VMWare News

As all Novell folks know, the vast majority of Novell admins are versed well beyond Novell products and across a multitude of technologies. A few may not realize though that VMWare started as a means for those of us going the self study route for Novell certs to use the equipment we had on hand to setup practice labs.

I've been using VMWare now for a long time, and have been tossing around the idea of getting my VCP but have been stymied by the mandate to sit the entire course before being "allowed" to sign up and take the exam. That's because there is no local center to take the $2,500 class at, so I'd have to include travel expenses, which put it out of my reach.

Not any more!  As of August 12, 2013, VMWare has made the class available via the web.  Yay!!  Now I can save up my pennies and take the course, which includes electronic version of the guides, practice tests AND an exam voucher.  Not too shabby.

Here's the link with the info on their new OnDemand training:

VCP OnDemand Course

Cannot create NSS volume on OES2 Linux box

This was one of the aggravating issues I ran into over this past Summer/Fall.  It was my own fault, but trying to find a solution was not easy.

Here's the assorted searches I performed:

• cannot install an NSS volume to eDirectory
• ERROR: NSS Admin Failed Creating Edirectory Objects
• Error -676 When Trying To Create A Pool Or Volume via NSSMU or iManager
• cannot create NSS volume on OES2 Linux on VMWare

This happens more often than I care to admit on virtual servers.

If you have cloned the server in question from another server - for instance using VMWare templates - you may be using the same NSS admin name as the orginally created server. This is the real issue. It's not a VMWare issue and it's not really an OES2 Linux issue, it's a doh!, slap my forehead issue.

Here's how to fix it:

1. Open up a terminal window
2. Type the command "id novlxregd" and confirm that the nssadmin name is wrong
3. Go into Yast | OES Install and Configuation. 
4. "Enable" reconfiguration under the NSS section. 
5. If the name doesn't match your server name, i.e. cn=server2admin,o=novell if the server with the issue is named server2, simply run through the NSS configuration after changing the name to the corrected name
6. Let it finish and the type the "id novlxregd" again and you should see the correct response now.

I ran into this after having used a template for a multiple server migration for a customer. First one that I'd missed this on, but it wasn't my last.