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Why use file integrity MD5 checksum?
Jun 28th
Last night I copied my Windows Server 2008 R2 server image to a central site. The copy of 3 GB took almost 5 hours over the network. I exported my Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine as OVF template. Due the image size of the virtual machine I used 7z tool to slit the image into 50MB files. I copied the directory to the storage server and started the extraction!
7-Zip: Data error in file.vmdk. File is broken
The export stopped at 23%. When looking at the file structure all files were 50MB and I could not find any which was less than that. So I had two choices now. a) start copy again or b)run a file integrity MD5 checksum on my source directory which contained all the files and than run that against the destination.
I decided to go for the B option and looked for a good MD5 checksum tool. On exactfile.com I found a small console utility named exf.exe and than I created a digest file against my source folder.
The exf.exe –md5sum took couple of minutes to generate the file. I than copied exf.exe and my exactfile.md5 to the destination folder.
After running exf.exe –c extractfile.md5 the MD5 checksum failed on file number 16. When looking at the file it has the same size 512000KB as any other files.
I copied file 016 again over the network and start the extract process all over again. I spent like 15 minutes to find a solution and copy only 50MB file to solve this whole problem.
Tools: ImgBurn on Windows Server 2008
Oct 30th
ImgBurn is a free tool that enables you to burn CD/DVD images with ease. All the latest drives are supported (including booktype / bitsetting on many of the major ones). Advanced functionality can be found in the ImgBurn context menus.
ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats – including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI.
ImgBurn supports all the Windows OS’s – Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and 2008 (including all the 64-bit versions). If you use Wine, it should also run on Linux and other x86-based Unixes.
If you never heard of this tool than now you should download and install it 
. I am using this tool to burn cd-roms from my Windows Server 2008 Hyver-V whitebox and it works smoothly. Beside all burning features one other which comes handy is to grab a folder and create a ISO file; than mount the ISO file with Hyper-V or ESX virtual machines. I used this feature many times when working in the test and production environments.
Click here to download the ImgBurn tool.
Tools: visionapp Remote Desktop 2008 Express (vRD 2008)
Oct 27th
vRD 2008 is a tool for the management of remote Windows computers via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). vRD is ideal for administrators who need to maintain simultaneous connections to multiple servers. Connection-specific settings and login credentials can be organized in folders and subfolders for quick access.
visionapp Remote Desktop 2008 is currently one of the most popular products in the market of RDP tools. visionapp Remote Desktop 2008 Express (vRD 2008 Express) offers a multiple number of enhancements and new features compared to the freeware version vRD 1.5, such as the extended support of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista (incl. 64-Bit), an overview on all logged in users and connection history.
Limitations of vRD 2008 Express:
- up to 15 objects
- 5 credentials storable
- no Database-Modus available
- duration is valid until 3-31-2009
With some enhancements and limitations the tool is still out there for public. I used the freeware versions before and still like the Office interface. Good opportunity to check the tool yourself before buying it. Looking into the future plans of mRemote and vRD I think I will buy the license somewhere next year .
Please register and download the tool from here if you want to test it.
Don’t worry the limitations is working after you start creating the 16th connection:
Ubuntu JeOS 7.10 VMWare Tools installing issue
May 22nd
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.
VMWare tools tracking mouse issue
Jan 23rd
New tutorial has been published explaining the strange behavior of the VMWare tools mouse driver.
Example screenshot
http://www.networknet.nl/apps/wp/published/vmware-tools-mouse-tracking-after-upgrade
