If you’re used to the streamlined, straightforward method of creating iSCSI targets with Solaris you may have been a little perplexed to see an error something like this:

# cannot set property for ‘tank/iscsi/vol001′: invalid property ‘shareiscsi’

This is because the mechanism for creating and manipulating iSCSI has changed significantly in recent versions of Solaris.  I’m not sure why the original syntax wasn’t retained, but nevertheless, you can still achieve the same result with the following sequence:

• Install the new COMSTAR package:

# pkg install pkg:/storage-server

• Create your zfs volume as usual

# zfs create -V 200G tank/iscsi/vol001

This will create a 200Gb volume in the “tank” pool of type ‘volume’ (not ‘filesystem’)

• Using the new sbdadm(1M) command, create a new logical unit based on the volume you just created:

# sbdadm create-lu /dev/zvol/rdsk/tank/iscsi/v001
Created the following LU:

GUID                              DATA SIZE            SOURCE
--------------------------------  -------------------  ----------------
600144f01cfe070000004e3df8200001  214748364800         /dev/zvol/rdsk/tank/iscsi/v001

• Using the new stmfadm(1M) command, verify that you now have a logical unit available:

# stmfadm list-lu -v 600144F01CFE070000004E3DF8200001
LU Name: 600144F01CFE070000004E3DF8200001
    Operational Status: Online
    Provider Name     : sbd
    Alias             : /dev/zvol/rdsk/tank/iscsi/v001
    View Entry Count  : 1
    Data File         : /dev/zvol/rdsk/tank/iscsi/v001
    Meta File         : not set
    Size              : 214748364800
    Block Size        : 512
    Management URL    : not set
    Vendor ID         : OI
    Product ID        : COMSTAR
    Serial Num        : not set
    Write Protect     : Disabled
    Writeback Cache   : Enabled
    Access State      : Active

• Add a view to the newly created object, otherwise we won’t be able to do anything with it

# stmfadm add-view 600144F01CFE070000004E3DF8200001

• Turn on the required service, if you haven’t already.

svcadm enable -r svc:/network/iscsi/target:default

• FINALLY you can now create the iSCSI target:

# itadm  create-target
Target iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:1cfef154-fa27-4f03-de2d-946adda9eea4 successfully created

So there you go. Nowhere near as simple as setting a property on a ZFS filesystem, but you can eventually achieve the same result.

Summary:

• Create volume
• Create a scsi block device, using the newly-created volume as a backing store.
• Create a logical unit using the previously created block device
• Add a ‘view’ to the logical unit (think of this as making it visible to outsiders – giving them a ‘view’)
• Create an iSCSI target

Simple, eh? :/

The problem:
I wanted to monitor my Billion BiPAV 7800N ADSL modem with my SNMP monitoring tool of choice, cacti.

In case you missed it, Australians went to the polls on the weekend in an attempt to decide which of the two candidates for Prime Minister was likely to do the least amount of damage to the country.

In response, the Australian public delivered the first hung parliament in 70 years.

This election is notable for a number of reasons. One of the more interesting things is the complete failure of either party to offer anything approaching a vision for the future.

Back in 2007, Kevin Rudd was elected on a tide of public enthusiasm. Australia gave him a mandate to address Climate Change, apologise to the Stolen Generation, and abolish what many saw as draconian workplace relations laws.

Back then, people seemed genuinely enthusiastic about having a government that looked to be “in touch” with the voters.

Three years later and Australia was faced with two of the most bland and uninspired choices for the top job in the country imaginable. I’m not even exactly sure how it happened. Someone fell asleep at the wheel, I guess.

Come election time, on the face of it, defeating either party should have been a cakewalk.

Unfortunately both the major parties seem to have spent so much time and effort on doing just that that they neglected to focus on any type of positive message. Election fatigue quickly set in throughout most of the country

As the result unfolded during the course of election night, I put together this video. The election result screamed “downfall parody” to me.

I think Hitler got it right here.

Running (vanilla) Snow Leopard in a virtualbox VM is now a piece of cake.

If for some reason this doesn’t work (like, you don’t have a compatible processor) you might try

this method

instead.

What you’re going to need:

1. An Empire EFI ISO image. Download it from Prasys’ blog.
2. An ISO image of Snow Leopard. (NOT a .dmg). Take an image of a retail copy, available from your friendly retailer.
3. VirtualBox 3.2.6, which you can get from the VirtualBox website.

We’re going to set up the virtual machine from the command line once again. You’ll only need a total of 10 commands to get your VM installed and booted.

I’m assuming that your VM will be called “osx“. The base folder will be /vbox, you’ll store your ISO images in /vbox/iso and you’ll create a hard drive image for your virtual machine called “disk01.vdi“. These items are color coded below so you can see where you need to change them to suit your setup.

Virtual Machine initialization:

VBoxManage createvm –name osx –ostype MacOS_64 –register –basefolder /vbox
VBoxManage modifyvm osx –memory 1536
VBoxManage modifyvm osx –accelerate3d on –vram 32
VBoxManage storagectl osx –add sata –controller IntelAHCI –name “SATA Controller”
VBoxManage storagectl osx –add ide –controller PIIX4 –name “IDE Controller”
VBoxManage storagectl osx –name “SATA Controller” –hostiocache on
VBoxManage storagectl osx –name “IDE Controller” –hostiocache on
VBoxManage createhd –filename /vbox/osx/disk01.vdi –size 40960 –variant Split2G –remember
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “SATA Controller” –type hdd –port 0 –device 0 –medium /vbox/osx/disk01.vdi
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –type dvddrive –port 0 –device 0 –medium /vbox/iso/empireEFI.iso

Snow Leopard installation:

At this point, you can power on your virtual machine:

VBoxManage startvm osx –type vrdp

Note: I use vrdp because I like to run my VMs on servers, You can omit the “–type vrdp” and the reguar GUI will pop up.

At this point, the system will boot from the EmpireEFI image. You’ll see the chameleon logo and an image of a CDROM. Now you need to attach your Snow Leopard ISO to the Virtualbox VM:

VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –port 0 –device 0 –type dvddrive –medium /vbox/iso/snowleopard.iso

Once you’ve done that, go back to the VM and hit the F5 key to rescan, Chameleon will pick up the Snow Leopard image. From here you can hit Enter and watch as the system boots into OSX.

At that point you can follow the regular OS X install procedure: Partition your drive, and let the installer run to completion.

Post OS Installation precedure:

Once the installer complete, you’ll see a message “Install Failed”.  Don’t panic, it didn’t really.  We just need to give it a helping hand.

Switch the EmpireEFI image back again:

VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –port 0 –device 0 –type dvddrive –medium /vbox/iso/empireEFI.iso

Then reboot:

VBoxManage controlvm osx reset

Once this happens, you’ll see Chameleon come up with two choices to boot from.  Use your arrow key to select the disk you just installed OSX onto, and then type “-v” and hit enter.

OS X should boot (in verbose mode).  You’ll then be able to run through the account setup process, and eventually you’ll get your fresh, shiny OSX desktop.

Once you’re booted, you should run the “MyHack Installer”.  You can find an earlier version on the EmpireEFI CD in the folder “Extra/post-installation”. Since your networking already works, (assuming your host machine has internet connectivity)…

From the Virtual Machine, browse to http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=242 and download the latest, custom version (ready for 10.6.4 upgrade). Install the package and reboot.

With the release of Virtualbox 3.2 beta Mac OS X “guests” are now supported. 

The following guide will show you how to get OS X running inside virtualbox using the command line interface.  It applies to any host operating system, but in this case we’re adding an additional virtualization layer on top of opensolaris.

Officially, so as not to run afoul of the Apple EULA, if you want to run OS X as a Virtualbox Guest you need to be running Virtualbox on Apple hardware.

So, let’s imagine that instead of a nice, 64 core Intel nehalem server I actually have a Mac Pro on which I am – for the sake of argument and somewhat inexplicably – running Opensolaris.

Today we’re not only going to show you how to get Mac OS X running in Virtualbox, but also how to run it on Virtualbox running inside an Opensolaris container, or zone.  Just in case you had, for example, a need to add resource controls, or clone multiple versions of your resulting OS X virtual machine, teleport running VMs to another server…

You will need a copy of a modified version of the OS X install DVD.  If you search around you might locate something called “iDeneb_v1.6_1058_Lite_Edition.iso” which is what I used for this example.

If you don’t care about the Opensolaris container (or indeed the opernsolaris host OS) part of this tutorial, you can use the same sequence to run Mac OSX as a Virtualbox guest on any OS, provided you’ve installed the 3.2 beta version (or later).  You just need to ensure that whatever machine you’re using has a CPU that supports VMX.  Otherwise the OS X Install CD won’t load the Operating system properly.  (Other guests will be fine)

[Grab the beta here]

Click here to skip to the Mac OS X guest configuration section.

Step 1:  Create the opensolaris container

At the time of writing, I was using Opensolaris b133.  The bits I typed are in bold.

1.a.  Define a new zone.

root@nehalem:/# zonecfg -z vbox
vbox: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.

zonecfg:vbox> create
zonecfg:vbox> set autoboot=true

1.b.  Deciide where it will live.  In this case I chose /zones/vbox.

zonecfg:vbox> set zonepath=/zones/vbox

1.c Add some networking so that you can talk to the world. In this case I have ipmp set up for redundancy. Change to suit your actual network interface. Here, mine is ipmp0, and I’ve given it the address 1.2.3.4.

zonecfg:vbox> add net
zonecfg:vbox:net> set physical=ipmp0
zonecfg:vbox:net> set address=1.2.3.4
zonecfg:vbox:net> end

1.d.  This is the important part.  Add the two virtualbox drivers from the global zone. You can’t install devices in a container, so you need to make sure that the ones that the global zone uses are available to your container.

zonecfg:vbox> add device
zonecfg:vbox:device> set match=/dev/vboxdrv
zonecfg:vbox:device> end
zonecfg:vbox> add device
zonecfg:vbox:device> set match=/dev/vboxusbmon
zonecfg:vbox:device> end

Then all you need to do is create the zone.  This will take a few minutes.

zonecfg:vbox> commit
zonecfg:vbox> exit

root@nehalem:/# zoneadm -z vbox install
A ZFS file system has been created for this zone.
 Publisher: Using opensolaris.org (http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/ ).
 Publisher: Using contrib.opensolaris.org (http://pkg.opensolaris.org/contrib/).
 Image: Preparing at /zones/vbox/root.
[...]

Step 2:  Install the Virtualbox package.

This needs to be done in the global zone as well as your newly-created container.  So while our new container is installing, go ahead and grab the latest beta, and install it in the global zone:

root@nehalem:/var/tmp# pkgadd -d VirtualBox-3.2.0_BETA1-SunOS-r60785.pkg

The following packages are available:

 1  SUNWvbox     Oracle VM VirtualBox
 (i386) 3.2.0_BETA1,REV=2010.04.27.22.46.60785

Select package(s) you wish to process (or 'all' to process
all packages). (default: all) [?,??,q]:

Once that’s done and your new container is ready, boot it and you’ll need to install the exact same Virtualbox package in the container, as well as some other packages.

inside the new container:

root@vbox:/# pkg install SUNWuiu8 SUNWgccruntime
[.. output omitted ..]
root@nehalem:/var/tmp# pkgadd -d VirtualBox-3.2.0_BETA1-SunOS-r60785.pkg

At this point, we’re ready to create our Guest.  We’re going to do this using the command line interface, so this will work on any operating system.  It isn’t Solaris specific.

If you’re following along from the top, make sure you’ve logged into the Opensolaris container (use “zlogin <container>”).

You don’t need to be root.  Cut and paste the following lines, being sure to change the green parts as appropriate for your system.

[Note: Since this post was written creating a Snow Leopard capable VM is now a lot simpler.  If you have compatible hardware, you might be interested to check out this post instead. ]

VBoxManage createvm -name OSX -ostype MacOS_64 -basefolder /vbox -register
VBoxManage createhd ---filename /vbox/OSX/OSX.vmdk --size 10240
VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --cpus 8
VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --memory 8192
VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --usb on --usbehci on
VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --acpi on --ioapic on
VBoxManage storagectl OSX --name "SATA Controller" --add sata \
  --controller IntelAHCI
VBoxManage storageattach OSX --storagectl "SATA Controller" \
  --type hdd --port 0 --device 0 --medium /vbox/OSX/OSX.vmdk
VBoxManage storagectl OSX --name "IDE Controller" --add ide \
  --controller PIIX4
VBoxManage storageattach OSX --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 0 \
 --device 1 --type dvddrive --medium /misc/iDeneb_v1.6_1058_Lite_Edition.iso

Now a well-known issue with earlier versions of Virtualbox was that if you managed to install OS X you might have the guest os complaining that no keyboard was connected.  Indeed, this is what happened to me.  In order to get a Mac OS X guest to run with a keyboard and mouse inside Virtualbox, you need to add the following lines to your configuration:

VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --mouse usb
VBoxManage modifyvm OSX --keyboard usb

Now you can go ahead and boot it up, and install Mac OS X.  You don’t need to change any package selections for the iDeneb CD.  Once you’re done just, reboot and voila!

VBoxManage startvm OSX --type vrdp

To access your OSX console, use VRDP.  Point your RDP client at the IP address you gave your container (or whatever IP address is running Virtualbox as the host if you skipped the Opensolaris part).

[ One thing worth noting - sometimes Mac OS X struggles if you give it more than 1 virtual CPU.  If this happens, set the number of CPUs to 1, and reboot and it should be fine.]

If you’re one of those fancy-pants GUI users, this post probably isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if you can see the potential that awaits once you learn to control VirtualBox from the command line, you may be interested to know how to add and remove USB devices to your running VM.

Here’s the quick and dirty version:

1. Ensure you actually have USB support for your target VM:

   # VBoxManage showvminfo "somevm" | grep USB
   USB:             enabled

2. If it’s not set to “enabled” you’ll have to add USB support to your VM.  You’ll need to power off the VM to do this:
   

   # VBoxManage modifyvm "somevm" --usb on --usbehci on

3. To attach a device that’s plugged into the same system as your VM (in my case, a Sony USB memory stick), grab its UID as follows:

   # VBoxManage list usbhost
   Sun VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.4
   (C) 2005-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
   All rights reserved.
   
   Host USB Devices:
   [...]
   UUID:               2a2c7255-3b90-448e-aa7a-b1c5710ddd79
   VendorId:           0x054c (054C)
   ProductId:          0x0243 (0243)
   Revision:           1.0 (0100)
   Manufacturer:       Sony
   Product:            Storage Media
   SerialNumber:       6A08102832911
   Address:            0x54c:0x243:256:/pci@0,0/pci108e,5347@2,1
   Current State:      Busy
   

4. Create a usb filter which will tell VirtualBox to provide the USB device to your virtual machine when it’s detected as plugged in on the host:

   # VBoxManage usbfilter add 0 --target "somevm" --name usbstick \
                  --vendorid 054C --productid 0243

5. Go ahead and power on your Virtual Machine.  You’ll notice that the USB device (if it’s currently plugged in) immediately becomes unavailable on the host.  You can confirm that it’s attached and that you didn’t make a typo with the vendor and/or product IDs:

   # VBoxManage showvminfo "somevm"
   [...]
   Currently Attached USB Devices:
   
   UUID:               582313d4-1d51-41ea-a053-ba5ac552d2e5
   VendorId:           0x054c (054C)
   ProductId:          0x0243 (0243)
   Revision:           1.0 (0100)
   Manufacturer:       Sony
   Product:            Storage Media
   SerialNumber:       6A08102832911
   Address:            0x54c:0x243:256:/pci@0,0/pci108e,5347@2,1

That’s it.  You can mount and unmount this device now inside your VM.

You can do some neat stuff with USB and Virtualbox, but that’s a subject for another post.

Here’s a quick rundown on how to get Virtualbox running with iSCSI targets.

But first the why: why would you want to configure Virtualbox to use an iscsi target instead of a native disk image?

The answer is teleport.  Sure, you can use an NFS or CIFS share just as easily with teleport, but using iSCSI targets is just that little bit more fun.

If you’re just setting up a standalone virtualbox, stick with disk images on local filesystems.  The only reason to put your disk images on shared storage is so that teleport works.

For the uninitiated, teleporting is somewhat similar to VMWare’s “vMotion”.  It’s the term given to the process of moving the processing and networking of a virtual machine to a different physical host without any (much) interruption to the virtual host.

Unlike VMWare though, Virtualbox lets you teleport your VM to different types of machines.  That means you can teleport your VM from your linux machine to your Macbook Pro, over to your Opensolaris server and even to your Windows machine.  The only limitation seems to be that they must have the same processor family (Intel to AMD processors doesn’t appear to work… yet.)

In this example I’m using an Opensolaris server to serve iSCSI targets from my ZFS pool.  This gives me neat stuff like dedup and compression, as well as thin provisioning if I would like it.  It doesn’t matter if you’re using FreeBSD or indeed any other way of presenting iSCSI targets.

On the Opensolaris server:

• Create a zfs volume to be your iSCSI target.  Here I have a zpool named “xpool”.# zfs create -V 20G xpool/targetThis will create a 20Gb volume.  To use thin provisioning, use the -s flag to the zfs create command)
• Install the following packages if you haven’t already:
  SUNWiscsitu
  SUNWiscsitr
  SUNWiscsidmu
  SUNWiscsidmr
  SUNWstmf
  SUNWstmfu
• Share the target:
  # zfs set shareiscsi=on xpool/target
  (Note: if you have more recent version of Solaris, this command may fail with “invalid property ‘shareiscsi’ “.  In that case, see this post for instructions)
  
• Make note of the device’s ID:
  # iscsitadm list target
  Target: xpool/target
  iSCSI Name: iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:74cedff0-250c-eacc-b509-bc930dc897d6
  Connections: 0

Now you can create your Virtualbox virtual machine.  I’m using the command line here.  You can repeat these steps quickly on any machine where you’d like to teleport the machine to.  Besides, who needs one of them fancy-pants GUIs, anyhow?

First – register the iSCSI target as a virtualbox disk:

# VBoxManage addiscsidisk –server 1.1.1.1 –target iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:74cedff0-250c-eacc-b509-bc930dc897d6

Check that it worked…

# VBoxManage list hdds
Sun VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.4
(C) 2005-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

UUID:       dfab4e6a-4ad6-44fa-96e0-76d5504b92aa
Format:     ISCSI
Location:   1.1.1.1|iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:74cedff0-250c-eacc-b509-bc930dc897d6
Accessible: yes
Type:       normal

Now we can go ahead and create our VM.  You can see what types of VMs your server will support with the command:

# VBoxManage list ostypes

It’s probably best to make sure that the type of server you’re going to build is supported on all the hosts you plan on teleporting it to.  It might save a bit of pain and anguish later..

This is a simple VM with an IDE controller and a single hard disk.  We attach an ISO image to the IDE controller as the second device in order to install our OS.  Later we can attach the Virtualbox additions ISO here, too.

# VBoxManage createvm –name testvm –ostype WindowsXP –basefolder /vbox –register
Sun VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.4
(C) 2005-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Virtual machine ‘testvm’ is created and registered.
UUID: c8a5b6a3-6fb3-4b50-beb2-9a08e656392a
Settings file: ‘/vbox/testvm/testvm.xml’

Now we can add memory limits, disk controllers and disk devices:

# VBoxManage modifyvm testvm  –memory 1024 –cpus 4
# VBoxManage storagectl testvm –name “IDE Controller” –add ide –controller PIIX4
# VBoxManage storageattach testvm –storagectl “IDE Controller” –port 0 –device 0 –type hdd –medium dfab4e6a-4ad6-44fa-96e0-76d5504b92aa

I’m encouraged to see that self-defence is being taught to school kids (specifically girls) here in Australia.

I  was running a martial arts session with a group of schoolgirls recently and we were addressing the idea of self defence as part of our lesson.  I asked them whether they’d had any previous self defence training.

The general response was that they were shown a lot of techniques that they probably wouldn’t be able to remember.

And therein lies the problem when teaching “self defence”: Too much focus on technique.

Self defence is not about learning techniques. Self defence is about learning a mindset. More precisely, self defence is about learning to deal with confrontation.

If you’re going to begin to teach self defence to anyone, you need to cover the following topics:

Awareness

Is this person, place or situation dangerous?  How long would it take me to get from here to a safe place?  Is there anything that makes me appear vulnerable to a potential attacker?  Am I tired, injured or scared? Am I under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and if so, to what extend does that impair my ability to defend myself?

Dialogue

Every day, each new piece of information your brain encounters causes you to poses two questions to yourself:  “What does this mean?” and “What should I do?”.Unless you habitually moderate your self-talk, you’ll be unable to understand HOW you feel in response to a threatening situation.  If you don’t understand how your mental processes work, you have no hope of changing them.

(This is built on the skill of developed awareness).

FEAR

Many will tell you that “fear” stands for “False Evidence Appearing Real“.

Others will tell you that it really stands for “Fuck Everything And Run“.

People respond differently when facing fear.  It’s useful to be aware that it’s a perfectly natural response to threat.  It’s also useful to be able to process it effectively (dialogue) and move on.  Fear can completely paralyse you.  Make no mistake.  Learning to move beyond the sudden dump of adrenaline and act effectively is important.

More importantly, it’s important to decide, quickly, which way to interpret your fear and take action.  If it is false evidence, by all means move on to technique selection.  If not, fuck everything and run.  Fast.  Being brave and dead isn’t valuable to anyone.

Technique

First: learn to deal with realistic attacks.  This is not the simulated, slow-motion attacks you’ll find in most self defence classes.  If you can, train with someone who scares you a little.

Second: face up to some healthy doses of your own fear.  Go skydiving.  Try bungee jumping, or enter a full-contact sparring match.

Technique training should be about developing the above skills FIRST.  You’ll notice we haven’t addressed “how to stop a 6 foot hairy guy from stealing your wallet” yet.

Once you’ve worked on techniques that address your awareness, your internal dialogue and your fear – Then (and only then) can you begin to think about adding actual self offence techniques to your arsenal.

Remember – the best self defence technique you can have in your arsenal is an alert mind.

Master that, and you won’t find yourself in  99% of the dangerous situations that “regular” people stumble into.

The other 1%…  Well, that’s where martial arts may come in handy.

Today I’m going to let Rocky Balboa do most of the talking:

“It aint about how hard you hit,” says Rocky. “it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward”.

As a martial arts instructor, this is what I’m looking for: Someone who can learn to take the “hits” and keep coming back for more.

Do you put yourself through the gruelling 4-hour grading process? Do you willingly submit to year after year of bruises, breaks, blood, sweat and tears? And once you’ve done that, do you continue to look for harder and harder ways to test yourself?

Martial arts aren’t about learning to fight. The Rocky movies aren’t really about boxing, either…