Dell EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN Arrays – Storage Area Network

This is not the first time I deal with SAN device but I never use it with Ubuntu Linux before. Anyway, there is first time for everything.

After 15 minutes playing around with Open-iSCSI (it can be done in just a few seconds in Windows by using GUI based iSCSI Initiator), here is the howto (and at the same time as a note for myself)

1) Install Open-iSCSI Initiator

sudo apt-get install open-iscsi

2) If you want your computer manually connect to the SAN volume, proceed with step 3. But if you want your computer automatically connect to the volume, edit the iscsid configurtation file

sudo nano /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf

And change the following parameters

• isns.address = SAN-IP-ADDRESS-HERE
• isns.port = 3260

3) If the restriction is based on IP (without password) procees with step 4. But if password is required, edit the iscsid configurtation file

sudo nano /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf

And change/set the following parameters

• node.session.auth.username = USER
• node.session.auth.password = PASSWORD
• discovery.sendtargets.auth.username = USER
• discovery.sendtargets.auth.password = PASSWORD

4) Restart the open-iscsi service

sudo /etc/init.d/open-iscsi restart

5) Run open-iscsi administration utility with root privilege to discover available volume

sudo iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 192.168.10.1

where 192.168.10.1 is the IP of your SAN. If your configuration is working, you will get something similar to this :-

192.168.10.1:3260,1 iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-f260b4603-e8b0000001249f55-vss-control
192.168.10.1:3260,1 iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-6980b4603-a990000001f49f56-csmvol3
192.168.10.1:3260,1 iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-58c0b4603-1730000001c49f56-csmvol2
192.168.10.1:3260,1 iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-4280b4603-a410000001949f56-csmvol1

6) In this case, I want to connect to volume 1 (iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-4280b4603-a410000001949f56-csmvol1), so here is what I should do

sudo iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-4280b4603-a410000001949f56-csmvol1 --portal 192.168.10.1:3260 --login

And if you are successfully connected, you’ll get the following message

Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-4280b4603-a410000001949f56-csmvol1, portal: 192.168.10.1,3260]
Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-4280b4603-a410000001949f56-csmvol1, portal: 192.168.10.1,3260]: successful

7) Now, verify the device name that has been connected to your machine

tail -f /var/log/messages

And in my case, this is my output

Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.014658] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     EQLOGIC  100E-00          4.0  PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.016499] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 209725440 512-byte hardware sectors: (107 GB/100 GiB)
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.017832] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.018256] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.019240] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 209725440 512-byte hardware sectors: (107 GB/100 GiB)
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.019434] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.019836] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.019842]  sdb: sdb1
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.024882] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Apr 28 09:42:48 xps kernel: [ 2514.026039] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

The connected volume appear to be as SDB in my machine

8 ) If the volume already contain partition and already formated, you can straight away mount them, but if they dont have partition and filesystem yet, you can either use fdisk or gparted to create the partition and format them 😉

Enjoy..!~

Demo for fdisk -l output

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x12961295
 
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          12       96358+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *          13        7661    61440592+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            7662       11396    30001387+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda4           11397       19457    64749982+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           11397       11520      995998+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           11521       19457    63753921   83  Linux
 
Disk /dev/sdb: 107.3 GB, 107379425280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 13054 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00093e08
 
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       13054   104856223+  83  Linux

[Reference: Cyberciti & Ubuntu Forum]

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Here are some tips on how to make scRUBYt! works on Ubuntu Linux :

Update your packages list

sudo apt-get update

Now install build-essential and dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential ruby-full rubygems libxml-ruby libxslt1.1 libxslt1-dev libxslt-ruby libxml2 libxml2-dev

By using gem, install scRUBYt!’s dependencies

sudo gem install rack rubyforge rake hoe sinatra nokogiri user-choices xml-simple s4t-utils builder commonwatir activesupport hpricot mechanize firewatir

Finally, install scrubyt

sudo gem install scrubyt

Enjoy! 😀

Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL)

Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is a Slackware and Slax-based live DVD purposefully stuffed with broken, ill-configured, outdated and exploitable software, began life as a training system used during the author’s university lectures.

Its primary goal is to design a Linux system that is as vulnerable as possible — in order to teach and demonstrate a variety of security topics, including reverse code engineering, buffer overflows, shell code development, web exploitation, and SQL injection.

It contains older, easily breakable versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and FTP and SSH daemons, as well as several tools available to help you compile, debug, and break applications running on these services, including GCC, GDB, NASM, strace, ELF Shell, DDD, LDasm, LIDa, and more.

So if you are looking for a new playground, DVL is a good choice for you.