napp-it v500s to v0.8h upgrade and then Solaris Express 11 to Solaris 1 upgrade (now)

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einstein-a-go-go

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Jun 11, 2012
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okay, we've been working with napp-it 0.500s for sometime quite happily, for NFS and iSCSI solutions in our VMware Lab, until someone throught it a good (or bad) idea to run Updates on Napp-it and Solaris Express 11 svn_151a platform.

These are the course of events from the Admin member which broke Napp-it!

1. He decided to run the napp-it update routine from 0.500s to 0.8h (on svs_151a), this broke napp-it, giving an interface.pl issue, in the gui, but NFS, CIFS, iSCSI were still working at this point.

2. He then decided it was possibly an outdated version of Solaris, after updating Solaris svs_151a, which after 1GB upgrade, has now upgraded the platform to Solaris 11. At this point NFS, CIFS and iSCSI were no longer working, and I get involved.

3. I just quickly re-installed Napp-It 0.8h, this seemed to work okay, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI all working again, and configuration seems fine, Virtual Machines all working, VMware happy.

BUT, a few things I've noticed:-

and due to two upgrades Solaris and Napp-it difficult to tell why it's broke:-

1. Bonnie, on selecting Start does not ever state running, and Bonnie does not function from napp-it.

2. ddbench, if running ddbench from napp-it - default 10.24 GB sample,

write tests are displayed, but read tests are never displayed.

write 10.24 GB via dd, please wait...
time dd if=/dev/zero of=/test/dd.tst bs=1024000 count=10000

10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out

real 59.1
user 0.0
sys 13.1

10.24 GB in 59.1s = 173.27 MB/s Write

read 10.24 GB via dd, please wait...
time dd if=/test/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=1024000


Comments? (other than shot the Admin team member!)
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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1. Update from napp-it 0.5 to 0.8 must be done via the wget installer
see http://www.napp-it.org/downloads/changelog.html

2. Solaris 11 is quite different to Solaris 11 Express regarding
sharing, some options and libraries. Some programms like bonnie,
vmware tools and powermanagement are not running/working.

3. Highest free ZFS version is 28, Solaris Express is 31 and Solaris 11
is ZFS V.33. If you update the pool-version, you have no way to go back.
 

einstein-a-go-go

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Jun 11, 2012
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Thanks for reply.


1. Update from napp-it 0.5 to 0.8 must be done via the wget installer
see http://www.napp-it.org/downloads/changelog.html
Unfortunately too late, as he hit Update from within Napp-it GUI!

2. Solaris 11 is quite different to Solaris 11 Express regarding
sharing, some options and libraries. Some programms like bonnie,
vmware tools and powermanagement are not running/working.
Yes, I would have thought with a 1Gig worth of changes it was a different beast, again, he did not release hitting the Update Button, would have changed the beast!

This is a physical server, not a virtual server, so no VMware Tools, Power Management could not really give a monkeys about, it's a NAS Server 24x7x365.

Oh, so Bonnie does not work on Solaris 11 - is that confirmed somewhere as a Napp-it Bug?


3. Highest free ZFS version is 28, Solaris Express is 31 and Solaris 11
is ZFS V.33. If you update the pool-version, you have no way to go back.
Yes, we were aware there was no way back, the pools were not upgrade, but we have since upgraded them, as there is no way back to Express from Solaris 11! from where we are the damage has been done.

I was just checking that the weirdness with Napp-it, could because of Solaris 11.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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Unfortunately too late, as he hit Update from within Napp-it GUI!
Oh, so Bonnie does not work on Solaris 11 - is that confirmed somewhere as a Napp-it Bug?.
napp-it 0.5 is already installable even over a 0.8 release via
wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit05 | perl
so it would have been possible to even restore the Solaris Express install with napp-it 0.5

Then changes, bugs and problems with updates are on the changelog page.

about bonnie:
I would not declare it as a napp-it bug when a tool like bonnie is not running properly under Solaris 11.
But the dd values are quite similar so bonnie is not really needed.

And last thing.
Solaris/OI is fully functional without napp-it via CLI. There was no reason to worry.
napp-it provides comfort to help with daily management tasks.
 
Last edited:

einstein-a-go-go

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Jun 11, 2012
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napp-it 0.5 is already installable even over a 0.8 release via
wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit05 | perl
so it would have been possible to even restore the Solaris Express install with napp-it 0.5

Then changes, bugs and problems with updates are on the changelog page.

about bonnie:
I would not declare it as a napp-it bug when a tool like bonnie is not running properly under Solaris 11.
But the dd values are quite similar so bonnie is not really needed.

And last thing.
Solaris/OI is fully functional without napp-it via CLI. There was no reason to worry.
napp-it provides comfort to help with daily management tasks.
the logic the Admin Guy had, was 0.8h broke because it needed a Solaris Update!

So, he Updated from 0.5 to 0.8, then updated Solaris, which made things worse from Express to Solaris 11, and then

I re-installed Napp-it, because surprise, surprise the Solaris update nacked everything!

Yes, the Admin uses Napp-it, I use CLI!

Okay, so Bonnie and Solaris 11 issue! (okay me understand that one!).

Any reason for dd not working in Napp-it.....?
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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bonnie and dd?

dd works if the value is under 10GB!

but read never gives a result....very odd.
Only dd
But unlike bonnie that runs in the background, the dd bench from the Web-UI is a pure cgi-call
where you get a timeout after a few minutes - especially with the read part that lasts much longer to finish.

dd checks with larger filesize needs fast disks or you can use only smaller data amounts.
Otherwise start the displayed dd check at console.

When I have some time, I may rewrite the dd check to run in the background like the bonnie bench.
 
Last edited:

einstein-a-go-go

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Jun 11, 2012
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Only dd
But unlike bonnie that runs in the background, the dd bench from the Web-UI is a pure cgi-call
where you get a timeout after a few minutes - especially with the read part that lasts much longer to finish.

dd checks with larger filesize needs fast disks or you can use only smaller data amounts.
Otherwise start the displayed dd check at console.

When I have some time, I may rewrite the dd check to run in the background like the bonnie bench.
very strange dd used to work under Solaris Express 11.

very strange, it's also busted at the console!

Write for 10GB works okay, but Read, never displays an output.

e.g. this does not result in any output

time dd if=/test/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=1024000
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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very strange dd used to work under Solaris Express 11.

very strange, it's also busted at the console!

Write for 10GB works okay, but Read, never displays an output.

e.g. this does not result in any output

time dd if=/test/dd.tst of=/dev/null bs=1024000

Worked for me either via Web-UI and CLI on S11
Must be another local problem

(space, quota?)
 

einstein-a-go-go

New Member
Jun 11, 2012
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Worked for me either via Web-UI and CLI on S11
Must be another local problem

(space, quota?)
only occurs on Read, not write, and it's okay with smaller values than 10GB, very wierd, oh well add to the bug list!

space and quotas are okay.

I'll move on.....

thanks for reply