I’ve been playing around a little recently with Thinstall (which was recently acquired by VMware).  Basically it will take an application and turn it into a self-contained single EXE that doesn’t require an install.

It’s extremely easy to use, I setup a fresh install of XP in VMware Workstation, created a snapshot then you run the setup capture program.  It will do a pre-install scan as shown below.

At this point (below) the scan is complete, and you leave this window up and install your application.

I am installing a trial version of SecureCRT which I use quite a bit for SSH connections.

After you run the post-install scan if should find the new EXE, click Continue.  It It will save the output to the Thinstall\Captures directory, run the build.bat file located in there to build the app.

Output after running the build.bat file:

As you can see below, after I ran build.bat I uninstalled SecureCRT  The single EXE is in the Thinstall\Captures\<software name>\bin folder

Execute the EXE to run the program on whatever machine you like with no install.

If you make a lot of these, I’ve found it is nice setting a snapshot right after XP is installed, then I revert back after each app I create.  

Popularity: 1% [?]

This has been out for awhile now, but after having seen National Treasure 2 last night it seemed appropriate. When you install Exchange 2007 it always installs in the same administrative group – FYDIBOHF23SPDLT. It also uses a routing group for compatibility, named DWBGZMFD01QNBJR.

What does it mean? If you shift every letter/number 1 place you get EXCHANGE12ROCKS.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I recently got around to installing Server 2008 on ESX again, I had installed an earlier build before and had to do a number of things to get it installed (load drivers during setup etc). 

Build 6001 installed fine, the only catch I had was I initially set the type to Windows 2003 Enterprise and once the installation was complete and I installed VMware Tools, it wouldn’t launch until I would go to “End VMware Tools” weird… The fix for it is to set the type to Windows Vista, then install VMware Tools.

Popularity: 1% [?]

One of the things I really like about NetApp is the fact that they have an ONTAP simulator, which is surprisingly powerful. I have used it a lot in the past for POC testing. I use it in VMware Workstation 6 with a minimal Debian install (no GUI). After installing the simulator (available from NetApp’s NOW site) it comes with 2 100mb disks. To add more disks there is a script in the /sim directory to run. I used this process to add 8 1000mb disks to my simulator.

/sim/makedisks -n 8 -t 5

Note: If you want to add a different type/size of disk, open up the makedisks script to see the available options.

Once that is done run the simulator with /sim/runsim.sh

After you login to the simulator, the new disks will show up as failed, follow this process to fix.

priv set diag
disk unfail -s v
disk zero spares

Once you are done, type priv set to exit from the diagnostic mode.

Once that is complete you can create a new aggregate using the 1000mb disks you have created. It probably goes without saying but since it is just a simulator uncheck the box for Double Parity when creating the aggregate so you can maximize your storage. Thanks to the NetApp Simulator and being able to use ESX on VMware Workstation I am able to have 2 ESX servers in a cluster with DRS/HA using SAN storage from 2 NetApp Simulators that replicate between each other with SnapMirror – extremely useful for learning.

Popularity: 6% [?]

One of the new features of Leopard is Time Machine a feature that automatically backs up your Mac. The main thing I didn’t like about it is that I have 2+ TB of disk space on my file server, and only a 250 gb USB drive connected to my Mac, using Time Machine the only way I could use it was with the attached USB drive. But I found there is a hack to allow you to use Time Machine with a Windows networked share. From a terminal window type:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Then go to System Preferences, Time Machine and click on Change Disk and you can now select your network share.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Being a NetApp partner, generally every ESX installation I do is backed by NetApp storage.  I had been looking for an open source package that I could run on ESX to monitor the ESX server as well as NetApp storage appliances.

I started out using unnoc, and it seems to do what I am after.  You can grab it from here.  It is built with an IDE disk so if you want to use it on ESX you need change the disk.  To do that run the following (I will assume you are currently in the directory that has the unnoc files) to clone the disk:

vmkfstools -i unnoc-1*.vmdk unnoc-scsi.vmdk

Create a new VM using a custom configuration, select Linux as the Guest os and Other Linux as the version.  Select use an existing virtual disk and use unnoc-scsi.vmdk

Once that is done boot it up, the default login is root/unnoc123.  Change the default password, and configure an IP address, gateway and DNS servers.

• passwd
• ifconfig eth0 <ip> netmask <subnet mask>
• route add default gw <gateway ip>
• nano /etc/resolv.conf

At this point you should be able to SSH into the box as well as view the default unnoc web page on the server.

First thing to do is make sure SNMP is enabled on the filer, from the command line run:

options snmp

Make sure snmp.enable is set to on, then run snmp and it should tell you the the community string is public and set to ro.

Edit the unnoc.conf file: nano /var/www/unnoc/etc/unnoc.conf

scroll to the very bottom and add a new entry:

host {
                hostname = <filer name>
                community = public
                type = netapp
        }

Adding the esx server:

host {
        hostname = <esx server>
        service_url = https://<esx server>/sdk/vimService
        community = public
        type = esx
        user = <user>
        password = <password>
}

Note: You may need to check your settings on the ESX firewall if you run into communication problems.

Popularity: 2% [?]