Use PowerCLI to connect the PVSCSI floppy drive to a VM
by lunarg on October 20th 2020, at 13:28
In order to install a fresh copy of Windows Server on a VM with the VMWare Paravirtual SCSI controller, as the driver for the PVSCSI adapter is not included in the default Windows Server ISO, you would use the built-in floppy images to make the PVSCSI driver available during the installation, avoiding the need to install using a different SCSI controller and then swap the controller after the installation of the guest OS and VMWare Tools.

To facilitate this, you would add a virtual floppy drive, connect the correct floppy image containing the PVSCSI driver, and then load the driver during the disk selection portion of the installation wizard. Unfortunately, since the deprecation of the Flas  ...
 
Unable to install NuGet provider for PowerShell (on older OS'es)
by lunarg on October 19th 2020, at 12:58
When attempting to install modules from the Powershell Gallery, you may get errors on older versions of Windows Server (2008-2012R2), even after updating PowerShell to more recent versions. The errors are concerning unable to install the NuGet provider, required to download packages from PSGallery.

Errors are similar to:

WARNING: Unable to download from URI.

WARNING: Unable to download the list of available providers. Check your internet connection.

Unable to find package provider 'NuGet'. It may not be imported yet.

The reason for this is a problem with the cryptographic providers enabled on your system. PowerShell 5.1 enables SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 for secure HTTP connections, which are  ...
 
Convert OVF to OVA and vice-versa
by lunarg on October 16th 2020, at 13:09

You can use VMWare's OVFTool to convert from OVF to OVA and vice-versa.

  1. Download and install OVFTool. Versions for Windows, Mac and linux are available. You'll need a (free) VMWare Account.
  2. Collect your OVF (and dependent files) and place them on the machine you've installed OVFTool on.
  3. Open a command prompt/Terminal and navigate to the folder where the files are located.
  4. Perform the conversion (adjusting command and paths according):
    For OVF to OVA (note that all files referenced in the OVF must be in the same folder):
    install-path\ovftool.exe C:\path\source.ovf C:\path\dest.ova
    For OVA to OVF:
    install-path\ovftool.exe C:\path\source.ova C:\path\dest.ovf
 
Switch to VMXNET3 in VMWare Fusion
by lunarg on October 16th 2020, at 09:14
A not so documented feature is the support of VMXNET3 in VMWare Fusion. It cannot be configured through the UI but by manually editing the VM configuration file (VMX-file), you can leverage it (assuming you have installed VMWare Tools and/or are running a supported guest OS).

Open the file with your favourite text editor, but avoid using Apple's TextEdit as it has a tendency to replace regular quotes with opening/closing quotes, which will break your VMX-file. You can use Terminal and open the file using Nano if you want to be sure.

Network adapters are specified with ethernet*. as the starting line, where * = the number of the network adapter (0 is the first, 1 is the second, and so on).   ...
 
Manually update Office Click-to-Run installations
by lunarg on October 7th 2020, at 14:08
You can manually trigger an update of Office Click-to-Run installations, without starting any of the Office applications. This can be useful in VDI-environments where it may be necessary to update Office in the source image.

To trigger the update, start the Click-to-Run client with the /update switch.

Perform the update (will show a progress bar):

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user

Silently perform the update (don't show progress bar and force Office apps to restart):

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user displaylevel=false forceappshutdown=true

Both comm  ...
 
Manually start a filesystem clean on a Data Domain
by lunarg on August 28th 2020, at 10:40

You can manually start a filesystem clean from the CLI:

  1. Log into the CLI using SSH (or via serial) using an account with admin privileges.
  2. To check how much space you will gain by running the clean, type:
    filesys show space
    The column Cleanable GiB will show the amount of storage that will be cleaned.
  3. Start the filesystem clean by typing:
    filesys clean start
  4. To monitor the process, type:
    filesys clean watch
    The monitor will run continuously in the CLI. Use Control + C to return to the prompt.
 
Mailman + ISPConfig: User unknown in virtual mailbox table
by lunarg on August 27th 2020, at 15:16

In a Mailman + ISPConfig type of setup, you may get the following error while sending an e-mail to the mailing list:

Error:
550 5.1.1 <leden@zweefvliegen-hasselt.be>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual mailbox table

When looking at the virtual aliases (in /var/lib/mailman/data/), the lists are empty.

You can resolve this by regenerating the aliases:

sudo /var/lib/mailman/bin/genaliases
sudo postmap /var/lib/mailman/data/transport-mailman
sudo postmap /var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman

Afterwards, restart Postfix:

sudo service postfix restart
 
About Windows DNS Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2020-1350)
by lunarg on July 17th 2020, at 12:35

The official information page about the long-standing Windows DNS Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability:

https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-1350

 
 
 
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