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

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Archive for July 2nd, 2021

Did not realise that a 2018 Mikrotik vulnerability made it to the top of the CBL (SMTP composite black list) warning page for quite some months as the first ever device

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/02

Having it accidentally made it to the CBL (Composite Blocking List – Wikipedia) a long time ago, I discovered the page started with (WayBack link mine):

IMPORTANT: Many CBL/XBL listings are caused by a vulnerability in Mikrotik routers. If you have a Mikrotik router, please check out the [WayBack] Mikrotik blog on this subject and follow the instructions before attempting to remove your CBL listing.

It wasn’t one of my Mikrotik devices, as first of all they had all being patched out of the box from a really empty internal network before being externally exposed to the internet or more busy internal networks, and second because the CBL entry was a one off on one specific day where someone used our guest network.

Some CBL entries in the range where it was displayed, quite a while after CVE-2018-14847 became public:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Firewall, Hardware, Infrastructure, Internet, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, Power User, routers, SPAM, WinBox | Leave a Comment »

How to toggle finder’s “Keep Both” vs. “Skip”, and when copying or moving files – why does the “default” seem to change?

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/02

Based on:

Via macos “keep both” versus “skip” – Google Search

When copying or moving files on MacOS using the Finder, sometimes you get a popup with chooses “Skip”, “Stop”, “Replace”, but at other times “Keep Both”, “Stop”, “Replace”.

Empirically:

  • “Keep Both” happens with less than 5 duplicate file names
  • “Skip” happens with 5 or more 5 duplicate file names
  • The “Alt” or “Option” key toggles between “Keep Both” and “Skip”
  • This was introduced around OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, as it used to be always “Keep Both” in all Mac OS X versions up to and including Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The new behaviour has stayed in all OS X and macOS versions since.

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, macOS 10.12 Sierra, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User | Leave a Comment »

In my research list: reproduce failing ESXi updates.

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/02

Whenever I get time to dig into the actual cause (a reboot fixed it; I do not like problems disappearing by themselves).

I got these errors:

  1. cannot be live installed
  2. No space left on device

A reboot resolved the first, which might be caused by the /bootbank pointing to /tmp:

[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] ls -la /bootbank
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             4 May 20 08:44 /bootbank -> /tmp
[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] ls -la /tmp
total 36
drwxrwxrwt    1 root     root           512 Jun 23 06:13 .
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           512 Jun 17 13:13 ..
-rw-------    1 root     root            40 Jun 23 06:15 probe.session
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         14188 Jun 23 06:01 state.tgz
drwx------    1 root     root           512 Jun 23 04:44 vmware-root
[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] ls -la /tmp/vmware-root/
total 8
drwx------    1 root     root           512 Jun 23 04:44 .
drwxrwxrwt    1 root     root           512 Jun 23 06:13 ..
[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] cd ..

Normally, this points to a valid filesystem:

[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] ls -la /bootbank
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            49 Jun 23 06:29 /bootbank -> /vmfs/volumes/69ab34ee-f2e2bd4a-e013-a62e6975b9e7
[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] du -h `readlink /bootbank`
146.7M  /vmfs/volumes/69ab34ee-f2e2bd4a-e013-a62e6975b9e7

Research links

This was while applying patches using the [WayBack] VMware ESXi 6.7.0 Patch History pop-ups:

  • ESXi-6.7.0-20190604001-standard
    # Cut and paste these commands into an ESXi shell to update your host with this Imageprofile
# See the Help page for more instructions
#
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190604001-standard \
-d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient
#
# Reboot to complete the upgrade
  • ESXi-6.7.0-20190504001-standard
    # Cut and paste these commands into an ESXi shell to update your host with this Imageprofile
# See the Help page for more instructions
#
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190504001-standard \
-d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient
#
# Reboot to complete the upgrade

The swap settings were exactly the same:

  • Working

  • Failing

The USB devices were the same too:

  • Working

  • Failing

The failing system had even more partition space than the working system:

Working Failing

So was quite baffled that pointing the swap space pointing to a datastore solved the problem:

  • Working

  • Working too

You can also request this from the shell (via [WayBack] VMware vSphere 5.1):

[root@ESXi-X9SRI-F:~] esxcli sched swap system get
Datastore Active: true
Datastore Enabled: true
Datastore Name: QVO860_960GB
Datastore Order: 1
Hostcache Active: false
Hostcache Enabled: true
Hostcache Order: 0
Hostlocalswap Active: false
Hostlocalswap Enabled: true
Hostlocalswap Order: 2

Empty bootbank

Quoted in full as it cannot be archived in the WayBack machine nor Archive.is: Bootbanks mounts to /tmp folder and configuration changes are lost after rebooting of ESXi 6.0 Server (2148321)

Last Updated: 1/31/2019Categories: Troubleshooting

 Symptoms

  • Configuration changes on the ESXi is lost after rebooting the server.
  • Bootbank and altbootbank points to /tmp folder instead of pointing to the ESXi installed partition (this can be confirmed by running ls -l on root (“/”) folder)

 Cause

This issue happens if there is a delay in Fabric Login during the ESXi Boot process. By default, there is 3 Second timeout for Fabric login.
If Fabric Login takes more than 3 seconds, claiming the devices and discovering the LUNs happens parallelly and some LUNs will not be claimed on time during the boot process. If the boot LUN is not claimed before mounting the bootbank, ESXi boot process will mount bootbank and altbootbank to /tmp.

 Resolution

VMware introduced a new boot configuration parameter on ESXi 6.0 Patch 4 to handle the delay in Fabric logins.

To resolve this issue, follow the steps:

  1. To mount the bootbank to proper LUN, run this command on ESXi:
    localcli –plugin-dir=/usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/int/ boot system restore –bootbanks
  2. Upgrade ESXi to Patch 4 (Build number 4600944) available VMware Downloads.
  3. Connect to the Server KVM Console.
  4. During the ESXi boot process, press Shift+O and append the boot parameter devListStabilityCount=10 (its 10 Seconds, can be different value depending on flogi delay in the environment).
  5. After the boot process, append the devListStabilityCount=10 entry in the /bootbank/boot.cfg file.Note: This step is to ensure that change is persistent.

 Related Information

Following log from ESXi boot, HBA Link is UP and it took more than 3 seconds for the Fabric login completion (flogi succeeded) and Claim rules are enabled after 3rd Second :
2016-05-13T11:07:45.610Z cpu24:33363)<7>fnic : 1 :: link up
2016-05-13T11:07:45.610Z cpu24:33363)<6>host1: libfc: Link up on port ( 0)
2016-05-13T11:07:45.752Z cpu15:33365)<7>fnic : 2 :: link up
2016-05-13T11:07:45.752Z cpu15:33365)<6>host2: libfc: Link up on port ( 0)
2016-05-13T11:07:46.754Z cpu0:33369)<6>usb 1-1: suspended
2016-05-13T11:07:46.754Z cpu0:33369)<6>usb 1-1: suspended
2016-05-13T11:07:48.019Z cpu0:33315)ScsiClaimrule: 2463: Enabling claimrules for MPplugins.
2016-05-13T11:07:49.465Z cpu0:33351)<6>usb usb1: suspended
2016-05-13T11:07:49.465Z cpu0:33351)<6>usb usb1: suspended
2016-05-13T11:07:49.620Z cpu26:33353)<6>host1: Assigned Port ID 16369
2016-05-13T11:07:49.620Z cpu26:33353)<7>fnic : 1 :: set port_id 16369 fp 0x439e41ccebc8
2016-05-13T11:07:49.620Z cpu26:33353)<6>host1: fip: received FLOGI LS_ACC using non-FIP mode
2016-05-13T11:07:49.620Z cpu26:33353)<7>fnic : 1 :: update_mac 0x439e41ccec41M
2016-05-13T11:07:49.620Z cpu26:33353)<7>fnic : 1 :: FLOGI reg issued fcid 16369 map 0 dest 0x43915249bcfaM
2016-05-13T11:07:49.622Z cpu11:33158)<7>fnic : 1 :: flog reg succeeded
Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Build numbers and versions of VMware ESXi/ESX

—jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi6.7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »