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Update: 2008/03/20 I see more and more people coming to my blog when searching for this KB article. The post below I published when I tried to install the SP1 during the test phases before it was available to public; unfortunately I was not able to get the SP1 installed; most probably of my installed software. Go directly to this website if you have any problems from now. 

Update:2008/04/08 Thanks to www.ghacks.net and their post here  you can download this cmd script which removes couple of registery entires Windows Vista SP1 checks. Download the script and run it. Reboot and go back to Windows Update Website.

Go to http://connect.microsoft.com website and download the service pack. You should participate the “Windows Beta Programs”!

Download the SP1 version. I downloaded the x86 and it took me 20minutes with 2MB SDSL dsl line. Start the Windows6.0-KB936330-X86_wave0_SPInstaller.exe and allow the exe to run if UAC is enabled.

See my screenshots which I took during the installation. Maybe it makes sense to double check Google for VistaSP1 issues. I read couple of posts people have issues when Bitlocker was enabled and Vista was upgraded to SP1; after the uninstall the encrypted files were not accessible anymore.

Screen clipping taken: 11/29/2007, 12:03 PM

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The screencapture below shows the installation time of my first Exchange Server 2007 ever. Exchange 2007 requires a 64bit Windows Server operating system and this was my opportunity to test the Windows Server 2008 RC0 Hypervisor on my new Intel Q6600 serverbox. 

Oeps 90 minutes in total ;(.  Finally I could test a Exchange Server 2007 installation myself. I reinstalled the Q6600 serverbox HDD with VistaX64 and I will start using the VMWare Workstation 6.0 with X64 bit support for guest operating systems. At this moment RC0 is very slow for me.

For 6 weeks I have been struggling with my emails on my new Q6600 server. Today I cleaned up my mailbox and organized all emails from last month.

I also found a screenshot which I forwarded to my work email. This was my first experience  with Microsoft preview of Hypervisor technology. Before the guest booted to Windows Server I created the image below.

Wow, but very slow as I will post my next screenshot in a minute.

Mount the iso image on the VMWare guest running the CentOS partition.

The iso file can be found C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\linux.iso if you are running VMWare Server instance.

Login with VMWare Server Console to CentOS and mount the cdrom

• mkdir /mnt/cdrom 
• mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom 

mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only

Mount will link the cdrom to the  /mnt/cdrom directory.  Now you can copy the rpm file to /tmp and start the installation process.

• cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-1.0.2-39867.i386.rpm /tmp
• cd /tmp
• rpm -i /tmp/VMwareTools-1.0.2-39867.i386.rpm

After the file has been installed start the vmware tools perl script

• vmware-config-tools.pl

Today I needed to change the hostname of my virtual guest machine running CentOS.

• Login with putty.exe
• Goto /etc/sysconfig/
• Type vi network
• Press i on the keyboard and change the HOSTNAME to your preferred servername
• Press ESC on the keybord
• Save the configuration by :wq!
• Reboot

That’s all!

As a security professional I am always concerned about my logs left on the servers running on the Internet. Couple months ago I heard something about the TOR network and never give at any attention to have a better look than just quickly read on their website. This evening I installed the local Vidalia Bundle but it still didn’t fulfill my needs to quickly tunnel other TCP based applications like Remote Desktop Protocol (RPD) though TOR network. 

After some research on Google and TOR wiki pages and found out this nice appliance called JanusVM. I downloaded the 20MB zip file and put it on my Intel Quad Core server running VMWare Workstation 6.0. After two minutes the appliance was up and running.

Screenshot from my appliance. I entered option 4 and created new vpn account.

Then I went back to my Windows XP machine and created new VPN connection to the JanusVM.

The JanusVM VPN tunnel was running and I started IE and went to Google. Entered a search for my ip address and lucky me my request came from Germany

Final test with mstsc.exe client to one of the RDP server on the Internet and I was successfully logged on with a nice IP address. 

This is working fine for me and my requirements. I would like to mention the latency. Yes, it is slow and don’t think to download a CD. Latency from China is also bad, but go back to the VMWare player/workstation and choose option5 to recreate the circuit.