wget is my friend

sometimes you need yank a site and edit it and really don't feel like doing it live. one way to get the content is cp'ing the directory and do whatever to it. other times wget is a quick and dirty if you're particularly lazy or if your content is all over the place. here's the command line i typically use for wget:

wget --random-wait -r -p -e robots=off -U mozilla http://your.site.org <- yanks *
wget --random-wait -r --no-parent -p http://your.site.org/content/dir <- grabs a dir

some useful swtiches per man:

-p ; include all files, including images.
-e robots=off ; do not obey server-side robots.txt 
-U mozilla ; browser identity.
--random-wait ; number of seconds to wait, thus avoiding server black list.
--limit-rate=15k ; throttle the download rate.
-b ; continue application in background.
-o ; output log (as opposed to scrolling on screen).

reassociate vmware images

so i got the grand idea to scp some vmware images from a dead nas to another living nas. since the dead one was dead, there really wasn't a good way to move the images in the usual vmware way.

so, i proceeded to set up another iscsi device on that nas, got it mounted right with all the correct data. neat.
my vmware esx server still reported that its images were "Unknown Host" of course. but blast it, what were the names of these systems before? my vsphere console server was down. crud.

easy, i went here:

esxserver:/etc/vmware/hostd/vmInventory.xml

and there they were.

all i needed to do to reassociate them was to change the /vmfs/volume/path to the correct one. i rebooted the vmware esx server and all was cool.