This is a simple example of how to get a list of Virtual Machines from a VMware host, using PySphere.

{% highlight python %} import pysphere

server = pysphere.VIServer() server.connect('vmware.zindilis.net', 'username', 'password')

vms = server.getregisteredvms() for vm in vms: virtualmachine = server.getvmbypath(vm) print virtualmachine.getproperty('name'), virtualmachine.getproperty('ip_address') {% endhighlight %}

exportfs is a helper utility for managing an NFS server.

Used without any parameters, it will just display a list of active exports, and the hosts that are allowed to access them.

Used with the r parameter, it will reread /etc/exports.

A couple of notes on special variables available in the Bash shell.

$0: Name of the script

The special variable $0 contains the name of the script. It is useful when returning usage instructions to the user that run the script. For example:

{% highlight bash %} echo "Usage: $0 --option-1 --option-2"; {% endhighlight %}

$#: Number of arguments

The special variable $# contains the number of arguments passed to the script. If no arguments are passed, it is equal to 0. It is useful to examine the value of this variable before taking further actions, if a script must be run with a minimum number of arguments.

Here is an example of $# used together with $0:

{% highlight bash %} if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then echo "Insufficient number of arguments!"; echo "Usage: $0 /path/to/file"; fi {% endhighlight %}

$?: Most recent exit code

The special variable $? contains the exit code of the most recently executed command. It is useful to examine this to determine whether or not the previous command completed succesfully or returned an error.

Typically, commands that complete succesfully return an exit code equal to 0, with other values indicating different errors, but check each command's documentation to verify this.

In the following example, the existense of the word "test" in a file is checked:

{% highlight bash %} grep test /path/to/file > /dev/null; if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "/path/to/file contains the word 'test'"; else echo "/path/to/file does not contain the word 'test'"; fi {% endhighlight %}

Random notes on Vim:

• Vim tips and tricks for developers
• NeoVim, vim's rebirth for the 21st century
• Tricks to play with vim
• Persistent Undo with Vim

• Perdition, IMAP and POP3 Proxy

Links

• The article Time-Saving Tricks at the Command Line has a section for working with screen with many helfpul tips.

Specs

• Datasheet

Reviews

• HP MSA2040 Review by IT Pro
• HP MSA2040 Review by The Register

The most updated information for enabling EPEL should always be at the Fedora Project's Wiki.

In that page's section "How can I use these extra packages?", there are links to the latest versions for CentOS 6 (and CentOS 5).

In that page, download the .noarch file, for example:

wget http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

Then, install with yum:

yum install epel-release-*.noarch

• Installing HP Systems Insight Manager On CentOS

Troubleshooting no server suitable for synchronization

If you have a cron jon periodically running ntpdate to update the time on a system, you might at some point hit the no server suitable for synchronization error. You can gain some insight into the problem with running ntpdate with the -d option, which will show debugging output from the actions of ntpdate, without actually changing the time on the system.

One example cause of this issue is that the value of strata exceeds a maximum value, in which case the NTP server is rejected by the system as being too far from its own source. You should then focus on either fixing the NTP server itself, or changing your ntpdate target to another system.