Ivan Versluis May 29th, 2008
Last two days I worked with a VMWare Premium Support engineer troubleshooting my VMWare ESX problem for booting the system. I will post another post with exact error messages, but we were not able to get into the service console nor did the other two boot options work. At some point he asked me did I have a Linux Live-CD? I was think ooh Yeah going back to old school and grabbed my case and found a BackTrack2 cd from two years ago.
After the reboot and boot into BackTrack we went trough couple of system settings and logs and he asked hey can you forward me the esxcfg-boot.log to me by email…. I was using the DRAC console and copy and paste is not going to work ;-(. Guys from past remember the real tricks when we did those back than with IIS 
and within couple minutes I was able to get the orginal file to one of my tftpd daemon on the network.
How did I get the log files?
-
- Download, burn the iso and boot from CD-rom
- Login with root/toor
- I prefer the GUI and start KDE by running startx
- Open Console session
- ifconfig eth0 up
- dhcpcd eth0
- check you ip address with ifconfig eth0
- now run tftp
- open ip address
- put esxcfg-boot.log or any other.
That’s all. For more information and download go to http://www.remote-exploit.org/.
Tags: ESX, howto, livecd, logfiles, network
Ivan Versluis May 22nd, 2008
Today I hit my first problem when creating a new JeOS virtual appliance based on Ubuntu. After I mount and extract the VMWare tools; I tried to run the ./vmware-install.pl script and got the warning below.
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-config.pl
The following VMware kernel modules have been found on your system that were
not installed by the VMware Installer. Please remove them then run this
installer again.
vmnet
vmhgfs
vmblock
vmmon
Execution aborted.
I did not install any VMWare tools before, but somehow these VMWare modules were included in the ubuntu-7.10-jeos-i386.iso file. Go to following directory and remove the mentioned directories.
cd /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-virtual/ubuntu
ls
sudo rm -r vmnet/
sudo rm -r vmhgfs
sudo rm -r vmblock
sudo rm -r vmmon
That’s all. Rerun the install script.
Tags: aborted, linux, Tools, Ubuntu, VMWare, vmware-install.pl
Ivan Versluis May 19th, 2008
If you are curios and interested like I am than the latest VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta is definitely something to download and install on your system.
Why Participate in a VMware Beta Program?
Here are a few reasons why you should participate in VMware beta programs.
- Exposure to the next generation features helps you grow your technical skills and understand the direction of the virtualization industry.
- Ability to prove that the product will work properly in your environment and report areas where it doesn’t.
- Prototype your solution during the beta program and be ready for deployment when we reach General Availability.
- Help shape today’s product and tomorrow’s features.
- Ability to work with VMware engineers on some programs.
- Problems encountered have a higher probability of being fixed by GA.
Join the new beta program for Workstation 6.5 here.
New Features in VMware Workstation 6.5:
- Seamless integration of guest and host applications with Unity
- Enhanced advanced VM Record and Replay
- Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
- Link state propagation networking
- Enhanced ACE authoring capabilities
- Easy Install Option’s support for Linux
- Improved 3D graphics Support
- Release 91182 supports ESX 3.5 and 3i installations
For me personally I would like to explore Unity and ESX in virtual machine support features. I like to keep my system as clean as possible and right now I can have one virtual machines hosting all my applications which I use occasionally. I don’t want to install Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop, Visual Studio and many others on my host system; with Unity I can bring all those application to my host system. Definitely something I will use quite often.
Since the release of ESX 3.5 and 3i I have been waiting to have a working installation of those products into VMWare Workstation. Thanks to Eric from NTPRo.nl who is confirming that ESX is up and running in the latest release of VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta.
Tags: 3.5, beta, ESX, support, unity, VMWare, workstation
Ivan Versluis May 19th, 2008
One week ago Del.Icio.Us released their new beta extension for Internet Explorer (6.0,7.0 and 8.0). I am using the IE extension button for a while at work & home to tag and group my Internet favorites. To me this is one of best tools you should have when using Internet. In the past I struggled many times with different kind of favorites folders and sync those with Firefox and vise-versa. The features and look and feel were already available for Firefox and now finally with IE.
Near instantaneous searching with very large accounts (over 10K bookmarks)
Full del.icio.us sidebar and toolbar implementation with bookmark sync and typedown search
Toolbar indicators for new network activity and links for you
Works on IE6, IE7, and IE8 beta on both XP and Vista
To download the plugin please go to http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/05/internet-explorer-and-delicious.html
Tags: button, del.icio.us, extension, IE
Ivan Versluis May 18th, 2008
Today I moved my data using the robocopy.exe tool and using the /move switch; the tool migrated data from one usb disk to another one. Before returning my usb disk to the IT department I checked the disk partition with one of the tools I use to check deleted files. Guess what the tool found 18000 files in 10 minutes scan on the usb volume which was empty…
Before I will return this USB disk for re-use I will make sure no data is left which can be recovered by any tool. With physical disks I used gdisk with dod option to wipe all data. For the USB disk I am going to install tool called Eraser which is freeware.
Continue Reading »
Tags: clean, data, delete, disks, erase, harddisk, howto, manual, secure, usb
Ivan Versluis May 18th, 2008
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 cannot start. The product license may be expired because you are using a pre-release or evaluation copy of the program, or the product key information may have been modified in your windows registry. Please run Setup to uninstall and then reinstall communicator.
For some reason I installed the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 which has limited license usage. I am not able to figure out now why and with others I am trying to get a workaround. For now I am using a script to remove the client from all my virtual machines.
MsiExec.exe /X{3960D0B6-A437-4D16-B0CB-41F5941DA08F} /q
I will update the post as soon I have the workaround.
Ivan Versluis May 18th, 2008
I am sure many of us hit this problem before, but after 6 years working with Windows XP I forget to change default settings over and over. Most of our clients are sitting in some kind of domain structure and receiving all their settings from Group Policy, but you probably will also have workgroup clients. Today I am testing the remote installation of Symantec Antivirus 10.2 server and hit this Administrator account problem.
First I thought the password is wrong; ok try again no…; than I add the computer\administrator and tried again; no again setup message.
Logon failure: unknown name or bad password. for \\%COMPUTERNAME%\admin$
I went back to my Windows XP virtual machine and checked the setting in Windows Explorer / Tools menu / Folder Options / View tab / and uncheck “Use simple file sharing (recommended)”.
Tags: account, administrator, issue, Windows, xp
Ivan Versluis May 14th, 2008
I tried to install Windows Server 2008 x64 on one of my Dell PowerEdge 2900 servers, because the storage driver was failing for x64 bit OS installations of Windows I was forced to install Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x86. The server is up and running and I installed Virtual Server 2005R2 SP1 Enterprise. Through the SCVMM console I initiated the Add Host of this new Windows server. The job failed with message the server did have the WS-Management service installed.
I did not install the WS-Management service before and I found somewhere to install the Hardware Management option in Add/Remove Windows Components to get this working.
Than I retried to add the server as host in SCVMM but the installation stopped with the message below.
Error (421) Agent installation failed on ref-vmh-02 because of a WS-Management configuration error.
I reboot the server couple of times; reviewed the eventlog and nothing worked to get the Virtual Machine Manager 2007 agent installed. There is hotfix which you can use and install the WinRM component manually without control panel. Go here and download and install the fix http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=84599. This fixed my problem and errors 10101 WinRM in the application eventlog.
Tags: 2007, add, new host, scvmm, WS-Management
Ivan Versluis May 13th, 2008
Recently the motherboard of one of the HP ProLiant ML370 G4 was replaced due faulty hardware, but the ILO was never reconfigured back. The ILO board was not reachable anymore on the old IP address. Last weekend we had issues with Active Directory and none of the domain accounts were able to logon locally with a RDP session; so the ops team tried the ILO remote web interface and this failed. Today I was able to find the IP address of the ILO board with the help of the “HP System Management Home Page” tools. I tried to login with the known password but the authentication failed. Couple years ago when these HP servers were deployed there is option in the bios to reset the ILO setting and change the ip and username setting. I do not want to reboot the server and manually reconfigure the ILO board from the console. HP has command line tool for this named HPONCFG. Please go here or search for HPONCFG on google.
HP Lights-Out Online Configuration Utility (HPONCFG)
Version 1.5.2.0
Description
———–
HP Lights-Out Online Configuration utility is a command line utility used to configure
iLO, iLO 2 and RILOE II from within the Windows operating systems without requiring a
reboot of the server.
I am not able to show the screenshots of HPONCFG.exe tool. The server is managed by third party, but after you installed the cpqsetup.exe on the server you should be able to configure the ILO board.
Tags: cmd, config, HP, HPONCFG.exe, ilo, password, proliant, reset
