Difference between revisions of "Server Dell PowerEdge T410"

Revision as of 09:31, 7 April 2011

Manuals

here, online version of the main manual here with chapter on LED status here

Install notes

BIOS

- Activate Virtualization support
- Power Management -> OS Control
- Report kbd errors: NO

Debian Squeeze

Still testing at time of writing but frozen so almost stable ;-)

Installing squeeze from daily image (17/08/2010)
- Complains about missing bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-5.0.0.j3.fw & bnx2/bnx2-rv2p-09-5.0.0.j3.fw
  - Get it on another machine and put it on USB stick: aptitude install firmware-bnx2 ; cp /lib/firmware/bnx2/bnx2-*-09-5.0.0.j3.fw /media/XXXX
  - Actually I had also an additional Intel network card so I could have skipped this step...
- Partitionning:
  there is a first primary partition for Dell Utilities (FAT16), I left it just in case...;
  there is also a second primary partition: 2Gb of FAT32, empty, so I deleted it.
  partition #2: primary 10Gb ext3 / label=ROOT
  partition #3: primary 16Gb swap
  partition #5: logical 2Tb physical volume for LVM
  Configure LVM / ok to write table / Create VG with sda5, called vg0 (will be used by XEN)
- Tasksel: SSH & standard utilities
- Reboot
SSH: PermitRootLogin no / ssh-copy-id ...
Install mc, screen, sudo (adduser xxx sudo)
Renaming interfaces (always easier to remember what's plugged where...)
- à la ifrename
  - aptitude install ifrename
  - Create /etc/iftab then reboot

intelG mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
intelD mac 00:1b:21:xx:xx:xx
bcm1   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx
bcm2   mac 84:2b:2b:xx:xx:xx

- à la udev
  - actually we don't need ifrename because udev is now doing the same, see /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, you can simply change the NAME key
- Be sure the old name is not used anywhere else in your config, typically in /etc/network/interfaces

Xen

Sagemath guest

xen-create-image --hostname=sagemath --memory=12288 --swap=12288 --vcpus=20
WARNING strangely the default root password was disabled with a '*' in /etc/shadow so impossible to log in. I had to mount manually the lv (/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk) to remove the '*'
One may prefer to setup the password interactively when creating the image with xen-create-image ... --passwd (or setup passwd=1 in /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf as I've now shown in the above diff file)
lvm> lvcreate -L 1000G -n sagemath-data vg0
/etc/xen/sagemath.cfg: add data volume:

root        = '/dev/xvda2 ro'
disk        = [
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk,xvda2,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-swap,xvda1,w',
                  'phy:/dev/vg0/sagemath-data,xvda3,w',
              ]

xm create -c /etc/xen/sagemath.cfg
Hook the data drive as /home
- mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvda3
- In /etc/fstab: /dev/xvda3 /home ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
- mount /home
Install sage
- apt-get install aria2
- cd /opt
- aria2c http://www.sagemath.org/mirror/linux/64bit/meta/sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux.tar.lzma.metalink
- tar x --lzma -f sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux.tar.lzma
- cd sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux
- Edit sage and set SAGE_ROOT="/opt/sage-4.5.2-linux-64bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-x86_64-Linux"
- ./sage
- sage> notebook.setup()
  Provide FQDN for TLS certificate generation

Misc notes

Boot & DHCP

I've still sometimes some issues at boot time when the xenbr0 bridge doesn't catch its IP...
In those cases I find dhclient still hooked to the non-existing bnx1 IF (which was renamed pbnx1 by XEN). I've to kill it and start a similar dhclient on IF xenbr0.
Finally I renamed the default interface as eth0 and called the xen bridge script without parameters: (network-script network-bridge)

Hyperthreading

I'm not sure if in the long run it'll help but given that there are already 12 CPUs, I've disabled the logical CPU support in the BIOS.

@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 *** actually we don't need ifrename because udev is now doing the same, see /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, you can simply change the NAME key
 ** Be sure the old name is not used anywhere else in your config, typically in /etc/network/interfaces
+==[[Xen]]==
-===XEN: installation===
+===Sagemath guest===
-* see [http://wiki.debian.org/Xen notes on Debian wiki]
-* aptitude install xen-linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 xen-tools xen-utils
-* backup /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp
-* edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and uncomment line "(network-script network-bridge)" or for a non-default interface ethX:
- (network-script 'network-bridge netdev=ethX bridge=xenbr0')
-* reboot
-* aptitude remove --purge linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 linux-image-2.6-amd64
-* /etc/default/grub =>  GRUB_DEFAULT=2
-* update-grub
-* reboot
-* cat /proc/xen/capabilities #(to check xend is running)
-===XEN: guest creation===
-* If you've a proxy it's much easier to have it defined in the environment variables:
-** Edit /etc/environment
- http_proxy=http://myproxy:port
-** Logout/login
-* Edit the config file for creating images (/etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf) to your needs:
-<source lang=diff>
---- xen-tools.conf.orig 2010-05-30 22:42:25.000000000 +0200
-+++ xen-tools.conf      2010-08-17 17:47:35.000000000 +0200
-@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
- # LVM volume group here instead
- #
- ##
--# lvm = vg0
-+lvm = vg0
- #
-@@ -125,12 +125,12 @@
- #  Disk and Sizing options.
- ##
- #
--size   = 4Gb      # Disk image size.
-+size   = 8Gb      # Disk image size.
- memory = 128Mb    # Memory size
- swap   = 128Mb    # Swap size
- # noswap = 1      # Don't use swap at all for the new system.
- fs     = ext3     # use the EXT3 filesystem for the disk image.
--dist   = `xt-guess-suite-and-mirror -s` # Default distribution to install.
-+dist   = squeeze  # Default distribution to install.
- image  = sparse   # Specify sparse vs. full disk images.
- #
-@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@
- #
- # Uncomment this if you wish the images to use DHCP
- #
--# dhcp = 1
-+dhcp = 1
- ##
-@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@
- # Uncomment the following line if you wish to interactively setup
- # a new root password for images.
- #
--# passwd = 1
-+passwd = 1
- #
- # If you'd like all accounts on your host system which are not present
-@@ -254,10 +254,10 @@
- #
- #  You may specify the things to use here:
- #
--# serial_device = hvc0 #default
-+serial_device = hvc0 #default
- # serial_device = tty1
- #
--# disk_device = xvda #default
-+disk_device = xvda #default
- # disk_device = sda
- #
-</source>
-==XEN quickref==
-[http://xen-tools.org/software/xen-tools/ Xen Tools], [http://xen-tools.org/software/xen-shell Xen Shell]
-See also [http://www.howtoforge.com/virtualization-with-xen-on-debian-lenny-amd64-p2 here] and [http://www.howtoforge.com/xen_tools_xen_shell_argo here]
-* xen-create-image --hostname=mynewguest
-* xen-delete-image
-* xen-list-images
-* xen-update-image # apt-get update; apt-get upgrade in the guest, !!! only if guest is NOT running
-* xm create /etc/xen/mynewguest.cfg
-* xm list # Show running xen guests
-* xm info # Show xen version and many other info
-* xm console mynewguest
-** CTRL+] to detach
-* xm shutdown mynewguest
-* xm destroy mynewguest
-If you want xen1.example.com to start automatically at the next boot of the system, then do this:
-ln -s /etc/xen/xen1.example.com.cfg /etc/xen/auto
-==Sagemath guest==
 * xen-create-image --hostname=sagemath --memory=12288 --swap=12288 --vcpus=20
 * WARNING strangely the default root password was disabled with a '*' in /etc/shadow so impossible to log in. I had to mount manually the lv (/dev/vg0/sagemath-disk) to remove the '*'<br>One may prefer to setup the password interactively when creating the image with xen-create-image ... --passwd (or setup passwd=1 in /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf as I've now shown in the above diff file)
@@ Line 160: / Line 61: @@
 <br>In those cases I find dhclient still hooked to the non-existing bnx1 IF (which was renamed pbnx1 by XEN). I've to kill it and start a similar dhclient on IF xenbr0.
 <br>Finally I renamed the default interface as eth0 and called the xen bridge script without parameters: (network-script network-bridge)
-===Allocating too much memory===
-I tried to create two guests with each 12Gb of RAM while the host had only 16Gb in total. I would have expected a nice handling of the error but it froze xend and I could even not shutdown properly.
-<br>And, oh, BTW, no, [http://blog.coparsystems.com/?p=36&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 xen doesn't support memory overcommitment]
 ===Hyperthreading===