<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Since the Lenny version of
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
+feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
+practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
+in the morning. This is done using the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
+
+<p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
+the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, This is done in
+LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
+every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
+shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
+the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
+package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
+10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
+try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
+and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
+blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
+the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
+for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
+machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
+starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot. If you have one of
+those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
+
+<p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
+also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
+central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
+<tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
+Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
-around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
-when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
-up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
-vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
-firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
-firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
-university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
-For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
-the tools to do so.</p>
-
-<p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
-fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
-our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
-so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
-
-<p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
-<a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
-with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
-which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
-site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
-download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
-within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
-be activated on the first reboot.</p>
-
-<p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
-Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
-servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/usr/bin/perl
-use strict;
-use warnings;
-use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
-BEGIN {
- # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
- my %rhelmodules = (
- 'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
- );
- for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
- eval "use $module;";
- if ($@) {
- my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
- system("yum install -y $pkg");
- eval "use $module;";
- }
- }
-}
-my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
-
-upgrade_dell();
-
-exit 0;
-
-sub run_firmware_script {
- my ($opts, $script) = @_;
- unless ($script) {
- print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
- exit 1
- }
- print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
-
- if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
- print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
- } else {
- print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
- }
-}
-
-sub run_firmware_scripts {
- my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
- # Run firmware packages
- for my $dir (@dirs) {
- print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
- opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
- while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
- next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
- run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
- }
- closedir $dh;
- }
-}
-
-sub download {
- my $url = shift;
- print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
- system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
-}
-
-sub upgrade_dell {
- my @dirs;
- my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
- chomp $product;
-
- if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
-
- # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
- system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
-
- my $tmpdir = tempdir(
- CLEANUP => 1
- );
- chdir($tmpdir);
- fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
- system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
- my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
- # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
- my $fwopts = "-q";
- if (@paths) {
- for my $url (@paths) {
- fetch_dell_fw($url);
- }
- run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
- } else {
- print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
- print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
- }
- chdir('/');
- } else {
- print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
- print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
- }
-}
-
-sub fetch_dell_fw {
- my $path = shift;
- my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
- download($url);
-}
-
-# Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
-# firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
-# machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
-sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
- my $filename = shift;
-
- my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
- chomp $product;
- my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
-
- print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
-
- my $xml = XMLin($filename);
- my @paths;
- for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
- my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
- my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
- my $oscode;
- if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
- $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
- } else {
- $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
- }
- if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
- {
- @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
- }
- }
- for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
- my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
-
- # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
- next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
-
- my $cpath = $component->{path};
- for my $path (@paths) {
- if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
- push(@paths, $cpath);
- }
- }
- }
- return @paths;
-}
-</pre>
-
-<p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
-it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
-index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
-moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
-outdated.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
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