Today, I took the drastic step of dropping all mails marked as spam. I finally valued the time I loose when sifting through my spam folder looking for false positives before emptying the folder over the risk of false positives.
From now on, people should learn to write emails that don’t look like spam!
Aaaahhhh….
So, you got a server linked to a SAN box. You define some LUNs on that SAN box. You link the LUNs to the server and you want to start using the LUNs on the server.
Let’s see:
xen02:/dev# ls -l sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 8, 0 2008-04-15 16:51 sda
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 8, 1 2008-04-15 16:51 sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 2008-04-15 16:51 sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 2008-04-15 16:51 sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 48 2008-04-15 16:51 sdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 64 2008-04-15 16:51 sde
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 80 2008-04-15 16:51 sdf
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 96 2008-05-09 13:35 sdg
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 112 2008-05-09 13:35 sdh
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 128 2008-05-09 13:35 sdi
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 144 2008-05-09 13:35 sdj
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 160 2008-05-09 13:35 sdk
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 176 2008-05-09 13:35 sdl
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 192 2008-05-09 13:35 sdm
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 208 2008-05-09 13:35 sdn
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 224 2008-05-09 13:52 sdo
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 240 2008-05-09 13:52 sdp
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 65, 0 2008-05-09 13:54 sdq
Phew, how to identify which drive corresponds to which LUN, especially if you have some equal-sized LUNs.
Fortunately, we have this:
xen02:/dev/disk/by-id# ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-14 16:11 scsi-1 > ../../sdl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000038e47e1430a > ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000039047e3f21f > ../../sdd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000039447f4f916 > ../../sdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000041f48073120 > ../../sdh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000042348076e8c > ../../sdj
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000043748206a2e > ../../sdn
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:52 scsi-3600a0b8000320d200000043a48244540 > ../../sdp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba0000067c47e3f289 > ../../sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba0000067e47e3f2cc > ../../sde
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba000007ca48076f1b > ../../sdi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba000007da480dc9cd > ../../sdk
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba000007de480f5683 > ../../sdm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:54 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba000007e0482445e4 > ../../sdq
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:52 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba000007e248244632 > ../../sdo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-14 16:11 scsi-3600a0b8000322cba00000890482afe68 > ../../sdg <---
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 usb-M-Sys_uDiskOnChip_0F801A713040492E > ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-04-15 16:51 usb-M-Sys_uDiskOnChip_0F801A713040492E-part1 > ../../sda1
Exactly, by using the /dev/disk/by-id virtual directory, you can see which disk id corresponds to which LUN, as you can see in the next (partial) screenshot:
That’s nice! Now we know that our LUN called dpmgmt-root corresponds to 60:0a:0b:80:00:32:2c:ba:00:00:08:90:48:2a:fe:68 which, according to our second listing, corresponds to /dev/sdg.
Using such long device paths isn’t really convenient though, so let’s take this a little further.
Format the device using your preferred filesystem and label your filesystem:
xen02:/dev/disk/by-id# mkfs.ext3 -L dpmgt-root scsi-3600a0b8000322cba00000890482afe68
mke2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
scsi-3600a0b8000322cba00000890482afe68 is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Filesystem label=dpmgt-root
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
...
Reboot your system and check this out:
xen02:/dev/disk/by-label# ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-14 17:28 dpmgmt-root > ../../sdg
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-04-15 16:51 root > ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-05-09 13:35 semail-root > ../../sdn
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2008-04-15 16:51 tempvm-root > ../../sdf
So now, we can address our device as /dev/disk/by-label/dpmgmt-root on every machine that has access to that LUN, now matter what the actual real device path is on that machine.
What’s even better, is that you even don’t even have to reboot to update /dev/disk/by-label/
Just trigger udev to reload the system information on /dev/sdg:
xen06:/dev/disk/by-label# echo add > /sys/block/sdg/uevent
xen06:/dev/disk/by-label# ls
dpmgmt-root root semail-root tempvm-root
Et voilà!
The last couple of days, it seems there’s some kind of ssh botnet trying to spread out. Since I installed DenyHosts some weeks ago, I usually got 5-10 notifications of blocked IP addresses. Last weekend however, I got more than 200 notifications.
Although I feel rather safe having installed DenyHosts (which I urge you to install on every SSH accessible server), as a lot of hosts out there aren’t protected, I fear a new botnet is in the making.
Clearly, someone thinks I need to get more junk in my mailbox. Let me tell you though, 1400 spam mails a day is enough already…
That’s why I wrote a very rudimentary script that hooks into DenyHosts and queries a whois server for an abuse email and sends it an email when found.
Update:
I didn’t notice the difference between the PLUGIN_DENY setting and the mail behaviour of DenyHosts.
By default, DenyHost will send you an email everytime it adds a new host to /etc/hosts.deny, whereas the PLUGIN_DENY script will be invoked every time it adds or readds a host to /etc/hosts.deny. That’s why I now first grep a file with hosts whose hostmaster I already notified of the abuse
The script is ridiculously easy:
#!/bin/bash
# Get parameter
IP=$1
# Check whether we've already seen this host.
if `grep $IP /var/lib/denyhosts/notified_abuse > /dev/null` ;
then
echo host already seen
exit
else
echo new host, added to logfile
echo "`date` $IP" >> /var/lib/denyhosts/notified_abuse
fi
# Try to lookup the abuse mailbox
abuse=`whois $IP|grep ^abuse-mailbox:| tail -n 1 |sed -e "s/abuse-mailbox: //"`
# if found an abuse mailbox, send a mail.
if [ "x$abuse" != "x" ];
then
cat << EOF | mail -a "From: Pieter Barrezeele <xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.be>" -s "SSH brute force attack from $IP" $abuse
Dear Sir/Madam,
Today we experienced an SSH brute force attack originating
from $IP, a host under your responsibility. This probably means
the host in question is compromised.
Please take action to stop this host from attacking us again.
Thanks in advance,
Pieter Barrezeele
PS: this is an automated mail, any errors in this mail are caused by parsing errors.
EOF
fi
I’d advise you to send the mails to yourself for a few days until you see only new hosts are added. Alternatively, you could copy the contents of /etc/hosts.deny into /var/lib/denyhosts/notified_abuse as well.
Last weekend the Iris festivities took place in Brussels. One of the headliner acts were performances by Daan and Ozark Henry. Of course I couldn’t miss out on that last one. We arrived just in time to enjoy Housewife, one of Daan’s latest and greatest songs after which it was Piet Goddaer’s turn to entertain the masses arrived at the Paleizenplein just in front of the royal palace.
As usual, this concert was a nice mix of his recent work as well some of his older hits, including “Sweet Instigator”, “Word up”, “Rescue” and even “Inhaling”.
To conclude, I’d like to say: “Merci, Piet!” 
Need to monitor a SQLserver with Nagios? There’s check_mssql.sh in the latest nagios plugins’ contrib folder. This check command only works with SQLServer 7 and 2000, though.
To make it work with SQLServer 2005, you only need to change 1 line in the script. Find this line:
echo -e "select loginame from sysprocesses where spid > $spid ...
and change it to
echo -e "select loginame from sys.sysprocesses where spid > $spid ...
Now, if your freetds installation (the actual SQLServer client that does all the magic) supports SQLServer 2005, you can run the script as though you’re checking a SQLServer 2000 installation.
And it was good. Well, it’s actually not over yet. A lot of enthousiasts chose to sleep over at the Martelarenplein in front of Leuven’s railway station, to show solidarity with streetchildren in third world countries. Hopefully, this event will reach its goal by gathering enough attention to its cause.
A lot of workshops ranging from street cooking to street dancing, short sets by street artists for this occasion: Milow, Klaas from Yevgueni and Anton Walgrave, an election of the “nicest” street shelter made from rubbish.
I’m really impressed by the courage these people show by sleeping outside on this cold, rainy night. Hats off!
A small impression:
Well, actually it’s my girlfriend that’s looking for such a case. She wants to do something ‘artistic’ with it, but I can’t tell you what… yet.
So if anybody knows where to find such a case… (none of the innards have to be in working condition, but the case should look good from the outside), let me know!
Puppet, my favourite system administration tool, gathers facts about its managed hosts which can be used in administering these hosts.
These default facts are collected by Facter, one of Puppet’s dependencies. One can use these facts by querying using ‘facter’ on a managed host and in Puppet recipes, i.e. a description of how you want your hosts to be configured. A rather big set of facts are supported out of the box. Adding facts, however, can help you in making your recipes more clever.
That’s what I’ve been doing over the last couple of days. This page, “Plugins in Modules“, explains rather well how to add your custom facts. What it fails to tell you is that facts added through this mechanism are only available to Puppet and not to Facter.
So reading this blog post can save you hours trying to figure out why you custom facts don’t show up in the output of facter, because they never will. Executing a mail statement in which you mail the output of a fact, will show you the contents of your facts, however…
Well, not really Xen related, but I noticed that our blades became unreachable once the bridging scripts had run.
After reading a lot of bug reports about bugs in the default Xen networking scripts, a posting on the Xen mailinglist pointed me in the direction of the network driver.
Apparently, some versions of the Broadcom NetXtreme II network driver are somewhat buggy which reflects in broken bridges. In particular, the version included with the binary distribution tarball of Xen 3.1 is affected.
Luckily for us, the bnx2 driver included in the 2.6.18-6-xen-686 kernel available in Debian etch is OK and after a reboot, I had my fully working bridge.
I hope this post reaches other people with the same problems, because it cost me a lot of time to fix.
Update: This problem also occured randomly on some of our other servers, all running the same Xen 3.1 bnx2 driver. After an update of the kernel, these problems disappeared.
Yep, why not abuse my own, much-read blog…
I started my own little company! Go see my projects page!
In order to help out a friend for whom I helped troubleshoot some problems, I started an on-the-side activity with which I try to broaden my experiences. I even have my own business cards, designed especially for me! 
Go check it out, maybe I can be at your service someday.
Bad Behavior has blocked 99 access attempts in the last 7 days.
