Redhat Linux: how to add/remove hard disk without rebooting server

A few years ago, I managed a few hundred of Redhat Linux servers, most of them are DELL PowerEdge 1750, 1850, and 1950.
Sometimes I needed to move the harddisk between servers. Removing or adding hardisks normally requires system reboot.
But I used this way to remove or add disk without rebooting:

echo 'scsi remove-single-device 0 0 1 0' > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo 'scsi add-single-device 0 0 1 0' > /proc/scsi/scsi

Recently I was asked to add a new harddisk without reboot system. It's a Redhat in VMware, as I was not managing VMware, so not clear about the hostadaptor, SCSI channel, ID, LUN, manipulating /proc/scsi/scsi may not work.

After searching around I found that I can let system to rescan the SCSI bus.

for scsi_host in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*
do
    echo '- - -' > $scsi_host/scan
done

After this, I could see the new hard disk was spinned up in /var/log/message.

Besides 'scsi remove-single-device 0 0 1 0', we can also do it in this way to remove a hard disk.

echo 1 > /sys/block/sdb/device/delete

Reference:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/archived/SCSI-Programming-HOWTO/SCSI-Programming-HOWTO-4.html
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/vmware-add-a-new-hard-disk-without-rebooting-guest.html

BIND DNS: reverse delegation of IP range

Besides mapping domain name to IP address, DNS systems can also map IP address to domain name. Many applications rely on DNS reverse mapping to function properly.
NetBackup will throw error if reverse mapping is not setup or is setup incorrectly, email system also needs correct reverse mapping.

Suppose we have the whole range of IP addresses in 222.222.222.0/24, we can configure reverse mapping in named.conf:

zone "222.222.222.in-addr.arpa" {

    type master;

    file "222.222.222.rev";

};

If we only have part of the IP addresses in 222.222.222.0/24, suppose 222.222.222.64 to 222.222.222.91, the reverse mapping is called classless reverse delegation.

From 222.222.222.64 to 222.222.222.95 there are 30 usable addresses, plus the network and broadcast address, there are 32 addresses, 32 = 2^5, 8 x 4 - 5 = 27. so our IP range can be represented as 222.222.222.64/27

ISP should have defined reverse delegation in their reverse zone file:

64/27    IN    NS    ns.sg.linuxscripter.blogspot.com

Now we can define the reverse mapping for our IP range in our own named.conf:

zone "64/27.222.222.222.in-addr.arpa" {

    type master;

    file "64-95.222.222.222.rev";

};

Note: The domain name and IP addresses in this post are dummy ones, I use them for easier writing.