# - Part 8

Lenovo T400 blank screen issue on Windows 10

Someone who owns a very well SEO company came to me with a freshly installed Windows 10 OS on a Lenovo T400 and showed me that he would get a black screen at start up. He would suspend the machine (close the lid), and it would come back to normal. He would reboot, and the same problem would reproduce again.

This didn’t happen when he first installed the OS. Only happened after the OS was installed and Windows update was run. I was suspicious that it might be a driver issue, but Lenovo’s website didn’t show much.

Then looked into the device manager and saw this:

2016-02-01

What’s interesting here is that the laptop actually has 2 video cards. I think it’s for power savings. I took a gamble and disabled the Intel video card. The problem went away!

Update: Booted into the BIOS and under video settings, found that the Lenovo could install a Switchable graphics driver along with their power management software so that it could save power. So, my hunch was correct. So, no need to disable the Intel card. Just boot into the BIOS and set it to discrete or the other one, whatever it is. I just set mine to discrete.

How to find and online all of your SteelFusion Core LUNs on a NetApp filer

Recently, I offlined a bunch of LUNs that had belonged to a SteelFusion Core in the lab that I had forgotten about. Needless to say, I had some unhappy users. The good news though is that I was able to get the LUNs back up and connected to the Core within minutes. This is how I did it.

The first thing I needed to do was find out which LUNs the Core was using. I did this by logging into the Core via SSH and running the following commands:

enable conf t terminal length 0 show storage luns iscsi

I output this to a file /tmp/core30luns.txt. An entry looks like this:

Total LUNs: 9 Locally Assigned Serial: P3PdB/-GFigd Configuration status : Ready Alias : avamar_restore LUN Size : 150.00 GB LUN Type : iscsi Online : yes IOPs acceleration : Enabled Failover Enabled : yes Prefetch : Enabled Edge mapping : pod3-3100b Target mapping : iqn.2003-10.com.riverbed:oh1mt0017065c.000 Origin portal : 10.33.192.174, 10.33.192.175 Origin target : iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.135037602 Backend session status : Connected Use iSCSI Reservation : Yes LUN Edge data session : Connected Client type : other Original LUN vendor : NetApp Original LUN serial : P3PdB/-GFigd Pinned : no Prepop : Disabled Smart prepop : Enabled Prepop status : N/A MPIO policy : roundrobin iSCSI Reservation status : LUN reserved

Prepop schedules:
Mapped igroups:
all

Mapped initiators:

The next thing was to find out what LUNs are on the NetApp to do some matching. You can do that by running this command:

lun show -v

I output this to a file /tmp/netapp_luns.txt. An entry looks like this:

/vol/NewYork_rvbd_d_e7cc5c29_f400_4c52_b1d4_f87da1b62652_1451278801/lun_RDM 10g (10737418240) (r/w, offline)
Serial#: P3PdB/9ytT31
Share: none
Space Reservation: disabled
Multiprotocol Type: vmware

Now with the 2 files, I could do some matching. I first want to extract the serial numbers from the LUNs. I do this by running:

grep serial /tmp/core30luns.txt | cut -f2 -d: > /tmp/core30lunlist.txt

From that, I would just get a list of serial numbers like this:

P3PdB/-GFigd

Next, I will loop through my list of LUNs to find the volumes I will need to put back online. I do this by running:

for i in `cat /tmp/core30lunlist.txt`; do grep -2 $i /tmp/netapp_luns.txt >> /tmp/netappvolumes.txt; done

This would give me a list like this:

/vol/NewYork_rvbd_d_8f3a7b69_05f7_4be8_b3a6_14a689c2b3b0_1452834001/lunC11 60.0g (64445480960) (r/w, offline)
Comment: “Cdrive”
Serial#: P3PdB/-KWreM
Share: none
Space Reservation: disabled

With that list, I can cut the volumes out with the following command:

grep -v : /tmp/netappvolumes.txt | cut -f1 -d' ' > /tmp/volumes.txt

This would give me a list like this:

/vol/NewYork_rvbd_d_8f3a7b69_05f7_4be8_b3a6_14a689c2b3b0_1452834001/lunC11

Now that I have a list of volume names from the NetApp, I can just put them all online with a loop:

for i in `cat /tmp/volumes.txt`; do echo "lun online" $i >> /tmp/online_vols.txt ; done

You can just take the /tmp/online_vols.txt file now and just paste it into your NetApp SSH session and you’ll have all of your LUNs online again.

How to expand a LUN with SteelFusion

Why would you want to do this?

No matter how well you plan, resources are almost never in abundance. There could be a few reasons why you want to expand a LUN. Perhaps you want to add more vmdks to the same VMFS volume. Another reason could be that you might want to increase the size of the partition of the guest VM. In either case, you might want some of the workarounds listed at the end of the article before continuing. If you’re convinced that expanding the LUN is what you’re going to do, here is how to do it.

Check feasibility. First check at the maximum size and expandability of the partitions involved.

Check the guest OS partition. If NTFS, the maximum partition size for NTFS is 256TiB according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS. You probably don’t need to go beyond that.
Check the partition size of VMFS. Consult VMware documentation http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ to ensure that you do not exceed maximum size for your partition. For example, if your partition is VMFS-3 and formatted with a 1MB block size, your maximum is 2TB-512bytes. If you’re already at the maximum, see workarounds further in this document.

These are the steps in a nutshell:

Resize/expand the LUN on the backend array.
If the SteelFusion Core is a virtual machine and LUN is connected via fiber, run a Rescan/Refresh on the HBA on the ESXi server where the Core is hosted.
On SteelFusion Core, perform a LUN rescan
Following VMware documentation, resize the VMFS volume http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1752
Resize or map the device in Windows

Resizing the LUN on the backend array.

Consult your array’s documentation for resizing the LUN. Here’s an illustration on how it’s done with a Netapp array.

1) Locate the LUN you want to expand, right click and select Edit.

2) In the Edit LUN window, assign the new LUN size, and click save and close.

Seeing the new size on the SteelFusion Core

The SteelFusion Core may automatically detect the change in LUN size depending on how busy the LUN is. If there are read/write operations from the backup with a “LUN configuration changed” status, the Core will be forced to rescan and retry and it will automatically change. There’s also a periodic rescan every 5 minutes that would cover change it. If you need the change immediately, you can do a manual rescan and force the change. The size will highlight in orange when it changes.

Once the Core sees the change, the new size will be propagated to the Edge. If the LUN was pinned, the Edge will approve or deny the size increase based on Blockstore capacity.

Extending the VMFS volume size

Reference this http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1752 VMware KB article for extending your VMFS volume. Here’s how it’s done with the vSphere Web Client if you’re using vCenter:

Find the Datastore, right click and select Increase Datastore Capacity.

Select Use Free space to expand the Datastore.

If you’re using the deprecated Windows client, you can effectively do the same in the Datastore view here:

Select the Datastore you are expanding, go to the Configuration tab and select the Properties of the Datastore. In the Properties box, Select Increase.

Follow the wizard and it will expand the volume.

Expanding the size of the virtual disk on the VMFS volume

If the UI doesn’t allow you perform the following steps, refer to this VMware KB:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004047

Find the VM settings and change the size of the VMDK.

In the Windows client, it’s in the same area.

Expanding the partition in Windows

Lastly, go into the Windows guest and expand the volume size.

First, go to the Disk Management in the Computer Management application, right click and select Rescan Disks.

11rescan

Upon rescanning, you should see the newly added space as unallocated.

Right click on the primary partition of the disk and select Extend Volume.

13extend

At completion, you now should have your expanded disk.

Consideration

Consider inflating the VMDK file after doing the extension during non-peak hours. Because the added capacity that you just added to the VMDK file is sparse, you may want to fill it up with zeroes. The reasoning behind this is so that you are not struck with first write or double-write penalty (in all copy-on-write disks) when your guest writes to the disk. You can read a little about the penalty here: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/05/thick-vs-thin-disks-flash-arrays.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/03/thin-provisioning-whats-the-scoop.html

You can do this in the Datastore browser. Just find the VMDK file of your VM, right click and select Inflate.

Functionality also is available in the Windows client.

15inflate

Workarounds

Here are some workarounds to consider LUN expansion is not feasible:

Consider moving swap files to another VMFS volume, preferably on a Local LUN. You can do this in the Options tab of a VM’s settings. This will require your VM to be shutdown, but the benefit of having this on a Local LUN is that it does not need to be replicated.
Consider moving guest page file, swap files, and print spools to another drive. Like workaround #1, these things do not need to be replicated, so moving them to a Local LUN can help with your WAN traffic.

Not-recommended workaround

A workaround that may sound logical, but is not recommended is to Storage vMotion the disk to another LUN. This should be your last resort. This may be something that vSphere administrators do commonly, but because the Blockstore on the Edge is a cache and not ordinary storage, this will result in a lot of WAN traffic and can be potentially dangerous.

Converting a VMware Fusion VM to ESXi

One of the easiest ways to get a VMware Fusion VM up to ESXi is to use the Upload to server option

If your VM was installed in more seamless mode though, after getting your VM up and running in ESXi, your local folders will be missing.

I love running my desktop in more seamless mode in Fusion, but obviously, this won’t work in ESXi. To fix this, go into the VM and make the following changes.

Navigate to these two locations:

– HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
– HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Make sure that you see these values (among others). Update these entries, if they have a different data value.

Navigate to these two locations:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
Make sure that you see these values (among others). Update these entries, if they have a different data value:

Windows XP / Server 2003

Name Data value

Desktop %USERPROFILE%\Desktop

My Music %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music

My Pictures %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures

Personal %USERPROFILE%\My Documents

Windows Vista / 7 / Server 2008 / 8 / 10

Name Data value

Desktop %USERPROFILE%\Desktop

My Music %USERPROFILE%\Music

My Pictures %USERPROFILE%\Pictures

Personal %USERPROFILE%\Documents

Microsoft PowerShell takes forever to open!

If you’re in a situation where it appears to take forever to open a PowerShell prompt, Internet access might be the problem.

The easiest resolution at this point appears to allow Internet access to the machine. If that is not possible, you can disable the check for the publisher’s certificate revocation. You can do this from Internet Explorer (or Control Panel, Internet Options) by clicking on Tools, Internet Options. Under the Security section of the Advanced tab, uncheck “Check for publisher’s certificate revocation”.

NOTE: These type of security features are in place for a reason. Take caution when considering disabling these.

How to install ESXi on an Intel NUC (video)

Running a home lab with ESXi doesn’t require a big heavy server that consumes a lot of power. I wanted to build a lab machine that could be portable so I could take it along with me if I’m traveling. Fortunately, this machine also is tiny and consumes with very little power.

Here are the details for the NUC:
The Intel NUC is an awesome little PC with a tiny form factor and small power footprint. You can use this for a great media player, desktop, or even a server! I will be using it as an ESXi server.

Here’s the list of components that I bought to build it:
D54250WYKH (Core i5 with 2.5″ slot) – $ 350
Crucial 16GB Kit (2x 8GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz – $ 160
Samsung 250GB mSATA SSD – $ 150 – Fast storage for quick deployment, swap space, temp files, etc.
Seagate 1TB Hybrid SSD – $ 100 – Slower storage to store other VMs that will have a lot of data at rest. Since it’s a Hybrid disk, chances are, the active data will be on the SSD portion of the disk.

So, I did a little bit of research when trying to figure out whether or not ESXi ran on the NUC. I read through a number of blog posts and the one that helped me was this one:

ESXi 5.x Installation on Intel NUC fails with “No Network Adapters”

Here’s a shameless copy/paste of the resources required:
– ESXi 5.x U1 ISO image (from VMware downloads)
– ESXi-Customizer (ESXi-Customizer-v2.7.1.exe)
– Intel Driver (net-e1001e-1.0.0.x86_64.vib) (3rd Gen NUC)
– Intel Driver (net-e1000e-2.3.2.x86_64.vib) (4th Gen NUC)
– SATA Controller (sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.vib) (4th Gen NUC) from v-front.de

Enjoy the video and please post comments!

How to build an Intel NUC in less than 10 minutes. (video)

I recently made a video building the Intel NUC. It was extremely easy to do and amazingly, it runs ESXi pretty well. Fully loaded, I gave it 16gb RAM, an SSD mSATA drive, and a hybrid laptop SATA drive.

Here’s the video and I hope you enjoy.

Why are my VM’s custom attributes not backed up? Work around with PowerCLI

This posting is for those that might want to backup a VM on one vCenter and restore it in another vCenter, but seeing that the custom attributes are not copied over. For now, this is a workaround. Moving forward, VMware is deprecating custom attributes in favor of tags. For tagging, it makes sense because if you’re searching for a particular VM, that’s how you do it, but custom attributes are key-valued pairs. I’m not sure how that makes sense with tags.

First off, you will need PowerShell and PowerCLI both installed on your machine. You can do this from any Windows host that can talk to vCenter. If you’re using Windows 7 or above, you should not need to download PowerShell, but you can download it here if necessary: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34595. You can get the VMware PowerCLI here: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/get-download?downloadGroup=PCLI501. There’s an access restriction in PowerShell by default that will not allow PowerCLI commands to run if it’s turned on. The installer will ask if you want to turn it off – you can have the installer do it for you. After it’s all installed, you can move onto the next step.

The first thing we need to do is to authenticate against vCenter. You can do this with:
We’ll need to find out what the custom attributes are. You can get them by running:
Connect-VIServer -user -pass for example:
Connect-VIServer 10.5.10.204 -user domain\administrator -pass P@SSw0RD!

Before we do any backup, we need to find out what the custom attributes are. You can do this by running
$vm=get-vm

If you want to read the custom fields, you can type:
$vm.Customfields

You can output those custom fields into a file or whatever you want. When you want to write those field back into a VM, you would do it this way:

After registering the VM, you can run this to assign the new vm:
$newvm = get-vm

Then loop through the custom fields and set them
foreach ($field in $vm.Customfields) {set-annotation -Entity $newvm -customattribute $field.Key -Value $field.Value }

This should set the custom fields that you will need.

How to backup your iPhoto pictures and videos to a NAS w/ rsync

This is how I backup my iPhoto stuff. I know that Apple has tools to do this, but I don’t use TimeMachine and keep most of my backups on my NAS.

I also keep my iPhoto Library on an external drive (to save space on my local SSD drive).

This is the simple script that I run in the Terminal:

#!/bin/bash
    if [ -d /Volumes/Monster/Private/iphoto_pictures ]; then
    if [ -f lock ]; then
exit 1
    fi
      touch lock
rsync -av /Volumes/Fujin/iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary/ /Volumes/Monster/Private/iphoto_pictures/iPhoto\ Library
   rm -rf lock
     fi;

What I’m doing here is first off, checking to see if the NAS is mounted. In my case, my mount name is “Monster” and the directory were I put my pictures is /Private/iphoto_pictures, so I check to see if the directory exists. If it does, I proceed to check if a lock exists. The reason I create a lock is so that I don’t have more than 1 backup job running at once. I keep this script running in my crontab, so that if the NAS is mounted and there is no lock, it will call rsync to copy all of the files in my iPhoto library into the one on the NAS.

I’ve had no issues with restoring so far – to restore, just need to rsync the other way.

Hope this helps.

Wait … before you move to Tomato from DD-WRT!

If you’re reading this, it’s probably too late. You’re probably already running into this issue:

and it’s probably driving you nuts!

If you haven’t done the move yet, good. Telnet into the router and run:

nvram get http_username

and

nvram get http_passwd

The way that Tomato and DD-WRT store passwords usernames and passwords is different – DD-WRT stores them encrypted whereas Tomato doesn’t, so with this, you can use it to log into Tomato after you’ve done the move. I call it a move and would hate to call it an upgrade, because some hardcore DD-WRT users might be offended.

Now, if you haven’t done this already and are seeing the error, this will be interesting. With the ASUS router, I think I was able to just do a 30-30-30 reset and it took care of it. Unfortunately with Shibby’s implementation of Tomato, they don’t implement the reset button, so you can press the reset button until you’re blue in the face and it won’t do a thing. On other routers, you may need to press the SES/AOSS button. On the Netgear Nighthawk, it’s the WIFI on/off button. You can hold it down and it will start a password-less telnet daemon at port 233 if held for 20+ seconds. So, when you’re booted into Tomato (the web login will still say DD-WRT) and you can’t log in, hold the button down for 20+ seconds and then go to the command prompt and run:

telnet <router IP> 223

There, you should be able to run the 2 ‘nvram get’ commands and use that info to log into the router and do a reset from there.

Hope this helps!

Name	Data value
Desktop	`%USERPROFILE%\Desktop`
My Music	`%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music`
My Pictures	`%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures`
Personal	`%USERPROFILE%\My Documents`