IGR IT blog – Page 7 – IT Administrator for the IGR at the University of Glasgow

Proxmox clustering and multicast (also, DNS)

After much problems with getting a new Proxmox cluster up and running two things have helped:

Putting the SAN IP addresses in the hosts file, avoiding DNS dependancies (especially when one of the systems isn’t in there yet…). This put me on track: http://blog.rhavenindustrys.com/2013/04/curious-proxmox-clustering-fix.html

Important bit:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
169.254.0.1 proxmox1.local proxmox1 pvelocalhost
169.254.0.2 proxmox2.local proxmox2

10.10.5.101 proxmox1.example.com
10.10.5.102 proxmox2.example.com

This associates the short aliases with the network used by corosync, while leaving the long addresses to the outside world.

Then tried tests detailed at: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Troubleshooting_multicast,_quorum_and_cluster_issues

The multicast test failed – i.e. running

omping -c 10000 -i 0.001 -F -q <list of all nodes>

on both nodes at the same time resulted in 100% loss. Fixed this by disabling IGMP snooping on the SAN VLAN. ExtremeOS command is:

disable igmp snooping <vlanname>

Hey presto, after getting the second node to join properly:

pvecm add 192.168.xxx.xxx -force

it gets quorum immediately. I suspect this issue was causing a lot of the historical issues with getting quorum to work on this switch.

Outlook 2010 and .pst files on network shares

What everyone says is true. Don’t do it! 2010 seems to be very sensitive to .pst issues. Best to import old ones.

Configuring Proxmox hosts (and other postfix installs) to send email via smarthost V2

In this post suggested using the Satellite system option. However, this seems to do the same as the mail sent by smarthost; no local mail option in exim – i.e. even local mail to root tries to go via the smarthost, which then complains. The Internet with smarthost option is probably the better choice (equivalent to exim’s mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail).

N.B. Normal proxmox setup seems to be for postfix to use /etc/aliases directly. Double check this file!

Dell OMSA install on Server 2012 R2 issues

Did install first as network admin – couldn’t get page to display and update patch (from 7.4.0 to 7.4.0.2) didn’t complete. Scrubbed and reinstalled as local admin – no problems.
firewall exception may be required for remote access.
https listener warning isn’t relevant for the https web interface!
send test email button didn’t work in ie11, does in chrome.

Windows Server 2012 R2 install on Dell R520 – boot order issue

Installing Windows Server 2012 R2 on a Dell PowerEdge R520. Initially had problems with the “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one” error. Fixed by going into the bios and changing the boot order so that the internal SD card module came second rather than first (which was needed to make it boot from the SD cards).

Permissions for scm-manager repository directory (.deb install)

For new server mounted storage volume at /var/lib/scm to fit with scm-manager defaults on debian. Note – need to give the scm user permissions to this if the install doesn’t create the directory first!

Booting from dual SD card module on Dell R520

Installed FreeNAS 9.3 on Kingston Ultimate 16 Gb cards on dual SD module in Dell R520 (took ages – so did card synchronisation when first inserted). Came up as boot device missing initially on reboot. Changed hard drive order in the bios to put SD cards first and it booted ok.

pingback test 2

test link

Testing self-pings

Link to previous entry…

Link to older entry.

Lenovo laptops freezing issues – WiDi driver

Had a new X240 that gave lots of problems when going to sleep. A factory restore sorted some of the issues, but not all – the system would bluescreen on entering sleep mode. Uninstalling the Intel WiDi software seemed to fix it, and also let the wifi work properly on a home router.