mdicecca112

How to Install kmttg on Windows 2012 R2

Posted on June 20, 2017 by mdicecca112

KMTTG is a great program to transfer TiVo recordings off of your TiVo to either save space or archive. Most channels support copying of recordings off, with the notable exception of channels like HBO, Cinemax and the like.

So let’s start the install.

Download kmttg from here
Create a folder on your drive of choice, create a kmttg folder and extract it.
Install the latest JRE from here.
Navigate to your kmttg install location and double click kmttg.jar. If you get a prompt that the OS does not know how to launch the file you’ll need to associate JAR files with the Java JRE.
If it launches correctly you will see the tools screen. Click OK to install the tools.

While that download, put in your 10 digit Tivo Media Access Key. If you don’t know where to find this, kmttg tells you where to look.

Now this step is optional. I like to separate all my File Directories for conversion.

You will get errors from kmttg that it can’t save due to errors. Ignore those and click OK. Then go and create the folders that you specified.
Click on the Roamio Tab and Click Refresh and you will see all your shows.

That’s it, now copy and encode the shows you want for later viewing!

Installing NVIDIA Drivers on CentOS

Posted on June 19, 2017 by mdicecca112

For those who have every tried to get NVIDIA or AMD Drivers working in Linux, know that its a complete pain to do. Hopefully this guide will clear things up a bit.

I have a base system with a Gigabyte Xeon D Motherboard along with a Gigabyte NVIDIA 1070 Card for us in ZCash Mining. My first step was to install CentOS 7. I chose to use the Net Install ISO “burned” to a thumb drive, which I then booted from and installed the OS. Be sure to run an update and reboot before starting the below directions.

Next I download NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66.run from the Nvidia Website and copied it to my Linux Server.

First install the prerequisites for the Drivers

yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers make vim wget

Be sure to now reboot so that the new kernel and headers take hold. If you don’t you will get errors that the headers and or sources can’t be found.

After the reboot, lets install the EPEL Repository in order to install DKMS

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm

yum install dkms

Then I ran to install the NVIDIA Drivers

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66.run –dkms -s

With the -s flag, the installer will run silent and we won’t see the screens below.

If you use the -s option this is the output you will see.

Capture

Create a blacklist file for the Nouveau Driver

vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

Add the following text

blacklist nouveau

options nouveau modeset=0

Run the following command and reboot the computer

dracut –force

Now run nvidia-smi to verify CUDA capable devices are seen

Capture

How to Install and Configure Zabbix

Posted on June 4, 2017June 4, 2017 by mdicecca112

One of the issues I have with Observium is how limited the Device Discovery is. Not all SNMP devices are recognized, and there is no way to customize the system with new Device MIB Files. Zabbix was recommended to me by a couple of former coworkers, so I decided to give it a shot.

First I built a standard CentOS 7 VM and ran

yum update

Next I installed the Zabbix Repository RPM

[root@zabbix ~]# rpm -ivh http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-3.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-3.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.434W6N: Header V4 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 79ea5ed4: NOKEY
Preparing… ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing…
1:zabbix-release-3.0-1.el7 ################################# [100%]

The next step is to install the Zabbix Server and Web Frontend with MySQL.

yum install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-web-mysql

Next we install the zabbix agent in order to allow the server to monitor itself

yum install zabbix-agent

Next we need to install MySQL

yum install mariadb-server

Next we enable and start the service

systemctl enable mariadb

systemctl start mariadb

Now we set the root password for the database by running

mysql_secure_installation

You will see a handful of questions, and you should evaluate them individually. My responses are not the most secure but for a demo they are fine to use.

[root@zabbix ~]# mysql_secure_installation

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MariaDB
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we’ll need the current
password for the root user. If you’ve just installed MariaDB, and
you haven’t set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on…

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MariaDB
root user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n] y
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
… Success!
By default, a MariaDB installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone
to log into MariaDB without having to have a user account created for
them. This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation
go a bit smoother. You should remove them before moving into a
production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
… Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from ‘localhost’. This
ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] n
… skipping.

By default, MariaDB comes with a database named ‘test’ that anyone can
access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed
before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
– Dropping test database…
… Success!
– Removing privileges on test database…
… Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far
will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y
… Success!

Cleaning up…

All done! If you’ve completed all of the above steps, your MariaDB
installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MariaDB!

We login to the database as the root user and create the Zabbix Database

mysql -uroot -p

From the mysql prompt enter the following to create the database

create database zabbix character set utf8;

Then we grant the zabbix server rights to the database. You can change “Changeme123” to whatever password you wish.

grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost identified by ‘Changeme123‘;

Finally apply the new permissions and exit the database prompt

flush privileges;

quit;

Next we need to import the schema and data into the Database. It will prompt you for a password, of which the zabbix password set above can be used.

zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql-3.0.9/create.sql.gz | mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix

Open the following configuration file and go to line 115

vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Your output should look like below after you have made the recquired changes

### Option: DBPassword
# Database password. Ignored for SQLite.
# Comment this line if no password is used.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Default:
DBPassword=Changeme123

Next we update the system for the special PHP server Settings that Zabbix needs and open the following file.

vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf

Go to line 19 and change the PHP value to be your timezone. You can determine your closet timezone here.

My file looks like below

#
# Zabbix monitoring system php web frontend
#

Alias /zabbix /usr/share/zabbix

<Directory “/usr/share/zabbix”>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
php_value max_execution_time 300
php_value memory_limit 128M
php_value post_max_size 16M
php_value upload_max_filesize 2M
php_value max_input_time 300
php_value always_populate_raw_post_data -1
php_value date.timezone America/New_York
</IfModule>
</Directory>

<Directory “/usr/share/zabbix/conf”>
Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory “/usr/share/zabbix/app”>
Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory “/usr/share/zabbix/include”>
Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory “/usr/share/zabbix/local”>
Require all denied
</Directory>

Next we go to the host specific httpd configuration file.

vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Go to line 95 and change it from

#ServerName http://www.example.com:80

ServerName <YOURIPADDRESS>:80

Next we restart httpd

systemctl restart httpd

Before we start the Zabbix Server you need to give the Zabbix User rights to certain folders.

chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/log/zabbix
chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/run/zabbix
chmod -R 775 /var/log/zabbix/
chmod -R 775 /var/run/zabbix/

Next we execute the following and let th zabbix_agentd what configuration file to use

/usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd -c /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf

Next we disable SELINUX

setenforce 0

Now we need to allow HTTP traffic for FirewallD

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

firewall-cmd –reload

Now we start the Zabbix Server

systemctl start zabbix-server

Finally check the zabbix-server status

systemctl status zabbix-server

The output should be similar to below

[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl status zabbix-server
● zabbix-server.service – Zabbix Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/zabbix-server.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2017-06-04 13:09:21 EDT; 39s ago
Process: 7480 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/zabbix_server -c $CONFFILE (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 7482 (zabbix_server)
CGroup: /system.slice/zabbix-server.service
├─7482 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server -c /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
├─7487 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: configuration syncer [waiting 60 sec for processes]
├─7488 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: db watchdog [synced alerts config in 0.000800 sec, idle 60 sec]
├─7489 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000005 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7491 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: poller #2 [got 0 values in 0.000005 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7492 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: poller #3 [got 0 values in 0.000005 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7493 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: poller #4 [got 0 values in 0.000006 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7494 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: poller #5 [got 0 values in 0.000007 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7495 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: unreachable poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000003 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7496 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: trapper #1 [processed data in 0.000000 sec, waiting for connection]
├─7497 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: trapper #2 [processed data in 0.000000 sec, waiting for connection]
├─7498 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: trapper #3 [processed data in 0.000738 sec, waiting for connection]
├─7499 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: trapper #4 [processed data in 0.000000 sec, waiting for connection]
├─7500 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: trapper #5 [processed data in 0.000000 sec, waiting for connection]
├─7501 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: icmp pinger #1 [got 0 values in 0.000005 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7502 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: alerter [sent alerts: 0 success, 0 fail in 0.000391 sec, idle 30 sec]
├─7503 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: housekeeper [startup idle for 30 minutes]
├─7504 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: timer #1 [processed 0 triggers, 0 events in 0.000023 sec, 0 maintenances in 0.001165 sec, idle 30 sec…
├─7505 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: http poller #1 [got 0 values in 0.000546 sec, idle 5 sec]
├─7506 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: discoverer #1 [processed 0 rules in 0.000352 sec, idle 60 sec]
├─7507 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: history syncer #1 [synced 0 items in 0.000001 sec, idle 1 sec]
├─7508 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: history syncer #2 [synced 0 items in 0.000001 sec, idle 1 sec]
├─7509 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: history syncer #3 [synced 0 items in 0.000001 sec, idle 1 sec]
├─7510 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: history syncer #4 [synced 0 items in 0.000001 sec, idle 1 sec]
├─7511 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: escalator #1 [processed 0 escalations in 0.000411 sec, idle 3 sec]
├─7512 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: proxy poller #1 [exchanged data with 0 proxies in 0.000002 sec, idle 5 sec]
└─7513 /usr/sbin/zabbix_server: self-monitoring [processed data in 0.000009 sec, idle 1 sec]

Jun 04 13:09:21 zabbix systemd[1]: Starting Zabbix Server…
Jun 04 13:09:21 zabbix systemd[1]: Started Zabbix Server.

Finally lets enable Zabbix to start at boot time.

systemctl enable zabbix-server

Navigate to http://<YOURIP>, and we need to do some configuration

Click Next and verify that all the checks come back with a status of OK

Click Next and enter in the zabbix database password

Click Next and leave the server settings at defaults

Verify your settings and click Next

Click Finish if no errors are returned

You will be brought to the zabbix login screen, where the user is admin and the password is zabbix.

How to Install SNMP on UnRAID6

Posted on May 30, 2017 by mdicecca112

One of the things I like to have in my lab environment is the ability to monitoring all OSes and keep an eye on such things as temperatures, disk space, and other sensors. I was disheartened to find that UnRAID 6 did not have SNMP installed or configured. After some searching I was able to figure out how to get SNMP installed.

First, Log into your UnRAID Web page and Click on Plugins

Next copy and paste the NerdPack Plugin into the URL Field and Click Install. The NerdPack installs the prerequisites that you need to install SNMP. Then you will see a plugin window pop up.

Then we go and reboot the server. This step is not necessary, but I prefer to do this after each plugin install.

Next go to Settings, and Nerd Pack

Find the entry for Perl and click the slider

Click Apply on the bottom

The package manager will launch a window and you see the package install.

Then we go and install the UnRaid SNMP Plugin following the same steps for the previous plugin install.

snmpwalk -v2c -c public localhost

You should see output similar to below.

Now you should be able to import your host into an SNMPD Based monitoring.

No 10gbe NICs showing in VMware 6.X with X10SDV-7TP4F

Posted on May 24, 2017 by mdicecca112

When I started building my VMware ESXi server, I did not have a Switch that could handle 10Gbe SFP+. Now that I have a Dell X1052, I figured I would cable up a 10Gbe DAC and get moving. Much to my surprise, I received a link light on the switch, but not on the motherboard.

Digging into the VMware side, I noticed that the 10Gbe NICs are not available, only the 1Gbe NICs.

Capture

A quick Google search brought me to a great site for VMware knowledge, tinkertry.com. It appears that the drivers for the 10Gbe are not loaded. So following the directions here, we open the SSH Console and enter the following command.

esxcli software vib install -v https://cdn.tinkertry.com/files/net-ixgbe_4.5.1-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585.vib –no-sig-check

We then reboot our host to get the new VIB to be loaded.

Capture

Low and behold on reboot we see the two 10gbe NICs.

Capture

How To Setup a CentOS 7 Syslog Server

Posted on May 22, 2017May 22, 2017 by mdicecca112

Today we learn how to build a syslog server. Having a couple SuperMicro Builds, Switches and Firewalls, I want to be able to know what is going on by looking at one central source. Easiest way to do this, and one that most Network Devices and SuperMicro Motherboards support is syslog.

First step is to build a quick CentOS 7 VM. Next we install rsylog and other packages we will use later. If you have installed the Minimum CentOS 7 image you will need the vim and net-tools packages.

yum install rsyslog vim net-tools

Next we open the syslog.conf file to allow the server to listen for syslog messages.

vim /etc/rsyslog.conf:

Then we un-comment the following four lines to allow syslog messages to be received on UDP and TCP Ports 514.

# Provides UDP syslog reception
#$ModLoad imudp
#$UDPServerRun 514

# Provides TCP syslog reception
#$ModLoad imtcp
#$InputTCPServerRun 514

becomes

# Provides UDP syslog reception
$ModLoad imudp
$UDPServerRun 514

# Provides TCP syslog reception
$ModLoad imtcp
$InputTCPServerRun 514

Then we restart the syslog service.

systemctl restart rsyslog.service

Then we want to verify that the service is listening on port 514.

netstat -an | grep 514

We should see that TCP is listening and that UDP is now showing for port 514.

Finally we want to allow TCP and UDP 514 through the firewall.

firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=514/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=514/udp

firewall-cmd –reload

Now that we have the syslog server up and listening, lets configure one of our servers to forward its message.

For my SuperMicro servers, we log into the IPMI page and click on the Configuration Tab and then Syslog. We click “Enable Syslog” and then we enter in the IP and Port for our Syslog Server. Finally we click Save.

Capture

For ESXi we need to login to the CLI of each ESXi host and run the following command, replacing the below IP with your syslog IP.

esxcli system syslog config set –loghost=’tcp://10.11.12.13:514′

Capture

For me Dell X1052 Switch, we log into the Administrator Web GUI and Click Log and Alerts, Expand Remote Log Servers, and Click Edit.

Capture

Then we click Add.

Then we enter the required information for our Syslog Server.

Eventually as events are generated you will see them in /var/log/messages on the your syslog server. Once we configured our Dell Switch we saw the following message generated.

Capture

PRTG Install Instructions

Posted on May 15, 2017May 15, 2017 by mdicecca112

I am a bit of a Monitoring junky, and while I am mostly fluent Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager, Observium, and Nagios/Opennms I do have a passing interest in PRTG

For myself, my current Observium Install does not have the MIBs installed to monitor my Dell x1052 Switch, and I liked to see a little more into how the switch is performing.

PRTG is known for handling network gear from all manufactuers very well, so I was curious to see how it performs.

First step is to go to PRTG’s website and download a trial. PRTG will provide you are 100% functional trial key. From there you build you host for PRTG, which for me was a low powered Virtual Machine. The installer is extremely simple, just put in the Trial Key and Trial Key Name and let it install. Once installed you will see two Icons on your desktop. As an astute reader pointed out, you are limited to 100 sensors, but this is perfectly fine for a homelab.

You can navigate to your servers IP address (or host name), and select the default login.

PRTG can be very busy and distracting, but lets focus on getting our Dell Switch monitored.

Let’s click on Devices and the Add Device

Then we select Network Infrastructure

Next we plug in a device name, and an IP. There is more configuration that can be done ahead of time to auto-discover items, but we won’t go into that here.

Once your device pops up on the Main Page, click Auto Discover.

After a while, we will see the following sensors pre-populated.

In a future post, I’ll show how to add custom sensors to monitor CPU, Memory and much more your Network Devices and Switches.

Author: mdicecca112