and successfully replicated the problem. Today’s video error picture is pretty special:

more video nonsense

The root cause appears to be that sometimes the MacBook Pro thinks there is a generic “VGA Display” attached, when there isn’t. If you have it set to use the external display as the main screen, you then are forced to turn on mirroring so that you can log in after waking up from sleep, etc.

Update Dec 2006:

The main logic board was replaced and now it’s much better!

Posted in General. Tagged with , , , .

By jesse
15/11/2006

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north west australia


IMG_0024.JPG

Originally uploaded by farnarcle.

The patterns you can see from 10,000 metres looking down on north western Australia are amazing, especially as you head towards the coast.

Posted in General. Tagged with , , .

By jesse
5/12/2005

No comments

Hello World

Goodness me, I have a blog.

This is really just to test out WordPress, which seems excellent.

Bye now

Jesse

Posted in General.

By jesse
19/9/2004

No comments