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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2019

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My LSI adapters and ESXi 6.5

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/03

So I won’t forget:

Direct download links in September 2017:

[WayBack] How to upgrade LSI MegaRaid SAS controller firmware using FreeDOS – Teksupport.in

Notes:

LSI provider install (SIM-S, SIMS, CIM, WEBM):

  1. Download the latest version (at the time of writing VMW-ESX-5.5.0-lsiprovider-500.04.V0.66-0002-5751577.zip)
  2. Unzip into /tmp
  3. esxcli software vib install -f -v /tmp/vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib
  4. wait for the VIB install to complete
  5. suspend or shutdown all VMs
  6. reboot the ESXi machine
  7. esxcli system wbem set --enable true
  8. Browse to https://192.168.71.91/ui/#/host/monitor/hardware/storage to see if SIM-S is working

MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) operation notes

A few tricky things to get right:

  • waiting: MSM is unbelievably slow (starting on SSD takes 10 seconds; discovery 30; connecting to host 60 – without any indication something is happening; fetching host data another 60;
  • old MSM versions are unstable (especially 14.x and lower), so keep current
  • ensure the hosts file on both the ESXi and Windows side match (otherwise it won’t discover anything, or discover as 0.0.0.0)
  • enable promiscuous mode on your vSwitch
  • if all else fails, disable any firewalls then enable bit by bit to see where it went wrong

Great installation steps:

MegaCLI installs

  1. Download the latest version that has VMware support (at the time of writing 8-07-07_MegaCLI.zip)
  2. Unzip into /tmp
  3. esxcli software vib install -f -v /tmp/VmwareMN/vmware-esx-MegaCli-8.07.07.vib
  4. wait for the VIB install to complete

Now you can the command /opt/lsi/MegaCLI/MegaCli (yes the casing of these two is different!) but you must to it in that directory, or ensure the LD_LIBARY_PATH contains /opt/lsi/MegaCLI.

StorCLI installs

Based on [WayBack] StorCLI unter VMware vSphere installieren – Thomas-Krenn-Wiki

  1. Download the latest version that has VMware support (at the time of writing 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip)
  2. Recursively uncompress the ZIP file into /tmp**
  3. esxcli software vib install -f -v /tmp/storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/vmware-esx-storcli-1.23.02.vib
  4. wait for the VIB install to complete

Now you can the command /opt/lsi/storcli/storcli but you must to it in that directory, or ensure the LD_LIBARY_PATH contains /opt/lsi/storcli.

Example:

execute-storcli.sh /cALL show all | grep 'Controller = \|Model = \|Serial Number = \|Firmware'a

The vib file in "Vmware-NDS/" folder works with native driver.
The vib file in "Vmware-MN/" folder works with VMKlinux driver.

So I did a bit more searching based on the files in the VMware directories and came up with this list:

  • storcli_All_OS/Vmware/storcli.zip
    • Looks like it targets ESXi 3.x and older
  • storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/vmware-esx-storcli-1.23.02.vib wit  storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/VMWARE_MN_Readme.txt
    • Targets the vmklinux drivers that are being phased out with ESXi 5.5 and up
  • storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/vmware-esx-storcli-1.23.02.vib with storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/VMWARE_MN_NDS_Readme.txt
    • Targets the New Driver architecture introduced with ESXi 5.5 and used more and more since then

Background reading:

** unzip doesn’t work:

# unzip -d /tmp/ 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip
Archive: 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip
inflating: 1.23.02_StorCLI.txt
unzip: short read

But a combination of 7za and unzip does work:

# 7za x -o/tmp/ 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip
7-Zip (a) [32] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,32 bits,20 CPUs Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630L v4 @ 1.80GHz (406F1),ASM,AES-NI)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 48778476 bytes (47 MiB)

Extracting archive: 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip
--
Path = 1.23.02_StorCLI.zip
Type = zip
Physical Size = 48778476

Everything is Ok

Files: 2
Size: 48928561
Compressed: 48778476

# unzip -d /tmp/ /tmp/storcli_All_OS.zip 
Archive:  /tmp/storcli_All_OS.zip
   creating: storcli_All_OS/
   creating: storcli_All_OS/EFI/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/EFI/license.txt
   creating: storcli_All_OS/EFI/UDK/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/EFI/UDK/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/EFI/UDK/storcli.efi
   creating: storcli_All_OS/FreeBSD/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/FreeBSD/FreeBSD_readme.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/FreeBSD/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/FreeBSD/storcli.tar
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/FreeBSD/storcli64.tar
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Linux/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux/LINUX_Readme.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux/storcli-1.23.02-1.noarch.rpm
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-OEL-Sparc/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-OEL-Sparc/license_OELSparc.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-OEL-Sparc/storcli64-1.23.02-1.sparc64.rpm
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Big Endian/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Big Endian/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Big Endian/storcli.tar
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Little Endian/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Little Endian/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Little Endian/Readme.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Linux-ppc/Little Endian/storcli64_1.23.02_ppc64el.deb
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris/SOLARIS_Readme.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris/storcli.pkg
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris Sparc/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris Sparc/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Solaris Sparc/storcli.pkg
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Ubuntu/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Ubuntu/read_me.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Ubuntu/storcli_1.23.02_all.deb
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/license.txt
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/Linux/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/Linux/storcliKL-1.23.02-1.noarch.rpm
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/Rel_read_me.txt.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/storcli.zip
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/Windows/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware/Windows/StorCLIKL.zip
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/vmware-esx-storcli-1.23.02.vib
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-MN/VMWARE_MN_Readme.txt
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/vmware-esx-storcli-1.23.02.vib
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Vmware-OP/VMWARE_MN_NDS_Readme.txt
   creating: storcli_All_OS/Windows/
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Windows/license.txt
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Windows/storcli.exe
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Windows/storcli64.exe
  inflating: storcli_All_OS/Windows/WIN_ReadMe.txt

9260-8i firmware update

  1. Download the latest firmware (at the time of writing 12.15.0-0239_MR_2108_SAS_FW_2.130.403-4660.zip) into /tmp
  2. unzip -d /tmp/ /tmp/12.15.0-0239_MR_2108_SAS_FW_2.130.403-4660.zip
  3. Find out the controller number
  4. Where 0 is the controller number, execute/opt/lsi/storcli/storcli /c0 download file=/tmp/mr2108fw.rom
  5. Wait for the firmware update to complete
  6. Suspend or shutdown all VMs
  7. Reboot

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 2 Comments »

Registering/unregseting Windows file associations with Delphi

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/02

As I need this one day: [WayBack] Just in case I need this again… >Free library DSiWin32 … now implements this as DSiRegisterUserFileAssoc and DSiUnregisterUserFileAssoc <… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

Note file has moved from WayBack: gpdelphiunits.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/DSiWin32.pas to [WayBack] OmniThreadLibrary/DSiWin32.pas at master · gabr42/OmniThreadLibrary · GitHub because Google code has shut down.

There still is [WayBack] Google Code Archive – Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting: gpdelphiunits, but maintenance is now part of [WayBack] GitHub – gabr42/OmniThreadLibrary: A simple and powerful multithreading library for Delphi

Related: [WayBack] delphi – How to associate a program with a file type, but only for the current user? – Stack Overflow

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

GExperts: searching for case-insensitive “T*List.Create” but not “TStringList.Create”

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/02

Just learned that partial exclusion can be done with the case-insensitive GExperts Grep Search like this:

T[^s][^t][^r][^i][^n][^g].*List.*\.Create

This will skip TStringList.Create, but matches TMyList.Create.

I’d rather have done something like this, but the Delphi RegEx does not support negative lookbehind:

^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]* *: *T(<!string)[a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *;$

So the alternative is to search for this:

^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]* *: *T[a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *;$

then exclude all the case insensitive TStringList entries from it, however GExperts did not support that at the time of writing.

This is an intermediate that works for some of the times:

^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]* *: *T[^s][^t][^r][^i][^n][^g][a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *;$

–jeroen

^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]* *: *T[^s][^t][^r][^i][^n][^g][a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *$;
^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]*: .T[a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *;$;
^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]* *: *T(?!string)[a-zA-Z0-9_]*ListO? *;$

Posted in Delphi, Development, GExperts, RegEx, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Show SCSI / HBA modules in ESXi 6.5 with file and version information

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/02

A small script I made: Show SCSI / HBA modules in ESXi 6.5 with file and version information:

MODULES=`esxcfg-scsidevs --hbas | awk 'FNR > 0 {print $2}'`
for MODULE in $MODULES ; do
    # echo "Probing $MODULE"
    vmkload_mod --showinfo $MODULE | grep 'file: \|Version'
done

The script is based on ideas from [WayBack] Determining Network/Storage firmware and driver version in ESXi 4.x and later (1027206) | VMware KB

It works in at least ESXi 6.5 where it shows this on one of my systems:

 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/lsi_msgpt3
 Version: 12.00.02.00-11vmw.650.0.0.4564106
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmw_ahci
 Version: 1.0.0-39vmw.650.1.26.5969303
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmw_ahci
 Version: 1.0.0-39vmw.650.1.26.5969303
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmw_ahci
 Version: 1.0.0-39vmw.650.1.26.5969303
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/lsi_mr3
 Version: 6.910.18.00-1vmw.650.0.0.4564106
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/megaraid_sas
 Version: Version 6.603.55.00.2vmw, Build: 4564106, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Oct 26 2016
 input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmkusb
 Version: 0.1-1vmw.650.1.26.5969303

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in bash, Development, ESXi6.5, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Note that the Delphi superobject library has changed to “not maintained” in december 2018, has problems with large address aware

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/02

A while ago I found out the [WayBack] not maintained status · hgourvest/superobject@f1c42db · GitHub.

This means you should not use the [WayBack] superobject JSON library in Delphi any more: there won’t be any fixes.

Many people use it, especially because it used to be much more stable than the built-in JSON support of Delphi.

One breaking issue in superobject is the lack of large address space support: due to the pointer calculations in various places, it does not support pointers above the 2 gibibyte boundary as filed in the 2016 [WayBack] Issues with {$SetPEFlags IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE} · Issue #22 · hgourvest/superobject · GitHub

This gives problems in at least this case:

  • enabling {$SetPEFlags IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE} (in older Delphi 7 through 2006 also versions this was {$SetPEFlags $20})
  • using top-down memory allocation, for instance by:
    • a user setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management value AllocationPreference to hex value 00100000
    • using FastMM4 with the (default) {$define AlwaysAllocateTopDown} setting

Example registry file and batch file to enable top-down memory (reboot afterwards):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"AllocationPreference"=dword:00100000

Command to view:

reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" | findstr "AllocationPreference"

Command to enable:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v AllocationPreference /t REG_DWORD /d 00100000 /f

Command to disable:

reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v AllocationPreference /f

Large Address Aware is a nightmare

Be very very very careful with this, and by enabling Large Address Aware to your executables, as many times they can load 3rd party libraries that often are beyond your control.

Even if there is a slight chance that your code is being used with Large Address Aware enabled, then follow guidelines line in [WayBack] windows – Unit Testing for x86 LargeAddressAware compatibility – Stack Overflow

Summary of [WayBack] memory – Drawbacks of using /LARGEADDRESSAWARE for 32 bit Windows executables? – Stack Overflow:

blindly applying the LargeAddressAware flag to your 32bit executable deploys a ticking time bomb!

by setting this flag you are testifying to the OS:

yes, my application (and all DLLs being loaded during runtime) can cope with memory addresses up to 4 GB.
so don’t restrict the VAS for the process to 2 GB but unlock the full range (of 4 GB)”.

but can you really guarantee?
do you take responsibility for all the system DLLs, microsoft redistributables and 3rd-party modules your process may use?

Edit 20240628

Earlier this year, the SuperObject Delphi library got archived on GitHub. Definitely unmaintained: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – hgourvest/superobject: This repository has been archived by the owner on Feb 27, 2024. It is now read-only.

The XSuperObject library mentioned below in a comment has not been maintained for 4 years either ( [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – onryldz/x-superobject: Delphi Cross Platform Rapid JSON: “vkrapotkin Now ParseFromFile can read UTF8-BOM files (#136) 2d3ec01 · 2020-12-09”), so I wonder what alternatives are still available.

--jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, EKON, Event, Software Development | 4 Comments »

@rw@mastodon.social on Twitter: “Personally, I prefer to increase the spacing for each successive indent according to the Fibbonaci sequence:… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/01

Awesome! [WayBack] @rw@mastodon.social on Twitter: “Personally, I prefer to increase the spacing for each successive indent according to the Fibbonaci sequence:… “

Via [WayBack] The indentation debate just ended – G+ – CodeProject

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Fun, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi function result assignments before the function returns…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/01

Eric Grange:

Actually it is not that assignments of function return values can happen “when the function raises an exception” but rather than they can happen before the function returns.

Note that this is not limited to large return types, it can also happen on reference counted types (string, dynamic array, variant and interface), though this is contextual as well…

Got bit by the interface thing a few months ago, an interface release was triggering an exception when the result was assigned, the call stack looked way out of synch with the code, so various compilation and and map file mismatch issues got investigated, before I dropped in asm view in the debugger, which made it all obvious.

I’ve quoted it in full as I’ve been bitten by this a few times as well, but never got to making a proper blog post on it.

Thanks Eric for phrasing this and David for bringing it up.

It actually has been the case since somewhere toward the end of the Turbo Pascal era.

Source: [WayBack] This program: {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} uses System.SysUtils; type TRec1 = r…

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »

1N73LL1G3NC3 15 7H3 4B1L17Y 70 4D4P7 70 CH4NG3. 573PH3N HAWKING

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/01

It might not be from him at all, but still a nice T-Shirt worthy quote:

1N73LL1G3NC3 15 7H3 4B1L17Y 70 4D4P7 70 CH4NG3.
573PH3N HAWKING

–jeroen

via: https://plus.google.com/+KevinPowick/posts/9D9hsyTwdFu

 

Posted in Fun, Quotes, T-Shirt quotes | Leave a Comment »

No, Visual Studio Community 2017 is not a 30 day trial – via Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/30

Visual Studio Community 2017 needs a license renewal every ~30 days with a Microsoft account: [WayBack] Visual Studio Community 2017 is a 30 day trial? – Stack Overflow.

This means it is not a trial, but it does not a Microsoft account, and communicate with it every ~30 days which you can get at [WayBack] Microsoft account | Sign In or Create Your Account Today.

Messages you can get:

  • “We could not download a license. Please check your network connection or proxy settings” – meaning: sign in with a Microsoft account by clicking “Add an account…”
  • “We could not download a license, Please ensure your accounts are authenticated.” – meaning you have to click “Reenter your credentials”

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »

bash – aliasing cd to pushd – is it a good idea? – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/30

On my research list: [WayBack] bash – aliasing cd to pushd – is it a good idea? – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

It has a nice discussion on complements to pushd/popd/cd/dirs including a very nice set of navd scripts that eases the navigation of the directory stack.

I found it because the ESXi busybox does not have pushd and popd and a cd won’t work from inside a shell script: [WayBack] linux – Why doesn’t “cd” work in a bash shell script? – Stack Overflow

It also made me find out that the ESXi busybox does support cd - to go to the previous directory. More info on that cd syntax is at [WayBack] bash – Difference between “cd -” and “cd ~-” – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, bash, Development, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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