Diary of a Network Geek

It’s a fine line between idiot and hero.
I’ve crossed that line. To the hero side, you weisenheimers! Notice that I’ve been a little quiet on what I’ve been doing at work since I got back from Florida? Well, that’s because things have gone horribly wrong. The whole idea of having a single base ZENWorks for Desktops Imaging installation of Windows XP just didn’t work out the way we’d planned. It was taking too long to make the “addon” images to customize everything for the individual models. And, every little, tiny change Dell made in the chipset was making the addon images fail, too. So, about two weeks ago, I was told we were abandoning that line of thought and going with what I originally suggested, namely, an image per model. And, that I had until Monday the 14th to get it all working.
Yikes!
Well, I got it pretty well there until Monday a fatal flaw was found. With the Dynamic Local User option enabled, when we installed Groupwise as one user, none of the other users could access it. Not even the local administrator of the machine! WTF!? So, I rebuilt the image, twice, each time making sure that all the updates were included. No go. Then I tried every variation of installing the Novell Client and the ZEN for Desktops clients. Same thing. As soon as I hit the network, in any way, only the user that installed Groupwise could access it, or the directory it was installed in. After almost a week of this, you can image how stupid I was starting to feel! Though, no one else could come up with an answer for why this was happening, either…
Well, this evening, at about 6:00pm, I found it. The answer was in the Local Security Policies. The setting was unser Security Options, Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts. It was set to “Guest only: local users authenticate as Guest.”, but should needed to be set to “Classic: local users authenticate as themselves.” As soon as I changed that, BAM! It was all working just like it was supposed to work. I tested it twice and got out before something else went wrong!
So, yes, it was a fine line between idiot and hero, but by the end of my very long working day, I was the hero. Again. Yea, me!

I know I’ve been sort of quiet this week, so here’s a tidbit.
I’ve been doing a LOT of bash scripting lately for the ZENWorks imaging project that I’ve been working on. Well, the first part of that goes live, or partially live, next week. Yikes! So, I’ve been refining and getting things ready for that. Busy, busy, busy! But, I did have time to notice someone asking for help adding color to the menus and such on a ZENWorks Discussion Forum at Novell. I posted a reply there, but I thought I’d do up something for the oh, so quiet blog, too.
First off, all this comes from the FAQs.org, Advanced BASH-scripting Guide, in the Colorizing Scripts section.

Now, remember, these are basically just escape sequences, just like from the old DOS days and batch files. (Thought you’d never have to do that again, right?) Keep in mind that once you apply one of these codes, it will be in effect until you cancel it out, one way or another.
Let’s start easy with a simple bold:
echo -e “33[1mThis line is bolded33[0m”;
Okay, notice that you need to append the ” -e” to your standard “echo” command for display. The actual “bold” code is “33[1m”. That’s it. Just add that to the begining of the quoted line and you’ve got bolded text. To “turn it off”, simply echo “33[0m”, either at the end of the quoted line as above, or on another line. Personally, I find it easier to turn off my codes ASAP. It cuts down on problems later on.
Now, we’ll make green, bold text:
echo -en “33[1mThis is bold and green”
tput sgr0

Okay, now notice that we “turned off” the codes with a different command. That command, tput sgr0, clears all the color and formatting.
Now, to do one color for the text and one for the background, do this:
echo -e ‘\E[34;47m'”This makes blue text on a white background”;

And, that’s really all there is to it. So, go experiment with your bash colors!

Here’s a table of some other colors for your reference:

Well, I’ve got another bit up on Novell’s CoolSolutions website.
This time, it’s a bit of bash code to let you choose which ZEN imaging server to use based on subnet. It works for any version of the ZEN for Desktops imaging system, since it’s pure bash.
For those of you who are not ” in the know” bash is the Bourne Again SHell which runs on Linux and has scripting capabilities. It’s pretty cool, considering that this will be the third or fourth thing I have up on Novell’s site and I get another t-shirt. Wooo! And, I’ve turned in enough articles that I have my very own Author Profile page. Cool!
Anyhow, go look at the article and vote it up higher, eh?

It always amazes me what people search for.

Especially when they end up with me, instead of what they were looking for in the first place! I used to check on this kind of thing a whole lot more than I do lately, but I looked yesterday and thought I’d put it up here.
Here are the Top 20 searchs that led to my site, with commentary:
1 “bootable usb linux” – Well, I have been working on this a lot lately
2 “crazy toys” – All my toys are crazy, yo
3 “geek pictures” – Er… Would anyone really want to look at me?
4 “linux resume” – Um, duh?
5 “strom thurman” – This one always gets me. Even after death, ol’ Strom is a draw
6 “virtual legos” – No idea at all here
7 “usb linux boot” – How is this different from #1?
8 “javascript encryption” – I am Geek. Hear me roar, er, type
9 “jim hoffman” – Well, DUH!
10 “zenworks imaging” – I am a Novell zealot, after all
11 “free cisco book” – Hey, a Fun Friday Link!
12 “geek art” – Must be me talking about the future ex-wife’s art
13 “hello kitty robot” – Hello Kitty is fun. Hello Kitty Mecha is more fun. Too funny.
14 “tales of hoffman” – Again, DUH!
15 “bootable windows cd” – Hmm, I think I talk about boot loaders too much
16 “case mod tools” – Never done it, but maybe in the future…
17 “linux resume software” – Gee, I guess I talk about Linux a lot, too…
18 “novell resume” – Yep, I’m a hardcore Novell geek allright!
19 “science fiction channel” – Or, maybe just a hardcore geek
20 “homebrew tivo” – Yeah, see the above comment.

Freaky! Well, at least no one is looking for goat-sex pictures and finding my website! You know, that reminds me of a story this Greek guy told me about somone from his village back home… Maybe another time.

I had some minor setbacks at work this week.

I say minor because, as far as I’m concerned, anything short of termination or death is minor. So, first the ZENWorks imaging thing that I thought I’d worked out last week didn’t work this week. Or, rather, it didn’t work all the time or even consistently. So, I’m working on that. Again. Oh, joy.

Then, I’ve been doing a lot of Linux server work lately and that had some small snags. Mainly, it was me being tired, a little depressed, and somewhat distracted. I forgot a couple of little, “detail” items, like chaning IP addresses and cleaning out temp files before running a backup. Stuff like that. The only “show-stopper” was something entirely out of my hands. (Hey, that seems like a theme in my life these days!) The server that I’d been working on, and getting prepared to install on a remote SAN, can’t be shipped until we get the additional processor and power supply from Dell. They’ve been on order for almost a month now. *sigh* Oh, well, my end is almost done. Just a little bit of testing left to do and then…. I wait. (Unfortunately, that seems like a theme in my life right now, too. Always waiting…)

All in all, though, it’s not been a bad week. Nice and quiet. So far…

After some long struggles, VICTORY!

In recent weeks I have posted less and less about my job. Why, you ask? Well, aside from a serious bout of depression, things have not been going well on my projects. Oh, the Linux stuff was okay, mostly, except for a nasty little problem with that mkCDrec program and our SAN. Something about the way it makes the boot partition on the ISO just didn’t like the drivers for the QLogic cards we use. It would never recognize more than one partition at a time. Even after we recompiled it with multiple LUN support. But, I digress….

So, I’ve been banging away at this ZENWorks desktop imaging system deal for weeks. Well, it hasn’t been smooth, but we have a way that *seems* to work well. And, get this, we use snapshot! Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but it works. So, here’s the thing, we want to have one base image for XP and then just have addon images for everything else. But, we have at least one SCSI-based workstation. So, what does that mean? Trouble, that’s what. Ultimately, here’s what I did…

I started with a base XP image then added just enough to get it to boot on the SCSI machine (a Dell Precision 670). Next, on a second partition, I loaded all the snapshot files and started that process. Then, I loaded all the Dell drivers and such as appropriate and capped off the snapshot. Finally, I make the app and use filedef.txt to create a BAT file that copies the converted files to their original names and directories. From that, I make the ZENWorks image. And, viola! It works like a charm. Okay, so it’s a bit ’round-about, but it *does* work and a whole lot better than using sysprep, too. At least, for me.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good week! Now, all I need is to get a working car….

Well, maybe….

According to this article on Groklaw, the recent spate of cases that Novell has brought against Micro$oft may, in fact, have far-reaching implications in the legal realm of intellectual property and anti-competition. Specifically, how these cases are handled may have some direct impact on the rest of the pending Linux infringement cases that have been SCO’s bread-and-butter. So, in short, the author (“marbux”), encourages us to pay attention to the outcome of these cases. They matter and can effect the lives of Linux geeks everywhere.

Wow, there’ve been a lot of stories about Novell in the past two days!

Let’s see, where to start…. First off, Novell whupped Micro$oft to the tune of $536 Million, according to this press release from the networking giant. Apparently, Novell and Micro$oft agreed to “settle potential antitrust litigation related to Novell’s NetWare operating system in exchange for $536 million in cash.” Hmm, not a bad deal. I wonder what that will do to their stock? What’s even more interesting to me, is that Novell also announced it will file “an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the United States District Court in Utah seeking unspecified damages in connection with alleged harm to Novell’s WordPerfect application software business in the mid-1990s.” More cash? One can only hope.

In other Novell news, my favorite Open Source company has released a “new” Linux desktop. Yes, that’s right, they’ve got a Linux desktop, with the option to purchase support. I guess there really are advantages to living way out in Orem and not having anything else to do during the winter months but think! If you follow that link, by the way, you can download a free trial. I know I will be!

Yea, Novell! You go!

I’m finally getting it!

Okay, so it only took three months and a visit from a Novell Service Engineer for me to finally get it, but I have. Here’s the big secret to making ZENWorks imaging Linux boot CDs: key information is not anywhere to be found on the web. But, of course, the Network Geek will share with his loyal readers.
Now, I’ll do this in more detail later, but here it is in a nutshell. To update the bootable CD, first, get a good image and, using the instructions for adding a driver to the ZEN Boot image, get into the initrd.gz file on a machine that has the kernel version you want to update the CD to use. Now, copy all the drivers you want to use from the patched/updated server to the mounted initrd filesystem. Unmount that and re GZIP it. Now, copy your bzImage, or whatever, to a temp directory and rename it to “kernel”. Now, copy both of these files into the ISO, or make a new one with everything else on the CD. Burn it and go.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I went too fast, I’ll do it again with more detail later. I just was excited about it and had to throw that out there. Way cool!

This is interesting.

Okay, I downloaded this little program some time ago and loaded it up at work on my experimental kernel machine. See, I foul things up so terribly that I occasionally need to reload the server. Well, rather than sitting around and doing an install all day, I thought a recovery CD, or CDs, would be a better answer. So, I tried it.
First off, mkCDrec is easy to install. Just download it, make yourself root, or root-like, and extract it. It’s that easy. Then, go to the mkcdrec directory and run “make”. That’s it! You’ll get a menu that will pop up and ask you a couple of options and you might want to change the default paths, but otherwise, that’s all there is to it.
Restoring is just a little bit more complicated, but not much. Basically, you boot off the first recovery disk and run /etc/recovery/start-restore.sh. After that, the restore script asks you a couple of questions and goes to work! When it finishes with the first disk, it prompts you for the next. My system took three CDs and less than 45 minutes to restore, which beats a fresh install any day.
Did I mention that this was free software? Oh, the author asks for donations, but for all intents and purposes, it’s free. Pretty damn cool.

Oh, I also noticed that my darling wife has taken me off her “Worthy Blogs” list. Not sure when that happened, but I’d suspect that my link went away between one and three weeks ago. I guess I’m just not worthy! Story of my life. This blog gets an average of 1300 hits per day, but I’m still not worthy. Maybe if I post the next winning lottery numbers….