Kickstart

Issue
The 'clearpart --initlabel' option in a kickstart no longer initializes drives in RHEL 6.3.

Environment
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3
Anaconda (kickstart)

Resolution
Use the 'zerombr' option in the kickstart to initialize disks and create a new partition table.
Use the 'ignoredisk' option in the kickstart to limit which disks are initialized by the 'zerombr' option. The following example will limit initialization to the 'vda' disk only:
zerombr
ignoredisk --only-use=vda

I found the solution in this forum post while trying to find out why my kickstart install is prompting with a warning while initializing a blank drive.

Sync local Centos repo

rsync  -avSHP --delete --progress ftp.linux.org.tr::centos/6.5/os/x86_64/ /var/www/html/centos65_64

Clonezilla

This weekend I replaced my 120 GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD drive with a new 250 GB Samsung EVO 840 series SSD. I was running out of space and got bored of having to use my external drive so often.

For the transfer I used for the first time Clonezilla. I downloaded the ISO, and put it on an usb stick using Universal USB installer. Steps: boot from usb flash drive with Clonezilla  (if it asks for login use credentials user/live and run sudo clonezilla but it should not ask and go strait to a text based menu); I used disk- image and saved an image of the current disk to the external usb, reboot after replacing the internal drive with the new one, select again disk-image but this time restore, select the image you want to restore and the new drive as destination. My machine booted without any issues after this using the new drive.

Replacing the drive in my wife's laptop with the Agility 3 SSD required some more work because the source disk was larger than the destination SSD. I had to use first Gparted live which is another open source tool, again put it on the usb flash, boot and shrink the partition to a size smaller than the destination disk. Then I repeated the Clonezilla operation and saved the image to a n external usb drive. Then another trick is required to do the restore, advanced mode and -icds option so it does not check the size of the destination disk. The restore worked fine, Windows needed a boot to repair environment but after that it worked fine.

Clonezilla supports lots of deployment modes, it works well with network deployments and it has been used recently by my colleagues to deploy a large Citrix farm. I am impressed how useful these open source tools have become and hope that this type of projects will gradually replace proprietary systems.

VMware Tools for Nested ESXi released

For those using nested ESXi in the lab there are great news, VMware tools for nested ESXi have been released, the download is available here:
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-tools-for-nested-esxi

Install instructions here:
http://vcdx56.com/2013/11/11/vmware-tools-for-nested-esxi-released/#!

EMC Celerra VSA

Instructions to download the latest appliance:
http://techhead.co/emc-vnx-simulator-vsahow-to-download-the-latest-version/

Fix the blue screen:
http://nickapedia.com/2010/10/18/vsa-time-fix-the-blue-screen/

To change the timezone:
/usr/bin/perl /nas/http/webui/bin/timezone.pl -s America/Denver
To regenerate ssl certs:
/nas/sbin/nas_config -ssl
OR
/nas/http/webui/bin/gen_ssl_cert.pl

Re-scan SCSI bus in Linux

echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
How to scan the SCSI bus with a 2.6 kernel

My experience with Microsoft Surface RT

I wanted to share some goods and bads about my experience using the Microsoft Surface RT tablet.

First the tablet's hardware is great, I like the touch cover, kickstand, USB port, micro HDMI port. To get all these on other tablets you need to pay a lot of money for accessories. They are all included with Surface. Great stuff.

The wireless performance is very good, I can watch HD movies over the network from my WD live media player and it is working great. This does not work on my son's IPAD 2, I cannot compare with the newer versions. The wireless router is Linksys E2000.

The only problem I see is the lack of applications and hopefully this will be solved in time. I also wish MS would allow other browsers like Chrome. IE 10 works fine but I cannot see my browsing history, bookmarks etc from my PC or android phone.