The Comms Room

Jaymit, it's not the real lei driver you want, it's emulating that, not being it - you need the vmtools driver

Lei=LSI sorry

jaymitt

Oh...well I took it right from the VMWare Guest Operating System Installation Guide which says:

@Chopper3, I am pretty sure the real driver will work well enough that windows will recognize the virtual drive. Once the install is done, installing the Vmware tools will give you the driver you really want. Won't it?

jaymitt

"ESX and GSX Server. If you are using the virtual LSI Logic SCSI adapter in a Windows XP virtual
machine, download the driver from the download center at the LSI Logic Web site. Go to
http://www.lsi.com/cm/DownloadSearch.do?locale=EN and download the LSI20320‐R SCSI adapter
driver for your guest operating system."

Yep but you can just mount the vmtools iso and browse to the driver

Wow, that's old, not heard the name GSX for a while

Josh

12:14 AM

@RebeccaChernoff that was a great town hall, I just wanted to thank you personally for the time you spent organizing and publicizing it. I thought it went well, does everyone else agree?

Ben

I hope it helped people who were uncertain

I just wish I had more vertical window-space to keep more of the chat in-window.

Josh

For anyone who missed it, the Transacript can be read in the Town Hall room

Server Fault Election: Town Hall Chat

see meta.serverfault.com/questions/2586

@Ben I thought it helped me get to know the candidates a lot better. I haven't been in chat as much as I'd like recently, so, it was very useful

It was also great to hear everyone answer the same questions on how you see the community and your goals as community members/moderators

Glad to hear.

Now I must go home and indulge in some real-world politics.

Ben

Well most of the candidates usually frequent in this room, so everyone is welcome to have a normal chat with us :-)

Evan Anderson

12:23 AM

@jaymitt: As an alternative to WinImage, I've had great success with the "Virtual Floppy Drive" project for building floppy images to "share" with VMs. Very handy when dealing with DOS VMs: vfd.sourceforge.net

jaymitt

@Evan: Thanks for the suggestion, I am going there now to check it out

Ben

12:39 AM

Right, I need some sleep too. Good chat tonight, night everyone

A: 2011 Moderator Elections - Town Hall Chat

1:00 AM

@EvanAnderson, That is a need took, but no 64bit support? Yuck...

Jonathan Rioux

No one have ever been fired for choose Microsoft.

Rebecca Chernoff

1:18 AM

0

Thank you to everyone who participated, particularly the candidates! Virtual coffee is on me! The full transcript to the Town Hall Chat can be found here. Despite being in timezones all over, all 7 candidates were able to attend! Whether you were able to attend or are just reading the transcr...

1:54 AM

really, dead quiet now?

hmm...

There's this big news thing going on.

2:20 AM

@sysadmin1138 ?

The President is Speaking.

Oh, is that tonight? Shit.

Well, have they decided to integrate yet?

Yes, actually. Democrats and Republicans! Sitting togeter! Mass Hysteria!

2:36 AM

@sysadmin1138 Where are you watching it? I'm at whitehouse.gov and it just crapped out.

Ye Olde Broadcaste TV.

Ewww.

CNN is also streaming it, as is msnbc, fox, and pretty much any other news outslet.

anyone here ever dealt with Microsoft Communicator web access?

It's in HD. I can see Obama's jacket pixellate.

@MarkElliot Not yet, but in 6 months I might. Sorry.

2:38 AM

@sysadmin1138 Well, back in the 60s it took the National Guard. I guess this time it just took fear of a black guy in power.

@sysadmin1138 no worries -- I have a really odd question anyway

I'd still be happy to describe the issue I'm running into, as I doubt it's actual an CWA problem at heart

I feel like it's too rambling to formulate an SF question, but I guess I'll post it there anyway

What the heck, how different can it be from OWA?

heh, so on our internal network I can load up CWA just fine, runs no problem

Have I missed any comment on the deficit? I just came in a few minutes ago.

Obligatory TSA grabass joke.

but we have this web-based VPN client, I think it comes from Juniper

2:40 AM

har har

if I navigate to the CWA page via the web-based VPN client, I can't login

as a lowly engineer in the company I have no authority to make any changes to the vpn system or CWA

but! I do have a spare ubuntu box, and a spare windows box sitting around

now, the ubuntu box is fair game to do whatever, the windows box gets audited once daily, so if I do something "strange" they'll come ask me what's up

the ubuntu box, while accessible, sits about 600 miles away from me and is headless only in the sense that I'm not in front of the monitor

but it is in a lab with monitor attached and people occasionally walk by

so I thought about running xrdp, but then users would see my activity on the screen

(oh, I should mention this fancy Juniper web based VPN client has some Java application that lets me RDP to anything network addressable)

sounds like fun eh?

SSL-VPN interactions make my head hurt, unfortunately. That kind of thing is probably burried in the VPN system somewhere.

@WesleyDavid That's inappropriate. The TSA is only doing their due diligence. :)

figures

the login page actually loads, and the javascript in Firefox or chrome will even pop-up the contact list window...but sign-in ultimately fails

I've got to imagine it's some kind of rewriting that the VPN system is doing

That or some new network ports its trying to communicate on that the VPN isn't allowing to pass.

2:44 AM

on a whim I tried to run the access through a tunnel, but that didn't help (and in hindsight didn't really make any sense, since the tunnel didn't go all the way out, just between CWA and the client)

oh

you know that's sensible

Who knows what ports lurk in the dark of OCS.

so an alternative here, though, would be if i could attach an rdp clip to the ubuntu box in such a way that passers-by wouldn't be able to see what i'm up to

sigh squirelly problems

oh, to add insult to injury OWA (with all its javascript) does work over this same client

is it worth writing this up into an SF question or should I quit now?

Yeah, I bet CWA is trying to talk on weird ports. OWA is nice that way, it's all TCP/443.

oo

I bet I could tunnel those ports, too

not sure that would help

Very likely. A bit of wireshark/tcpdump'll show that right up.

2:50 AM

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb663583(office.12).aspx

yeah this isn't feasible, they'd have to open all those ports in the VPN

anyway, thanks

You bet.

murisonc

3:06 AM

If a port request is made by a client, specifically port 22 (SSH) then must the other host respond on the same port to establish the connection at layer 4?

TCP connections are two way associative. Generally it's a random high port on the client side and a specific port on the server side. The SYN will go to TCP/22, but the SYN/ACK will be sent to something like 44512.

murisonc

Back to the books for me. I must have missed something important. Thanks!

Well that's over.

3:33 AM

We need a random sort order for the Unanswered question lists.

I want to find old questions to answer, but I get really annoyed at seeing the same ones each time.

Or better yet, a way of searching for questions based on various data like date.

I really want a random sort. I want to review some of the unanswered questions, but I am tired of seeing the unanswered sorted by votes, or age.

Or the ability to hide a question. "Don't show me this question anymore."

Hey hello everyone I need a quick help

I just purchased a VPS from intovps.com and I don't know how to configure it

Can any one help me out

@ntechi, read the FAQs at intovps.com?

@ntechi, or where you having a more specific problem, and can you provide us with a more detailed question?

3:49 AM

@Zoredache I am new to VPS, first time I am configuring it, so let me check the FAQ first

@ntechi Being new to VPSs, perhaps a managed providor like VPSLatch.com would be preferrable. But yes, if you have a specific scenario in mind that you're having trouble with, let us know.

I would be extremely surprised if they didn't provide you with some getting started guide along with any credentials you needed to access your VPS.

@Zoredache before doing anything, directly I have to configure Open VPN?

@Zoredache no they did'nt provided me anything

Surely they gave you a link to some web-based control panel or something right? You may need to start by asking them what you need to do. You say you just purchased it, do you mean you literally, just purchased it right now? Have they had enough time to actually provision the account and give you the initial setup info? That might take a day or two depending on the provider.

On there blog, it looks like you would be using something called Hypanel. intovps.com/blog/2009/07/30/hypanel-screenshots

Unmanaged VPS providers seem to be a decent way to go. Just pay for the licensing for Virtuozzo or something similar, take people's money and tell them to bite you hard if they have problems. =)

3:57 AM

@Zoredache I purchased it yesterday evening time, and you are right, they provided me with Hypanel

@ntechi So what are you trying to do with the VPS at the moment that you can't? Access it via SSH? Get into the control panel?

@WesleyDavid Actually I dont know what to do first, I purchased VPS because my existing wordpress hosting suspended my site due to heavy load, now I want to start my wordpress site on this VPS, but don,t know from where to begin

Oh my.

@ntechi Are you familiar with Apache? Linux? Bash?

@WesleyDavid I have handled wamp server for wordpress, and know little bit of linux

I'll just drop this here because it made me happy despite being tired and sober. blog.whiletrue.com/2011/01/…

4:07 AM

Okay, well... a VPS that is unmanaged is pretty much like being handed a linux box and an SSH connection. Perhaps a better way to go would be a cPanel VPS that is managed. I know you've already made your purchase, so perhaps it's too late to go back.

@WesleyDavid Ya so now what to do? Can you help me out?

And things might be further complicated by the use of an in-house control panel. Very few people will be able to offer you counsel unless they too use that host. It seems that they don't offer much in the way of documentation. =|

And wow, those prices are dirt cheap. My first reaction is "Okay, what's wrong with it?" =)

They have an IRC channel, so that's good.

@WesleyDavid they provided me this tutorial blog.adlibre.org/technology/… they told to start with this first

Okay, the first order of business would be to get into your control panel and see if it offers any kind of automated web server setup and SSH setup

ayup, that's the way to do it. Gotta install the packages you need, config things

I think I saw something that mentioned you could install a template which included cpanel...

4:11 AM

Trial by fire, man. WAMP to SSH install of a webserver. Nice learning curve, that. =)

I hate cpanel, but if you install that VPS template, it might have what you need.

@WesleyDavid I am into hypanel I can see these options HOME, DNS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, MY ACCOUNT, KNOWLEDGEBASE, SUPPORT, PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

errr, my account? Sounds promising.

@WesleyDavid they were telling me to install phpmyadmin LAMP etc first

yeah, okay. Well, to do that you need SSH access. so that's your first treasure hunt

Unless they offer some kind of deployment scripts

4:14 AM

They have provided me with it

Okay, so they offer a script library?

I can login into SSH

they have provided me with username and passs

okay, cool.

Now what to do first?

So at that point, you have to deal with your distro's package management tool. Yum, emerge, apt-get

So I think you're best off reading up on those posts to know what you need to install for a Wordpress site first. Then find instructions on how to install for your specific distro

4:17 AM

OK

So if you got a Gentoo image, it's emerge, SUSE it's yum, debian based it's apt-get

You're in for a nice learning curve, that's for sure. ;)

:)

And I'm not much of a Linux guy, so I'm not a terrible amount of help.

thanks any way for your help

You're welcome

And glad that your site has enough volume to need a VPS. That's awesome.

I only get the very occasional Reddit or Twitter crush.

4:23 AM

ok

I suddenly have the itch to nuke my Windows laptop and install SUSE on it.

Rebecca Chernoff

7:07 AM

Hey, did anybody in the town hall chat notice how many people were in the room? I can look at the transcript and see who spoke, but not just who was in the room.

@RebeccaChernoff hii

8:34 AM

@RebeccaChernoff if I had to guess it would be about 30 people. I'm basing this on how many avatars in a row I see in the room population list to the side of the chat window (8) and that I seem to remember 4 rows. I'll let you decide how reliable that data is :-)

@RobertMoir hii, can you do freelancing for me?

Sorry ntechi, I can't.

Its a server related, I need someone to configure it

I need someone who can configure my VPS

sorry ntechi, I don't do freelance work.

OK, do you know someone who can do this for me in cheap rates

8:41 AM

You think we're cheap? :P

Your VPS provider probably have a service for this

not cheap, don't get me wrong, I mean in the rates

And (this is in no way meant to be rude), perhaps shared hosting would suit you better if you need to hire someone to configure your VPS?

ok

Or is it some kind of special application setup you need?

I have a wordpress site which is suspended on shared hosting due to high traffic, now I purchased unmanaged server from intovps.com and I just want that site to be hosted on this VPS

8:47 AM

morning all

@pauska can you this for me?

@ntechi: Sorry, I don't do freelance work

OK

@Chopper3 Hi matey

tombull89

Morning guys.

am I reading that right, he was after to someone to configure a new VPS? poor guy...

8:52 AM

Ye

tombull89

ouch.

morning / hello folks

i don't think its the first time he's been here asking for people to do stuff like that

9:35 AM

Morning all.

Any Debian heads about?

9:56 AM

Well, it depends what you need

If I apt-get install gnome on a clean netinst. (650MB of dependencies, ~800 packages). Is there a proper way to then uninstall all of it?

I have the package list, but it seems crude to have to feed that into dpkg.

SvenW

10:18 AM

@SmallClanger: You could use deborphan (it's a package), and use it like this: sudo apt-get remove --purge deborphan

Eh, the deborphan part belongs in backticks, not sure yet about the syntax of se.chat

@SvenW: Very useful. Thanks.

Heh, I'll have to be careful with it, though. deborphan -Pa lists linux-image-2.6-686 as an orphan package. :)

SvenW

Yep, it might be a good idea to put the output into a file and check it manually and feed this to apt-get.

11:14 AM

our IPTV system makes firefox about as stable as a drunk person juggling jelly on a unicycle lé sigh

morning

hi Iain

@RobertMoir which IPTV ?

11:42 AM

@Iain - OneLan

@RobertMoir for a second there I thought you mean proper IPTV ;)

ditto - I have a nice Sony with IPTV built in

heh... no no just mickey mouse stuff for a college

can't say i'm overly impressed with it, but it was the best we could afford

@Iain I just meant that's what I build iptv systems

higher end ones by the sound of things

12:01 PM

consumer ones

cool

1:02 PM

Uprising in Egypt. Big news on this morning's newscast: during the president's state of the union address, both sides of congress acted like adults. sigh

1:48 PM

@BartSilverstrim At the risk of minimizing the horror that is civil unrest...which one is more surprising?

I was more surprised at Egypt, probably because I'm American and ignorant of what has been happening that led up to this.

Good Morning America (I think) had their NYC host talking to a person in their DC affiliate and asked what it meant to America...I was waiting for her to say, "Absolutely nothing, there's a football game on this weekend."

But apparently there's something about A) getting billions in aid from us every year and B) political issues over support for Israel, but I again don't know all the details. I've just been seeing pictures and news on the Internet about what's happening.

2:33 PM

So quiet this morning...

Dan

So when do we find out results?

@BartSilverstrim Sorry, I updated to puppet 2.6 last night. Fixing the inevitable bits that slipped through.

@Dan of the mod election ? in 7 days

@Iain I assume there won't be any kind of a live tally either.

Dan

ah

2:38 PM

@packs doesn't look like it - unfortunately we skipped the primary stage as there are only 7 candidates so we don't get a chance to see who the runners are.

@Iain I would actually call that a fortunate event. I'm not so sure I would have wanted to deal with a month of elections.

Of course, having said that, as a citizen of the US, imagine I how I feel every few years. :)

The primary/election is 8 days - 4 primary & 4 election on SU - I guess we would have been the same but we just got an 8 day election

Do the winners get "I read your email" t-shirts?

I think our 6 week elections are too much I couldn't be doing with all the palaver you have to put up with

Warner

hm.

2:43 PM

@Iain I think I could deal with 6 weeks. The 2 year cycle is a bit much.

hahaha - just had someone come up to me saying that their management tools terminal server pool had hit a licencing limit - made a call to someone else telling them this, 5 minutes later another bloke called me back with a number and 'enrolement ID' for calling MS - got the original guy to call them and MS gave him the code to unlock the new licences - all well and good until we noticed that it's valid for 20-fricking-thousand seats FFS! haven't stopped laughing since :)

@BartSilverstrim I had that bumper sticker for a while. Then I started working in security. I decided it might be a bit distasteful after that.

@Chopper3 Will that be enough, do you think?

@chopper3 Hope they don't bill him :-)

it had something like 35 (25+5+5 - does that make sense?) CALs previously - they needed like 5-10 more or something - funny

customer must have a deal on CALs I guess, not my area normally,

0

Q: mysql not runnning

i have windows 7 i just installed wamp Server 5.1 my php pages are running fine nut when i go to phpmyadmin i get this error MySQL said: Documentation #2002 - The server is not responding (or the local MySQL server's socket is not correctly configured) can any one help me out i have ch...

oh dear

language, PEBKAC, or both?

2:50 PM

Honestly, I saw 'wamp' and gave up. One of those letter just doesn't belong.

The acronym is much more fitting when it's IIS and not apache...

jscott

@SmallClanger "WI.NET"?

No, sticking with MySQL and PHP. A popular combination as you can see from the traffic on this forum: wimpserver.com/forums

Not flaming but: why would anyone prefer IIS to serve php with a MySQL db over Linux?

Kyle Brandt

3:05 PM

@kennyr: I might start with "Why prefer Apache?"

"it's what we know" is the answer i've gotten a bunch of times

One argument I would use is licensing costs.

at my last place the engineering team developed a tool on a LAMP stack, and then was forced to shimmy it onto a IIS/MySQL/PHP stack by the Systems team

I have to admit that confuses me. Horses for courses

we're primarily a Microsoft shop here, licence costs aren't an issue for us, so we use the whole "natural" microsoft stack.

If I was running a stack that was more naturally based around linux/apache I'd still rather switch to use those than attempt to run it in a windows environment that isn't best suited for it.

I guess that makes sense then. Again, didn't mean to step on any toes. I realise the question sounds flamey.

3:09 PM

Am I safe to assume that a Cisco router can route packets in and out the same interface? Cause ASA's sure as hotpants doesnt

uhhh

@pauska ASAs, at least acting as a VPN can

Chris S

@Zypher Which is one of the best reasons for sticking with it.

I strongly believe in "use what you know" - really these days 95% of servers would be just fine using windows, linux, bsd, osx, solaris etc. there's no real difference until you start loading them or need higher-functions like clustering

@pauska They call it 'hairpinning' or 'hub and spoke' depending on which doc you look at or who you talk to

3:10 PM

yea the biggest issue was when the engineering team just did whatever the hell they wanted not thinking about how it would be effected by the enviroment

@pauska yes they can

Use what you know is important for supportability and security

@packs: Are you really sure? Last time I tested it didnt work. Example: ASA is 192.168.0.1 (and the clients default gateway), router is 192.168.0.2. ASA has route entry to 1.2.3.4/24 pointed at 192.168.0.2

@pauska Since we have 4 devices doing it, yes I'm sure :)

@Chopper3 I would argue that for some use cases there are free alternatives that don't really require much expertise. I mean free as in financially, not ideologically.

3:11 PM

:o things have changed then

My group handed off administering these things a while ago, so I'm having to plow through the configs to find the relevant data now

It was added back in PIXOS 7, I think

We set up our first one in, 2006ish maybe? It's been a good long time.

oh, I tried to do this with PIX 6.x

cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/…

this is great news

@Chopper3: A router should perform this by default ammirite?

@pauska That sounds right, yeah. Good stuff :)

@pauska i think hairpinning is only supported on the 7.x+ releases of PIX/ASA OS

@Zypher My hazy memory agrees.

3:18 PM

cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa80/command/reference/…

looks like intra-interface is functional on 8.x

@pauska I can confirm that with real world data

thanks

I have another newbie question.. lets say I wanna enable ip routing on one of my core switches.. is access lists the only way to prevent traffic between certain vlans?

Or is there some way to provide virtual routers wich their own ip routing table?

or more specifically, separate default gateways depending on wich vlan the packet comes from :P

Someone should smack pauska for classifying that as a newbie question.

classing what as a newbie question?

Just above my statement.

3:30 PM

ahh

oh missed that line :)

I know for many it's a simple question, but reading it at first struck me as prefacing a statement with "I'm going to state this as clearly as possible..." then proceeding to speak Klingon.

hahaha

Sadly reading it a second time I actually understood what he was asking to do.

Iszi

@BartSilverstrim Don't worry, you're not alone.

I think I found a solution

Policy Based Routing

3:33 PM

@pauska : does it involve a bar?

if src is x and dst is y then use gateway blah

That's pseudocode, silly. I'm fluent in that.

PBR baby! It's a big hit amongst both networking professionals and hipsters.

@packs eww drink some good beer

@Zypher Amen Brother.

Though I was making a double entrandre there. PBR being both an acronym for Policy Based Routing and piss in a bottle :)

3:37 PM

oh yes i know :)

@Zypher Ok, good.

Sometimes I worry about you kids nowdays.

Chris S

"high quality sterling silver jewelry" - I've never quite understood that oxymoron....