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Automatically uninstall Altiris Agent on ESX and Linux

Stephen Leuthold — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:15:51 +0000

I’ve recently configured a HP Rapid Deployment (RDP) script to automate the deployment of VMWare ESX to our HP servers. However I did not want to leave the Altiris client on the server after the installation was complete in order to avoid any mistakes (like wiping out the server) after it went into production. Here is how you automate the uninstall of the Altiris agent…

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1) On your RDP server go to C:\Program Files\HP\RDP\Deployment Server\lib\osconfig\(your ESX install)
2) Edit default.cfg
3) After #%vmlicense_text add %post (this is used for post install commands)
4) create a new line
5) /usr/bin/yes | /opt/altiris/deployment/adlagent/bin/uninstall

This is all theory and I have not actually tested it yet but I will update this post after testing. I did run “/usr/bin/yes | /opt/altiris/deployment/adlagent/bin/uninstall” successfully from the shell (without the quotes of course).

Debian apt-get upgrade fails for package linux-image-2.6.18-5-686

Stephen Leuthold — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:22:08 +0000

Was working on a Linux server today in the datacenter that we use for monitoring our Cisco gear and decided to upgrade all the Debian packages. I came across the following error and was able to resolve the issue.

Searching for GRUB installation directory … found: /boot/grub
Searching for default file … found: /boot/grub/default
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file … found: /boot/grub/menu.lst
Searching for splash image … none found, skipping …
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.20.1.intel
Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-686
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst … /usr/sbin/update-grub: line 1154: /boot/grub/menu.lst: Permission denied
User postinst hook script [/sbin/update-grub] exited with value 1
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.18-5-686 (–configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-686
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

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I actually found the solution on an Hungarian Linux forum http://hup.hu/node/48864. It turns out that /boot/grub/menu.1st has an immutable attribute on the file that you need to remove before upgrading the kernel package. You can do this by simply issuing an “chattr -i /boot/grub/menu.1st”.

Managing the mail queue for forums and blogs

Stephen Leuthold — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:51:46 +0000

I administrate several forum and blog sites and was in need of a quick and reliable method to monitor and manage the mail queue. My desire was to implement a system that would keep me up to date on the status of my server’s mail queue via a daily cron job. This is something that can easily be forgotten about if one is as busy as I am and this very simple script lets me know if I have any e-mails jammed up in the local mail queue.

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Feel free to change the variables to your liking and add it to your daily or weekly cron job.
———————————START COPY———————————
#!/bin/sh

file=”/home/user/mailq.txt”
from=”sender@myemail.com”
to=”recipient@myemail.com”
subject=”Mail Queue Status”

echo “to: ” $to>$file
echo “subject: “>>$file
echo “from: ” $from>>$file
echo “”>>$file
/usr/bin/mailq>>$file

/usr/sbin/sendmail -t <$file
———————————END COPY———————————