Problem staging VMWare patches due to SSL inspection


Error:
Download patch definitions
Web sites: 
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml;https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/cscomain/cscodepot-index.xml; 
hosting the patch definitions and patches cannot be accessed or have no patch data. Check the Internet connectivity.

 Solution:

VMWARE KB:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2009000


Update Manager 5.0 introduces a new setting that verifies the SSL certificates during download. By default, this value is set to 1 or enabled.
 
To disable this behavior:
  1. Click Start > Run, type regedit, and click OK. The Registry Editor window opens.
  2. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VMware, Inc.\VMware Update Manager  key. 
  3. Right-click the value of the SslVerifyDownloadCertificate key and click Modify.
  4. Change the Value data field value to 0.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click Start > Run, type services.msc , and click OK.
  7. Right-click VMware vSphere Update Manager Service and click Restart.   

Solution 2

Trust the certificate for the site that is failing by installing it into the trusted certificate store for the local computer. You could also download and trust the CA certificates that were used in signing the site certificate into the local computer certificate store.
 
You might also want to update the root certificates on the Microsoft Windows operating system. For more information, go to the Microsoft Download Center.

Note: You must download the corresponding version of root certificates for your operating system. For more information, refer to Microsoft support documentation. 
 

Device eth0 does not seem to be present” error when we move or clone a CentOS 6.3 virtual machine in vSphere

source link

When we move or clone a CentOS 6.3 Virtual machine made in vSphere5.5, and boot the machine once it is moved/cloned, we get the following error:
“Device eth0 does not seem to be present”.

This is due the fact that whenever we move or clone a Virtual machine, vSphere changes the MAC Address and CentOS renames the NIC from eth0 to eth1.  CentOS stores the network interface hardware configuration using udev.  The file is:
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Open this file in vi editor and delete the old entry for eth0 and edit the new entry for eth1 to eth0.
Then you need to edit the following file:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Record the HWADDR from the 70-persistent-net.rules configuration file and replace it with the existing HWADDR in ifcfg-eth0 configuration file.

Reboot the machine.

Server Service - Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified

Had a customer with a brand new Windows 2008 R2 server VM that started representing the error shown below.

Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified


I spent some time trying different authentication methods for the service, and trying to confirm versions of srv.sys, all seemed to be correct and OK with the server, and it was patched and up to date as well.

I stumbled upon this thread talking about solving a similar issue:

User m_a_tt's post is what lead me to resolve this issue. 

I checked the "dependencies" of the service on my server:

Compared to another server with the same patch level:

So I browsed into the registry to get the multi-string data that represents these two dependencies:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer


And then added them to my "broken" server's registry.

Rebooted, and all was working again.  After some further digging, I found out that this was indeed manually configured this way by a co-worker who was following instructions from an HP Lefthand SAN installation.  The exact line in their documentation was:

sc lanmanserver depend= MSiSCSI

Future note if you implement storage - this seems to replace existing entries entirely.  The command below would be more appropriate:

sc lanmanserver depend=SamSS/Srv/MSiSCSI

Active Directory: Active Directory Upgrade - High Level Steps

sourcelink

Here are the high level steps which you can use to upgrade the Active Directory.  
AD_Upgrade_WiKi

Steps :





1.  Upgrade the schema using correct version of OS – Adprep







     Reference - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464018(WS.10).aspx







Note - Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version of Adprep.exe. The 64-bit version runs by default. If you want  to run one of the Adprep.exe commands on a 32-bit computer, use the 32-bit version of Adprep.exe. It is called Adprep32.exe. In Windows 2008 R2, it is located in the \Support\Adprep folder.







You can ignore the following message. However, if you are planning to install RODC later, you need perform ADPREP/RODCPREP first. First Windows 2008 DC cannot be a Read Only Domain Controller (RODC). 
ADPREP







2.  Verify the schema version







Note - You can verify the schema version using dsquery * cn=schema,cn=configuration,dc=sivarajan,dc=com -scope base -attr objectVersion command. The following table lists the Active Directory Schema and the corresponding Object Version:







Active Directory Object Version
Windows 2000 13
Windows 2003 30
Windows 2003 R2 31
Windows 2008 44
Windows 2008 R2 47
Windows 8 Beta 52
Windows 2012 56
Windows 2012 R2 69




***ObjectVersion 39 - Please refer http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2011/07/15/friday-mail-sack-peevish-nediquette-edition.aspx







3.  Install a new server with correct version of OS and join this server to the existing domain.







4.  Perform DCPRMO on this server and select Additional Domain Controller for an existing Domain option.



     Beginning with Windows Server 2012, you can install AD DS using Windows PowerShell the Install-ADDSDomainController command.







     Reference - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753720(WS.10).aspx







     Reference PowerShell - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh472162#BKMK_PS







     Note - If you are using Active Directory Integrated (ADI) DNS, it will get replicated as part of the Active Directory replication.  
5.  If you are planning to decommission the old servers, you need transfer FSMO roles, DHCP etc to the new server.







Note - You can identify the FSMO role DC information using Netdom /Query FSMO command.







   Reference FSMO http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324801







   DHCP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962355/en-us







6.  You can remove (demote) a domain controller using DCPROMO command and again, since WS2012 also possible with PowerShell.







    Reference - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc740017(WS.10).aspx







    Reference PowerShell - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh472163#BKMK_RemovePS  

Networking Error: IP address already assigned to another adapter (1179)

sourcelink

Details

  • An error message indicates that the IP already exists in the network, but no other virtual machine in the network is sharing the IP.
  • On a Windows virtual machine, you see this error:

    The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter

  • After rebooting the virtual machine, the guest operating system NIC is assigned a private IP address.
  • After a physical to virtual (P2V) conversion of a machine, you cannot assign an IP address to a NIC.
  • After removing and re-adding a virtual NIC, the previous device is no longer visible in Device Manager.
  • The NIC is re-enumerated in the guest operating system.
  • After a P2V conversion, installed devices such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device or ghosted device, are not connected to the computer.
  • The Show Hidden Devices option in Device Manager does not display the devices.

    Note: To view the hidden devices, navigate to My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager > View > Show Hidden Devices.

Solution

Cause

Under certain conditions, you may see this error message from a Windows guest operating system:

The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter Name of adapter. Name of adapter is hidden from the network and Dial-up Connections folder because it is not physically in the computer or is a legacy adapter that is not working. If the same address is assigned to both adapters and they become active, only one of them will use this address. This may result in incorrect system configuration. Do you want to enter a different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in the advanced dialog box?

In this message, XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address you are trying to set and Name of adapter is the name of a network adapter that is present in the registry but hidden in Device Manager.

This error can occur when you change a network connection's TCP/IP configuration from DHCP to a static IP address if:
  • You have upgraded VMware virtual network adapters (for example, when you migrate a virtual machine from an older to a new version of VMware software). This can also include updating the virtual machine hardware version and/or upgrading the version of VMware Tools.
  • You have added and removed network adapters multiple times.
This issue occurs if a network adapter with the same IP address is in the Windows registry but is hidden in the Device Manager (My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager). This hidden adapter is called a ghosted network adapter.
  • You may see this if you recently performed a P2V and the resulting virtual machine still has the physical NICs and drivers for those NICs present. These ghost NICs have the old IP address and the virtual NIC cannot be assigned the same IP address.
Using the Show hidden devices option in the Device Manager (View > Show hidden devices) does not always show the old virtual NIC (ghosted adapter) to which that IP Address is assigned.

For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 269155.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 20, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, make the ghosted network adapter visible in the Device Manager and uninstall the ghosted network adapter from the registry:
  1. Click Start > Run.
  2. Type cmd and press Enter.
  3. At the command prompt, run this command:
    Note: In Windows 2008 and Windows 7, open the command prompt using the Run as Administrator option.

    set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    Note: If this command does not work (a possibility in Windows Server 2000 and 2003), you may need to add the parameter to Windows and set its value:

    1. Right-click the My Computer desktop icon and choose Properties.
    2. Click the Advanced tab and select Environment Variables.
    3. In the System variables section, click New.
    4. Set the Variable name to devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and set the Variable value to 1 to enable the parameter.
    5. Click OK to add the variable to Windows.
  4. Start the Device Manager by running this command from the same command prompt:

    start devmgmt.msc
  5. Click View > Show Hidden Devices.
  6. Expand the Network Adapters tree (click the plus sign next to the Network adapters entry).
  7. Right-click the dimmed network adapter, then click Uninstall.
  8. Once all of the grayed out NICs are uninstalled, assign the IP address to the virtual NIC.

    Note: To assign the IP address to the virtual NIC on the command line, run the command:

    netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection #" static IP_Address Subnet_Mask Default_Gateway

    For example:

    netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection 2" static 192.168.1.101 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1
  9. Close the Device Manager.

    Note: In some Windows versions, a reboot may be necessary to apply the changes.
For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 241257.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 20, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

Resolve issue using DevCon utility

Alternatively, you can also resolve this issue using the DevCon utility. This is a command-line utility that acts as an alternative to Device Manager. When you use DevCon, you can enable, utility disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices.

To resolve the issue using DevCon:
  1. Download the DevCon tool from Microsoft Knowledge Base article 311272.

    Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 20, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.
  2. Unpack the 32-bit or 64-bit DevCon tool binary to a local folder.
  3. Click Start > Run, type cmd, and press Enter.
  4. Type CD:\path_to_binaries to navigate to where the devcon.exe file is located.
  5. Use this syntax to find installed network adapters:

    devcon findall *net*
    or

    devcon listclass net
    Note: In the output of the previous commands, there is a line for the ghosted network adapter that is similar to PCI\.
  6. Run this command to remove the adapter:

    devcon remove @device\name

    For example:

    devcon remove "@PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_1600&SUBSYS_01C21028&REV_02\4&378EDFA4&0&00E2"

    Note: IDs that include an ampersand character (&) must be enclosed in quotation marks as seen in the example.
  7. Reboot the system and you no longer see the ghost network adapters.
Note: If you did not get the Device Instance ID or the OCI name from devcon, search for the adapter name in the registry using Find by clicking Start > Run and typing regedit. Then copy the Device Instance ID for the appropriate adapter. When you locate the device, use the command from Step 6.

For related information, see:

SharePoint 2010 File Size Upload Limits

source link

Excellent article. Credits goes to the author!

Errors Encountered:
– “Page cannot be displayed” when uploading large files
– Error 0x800700DF: The file size exceeds the limit allowed and cannot be saved
– The specified file is larger than the maximum supported file size

1. Setting File Size Upload Limits on a Web Application

1. Login to Central Admin and navigate to Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Web Applications.
2. Once there highlight the web application that you want to change and then click on general settings:
clip_image001
3. Once in general settings scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see the maximum upload size the default setting is 50mb this can be can set to a maximum size of 2047mb (2GB). If you try to go beyond this it does flag up and tell you that you have exceeded the Maximum size.
clip_image002

2. Changing the Web.config file in the IIS Root Folder of Each Web Application

Independently of the SharePoint Web Application file size upload limit Central Admin steps described above, we need to also manually (backup with a copy first) open up the Web.config XML file located in the root folder of each web applications IIS Website.
1. Open the Internet Information Server (IIS) management console on the server desktop
2. Open the Websites tree node on the left 3. Select the website(s) one at a time and go to their root folder by clicking “Open in Explorer View”
3. Locate the web.config file in the folder and make a copy of it (generally acceptable to leave a copy with a name like “web_backup.config” in the root folder) in case it becomes corrupted while you’re editing it.
4. Open the web.config file with NotePad and change the value in the following node from the default of 50MB (expressed in KB):

..to a new value, e.g. 200 MB:

If you are not a math fan (like me), you can easily do the KB / MB / GB calculation (sorry, Bing doesn’t seem to want to help on this one!) by just typing in “200 MB in kilobytes” into Google.
5. IMPORTANT: Repeat the same settings configurations for each server in the SharePoint farm. Web.config’s are just plain XML files and when we are manually mucking about with them there is nothing to tell their sister .config files on the other SharePoint servers in the farm to reflect those changes. You want to avoid inconsistent settings between servers.
Notes on these steps:
– services will be briefly interrupted to SharePoint at the moment you click “Save” in Notepad as it will induce an application pool recycle
– make sure not to dilly dally when you have any particular web.config open in Notepad; it is possible that other processes could potentially may want to modify the config file while you’re using it. Get in and get out like that mission in Grenada.

3. Increase the IIS7 Machine-level Request Length Setting

1. Open an Administrative Command Prompt on each SharePoint server desktop
2. Enter the following command, entering the value in BYTES (not kilobytes this time) at the end:
%windir%system32inetsrvappcmd set config -section:requestFiltering -requestLimits.maxAllowedContentLength:209715200
You will receive a confirmation message after applying the command. Please bear in mind that you will need to run the cmd.exe in administrator mode.
clip_image004
Notes on these steps:
– services will be briefly interrupted to SharePoint at the moment you click “Save” in Notepad as it will induce an application pool recycle

4. Increase the IIS7 Application Pool Idle Time-out Settings (Optional)

IIS7 sets application pools to “time-out” after 20 minutes of inactivity. So if you don’t have a visitor to your site within 20 minutes the application pool will shut down – freeing up those system resources. Then the next time a request comes into the site IIS7 will automatically restart the application pool and serve up the requested pages.
This is a great way to preserve resources since every running application pool does place a certain amount of overhead on the system. But, it also means that the first request – the one that causes the application pool to restart – is very slow. It is slow because the process literally needs to start, then load the required assemblies (like .NET) then load the requested pages. Depending on the size and complexity of your application, this might just be a couple of seconds or it might take 30+ seconds (during which time a user would likely give up and move on to a different site).
If you want to extend the length of the time-out setting, just change it from the default of 20 to however many minutes you want. You can also adjust the setting to 0 (zero) which effectively disables the timeout so that the application pool will never shut down due to being idle.
1. Open Server Manager & Expand the Roles node
2. Expand the Web Server (IIS) node. Then click on the Web Server (IIS) node
3. Expand the node with your local server name
4. and click on the Application Pools icon. You’ll then see a list of the application pools that are defined on your server. In the right-hand pane you’ll see an option for Advanced Settings – click that.
clip_image005
5. Once you see the Advanced Settings dialog box just look for the Idle Time-out (minutes) property; click where the default “20″ is, and change it to whatever value you prefer.
Notes on these steps:
– you need to monitor & plan resource consumption; the idle timeout mechanism is there for the health of the overall system so that idle applications don’t chew up memory needlessly. Setting a huge timeout may be great for allowing big uploads but you need to make sure it’s not throwing resource consumption patterns off kilter in other areas.

5. Increase the IIS7 Connection Timeout Length (Optional)

One more thing to keep in mind is the connection timeout settings: When you upload large files, depending on your connection speed it can happen that the connection times out. If you want, you can increase the connection timeout to a larger value. The standard is 120 seconds. This step is optional, but can become required if you have users with low speed internet connections.
1. Open IIS
2. Select the Web Application
3. Click on Advanced Settings
4. Expand Connection Limits
5. Set the new value for Connection Time-out (seconds)
clip_image008

6. Increase the Web Client File Size Limit

When you upload a large file (over 50Mb usually) to SharePoint 2010, you might get an “Error 0x800700DF: The file size exceeds the limit allowed and cannot be saved” message. Check your  current SharePoint file size upload quota and web.config settings. If the quota is not a problem, then the error is most likely caused by a local restriction set on Web Client service. By default, Web Client file size limit is set to 47Mb or so. To increase this limit:
1. Open Windows Registry using regedit command
2. BACKUP THE REGISTRY!
3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesWebClientParameters
4. Right click on the FileSizeLimitInBytes and click Modify
5. Click on Decimal, and type 4294967295 and click OK
6. Restart Web Client service by typing services.msc.
This will increase the Web Client file size limit to 4Gb, which is a maximum file size you can upload using WebDAV. Please note, that this will only address Web Client service restrictions, and will not increase your SharePoint quota .. you still need to address those points approriately as per the linked MSDN blog post above.
It is also of note that the SharePoint max, cannot raise, hardcoded file size limit is 2GB, period, so raising to 4Gb is essentially overkill. ;)
p.s Don’t forget, if you want to use WebDAV effectively in SharePoint, you will need to have the Desktop Experience feature turned on in Win2k8 – you’ll run into inexplicable intermittent transfer drops otherwise.
That’s it!
clip_image010

7. Increase the SQL Chunk Size for Large Files

The large-file-chunk-size property sets the amount of data that can be read from server running SQL Server at one time. If you have a file that is greater than your chunk size (such as 70 MB when the chunk size is set to 5 MB), the file would be read in 14 chunks (70 / 5).
The chunk size is not related to the maximum upload file size. The chunk size simply specifies the amount of data that can be read from a file at one time. By default, the large-file-chunk-size property is set to 5 MB. If you notice performance or scale problems on the client or server, then you may need to tune this setting to get the performance you are targeting.
1.The large?file?chunk?size property must be set from the command line. This property is configured for a server or server farm, and cannot be configured for an individual virtual server. To set this property, use the following syntax:
Stsadm.exe ?o setproperty ?pn large?file?chunk?size ?pv
2. After making a change to this property, you must restart IIS. You can restart IIS by typing iisreset on the command line.
Notes on this section
-if you raise the chunk size too high, the files might use up too much front-end memory and you may need to lower this setting.

Notes & Caveats

-2047MB is the limit you can use for uploading files. RBS does not get around this either. If you upload the 2GB file and watch you w3wp.exe worker process it will consume this extra memory so it’s not a good idea to do huge uploads it will stop other request to the server (IIS web site at least).
– the IIS7 worker process w3wp.exe has a 4GB limit therefore as the upload would need all the memory to perform an upload. 2GB is a safety limit enforced by SharePoint.

Windows Server 2008 R2: Server Service Fails to Start (Error 67)


SYMPTOMS
On a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2, the Server service may not start. In this scenario, the following event is logged in the System log: Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Date: 03/11/2009 13:54:29

Event ID: 7023 Task
Category: None
Level: Error


Description


The Server service terminated with the following error: The network path was not found. Also, you receive the following error message if you try to manually start the Server service:
The network path was not found. CAUSE
This issue occurs because the system path variable (%path%) contains a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path. Note To view the system path variable, use the path command.
A system path that contains a UNC path may cause severe system problems and severe software problems. Therefore, a system path that contains a UNC path is unsupported.

WORKAROUND
To work around this issue, delete the UNC paths from the system path variable. If the UNC paths must be added to the environment variables, use the user path environment variable.
Properties
Article ID: 978856 ­ Last Review: 26 March 2010 ­ Revision: 2.0

APPLIES TO
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 

Aria2 download manager for Buffalo NAS LS-WVL

source link



1. Existing Buffalo NAS version is 1.64Mod
Go to http://forum.buffalo.nas-central.org/ to update 

2. Install Optware
cd /tmp

wget
http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/stable/ls-mvkw-bootstrap_1.2-7_arm.xsh
sh ./ls-mvkw-bootstrap_1.2-7_arm.xsh

mv /etc/init.d/optware /etc/init.d/rc.optware

ipkg update


3. Install aria2
ipkg install aria2

4. Running aria2 (take note of the download location, adapt it to yours)
aria2c --event-poll=select --enable-rpc --rpc-listen-all=true --rpc-allow-origin-all --dir=/mnt/disk1/volume1/downloads --file-allocation=none -c -D

5. Running aria2 WEB UI
Go to https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 and download the zip file.
Open the index.thm file and configure it to your nas IP.

HowTo : Install VMware Tools on CentOS/RHEL

source link

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine.
Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality.

Installing VMware Tools

Open Vmware Worstation or ESX console and Locate the VM you need to install VMware Tools to.
Right click the VM and choose "Tools", then select "Install VMware Tools".
It will connect the virtual CD-ROM device to the appropriate CD image containing the tools for your virtual machine.
Log into VMware Guest you need to install VMware Tools to.

Install the kernel-devel, gcc, dracut, make and perl packages using yum :
$ yum -y install kernel-devel gcc dracut make perl

Mount CD image with VMware Tools :
$ mkdir /mnt/cdrom
$ mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Copy the archive with VMware Tools to temporary directory :
$ cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp

Uncompress the archive and run the installer :
$ tar -zxf /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp
$ /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default

Remove temporary files :
$ rm -f /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
$ rm -rf /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

Validating VMware Tools Installation

Use the command as follows to validate that VMware Tools is running :
$ initctl list | grep vmware-tools
vmware-tools start/running

To determine the vmware-tools version, run the command :
$ vmware-toolbox-cmd -v