HOWTO: ESXi and SSH

VMware ESXi is a bare metal hypervisor.

One of the most asked questions is how can I SSH to an ESXi host?

By default this isn’t possible. But there’s a way to get this working, just do the following:

1. Go to the ESXi console and press alt+F1
2. Type: unsupported
3. Enter the root password(No prompt, typing is blindly)
4. At the prompt type “vi /etc/inetd.conf”
5. Look for the line that starts with “#ssh” (you can search with pressing “/”)
6. Remove the “#” (press the “x” if the cursor is on the character)
7. Save “/etc/inetd.conf” by typing “:wq!”
8. Restart the management service “/sbin/services.sh restart”

Done!

Update for ESXi 3.5 Update 2 - With Update 2 the service.sh command no longer restarts the inetd process which enables SSH access. You can either restart your host or run ps | grep inetd to determine the process ID for the inetd process. The output of the command will be something like 1299 1299 busybox      inetd, and the process ID is 1299. Then run kill -HUP <process_id> (kill -HUP 1299 in this example) and you'll then be able to access the host via SSH.

Source: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/08/10/howto-esxi-and-ssh/

Create a virtual interface in Solaris

Virtual interfaces allow a single ethernet interface to listen on additional IP addresses.

Given an ethernet interface hme0 (use ifconfig -a to identify the names of your interfaces), you can create a subinterface called hme0:1 with the following command:

ifconfig hme0:1 plumb

You can set the IP address of the interface to 192.168.1.15 and turn on the interface with the following command:

ifconfig hme0:1 192.168.1.15 up

Unless you do some additional nonstandard things in your network, all of the subinterfaces on a physical interface need to be in the same subnet.

To make the virtual interface persist following a reboot, you can add the ip address or hostame from /etc/hosts in the file /etc/hostname.hme0:1

Source : http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/35/create-a-virtual-interface-in-solaris/

Enable SSH with root access on Solaris 10

1. Open up /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set "PermitRootLogin" to "yes".
   
2. You also need to restart the sshd process. This is done by killing the existing one (use ps -aux|grep sshd to get the process ID, then use kill to zap it), then restarting /usr/lib/ssh/sshd

ScribeFire and Xobni

I have started using ScribeFire for blogging from Firefox. Its kinda cool.

Also I am using Xobni for my Outlook account at work. The stats feature is quite good .

Change mountpoints in Solaris 10

To change the mountpoints just edit the /etc/vfstab file and the mountpoint will change upon reboot.

The change remains active across reboots until you change it.