ALTERPATH MANAGER RELEASES

ALTERPATH MANAGER 2500 RELEASES

This document brings all new features and bug fixes regarding AlterPath Manager 2500 versions.

V_1.4.1 Apr/04/21 : (official release; upgrade from V_1.4.0)

a) Warnings

IMPORTANT: If you are upgrading from V_1.3.0 or earlier, please download the installimg file from ftp://ftp.cyclades.com/pub/cyclades/alterpath/apm/e2000/released/V_1.3.1 and replace the /sbin/installimg in the AlterPath Manager with the downloaded file. Do not use the installimg from V_1.3.0 (or earlier) otherwise the system will no longer boot. The installimg was changed to remove the original image from the compact flash due to size increase of the firmware.
ACS V_2.3.1 (and later) is shipped with all ports disabled by default. AlterPath Manager Auto Discovery can only discover ports that are enabled.
After running “restore”, it is recommended that AlterPath Manager is rebooted. Note: If “restore sys” or “restore all” is executed, the “root” password will be restored from the backup file if the backup file was generated with the “System” configuration option. If “restore conf” or “restore all” is executed, the “admin” password will be restored from the backup file if the backup file was generated with the “Conf” configuration option.
After executing “defconf”, if the serial console of AlterPath Manager is not attached during the boot, eth0 will be configured to get an IP from DHCP and the root password will be reset to “cyclades”; the initial configuration wizard is then displayed during first login. In case the IP cannot be retrieved from the DHCP, the IP 192.168.1.20 will be used.
When upgrading from V_1.4.0, the Upload Status for devices that have Dial Up with OTP enabled will be changed to Required, i.e., a configuration upload will be required because the OTP login shell has been changed due to a security fix.

b) New features

Replacement of CLI applet by MindTerm applet. This new applet is compatible with Java 1.3 or later, it allows re-sizing the window and changing the number of rows or columns, font size or text color. Optionally, the CLI can be also launched with Java Web Start.
Support for Eicon Diva Server ISDN cards.
Support for Equinox modem card.

Security Rules Enhancement: In previous versions, if a Security Rule was applied to a group of Users and this group of Users had access to only some Consoles, the Security Rule would be applied to all Consoles to which the user had access. This was changed to apply the Security Rule only to Consoles to which the group of Users has access. For instance, we can now give Power Control to only a group of users, and the user that belongs to this group can power On or Off only the Consoles that this group has access; he can no longer power On or power Off other consoles that he has access through a different group of users.
Column re-size in the Web is saved per user, and a new option was added in User Preferences to reset the column size.
CLI Session Timeout: Creation of an option in User Preferences to enable the disconnections of child CLI when the parent APM web session times out it.

c) Bug fixes

6213 Renaming KVM consoles several times can cause DB connection failures.
6351 Delays to see the keystrokes in the CLI connections once in a while.
6412 Serial console applet could take 2 minutes to launch.
6535 Slowness to open console groups by admin profile users.
6604 Slowness to save outlet if there is no connection to the device where the IPDU is attached to.
6497 Creation/Edit of Admin user page could take too long when there is a large set of Users, Groups and Consoles.
6216 Alarm trigger is not working when Data Buffering is enabled in the ACS/TS.
6528 Alarm notification is not sent if Create Alarm is set to “N”.
6533 Auto-discovery of cascaded KVMnet Plus is not working.
6530 System partition could be re-created even without answering ‘y’ to “Do you want to re-create System file system?” during boot.
6043 RDP window does not support scroll bar.
6320 KVM session does not start if APM web is accessed via https.
6686 No port is available when adding a KVM console for a cascaded KVM/net.
6510 Options ReadWrite and Kill do not work in a KVM session if somebody else is already using the KVM port.
5865 When ACS is configured to redirect http to https, web proxy does not work.
3889 When KVM/net web encryption is enabled, web proxy does not work.
6606 IPDU device 'outlets' screen could show incorrect information if there is no connection to the device to which the IPDU is attached.
6607 IPDU device could not be deleted in some cases.
6301 Admin profile users unable to view some consoles or devices when editing Consoles ACL or Devices ACL of users.
6244 Security fix for dial up with OTP to prevent OTP users of getting shell access.
6007 Blade Module: Accessing Blade Center web using web proxy could remove /dev/null.
4367 “top” command would not work when accessing APM through its serial console.
6320 KVM Viewer “launch Class” Active X object is not downloaded when APM is accessed via https.
5930 Re-running auto-discovery of KVM/net with IPDU’s creates repeated outlets in the Console ACL of the User configuration.
6810 searchlog and page commands from CLI do not work.
6811 snmptrapd does not report to syslog.
6036 NIS authentication fails for users created before authentication is set to NIS.
6132 VLAN is not working in 2500.

HP OpenView:

Power On, Power Off and Power Cycle do not work for IPMI and OnSite consoles (#5978, #6042).
The NNM Selection Name field in the IPDU Outlet Console configuration should be left blank. If it is not left blank, it may create an invalid menu item in HP OpenView NNM (#6011).

d) Known bugs

Upload of configuration to Onsite V_1.0.0 requires Device Admin Name to be “root” (#5045).
Upload of firmware to KVM/net V_2.0.0 (or earlier) requires Device Admin Name to be “root” (#4525).
Web may not start after upgrading from previous versions. If there is a “FAILED” line in /var/log/conf-V_1.4.1.log you may need to run “defconf” and configure the initial configuration wizard. Otherwise restarting tomcat (“/etc/init.d/tomcat restart”) or a rebooting would start the web.

V_1.4.0 Dec/16/05 : (official release; upgrade from V_1.3.1)

a) Warnings

ACS V_2.3.1 (and later) is shipped with all ports disabled by default. AlterPath Manager Auto Discovery can only discover ports that are enabled.

After running “restore”, it is recommended that AlterPath Manager is rebooted. Note: If “restore sys” or “restore all” is executed, the “root” password will be restored from the backup file if the backup file contains System configuration. If “restore conf” or “restore all” is executed, the “admin” password will be restored from the backup file if the backup file contains Conf configuration.

After executing “defconf”, if the serial console of AlterPath Manager is not attached during the boot, eth0 will be configured to get an IP from DHCP and the root password will be reset to “cyclades”; the initial configuration wizard is then displayed during first login. In case the IP cannot be retrieved from the DHCP, the IP 192.168.1.20 will be used.
Users with ADMIN rule can no longer change the password of other users. They can create new users and set their local password but only user “admin” can change local password of existing users.
This version introduces ACL for devices. Users other than “admin” need to have ACL to devices to be able to view or access the devices.
To view Health Monitor or Health Modem alarms requires ACL to device instead ACL to console of lowest port.
VLAN is not supported in APM 2500.

b) New features

Web GUI redesigned for better view and work flow: larger area for user view, re-sizable columns, “Select All” or “Deselect All” for multiple checkbox selection.

Ethernet Bonding support: it allows placing eth0 and eth1 on the same IP address with one interface acting as stand-by. If the primary link goes down, the secondary interface will switch on and resume traffic over Ethernet.
DHCP Client support to allow AlterPath Manager to use DHCP to obtain its own IP address in eth0.
Improvements in Security Rules: the Source Filtering supporting network range or DNS Hostname and domain filters.
KVM/net firmware upload support. This includes uploading the KVM/net firmware, the KVM/IP module firmware, boot code, KVM switch microcode, terminators microcode and KVM RP microcode.
KVM/net Plus support. (Note: firmware upload not supported.)
Cyclades Power Management (AlterPath PM) range of products support. (Note: firmware upload not supported.)
Access Control List (ACL) for Devices to allow restricting access to devices.
HP Open View Integration for Linux, Solaris and Windows: it allows administrators to access consoles or devices managed by AlterPath Manager from the HP Open View Network Node Manager (NNM).
Added support to logrotate for devices.
Added support to logrotate by size. All console data buffering logs that had logrotate frequency set as “never” will be changed to be logrotated by size.
Redundancy and fail over support: two AlterPath Managers are kept synchronized and one of them takes over when the primary AlterPath Manager fails.
Multiple Auto-Discovery support: Wizard allows discovering consoles and outlets of multiple devices.
Database security enhancement.
mysql upgraded to 4.1.10a.
Linux kernel upgraded to 2.6.12.3.

c) Bug fixes

Failure to add new user using Reverse Web Proxy of KVM/net V_2.0.0 (#4814).
HTTP Status 404 error when using Reverse Web Proxy to login to ACS V_2.6.0 (#4550).
telnet not working with PAM (#4658).
telnet does not allow root to login (#4669).
Java applet prompts for username and password when user password has semicolon (#4949).
Failure to execute “backup all <filename>” (#4679).
Reverse Web Proxy stops working when the KVM/net IP is changed (#4148).
If the Console List, Device List or User List has “Filter By” filtering by a group and this group is deleted, the Console List, Device List or User List will still be filtered by the deleted group although the group no longer shows up in the “Filter By” selection (#4576).
Auto-Discover does not discover ACS ports when they are configured with “telnetssh” protocol (#4797).

d) Known bugs

· In the Edit User-> Console ACL, if there are more consoles than 512 (this value is configurable) pagination will occur. This pagination can show more page index than it should (#5815).

· In the Edit User-> Console ACL, console groups that were moved from “Selected consoles” box to “Select console to user access” box will no longer appear in both boxes when the page index is clicked (#5816).

· The deletion of multiple devices may fail. In this case, select a smaller number of devices to be deleted. (#5963)

· Web may not start after upgrading from previous versions. If there is a “FAILED” line in /var/log/conf-V_1.4.0.log you may need to run “defconf” and configure the initial configuration wizard. Otherwise restarting tomcat (“/etc/init.d/tomcat restart”) or a rebooting would start the web.

· Disabling a device group still allows access to the devices via ssh (#5953).

· When ACS is configured to redirect http to https, web proxy does not work (#5865).

· RDP window does not support scroll bar (#6043)

· IPDU device: changing device status to disable does not change outlet consoles status to disable (#6120)

· IPDU device: a new (duplicated) instance of outlet console is created when auto-discovering an IPDU device connected to KVM device. This duplicated outlet consoles are listed on User -> Console ACL (#5930)

· Validation is not checking for duplicated outlet console names (#6152)

· When Heartbeat is enabled, the error “HTTP Status 500” may happen in the Web when the secondary APM becomes primary. This may be caused by mysqld that did not start (#6034). Steps to identify the problem:

1. Run “mount” to confirm that “/var/log” and “/var/lib/mysql” are mounted.

2. Run “/etc/init.d/mysqld status” to confirm that mysqld is “Stopped”.

3. Run “/etc/init.d/mysqld start” to confirm that mysqld cannot be started:

            ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket

            '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111)

DB ERROR 001: DB root access failed. It is advice to rebuild DB filesystem.

Steps to fix the problem:

1. Unmount /var/lib/mysql: “umount /var/lib/mysql”.

2. Run “fsck –f /var/lib/mysql”.

3. Run “mount /var/lib/mysql”.

4. Run “/etc/init.d/mysqld start”.

· Blade Module: Accessing Blade Center web using web proxy deletes /dev/null, which may cause problems to start sshd daemon (#6007). You can re-create /dev/null manually by running the command “rm –rf /dev/null; mknod –m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3” in the AlterPath Manager shell, or download apm_fix_dev_null.sh from ftp://ftp.cyclades.com/pub/cyclades/alterpath/apm/2500/released/V_1.4.0/BladeModule.

· HP OpenView:

o Power On, Power Off and Power Cycle do not work for IPMI and OnSite consoles (#5978, #6042).

o The NNM Selection Name field in the IPDU Outlet Console configuration should be left blank. If it is not left blank, it may create an invalid menu item in HP OpenView NNM (#6011).

V_1.3.1 Sep/09/05 : (official release; first release)

a) New features

New hardware platform with faster processor, more memory, 1 GB Ethernet and an LCD panel (available for future applications).
License controlled model for the following features:

Number of Data Logging Sessions (DLS): The base system comes with support to 64 DLS, 1024 managed consoles and 2048 devices. The license file for the base 64 DLS is /var/apm/licenses/APM_B_DLS_64.enc. The DLS can be upgraded from 64 DLS and 1024 consoles to 128 DLS and 2048 consoles, 256 DLS and 4096 consoles or 512 DLS and 8192 consoles.
IPMI: IPMI support is enabled by the IPMI license. The license file for IPMI is /var/apm/licenses/data/APM_B_IPMI.enc.

Support for AlterPath OnSite:

Configuration Upload.
Access.

Note: Console Creation Wizard, Auto-Discovery and Firmware Upload are not supported yet. Devices and Consoles must be created individually.

New configuration shell scripts included:

setethernet: sets ethernet speed/duplex negotiation.
ethtool: displays ethernet settings.

All software features supported in E2000 and 2500 are the same for this release.

b) Known bugs

If the Console List, Device List or User List has “Filter By” filtering by a group and this group is deleted, the Console List, Device List or User List will still be filtered by the deleted group although the group no longer shows up in the “Filter By” selection (#4576). There are two workarounds to correct the display:

Pressing Enter in the “Search For” field will correct the Console List or Device List.
Changing the “Filter By” selection will correct the User List. If the “Filter By” shows the USER group only, add a new user group (it does not have to have members) to be able to change the “Filter By” selection.

c) Warnings

ACS V_2.3.1 (and later) is shipped with all ports disabled by default. AlterPath Manager Auto Discovery can only discover ports that are enabled.
After running “restore sys” or “restore all”, AlterPath Manager needs to be rebooted.