I see lots of posts around the net asking for ways to bypass the memory requirements but not many with answers. I stumbled upon this one recently which has finally allowed me to get some SBS 2008 dev work done.

When installing SBS 2008 once you are past the initial install and are up to the first page of the configuration if you hit shift+F10 to bring up a command prompt then launch regedit you can edit the following key to allow the install to continue even though your machine doesn’t meet the requirements.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Setup]
“SkipReq”=”RamRequirement”

This may also be useful for those of you running on the bare minimum but with an onboard videocard which is consuming some of the ram pushing your usable ram down.

Hope this helps a few people

mRemote as their website says is “a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager”. I use it for accessing RDP/VNC/SSH services on a variety of hosts so that I can keep it all neat and in one interface. However the developer has since merged the project into a paid for application so at some point the current 1.5.0 may no longer be on his site.

For now I have uploaded the current latest source code and binary for anyone looking for a copy. Long live mRemote. However I will note the paid for application is pretty good so if your feeling generous grab a copy

So why has this all come about. In my job I’ve been working on a small helpdesk type application written in PHP. The idea being that it presents all the information about the user, computer and helpdesk ticket that we are working on in one place. It also provides a quicker interface for searching information than the existing systems on their own. For this I needed to be able to hook into Active Directory, the MSSQL job tracking DB and of course WMI data for the remote PC. All this from the Linux based server.

So I branched off some code from the CactiWMI project and initially wrote it as a simple wmi() type function to run basic queries against remote machines. This quickly became a bit of a pain as I needed to add more arguments to allow filters and then more code to decide if a filter had been supplied or not etc so dumped it and rewrote it into a WMI object.

Now what we have is a reasonably simple library which you can include into your project, create the WMI object and throw some queries at hosts. The data returned at the moment is a little rough as its just a numerically indexed multi dimensional array but should make iteration very easy. I’ll be looking for suggestions as to what I can improve as it’s the first library like this I have had to write and I’ve probably made plenty of rookie mistakes.

I’ve attached a copy of the current stable release and an example file which should get people started until I can add some documentation. I may look at releasing the helpdesk app as well as it’s come in quite useful

SVN Repository is located here http://svn.parkingdenied.com/PHPWMILib/

The script is attached below and requires PHP. Configure the config options within the script and then to provision a new VM you simply sudo ./makevm.php <vmname> and it will take care of everything.

• Creates the snapshot of the original logical volume
• Sets the permissions on the device so that the user can access it
• Creates the raw VMDK file and registers it with VirtualBox
• Creates the base VM with the name provided
• And finally it configures the VM to use the correct disk and network setting etc

That’s all there is to it

• Update templates to suit new input method
• Backwards compatibility for old argument input method
• Overhaul how arguments are passed to wmi.php
• Debug mode via console option
• Add support for alternate namespaces
• Use isset() instead of is not null
• Prevent passwords from showing up in process list
• Fix data template MIN & MAX
• Enterprise Vault Templates

I have added support for additional namespaces and overhauled how  input arguments are passed to support this. As you can see below the cmd line help details how input is now passed.

Usage:
-h <hostname>         Hostname of the server to query.
-u <credential path>  Path to the credential file. See format below.
-n <namespace>        What namespace to use. (optional, defaults to root\CIMV2)
-w <wmi class>        WMI Class to be used.
-c <columns>          What columns to select. (optional, defaults to *)
-k <filter key>       What key to filter on. (optional, default is no filter)
-v <filter value>     What value for the key. (required, only when using filter key)
-d <debug level>      Debug level. (optional, default is none, levels are 1 & 2)

All special characters and spaces must be escaped or enclosed in single quotes!

Example: wmi.php -h 10.0.0.1 -u /etc/wmi.pw -w Win32_ComputerSystem -c PrimaryOwnerName,NumberOfProcessors -n ‘root\CIMV2′

Password file format: Plain text file with the following 3 lines replaced with your details.

username=<your username>
password=<your password>
domain=<your domain> (can be WORKGROUP if not using a domain)

In addition to this there is now no longer any need for additional PHP files. The passwords are stored in a separate file and called via passing the path. This prevents passwords showing up in your process list and allows you to secure it further by limiting access to the password file to the cacti user.

To ease the upgrade process backwards compatibility has been maintained however there is one gotcha. You will still need to update your templates to point to the new password file instead of the reference to the key pair in wmi-logins.php. Aside from this the old templates will all work.

So basically this version is a bit cleaner, adds a few key features, improves security and lays the foundation for further feature upgrades. As per usual the download is attached to this post and any fault tickets can be lodged on my Mantis bug tracker page (Link) and the subversion repository in the usual spot (Link).

So how does one accomplish this task, well it’s really quite simple, LVM snapshots. If you have never heard or used LVM before it is a logical volume manager. It’s job is to take a bunch of physical volumes such as hard disks or raid arrays and combine them into a storage group. From this storage group you can then create multiple logical volumes (similar to luns in the Netapp world) which act like standard disk devices allowing you to easily carve up your storage in a more logical way. Now LVM is really quite a powerful tool and has many extra features which are outside of the scope of this article but see my links at the end to find out more on the specifics.

Anyway the feature we are going to use as I already mentioned is snapshots, what these are is an instantaneous snapshot of a volume which we can then mount separate to the real volume and use as a normal disk. The beauty of this is that your original volume remains completely untouched and any changes that are written to the snapshot are stored as just that changes or differences between that and the original volume. This means for our VM’s that only a few hundred meg or so will change that our disk usage is significantly reduced. You can see now just how useful this can be. The other big advantage is that they are fast, you can create a snapshot in a matter of seconds whereas to copy a vmdk or vdi file it takes a lot longer for it to copy, especially if using a dynamic disk as it locates all the used blocks.

Now lets get down to using it in the real world.

First things first get your VM installed using a raw device mapping.

lvcreate -L20G -nvbox_win2003std_base storage /dev/md2
Logical volume “vbox_win2003_base” created

In this instance I have created a 20gb volume called “vbox_win2003_base” on my storage volume group and forced it to allocate all its extents on /dev/md2. I prefer to do this just to make sure no logical volumes cross over physical volumes unless absolutely needed.

Now you have your volume ready you will need to create a disk for VirtualBox to use.

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename “win2003_base.vmdk” -rawdisk /dev/storage/vbox_win2003std_base -register
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.2
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

RAW host disk access VMDK file win2003_base.vmdk created successfully.

This creates a vmdk file with a raw mapping to the logical volume and automatically registers it for use within VirtualBox.

Now prepare your VM like you would any other Windows machine being cloned. Preinstall all your OS, applications, software, any patches or tweaks and get it configured just the way you like. However try to keep things reasonably simple, this means don’t promote the machine to a DC or any other service which when cloned will break. For my builds I have been testing with Windows 2003 Standard edition. So this means you need to extract the deploy.cab from your Windows 2003 CD to c:\sysprep and run the setupmgr.exe app to generate a sysprep.inf. If you want to avoid problems don’t set a password for the admin account in the sysprep if you have already set one for the machine as it appears to fail when updating it. So you have generated your sysprep.inf, do a quick check to ensure everything is in it’s place and run sysprep.exe –reseal –mini –pnp. The machine will do its bit and then shut down meaning it is ready to be cloned.

Now the fun part, time to make a snapshot of your logical volume.

lvcreate -L5G -s -nvbox_vodka_dc /dev/storage/vbox_win2003std_base
Logical volume “vbox_vodka_dc” created

Now in the blink of an eye it has created a snapshot of your base VM’s logical volume with a maximum growth of 5gb. This means the VM can have a maximum of 5gb of changes before it runs out of space. You will need to fine tune this depending on your VM’s and workload. To keep an eye on it simply use lvdisplay as per normal.

lvdisplay storage/vbox_vodka_dc
— Logical volume —
LV Name                /dev/storage/vbox_vodka_dc
VG Name                storage
LV UUID                IOFUF4-Bxze-Xpij-Qd5b-nH7k-FeEx-k6936B
LV Write Access        read/write
LV snapshot status     active destination for /dev/storage/vbox_win2003std_base
LV Status              available
# open                 0
LV Size                20.00 GB
Current LE             5120
COW-table size         5.00 GB
COW-table LE           1280
Allocated to snapshot  0.00%
Snapshot chunk size    4.00 KB
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     256
Block device           253:4

Now that we have the snapshot volume all we need to do is create another raw device vmdk.

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename “Vodka_DC.vmdk” -rawdisk /dev/storage/vbox_vodka_dc
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.2
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

RAW host disk access VMDK file Vodka_DC.vmdk created successfully.

And that’s it, you now have a complete clone of that machine ready to load into a new VM within VirtualBox and boot. It will run through the mini-setup as per normal for any cloned machine and that’s it. All done!

With a few batch commands you can quickly automate the creating of a whole fleet of VM’s ready to plug into your dev environment.

Hope this helps a few people out there

Links:

• LVM (wiki)
  
• VirtualBox (wiki)
  

This is how you start out with the fermenter ready to go and sanitized! I can not stress this enough SANITISE EVERYTHING that will come in contact with the mix.

And your basic ingredients… time, dextrose, yeast and the magic mix (which you can also make yourself). You may notice the pager so yes I was on call and since I can’t drink on call it was the perfect time to brew. This time I am brewing Ginger Beer which should be nice on a hot sunny day.

This is the mix which you heat up in some hot water before hand then mix with hot water to make it dissolve.

At this stage you have a couple litres of hot liquid you start to mix in your dextrose. Make sure you thoroughly mix this through.

Now at this stage you are basically filling it up till your defined level which in my case was 23L. Make sure if you can to use filtered or boiled (and cooled) water.

And now your done you seal it up put water in your air lock (filtered) and then let her sit for a week. I would suggest somewhere that doesn’t get too hot as you want it to stay within your temperature range as much as possible.

I’ll do up a post when I am bottling it which should be in a few days hopefully. Next batch will be a keg

Below are some examples of what we now have!

So we have some standard Windows stats such as system calls, context switches and process/processor stats.

We can now also monitor processes themselves on an individual basis.

And some new Exchange graphs including the much requested SMTP graphs.

And here is the download. Any questions or suggestions let me know and feel free to stop by the thread on the Cacti forums (Link!).

Picked up a stack of supplies.

Hooked up the air compressor.

Got out the sander.

And got to work!

Then with the help of the big boy 2 stage filtration setup.

Put down a nice coat of etching primer.

The next stage will be lightly sanding the etching primer and then lay down a few coats of high build primer. Once that’s done I can start blocking it back and get it nice and smooth before the colour and clear.

Aside from just supporting Exchange here are the changes below:

• Now parses out spaces and replaces with an underscore (needed for anything that has a name with spaces in it)
• Included new debug mode which logs detailed information to a per host text file
• Code cleanup, should make it a bit easier to configure
• General tweaking

The biggest issue with Exchange that I encountered was that the store names could have spaces which would throw off Cacti when it interpreted the data being passed to it. But as you can see from below the changes have fixed this issue and allow for some useful monitoring.

The templates are included in the attached tar file, please note however that the active client logons will need tweaking to suit your system. For me I created two graphs based on the template then removed the template so that the name of each store could be displayed on the graph. You can do this or alternatively do per store graphs however I found it to be overkill and used two graphs of 5 stores each.

The new debug mode logs by default to /tmp but you can adjust this to wherever you like so long as it has the correct permissions. Effectively what you will end up with is a log file per host of the filename dbug_xx.xx.xx.xx where the x’s are your IP. Inside it will contain basically all the variables being passed in and out as well as the direct output from wmic etc. With this you should be able to track whats going on and debug any issues.

So there you have it everything you need to get started. I will have some additional Exchange templates over the next few weeks so stay tuned! For now if you need help leave a message or drop by the Cacti forums. Also one last note you can browse the latest code and check out any build you like from the web based Subversion repository. Check it out at http://svn.parkingdenied.com/