Stefan Helander

Latest iLO2 firmware for HP Proliant DL380 Gen 5

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When looking for the latest iLO2 firmware for HP Proliant DL380 Gen 5 on the HPE website I found version 2.27 dated in 2015. To resolve browser issues with modern browsers I wanted to find a later firmware.

On this site you will find an exellent collection of all the latest iLO firmwares: https://pingtool.org/latest-hp-ilo-firmwares/

The latest listed iLO2 firmware is 2.33 dated march 2018 (when writing this post). The download links leads to HP sites so it should be legitimate. However, when unpacking the archive and investigating the Readme-file, only Gen 6 servers where listed.

HP Proliant iLO2 firmware

HP Proliant iLO2 firmware

It turns out the firmware works fine on my DL380 Gen 5 iLO2. Upgrade had to be done through Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, otherwise when trying to upgrade through other browsers I got the error message “iLO 2 firmware update has not started.” described here. The simple solution was to upgrade through MSIE 11.

Disclaimer: I can’t garantuee this will work for you or not get you in trouble with your system using the above procedure. It is just a description of what worked for me.

 

Stefan Helander

What Supermicro motherboard model does my server have?

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When getting the latest IPMI firmware for your Supermicro server, you need to know what model of the motherboard your server has. Often the server lives in a datacenter somewhere and you don’t want to go there, take down the server, pull it out of the rack and investigate it. If you are running Linux on it, you can simply check the dmesg log for “Supermicro”.

grep Supermicro /var/log/dmesg

Supermicro motherboard model

Supermicro motherboard model

Stefan Helander

open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/) is not within the allowed path(s) in WordPress [Solved]

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After a WordPress site move to new hosting, some images wouldn’t load and investigating the php error log revealed:

open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/) is not within the allowed path(s)

The solutions was to edit the database using phpMyAdmin, go to the table wp_options and set the correct value for upload_path.

Stefan Helander

VMware ESXi 5.5 guest freezes randomly [solved]

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On a VMware 5.5 ESXi host I suddenly experienced guest machined that hanged or froze. I had to reset the guest machine to get it up and running again. In the Events tab I could see entries like below at the time of freezing.

Lost access to volume 51d15c1a-17706da4-0ae6-001f29e5c998 (datastore1) due to connectivity issues. Recovery attempt is in progress and outcome will be reported shortly.
info
2018-10-11 04:03:50
datastore1

Device mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0 performance has deteriorated. I/O latency increased from average value of 69864 microseconds to 4383213 microseconds.
warning
2018-10-11 04:03:50
localhost

I started to check my disks and raid as I suspected a failing disk, but the disks and raid was in working order.

It turned out that the problem started around the time I did a guest snapshot. The datastore had about 14 GB free space out of it’s 924 GB capacity and this seems to be to0 little. After deleting a couple of snapshots the problem disappeared.

When the snapshots had been deleted, I also had to consolidate some of the virtual machines disks.

Stefan Helander

APS package installation_task stuck in ISPConfig3

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When trying to install an APS package on a ISPConfig3 system, the package was never installed and the status “installation_task” remained for the site I tried to install a package.

Investigating /var/log/ispconfig/cron.log revealed:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in /usr/local/ispconfig/server/lib/classes/aps_installer.inc.php:627

This problem can occur when curl is not installed on the target server, but that was not the problem in this case.

The server had been upgraded to Ubuntu 16.05 which runs PHP 7.0 instead of PHP 5. Curl was installed but the problem was that php7.0-curl was missing. The problem was resolved by:

sudo apt-get install php7.0-curl

The next issue that occured according to the logs was:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'ZipArchive' not found in /usr/local/ispconfig/server/lib/classes/aps_installer.inc.php:106

This problem was resolved by:

sudo apt-get install php7.0-zip

After this nothing more had to be done. The ISPConfig cron now successfully installed the APS package automatically.

Stefan Helander

iPhone, iPad or Mac computers unable to connect to wifi network

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The Apple products, iPhone, iPad and Mac computers sometimes has problems when connecting to a wifi network where other devices have no problems. The problem seems to be in the encryption used.

Make sure the router doesn’t have WPA/WPA2 mixed mode enabled, i.e. set it to WPA2 only. If encryption is configurable, use AES (not TKIP or TKIP/AES).

You can also read more about Apple recommendet wifi router settings here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202068

Stefan Helander

Installing Samsung Kies 3 on Windows 10 – error message “Side by side configuration is incorrect”

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When trying to install Samsung Kies 3 on a Windows 10 machine, the error message “Side by side configuration is incorrect” was displayed.

The reason to this error is that the Visual C++ 2008 runtime is not installed.

To solve the problem you need to download and install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008.
Download it from these links (directly from Microsoft), install them and then retry the Kies installation:

 

 

Stefan Helander

No email or folders visible when using IMAP account with Outlook 2013 or Office 365

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The problem seems to be caused by two updates from Microsoft; KB2837618 and KB2837643.

There is a simple solution though:

  • Right click on the affected account in the left pane and select IMAP Folders
  • Below the list of folders, uncheck the box for “When displaying hierarchy in Outlook, show only the subscribed folders.“
  • Exit Outlook 2013 / Office 365 and restart it
  • At the next synchronization the folders and mail will (hopefully) be visible
Stefan Helander

10 years anniversary in supplying technical solutions!

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Today, august 14, the site celebrates 10 years of supplying technical solutions to tech nerds all over the world! The first post was written on august 14, 2008. Happy anniversary to nerdia.net!

Do you have technical solutions or other things you find would be suitable to publish here – send me a message through the contact form.

Stefan Helander

Windows 10 desktop disappeared

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A Windows 10 user contacted me because the desktop had disappeared.

The first thing to check is if Windows is in “Tablet mode” which disables the desktop.

  • Go to the Control panel
  • Search for “tablet” and click on “Table mode settings”
  • In the “When I sign in” change from “Use the apropriate mode for my hardware” to “Use desktop mode”
  • Log out and log back in again

If this doesn’t help the user profile might have become broken. In this case, the solution is (description below is just short notes taken from my memory):

  • Go to the Control panel and select accounts
  • Create a new account
  • Using a user with administrative rights, copy the content from the users folders like desktop, documents etc to the new user’s folder.
  • Log in using the new user