FTP server processes of most UNIX systems records user login and logout events in the login log file (wtmpx/wtmps). These files keep track of all login/logout events and typically grow without bounds.

If your systems are receiving large number of ftp connections than ftp records dominates the log files and makes it difficult to track shell logins via last command and other utilities. Also the size of the wtmpx/wtmps files will grow huge and take a lot of disk space.

Thankfully ftpd command on Solaris 10 and HP-UX 11.23/11.31 systems has a command line switch that disables recording of ftp login/logout sessions. You must add the “-W” on the command line while starting the ftpd process.

To achieve this:

Solaris 10

You can use the inetadm command to configure inetd-controlled services on Solaris 10 systems.

Issue the following inetadm command to append “-W” to the command line of the svc:/network/ftp:default service. You must refresh the service definition using the svcadm command to make the change take effect.

inetadm -m svc:/network/ftp:default exec="/usr/sbin/in.ftpd -a -W"
svcadm refresh svc:/network/ftp:default

HP-UX 11.23/11.31

inetd configuration is done using the good old inetd.conf file on HP-UX systems.
You can edit the /etc/inetd.conf file and append the “-W” at the end of the ftp line.
You must run the inetd -c command to make the inetd deamon to reload the configuration and make your changes take effect.

vi /etc/inetd.conf
ftp          stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/lbin/ftpd     ftpd -l -W
inetd -c

FAST FACTS

Industry: Manufacturing

Geography: India

Challenge: To reduce dependence on UNIX systems, improve cost-efficiency ratio, simplify systems management, and improve scalability for business growth

Migration Path:Proprietary UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on Intel Xeon-based Dell PowerEdge server

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Oracle DB

Hardware: Dell 2950 PowerEdge server, Intel Quad Core Xeon-based E5410 x 2 (Dual CPU) Processors

Benefits: Eliminated vendor lock-in, doubled system performance, slashed costs by one-tenth translating into cost savings of over Rs. 40 lakh (USD $83,333), and gained the ability to independently manage systems

“Today, I have complete peace of mind because Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our Intel Xeon-based Dell PowerEdge server has delivered stability, performance gains, and cost savings while providing the ability to scale to the rapidly growing demands of our organization.”
–Pertish Mankotia, head of IT, Sheela Foam

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
A US $200 million group and an ISO 9001:2000 company, Sheela Foam is the largest manufacturer of flexible Polyurethane Foam (PU) in India. The company ranks among the top five PU foam manufacturing companies in the Asia-Pacific region. In India, the firm has many manufacturing units, supported through a distribution network of over 70 distributors and 3,000 dealers. The firm also has a
presence in Australia, with five manufacturing units located in five major cities. A combination of manufacturing excellence and distribution network has enabled the company to capture over 40 percent of the Indian PU foam market share.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Sheela Foam has previously developed Greatplus, its own custom enterprise resource planning application (ERP) based on Oracle running over a proprietary UNIX environment, to automate its entire production process, from procurement to production.

The custom-built ERP is integrated into Sheela Foam’s distribution network of 70 distributors and 3,000 dealers. The firm also used an innovative SMS-based tracking system that helps the company to accurately track and maintain inventory at the location of its distributors and dealers. With every dispatch made by the company to the dealer, an SMS message is sent to the distributor about the stock
dispatched to him.

In this process, every transaction made by the more than 1,500 users worldwide each day was recorded by the ERP system. While the self-constructed ERP system helped Sheela Foam to boost customer confidence, it also meant that the costly system had to be available 24×7. In an effort to improve its cost-value ration, lower costs, and reduce vendor lock-in, Sheela Foam decided to evaluate a number of platforms, including those based on open source technology.

“As a company, we wanted to maximize the value gained from the support provided, as the support costs were too high and prevented us from scaling effectively,” said Pertish Mankotia, head of IT, Sheela Foam. Sheela Foam’s proprietary UNIX system forced it to depend on a proprietary vendor to test and implement improvements, which made the process expensive to maintain and less effective.

Sheela Foam decided to adopt an open source solution after the company’s UNIX system went down and took more than 16 hours to recover. As a mission-critical system, any system downtime directly impacted the reputation of the company and in turn, sales and profits. The incident provided Sheela Foam the impetus to migrate to an open source solution that could be independently maintained by its own IT team.

SOLUTION
After evaluating a host of options, Sheela Foam consulted Red Hat Enterprise Linux partner Keen & Able Computers Pvt Ltd.. Along with fostering Linux, they are uniquely positioned to deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux based solutions, trainings, and product offerings.

Convinced about the value offered, the firm trusted the market leader, Red Hat, and chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on an Intel Xeon processor-based Dell PowerEdge server. The preloaded Dell 2950 PowerEdge server and the thoroughness of the implementation team made the migration and installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux quick and easy. This meant that the system was ready to be tested and could be deployed immediately.

BENEFITS
Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an Intel Xeon-based Dell PowerEdge server has enabled the firm to deploy its ERP on a single server, compared to the two previously required servers, doubling system performance with no downtime. The Red Hat solution has also reduced the amount of time required for processing heavy reports by 25 percent. It has also tremendously brought down the costs of maintaining backups and server redundancy in the face of unforeseen failures.

The reduction in servers and associated maintenance costs has translated to cost savings of over Rs. 40 lakh (USD $83,333). The firm now spends only Rs. 4 lakh (USD $8,333) per year compared to the more than Rs. 44 lakh (USD $91,667) on its previous UNIX system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon-based processors has doubled Sheela Foam’s performance levels, significantly lowered costs, and has given the company the ability to independently manage its systems. Today, Sheela Foam’s IT team is able to make improvements rapidly with ease.

“Today, I have complete peace of mind because the Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon processor-based Dell PowerEdge server system is known for its stability and is well-designed to scale to the rapidly growing demands of our organization. My only regret is that I did not start this earlier,” said Mankotia.

The trusted Red Hat solution has given the Sheela Foam IT team the ability to focus on more strategic issues that can boost the competitiveness of the company.

Following steps can be taken to change the Duplex/Speed settings for a network interface on a HP Unix based system:

lanscan and lanadmin are the two tools which are used to configure most the network parameters on a network interface. (click on the links to get to the man page for both tools)

List of all interfaces along with names, type and their corresponding drivers:

>lanscan -v

In the above output; this server has two interfaces lan1/lan3 and lan1 is igelan based device and lan3 is btlan based device.

To display the duplex and speed configuration of any interface:

lanadmin -x 0 (where 0 is lan0 and for lan1 use lanadmin -x 1)

To set/change the duplex and speed configuration of any interface:

lanadmin -X 100FD (As per requirement 10HD or 10FD or 100HD or 100FD or AUTO_ON can be used)

To change the duplex and speed configuration in the start-up scripts:

Edit the appropriate file for btlan or igelan device config:

for igelan device edit /etc/rc.config.d/hpigelanconf
change HP_BTLAN_SPEED parameter to 10HD or 10FD or 100HD or100FD or AUTO_ON

for btlan device edit /etc/rc.config.d/hpbtlanconf
change HP_IGELAN_SPEED parameter to 10HD or 10FD or 100HD or 100FD or AUTO_ON

then restart the device:

/sbin/init.d/hpbtlan start
/sbin/init.d/hpigelan start

To verify the changes; display the current  duplex and speed configuration:

lanadmin -x 0

A quick way to determine the version of OpenView Operations:

List the version of Management server (Unix based) :

use the what command to get the detailed information about installed version of OVO:

#what /opt/OV/bin/OpC/opc*

OR

#swlist -l product | grep OVO

List of Available OVO Agent versions on Management server:

#/opt/OV/bin/OpC/agtinstall/opcversion -a

List the Installed version of OVO Agent on a node:

#/opt/OV/bin/OpC/opcragt -agent_version <NodeName>

Below is a list of TAR and CPIO command integrated with REMSH command in order to remote access tape drive in another HPUX server. Refer Tar and Untar tape drive in another HPUX server to setup the server before try the commands below.

• CPIO into tape: find /dir/or/files/to/cpio -print | cpio -oacvB | remsh OLDSERVER 'dd of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b'
• Verify CPIO tape: remsh OLDSERVER 'dd if=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b' | (cpio -itcvB)
• CPIO from tape: remsh OLDSERVER 'dd if=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b' | (cpio -iacvBdum)

• TAR into tape: (tar -cvfb - 64 /dir/or/files/to/tar) | remsh OLDSERVER 'dd of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b'
• Verify TAR tape: remsh OLDSERVER 'dd if=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b' | (tar -tvfb - 64)
• UNTAR from tape: remsh OLDSERVER 'dd if=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b' | (tar -xvpfb - 64)

Symptoms: cmviewcl command doesn’t display any output and just hangs; it behaves same  way on two of the cluster nodes. Third node displays the output from cmviewcl command and all packages are up. System is HPUX 11.11 running ServiceGuard A.11.16.00.

Following steps were taken to diagnose/fix the problem:

ps -ef | grep inetd – make sure inetd daemon is running

ps -ef | grep cmcl shows approximately 50 processes for cmclconfd daemon on both nodes; on the 3rd node there are only 2 processes for cmclconfd.

kill cmclconfd daemon processes except the first one

run “inetd -k; inetd“  to restart a fresh inetd daemon

This should restart the inetd daemon and cmviewcl command should start working after this.

OpenView console started showing these messages from one of our HP-UX cluster node;

05/27/09 04:51:21 WARNING opcmona   (Monitor Agent)(24834) [genmona.c:4693]: Can’t start monitor script for object ‘OSSPI-inetdproc_1′. Script still running. (OpC30-610)

/var/opt/OV/log/OpC/opcerror on the agent machine showed that this message is being generated every 5 minutes.

ps -ef | grep -i osspi output shows multiple instances of these OpenView monitor scripts being run and some of the these instances were running for couple of hours.

The most common cause of this error is heavy I/O or processor usage; agent script starving for processor usage and another script is kicked off in the mean while causing this warning. That was not the case in this instance as resource usage was normal on this server. We tried restarting theOpenView agent but it didn’t fix the issue.

The easiest way to troubleshoot the problem is run this script manually and review the output to see why the script is failing:  (make sure you have /var/opt/OV/bin/OpC/cmds in your PATH variable)

run following command from /var/opt/OV/bin/OpC/monitor directory
sh -x ./osspi_procmon.sh OSSPI-inetdproc_1 inetd

It will provide a long output and will give you a starting point where the script is hanging. In our case it was trying to run cmviewcl which was causing this script to hang as there were some problems with cluster state (which will be discussed in next post).

There is situation when you have a new HPUX server and then you need to access the old tape that is not supported on the new tape drive. If there is extra SCSI port on the server, definitely you can move the old tape drive to the new server. But when there is no extra SCSI port and you don’t want to buy extra SCSI card, or the old tape drive is needed to be attached to the old server, you still can access the old tape drive using “remsh” command.

We assume the new server’s host name is newserver, while the old server’s host name is oldserver:

1. Decide a user login to be used to access the old tape drive, let’s said james.
2. Ensure that both servers have that particular user login (with same password).
3. Add the host names of both servers into both hosts file (/etc/hosts), for example:
   192.168.0.1 oldserver
192.168.0.2 newserver
4. At old server, create or edit the .rhosts file at the home directory of that particular user by adding the following line:
   newserver james
5. To untar files from old tape drive on old server, use this command:
   remsh oldserver dd if=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b|(cd /location/to/untar;tar -xvpfb - 64)
6. While to tar files into the old tape drive, use this command:
   tar -cvpfb - 64|remsh oldserver dd of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=64b

Refer Remote access tape drive in another HPUX server for extra commands.

Sometimes it is easy to miss the simple stuff and I must admit that although I have managed Oracle on HPUX over many years I have not in the last few years (mostly Solaris and Linux).
Having started work at a solely HP site in the last year I never bothered to read the Installation guide as a tried and tested set of practise were in place.

Recently we were having problems with a Peoplesoft database and we went the whole hog in re-striping disk and re-evaluating everything. A HP specialist mentioned the init.ora parameter HPUX_SCHED_NOAGE which I had not come across before. On investigation the parameter was in place on our 10.2.0.3 databases but set to 0. Looking at some 11g databases I was surprised to see that it had been set also but with the recommended value of 178. Obviously it is now enabled by default on 11g on HPUX

So what does it do. Well in a non Unix specialist way I can describe it as ensuring that all the database processes run at the same priority and therefore do not get aged out as new processes come along and look for resource. Older processes are more likely to stay on the CPU which results in less context switching. On a busy system it is likely that the lgwr process will perform better as it gets more time on the CPU and is not switched out as often to make way for a process that is waiting in the normal time-share manner. It is not expected that gains will be seen in OLTP systems rather than DSS systems as there will be more process competing for resource than in a DSS system where fewer longer running processes will be the norm.

Whilst writing this up I came across I came across a blog that describes it all in a much more technical manner than I can, complete with diagrams Christian Bilien

Metalink note 217990.1 (Mar 2009) states This could be suited to online transaction processing (OLTP) environments because OLTP environments can cause competition for critical resources. Overall performance improvements of 5 to 10% for OLTP applications.

If the parameter setting is out of range, Oracle sets the parameter to a permissible value and continues with the SCHED_NOAGE policy with the new value.

It also generates a message in the alert_sid.log file about the new setting. Oracle Corporation recommends that you set the parameter to the required priority level for Oracle processes.

The Oracle manual also shows you how to set the unix pre-reqs for the HPUX_SCHED_NOAGE init.ora parameter to work

To permit Oracle Database to use the SCHED_NOAGE scheduling policy, the OSDBA group (typically, the dba group) must have the RTSCHED and RTPRIO privileges to change the scheduling policy and set the priority level for Oracle processes. To give the dba group these privileges:

1. Log in as the root user.

2. Using any text editor, open the /etc/privgroup file, or create it if necessary.

3. Add or edit the following line, which begins with the name of the OSDBA group, specifying the privileges RTPRIO and RTSCHED that you want to grant to this group every time the system restarts:

4. Save the file, and quit the text editor.

5. Enter the following command to grant the privileges to the OSDBA group:
# /usr/sbin/setprivgrp -f /etc/privgroup

Enter the following command to verify that the privileges are set correctly:

# /usr/sbin/getprivgrp dba

So did it make any difference to us. I can only give an example of how it helped a specific problem for us. On a   Peoplesoft HR system we made 2 changes, bad practise I know but time constraints forced it upon us. We added the scheduling parameter and also reduced the filecache_min and filecache_max kernel parameters from 3%,5 % to 1%,2%. These parameters control the amount of physical memory used for caching file I/O data and we were tight on memory anyway. On a specific time and labour batch processing benchmark we saw an immediate improvement of 12% which was very acceptable.

PS to show the process in Glance use ’s’ then select any PID associated with the database and note in the left hand column that scheduler=NOAGE and Priority=178

Most Linux [and to some extent, Windows] users or administrators try to run away from scripting or get as far away from it as possible only to be thrown back into the ring with such deadly opponents as Python, Perl, BASH, KSH, etc.

For the most part it’s NOT that the languages are difficult to learn, but rather the “FEAR” of learning them seems to be the biggest road block for many people.

I want to change the way you think about scripting/programming and to convert your “fear of scripting” to a “flair for scripting“.

I’ll try to do this in two ways:

1. I’ll write your scripts for you with detailed comments in the code using in Python, BASH or KSH on Linux, Unix, HP-UX, Windows, etc (for free or otherwise if you like).
2. Create a new type of tutorial that will clearly explain scripting so that you won’t have to read the same thing 5 times or more to understand and remember what you read.

Remember, THIS

doesn't bite...

HPUX 11iv3 has a feature called MirrorDisk that enable user to do software mirroring, basically is integrated with LVM. However you need to pay extra in order to use it. After installing this feature, follow steps below to mirror the disks (assume the new disk as c2t2d0):

1. Create physical volume for new disk:
   pvcreate -f -B /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
2. Add disk to current root volume group.
   vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
3. Make new disk bootable.
   mkboot /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
4. Copy correct AUTO file into new LIF area.
   mkboot -a "hpux -lq (;0)/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
5. Here is the part to mirror up the logical volume, boot (stand) logical volume need to be done first so that it occupies the first contiguous set of extends on the new disk. Normally logical volume 1 is for stand, 2 is for swap and 3 is for root.
   lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol4 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol5 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol6 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol7 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol8 /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
6. Update the boot information contained in BDRA for the mirror copies of boot, root and primary swap.
   lvlnboot -b /dev/vg00/lvol1
lvlnboot -v -r /dev/vg00/lvol3
lvlnboot -s /dev/vg00/lvol2

7. Check if the BDRA is correct.
   lvlnboot -R /dev/vg00
8. Verify if the mirrors were properly created.
   lvlnboot -v

After finish all the steps, try to restart the server and boot from the new disk. If server is able to boot, it means the mirroring setup is success.

Hi,

For those interested in HPUX, this is an interesting note.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3809181/HP+Unix+Vigilant+in+the+Face+of+Linux.htm

Regards,

Marco,

Jag tror det är dags att göra en omvärdering av mig själv och vem jag är. Eller vad jag är, snarare. Och då syftar jag främst på det yrkesmässiga jaget, även om det gäller även för resterande delar. Fast de känns inte så akuta just nu eftersom privatlivet för tillfället känns rätt problemfritt. Positivt, helt klart.

För att koppla mer direkt till rubriken så handlar det bland annat om vilken sorts datormänniska jag är. Det fanns en tid då inget annat än UNIX kunde tänkas användas. Windows använde jag bara som port mot den riktiga datorvärlden, som bestod av UNIX-servrar. ULTRIX, Solaris, HP/UX, OSF/1… you name it, I’ve run it. I tjänsten hade jag en egen UNIX-arbetsstation ända tills för dryga … hm, kanske fem år sedan, då jag tröttnade på krånglet att vid varje flytt behöva göra specialbeställningar för att i mitt rum få nätverksuttag med koppling mot UNIX-nätet. Då hade jag sedan länge i praktiken slutat att använda den Sparc 10:a jag tilldelades då jag 1998 fick anställning som applikationsutvecklare, web & Internet. Det var där det började. Anyway, jag ser mig fortfarande som UNIX-människa fast det faktiskt var länge sedan jag var någon i något som helst praktiskt hänseende. När slutar man vara något man en gång var? Jag hade samma slags funderingar när jag insåg att jag bott längre tid i Stockholm än i Norrbotten – hur länge förblir man norrbottning?

Idag satt jag på kundmöte och presenterade mig för några nya ansikten som utvecklare, när jag insåg att det är jag kanske inte längre. Men vad är jag då, i så fall? Jag är rent formellt inte arkitekt, även om det nog ligger rätt nära vad jag känner mig som. Men kanske kan man vara utvecklare med arkitektinslag. Jag hade lite roligt åt att han som är chefsarkitekt vände sig mot mig som för att söka godkännande, när han presenterade sina tankar kring dagens ämne. Möjligen kan det bero på att de flesta av dessa tankar ursprungligen kommer från mig. Och, för att fokusera på fler roliga saker, kunden verkade ta till sig mina idéer ganska omgående, alltså de nya som jag lade fram där och då, direkt på mötet. Det känns väldigt bra att få gehör för sina goda idéer och jag blir stolt och börjar genast hoppas på allt möjligt som inte är värst realistiskt. Och mest av allt inser jag att jag inte kommer riktigt till min rätt där jag är nu. Om inte annat märker jag det på mina egna reaktioner. Eller bristen på. Det finns många anledningar till att det blivit så, och många sätt att förändra.

Rent allmänt har nog tiden kommit för mig att se om mitt yrkesmässiga hus.

En mentor vore inte dumt att ha. Några tankar kring det?

Najlepsze praktyki utwardzania (ang. hardening) w zakresie konfiguracji serwera HP UX.

Lista komend służących wyciągnięciu istotnych informacji na temat konfiguracji serwera HP UX, rekomendacje dotyczące bezpiecznej konfiguracji powłoki, usług, sieci i kont

MindMapa w formacie PDF: HP UX Security Check

It’s Friday… so I dug up one of my all-time favorite web gems: The Unix Family Version Tree. Ever wonder when Unix started? Or the relationship between BSD and System V? Or how closely related Mac OSX is (or is not!) to Linux? Click the chart to see the full-size version.

Here are some notable shortcuts: SystemV, Linux, BSD, HPUX, Solaris, MacOSX, GNU/Hurd, Plan 9, Atari Unix, iPhone OS, Windows OS.

Even for those new to Unix (out on the leaves of the tree!), this time-line has a wealth of interesting information showing the history and relationships of most unix varietals. It will also help explain the usability challenges of switching between divergent OS’ from navigating file-systems to loading drivers to managing hardware.

While this reference isn’t exactly about AccuRev or its software development process automation per-se, it’s a great example of how divergent software can grow over time and how tracking changes between active mainline and previous releases becomes really tricky — unless you have good tools (like AccuRev!).

/happy friday/ – dave

A voting disk is a critical file for Oracle Clusterware. You must have at least 3 voting disks. If you have “only” two SAN then you can configure the third on a NFS share.

Oracle supports now a third voting disk on NFS for HPUX. But only for HPUX 11.31 and Oracle Clusterware 10.2.0.2 onwards.

This white paper describse how to configure it:
Using standard NFS to support a third voting disk on an Extended Distance cluster configuration on Linux,AIX,HP, or Solaris (PDF)

In finding information about the dynamic loader and shared libraries in general, there are several places to look. The obvious Internet location is Google; however, the system itself has a lot of information about shared libraries if one only knows where to look.

The first place is the information on the dynamic loader’s man page. Unfortunately, most loaders have names that are unique among their UNIX peers (Linux is almost universal). You can start by looking at the /lib directory for a program containing the string “ld” (or perhaps, “dl”). On Linux, this produces:

# ls -d *ld*
ld-2.6.so ld-linux.so.2

The proper Linux loader is ld-linux.so.

On HP-UX, this produces:

# ls -d *ld*
dld.sl* libdld.2* libldap_send.1*
libdld.0@ libdld.sl@ libldap_send.sl@
libdld.1* libldap.sl@ libnss_ldap.1*

Here, the proper loader is dld.sl.

Looking at the man pages for ld-linux.so or dld.sl or whatever was found gives a vast amount of information directly related to the dynamic loader and how it loads shared libraries, as well as debugging tools to report on how the libraries are found and loaded.

This man page will also mention utilities that will help you manipulate shared libraries. For example, the Linux man page for ld-linux.so mentions ldconfig(8); the HP-UX man page for dld.sl mentions the utilities fastbind(8) and chatr(8).

There are other utilities that remain fairly generic and which can help, though these tend to be specific to machines that are configured for development. If the development tools are not loaded, these tools may be missing. These utilities may include:

• ldd – list libraries used by a binary
• nm – list symbols from program binaries and/or libraries
• objdump – display information from binaries and/or libraries
• readelf – display information from ELF-formatted binaries

Always look at the SEE ALSO section in order find more information.