Intro to MSE: The setup wizard

Not only do I stumble around firewalls these days, but I also get to fumble my way through the vast world of wireless as well. Currently part of a project to upgrade WCS and 4400 series controllers to the latest and greatest, I found myself installing MSE virtual appliance and ran across a few oddities.

I ended up using this guide MSE Software Release 7.2 Virtual Appliance Configuration and Deployment Guide even though I was installing 7.4, frankly because I couldn’t find the equivalent guide for 7.4 with step by step screen shots and instructions that engineers like me cling to.  There is this 7.6 guide, but it doesn’t have quite the same level of detail on the wizard process as the 7.2 version.

Couple of notable steps given my experience going through the setup wizard for MSE:

When the documentation says to change the root password and the minimum password length is 8 characters, it’s mostly lying.  Fourteen was required, as well as some complexity requirement that took a bit to dechiper. I tried a zillion passwords with every category of complexity I could summon until the security gods finally accepted my offering.  Upon consulting the oracle that is Google to find out what in the wild world of the obvious I was missing, I found this support form post that suggests I could have skipped this step, changed the security restrictions in a future step, and then re-ran the wizard. Fabulous.

The other thing to take note of is that when the installation finishes, even after rebooting the box, the MSE service doesn’t automatically start. This is mentioned in some documents but not others. If you don’t start the MSE service, when you go to add the MSE to the Prime Infrastructure server, you will get an error that the MSE server doesn’t much like you and won’t be talking to you.

The fix for this issue is rather simple, log in as root and issue the command: service msed start

After this, I was able to add the MSE to Prime without a problem. Woot.

Published 2/27/2014