Setting up LVM in RHEL kickstart file

Another piece of fun today...

Task:
Set up and configure a linux box with the following partition information.

Non-LVM
/boot - 100MB

LVM
/ - 9GB
/opt - 12GB
/var - 8GB
swap - 8GB

Kickstart Entries:
clearpart --all
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --ondisk=sda
part pv.4 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=sda
volgroup VolGroup00 pv.4
logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=root --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=9216
logvol /opt --fstype ext3 --name=usr --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=12228
logvol /var --fstype ext3 --name=var --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=8192
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=swap --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=8192

My big mistake was trying to set the "pesize" in the volgroup line. Apparently, it will assume to use all if not set, which is what I wanted. RedHat documentation about kickstart options can be found here.

Creating ISO images with Mac OS X

Since moving .iso files is easier than CD's when performing remote installs, I was trying to find out how I could without paying for software. Apparently, you can do this natively with Mac OS X.

Giving credit where credit is due, I found this link very useful.

http://www.slashdotdash.net/articles/2006/08/14/create-iso-cd-dvd-image-with-mac-os-x-tiger-10-4

And then, if your kernel supports it, you can mount it like this.

# mount -o loop -t iso9660 file.iso

Cfengine File Permission Blunder

While testing some changes to our sshd_config, I imported a copy of it from another host to our cfengine repository. After making adjustments to our cfagent.conf so that the test machine would be the only host to get this copy, I saved the file and ran cfagent.

Much to my surprise, the test server's sshd_config file would not update. I double checked my cfagent.conf, made sure the file was correct in the cfengine repository, etc. Looking at /var/log/messages, I saw

Sep 4 12:52:50 testhost cfengine:testhost[4333]: Network access to cfserver:/repository/cfengine/test/etc/ssh/sshd_config denied

This was confusing, because the testhost:/var/cfengine/cfagent.conf was getting the new configuration file. After banging my head for a while, I realized that the permissions of cfserver:/repository/cfengine/test/etc/ssh/sshd_config were incorrect.

-r-------- 1 root root 3050 Sep 4 10:53 sshd_config

Apparently, when importing the file over to my repository, I kept its original permissions. After chown'ing the file to cfengine, everything worked. Unfortunately, "Network access denied" is misleading. So, in the future, check you file perms to make sure cfengine can read the file.

Is Usenet Dead?

I may have missed the countless articles, Slashdot posts, etc. (would anyone be surprised, or as one of my colleagues keeps saying to me, "OLD!"). For some reason (okay, I was looking up music album easter eggs), I came across a link to an alt.music group and made me think of the "good old days" when customers would ask UUNET to basically max out their T1/T3 with Usenet newsfeeds. I started digging around, and noticed aside from the occasional spam posts, newsgroups seem to be dead.

Did everything now go to Wikis, blogs, collaborative web groups (i.e. Yahoo! Groups), and BitTorrents (R.I.P. alt.binaries); and I just didn't notice?

Happy Sys Admin Day!

http://www.sysadminday.com/
I know I'm a day early, but I won't be around the computer tomorrow (I will be too busy celebrating). So, here's to the good sysadmins, and the lamers like me.

iPhone Mac Address OUI's

Because of security concerns, I'm thinking about filtering out iPhone wi-fi access from our corporate "trusted" wi-fi network. One thought would be to know what the MAC addresses for iPhones wi-fi start with, and block those. I found this post.

http://www.everythingiphone.com/forum/wifi/iphone-mac-address-oui-5819.html

Accessing Serial Console Using a Mac Book Pro

Mac Book Pro's are awesome, but they lack a serial port. Recently, our Network Admin left for greener pastures (or a job that gave him an office) and most of our Unix/Linux admins prefer Macs for their workstations. I found this blog post to address our problem of being able to connect to the serial access port on our network gear.

http://www.ciscoblog.com/archives/2006/05/macbook_pro_usb.html