Shell access to your ix2/ix4 exposed! “Get yer red hot ssh here!”

So, I promised you guys in Iomega ix4-200d data reconstruction, ssh and more! that I would expose the password to login to the ix2 and ix4 as soon as I could.    Well, your wait is finally over!

Let’s start as you normally would, by logging into the support console!

http://192.168.1.1/support.html

Click on Support Files

Whoa, what’s that I highlighted there and even tossed in an arrow?! Can I MAKE it any more straight forward? Psst.. Click on Support Files :)

Click on the Dump button

Ooh, what’s that little guy down there? Dump? Yea, I didn’t even notice this before (because I had shell access myself ;)) but this is for your benefit!

The system will go through "Gathering system state…"

Open up your dump file!

Why yes, I did go mad with clicking colors and arrows in the win7 version of MSPaint.. Okay, but I digress. :)

Click that bad boy, which will include dump data about your system! Download it, and open it!

Drill down into the dump –> config –> etc –> and open up the file named “shadow”   (dump-20100107225620.tar.gz\dump-20100107225620\config\etc)

Wait, what?! Is that an exposed hash with the root password from your shadow?!

Find your shadow File in there, and lo and behold, you will have your Iomega root users hash!    Now it’s just a matter of cracking it!

It is beyond the scope of this article to tell you how to actually crack the pwd.. (giggle) go here, download john the ripper and you’ll do just fine :)

Password CRACKED in seconds! user:root pwd:soho

Taking my seed from my system and running it through a simple alphanumeric search, I come up with username root, password soho! That was easy! That works if you have NO Password set!

Through a collaborative effort with @randyjcress @Kiwi_Si @VirtualisedReal and @gabvirtualworld we were able to determine that by using soho and whatever password you use on the system, that should do it! And really, the credit does primarily go to @randyjcress for leading us in that specific direction so props randy! :)

ie: admin pwd is apples, so login using sohoapples – This is still undergoing verification, but I thought I’d share it out there, while we sort it out!

Disclaimer: The means to perform all of these tasks has been replicated and verified in the wild without requiring any intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the system. 

Iomega ix4-200d data reconstruction, ssh and more!

So for those of you who know me, you know I initially complained about a data reconstruction problem with my ix4-200d! I accidently pulled the power cable out (doh!) and then my system came up JUST fine, and said “Data reconstruction, 2%” Yea, it said that FOREVER – And it did nothing and got nowhere! Regardless of how many reboots I made! (Though my data access was fine!)

ix4-200d !

And even going to the “Update Device Software” tab, it always reported “The device software is up to date” Which I now know is a LIE! LIES I SAY! :)

I did a little searching and came across an updated firmware! (oh my!) however it didn’t say it’d do anything about data reconstruction problems! But hey, I always like to be running the latest/greatest, so I downloaded and installed the latest firmware! StorCenter ix4-200d Firmware Version 2.1.25.229: Read First (You’ll find this to be quick and painless!)

Well, some minutes passed and all of a sudden the system was all “DATA RECONSTRUCTION IS HAPPENING IN THE HIZZY!” Okay, not in those exact words.. but I don’t feel like pulling my power to try to reproduce the problem – needless to say, my data reconstruction resumed and finished in short order! Score one for the bucko! (dated reference much?!)

So I deep dove into the system to see what else had changed! (nothing consequential that I could find) but my journey to find a way to ssh this box had not ended! I was determined! I must.. I must.. I must increase my SSH ability! And while searching I came across not only this webpage SSH/Shell access to iomega StorCenter ix2 but that little gem of a webpage included this little link at the bottom! http://ip-of-nas/support.html – Which when you browse to it on your ix4, you end up seeing a page which looks like… this!

Support Page to enable SSH on ix4-200d /support.html

This has a few little gems, only two of which will I look at in any detail – Support Access and Recover Disks

Support Access to enable SSH Storage Recovery Verification - Force Disk data reconstruction maybe?

Well, Support Access looks pretty damn straight forward! Check the box, reboot, and SSH will be enabled (permanently!)

The Storage Recovery Verification is a bit more interesting – my “guess” is that it allows you the ability to force the data reconstruction many of us complain of! Again, I have no intention of forcing the deal to try to see what happens if I fail my system – You simply let me know if this works for you – with data reconstruction woes :)

Getting Shell (ssh) access to the ix4-200d!

Sweet, eh! So, I feel comfortable sharing the process on how to do this.. because frankly, I had to find it from the outside looking in! So I definitely grant you good luck on solving your data reconstruction, firmware updating, and enabling SSH on your NAS!   Until I find an externally cited source though.. I cannot share with you my passwd I used to log in to my ix4 ;)

As promised!  Shell access to your ix2/ix4 exposed! “Get yer red hot ssh here!”

If you come across a site referencing it though, I’d be glad to add it to the mix!  Thanks for your patience.. and look forward to a future post around getting my ‘gigabit runs at 100mb’ problem :)

Life Changing Highlights of the Iomega ix4-200d

Welcome to the ix4-200d! This single device is a life changer for both the active home user as well as the SOHO business user who wants to take things to the NEXT Level!

Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS Server

If you’re not familiar with this little beast in a box, here are some of the high-lights which this brings to bear!   NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, AFP Support, BitTorrent client, Xbox Media Services, Printer, USB, Rsync, Celerra integration, dual gigabit Ethernet?!   Oh, and did I mention it’s –VMware- Certified out of the box?!?

Now, seriously! Let’s take a tour of this little system which has taken quite a step or integration in my household!

ix4-200d Home Page ix4-200d Dashboard

When I first powered this system up, it sat there for awhile without me doing anything to it.  Why? This thing is SILENT! I forgot I had powered it up, and as a result didn’t even bother to check what the IP address was that it assigned itself!   Well, out of the box, it came with a RAID protection I was fine with! I had options to change it, but I’m comfortable with it!

Iomega Data Protection Settings Parity Disk 2.7TB

Frankly, this covers most of what you need to do with the device and you’re set! –Done!- But that doesn’t mean you need to stop there!

Iomega Settings Iomega Network Services (AFP, Bluetooth, FTP, NFS, rsync, SNMP, CIFS)

Most of the features in this unit can be configured by simply checking a box and poof! You’re done!

I have mine configured in the following fashion: AFP for my Macbook to backup, NFS and iSCSI for my ESX Servers, CIFS for local network file access, Media Services to interface with my Xbox360 to stream content and pictures, rsync Server to strangely replicate the box between this ix4 and an ix2 as well as to replicate over to the Celerra VSA :)   (Oh, and the Avamar Virtual Edition running in a VM backing up all of my home machines while taking up far less space with inline deduplication :))

I don’t have Video Surveillance enabled yet, but it’s nice to know the integration is built in there! (Printers also nice, but this lives in a closet, so I’m not sure I want to do that :))

So, hopefully you get the opportunity to play around with this power house in a box, and with the ix2-200d offering the same services (but with less disks and less IOPS) Oh, and if you’re interested in buying one, it’d help if you knew the “retail” costs!

Iomega Pricing

So, that gives you an idea of “retail” cost, now I’d say, go to Fry’s and try not to pay more than $599.99 for the 4TB model (Fry’s is your friend! ;))

For another great review of this, check out Stephen Foskett’s review!

RichCopy under the covers – File Migrations exposed!

I’m sure by now you’ve read my introduction to RichCopyIntroducing RichCopy – your Robocopy replacement!  Well, today I spent some time doing speeds and feed tests over numerous protocols in my lab environment.  I want to establish a disclaimer that this is no way a reflection of the ‘speed’ you will get, or not get respectively – More that the sheer differences between single threaded operation (re:xcopy, robocopy, rsync for windows) will be infinitely improved when using this tool! Oh, and I’ll also go into some of the cool depth you can cover!

I ran a number of very small file copies (<4k file size files) in the 15,000 to 90,000 file range and got the following results!

Speeds and Feeds tests!

The specific items I want to call out here are – when doing a single threaded copy (such as the CIFS job which took 57:16 – well, frankly that is as close to a ‘robocopy’ or ‘xcopy’ we’d get and when you compare it to slightly increasing the number of simultaneous threads – OMFG look at the results! Cut down by a lot of the time! Imagine if that were your production data migration – Cutting that seriously by 1/6th or even more depending upon the workload! The same can be said if you have ‘changed’ data that it is looking to update only the changed blocks.  So much potential!  This particular host was a slooooow VM which can somewhat explain why in general it was slow.  However the slowness is reflective across the board, so the 1/6th speed improvement is likely to be the same if not better in any other situation or circumstance! 

I definitely encourage checking it out, as well as the numerous advanced features this tool offers.

These advanced features… I’m going to discuss in a few moments as well ;)

For those of you who are new to RichCopy – Honestly you can get by with the simplest of actions by simply modifying your thread numbers.  But if you want to get into the special details of it, let me reveal to you a number of VERY cool functions and features.  Oh and might I add, ADVANCED features that let you take it up a notch, not to mention the amazing HELP file too!

Starting with the mothership of all functions! The Advanced option! Which enables a whole series of new options enabled when you go to your File Copy options!

Taking RichCopy to the Advanced! File Copy Options Process Control

The Process Control lets you really dive down into some functions such as your cache sizes and more! Really quite cool.  Though frankly as I jump to the “Others” section, one of the coolest features if the fact that when you modify your options in the GUI, you are presented with your CLI parameters!

Command Line Parameters - CLI so cool!

Though don’t get me wrong, File Attributes, Error handling, inclusion and exclusions, FTP and other things themselves –are- quite cool!

File Attributes and Error Handling Inclusion (Exclusion looks the same, so I didn't dup it!) FTP, Other and more!

Though hands down, the most important part of this tool is the fact that it EXISTS, it is FREE and it is fricking COOL!   So, there’s no reason to sit idly by paying for SecureCopy, or watching your serial operations SLOWLY move by as you migrate data! Get out there, and play around with RichCopy today! It’ll make you wish you had this tool for the past 10 years like MS had!

NetApp NSM – SAN v NAS creation differences

For those of you who manage filers via FilerView or the Command Line, you’ll find this interesting (I swear, I promise you will! :))

The following is what happens when you create a volume using the NSM and choose NAS

image

Language on volume nsm_nas changed to en_US
(This is the what gets set – The rest below are the values set)

(snap reserve)
Volume nsm_nas: current snapshot reserve is 20% or 4096 k-bytes.

(snap sched)
Volume nsm_nas: 0 2 6@8,12,14,16,20

(snap autodelete)
snapshot autodelete settings for nsm_nas:
state : off
commitment : try
trigger : volume
target_free_space : 20%
delete_order : oldest_first
defer_delete : user_created
prefix : (not specified)
destroy_list : none

(vol autosize)
Volume autosize is currently OFF for volume ‘nsm_nas’.

(vol options)
nosnap=off, nosnapdir=off, minra=off, no_atime_update=off, nvfail=off,
ignore_inconsistent=off, snapmirrored=off, create_ucode=on,
convert_ucode=on, maxdirsize=62914, schedsnapname=ordinal,
fs_size_fixed=off, compression=off, guarantee=volume, svo_enable=off,
svo_checksum=off, svo_allow_rman=off, svo_reject_errors=off,
no_i2p=off, fractional_reserve=100, extent=off, try_first=volume_grow,
read_realloc=off, snapshot_clone_dependency=off

This is the same you’d expect as when creating via the CLI or using FilerView!

Now, this is what happens when you do the same actions, but choose SAN

image

Language on volume nsm_san changed to en_US
Security style for /vol/nsm_san/ changed from ntfs to unix
The space management policy for vol nsm_san has changed: autosize state enabled.
The space management policy for vol nsm_san has changed: autodel state enabled.

(I did edit the words above to fit, but you get the point :) – here are the results)

(snap reserve)
Volume nsm_san: current snapshot reserve is 0% or 0 k-bytes. (Down from 20%)

(snap sched)
Volume nsm_san: 0 2 6@8,12,14,16,20  (Didn’t change)

(snap autodelete)
snapshot autodelete settings for nsm_san:
state                           : on (Turned on now)
commitment                      : try
trigger                         : volume
target_free_space               : 20%
delete_order                    : oldest_first
defer_delete                    : user_created
prefix                          : (not specified)
destroy_list                    : none

(vol autosize)
Volume autosize is currently ON for volume ‘nsm_san’. (Enabled now also)
The volume is set to grow to a maximum of 24 MB, in increments of 1 MB.

(vol options)
nosnap=on, nosnapdir=off, minra=off, no_atime_update=off, nvfail=off,
ignore_inconsistent=off, snapmirrored=off, create_ucode=on,
convert_ucode=on, maxdirsize=62914, schedsnapname=ordinal,
fs_size_fixed=off, compression=off, guarantee=volume, svo_enable=off,
svo_checksum=off, svo_allow_rman=off, svo_reject_errors=off, no_i2p=on,
fractional_reserve=0, extent=off, try_first=volume_grow,
read_realloc=off, snapshot_clone_dependency=off

 

So, I don’t know about you, but this is pretty damn cool! The coolest bits are – when  I want to create volumes and I don’t want to look up the Best Practices for Vol auto growth and snap auto-deletion, I don’t need to now! Hooray!