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VMWare vMotion: compatibility check fails with connection refused
edited by on December 9th 2019, at 16:54
I had an issue where vMotion would no longer work. When selecting the target host in the vCenter UI, the compatibility check would fail with the error:

Error
A general system error occurred: Connection refused: The remote service is not running OR is overloaded, OR a firewall is rejecting connections.

A Google search for the issue reveals quite a bit of possible causes, mostly pointing to several more standard causes, which were all in order. When digging deeper in the logs, I stumbled upon the same message appearing in /storage/log/vmware/vmware-vpxd/vpxd.log.

Continuing the search, someone mentioned that it could be caused by services not started, which can easily be revealed when loggi  ...
 
VMWare VCSA/PSC: disable password expiration for the root account from the CLI
edited by on December 9th 2019, at 15:45
You can disable password expiration from the command-line when logging on using SSH or by enabling the Bash shell. Note that you will need root privileges (i.e. root account) to make this change.

If shell access is not enabled, you need to enable it first:

Log on to the appliance management portal: https://ip-or-fqdn:5480/.

In the Navigator, click on Access. On the right side (Access Settings), click on the Edit button.

Tick the box next to Enable SSH Login for remote access, or if you rather prefer making the change through the VMRC, check the box Enable BASH Shell. Then click OK. The change is effective immediately.

Log on to the shell using either SSH (using PuTTY or another applicat  ...
 
HPE SAS SSD - Drive Failure after 32768 hours of operation
edited by on December 2nd 2019, at 14:41

HPE has determined an issue with certain HPE SAS Solid State Drives (SSDs) which have a bug in their firmware causing a drive failure at 32,768 hours of operation. A critical patch has been releases to address the issue.

More information: https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00092491en_us

 
Notes on updating firmware on a Dell EMC PowerVault ME 4 SAN
edited by on November 18th 2019, at 10:14
Updating the firmware on the Dell EMC PowerVault ME 4 series is pretty straight forward. If you are downloading the firmware on macOS, there's a small caveat though.

The download is delivered as a ZIP-file and contains a single binary file with the extension .bin. When unpacking this ZIP file through the Finder, the BIN file also gets unpacked. In order to successfully get the BIN file, you need to unpack the file through Terminal:

Download the latest firmware from support.dell.com

Start up Terminal and navigate to the folder where you downloaded the ZIP file containing the firmware.

Unzip the ZIP file using the "unzip" command:unzip GT280R004-01-dellemc.bin

This will unpack a  ...
 
NullSoft Installer Script (NSIS) for Barracuda FirewallAdmin (NGAdmin)
edited by on November 14th 2019, at 15:38
Barracuda NextGen firewalls are managed either by webinterface or by using the FirewallAdmin (used to be: NGAdmin) management application. This is a standalone application consisting of a single executable which can be downloaded and run (like a portable app). The software does not need any installation but if you're using the software in a shared environment (such as a Terminal Server), it may be useful to "install" the software in a central location and create shortcuts to it, like if you were to install the software. By using NullSoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), you can create an installer that does just that.

Because of copy- and redistribution rights, a prebuild install  ...
 
Automatically enable Numlock in Windows
edited by on November 5th 2019, at 09:55
Ever since Windows 2000, by default, Numlock is turned off at the logon screen. This can be annoying if you use the numpad to type in (part of) your password. Luckily, you can change this behaviour through a registry fix.

The registry key to change is the same for all versions of Windows, but the value to enter is different depending on the version of Windows.

Fire up regedit.

Navigate to the key HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard.

Look for the registry value InitialKeyboardIndicators, which needs to be changed to:Windows 7: set the value to 2

Windows 8, 8.1, 10 (older builds): set the value to 80000002

Windows 10 (newer builds): set the value to 2147483650



Note that for Win  ...
 
Acrobat Reader DC - GPO Templates
edited by on October 30th 2019, at 12:26

If you're looking for the Group Policy Templates (ADM/ADMX) for configuring Acrobat Reader DC, you can download them from the Adobe FTP:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/AcrobatDC/misc/

 
Completely uninstall Office for Mac
edited by on October 29th 2019, at 13:01

There's no proper uninstall tool for Office on Mac. To completely uninstall Office for Mac, follow these official instructions:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/troubleshoot-office-for-mac-issues-by-completely-uninstalling-before-you-reinstall-ec3aa66e-6a76-451f-9d35-cba2e14e94c0

 
Getting rid of Microsoft AutoUpdate on Mac
edited by on October 29th 2019, at 12:59
To get rid of Microsoft AutoUpdate on Mac, remove these files and folders:

In the System Library (you need "sudo"):

Folder: /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0

File: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist

File: /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist

File: /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper

In your user's Library (needs to be done for each user):

File: ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist

File: ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate.fba.plist

Folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft AU Daemon

Folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Update Assistant

File: ~/L  ...
 
Hide macOS Catalina from Software Update
edited by on October 27th 2019, at 11:48

If you're not ready/able to upgrade to macOS Catalina, you can hide the update from Software Update.

Note that because of sudo, you'll need to be an admin on your Mac.

Open Terminal and enter the following command:

sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"

Enter your password when prompted.

When you are ready to update, you can un-hide Catalina the same way:

sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored
 
VMware Fusion system requirements
edited by on October 11th 2019, at 13:55

Not straightforward to find on the website (but with a little bit of Googling, here it is): an overview of the system requirements for VMware Fusion. All versions are listed:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2005196

 
VMware vCenter Server Converge Tool
edited by on October 9th 2019, at 15:19

A very nice article explaining how to migrate from an external Platform Service Controller to an embedded one:

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/02/understanding-the-vcenter-server-converge-tool.html

A note about versioning: use the same version of the converge tool as the version of your vCenter and PSC. Otherwise the converge will most likely fail (as it did when using 6.7 tool on a 6.5 environment).

 
Monitor (on-premise) AeroHive Hive Manager with Check_MK (OMD)
edited by on September 26th 2019, at 12:11
Check_MK, standalone or as part of OMD (The Open Monitoring Distribution), has built-in support for monitoring AeroHive wireless infrastructure through a Hive Manager. It uses the on-premise Hive Manager in order to collect information from devices registered to the Hive Manager.

Note for HMOL users
Because the agent uses the Hive Manager API, HMOL environments are not supported, as they do not allow the HM API to be enabled.

By default, HM API is turned off. Log on to the Hive Manager using an admin account. Go to:

Home → Administration → HiveManager Settings

Scroll down to API Authorization Settings, then click Settings.

Check Enable API Access, and type in a username, and t  ...
 
Get Windows NTFS block size
edited by on September 24th 2019, at 16:37

You can use Powershell to get the block size of a Windows NTFS volume:

On newer systems:

Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Volume | Select DriveLetter,Label, BlockSize | FT -AutoSize

On older systems, the Get-CimInstance may not be available, in which case you can use the (deprecated) Get-WmiObject:

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Volume | Select DriveLetter,Label, BlockSize | FT -AutoSize
 
Rescan SCSI bus on linux
edited by on September 18th 2019, at 12:02
When adding a new disk to a live system (e.g. a linux VM), the new disk may not always show up. Additionally, when resizing a disk through the hypervisor, the VM may not always immediately have the new size available for use. Luckily, you can trigger a rescan of the SCSI bus through the sysfs system.

For this to work, you'll need to have shell and root access to the server/VM.

Modern linux kernels automatically detect the addition of a disk, but in case it doesn't, you can trigger a rescan of a specific (virtual) SCSI controller:

echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan

Replace hostX with the number of the SCSI controller, where host0 is the first, host1 is the second, et  ...
 
iptables: block traffic from/to a specific IPv4 address
edited by on September 13th 2019, at 10:55
To quickly block traffic from/to a specific IPv4 address using iptables, you can use the commands below.

Warning!
Do not use these commands when you are already running an iptables-based firewall as this may result in unexpected results.

Block incoming traffic from a specific IP:

iptables -A INPUT -s 1.2.3.4 -j DROP

Block outgoing traffic (i.e. traffic initiated from the host itself) to a specific IP:

iptables -A OUTPUT -d 1.2.3.4 -j DROP

To block outgoing traffic to a specific port and protocol, you can also do something like this (the example below blocks DNS and HTTP):

/sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -d 1.2.3.4 -j DROP/sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -d 1.2.3.4  ...
 
VCSA: resizing the database disk
edited by on September 9th 2019, at 16:54
On VCSA, the database is stored on a separate disk. It could happen that this disk runs out of room, causing Vcenter to no longer function properly. One way to resolve this is by running database clean up as mentioned in KB 2110031. However, if this is not possible, or you don't want to clear out the data, you can also resize the disk.

For this to work, you'll need root access and access to the bash-shell, either on the console or through SSH.

Before resizing, identify the physical disk to be resized. For VCSA 6.5 and 6.7, this should normally be Disk 8 (device node in linux = /dev/sdh), but your setup may vary, so it's best to double-check this.

In VCSA 6.5 and 6.7, the database is locat  ...
 
PowerCLI: handling snapshots
edited by on September 9th 2019, at 12:45
Handling snapshots (creating, deleting, restoring) is rather intuitive when you already have some experience with PowerCLI. As a reference, here are some one-liners. As always with Powershell, there's more than one way to achieve a goal... The examples used here assume a VM named "SRV01". Adjust as needed.

Create a snapshot:

Get-VM SRV01 | New-Snapshot -Name "My snapshot"

Remove all snapshots (disabling confirmation request in the process):

Get-VM SRV01 | Get-Snapshot | Remove-Snapshot -Confirm:$false

To handle a specific snapshot, you could do something like this:

$vm = Get-VM SRV01$snap = Get-Snapshot -VM $vm -Name "My snapshot"# do something with the sn  ...
 
Ways to disable Windows 10 automatic updates
edited by on September 5th 2019, at 16:43
For users which really want to prevent Windows 10 from automatically installing updates, here are some methods to disable automatic updates. Depending on which method you use, you will still be able to manually check and install updates, or not be able to install updates at all...

Note that the methods leverage group policies, which is not supported on Windows 10 "Home/Essential" editions. A minimum of Windows 10 Pro or better is needed.

Caution
It is generally not recommended to disable automatic updates. Doing so (and not subsequently regularly installing the updates yourself) increases the risk of data loss and/or stealing due to potentional vulnerabilities in Windows 10.

The  ...
 
Show S.M.A.R.T. logs on Synology using CLI
edited by on August 29th 2019, at 11:29
There's an easy method for extracting hard disk S.M.A.R.T. testing logs using the CLI. This is useful if you require support on Synology and need an easier method to get the data (other than creating screenshots from your web-browser), and if more detailed data is needed.

Before getting the logs from the CLI, first run an extended SMART analysis from the DSM. This will take a while (usually several hours). Running the analysis on multiple disks is possible and can be done concurrently, but it needs to be initiated manually for each disk.

Once tests have completed, log onto the CLI (using your favourite SSH client, such as PuTTY) using the "admin" or "root" account.

As   ...
 
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