VMware virtual or not?

Depending on naming, in a VMware environment you may not actually be sure if a Linux system is VMware or not. Here’s a quick command to find out:

which will generally output “VMware, Inc.” if VMware.

On older systems you may find “-s” doesn’t work, in which case just pipe “dmidecode” through grep looking . . . → Read More: VMware virtual or not?

Installing Plixer’s “Scrutinizer” NPMD

Plixer makes a good “Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics” (NPMD) application called “Scrutinizer“. NPMD, as Gartner calls it, mostly omeans, collecting, aggregating, and reporting on Netflow data.

Plixer provides a VMware OVF for installation of a virtual appliance. I, however, ran into a few issues with the installation:

I couldn’t get the install to work . . . → Read More: Installing Plixer’s “Scrutinizer” NPMD

Ubuntu package commands

Because Ubuntu has a mix of utilities to manage packages I constantly seem to be forgetting the options I need when I go to do basic package management. Mostly for my sake are the ones I use most regularly:

List installed packages:

List names of available packages (including those not installed):

Tell what . . . → Read More: Ubuntu package commands

Get RPM install date

Sometimes you don’t know when an RPM was installed – maybe it was updated, maybe it came with the system. In any case, it can be handy when debugging or even for auditing purposes. This gives an example of getting the install time for the “filesystem” package:

somehost% rpm -q filesystem –queryformat ‘%{name} . . . → Read More: Get RPM install date

Dell Service Tag the easy way under Linux

Sometimes you need the service tag or model off a Dell server that isn’t in your possession. You can either find some feet on the street to do it or as it turns out, with Linux, you can use “dmidecode”:

Thanks to Brandon Checketts’ website for this tidbit.

How to probe ethernet capabilities…

Mostly for my own edification – use “ethtool”, eg:

You’ll note two important details about this output:

This NIC is gig capable but is only running at 100mbs. I claim to be running this as root, but any good sysad should be using “sudo” instead!

Anyway, simple command, but sometimes you forget them.

. . . → Read More: How to probe ethernet capabilities…

How to dump the Firefox history (Linux)

Not pretty, but gets you there:

Find and go to your Firefox profile (usually you can locate by going to “~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default”). Run “sqlite3 places.sqlite .dump | grep moz_places”

If Firefox is running you may have to copy the “places.sqlite” to a new file then run the “sqlite3” against it. You can’t dump it while Firefox . . . → Read More: How to dump the Firefox history (Linux)

Testing “sendmail” with immediate delivery

In the old days when using “sendmail” if you wanted to watch the SMTP conversation between the local host and the next mail relay all you’d have to do is either run “sendmail -v” or “mail -v” (or “mailx -v” depending on the OS). It would then output the entire SMTP conversation with the remote . . . → Read More: Testing “sendmail” with immediate delivery

Four keyboard shortcuts you should know…

I’m writing this because I see so many people who use computers regularly who don’t know these basic keyboard shortcuts. They’re easy – learn them and your computer life will be much better. Most work on pretty much any GUI (Windows, Unix, even Mac substituting the CMD key for the CTRL key).

So with no . . . → Read More: Four keyboard shortcuts you should know…

How to build a SLES minicd boot image…

Sometimes you’ll have a system that doesn’t have a DVD drive and/or it’s more convenient to use the network. Making a “minicd” to boot from network is fairly simple:

Set up Apache and copy the DVD media to a subdirectory of “/srv/www/htdocs”. At least in my case I ended up with two directories: /srv/www/htdocs/SLES11SP1/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..001/ /srv/www/htdocs/SLES11SP1/SLES-11-SP1-DVD-x86_64.0432..002/ . . . → Read More: How to build a SLES minicd boot image…