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iSCSI and Jumbo Frames

I’ve recently been working on a project to deploy a couple of Pure Storage Flash Array //M10‘s, and rather than using Fiber Channel we opted for the 10Gb Ethernet (admittedly for reasons of cost) and using iSCSI as the transport mechanism.

Whenever you read up on iSCSI (and NFS for that matter) there inevitably ends up being a discussion around the MTU size.  MY thinking here is that if your network has sufficient bandwidth to handle the Jumbo Frames and large MTU sizes, then it should be done.

Now I’m not going to ramble on about enabling Jumbo Frames exactly, but I am going to focus on the MTU size.

What is MTU?

MTU stands for Message Transport Unit.  It defines the maximum size of a network frame that you can send in a single data transmission across the network.  The default MTU size is 1500.  Whether that be Red Hat Enterprise Linux, , Fedora, Slackware, Ubuntu, Microsoft Windows (pick a version), Cisco IOS and Juniper’s JunOS it has in my experience always been 1500 (though that’s not to say that some specialist providers may change this default value for black box solutions.

So what is a Jumbo Frame?

The internet is pretty much unified on the idea that any packet or frame which is above the 1500 byte default, can be considered a jumbo frame.  Typically you would want to enable this for specific needs such as NFS and iSCSI and the bandwidth is at least 1Gbps or better 10Gbps.

MTU sizing

A lot of what I had ready in the early days about this topic suggests that you should set the MTU to 9000 bytes, so what should you be mindful of when doing so?

Well, lets take an example, you have a requirement where you need to enable jumbo frames and you have set an MTU size of 9000 across your entire environment;

  • virtual machine interfaces
  • physical network interfaces
  • fabric interconnects
  • and core switches

So you enable an MTU of 9000 everywhere, and you then test your shiny new jumbo frame enabled network by way of a large ping;

Linux

$ ping -s 9000 -M do 192.168.1.1

Windows

> ping -l 9000 -f -t 192.168.1.1

Both of the above perform the same job.  They will attempt to send an ICMP ping;

  • To our chosen destination – 192.168.1.1
  • With a packet size of 9000 bytes (option -l 9000 or -s 9000), remember the default is 1500 so this is definitely a Jumbo packet
  • Where the request is not fragmented, thus ensuring that a packet of such a size can actually reach the intended destination without being reduced

The key to the above examples is the “-f” (Windows) and “-M do” (Linux).  This will enforce the requirement that the packet can be sent from your server/workstation to its intended destination without the size of the packet being messed with aka fragmented (as that would negate the whole point of using jumbo frames).

If you do not receive a normal ping response back which states its size as being 9000 then something is not configured correctly.

The error might look like the following;

ping: local error: Message too long, mtu=1500
ping: local error: Message too long, mtu=1500

The above error is highlighting the fact that we are attempting to send a packet which is bigger than the local NIC is configured to handle.  It is telling us the MTU is set at 1500 bytes.  In this instance we would need to reconfigure our network card to handle the jumbo sized packets.

Now lets take a look at what happens with the ICMP ping request and it’s size.  As a test I have pinged the localhost interface on my machine and I get the following;

[toby@testbox ~]$ ping -s 9000 -M do localhost
PING localhost(localhost (::1)) 9000 data bytes
9008 bytes from localhost (::1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.142 ms
9008 bytes from localhost (::1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.148 ms
9008 bytes from localhost (::1): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.145 ms
^C
--- localhost ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2085ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.142/0.145/0.148/0.002 ms

Firstly notice the size of each request.  The initial request may have been 9000 however that doesn’t take into account the need for the header to be added to the packet, so that it can be correctly sent over your network or the Internet.  Secondly notice that the packet was received without any fragmentation (note I used the “-M do” option to ensure fragmentation couldn’t take place).  In this instance the loopback interface is configured with a massive MTU of 65536 bytes and so all worked swimmingly.

Note that the final packet size is actually 9008 bytes.

The packet size increased by 8 bytes due to the addition of the ICMP header mentioned above, making the total 9008 bytes.

My example above stated that the MTU had been set to 9000 on ALL devices.  In this instance the packets will never get to their intended destination without being fragmented as 9008 bytes is bigger than 9000 bytes (stating the obvious I know).

The resolution

The intermediary devices (routers, bridges, switches and firewalls) will need an MTU size that is bigger than 9000 and be size sufficiently to accept the desired packet size.  A standard ethernet frame (according to Cisco) would require an additional 18 bytes on top of the 9000 for the payload.  And it would be wise to actually specify a bit higher.  So, an MTU size of 9216 bytes would be better as it would allow enough headroom for everything to pass through nicely.

Focusing on the available options in a Windows world

And here is the real reason for this post.  Microsoft with all their wisdom, provide you with a drop down box to select the required predefined MTU size for your NICs.  With Windows 2012 R2 (possibly slightly earlier versions too), the nearest size you can set via the network card configuration GUI is 9014.  This would result in the packet being fragmented or in the case of iSCSI it would potentially result in very poor performance.  The MTU 9014 isn’t going to work if the rest of the network or the destination device are set at 9000.

The lesson here is make sure that both source and destination machines have an MTU of equal size and that anything in between must be able to support a higher MTU size than 9000.  And given that Microsoft have hardcoded the GUI with a specific number of options, you will probably want to configure your environment to handle this slightly higher size.

Note.  1Gbps Ethernet only supported a maximum MTU size of 9000, so although Jumbo Frames can be enabled you would need to reduce the MTU size slightly on the source and destination servers, with everything in between set at 9000.

Featured image credit; TaylorHerring.  As bike frames go, the Penny Farthing could well be considered to have a jumbo frame.

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A step-by-Step Guide to Installing Spacewalk on CentOS 7

It would appear that during an upgrade of my blog at some point over the past year, I have managed to wipe out the original how to guide to installing Spacewalk on CentOS 7, so here we go again.

A step-by-step guide to installing Spacewalk on CentOS 7.  Just in case you weren’t aware Spacewalk is the upstream project for Red Hat Satellite Server.

Assumptions

  • You know the basic idea behind Spacewalk, if not see here
  • You have a vanilla VM with CentOS 7.2 installed which was deployed as a “minimal” installation
  • You have subsequently run an update to make sure you have the latest patches
  • You have root access or equivalent via sudo
  • You have got vim installed (if not run the following command should fix that) 
    yum install vim -y
  • The machine you intend to install Spacewalk onto has access to the internet

Preparation

Firstly, we need to install and/or create the necessary YUM repo files that will be used to install Spacewalk directly from the Spacewalk official yum repository and all it’s associated dependencies.

  1. Run the following command as root on your spacewalk VM 
    rpm -Uvh http://yum.spacewalkproject.org/2.5/RHEL/7/x86_64/spacewalk-repo-2.5-3.el7.noarch.rpm
  2. You then need to manually configure another yum repository for JPackage which is a dependency for Spacewalk, by running the following (you will need to be the root user to do this); 
    sudo -i
cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/jpackage-generic.repo << EOF
[jpackage-generic]
name=JPackage generic
baseurl=ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/jpackage/5.0/generic/free/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc
EOF
  3. And then we also need to install the EPEL yum repository configuration for CentOS 7; 
    rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Installation: Embedded Database

Spacewalk utilises a database back end to store the required information about your environment.  The two options are PostgreSQL and Oracle.  Neither would be my preference but I always opt for the lesser of two evils – PostgreSQL.

The installation is a piece of cake, and can be performed by issuing the following command at the command line;

yum install spacewalk-setup-postgresql -y

During the process you should be prompted to accept the Spacewalk GPG key. You will need to enter “y” to accept!

Installation: Spacewalk

Now things have been made pretty easy for you so far.  And we wont stop now.  To install all of the required packages for spacewalk just run the following;

yum install spacewalk-postgresql

And let it download everything you need.  In all (at the time of writing) there were 379 packages totalling 563M.

Again you will likely be prompted to import the Fedora EPEL (7) GPG key.  This is necessary so just type “y” and give that Enter key a gentle tap.

And.. you will also be prompted to import the JPackage Project GPG key.  Same process as above – “y” followed by Enter.

During the installation you will see a lot of text scrolling up the screen.  This will be a mix of general package installation output from yum and some commands that the RPM package will initiate to set and define such things as SELinux contexts.

The key thing is you should see right at the end “Complete!”.  You know you are in a good place at this point.

Security: Setting up the firewall rules

CentOS 7 and (for that matter) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ship with firewalld  as standard.  Now I’m not complete sure of firewalld but I’m sticking with it, but should you decide you want to use iptables (and you have taken steps to make sure it is enabled), then I have provided the firewall rules required for both;

firewalld

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https --permanent

Note.  Make sure you have double dashes/hyphens if you copy and paste as I have seen the pasted text only using a single hyphen.

Skip to section after iptables if you have applied the above configuration!

iptables

Now as iptables can be configured in all manor or ways, I’m just going to provide the basics, if your set-up is typically more customised than the default, then you probably don’t need me telling you how to setup iptables.

I will just make one assumption though.  That the default INPUT policy is set to DROP and than you do not have any DROP, REJECT lines at the end of your INPUT chain.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

And don’t forget to save your firewall rules;

# service iptables save

Configuring Spacewalk

Right then, still with me?  Awesome, so lets continue with getting Spacewalk up and running.  At this point there is one fundamental thing you need…

You must have a resolvable Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).  For my installation I have fudged it and added the FQDN to the host file, as I intend to build the rest of my new lab environment using Spacewalk.

So assuming you have followed everything above we can now simply run the following;

spacewalk-setup

Note.  The above assumes you have the embedded PostgreSQL database and not a remote DB, or the Oracle DB option.  Just saying.

So you should see something like the following (it may take quite some time for many of the tasks to be completed so bare with it);

[root@spacewalk ~]# spacewalk-setup
* Setting up SELinux..
** Database: Setting up database connection for PostgreSQL backend.
** Database: Installing the database:
** Database: This is a long process that is logged in:
** Database:   /var/log/rhn/install_db.log
*** Progress: ###
** Database: Installation complete.
** Database: Populating database.
*** Progress: ###########################
* Configuring tomcat.
* Setting up users and groups.
** GPG: Initializing GPG and importing key.
** GPG: Creating /root/.gnupg directory
You must enter an email address.
Admin Email Address? toby@lab.tobyhewood.com
* Performing initial configuration.
* Configuring apache SSL virtual host.
Should setup configure apache's default ssl server for you (saves original ssl.conf) [Y]? 
** /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf has been backed up to ssl.conf-swsave
* Configuring jabberd.
* Creating SSL certificates.
CA certificate password? 
Re-enter CA certificate password? 
Organization? Toby Heywood
Organization Unit [spacewalk]? 
Email Address [toby@lab.tobyhewood.com]? 
City? London
State? London
Country code (Examples: "US", "JP", "IN", or type "?" to see a list)? GB
** SSL: Generating CA certificate.
** SSL: Deploying CA certificate.
** SSL: Generating server certificate.
** SSL: Storing SSL certificates.
* Deploying configuration files.
* Update configuration in database.
* Setting up Cobbler..
Cobbler requires tftp and xinetd services be turned on for PXE provisioning functionality. Enable these services [Y]? y
* Restarting services.
Installation complete.
Visit https://spacewalk to create the Spacewalk administrator account.

Now at this point you are almost ready to break open a beer and give yourself a pat on the back.  But lets finalise the installation first.

Creating your Organisation
(that’s Organization for the Americans)

Setting up your organisation requires only a few simple things to be provided.

  • Click the Create Organization button and you should finally see a similar screen to the following;
    Set up your Spacewalk organization.
  • The last thing to do now you have your shiny new installation of Spacewalk is to perform a few sanity checks;
    Successful installation of Spacewalk.
  • Navigate to Admin > Task Engine Status and confirm that everything looks health and that the Scheduling Service is showing as “ON”
  • You can also take a look at my earlier blog post – spacewalk sanity checking – about some steps I previously took to make sure everything was running.

And there we go, you have install Spacewalk.

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Security Broken by Design

Admit it. You, just like me, use Google every day to answer those tough questions that we face daily.

Sometimes we will ask it how to get us home from somewhere we have never been before – “OK Google, take me home” – other times we might be close to starvation (relatively speaking) – “show me interesting recipes” or “OK Google, give me directions to the nearest drive through McDonalds”, but were I use it most, is at work, where I search for such mundane things as; “rsyslog remote server configuration”. Yes, I know, I could just look at the man page for rsyslog.conf but Google seems to have worked its way into my head so much that it is often the first place I look.

Right… back to the topic at hand – Security Broken by Design.

So whilst Googling how to set up a remote syslog server I read through one persons blog post and an alarm bell started to ring!

This particular post had correctly suggested the configuration for rsyslog on both the client and server but then went on (in a very generic way), instructing readers to opening up firewall ports on the clients.

This highlighted a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of the individual whose blog I was reading. You only need to open up ports 514/tcp or 514/udp to enable rsyslog to function on the server-side.  The connection is initiated from the client NOT the server.  Granted, in a completely hardened installation it is likely that outbound ports will need to be enabled.  BUT, where security is concerned, I feel that things should not be taken for granted or worse, assumed!

This generic discussion about security seems completely idiotic! The likes of Red Hat, Ubuntu and almost all other distributions now enable firewalls by default.  And the normal fashion for such a thing, is to allow “related” and “established” traffic to flow out of your network card to the LAN and potentially beyond.  But (and more importantly) to block none essential traffic inbound to your machine.

If you are working in a hardened environment then one of the two options below would be better suited for your server;

So in short.

Please think before you apply make potentially unnecessary changes to your workstations and servers!

Thanks to Sarah Joy for posting the featured image Leader Lock on Flickr.

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kernel: BUG: soft lockup – CPU#0 stuck for 67s!

Over the weekend I was confronted by the above error being repeated on the console of a VM running Oracle RDBMS.

This error occurs when there is a shortage of CPU resources.  For me the solution was a quick shut down of the VM and increasing the available CPU resources.  However there are more ways to skin this cat…

There is also a kernel parameter which can be tweaked;

kernel.softlockup_thresh=x

Were “x” is the threshold (in seconds) you want to allow the kernel to wait before decided there has been a soft lockup.

The Red Hat documentation showed a threshold of 30 seconds.  So I would recommend a bit of experimentation if you feel that 30 seconds is not high enough.  Or throw more resources at it.

Reference Material

Featured image: The Old Lockup was made available by John Powell on Flickr.

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Back to basics – Setting up a TFTP server & PXE (PreBoot Environment)

Right then.  So far (if you have been following along) we have done the following;

  • Created a local yum repository based on the installation media on the initial server in our sand boxed lab
  • Installed and setup DNS with Forward and Reverse zones
  • Installed and configured dhcpd for the lab network
  • Tested the DNS and dhcp services using a client machine
  • And network enabled our yum repository by exposing the directory using Apache

The final steps to enable an ISO free installation of CentOS 7 into a KVM virtual machine are;

  • Installing, configuring and testing Trivial FTP, adding additional configuration to DHCPd to enable PXE booting and testing that setup (this post)
  • The final piece will be to create our kickstart file from which will define the standard installation on CentOS 7 (maybe splitting out into server and client)

So, lets not waste any time and get our hands dirty and flex our fingers with a bit of typing…

Trivial FTP (tftp)

First things first, lets log on to the server and get the packages installed.  Thankfully they are part of the installation media and therefore part of the yum repository that was set up in the last post.

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ sudo yum install tftp*
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
baselocal                                                                                                            | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Resolving Dependencies
-- Running transaction check
--- Package tftp.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7 will be installed
--- Package tftp-server.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7 will be installed
-- Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

============================================================================================================================================
 Package                            Arch                          Version                            Repository                        Size
============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 tftp                               x86_64                        5.2-11.el7                         baselocal                         35 k
 tftp-server                        x86_64                        5.2-11.el7                         baselocal                         44 k

Transaction Summary
============================================================================================================================================
Install  2 Packages

Total download size: 79 k
Installed size: 112 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                                                                                       654 kB/s |  79 kB  00:00:00     
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installing : tftp-server-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                            1/2 
  Installing : tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                                   2/2 
  Verifying  : tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                                   1/2 
  Verifying  : tftp-server-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                            2/2 

Installed:
  tftp.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7                                          tftp-server.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7                                         

Complete!

Note, I’ve installed both client and server RPMs on the server. For my tests from a client I will only install the client tftp package.

Next step is to prepare the folder structure where the files will be served from.  Don’t forget to make sure SELinux contexts, etc. are defined correctly otherwise things will not work as expected.

[root@rhc-server lib]# ll -aZ /var/lib/tftpboot
drwxr-xr-x. root root system_u:object_r:tftpdir_rw_t:s0 .
drwxr-xr-x. root root system_u:object_r:var_lib_t:s0    ..

Note that the SELinux type is “tftpdir_rw_t”, we will need to apply this same type to the folder created next.

[root@rhc-server ~]# mkdir /tftpboot
[root@rhc-server ~]# chcon --reference=/var/lib/tftpboot/ /tftpboot
[root@rhc-server ~]# ll -Z /
[.. snip ..]
drwxr-xr-x. root root system_u:object_r:tftpdir_rw_t:s0 tftpboot

I am slightly cheating with the above command as I am using the standard tftp directory SELinux security types and contexts as a reference. Why make things more difficult than they need to be.

And now lets configure the tftp daemon to use this new location by default.

So lets just check where we are;

  • tftp server and client installed? – check!
  • folder structure created, permissions set and SELinux attributes defined correctly – check!
  • tftp server configured? – Nope

Best fix the TFTP configuration side of things before going further;

[toby@rhc-server lib]$ cat /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
# default: off
# description: The tftp server serves files using the trivial file transfer \
#    protocol.  The tftp protocol is often used to boot diskless \
#    workstations, download configuration files to network-aware printers, \
#    and to start the installation process for some operating systems.
service tftp
{
socket_type        = dgram
protocol        = udp
wait            = yes
user            = root
server            = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
server_args        = -s /tftpboot
disable            = no
per_source        = 11
cps            = 100 2
flags            = IPv4
}

OK, so the remaining task at this point before we start the service is to make sure the firewall is configured to allow connectivity to the tftp service via its LAN interface and also to make sure the hosts.allow file has an entry for the tftp service.  hosts.allow is used by the xinetd processes, and is required in addition to the firewall changes.

Lets get the hosts.allow file out of the way first;

[root@rhc-server ~]# cat /etc/hosts.allow 
#
# hosts.allow	This file contains access rules which are used to
#		allow or deny connections to network services that
#		either use the tcp_wrappers library or that have been
#		started through a tcp_wrappers-enabled xinetd.
#
#		See 'man 5 hosts_options' and 'man 5 hosts_access'
#		for information on rule syntax.
#		See 'man tcpd' for information on tcp_wrappers
#
in.tftp:	ALL

And now for the firewall;

[root@rhc-server ~]# firewall-cmd --zone public --add-service tftp
[root@rhc-server ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone public --add-service tftp
success

It is worth mentioning that if you use the “–permanent” parameter on the command line, it will not be applied immediately.  Now we should be good to start the service and do some tests. We will create a test file to try and copy via tftp before performing the tests.

[root@rhc-server ~]# systemctl enable tftp.socket
ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/tftp.socket' '/etc/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/tftp.socket'
[root@rhc-server ~]# systemctl reload xinetd

Based on the above the service has started successfully and nothing appears to be out of the ordinary in the journal, so lets proceed with the testing, and here is my test file;

[root@rhc-server ~]# echo "Hello?  Is it me you're looking for?" > /tftpboot/this_is_a_test

[root@rhc-server ~]# ll -Z /tftpboot/
-rw-r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_rw_t:s0 this_is_a_test

Call me paranoid, but I wanted to make sure the file had inherited the SELinux type of “tftpdir_rw_t”.  Which it did 🙂

Testing locally on server

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ tftp -4 localhost
tftp> get this_is_a_test
tftp> quit
[toby@rhc-server ~]$ ls
this_is_a_test
[toby@rhc-server ~]$ cat this_is_a_test 
Hello?  Is it me you're looking for?

Looking good so far! 🙂

Testing remotely from client

Before we can test lets determine if the tftp package is installed, in my case it wasn’t, so I installed it;

[toby@rhc-client ~]$ yum search tftp
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Determining fastest mirrors
============================================================ N/S matched: tftp =============================================================
syslinux-tftpboot.x86_64 : SYSLINUX modules in /tftpboot, available for network booting
tftp.x86_64 : The client for the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
tftp-server.x86_64 : The server for the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)

  Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ yum list tftp
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Available Packages
tftp.x86_64                                                     5.2-11.el7                                                     th_lab_server
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ sudo yum install tftp
[sudo] password for toby: 
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
th_lab_server                                                                                                        | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Resolving Dependencies
--&gt; Running transaction check
---&gt; Package tftp.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7 will be installed
--&gt; Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

============================================================================================================================================
 Package                      Arch                           Version                            Repository                             Size
============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 tftp                         x86_64                         5.2-11.el7                         th_lab_server                          35 k

Transaction Summary
============================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 35 k
Installed size: 48 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
warning: /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7/th_lab_server/packages/tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID f4a80eb5: NOKEY
Public key for tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64.rpm is not installed
tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64.rpm                                                                                           |  35 kB  00:00:00     
Retrieving key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
Importing GPG key 0xF4A80EB5:
 Userid     : "CentOS-7 Key (CentOS 7 Official Signing Key) &lt;security@centos.org&gt;"
 Fingerprint: 6341 ab27 53d7 8a78 a7c2 7bb1 24c6 a8a7 f4a8 0eb5
 Package    : centos-release-7-0.1406.el7.centos.2.3.x86_64 (@anaconda)
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installing : tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                                   1/1 
  Verifying  : tftp-5.2-11.el7.x86_64                                                                                                   1/1 

Installed:
  tftp.x86_64 0:5.2-11.el7                                                                                                                  

Complete!

And now the test from the client.

[toby@rhc-client ~]$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone public --add-service tftp
[sudo] password for toby: 
success
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ tftp rhc-server
tftp> get this_is_a_test
tftp> quit
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  test  this_is_a_test  Videos
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ cat this_is_a_test 
Hello?  Is it me you're looking for?
[toby@rhc-client ~]$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone public --remove-service tftp
success

Note. If you don’t temporarily enable the tftp port on the client, the test will fail. I got the follow error via tcpdump which highlighted that the firewall was blocking the request;

23:25:40.388650 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 0, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 54)
    192.168.20.50.36588 &gt; 192.168.20.1.69: [udp sum ok]  26 RRQ "this_is_a_test" netascii
23:25:40.390312 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 31747, offset 0, flags [none], proto UDP (17), length 70)
    192.168.20.1.43788 &gt; 192.168.20.50.36588: [bad udp cksum 0xa9c7 -&gt; 0xddd1!] UDP, length 42
23:25:40.390721 IP (tos 0xc0, ttl 64, id 3881, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 98)
    192.168.20.50 &gt; 192.168.20.1: ICMP host 192.168.20.50 unreachable - admin prohibited, length 78
	IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 31747, offset 0, flags [none], proto UDP (17), length 70)
    192.168.20.1.43788 &gt; 192.168.20.50.36588: [udp sum ok] UDP, length 42

At this point we have now completed the necessary steps to ensure we have a working tftp service.

Setting up PXE

The second part of today’s post covers the steps needed to enable booting from the network to facilitate building machines without the hassle of creating USB bootable images or burning ISO images to CD or DVD.

Out task list for this section is;

  • Add the additional config to the DHCP scope
  • Ensure we have the pxelinux/syslinux installed and copied to the required location
  • Create a basic menu to provide end users with a installation options
  • Test

Configuring DHCP

So, lets start by reminding ourselves what the current dhcpd.conf file looks like;

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ sudo cat /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
[sudo] password for toby: 
#
#  lab.tobyheywood.com dhcp daemon configuration file
#
#  2016-02-22 - Initial creation
#

# Define which IP to listen on.  NOTE. daemon can only listen to one
# IP at a time if defined.
local-address 192.168.20.1;

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
option domain-name "lab.tobyheywood.com";
option domain-name-servers ns.lab.tobyheywood.com;

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

# Use this to enble / disable dynamic dns updates globally.
#ddns-update-style interim;

# This is the authoritative DHCP server.
authoritative;

# Use this to send dhcp log messages to a different log file (you also
# have to hack syslog.conf to complete the redirection).
log-facility local7;

# Interface which can be accessed from outside the sandbox
# **** NOT IN USE ****
subnet 192.168.122.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
}

# The lab network
subnet 192.168.20.0 netmask 255.255.255.128 {
  range 192.168.20.50 192.168.20.99;
  option routers rtr.lab.tobyheywood.com;
}

So in order to get PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment) to function we will need to add a few more lines to the configuration, as highlighted below.

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ sudo cat /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
[sudo] password for toby: 
#
#  lab.tobyheywood.com dhcp daemon configuration file
#
#  2016-02-22 - Initial creation
#

# Define which IP to listen on.  NOTE. daemon can only listen to one
# IP at a time if defined.
local-address 192.168.20.1;

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
option domain-name "lab.tobyheywood.com";
option domain-name-servers ns.lab.tobyheywood.com;

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

# Use this to enble / disable dynamic dns updates globally.
#ddns-update-style interim;

# This is the authoritative DHCP server.
authoritative;

# Use this to send dhcp log messages to a different log file (you also
# have to hack syslog.conf to complete the redirection).
log-facility local7;

# Interface which can be accessed from outside the sandbox
# **** NOT IN USE ****
subnet 192.168.122.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
}

# The lab network
subnet 192.168.20.0 netmask 255.255.255.128 {
  range 192.168.20.50 192.168.20.99;
  option routers rtr.lab.tobyheywood.com;
}

# Additional configuration for PXE booting
allow booting;
allow bootp;
option option-128 code 128 = string;
option option-129 code 129 = text;
next-server 192.168.20.1;
filename "/pxelinux.0";

Setting up the required syslinux files in /tftpboot

During the section above when testing the tftp service on the client, I saw that there may be a shortcut to getting things up and running.  Everything I have read says you need to manually copy the syslinux files into the /tftpboot directory, however, if you search the rpm database with yum for anything tftp related, I see that there is potentially an easier way.

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ yum list tftp
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Installed Packages
tftp.x86_64                                     5.2-11.el7                                     @baselocal
[toby@rhc-server ~]$ yum search tftp
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
=========================================== N/S matched: tftp ===========================================
syslinux-tftpboot.x86_64 : SYSLINUX modules in /tftpboot, available for network booting
tftp.x86_64 : The client for the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
tftp-server.x86_64 : The server for the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)

As you can see there appears to be a syslinux-tftpboot rpm.  So lets see what it gives us;

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ sudo yum install syslinux-tftpboot
[sudo] password for toby: 
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
baselocal                                                                         | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package syslinux-tftpboot.x86_64 0:4.05-8.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=========================================================================================================
 Package                        Arch                Version                 Repository              Size
=========================================================================================================
Installing:
 syslinux-tftpboot              x86_64              4.05-8.el7              baselocal              425 k

Transaction Summary
=========================================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 425 k
Installed size: 1.3 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installing : syslinux-tftpboot-4.05-8.el7.x86_64                                                   1/1 
  Verifying  : syslinux-tftpboot-4.05-8.el7.x86_64                                                   1/1 

Installed:
  syslinux-tftpboot.x86_64 0:4.05-8.el7                                                                  

Complete!
[toby@rhc-server ~]$ ls /tftpboot/
cat.c32        dmitest.c32   host.c32     ls.c32       pcitest.c32   rosh.c32        vesamenu.c32
chain.c32      elf.c32       ifcpu64.c32  lua.c32      pmload.c32    sanboot.c32     vpdtest.c32
cmd.c32        ethersel.c32  ifcpu.c32    mboot.c32    poweroff.com  sdi.c32         whichsys.c32
config.c32     gfxboot.c32   ifplop.c32   memdisk      pwd.c32       sysdump.c32     zzjson.c32
cpuid.c32      gpxecmd.c32   int18.com    memdump.com  pxechain.com  this_is_a_test
cpuidtest.c32  gpxelinux.0   kbdmap.c32   meminfo.c32  pxelinux.0    ver.com
disk.c32       hdt.c32       linux.c32    menu.c32     reboot.c32    vesainfo.c32

It looks like we have a winner!  Now we just need to make sure that the Preboot environment has a kernel or two to play with;

[root@rhc-server ~]# cp /software/centos7/images/pxeboot/* /tftpboot/centos7/
[root@rhc-server ~]# ls -Z /tftpboot/centos7/
-rw-r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_t:s0 initrd.img
-r--r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_t:s0 TRANS.TBL
-rw-r--r--. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_t:s0 upgrade.img
-rwxr-xr-x. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_t:s0 vmlinuz

OK, so lets now create the directory which will hold the PXE menus;

[toby@rhc-server ~]$ sudo mkdir /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
[sudo] password for toby: 
[toby@rhc-server ~]$ ls -Zd /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
drwxr-xr-x. root root unconfined_u:object_r:tftpdir_t:s0 /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

And now lets look at what is required to create the menus from which we will be able to select installation options.

[root@rhc-server centos7]# cat /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default 
DEFAULT menu.c32
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 300
ONTIMEOUT localdisk
MENU TITLE PXE Network Boot

LABEL localdisk
    MENU LABEL ^Local Hard Drive
    MENU DEFAULT
    LOCALBOOT 0

LABEL Install_CentOS_7_2
    MENU LABEL CentOS 7.2
    KERNEL centos7/vmlinuz
    APPEND initrd=http://rhc-server.lab.tobyheywood.com/centos7/isolinux/initrd.img  inst.repo=http://rhc-server.lab.tobyheywood.com/centos7

At this point, all I wanted to do was prove that the pxe settings in dhcp were correct and that maybe, just maybe, I could build a vm across the network, first time.  No such luck! 🙁  Well, I guess 50% of the way there.

You can skip the next and jump to here if you don’t want to understand the pain I went through to get this operational.

I thought things were going well.  I created a blank VM, made sure to select that I was going to boot from the network to install the OS in Virtual Manager and turned the VM on.

pxeboot_initial_screen

So far so good!

pxeboot_menu

I’m now feel pretty happy with myself.  I select CentOS 7.0 and hit the enter key… and then am presented with the expected Welcome to CentOS 7 screen, from where I can kick off a manual installation.

pxeboot_centos7_initial_install_screen

So all, in all, things look good.  However there is more work to be done, as the next step is to create a kickstart file to define how the base install should look.

Reference Material

Trivial FTP (tftp)

PXE

Featured image taken by Ed Robinson who kindly uploaded it to Flickr.com.  I have made no changes to this image and left it in its original form for your viewing pleasure.  And to give the page a bit of colour 😉

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Useful link – RPM DB Recovery

Every now and then, we find ourselves in a bit of a predicament.  In this instance whilst performing an upgrade on a server, things just weren’t going well and it appeared we had some corruption in the RPM database on one of our servers.

We were seeing segmentation faults when trying to use “rpm”.

The following page on the rpm.org website proved very useful, in getting things back up and running swiftly;

http://www.rpm.org/wiki/Docs/RpmRecovery

Posted on

A tale of woe: LD_LIBRARY_PATH, SETUID and q

Whilst trying to enforce restrictions around how services run on a RHEL6 server, I thought it would be good to make use of the SETUID/SETGID permission bits, rather than relying on the development team to to make us of the su command to launch their applications as a specific user.

This turned out to be a really bad idea!  And caused a major headache.

Continue reading “A tale of woe: LD_LIBRARY_PATH, SETUID and q”

Posted on

Kernel Tuning: kernel.sched_child_runs_first

So, to kick start the Linux Kernel Tuning series I appear to have embarked on, first on the list is the kernel tunable parameter – kernel.sched_child_runs_first.

Disclaimer – see bottom of page.

The not so important disclaimer.  Basically, I have limited knowledge of C/C++ and therefore I am relying purely on third party information to provide the below.  So if you spot an inaccuracy let me know.

What is it for?

The idea behind the kernel.sched_child_runs_first parameter is that there may be times where a process (the parent)  will spawn a (number of) child process(es).  In this scenario it is likely that the child process(es) are the ones doing the actual grunt work and that the parent process is potentially just over seeing the running of the child processes.

The purpose of this variable is to set a preference that if at all possible, the child process should be run before the parent.  The thinking is that this could shave some processing time off of the overall total.

Continue reading “Kernel Tuning: kernel.sched_child_runs_first”

Posted on

Enabling Broadcom FCoE

Following on from my previous post on the topic on BL460c Gen8 and the missing HBA, I thought I’d provide a quick script to automate the required installation of rpms and associated config changes, so here you go;


echo "Installing Pre-Reqs for FCoE on Broadcom NICs..."

yum install -y lldpad lldpad-libs fcoe-utils

echo "Configuring FCoE..."

cd /etc/fcoe

DEVICES="eth2 eth3"
COUNT=0

for i in $DEVICES; do
cp cfg-ethx cfg-$i
sed -i 's/DCB_REQUIRED="yes"/DCB_REQUIRED="no"/g' cfg-$i
done

echo "Starting lldpad service..."

/sbin/chkconfig lldpad on
/sbin/service lldpad start

for i in $DEVICES; do
lldptool set-lldp -i $i adminStatus=disabled
COUNT=$[COUNT+1]
done

ADMINSETCOUNT=`grep adminStatus /var/lib/lldpad/lldpad.conf | wc -l`

if [ $ADMINSETCOUNT == $COUNT ]; then
echo "adminStatus appears to have been set correctly"
else
echo adminStatus has not been set correctly, you should investigate this further!"
echo "Useful URL - http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=mmr_kc-0115755-3"
fi

echo "Restarting services after changes made"
/sbin/service lldpad restart
/sbin/service fcoe restart

echo "Setting FCoE service to start on boot..."
/sbin/chkconfig fcoe on

echo "Enable Ethernet interfaces to start on boot"

for i in $DEVICES; do
sed -i 's/ONBOOT=no/ONBOOT=yes/g' ifcfg-$i
done

The above does make the assumption that you are using eth2 and eth3 for FCoE.

Posted on

HP BL460c Gen8 and the missing HBA

Let me begin my tale of woe by setting the scene appropriately;

  • 4x BL460cGen8
    • 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v2 @ 3.00GHz (10 Cores)
    • 128GB RAM
    • HPFlexFabric10Gb2-Port534FLB Adapter
      • in iLO (integrated Lights Out)
  • 4x c7000 enclosure (some platinum, some not)
    • OA (Onboard Administrator) firmware version: 4.30
    • VC (Virtual Connect) firmware version: 4.30
      • A server profile has been created for each server with the Ethernet connectivity and FCoE)
      • The server profile has also been assigned to the required bay (just putting this in so there is no doubt, it is set-up as it should be)
  • RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 6.5 and 6.6 were tested
  • HP SPP (Service Pack for ProLiant) 2014.09.0(B) installed across the board and the RHEL 6.6 Supplemental for the SPP have been applied where required
    UPDATE – HP have release SPP 2015.04.0.

The tale of woe!

I had a new requirement to set-up 4 new servers which would run RHEL 6.6 and would very much rely upon SAN based storage.

Installing RHEL was the easy part, getting the server to see it had access to FCoE (Fibre Channel of Ethernet) was more tricky, but only because there is a marked difference between the implementation of FCoE when using a Broadcom CNA (Converged Network Adapter) vs Emulex or Qlogic.

Things I checked

  • lspci – Didn’t show anything Fibre related.
  • dmesg – Equally didn’t show anything HBA or SAN related.
  • looking in the /sys/class directory structure showed no signs of the fc_host I am accustomed too.
  • A quick reboot a trawl through the BIOS (in HP speak RBSU) also showed no signs of anything SAN related.
  • Googled the issue to death
  • Confirmed that the CNA definitely was SAN compatible (you never know)
  • Logged onto the SAN switches to confirm there was connectivity between the Virtual Connect modules and the switches (it was but it showed that no blades had attempted to log into the fabric)
  • In the end I logged a ticket with HP.

The solution

So… After much head banging, and three hours describing the issue to HP first line technical bods, plus submitting (what felt like in triplicate) numerous logs from OA, VC and the server, I was finally pointed to the following URLs;

Now the above guides are all well and good assuming you haven’t followed the advice by HP tech support to upgrade to the latest firmware/drivers.  If you have done exactly as they have asked (not the you usually have much choice in the matter), then the following guide proved more useful;

One word of warning.  In the first article (Broadcom-Based CNAs…) above, when you get to step 6, It states you should run the following command;

# lldptool set-lldp-i ethY adminStatus=disabled

There is a typo and the line should be entered at the command line (as root) as follows;

# lldptool set-lldp -i ethY adminStatus=disabled[/bash

With the above you will need to replace ethY with the actual interface name.

Also:  Its not made crystal clear but you will need to make sure that you update the ifcfg-ethY files for the NICs that are using the FCoE personality so that they are brought online at boot.

Going forward

For me, I have created a script to recreate this, so should we purchase servers with this card installed again, the set-up remains consistent and documented.  That said it is still very much a manual step to enable the FCoE personality on the card.