Yosemite brings Xsan 4, which brings a new way to add clients to an Xsan. Xsan Admin is gone. From now on, instead of scanning the network using Xsan Admin. we’ll be adding clients using a Configuration Profile. This is actually a much more similar process to adding Xsan clients to a StorNext environment than it is to adding clients to Metadata Controllers running Xsan 3 and below. But instead of making a fsnameservers file, we’re plugging that information into a profile, which will do that work on the client on our behalf. To make the Xsan configuration profile, we’re going to use Profile Manager. To get started, open the Profile…
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Yosemite Server And Logs
OS X Yosemite running the Server app has a lot of scripts used for enabling services, setting states, changing hostnames and the like. Once upon a time there was a script for OS X Server called server setup. It was a beautiful but too simplistic kind of script. Today, much of that logic has been moved out into more granular scripts, kept in /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup, used by the server to perform all kinds of tasks. These scripts are, like a lot of other things in Yosemite Server. Some of these include the configuration of amavisd, docecot and alerts. These scripts can also be used for migrating services and data. Sometimes the…
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Make iMovie Work With Network Volumes
I work with a lot of network storage and video world stuff. While most in the editorial world prefer FinalCut, Avid, Adobe and other tools for video management, I do see the occasional task done in iMovie. By default, iMovie doesn’t support using assets stored on network volumes. However, you can make it. To do so, just use defaults to write com.apple.iMovieApp with a boolean allowNV key marked as true: defaults write com.apple.iMovieApp allowNV -bool TRUE
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Access Qlogic Switches & Other Java Apps From OS X
Qlogic fibre channel switches are about the most common I see in Xsan environments. A common frustration when managing a Qlogic switch is that the Java runtime used to manage the switch is blocked from most OS X systems by default. But it’s pretty easy to get into them with a couple of minor adjustments. To get started, first download and install the latest Java from here. Once installed, open System Preferences on your Mac and then open the Java Preferences. Here, click on the Security tab. Click Edit Site List… In the pop-up, click Add and enter http:// followed by the name or IP address of your switch. Click…
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Test Volume Speeds for Xsan Metadata Controllers
I have used a variety of tools for testing the speed of Xsan volumes. But none have been as easy as the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test. It’s cute, it’s fast, it’s very informative and it requires no Terminal, unlike the other tools I’ve used for years. To use Disk Speed Test, first download it from the Mac App Store (it’s free). Then mount the volume you’d like to test and open the Disk Speed Test app. Click on the Settings icon in the middle and select the volume you’d like to test. Then click Start. Enjoy.
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Force Remove Metadata Controllers in Xsan
When you use Xsan Admin to remove a metadata controller, all metadata controllers must be accessible to do so. In many an upgrade scenario this has turned out to be challenging. Therefore, you can remove a metadata controller using the configuration files. To do so, open /Library/Preferences/Xsan/fsnameservers. In this file, you’ll see the IP address of all active metadata controllers that are used to manage any (or no) volumes as follows: 192.168.210.2 192.168.210.3 192.168.210.4 Remove the line with the IP address of the system you’ll be removing so it looks like the following, assuming you’re removing 192.168.210.2): 192.168.210.3 192.168.210.4 This needs to be repeated for all metadata controllers and clients.…
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Resolve Error 1006.0005 For Qlogic Switches
Error 1006.0005 can appear on a Qlogic fibre channel switch when using ACL zones. If you don’t need ACL zones, then the easiest thing to do here is to swap the offending zone back to a soft zone. To do so, open the Qlogic Switch and use the Edit menu to select “Edit Zoning …” From the zone editor, right-click on the zone to change and click on Set Zone Type. From the Set Zone Type pop-up, click on the option for Soft. Save the zoning and provided that you can actually use soft zones you are done. Now, what if you can’t use soft zoning? In that case, I…
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Recycling The Promise X10
The Promise X30 and beyond have been out for some time. I find that as the older X10 units reach the next phase of their lifecycle, removing LUNs and RAIDs from the units is a necessity. While many are put back into production as near-line or backup storage (with new drives even) these RAIDs still need to be cleaned off. As such, an example of doing so might be creating one large LUN each of an E+J pair. First, let’s delete our spare drives. To do so, click on Spare Drives in the sidebar. Then click on the Delete tab. Check all of the boxes and then click on the…
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Disable Swap Files In OS X
Every now and then I need to reclaim that space in /var/vm or I need to stop a process from paging to swap files while I’m troubleshooting something else. I in no way endorse disabling swap files (which basically kills using swap files as a part of your overall virtual memory) for extended periods of time. However, it has saved me in the case of stability concerns long enough to get a system patched or something like that. To disable OS X swap files, all you need to do is stop the com.apple.dynamic_pager daemon and restart. Use launchctl to stop: sudo launchctl unload -wF /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist Once restarted, you may need…
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compgen like a boss
I’ve traditionally used the apropos command to find new commands. But you can also use the compgen command, which looks at the completion matches for given words, to find a list of commands that you can run, simply use compgen with a -c option: compgen -c You can parse information for a single command: compgen -c | grep apropos You can also use -a for aliases, -b for bash built-ins and -k for bash keys, as well as `-A function` for functions. You can then string ’em together: compgen -abckA function I won’t paste the output but I’ll let you pipe it to grep to compgen like a boss. Enjoy!