Category Archives: Hardware Config

Setting up Mesh Wi-Fi with Airtel Xtreme Fiber

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In this post we will walk you through step by step guide for setting up your own Mesh Wi-Fi system with Airtel Xtreme Fiber.

Home Mesh Wi-fi with Airtel Xtreme

I’ve been an Airtel Xtreme Fiber user for many years and am now considering getting a Mesh Wi-Fi system. While the default routers provided with Airtel Xtreme are good, they tend to become sluggish as the number of connected devices increases. I was also experiencing Wi-Fi range issues, so I had to hard wired the rest of the rooms for internet connectivity. This ignited the need to explore the Mesh Wi-Fi setup.

Single router range

After researching internet forums, I found that the information is available but scattered across various threads and discussions. So, I decided to write this post, which I hope will be helpful for others in setting up their own Mesh systems with Airtel Xtreme routers.

The setup goes through several steps –

  1. Enable Bridge mode on LAN port of Airtel router
  2. Configuration on Airtel router
  3. Configuration on Mesh Wi-Fi router

Let’s look at the inventory before we get into the procedures –

  1. Internet type: Airtel Xtreme Fiber
  2. ISP Router: Airtel Dragon Path 707GR1
  3. Mesh Wi-Fi system: TP-Link Deco X20 (Deco X60 is another great choice with more speed capabilities and inbuild extra antenna pair)

Now, we deep dive into configurations and related procedures.

Enable bridge mode on Airtel router

The Airtel router is configured with PPPoE for the Fiber Channel port. Before using another router with Airtel Xtreme, it’s essential to enable Bridge mode on the Airtel router. Bridge mode allows the Airtel router to function as a passthrough, enabling your own router to handle the PPPoE connection for internet access. This setup unleash the full capabilities of your own router and bypass the limitations of the default Airtel router.

Airtel Router with FC PPPoE

To enable bridge mode on your Airtel router, send an email to net@airtel.com explaining your request. You should then receive a call within two days from Airtel to discuss your requirements. Explain that you need to use your own router and specify the port number where you want bridge mode enabled. Within a few hours, you should receive a confirmation callback from their backend team, confirming that bridge mode has been enabled on the specified port. No engineer visit is required (at least for the model I mentioned), as they can remotely enable bridge mode on your router. I oberved on internet forums that always the last LAN port on your router is chosen to enable the bridge mode if not all. So LAN2 or LAN4 depending on how many LAN ports you have on your Airtel router. Dragon Path 707GR1 has two LAN ports so I requested to enable it on LAN2 and its been working good for me.

Bridge mode on LAN2 of airtel router

Verify LAN2 bridge mode by navigating to WAN > PON WAN > select nas0_3 in dropdown on Airtel router webconsole.

LAN2 Bridged

For the next step—router configurations—ensure you have local access to both routers (Airtel and Mesh) by connecting them to your laptop or machine via LAN cables. This will make the configuration process easier.

Airtel router configuration

When using your own router with the Airtel Xtreme router, there are two key configurations to perform on the Airtel router:

  1. Disable the WAN profile to allow your own router to handle the PPPoE connection.
  2. Disable the Wi-Fi networks on the Airtel router so that your own router can manage Wi-Fi signals.

Once bridge mode is enabled, your mesh Wi-Fi router will need to dial in with PPPoE for internet access, so you should remove the WAN profile on the Airtel router. Note down the username in WAN profile. Before making any changes, ensure you have a backup of the current configuration. If the backup option is disabled, take screenshots for future reference.

Removed WAN profile from Airtel router

Since you plan to use a mesh Wi-Fi network, disable the Airtel router’s Wi-Fi networks to prevent interference from the extra signals. At this point, the Airtel router will function solely as a passthrough for your router.

Mesh router configuration

You need to configure the very two things that you disabled on Airtel router in previosu step.

  1. Configure PPPoE
  2. Configure Wi-Fi network

TP-Link Deco Mesh systems are easy and quick using the Deco app. Installation guide here. Use PPPoE protocol for internet connection configuration. Username is alredy known in previous step (copied from the WAN profile in Airtel router) and password should be your Airtel Account ID. If not, please reach out to Airtel and get the credentials.

Airtel-Deco Mesh Setup

TP-Link Deco X20 is a dual band Wi-Fi with band steering. It means both 2.4Ghz and 5GHz emitted on a single SSID. Band steering optimizes which band a device connects to based on signal strength and congestion. When setting up Deco Mesh Wi-Fi network, it’s helpful to use the same SSID and password as your Airtel router. This way, all devices on your network will seamlessly connect to the Deco mesh Wi-Fi without any issues. If you prefer to start fresh, you can create a new SSID for the Deco mesh, but you’ll need to enter the new Wi-Fi password on all the devices in your network.

Dual band Deco Wi-Fi network

It is also recommended to have a wired backhaul for the Decos in your network. Or decos should be in a good range with each other to establish a good backend network between them. Wired backhaul ensures minimum bandwidth drop for the internet speed.

Deco Mesh

I already had network cables running through different rooms, which was convenient for backhauling the Deco network over a wired connection.

Now, with Mesh network my complete home is covered with full range of Wi-Fi strong signals.

Mesh network range

With the transition to a Mesh network, I gained following benefits:

  • Increased device handling capacity for my Wi-Fi hardware.
  • Strong Wi-Fi signal coverage throughout my entire house.
  • Improved internet speed for all devices in every corner of the house.
  • Seamless network switching for devices when moving between rooms.
  • A single SSID broadcast that supports both 2.4G and 5G bands.

In summary, multi-story homes or houses with many rooms (which introduces wall interference) should opt for mesh systems over traditional single router and wired setups. Mesh systems offer a cleaner, maintenance-free solution without cable clutter throughout the house.

I hope this post will be helpful to our fellow readers in setting up their own mesh with Airtel Xtreme fiber internet.

How to add new disk in Linux

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Step by step procedure to add disk in Linux machine

New disk addition in Linux

In this article, we will walk you through steps to add a new disk in the Linux machine. Adding a raw disk to the Linux machine may vary depending upon the type of server you have but once the disk is presented to the machine, the procedure of getting it to mount points is almost the same.

Objective: Add a new 10GB disk to the server and create a 5GB mount point out of it using LVM and newly created volume group.

Adding raw disk to Linux machine

If you are using the AWS EC2 Linux server, you may follow these steps to add raw disk. If you are on VMware Linux VM you will have a different set of steps to follow to add disk. If you are running a physical rack-mount/blade server then adding disk will be a physical task.

Now once the disk is attached to the Linux machine physically/virtually, it will be identified by the kernel and then our rally starts.

Identifying newly added disk in Linux

After the attachment of the raw disk, you need to ask the kernel to scan a new disk. Mostly it’s done now automatically by the kernel in new versions.

First thing is to identify the newly added disk and its name in the kernel. There are numerous ways to achieve this. I will list a few –

  • You can observer lsblk output before and after adding/scanning disk to get a new disk name.
  • Check newly created disk files in /dev filesystem. Match timestamp of file and disk addition time.
  • Observer fdisk -l output before and after adding/scanning disk to get a new disk name.

For our example, I am using the AWS EC2 server and I added 5GB disk to my server. here is my lsblk output –

[root@kerneltalks ~]# lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
xvda    202:0    0  10G  0 disk
├─xvda1 202:1    0   1M  0 part
└─xvda2 202:2    0  10G  0 part /
xvdf    202:80   0  10G  0 disk

You can see xvdf is our newly added disk. Full path for disk is /dev/xvdf.

Add new disk in LVM

We are using LVM here since its widely used and flexible volume manager on the Linux platform. Make sure you have lvm or lvm2 package installed on your system. If not, install lvm/lvm2 package.

Now, we are going to add this RAW disk in Logical Volume Manager and create 10GB of mount point out of it. List of commands you need to follow are –

If you are willing to add a disk to the existing mount point and use its space to extend mount point then vgcreate should be replaced by vgextend.

Sample outputs from my session –

[root@kerneltalks ~]# pvcreate /dev/xvdf
  Physical volume "/dev/xvdf" successfully created.
[root@kerneltalks ~]# vgcreate vgdata /dev/xvdf
  Volume group "vgdata" successfully created
[root@kerneltalks ~]# lvcreate -L 5G -n lvdata vgdata
  Logical volume "lvdata" created.

Now, you have a logical volume created. You need to format it with the filesystem on your choice and mount it. We are choosing ext4 filesystem here and formatting using mkfs.ext4 .

[root@kerneltalks ~]# mkfs.ext4 /dev/vgdata/lvdata
mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
327680 inodes, 1310720 blocks
65536 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=1342177280
40 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Mounting volume from new disk on mount point

Lets mount the logical volume of 5GB which we created and formatted on /data mount point using mount command.

[root@kerneltalks ~]# mount /dev/vgdata/lvdata /data
[root@kerneltalks ~]# df -Ph /data
Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vgdata-lvdata  4.8G   20M  4.6G   1% /data

Verify your mount point with df command as above and you are all done! You can always add an entry in /etc/fstab to make this mount persistent over reboots.

You have attached a 10GB disk to the Linux machine and created a 5GB mount point out of it!

How to check if Linux server is physical or VM or cloud

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Learn how to check if the Linux server is a physical or VM or cloud server by observing ‘dmidecode’ command output fields.

Identify physical or VM or cloud server

Recently one of my friends came across a situation where he didn’t know logged in the server is physical server, virtual machine, or cloud server. So here in this article we will walk you through how to check if the server is a physical server or virtual machine. Since cloud servers are also VM there is a very thin line between identifying them as different. It takes some infrastructure knowledge and sense to differentiate between VM and cloud-hosted servers.

dmidecode command helps you through this process. This command helps you to identify the manufacturer of the system. Let’s look at its output :

root@kerneltalks# dmidecode -t system
# dmidecode 3.0
Scanning /dev/mem for entry point.
SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Handle 0x0100, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: Xen
        Product Name: HVM domU
        Version: 4.2.amazon
        Serial Number: ec27c3cb-8e3b-8a30-4325-3f388b0fxxxx
        UUID: EC27C3CB-8E3B-8A30-4325-3F388B0Fxxxx
        Wake-up Type: Power Switch
        SKU Number: Not Specified
        Family: Not Specified
-----output trimmed-----

This is output from the AWS cloud server. In the above output you have to observe the ‘System Information‘ section.

Manufacturer :

If you see Xen, VMware, Red Hat, etc here its a VM (virtual machine). VM host KVM also shows the same manufacturers. Anything other than these like Dell Inc, HP, etc (hardware manufacturing companies name) shows that you are on real physical hardware means its physical server.

Product Name :

This parameter also helps further to confirm it’s physical or VM. Here HVM denotes its virtual machine clearly. For a physical server you see the physical server model name here.

Version :

Its again narrowing down your search. Word amazon here denotes its a VM from Amazon (most likely AWS). So as I said if you know your infrastructure well, so must be knowing you have AWS servers or not. And hence you can be sure here that it’s AWS cloud server.

Even serial numbers can be a confirmation but you should have in-depth knowledge of hardware serial number nomenclature used by industry manufacturers. Mostly, physical hardware has much short, clean and human-readable serial number whereas VM has long serial which starts with virtual service name (eg, ec2 for AWS cloud, VMWare for VMware VM, etc.) This can be added confirmation and not the primary parameter for validation.

For more understanding lets look at output from virtual machine :

root@kerneltalks_vm1# dmidecode -t system
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.
        Product Name: VMware Virtual Platform
        Version: None
        Serial Number: VMware-56 4d c7 47 54 09 d6 39-xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
        UUID: 564DC747-xxxx-D639-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx
        Wake-up Type: Power Switch
        SKU Number: Not Specified
        Family: Not Specified
-----output trimmed-----

In above output,

The manufacturer is VMware Inc. which denotes its a VM. Product Name VMware Virtual Platform clearly states its VM

Like the cloud server above we do not have version value here. But the above two values are sufficient to confirm its a VM. These values put up by hardware or system image manufacturer hence can be blank at times.

Finally, before signing off lets check output from physical machine as well –

root@kerneltalks_phy # dmidecode -t system
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: Cisco Systems Inc
        Product Name: UCSB-B200-M3
        Version: 1
        Serial Number: XXXXXXXXXX
        UUID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
        Wake-up Type: Other
        SKU Number:
        Family:
-----output trimmed-----

Here,

The manufacturer is Cisco System Inc (who is hardware manufacturer) confirming its server hosted on bare metal.

Product Name is a UCSB-B200-M3 which is the model name of Cisco Blade. Confirms server is Cisco Blade hardware (Physical server)

Checks submitted by readers

Few readers posted these commands on social media comments.

lscpu: One can observe hypervisor vendor determine if its virtual or physical server

# lscpu |grep -i hypervisor
Hypervisor vendor:     Xen

hostnamectl: Works on a new distro like RHEL7. The virtualization field gives you an idea about if its physical or virtual.

root@kerneltalks # hostnamectl status |grep -i virtual
    Virtualization: xen

dmesg: Check for words like KVM, hvm, or virtual in boot messages. Here Xen virtualization detected confirming its a virtual box.

# dmesg |grep -i virtual
[    0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on Xen HVM
[    1.403040] systemd[1]: Detected virtualization xen.
[    1.889088] xen_netfront: Initialising Xen virtual ethernet driver

Conclusion

System information like manufacturer, product name, version, the serial number can be used to observe and understand whether logged in the server is a physical server or VM (physically hosted or cloud).

If you have any other tricks or solid methods to confirm the server is physical or virtualized, please let us know in the comments below.

Howto get CPU details in HPUX

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Learn how to extract CPU, core, socket details in HPUX. Get familiar with hardware related commands like print_manifest, machinfo, cstm, ioscan.

There are many times when one has to check CPU details of the server which are like the number of cores, sockets, etc. This detail is useful in capacity planning, troubleshooting, performance analysis, etc. There are many ways to get these details as below –

  • ioscan command
  • cstm tool
  • print_manifest report
  • machinfo command
  • MP console
  • top command
  • SAR output

Before going into these methods make sure you check if logical CPUs are enabled on server or not. If yes then you need to take that into consideration while calculating the number of CPUs.

Let’s see the above methods one by one.

ioscan command

This is a well-known command to every HPUX server administrator. To scan or list hardware on the system, we use this command. Filtering processors out of this command give you details about CPU. This is helpful to get the only number of processors on the system.

# ioscan -kfnC processor
Class       I  H/W Path  Driver    S/W State H/W Type  Description
===================================================================
processor   0  128       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   1  129       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   2  136       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   3  137       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   4  144       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   5  145       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   6  152       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor
processor   7  153       processor CLAIMED   PROCESSOR Processor

# ioscan -kfnC processor | grep processor|wc -l
8

cstm tool

CSTM is another famous tool native to HPUX used to deal with hardware. This will give you in-depth details about each processor on the system. Type /usr/sbin/cstm and you will be on CSTM shell. Here type is below command :

cstm>selclass qualifier cpu;infolog
-- Converting multiple raw log files to text. --
Preparing the Information Tool Log for each selected device...

.... server1  :  10.10.11.1 ....

-- Information Tool Log for CPU on path 128 --

Log creation time: Wed Jul 20 11:09:00 2016

Hardware path: 128


Product ID:                CPU          Module Type:              0
Hardware Model:            0x894        Software Model:           0x4
Hardware Revision:         0            Software Revision:        0
Hardware ID:               0            Software ID:              3848593997
Boot ID:                   0x2          Software Option:          0x91
Processor Number:          0            Path:                     128
Hard Physical Address:     0xfffffffffe780000     Soft Physical Address:    0

Slot Number:               0            Software Capability:      0x100000f0
PDC Firmware Revision:     46.34        IODC Revision:            0
Instruction Cache [Kbyte]: 768          Processor Speed:          N/A
Processor State:           CPU Present Configured
Monarch:                   Yes          Active:                   Yes
Data Cache        [Kbyte]: 768
Instruction TLB   [entry]: 240          Processor Chip Revisions: 3.2
Data TLB Size     [entry]: 240          2nd Level Cache Size:[KB] 65536
Serial Number:             44549e6cf43f0605


-----------------  Processor 0 HPMC Information - PDC Version: 46.34  ------

   * * * No valid timestamp * * *
       No HPMC chassis codes logged


General Registers 0 - 31
00-03  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
04-07  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
08-11  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
12-15  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
16-19  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
20-23  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
24-27  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
28-31  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000



Control Registers 0 - 31
00-03  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
04-07  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
08-11  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
12-15  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
16-19  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
20-23  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
24-27  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
28-31  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000


Space Registers 0 - 7
00-03  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
04-07  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000


IIA Space (back entry)       = 0x0000000000000000
IIA Offset (back entry)      = 0x0000000000000000
Check Type                   = 0x00000000
Cpu State                    = 0x00000000
Cache Check                  = 0x00000000
TLB Check                    = 0x00000000
Bus Check                    = 0x00000000
Assists Check                = 0x00000000

Assist State                 = 0x00000000
Path Info                    = 0x00000000
System Responder Address     = 0x0000000000000000
System Requestor Address     = 0x0000000000000000



Floating Point Registers 0 - 31
00-03  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
04-07  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
08-11  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
12-15  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
16-19  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
20-23  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
24-27  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000
28-31  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000  0000000000000000


PIM Revision                 = 0x0000000000000000
CPU ID                       = 0x0000000000000000
CPU Revision                 = 0x0000000000000000
Cpu Serial Number            = 0x0000000000000000
Check Summary                = 0x0000000000000000
SAL Timestamp                = 0x0000000000000000
System Firmware Rev.         = 0x0000000000000000
PDC Relocation Address       = 0x0000000000000000
Available Memory             = 0x0000000000000000
CPU Diagnose Register 2      = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_STAT                     = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_LOG1                     = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_LOG2                     = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_ECC_DATA                 = 0x0000000000000000
ICache Info                  = 0x0000000000000000
DCache Info                  = 0x0000000000000000
Sharedcache Info1            = 0x0000000000000000
Sharedcache Info2            = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_RSLOG1                   = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_RSLOG2                   = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_RQLOG                    = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_REQLOGa                  = 0x0000000000000000
MIB_REQLOGb                  = 0x0000000000000000

Reserved                     = 0x0000000000000000
Cache Repair Detail          = 0x0000000000000000

PIM Detail Text:



--------------  Memory Error Log Information  --------------

   No errors logged for this bus

------------  I/O Module Error Log Information  ------------

  No IO subsystem errors recorded

FRU INFORMATION

        Module              Revision
        ------              --------
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2
        PA 8900 CPU Module  3.2

Board Info!
  Format Version  : 0x1                   Language Code : 0x0
  Mfg Date        :                       Mfg Name      : JABIL
  Product Name    : augustus baseboard
  Serial Number   : 52JAPE4822000149
  Part Number     : A6961-60401
  Fru File Tp/Len : 0x1  Fru File :
  Revision        : A  Eng Date Code : 4728
  Artwork Rev     : A5  Fru Info :



=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=

----- output clipped -----

I showed only one processor details above.

print_manifest report

This command comes bundled with the Ignite Ux package. If you have ignite installed on your server you will be able to run this command. This command shows a number of the processor along with its speed.

# print_manifest

NOTE: Could not read the /etc/resolv.conf file.

System Information

    Your Hewlett-Packard computer has software installed and
    configured as follows.

    The system was created September 24, 2008, 02:30:54 EDT.
    It was created with Ignite-UX revision C.6.10.97.

-------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: You should retain this information for future reference.
-------------------------------------------------------------


System Hardware

    Model:              9000/800/rp4440
    Main Memory:        24574 MB
    Processors:         8
    Processor(0) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(1) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(2) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(3) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(4) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(5) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(6) Speed: 999 MHz
    Processor(7) Speed: 999 MHz
    OS mode:            64 bit
    LAN hardware ID:    0x001A4B08AF2E
----- output clipped -----

machinfo command

This command is available from HPUX 11.21 and above on RX models. This command gives you processor numbers, speed, sockets, and core details.

# machinfo
CPU info:
  4 Intel(R) Itanium 2 9000 series processors (1.6 GHz, 12 MB)
          533 MT/s bus, CPU version C2
          6 logical processors

MP console

Login to MP console and enter the command menu by typing cm. Then ss is the command which shows processor status. This shows you processor sockets. So if you are seeing 8 CPU in top command and below output in MP then its 4 processor sockets housing 4 duel-core processors.

[server12] MP:CM> ss

SS

System Processor Status:

   Monarch Processor: 0

   Processor Module 0: Installed and Configured
   Processor Module 1: Installed and Configured
   Processor Module 2: Installed and Configured
   Processor Module 3: Installed and Configured

top command

This is the simplest way to check the number of CPU on HPUX as well as any Linux system. The top output shows your list of the processor at top of the page.

# top
System: server1                                      Fri Nov 25 14:29:06 2016
Load averages: 0.15, 0.11, 0.11
386 processes: 362 sleeping, 24 running
Cpu states:
CPU   LOAD   USER   NICE    SYS   IDLE  BLOCK  SWAIT   INTR   SSYS
 0    0.13  23.8%   0.0%   0.0%  76.2%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 1    0.18  25.7%   0.0%   7.9%  66.3%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 2    0.16  14.9%   0.0%   2.0%  83.2%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 3    0.13   3.0%   0.0%   5.0%  92.1%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 4    0.13  23.8%   0.0%   4.0%  72.3%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 5    0.15  17.8%   0.0%   4.0%  78.2%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 6    0.15  11.9%   0.0%   4.0%  84.2%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
 7    0.16  20.8%   0.0%   5.0%  74.3%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%
---   ----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
avg   0.15  17.8%   0.0%   4.0%  78.2%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%   0.0%

You can see CPU is numbered from 0 to 8 i.e. total of 8 CPU active.

sar output

Even sar output can be used to determine the number of CPU in the system. Use just one iteration for output for one second. sar will show one row for each cpu value.

Read our SAR tutorials

Counting the number of rows can help us figure out CPU count.

# sar -Mu 1 1

HP-UX apcrss78 B.11.11 U 9000/800    11/25/16

14:41:14     cpu    %usr    %sys    %wio   %idle
14:41:15       0       0       0       0      99
               1       0       1       0      98
               2       0       0       0      99
               3       0       0       0      99
               4       0       0       0      99
               5       0       0       0      99
               6      24       1       0      75
               7       0       1       0      98
          system       3       1       0      96

# sar -Mu 1 1 | awk 'END {print NR-5}'
8

See first command actual output. We are stripping off extra 5 lines which are for total, headers to get exact count using awk. in second command. Even first output shows CPU numbering like top in first column!

Hyperthreading in HPUX

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Learn what is hyperthreading or logical CPU in HPUX. Checklist of commands to enable or disable hyperthreading on hardware or OS level.

What is hyperthreading

It’s a new feature supported in HPUX 11iv3. It’s supported only on the Integrity system architecture (Itanium dual-core processors). Basically, after enabling hyperthreading (will be called HT in this post henceforth) on the server, it allows a single process to spawn threads on multiple cores at a time. This speeds up the processing and in turns enhances performance.

How to enable it

HT can be enabled at the hardware level and also on the OS level. While toggling this settings reboot is required for changes to take effect.

Enable/disable HT at the hardware level

There are several ways to do it depends on your server’s environment.

From HPUX OS shell by setting -HT (-m parameter) to on or off in setboot configuration. Also for vpars one can use parmodify command.

# setboot -m on
OR
# setboot -m off

# parmodify -T y
OR
# parmodify -T n

From EFI shell i.e. during boot

EFI> cpuconfig threads on
OR
EFI> cpuconfig threads off

From vPar monitor i.e. vpmon prompt

vpmon> threads on
OR
vpmon> threads off
Enable/disable HT at OS level 

This can be done by setting kernel parameter logical CPU attribute to 1 on 0 in kernel configurations.

# kctune lcpu_attr=1
OR
# kctune lcpu_attr=0

You need to reboot the system after making these changes so that kernel will boot with HT feature.

Change MP IP for HPUX server

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MP is the management processor of the server which is used to manage the server remotely/locally when it’s not running any OS. Learn how to modify the MP IP of the HPUX server. 

Caution!

In this activity, you are going to edit the connectivity specifications of the server. Mis-configurations may lead to lost connectivity which may impact your operations. Please proceed on your own risk.

MP is a management processor on HP servers typically found in servers made to run HPUX operating systems. MP is used to access the system when it’s in down mode i.e. OS is not running on the system. The only requirement to access MP is server should have active power connection and MP IP should have configured to access it over LAN.

It’s a management port on the server where one can plug in RJ45 cable for accessing MP over LAN. Sometimes during migrations, shifting datacenters, VLAN changes one may face requirements where MP IP should be changed to meet the new environments.

Here in this post, we will see how to change the existing IP of MP. For example, we have outputs from the rx8640 server.

Step 1:

Connect to MP console. Normally telnet is used to connect to MP. If you have not changed credentials then admin/Admin should work for username and password, both fields.

MP login: Admin
MP password:



(c)Copyright 2000-2008 Hewlett-Packard Co.,  All Rights Reserved.

                             Welcome to
                  rx8640's Management Processor



    MP MAIN MENU:

         CO: Consoles
        VFP: Virtual Front Panel
         CM: Command Menu
         CL: Console Logs
         SL: Show Logs
         FW: Firmware Update
         HE: Help
          X: Exit Connection

Type in cm command to go to command mode. You will land on CM prompt then.

[rx8640] MP> cm


                Enter HE to get a list of available commands

                      (Use ^B to return to main menu.)




[rx8640]
MP:CM>

Step 2:

Type in LS command to view current configuration. Here your current MP IP information will be displayed. Make a note of it.

[rx8640] MP:CM> ls

Current configuration of MP customer LAN interface
  MAC address   : 00:1b:45:a2:57:60
  DHCP Status   : Disabled
  IP address    : 10.10.10.10       0x0a01010b
  Hostname      : rx8640
  Subnet mask   : 255.255.255.0   0xffffff00
  Gateway       : 10.10.10.1       0x0a010101
  Status        : UP and RUNNING
  Link          : Connected 100Mb Half Duplex

Current configuration of Integrity Lights Out Advanced KVM card LAN interface
    No Integrity Lights Out Advanced KVM Cards were found

Step 3:

Type in lc command to edit this IP information

[rx8640] MP:CM> lc

MP Configurable LAN devices:

     1 - MP Customer LAN

Enter LAN device to change, or [Q] to Quit: 1

Current configuration of MP customer LAN interface
  MAC address   : 00:1b:45:a2:57:60
  DHCP Status   : Disabled
  IP address    : 10.10.10.10       0x0a01010b
  Hostname      : rx8640
  Subnet mask   : 255.255.255.0   0xffffff00
  Gateway       : 10.10.10.1        0x0a010101
  Status        : UP and RUNNING
  Link          : Connected 100Mb Half Duplex

    Do you want to modify the configuration for the MP LAN? (Y/[N])

Edit the information and save.

Step 4:

Finally, reset MP to take up this new configuration. Use command XD to reset MP. You will be disconnected from the current session and you need to open a new session with a new IP!

There are different commands for different variants of servers. You can always find a command to view/edit IP information on your MP itself by running HE (help) command in the command menu of MP. Look for the below type of descriptions in the presented list to get to know about commands available on your MP for editing this info.

LC      : Configure MP LAN interface
LS      : Display MP LAN configuration

Some servers have commands like CL to view and CE to edit IP configurations.