Loading drivers in ESXi 5.0

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So I upgraded to 5 from 4.1 – Cool. Almost. Vanilla install had no support for my Promise SuperTrak EX-8654 card which I have in my HP MircoServer. Now what?!?!?
Well, after a lot of searches, the solution was actually on the Promise site! Yay for them!

So in short an example of you to load a driver on esxi 5.0.

1) Enable ssh access on your esxi 5 host (what do you mean you’ve already done that? It’s dangerous!)

2) Get you driver. The 8654 driver I got from the Promise support site was called 'scsi-stex-4.07.0000.75-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.x86_64.vib'. Yep, what’s in a name.

3) Copy over the driver to the host using scp
ex: scp <driver name> root@<esxi_5_host_ip>:/tmp

4) Next ssh to the esxi host, go to /tmp

5) Install the driver
esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/<driver name>

6) Reload the esxi host – Oh I hand’t told you? Well you need the driver right?

7) Then ssh to the esxi host and check if the driver loaded with 'esxcli software vib list'
In my specific case it looked like this:

~ # esxcli software vib list
Name        Version                             Vendor   Acceptance Level  Install Date
----------  ----------------------------------  -------  ----------------  ------------
scsi-stex   4.07.0000.75-1OEM.500.0.0.472560    Promise  VMwareCertified   2011-12-26

8) Sit back and enjoy the fact you have access to the disks again for adding as a datastore.

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Adding a non-VMFS drive to your ESX(i) server and use it!

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I had some spare Windows drives lying around and wanted to put them in my HP MicroServer running ESXi 4.1.

After installing the SATA drive, and rebooting, I tried to simply add the drive in the vSphere console. No love from VMWare — I got the message, “Error while adding drive – disk not available.” Hmmm. I was sure the drive was working.

Turns out that in ESXi, once a disk has been written to, in any format, it won’t initialize.
Here’s what it took to add the drive in:

Low-level formatted the drive (the name of the drive might be shorter or longer):
~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=/vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6 bs=512 conv=notrunc

Try adding the disk to your datastore now; I canceled this command after waiting 5 minutes and noticed that ESXi now saw the disk as a ‘blank disk’. Adding it to my datastore now worked! If not, continue…

Recreate the partition table:
~ # fdisk /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6

Then ‘o’ to Create a new empty DOS partition table
Then ‘n’ to add a new partition. I used Primary as the type, and 1 as the partition number.
Then ‘t’ to change the type. ‘fb’ is the code for VMFS 3.0
Then ‘w’ to write everything to the drive

Finally, use the ‘vmkfstools’ program to create the volume. I added it as a new datastore using the following command:
~ # vmkfstools -C vmfs3 -S Datastore2 /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6

As always, YMMV.

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Hide your drive from the desktop in OSX

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Sometimes you simple need all your drives on your desktop, but the ones like ‘TimeMachine’ or ‘Lion Installer’ can also simple disappear. Use this script to hide them at every reboot, without having to unmount them. Adjust your volume name to reflect yours.

sudo echo "echo \"UUID=$(diskutil info /Volumes/Lion\ Installer/ | grep UUID | awk '{print $3}') none hfs rw,noauto\" >> /etc/fstab" | sudo bash

To see if it has worked:
sudo cat /etc/fstab

Results in:
UUID=F4F6562F-1C4D-361D-BBD4-91C12ED96B44 none hfs rw,noauto

If your /etc/fstab doesn’t show the UUIC, then you need to check the volume name and/or delimit spaces with an \.

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Print protected PDF files on OSX – using the terminal

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The newer versions of Preview (at least OS X 10.5, and maybe earlier) respect the “do not print without a password” setting in PDF files. However, it is possible to create a completely unprotected version of any PDF file using ghostscript. A command like this should work:

gs -sOutputFile=MyNewFile.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dbatch -q MyProtectedFile.pdf

You may need to type “quit” at the command prompt after gs finishes processing the file. Then open the newly created PDF file and voilà, printable!

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(Sony) XDCAM Transfer for OS X

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So as I now and then have to fix up a OS X + FCP install with XDCAM PDW-U01 import functionality, here is a short howto:
1) PDZK-P1 XDCAM Transfer, now 2.12
2) Mac i.Link FAM driver
3) XDCAM Browser, currently 1.2

The links might break, so here is the official Sony XDCAM site.

I am not affiliated with Sony, nor do they pay me for this. It’s just a braindump for myself and hopefully others will find this helpful!

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The Windows multiple program installer thingie…

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I keep forgetting this GREAT tool. After a nice clean Windoze install, all it takes is one visit to http://ninite.com/ and a few clicks, and your all set as far as software goes. Download the bundled installer click on it, and go for coffee… :) Joy!

Before throwing rotten tomatoes, yes this is Windows only… my bad! No I don’t have shares or anything. I’m just lazy!

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OS X 10.7 Lion and mail search not working…

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I was stunned to find out that the search function on the Mail.app wasn’t working anymore since I’ve upgraded my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to (the very cool) Lion 10.7. Thought it could be Spotlight not working, or something else.

Well, as it turns out, it’s a combination of 2 problems:

1) turn Spotlight indexing on: sudo mdutil -i on /
2) when using IMAP, configure your account to Keep a message for viewing offline

That’s it! Where Snow Leopard was able to search thru already downloaded mail (although the above option was enabled), Lion can’t.

Now the search is working great!

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Hyves account opzeggen / verwijderen / deleten

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Zelf doe ik al helemaal niets meer op Hyves dus werd het tijd om mijn account op te heffen. Grappig genoeg kan je op de site van Hyves.nl hier GEEN informatie over vinden en op honderden sites kom je steeds een niet werkende link tegen.

Wel nu, hier is ie dan; een werkende ‘Verwijder mijn account’-link:

http://hyves.nl/?module=Layout&action=showDel

Klik op ‘Ik neem afscheid’.

Vul je wachtwoord in en klik op ‘Verwijderen’,

Als het goed is ontvang je een bevestigings email.
Klik op de link in die mail, bevestig het verwijderen:

…en klaar is Kees!

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Poste Italiane: International shipments price list 2011

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Seems to be it’s impossibile to find out how much the Italian Postal service is charging for a simple shipment of a box outside Italy. In fact, on their site they ONLY show you the more expensive ways (PaccoCelere Internazionale, QuickPak Europe, EMS) but these services have a starting price of € 28 ! There’s NO direct link on their site towards this page: http://www.poste.it/postali/ordinario/estero.shtml

So, if you’re in Italy and you need to ship something, ask for “pacco ordinario per l’estero’. They won’t have any documentation about it and the price will depend on weight, country and if you’ll be using air or ground services.

But how to know what it’ll cost… Well, see the attached image of an internal document of the Poste Italiane! Should be valid from 2011 but your mileage may vary: prices are always subject to change (mostly without notice).

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