HP IMC Adapter Directory Naming

This week’s lesson: Be consistent with your vendor naming when working with HP IMC Custom Device Adapters. When you create the new adapter directory, use exactly the same vendor name as used within the UI. Otherwise IMC may not recognise your new adapter. Case matters too, even on Windows!

HP IMC ships with a set of “Device Adapters” that define functions such as backups, configuration deployment, firmware upgrades, etc. These adapters are sets of XML, TCL and Perl files. They define which devices are supported, for what functions, and how to execute those functions.

Obviously HP can’t support every device ever made. But they’re quite happy for you to write your own adapters, or extend the ones they have. So if you’ve got a few unsupported switches, and they have some sort of sensible interface, you can write your own adapters.

These are stored at /server/conf/adapters/ICC/. Under there, you have a set of folders for each vendor. Under each vendor folder is an adapter-index.xml file, which maps SNMP sysOIDs to adapters. You must have a mapping in the adapter-index.xml file for your sysOID. (nb you can use wildcards). If those XML files change, you need to restart IMC.

Continue reading

Those expressing moral outrage probably can’t do math

Many are discussing the FBI document where Chris Roberts ("the airplane hacker") claimed to an FBI agent that at one point, he hacked the plane's controls and caused the plane to climb sideways. The discussion hasn't elevated itself above the level of anti-vaxxers.

It's almost certain that the FBI's account of events is not accurate. The technical details are garbled in the affidavit. The FBI is notorious for hearing what they want to hear from a subject, which is why for years their policy has been to forbid recording devices during interrogations. If they need Roberts to have said "I hacked a plane" in order to get a search warrant, then that's what their notes will say. It's like cops who will yank the collar of a drug sniffing dog in order to "trigger" on drugs so that they have an excuse to search the car.

Also, security researchers are notorious for being misunderstood. Whenever we make innocent statements about what we "could" do, others often interpret this either as a threat or a statement of what we already have done.

Assuming this scenario is true, that Roberts did indeed control the plane briefly, many claim that this is especially Continue reading

Google looks set to join the ‘buy’ button trend

Google will include a “buy” button in its search results on mobile devices in the coming weeks, said a report on Friday in the Wall Street Journal, a move that could give online shoppers an easier way to buy products on small screens.The change might also give consumers an alternative to mobile apps from companies like Amazon and eBay, though it might jeopardize retailers’ ability to directly market to their customers.The buy button will appear on Google’s search results pages when people search for certain products on mobile devices, said the report, which cited unnamed sources. If users click on the buttons, they’ll be taken to another Google page where they can choose among sizes and colors, select shipping options and complete the purchase, the report said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google looks set to join the ‘buy’ button trend

Google will include a “buy” button in its search results on mobile devices in the coming weeks, said a report on Friday in the Wall Street Journal, a move that could give online shoppers an easier way to buy products on small screens.The change might also give consumers an alternative to mobile apps from companies like Amazon and eBay, though it might jeopardize retailers’ ability to directly market to their customers.The buy button will appear on Google’s search results pages when people search for certain products on mobile devices, said the report, which cited unnamed sources. If users click on the buttons, they’ll be taken to another Google page where they can choose among sizes and colors, select shipping options and complete the purchase, the report said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Moving Soon!

I would like to take the opportunity to let you all know that Keeping It Classless will be moving to a different blogging platform in the near future. For the vast majority of you, this will not be a problem. My intent is to keep as much as possible consistent between moves. However, some of you subscribe to my blog using some WordPress-specific features such as email subscription, as well as following me through the WordPress service itself.

Moving Soon!

I would like to take the opportunity to let you all know that Keeping It Classless will be moving to a different blogging platform in the near future. For the vast majority of you, this will not be a problem. My intent is to keep as much as possible consistent between moves. However, some of you subscribe to my blog using some WordPress-specific features such as email subscription, as well as following me through the WordPress service itself.

More ADN (Awk Defined Networking)

Want to know how many IPv4 nodes are in each of your VLANs? Use ADN:

ssh myswitch 'sh arp | i Vlan' | awk '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

     79 Vlan38
     65 Vlan42
     58 Vlan34
     22 Vlan36
     21 Vlan32
     20 Vlan40
      9 Vlan3
      7 Vlan8
      5 Vlan6
      5 Vlan204
      5 Vlan203
      5 Vlan2
      4 Vlan74
      3 Vlan82
      3 Vlan4

More ADN (Awk Defined Networking)

Want to know how many IPv4 nodes are in each of your VLANs? Use ADN:

ssh myswitch 'sh arp | i Vlan' | awk '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

     79 Vlan38
     65 Vlan42
     58 Vlan34
     22 Vlan36
     21 Vlan32
     20 Vlan40
      9 Vlan3
      7 Vlan8
      5 Vlan6
      5 Vlan204
      5 Vlan203
      5 Vlan2
      4 Vlan74
      3 Vlan82
      3 Vlan4

Cisco CEO feisty til the end

John Chambers’ last quarterly conference call as Cisco CEO this week was as bullish as it’s ever been, especially on switching. Chambers left little doubt what he thought about prognostications that software-defined networking and whitebox switching would ultimately kill Cisco’s switching dominance: So all this garbage about new players coming in and software coming in and white label killing our approach was entirely wrong… We are beating our competitors that you all were worried about. In Cisco’s fiscal Q3, orders for the Nexus 9000 switch and APIC controller, the guts of its SDN – or SDN killing – offering grew sequentially 27%. As we reported earlier, APIC customers just about doubled and Nexus 9000 customers grew 56% since January.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ARM seen making rapid progress on next high-end chip

ARM’s next major CPU design could be here sooner than you think.The company is in the advanced stages of development with its next high-end processor, which will succeed the Cortex-A72 and could reach smartphone and tablet makers by the end of next year, chip analyst Linley Gwennap said in a research note this week.ARM’s chip designs are used in most of the world’s smartphones and tablets, and its speedy development work reflects the intense pressure gadget makers are under to get new products to market quickly. It also reflects heightened competition from Intel.ARM hasn’t discussed the new chip publically and even its name it not yet known. But the company seems to be accelerating the pace at which it gets new processor designs to market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

European mobile operators seemingly divided over sanity of blocking ads

Several European telcos have come out against a scheme by their fellow operators to block advertising as a maneuver to force Google to share its revenue.An executive at a European telecom operator has said it and others are planning to start blocking online ads this year in their respective mobile networks, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.First, the unnamed operator will launch an advertising-free service for its subscribers on an opt-in basis. However, there are also plans to use the technology across its entire network. The plan is to specifically target Google, blocking ads on the company’s websites in an attempt to force the online giant to share its revenue, according to the Financial Times.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PlexxiPulse—Scale-out Networking for Oracle

We were in Overland Park, KS this week at the Spring Oracle Summit hosted by the Central States OAUG (Oracle Application Users Group). We hosted a lecture on scale-out networking for Oracle applications. We’ll be at the next summit on May 27 in St. Louis, MO. Will you be in the area? Drop us a line on Twitter or at [email protected]. We’d love to see you.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

CRN: 2015 Virtualization 50
By Joseph Kovar
While software-defined data centers are not yet available, there is considerable buzz building up about the possibility of virtualizing an ever-larger part of the data center as such technologies, including server and storage virtualization, software-defined networking and storage, and VDI and hyper-converged infrastructures, continue to come to market…Plexxi develops software-defined networking software that “renders” network configurations based on application requirements. That software sits on the company’s software-definable hardware platform. The company claims its hardware can be quickly defined and redefined by its software in response to the needs of a customer’s application.

Network Computing: SDN Introduces Choice To The Data Center
By Gilad Shainer
There Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Samsung launches Internet of Things boards

Samsung is getting serious about Internet of Things (IoT). Following up on its 2014 purchase of startup SmartThings, Samsung has just unveiled a set of modules called ARTIK, which it hopes companies will adopt in order to build IoT into their products.SmartThings is an app-controlled remote control for a smart home.ARTIK Three tiny circuit boards make up the ARTIK collection. They're about the "size of a ladybug," says Don Clark, writing about the technology in the Wall Street Journal. The smallest is 12 millimeters on each side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Samsung launches Internet of Things boards

Samsung is getting serious about Internet of Things (IoT). Following up on its 2014 purchase of startup SmartThings, Samsung has just unveiled a set of modules called ARTIK, which it hopes companies will adopt in order to build IoT into their products.SmartThings is an app-controlled remote control for a smart home.ARTIK Three tiny circuit boards make up the ARTIK collection. They're about the "size of a ladybug," says Don Clark, writing about the technology in the Wall Street Journal. The smallest is 12 millimeters on each side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

vSphere with Cumulus Linux

I presented my first webinar on VMware vSphere with Cumulus® Linux® last week, which was really exciting for me. VMware has been around for 17 years and counting while Cumulus® Networks® came out of stealth mode only in June 2013. We all know that VMware vSphere works with a variety of network architectures, so I wanted to take a slightly different approach while presenting the webinar and writing this blog:

  •  What does Cumulus Networks bring to vSphere that others don’t?
  •  Does Cumulus Linux work well with vSphere?  How can we test it?

VMware vSphere and Cumulus Linux

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Cumulus Linux and VMware vSphere are both software solutions that run on a variety of hardware platforms. This allows customers to build and use platforms from a range of suppliers for compute, storage and networking. The software defines the performance and behavior of the environment, which allows the administrator to exercise version control and programmatic approaches that are already in use by DevOps teams. Today, switches with Cumulus Linux can be treated as servers.

Cumulus Linux with ONIE, ZTP and Automation

How does Cumulus Linux just work on top of bare metal switches? What is so different? Why can’t we do this with any switch out there Continue reading

PPP CHAP Authentication Question

 

The following question was recently sent to me regarding PPP and CHAP:

 

At the moment I only have packet tracer to practice on, and have been trying to setup CHAP over PPP.

It seems that the “PPP CHAP username xxxx” and “PPP CHAP password xxxx” commands are missing in packet tracer.

I have it set similar to this video… (you can skip the first 1 min 50 secs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ltNfaPz0nA

As he doesn’t use the missing commands, if that were to be done on live kit would it just use the hostname and magic number to create the hash?

 

Also, in bi-directional authentication, do both routers have to use the same password or can they be different as long as they match what they expect from the other router?

Thanks, Paul.

 

Here was my reply:

Hi Paul,

When using PPP CHAP keep in mind four fundamental things:

  1. The “magic number” that you see in PPP LCP messages has nothing to do with Authentication or CHAP.  It is simply PPPs way of trying to verify that it has a bi-directional link with a peer. When sending a PPP LCP message a random Magic Number is generated. Continue reading
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