Check out the latest update to ghettoVCB which now support backup logs to be emailed upon competition. This feature is in experimental support and require the availability of nc (netcat) utility which is included in ESX(i) 4.0+. One can utilize netcat for variety of networking tasks, including communicating to an email server. The reason this feature is in experimental support is it may not be compatible with all email servers. The email functionality has been tested against a default installation of Postfix and is provided as-is.
For more details, please take a look at the ghettoVCB documentation.
Netcat is available as optional package beginning with ESX 3.0, with 4.0 it was already installed per default.
I used it many many times for troubleshooting purposes or for rescuing data per piped dd over netcat in very critical situations. The windows build of this tool (google for netcat hobbit) is a MUST for every troubleshooter - unfortunatly it is blacklisted by many Antivirus scanners. Check the "netcat cheat sheet" for getting handy with it - it saved my ass many times.
Mario,
Thanks for the info, I was not aware nc was included in previous releases. I guess I never noticed. I do know that in the What's new in vSphere 4.1, one of the marketing slides did state nc as being a new feature, perhaps it was for ESXi?
I did check on classic ESX 4.0 and 4.0u2 that nc was included, so I'll need to update the script to just check to see if nc is available and if a user would like to send the logs.
I'll post an update once I get a chance to update the script.
Thanks again
--William
I've found lot of problems with windows 's exchange. The problem is related to CR-LF which netcat don't use it (instead telnet which it uses)
For example, if I type:
#nc myserver 25
#HELO mydomain.com
I get no response.
But if I type:
#nc myserver 25
#HELO mydomain.com(CTRL-V)(enter)(enter)
I get reply from server.
This problem is related only to windows mail servers, do you have some hint?
Thanks
Andrea
@Andrea,
I may have a workaround that is still being tested, but it still may not resolve the problem you are seeing. This is a feature that is provided as and is limited in support. Keep an eye out for a future release
Thanks
i'm also having an issue against an exchange 2007 server..
Problem is the ghettoVCB-email-log file is not always created in /tmp which makes it hard to troubleshoot.
Use ESX4i (free) BTW
Please note that a few of the stray newlines on the email_log output leads to qmail rejecting the smtp nc session. Just wipe a few unnecessary \n.
@Gerard,
This is actually needed for windows based mail servers, else they run into issues. As mentioned this feature is experimental and since there is no real mail client, the format may need to be tweaked for different mail servers.
Yes, the same problems for me with qmail.
Andrew, the problem seems to be that because of the extra \n bits on some of the lines calling the logger function, they are creating two end of lines, without the corresponding \r. This means qmail finds the odd line ending which is incorrect (START LOG and END LOG messages and the lines stating whether the backup is successful or not) and rejects the message.
I removed the additional \n line endings to fix this...
@disciple3d,
Thanks for the info, I'll go ahead and remove these \n from the mentioned lines in a future release of ghettoVCB. You're right, in this sense, you would get additional \n without the matching \r.
Let me know if there are other lines having the same issue.
The links to GhettoVCB on vmware's communiy site seems to have been removed
@Paul de Goede,
It looks like during the upgrade of the VMware VMTN forums software, the document conversion was not successful on this particular document 🙁 I've already reported this bug and there are actual several threads on VMTN regarding the issue. Until VMware returns from their holiday shutdown, I'm afraid it will be down until then.
You should still be able to access the latest version via Google cache
Hello,
I currently use :
VMWare ESXi 4.0.0 Releasebuild-171294
And it seems that there is no netcat installed
(I did not found any "nc" file)
Is there anything additionnal to be installed?
Thanks
Regards
This experimental email support that will help users who experience technical difficulties with their email servers. Great job and keep up the good work guys
I have 4 ESX 5.5 boxes, 2 of which emailing the logs works, and 2 do not send logs out, complaining about the firewall rule set. I have checked and rechecked the firewall rule set and they're in place and listed. Even reloading the ruleset and refreshing the firewall rules has been done and they still fail out on sending the logs. Any ideas? I'm running Exchange 2010.