Keith's Blade Adventures

Keith wanted to find out about blade systems (sorry knife and Snipes fans) and mapreduce, so he went and bought one. This blog chronicles the fun and pain he is going through to get his blade system up and running. It's newest post at the top, so start at the bottom or use the peachy Archive link below. Keith is lead coder on a simulation game. Being a small outfit, he wears many hats, some at a jaunty angle. Hobbies are electronics, web tech, beer, some art and burning wood. var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-118617-14"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

[keithmarsh]

And finally uncheck Deny TCP connections in System > Admninistration > Login Screen.  Try a reboot then on windows Start > All Programs > Xming > XLaunch and choose Fullscreen then Open Session via XDMCP then Search for Hosts and the rest to get a login screen on your CentOS box.  You may need to Alt-Tab to allow Windows Firewall to let you through.

[keithmarsh]

Open the ports for XDCMP, X Server and the X Font server

[keithmarsh]

Don't run it, but choose XLaunch from it's Start menu.

[keithmarsh]

That's it!

OpenQRM is up and running.  Setup next, after enabling remote login so we can ooperate lights out.

[keithmarsh]

Do what it says below the title Installation openQRM 4.9 on CentOS/RHEL: (three quarters down) logged in as root in root's home directory.

[keithmarsh]

Disable SELINUX.  In Gnome, go to System > Administration > SELinux Management

[keithmarsh]

We're going to install OpenQRM to provision and manage a group of servers into a private cloud.  Then we'll try and do some stuff that may be interesting.

[keithmarsh]

Awww, Needs USB Key to Boot

It wrote the boot record to the USB key, not the disk.  Using command

grub-install /dev/sda

almost worked.  I can boot without key, but it looks for hd1, and I had to edit the grub entries from hd1 to hd0.  Sometimes Linux, you suck balls.

[keithmarsh]

Final step with instructions for installation

[keithmarsh]

Next step

[keithmarsh]

To install an OS without a DVD drive, I used ISO2USB for Windows.  See the following Pics

[keithmarsh]

I'm using a Firebox X15 as a router to keep this on a separate network to my home network because OpenQRM needs to be a DHCP server.  The Firebox is blocking packets on large downloads and I need to replace it.  The external network is connected through a Comtrend PowerGrid 9020.  They're great. 

[keithmarsh]

Fresh Start with OpenQRM

Hello again.  I'm starting anew.  I've got an HP MicroServer and on that I'm going to install Centos and OpenQRM.  I've got a bunch of 1U servers and HP blades that I'll be playing with when it's all running.

[keithmarsh]

Oracle is Plop.

Oracle's download servers were down for 48 hours.  Very professional and reassuring.

When I eventually downloaded, I had no luck installing on Centos x64, getting cryptic "tns listener all appropriate instances are blocking new connections".  

Eventually, I found it's because I'd set my hostname to bay5.lan2. instead of localhost.localdomain.  Like I said, Oracle is plop.

[keithmarsh]

DISK CRASH!

The PC I was setting up as a Spacewalk has died with a disk failure.  Arse biscuits. Start again.  Go directly to jail, do not collect £200.

I was using a little old PC as the spacewalk server, but now I'm going to use one of the blades.

[keithmarsh]

I've learnt provisioning.  It's boring.  I've learnt PXE, DHCP, Kickstart, DNS, Routing.  It takes an hour and a half to get a blade up and it's very boring, unacceptable and needs streamlining and automating.  Looked into a few provisioning system, but I'm going to invest some time with Spacewalk.  I'll report back soon.

[keithmarsh]

Here's the cool part of iLo - you get to see the console booting up but in a web page.  There's also another tool that lets you mount a disk image .iso as a CD drive on the blade remotely.  This allows you to do an operating system install remotely. \o/

I've got PXE booting and installation almost working (god that's not fun - I won't elaborate - just read the fun manual) only it says it can't find the kickstart file when it is DEFINITELY THERE!

I've got a Centos machine VMed on my Windows 7 machine in the sitting room.  That's running DHCP, TFTPD etc.  I'm VNCed into that from my netbook in bed.  Lazy admin.