The Silo Chronicles
The not so exciting adventures of a Network Engineer

I recently ran across some unusual behavior with our MeetingPlace Express server.  We got a report from a user that they were unable to access the MeetingPlace Express web interface.  I opened up Firefox and was able to access it however my Internet Explorer was not.  The rest of the system appeared to be fine so we simply rebooted the server since it wasn’t in use.  When the server came back online no one was able to get into the web interface at all.  The strange part about it was the rest of the system was working just fine.  If you had a previously scheduled meeting it started up no problem.  If you wanted to start a meeting from the dial-in menus that worked fine as well.  This lead me to belive it was a problem with the web server portion of MPE.

We were running 2.0.2.126 and 2.0.3.35 was out so I went ahead and upgraded to 2.0.3.35 and was shocked to find the problem remained.  After the upgrade SSL was disabled and the HTTP wasnt re-directing me so I assumed it was turned-off.  This was my first mistake.  Apparently SSL after an upgrade is not fully turned off.  It does turn some of the flags off but not all of them.  After a quick talk with Cisco I disabled the SSL from the CLI and poof the web interface came back alive.

The problem was expired certificates.  For some reason the server inspects the certificates and if they expire shut down the entire web server.  According to TAC this was not intended and they would be looking into it.  As son as I requested new certificates and re-enabled SSL it worked lke a champ.  It wasn’t a very difficult problem but one thing I did some to realize is that I really didn’t know any CLI commands for MPE.  Without these commands I was unable to fix the issue.  Of course when I asked my TAC engineer if he had a document with all the commands he laughed and said there wasn’t any single document and they were spread across a handful of internal and external documents.

Here is a quick list of some of the CLI command that I found during this little issue:

mpx_sys status
Tells you the status of all the various sub-system components for MPE.

mpx_version
Tells you all version of the software install.  The original install is the first listed and each upgrade path performed is listed below.

net
Lets you review/change all portions of the network configuration of MPE via the CLI.

SSLUtil
Lets you review/change all portions of the SSL configuration of MPE via the CLI.

activity
Lets you pull reports of current activity on the system.  This is the only way to see if anyone is using the system from the CLI.

cat /opt/cisco/meetingplace_express/web/logs/rcms.out
This will display the tomcat logs.

infocap -b MMDDYYYYHHmm -e MMDDYYYYHHmm
This will collect data from all the various logs between the two date/timestamps and put them in a single zip file for you.  The -b stands for begins and -e stands for ends.

Have you run into any handy CLI commands?  Let me know in the comments.

One of the perks of my new job is the fact we are allowed to supply our own laptop/phones. My current personal laptop is over 6 years old now and hasn’t even been turned on in at least 4 years now. It was time for a new laptop and I decided it was time to take the plunge. I ordered myself a MacBook Pro 15” from Apple. I have been wanting to give Mac a whirl for a few years now and it was the perfect time. I have three weeks of unused vacation right now so the cost wasn’t an issue so I couldn’t find a reason not too. So far I am completely happy, there have been a few things that I have had to relearn but I am making progress. Apple really knows how to make something slick.

The second switch was in the cellular department. I have been using a BlackBerry for the last 4 years now I knew it would be a touch role to fill so I was kind of reluctant to move to a different platform. My biggest gripe about the AT&T BlackBerry was the EDGE network. The timing worked out that the iPhone 3G was coming out 4 days after I took a new job and had to get a personal laptop. After thinking about it for awhile and being happy with my Mac I figured what the heck. The BlackBerry was 199.99 and so was the iPhone 8gb. The monthly plan for BlackBerry is 44.99 and the iPhone is 30.00 all in all the iPhone was cheaper and faster. I planned on getting to the store around 5AM this morning but I woke up at 2:30AM and couldn’t get back to bed so I figured what the heck and headed down to the store. I was shocked to find myself the 25th person in line. Apparently people started lining up at 10PM the previous night. After a slow start I finally made it in the store around 8:50AM and I was done and on my way to work by 9:15AM. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to actually do any syncing with iTunes until around noon when their servers came back online.

I also decided to give the 60-day free trial of Mobile-Me a go. This was a test of patience today. The MobileMe website was down pretty much all day and my iPhone wasn’t getting any contacts, calendar events or mail. Around 9PM tonight I created a contact on my iPhone to see if the phone could send a contact up to the web and bam as soon as I saved the contact my iPhone downloaded all my contacts and the contacts/calendar portions seemed to work. I still however had no luck with mail. I finally broke down found an article on apple and it didn’t help so I sent an e-mail to support and to my shock about 10 minutes later I got my first me.com e-mail on my iPhone. It seems to also be fixed now.

All in all I am very pleased with my purchases and the way Apple handled the launch. Yes it was bumpy but seriously people what launch of any size goes off without a hitch. Guitar Hero 3? GTA IV? None of these had their website working and in fact it was days before it was fixed. Yes iPhone is a lot more dependent but a global launch and they were for the most part squared away within 24 hours is impressive. At least in my book.

On Monday of this week I accepted a new position moving into the Cisco Partner world. I am looking forward to the new opportunities and the certifications that I will be getting along the way. After five years at my current employer I felt it was time to move on to the next step of my career and start tackling new challenges. I gave my employer four weeks notice and I am already counting down the days. Thus far the strangest part of this whole switch has been sending e-mails out to all the vendors we deal with notifying them on my departure. After five years of working with some of these people the relationships I have formed with them is no longer just vendor but also friend. I will truly miss working with some of them.

As far as the blog goes I will try and ramp up the posting again. With all of this going on and getting back from Networkers I took a little break. But alas, I will be spending far more time studying now for my VP, SP and NP so I am sure I will come up with some good material.

I ran into some bugs when I added our 4402 to our WCS server today. Our 4402 is running v5.0.148.0 which has some known bugs (CSCsk97699 and CSCsm99941) which don’t actually apply to me since I don’t have a location appliance but I was assured by TAC what is happening to me is a known issue with WCS. Their work-around is to remove it from WCS or downgrade the 4402 to 4.2.130.0 (which would require a downgrade of WCS as well). I choose to simply remove it from WCS.

If anyone else runs into this let me know. We are using WCS with SNMPv3 creds on our 4402.