David Rancourt Jr.

Switching up hosting & serving this blog with Git, Jekyll, Travis-CI, and Firebase

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

So I am firing this blog back up now that I am no longer silenced by my employment. Since the blog will be mostly text based articles, I don’t think using a VPS is a good idea for hosting as it costs too much, and also unnecessary for a static site using Jekyll generated content. Another reason to switch from using GitHub Pages is the lack of https support, as I want my visitors to this blog to know that they can read it in confidence that nothing has changed in transit between the hosting and their browser of choice.

In the years since I last posted, I have worked at NASA as a contractor and the work is very interesting and cool at the same time yet challenging. My wife and I now have a dog (Wirehaired Pointing Griffon) and a baby and really enjoy our time with both of them. I also will talk about my adventures in my Jeep here as well from time to time, outline the different projects I have done with it and along the journey to the places it takes us. Oh and the Washington Capitals have finally won a Stanley Cup!

Anyhow here’s what I did as far as setting up this website with Jekyll, Git, Travis-CI, and Firebase.

Setup your hosting with Firebase at https://firebase.google.com/
Download and install Jekyll on your local machine, here’s a great place to get started, and Jekyll docs are very useful. https://jekyllrb.com/
Setup a GitHub account at https://github.com, the repo can be public, there’s no need for a private repo anyways because a website still needs to see it for hosting to work correctly. Also by using GitHub we are able to backup the site at GitHub and on the local machine.
Setup a free account using your GitHub credentials at Travis-CI https://travis-ci.org and create a new build, turn on the repository you want to use Travis-CI to build & deploy from and use the following code in the config:

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{
  "os": "linux",
  "dist": "trusty",
  "sudo": false,
  "group": "stable",
  "script": [
    "set -e",
    "jekyll build"
  ],
  "install": [
    "npm install -g firebase-tools"
  ],
  "node_js": "7",
  "language": "node_js",
  "global_env": "NOKOGIRI_USE_SYSTEM_LIBRARIES=true",
  "after_success": [
    "firebase deploy --token \"$FIREBASE_API_TOKEN\""
  ],
  "before_install": [
    "rvm install 2.3",
    "rvm use 2.3",
    ". $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh && nvm install 6.1 && nvm use 6.1",
    "gem install bundler",
    "bundle check || bundle install"
  ]
}

To maintain operational security with your build & deploy it is highly recommended that you set your API token key for $FIREBASE_API_TOKEN in an environment variable and do not check the box for the token to show in the output log.
Create content for your site using Jekyll on your local machine and when you are ready to publish & deploy to the public interwebs, just do a simple git push to publish it.

Jeep Mods

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Mods that have been done to the Jeep. I list all items here, service work that has been done is also listed here as well with dates.

Purchase: June 2016
Sliders: LoD Offroad Signature Series
Skid Plates: JCR Offroad full skid plate package with trans crossmember
Soft top: Bestop Trektop NX
Lift: Metalcloak True Dual Rate 3.5”
Tires: Nitto Trail Grapplers 315/70R17
Tire Carrier: Rugged Ridge Spartacus HD Carrier
Grab Handles: Bartact coyote/black
Tool Bag: Blue Ridge Overland Gear Tool bag, BROG Recovery Backpack
Fog Lights: BajaDesigns Fog Light Kit Squadron Sport wide driving mode
Headlights: JW Speaker 8700 J2 Series black bezel
Steering stabilizer: Old Man Emu
Trackbar & Steering box brace: Synergy
C-Gussets: Artec Industries
On-board Air: ARB CKMA12, ARB Hose, ARB Digital Pressure Gauge
Switches: Switch-Pros SP8100, Blue Sea Systems Bus Bar, Blue Sea Systems in-line fuses
Rock Lights: Sunpie Amazon special white color.

Unlocking Locked VM's in ESXi

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So one of your virtual machines either won’t lock or got locked in ESXi and you need to fix it quickly? Well VMware’s KB can be pretty useful when it’s direct and to the point. However I found it difficult to figure out after a bit of digging around in my ESXi system. So I thought I would clarify this for everyone here. Often times you’ll probably see one of these errors:

A virtual machine cannot power on.
Powering on a virtual machine fails.
Unable to power on a virtual machine.
Adding an existing disk (VMDK) to a virtual machine that is already powered on fails with the error:

Failed to add disk scsi0:1. Failed to power on scsi0:1

When powering on the virtual machine you may see one of these errors:

Unable to open Swap File
Unable to access a file since it is locked
Unable to access virtual machine configuration

In the /var/log/vmkernel log file, you see entries similar to:

WARNING: World: VM xxxx: xxx: Failed to open swap file <path>: Lock was not free  

WARNING: World: VM xxxx: xxx: Failed to initialize swap file <path>

When opening a console to the virtual machine, you receive this error:

Error connecting to <path><virtual machine>, vmx because the VMX is not started

Powering on the virtual machine results in the power on task remaining at 95% indefinitely.
Cannot power on the virtual machine after deploying it from a template.
The virtual machine reports conflicting power sates between VMWare vCenter Server and the ESXi host console.
Attempting to view or open the .vmx file using the cat or vi command reports the error:

cat: can't open '[name of vm].vmx': Invalid argument

Any one of the above error statements that is output by your ESXi server there is an easy fix for it: The virtual machine files are commonly locked for run time use (i.e. when the host is running the machine) are usually any of the files in the directory. The easiest way to identify the locked file is to attempt to power on the VM and you will see an error message that will give you the full path to the VM’s directory plus the locked file. So the work around is as follows:

Login to the ESXi host via SSH.
Confirm that the virtual machine is registered on the server and obtain the full path to the VM. Run the following command:

# vmware-cmd -l

The output returns a list of VM’s registered to the host server. Should look similar to this:

[<datastore>] <VMDIR>/<VMNAME>.vmx

You the need to move the VM’s working directory:

cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/<VMDIR>

You can use any text editor to view the vmware.log file, near the end it will have the most verbose output related to your error. The command is really easy to fix the whole unlock/lock issue for the whole directory:

touch *

You should now be able to start up your VM without any issues.

Get Dell Service Tag & Express Service Code from Linux & Windows

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This article is for the masses who support Dell hardware and have to reach out to Dell Support every now and then. This is an awesome trick for those times when you need to get in touch with Dell’s technical support or to get drivers and other documentation from Dell. The following methods are known to be good with Windows and Linux.

1. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Windows System via RDP/VNC etc.

C:\wmic bios get serialnumber SerialNumber ABCDEF1

The following command can give you more information such as the make, model, and service tag.

C:\wmic csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber IdentifyingNumber Name Vendor ABCDEF1 PowerEdge 2950 Dell Inc.

2. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Windows System

If VNC or Remote Desktop isn’t available, you can execute the following command from your local machine to get the service tag of the remote machine.

C:\wmic /user:administrator /note:remote-host bios get serialnumber  
SerialNumber ABCDEF1

Note: replace remote-host with the machine name of your remote host.]

3. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Linux System

[remote-host]# dmidecode -s system-serial-number
ABCDEF1

4. Get DELL Express Service Code from your Service Tag

Service Tag is a base-36 integer. Once you have your service tag, you can calculate your Express Service Code yourself. Express Service Code is a base-10 integer. Dell mainly uses the Service Code for support based in-call routing. When you call Dell support, it may ask you for your express service code which you can easily enter in your telephone in the dial pad, as it is a bunch of numbers. Use the following tools to find express service code from service tag and vice-versa.

I have also tried this method on some of my other vendor equipment so far I have seen it work on the following:

IBM
HP Blades
HP Servers
Supermicro Servers

P2V Conversion Failure Fixed

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve been trying to convert a few Windows 2000 SP4 server to a VMWare machine for a while and running into the same issue. I would always get a MODEEXCEPTIONNOT_HANDLED BSOD right after the login screen would appear. I tried the normal fixes listed on the VMWare website including the right SP4 rollup 1 v2 and checking the versions of scsiport.sys. Fortunately, I stumbled across this wonderful article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/041105-windows-crash.html?page=1.

I set the virtual machine to a kernel mode dump and let it BSOD as recommended by the article. I then copied to memory.dmp file to my Windows 7 workstation where I had installed the debugging tools referenced in the article. I quickly identified usbsp.sys as the offending driver. I renamed it on the virtual and rebooted. Result? Perfect! I will definitely make sure I use this in the future to get a handle on blue screens when they pop up. Here is the relevant data from the process with the info highlighted in red. How cool is that?

The important bits to know is this section here: SYMBOL_NAME: usbsp+af5 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner MODULE_NAME: usbspIMAGE_NAME: usbsp.sys

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1:  00000000EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2:  00000000 ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0 - STATUS_WAIT_0 BUGCHECK_STR:  0x1E_0
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME:  System LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from f2695af5 to 8042be0b STACK_TEXT: f245fc78
f2695af5 0000001e 00000001 804b1cd8 nt!KeBugCheck+0xf WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be
wrong. f245fc90 804b1d5e 828696f0 82614000 f219fd08 usbsp+0xaf5 f245fd58 804b1f9f 0000008c 82614000 f219fd08
nt!IopLoadDriver+0x672 f245fd78 80417b47 f219fd08 00000000 00000000 nt!IopLoadUnloadDriver+0x3f f245fda8 80457838 f219fd08
00000000 00000000 nt!ExpWorkerThread+0xaf f245fddc 8046c8e6 80417a98 00000001 00000000 nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x54 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!KiThreadStartup+0x16 STACK_COMMAND:  kb FOLLOWUP_IP: usbsp+af5 f2695af5 8d45f4         
lea     eax,[ebp-0Ch] SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  1 SYMBOL_NAME:  usbsp+af5 FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner MODULE_NAME:
usbspIMAGE_NAME:  usbsp.sys DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  3cc859dd FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  0x1E_0_usbsp+af5 BUCKET_ID:
0x1E_0_usbsp+af5 Followup: MachineOwner