Articles by Scott Hebert

Sendmail: Remove Queued Messages

Posted on January 04, 2012 in system_administration

for id in \`find . -mtime +10 -name qf\\\* \| sed 's/\^....//'\`; do
    mv qf\${id} /var/tmp/scott-20120104/ ;
    mv df\${id} /var/tmp/scott-20120104/ ;
done

Enabling Stateful Switchover in the Cisco ASR1000

Posted on December 05, 2011 in Networking

When you get your brand new Cisco ASR1000 series router, Stateful Switchover (SSO) is disabled by default:

Router# show redundancy states
       my state = 13 -ACTIVE 
     peer state = 1  -DISABLED 
           Mode = Simplex
        Unit ID = 6
Redundancy Mode (Operational) = Non-redundant
Redundancy Mode (Configured)  = Non-redundant
Redundancy State              = Non Redundant

Enable SSO!

Router# config …

Mutt: Tagging Messages Based on Message ID

Posted on November 28, 2011 in Software
I recently needed to tag the first 5,389 messages in a mailbox using Mutt. This is much easier than you might think.
1. shift-t - By default, the command to tag messages based on a pattern is bound to shift-t. If you've changed this in your muttrc, use whatever you've bound …
What are BGP Update-Groups?

Posted on November 21, 2011 in Networking
You've certainly noticed when look at individual BGP routes on your Cisco routers that the route is advertised to specific update-groups. It isn't obvious from that output just what those update-groups are.
```
Router#show ip bgp 8.8.8.8       
BGP routing table entry for 8.8.8.0/24 …
```
Comments in .vimrc

Posted on November 14, 2011 in Software
If you need to comment something out of your .vimrc, start the line with a double quote (").
```
"autocmd BufRead *.xml :source ~/.vimrc.xml
```
It's embarrassing to admit how long it takes to find the answer to that question.
Lion + Cisco VPN DNS Workaround

Posted on November 07, 2011 in System Administration

When I upgraded to OS X 10.7 (Lion), I started using the built-in IPSec VPN client rather than Cisco's VPNClient. I experienced problems immediately. At first it appeared that the connection was being made, but no traffic was passing. When I tried pinging by IP address, I found that …
Google PageRank Tool 0.5.0

Posted on October 24, 2011 in Software

I released a new version of my Google PageRank Tool for WordPress last week. Google recently changed the URL for PageRank information which necessitated a change in the plugin. The new plugin has been tested with WordPress 3.2.1.

You can download the latest version of the plugin from …

Cisco Catalyst NVRAM Corruption

Posted on October 17, 2011 in Networking

This is an annoying problem:

Switch#write
startup-config file open failed (Not enough space)

Switch#dir nvram:
Directory of nvram:/

%Error opening nvram:/ (Function not implemented)

1048576 bytes total (1034573 bytes free)

Cisco Catalyst switches simulate NVRAM on their flash. Once in a blue moon, this simulated NVRAM will become …

Mac OS X terminal and GNU screen scrollback

Posted on October 11, 2011 in system_administration
If you're a frequent user of GNU screen on your Mac, you are probably tired of using ctrl-a [ to enter scrollback mode. Adding the following lines to the .screenrc configuration file in your home directory in order to scroll with your mouse:
```
defscrollback 5000
termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@
```
Cisco IP Phone: Rewrite Dialed 10 Digits to 7

Posted on October 03, 2011 in voice

If your carrier doesn't allow 10 digit dialing for local numbers, you are probably pretty annoyed that you can't just hit the redial button on those missed calls. It's possible to rewrite these dialed numbers in your phone system, but I wanted to do this on my Cisco 7961 IP …
QM FSM Error? Check Your Transform-Set

Posted on September 26, 2011 in Networking
If you see an error like the one below in your Cisco ASA log files, check with the other end and make sure your transform-set matches.
```
QM FSM error (P2 struct &0xd7fed708, mess id 0xcc86fb64)!
```
The QM FSM error message usually relates to a configuration mismatch. Although checking the crypto …
Killing Old popper Processes in Solaris 8

Posted on September 19, 2011 in System Administration

I've dealt with a few servers that have long lived popper (POP3) processes. These processes should be closed once the connection is closed, but they occasionally hang around. Once they get in this state, they will never close on their own. After a while, hundreds of these processes will just …
Alternative to 'show policy-map interface' on Catalyst Switches

Posted on September 12, 2011 in Networking

If you're using policy-maps on your Cisco Catalyst switches to handle rate-limiting, you may have noticed that on some models, the show policy-map interface command does not seem to work. The CLI accepts the command and returns properly formatted output, but the output is all zeroes. There is no information …
Sendmail Mail-to-Program Failures: Check smrsh

Posted on September 05, 2011 in System Administration

One of the beauties of using a Linux-based Mail Transport Agent (MTA) like Sendmail is the ability to pipe mail into programs. You can use this in conjunction with a filtering application like procmail, with a custom application that collects data about the email, or anything else you can imagine …
Brand New ME3400G Can't Ping!

Posted on August 29, 2011 in Networking

After cracking open a brand new Catalyst ME3400G, we weren't able to get it upgraded to the latest version of software. In fact, we couldn't even ping anything on the local subnet.

In order to use Cisco's Metro Ethernet switches, it's important to understand the new concepts that are introduced …

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