Posts from September 2011.

Installing and booting VMware ESXi over FCoE on an IBM BladeCenter H with Brocade CNA

Hardware:
– IBM BladeCenter H
– HS22V and HX5 blades with Brocade 2 port 10GbE Converged Network Adapter, no local drives
– IBM Storwize V7000

At the time of writing the Brocade 2 port 10GbE Converged Network Adapter for IBM BladeCenter (81Y1650) is supported on VMware ESXi up to version 4.1.

To install VMware on the blades, a custom VMware ESXi 4.1 ISO image with Brocade CNA drivers is required.

More… »

Exactly what I wanted to see on a production server…

RHEL 6.1 / Scientific Linux 6.1 dmesg:

TECH PREVIEW: fscache may not be fully supported.
Please review provided documentation for limitations.
FS-Cache: Loaded
FS-Cache: Netfs 'nfs' registered for caching

Excerpt from RHEL 6.1 Technical Notes, Chapter 3. Technology Previews:

FS-Cache
FS-Cache is a new feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 that enables networked file systems (e.g. NFS) to have a persistent cache of data on the client machine.

… and nothing about the limitations or how to disable fscache.

Tried to add install fscache /bin/true to /etc/modprobe.d/fscache.conf with the following dmesg result (of course, no NFS filesystems mounted):

nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_read_or_alloc_pages
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_relinquish_cookie
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_unregister_netfs
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_maybe_release_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_read_or_alloc_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_uncache_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_register_netfs
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_write_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_wait_on_page_write
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_acquire_cookie
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_read_or_alloc_pages
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_relinquish_cookie
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_unregister_netfs
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_maybe_release_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_read_or_alloc_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_uncache_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_register_netfs
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_write_page
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_wait_on_page_write
nfs: Unknown symbol __fscache_acquire_cookie

How to convert CentOS 6.0 to Scientific Linux 6.x

Install the Scientific Linux 6.x yum repositories:
rpm -ivh http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/yum-conf-sl6x-1-1.noarch.rpm

Install the required GPG keys:
– for i386 arch:
rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.i686.rpm

OR

– for x86_64 arch:
rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.x86_64.rpm

Update from CentOS 6.0 to Scientific Linux 6.x using yum:
yum clean all
yum update

Remove some old packages:
rpm -e centos-release
rpm -e yum-plugin-fastestmirror

Reboot and enjoy!