travis' brain dump

Ok, since there really isn’t a very good tutorial out there on this nor are there good resources to find the right links to this stuff, here’s a post for you and for me.

So you need update your Virtual Connect Module, right? Should be just as easy as updating the OA, right? riiiiight. Because HP, that’s why.

Ok, so a few things you’ll need:

1. A current version of the VCSU -> Click Here <-
2. A current version of the VCM firmware. (make sure you get the right firmware for your device type)
a. Flex-10/10D Module
b. FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port Module
c. FlexFabric-20/40 F8 Module
3. You don’t need this, but it’s handy. VCSU Useful Commands.

Now that you’ve made it through all that, the easy part. First we’re going to check the current version of the module, do this by running the vcsu utility with the following:

.\vcsu.exe -a version -i (ip.addr.of.active.oa) -u OA.Admin -p OA,Admin.Pass -vcu VCU.Admin -vcp VCU.Admin.Pass 

(yes, you really want to pass all of those lovely credentials, even if they are the same login/password for both the OA and the VCU)

You should then see some results sort of like this:

Now to update. This is very similar to your version check, except changing version to update and adding the switch and path at the end.

.\vcsu.exe -a update -i (ip.addr.of.active.oa) -u OA.Admin -p OA,Admin.Pass -vcu VCU.Admin -vcp VCU.Admin.Pass -l ‘c:\path\to\firmware.bin’

You should now see something like the following:

At this point you should now be updated.

I’ll try to keep these updated with the most current links as I update my equipment, however, if someone hits it and it’s out of date, please let me know and I’ll go update it.

Little FreeBSD one for this morning… mostly because I’m sure I’ll forget this.

So, here’s the scenario, common mistake… you put a typo in your rc.conf and you get slapped into single user mode. We’ve all been there, on multiple occasions. It’s typically one of those moments you forgot an end quote or something silly like that. No biggie right?

I guess that depends on if you’re a regular user of ZFS or if you’ve been using UFS2 for so long you run commands for that on auto pilot…
In my case this morning, it was just that. “oh yeah, I’m running zfs on this box…” and found myself with half a second of ‘tf?’ when I went to run ‘mount -w /’ and received ‘unknown special file or file system’.

Solution? Just as easy.

# mount -u /
# mount -a -t zfs

Fix issue, reboot. 🙂

Ok, so you’ve put in a lot of time spinning up some Azure VM’s and services using your free account or MSDN account and want to move it to another subscription. Should be easy right?

Evidently not really. 🙂

So I did my due diligence here to find out the best model and there was a lot of suggestions out there. Microsoft even has some instructions up there, which are slightly incorrect. No surprise right?

The original post by MSDN is here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn736051.aspx, however it does have a few minor inconsistencies.

1. Go to the Azure Support web site and click Get Support. You can also submit an incident from the Microsoft Azure Management Portal or from the Azure Accounts Center.
2. To submit support ticket from the Azure Management Portal, click your account name, and then click Contact Microsoft Support.
3. In the Create Support Ticket window, select the subscription for which you want to migrate data and services.
4. For Support Type, choose Billing.
5. Select your region and language, and then click Create Ticket
6. On the next page, for Problem Type, select Account, Subscription and Account Portal Assistance.
7. For Category, select Transfer my account, subscription or data, and then click Continue.
8. Confirm your contact information, provide a telephone number at which you can be reached, and then click Continue.
9. On the next page, provide the following information:
   1. For Problem Details, provide an incident title for your request and then use the text boxes provide required information and to include any additional information about your request.
   2. For Determine Severity, choose an option that represents the severity of your request. For more information about the severity types, refer to the Microsoft Azure Incident Severity Table.
   3. Use the File Upload tool to attach related documentation to your request. (not usually necessary)
   4. If you accept the Agreement for Microsoft Services, click Submit.You will be contacted by an Azure Support representative in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

Once you’ve completed this, support will email you or call you (whichever choice you picked) and confirm information with you as well as let you know of any limitations of the move (depends greatly on what you’ve deployed) and usually wrap this up within a day or so.

Ok, so you just updated recently to the latest version of chrome… notice you’ve got some plugins missing that you’re used to having? Yeah, me too. Ya know, things we take for granted until they’re gone… java, quicktime, citrix, etc. to name a few. Well, this is due to Google’s move to disable NPAPI plugins by default as they phase out support for them altogether. For the time being, however, you can re-enable these plugins by conducting the following operation:

• Open Chrome and enter the following address : chrome://flags/#enable-npapi
• At the top of the list you should now see ‘Enable NPAPI’ highlighted. Click ‘Enable’ on the link below it.
• Restart Chrome completely and upon re-opening, enter the following address : chrome://plugins/
• Review your plugins listed and make sure they’re all back

So what next? With Google phasing out NPAPI plugins, it’s advisable to start finding alternatives and/or look into what your favorite plugin developers plans are to move forward to more secure supported platforms.