Category: Linux

VXRail Hardware failures? Not so fast.

Recently had a VXRail upgrade and then noticed hardware failures on equipment we were not using. Worked with it through the DELL/EMC support cycles and we came to two conclusions. Update to the latest version of VXRail or reset the BMC on the troubled node. Because the hardware was not the issue. These are the steps they provided me and it worked.

  •  SSH to the VXRail node
  • Run the following command on the host
/opt/vxrail/tools/ipmitool mc reset cold
  • Once that command completed took about 3 minutes for me. Log into the VXRail Manager via SSH use the default “mystic” username and password.3
  • Restart the VMWare Marvin service and the Jars service. (Note you may need to su to root)
systemctl restart vmware-marvin
systemctl restart runjars

Once VXRail manager is back up log in and check the console to make sure the hardware errors are gone.

Enjoy!

EMC ESRSve admin password reset (VXRail Edition)

Resetting a password on a ESRS appliance is pretty straight forward. But there is a pesky error that can pop up from time to time with ESRS appliances that get deployed via the VXRail deployment.

The normal esrs admin password reset goes something like this:


ESRSapplicance:~ # cd /opt/esrs/webuimgmt-util/
ESRSapplicance:~ # ./passwordAdmin.sh

Normally this would then ask you for a new password for the admin account associated with your ESRS appliance.

But what is the error you might ask? Well it happens in lieu of asking for a new password.

“User Configuration File Missing. Please contact ESRS Support”

In order to get around this error it is a simple command you must run before starting the ./passwordadmin.sh script:


ESRSapplicance:~ # echo admin > /etc/esrsadmin.conf
ESRSapplicance:~ # cd /opt/esrs/webuimgmt-util/
ESRSapplicance:~ # ./passwordAdmin.sh

And thats it! Have fun with ESRS and let me know it this article helped you!

RHEL/CentOS7 xrdp auto disconnects when logging on

So I ran into an issue this week with XRDP disconnecting from my RHEL/CentOS7 RDP connection the moment the logon process is finished. Searching around for different answers to this solution there seems to be no one way of doing it. So I decided to tell you what I did to fix the issue and hopefully help you avoid a major headache in the future.

 

I will start with the installation of XRDP and go through the changes.

  1. Install xrdp tigervnc-server on your RHEL/CentOS7 box
yum -y install xrdp tigervnc-server

2. Start xrdp service and enable at boot

systemctl enable xrdp
user@computer:$ systemctl start xrdp

3. Allow 3389 through the firewall and reload firewall

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=3389/tcp 
user@computer:$ firewall-cmd --reload

4. Configure SELinux ( I did not need to perform this step)

chcon --type=bin_t /usr/bin/xrdp
user@computer:$ chcon --type=bin_t /usr/bin/xrdp-sesman

5. Edit the xrdp.ini file located at the /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

vi /etx/xrdp/xrdp.ini

6. Comment out the line that says “Channel_code=1” Here is a example of the .ini file after the change is made

[globals]
bitmap_cache=yes
bitmap_compression=yes
port=3389
crypt_level=high
#channel_code=1
max_bpp=24
#black=000000
#grey=d6d3ce
#dark_grey=808080
#blue=08246b
#dark_blue=08246b
#white=ffffff
#red=ff0000
#green=00ff00
#background=626c72

[xrdp1]
name=sesman-Xvnc
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1

Just a FYI also some of these commands I did not come up with and where figured out from other blogs. Which when I get permission from the owners I will post here.

That being said this is my first post into some real enterprise level Linux! If you have any tip or tricks as i go down the RHEL CentOS path let me know!

Resources i used:

Install xrdp on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7