Moiz Blog

Command to tar multiple sub-folders (Linux)

2013-12-31T15:24:00.001+02:00

Hello,

I am not a scripting expert but I tried this below 1 line script by adding many parts and it did my work so I thought of sharing with all.

This script will tar multiple sub-folder base on the number giving by the user in the script.

 #head -num File_with_list.txt | tr '\n' '\0' | tar --null -uf /folder_destination/name.tar -T -

Where,

-num is -50 or -100 or any number of folders you want to tar in single .tar file
File_with_list.txt is a file which has a list of folders which you want to tar
you can get a list of folders in a file by using following command

 ls -l > file_with_list.txt

    /folder_destination is the path where you want to save your tar file
    name.tar is the name of the tar file
    -T -   is the bit which provides the input to the tar with the folder names

so in short..

The above command will take the input from the head command and piped with \n for new line at the end of line and then \0 for null characters, this is then again piped to tar which is feeded by STDIN with the help of -T - bit at the end.

If you want to archive/tar the folder in an alphabetical order. then sort the name in the file and then run the script.
to sort the name in the file use the command

:%!sort

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Deduplication in Windows 8

2013-11-07T12:06:00.002+02:00

Data deduplication is a technique to reduce storage needs by eliminating redundant data in your backup environment. Only one copy of the data is retained on storage media, and redundant data is replaced with a pointer to the unique data copy.
The goal is to store more data in less space by segmenting files into small variable-sized chunks (32–128 KB), identifying duplicate chunks, and maintaining a single copy of each chunk. Redundant copies of the chunk are replaced by a reference to the single copy. The chunks are compressed and then organized into special container files in the System Volume Information folder.

The result is an on-disk transformation of each file as shown in below Figure 1. After deduplication, files are no longer stored as independent streams of data, and they are replaced with stubs that point to data blocks that are stored within a common chunk store. Because these files share blocks, those blocks are only stored once, which reduces the disk space needed to store all files. During file access, the correct blocks are transparently assembled to serve the data without calling the application or the user having any knowledge of the on-disk transformation to the file. This enables administrators to apply deduplication to files without having to worry about any change in behavior to the applications or impact to users who are accessing those files.

Data deduplication is a Windows Server 2012 feature. Since Windows 8 has the same architecture with Windows Server 2012 we can achieve this by using the Windows 2012 .cab files in windows 8 and enable Data deduplication on Windows 8.

get the cab files from Here
Open powershell as an Administrator and change directory to c:\dedupefiles

 cd c:\dedupefiles\

Run the following command in an elevated powershell window:

dism /online /add-package /source:c:\dedupefiles /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab
/packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab 
/packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab 
/packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab 
/packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab 
/packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab

Now run this command to enable the feature:

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Dedup-Core /all

Then, enable dedupe on your chosen volume. Here, I am enabling this on my d:\ drive.
NOTE: It will not work on a boot volume.

 Enable-DedupVolume d:

Now lets run the first optimsation run on volume d:

Start-DedupJob –Volume d: –Type Optimization

To see the how far the job has progressed (do not expect this to be quick, espically on the first run). You will need to rerun this several times to view the progress. If this command returns no results, the job is complete!

get-dedupejob

Once this has complete, we can see how much space has been saved with the following command.

 get-dedupestatus

Deduplication is not an inline process, meaning tasks are run. These tasks can be viewed in task scheduler, but it's just as easy in powershell.

Get-DedupSchedule

Optmisation will run in the background; there is also a couple of other tasks which run. Garbage collection and Scrubbing.

There's a bit more you can do, but now you should have a volume with some space saved!

Microsoft website is filled with commands: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831434.aspx

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program

2011-11-21T16:13:00.000+02:00

Grrrrr! what is this?
Why I am getting this error?

"The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program"

I am getting this error in Windows 7 and I am really getting irritated at times.I goggled alot, but I can't see any hotfix nor I can see any solution on the M$ site for this bug, I seriously can't see any good solution for this, Ohh Yes!! few people suggested that I should reboot the system in safe mode and make the necessary changes on the files, some of my friends suggested me to disable few features of windows, but after trying all , nothing of such impressed me and I am still looking for a good solution.

But Yes, I somehow manage to get work around for this issue.

You can download this free software and use to get your work keep going.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Unlocker.shtml

you don't have to reboot your system nor have to make any changes to your system configurations and can rename,delete,move,copy,unlock your files

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Use Mobile as a Webcam

2011-07-24T17:31:00.002+02:00

Oooops!! I don’t have a webcam in my Laptop, I am working in the office where I can’t take webcam every day, Oh No!! My Webcam broke today.. For all these issues there is better way, use your mobile as webcam and save few bucks... Yes you can use your mobile as a Webcam.(Most of the new mobile comes with built-in camera and supports JAVA), if you don’t have one, get one ;-)

You can turn your iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile or Symbian smartphone into a high-quality wireless webcam. Connect it to a Mac (iPhone version only) or PC using a Wi-Fi connection and share bright moments of your life that cannot be caught with a built-in webcam or USB camera.

Yes all these application supports Wi-Fi connection, Bluetooth connection and USB connection if your phone supports. So you can enjoy using your phone to fullest.

Here I am not going to show any troubleshooting steps for these Applicaitons. As these application follow pretty much same procedure and they are very simple to install.

These are the generic steps to install such application.

1) Install the application on your pc windows/Mac

2) Install the application on your mobile (for nokia you need to look in OVI store, for Android it’s in Android market, for blackberry in appworld and so on), if you don’t find in your relevant stores, you will get on the sites.

3) Then start the application on the pc and select the kind of connection you want (USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth).

4) Start the application on your mobile and select the connection you have select on the pc and the status will show as connected. Yuppie!!! It’s done...

5) You might need to re-start your communicators once (Yahoo, skype, gtalk or so). The application will be detected and will give you an option in the video settings.

Select the kind of application you want to use from the below list. There might be more, but these were few which I have used and I am comfortable with. Click the name to visit their sites.

1) http://www.kinoni.com/ (Freeware)

2) http://www.mobiola.com/ (Paid version)

3) Wwigo (Paid version)

4) http://www.mobcam.cz/ (Freeware) Limited to few phones.

5) SE WebCam (Freeware) Only for Sony Ericsson phones

6) SmartCam (Licensed and Freeware)

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Free Storage for SMB's

2011-06-20T11:48:00.001+02:00

I have seen many Small and Medium enterprises going for very expensive storage boxes as they get fascinated by their skill-full sales persons, Here I want to highlight one of the free storage software which you can compare to your expensive storage boxes and you will be surprised to see that everything what your expensive storage can give even Openfiler offers the same with no cost.You can use openfiler for testing few of your testing and also in POC's, I am NOT here to market Openfiler but I just want to be a helping hand to few of the SMB's who really need to save some bucks for their growth and needs some really high-end features.

Openfiler Features..

Openfiler includes support for volume-based partitioning, iSCSI (target and initiator), scheduled snapshots, resource quota, and a single unified interface for share management which makes allocating shares for various network file-system protocols a breeze.

The following are just some of the features currently available (unless indicated otherwise) in Openfiler.

Powerful block storage virtualization

Full iSCSI target support, with support for virtual iSCSI targets for optimal division of storage
Extensive volume and physical storage management support
Support for large block devices
Full software RAID management support
Support for multiple volume groups for optimal storage allocation
Online volume size and overlying filesystem expansion
Point-in-time snapshots support with scheduling
Volume usage reporting
Synchronous / asynchronous volume migration & replication (manual setup necessary currently)
iSCSI initiator (manual setup necessary currently)

Extensive share management features

Support for multiple shares per volume
Multi-level share directory tree
Multi-group based access control on a per-share basis
Multi-host/network based access control on a per-share basis
Per-share service activation (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP with read/write controls)
Support for auto-created SMB home directories
Support for SMB/CIFS "shadow copy" feature for snapshot volumes
Support for public/guest shares

Accounts management

Authentication using Pluggable Authentication Modules, configured from the web-interface
NIS, LDAP, Hesiod, Active Directory (native and mixed modes), NT4 domain controller
Guest/public account support

Quota / resource allocation

Per-volume group-quota management for space and files
Per-volume user-quota management for space and files
Per-volume guest-quota management for space and files
User and group templates support for quota allocation

Other features

UPS management support
Built-in SSH client Java applet

Full industry-standard protocol suite

CIFS/SMB support for Microsoft Windows-based clients
NFSv3 support for all UNIX clients with support for ACL protocol extensions
NFSv4 support (testing)
FTP support
WebDAV and HTTP 1.1 support
Linux distribution back-end for any other customizations

System Requirements

Openfiler is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit industry standard server hardware. It can also be installed in a virtual machine environment as a guest OS in Xen, Virtual Iron and VMware.For production deployment in either virtualized or bare-metal configuration, its recommend 64-bit Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron architecture processors for best performance. Future releases of Openfiler may only support 64-bit processors therefore they are highly recommended for new Openfiler installations.

Download Link :-> Openfiler:

Ref: http://www.openfiler.com/about

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Stand By Energy Consumption

2011-06-16T17:28:00.012+02:00

Below are few of the findings which I feel worth sharing with you all..

When you turn off your TV, PC, or DVD, it still consumes energy. The standby mode does not mean it doesn’t consume energy, as how much energy each appliance uses during standby mode, take look at the chart below. In order to eliminate the energy consumption you could either unplug the appliance or use a switchable power strip for clusters of computer or video products. That way you can switch everything to zero with one action. The magnitude of the standby power consumption should be taken very seriously, since it comprises from 10% to 15% of your power bill. Altogether, standby power use is roughly responsible for 1% of global CO2 emissions.

This shows how much electricity we are wasting unknowingly.

Plz use electricity wisely ...

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Quick Reference for Symantec Cluster : Basic VCS Commands

2011-06-09T17:23:00.002+02:00

Quick Reference for Symantec Cluster : Basic VCS Commands

JOB AID: Troubleshooting VCS

2011-06-06T13:34:00.004+02:00

Below is a very handy VCS troubleshooting picture .. it can help you to do basic troubleshooting for any Symantec Veritas Cluster setup..

Ref: Symantec Education VCS courseware

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Error 1406 – Could not write value InstallPath to key Software\Microsoft

2011-06-04T08:09:00.002+02:00

A few days back I tried installing vmware workstation on my Windows 7 64-bit and I got Error -1406 .. Eeeerrrrrr ... Errors all the time... I asked google and got so many answers but I felt unlucky as nothing worked for me.. Belive me I tried 101 things to solve... and I guess the solution was just with me... below is a simple thing what I did to get my workstation started...

Go to the regedit and delete the reg entry
“HKLM\Software\VMware Inc” and then I just restarted the installation and it worked like a charm ....

Full path...
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VMware, Inc.” for it to work.

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Wireless device issue with Fedora 14

2011-06-02T08:52:00.003+02:00

I turned my MS to Linux Fedora 14 and I ended up with no Wireless on my laptop, When googled I saw many threads unanswered or unsolved for the wireless drivers for Fedora 14 ...
below solution worked for me, may be it can be a good help for you as well..

1) download the wireless drivers from the below link

http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...0.10.5.tar.bz2

2) then untar it ..

       # tar -xvzf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
     # cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/drivers

# b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

3) now just restart your lappy

# init 6

you are done...

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

LLT does not work with Linux NIC bonded interfaces during initial startup of symantec cluster

2011-05-09T00:02:00.006+02:00

Here goes the Solution…

We can configure Linux NIC bonds as private links under LLT. LLT treats each bonded NIC as single link. So, we must configure these NICs that form the bond in such a way that the NICs are connected to the same switch or hub.

In order to properly configure a linux bond interface to use as an LLT link it MUST be defined as follows in the /etc/llttab:

# cat /etc/llttab

set-node 10.10.11.111

set-cluster 11

set-verbose 1

link eth2 eth-00:04:23:c5:d4:78 - ether - -

link eth3 eth-00:04:23:C5:D4:79 - ether - -

link-lowpri bond0 bond0 - ether - -

Now the Issue with installsfrac

Due to this reason it might cause problem during the installation of SFRAC (installsfrac). The installation will be interrupted because LLT fails to start and might give you error messages

If you want installsfrac to configure the SFCFS service groups automatically, then you need to manually fix the /etc/llttab in the middle of the installation process.

Below are the steps:

a) Use the following instructions so that during SFCFSRAC configuration LLT link can start up successfully and VCS engine (HA Daemon) and other related modules like ODM and Fencing can come up with no issues:

During SFCFSRAC configuration, CPI creates /etc/llttab and other configuration files for VCS. Don’t do anything here.

Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System for Oracle RAC 5.0MP3 Configuration Program

Veritas Volume Manager default disk group name configuration:

Many Veritas Volume Manager commands affect the contents or configuration of a disk group. Such commands require that the user specify a disk group.This is accomplished by using the -g option of a command or setting the VXVM_DEFAULTDG environment variable. An alternative to these two methods for some commands is to configure the name of the default disk group of a system.

Do you want to set up a default disk group for each system? [y,n,q,?] (y) n

Creating Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System for Oracle RAC configuration files .................................................. Done

Copying configuration files to vcslxnode1 ..................................................................................................... Done

Copying configuration files to vcslxnode2 ..................................................................................................... Done

When below line appears, edit /etc/llttab file on all the nodes BEFORE answering the following question

Is the fully qualified hostname of system "vcslxnode1" = " vcslxnode1.domain.com"? [y,n,q,?] (y)

as shown below.

Caution: Don't take any action before editing /etc/llttab on all the nodes, otherwise the LLT links may not come up successfully.

Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System for Oracle RAC 5.0MP3 Configuration Program

Verifying the install systems fully qualified hostnames.

Querying fully qualified domain name of host "vcslxnode1" ....................................................................................... ok

Is the fully qualified hostname of system "vcslxnode1" = "vcslxnode1.domain.com"? [y,n,q,?] (y)

Howto edit /etc/llttab:

Edit /etc/llttab (from another terminal) to change all the eth- entries for bonded links with the corresponding bonded link name.

eg.

Replace entries like this:

link bond1 eth-a0:b1:c2:d3:e4:f5 - ether - -

link-lowpri bond0 eth- a0:b1:c2:d3:e4:f6 - ether - -

With this:

link bond1 bond1 - ether - -

link-lowpri bond0 bond0 - ether - -

and guess what.. you are done

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

Virtual Disk Issues in Vmware ESX

2011-05-07T06:47:00.015+02:00

I have found that most of us have struggled a lot when it comes to converting physical System to Virtual (P2V), Due to the IDE disk which VMware is struggling to understand. Generally we see such issues with windows XP, windows 2000 and windows 2003(64-bit).

Most of my colleagues have complains about.....

Virtual machine contains an IDE virtual disk does not detect after P2V conversion.
Virtual machine fails to boot with a black screen after P2V conversion with just blinking underscore on the black screen.
Or with some errors like “disk error occurred, press ctrl+alt+del to restart” after P2V, the virtual machine fails to boot.

I have found a very simple solution and for all of these case it worked well.

Resolution

We must convert the IDE disk to SCSI to get our newly creating Virtual machine get going. If its xp,2000 prof or 2003 (64-bit) for all these cases below method works.

To Note: The typical SCSI adapter type for newer versions of Windows and Linux OS guests is the LSI Logic controller type.

To convert the IDE disk to SCSI:

Locate the datastore path where the virtual machine resides. For example:

/vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/
From the ESX Service Console, open edit the primary disk (.vmdk) in a text editor.

#vi /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/vm_name.vmdk

Look for the line:

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
To change the adapter type to LSI Logic change the line to:

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
Or in some case we might need to use bus Logic. Then change the adapter type to Bus Logic

Change the line to:

ddb.adapterType = "buslogic"

Save the file.
From VMware Infrastructure or vSphere Client

Click Edit Settings for the virtual machine.
Select the IDE virtual disk.
Choose to Remove the Disk from the virtual machine.
Click OK.

Caution: Make sure that you DO NOT choose Remove from disk.

From the Edit Settings menu for this virtual machine:

Click Add > Hard Disk > Use Existing Virtual Disk.
Navigate to the location of the disk and select to add it into the virtual machine.
Choose the same controller as you selected in previous Step 4 or 5 as the adapter type. The SCSI ID should read SCSI 0:0.

If a CDROM device exists in the virtual machine it may need to have the IDE channel adjusted from IDE 0:1 to IDE 0:0. If this option is greyed out, remove the CDROM from the virtual machine and add it back. This sets it to IDE 0:0.

You are done...
Cheers,

All the Best ..... :)

Network Hacking Tools

2010-03-28T18:26:00.002+02:00

Hey friends!! Let me share few details about different Network Hacking tools and how you can protect yourself from them if someone is playing with it on you.

So here we goooo……..

NetStumbler (Freeware):

Download Link: http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

NetStumbler is a tool for Windows that allows you to detect Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g. It has many uses:

• Verify that your network is set up the way you intended.

• Find locations with poor coverage in your WLAN.

• Detect other networks that may be causing interference on your network.

• Detect unauthorized "rogue" access points in your workplace.

• Help aim directional antennas for long-haul WLAN links.

• Use it recreationally for WarDriving.

How to protect yourself from NetStumbler:

Do not broadcast your SSID. Ensure your WLAN is protected by using advanced Authentication and Encryption.

Kismet (Freeware)

Download Link: http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml

Kismet is an 802.11 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic (devices and drivers permitting).

Kismet also sports a plugin architecture allowing for additional non-802.11 protocols to be decoded.

Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting networks, which allows it to detect (and given time, expose the names of) hidden networks and the presence of non-beaconing networks via data traffic.

How to protect yourself from Kismet:

There’s really nothing you can do to stop Kismet from finding your WLAN, so ensure your WLAN is protected by using advanced Authentication and Encryption

AirSnort (Freeware) Old software not so active:

Download link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/airsnort/files/

AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. 802.11b, using the Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP), is crippled with numerous security flaws. Most damning of these is the weakness described in " Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4 " by Scott Fluhrer, Itsik Mantin and Adi Shamir. Adam Stubblefield was the first to implement this attack, but he has not made his software public. AirSnort, along with WEPCrack, which was released about the same time as AirSnort, are the first publicly available implementaions of this attack.

AirSnort requires approximately 5-10 million encrypted packets to be gathered. Once enough packets have been gathered, AirSnort can guess the encryption password in under a second.

Alternatively one can use Aircrack-ng

Download link: http://download.aircrack-ng.org/

Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured. It implements the standard FMS attack along with some optimizations like KoreK attacks, as well as the all-new PTW attack, thus making the attack much faster compared to other WEP cracking tools. In fact, Aircrack-ng is a set of tools for auditing wireless networks.

How to protect yourself from AirSnort

Use a 128-bit, not a 40-bit WEP encryption key. This would take longer to crack. If your equipment supports it, use WPA or WPA2 instead of WEP (may require firmware or software update).

coWPAtty (Freeware)

Download link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cowpatty/

Brute-force dictionary attack against WPA-PSK, To perform the coWPAtty dictionary attack we need to supply the tool with a capture file that includes the TKIP four-way handshake, a dictionary file of passphrases to guess with and the SSID for the network.

In order to collect the four-way handshake you can either wait until a client joins the network or preferably you can force it to rejoin the network using tools like void11 or aireplay and capture the handshakes using something like kismet, ethereal or airodump.

How to protect yourself from coWPAtty

Use a long and complex WPA Pre-Shared Key. This type of key would have less of a chance of residing in a dictionary file that would be used to try and guess your key and/or would take longer. If in a corporate scenario, don’t use WPA with Pre-Shared Key, use a good EAP type to protect the authentication and limit the amount of incorrect guesses that would take place before the account is locked-out. If using certificate like functionality, it could also validate the remote system trying to gain access to the WLAN and not allow a rogue system access.

ASLeap (freeware)

Download Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/asleap/

ASLeap is a tool designed to recover weak LEAP (Cisco's Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) and PPTP passwords, asleap can perform:

Weak LEAP and PPTP password recovery from pcap and AiroPeek files or from live capture
Deauthentication of clients on a leap WLAN (speeding up leap password recovery) AIRJACK DRIVER REQUIRED
Handles dictionary and genkeys files up to 4 TB in size.
Can read live from any wireless interface in RFMON mode (DLT_IEEE802_11, DLT_TZSP).
Can read live from any network interface in Ethernet or Ethernet- compatibility mode (DLT_EN10MB). This was intended to let Windows users capture LEAP transactions without RFMON support, but is also useful to capture PPTP transactions on wireless or wired networks.
Added getopt to genkeys for advanced command-line parameter support.
Can read from STDIN with genkeys, useful to combining genkeys with John the Ripper to create custom dictionaries.
Support for a standard dictionary attack without genkeys databases (-W). Useful for trying to recover a password from a transaction that isn't in your dictionary file when you have a lot of time, or little disk space.

How to protect yourself from ASLeap

Use long and complex credentials, or better yet, switch to EAP-FAST or a different EAP type.

Ethereal (Freeware)

Download Link: http://www.ethereal.com/download.html

Ethereal® is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development and education. It has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer and several features not seen in any other product. Its open source license allows talented experts in the networking community to add enhancements. It runs on all popular computing platforms, including UNIX, Linux, and Windows.

How to protect yourself from Ethereal

Use encryption, so that anything sniffed would be difficult or nearly impossible to break. WPA2, which uses AES, is essentially unrealistic to break by a normal hacker. Even WEP will encrypt the data. When in a Public Wireless Hotspot (which generally do not offer encryption), use application layer encryption, like Simplite to encrypt your IM sessions, or use SSL. For corporate users, use IPSec VPN with split-tunneling disabled. This will force all traffic leaving the machine through an encrypted tunnel that would be encrypted with DES, 3DES or AES.

All the Best ........ :)
Cheers!

How to Hack Wireless Networks

2010-03-27T00:31:00.006+02:00

-Disclaimer-

The purpose of this information is for the knowledge and studies only, Please DO NOT make use of this information in wrong manner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What we are going to do here is to break into a wifi network and try to extract the data from the network.Let me not start with good story here rather let’s start the show.

Step1: First you need an O/S or say a tool, I would recommend Backtrack for our exercise. There are many other tools in the market but somehow I like this one, so lets go ahead in my way ;-) you can get the backtrack at http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

BackTrack is a Linux-based penetration testing arsenal that aids security professionals in the ability to perform assessments in a purely native environment dedicated to hacking. Regardless if you’re making BackTrack your primary operating system, booting from a LiveDVD, or using your favorite thumbdrive, BackTrack has been customized down to every package, kernel configuration, script and patch solely for the purpose of the penetration tester.

Once your system is booted you will see the following screen “I am using Backtrack -4 final version here”

Step 2: Lets start playing with WEP crack. Give the command airmon-ng to see what interfaces are available. “airmon-ng is a script that can be used to enable monitor mode on wireless interfaces. It may also be used to go back from monitor mode to manage mode.”

Step 3: Type the command #airmon-ng stop ath0 to stop ath0 interface and then fire the command

#airmon-ng start wifi0 which will force ath0 into monitor mode

Step 4: now give the command ifconfig ath0 down and change the MAC address.

Give the command

#macchanger –mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 ath0

Now lets start the interface back , give the command

#airmon-ng start wifi0

Step 5: lets start scanning to see available networks to play with #airodump-ng ath0

(INFO: airodump-ng is used for packet capturing of raw 802.11 frames for the intent of using them with the aircrack-ng. if you have a GPS receiver connected to the computer, airodump-ng is capable of logging the coordinates of the found access points. Additionally, airodump-ng writes out a text file containing the details of all access points and clients seen)

Step 6: Now as we are associated, we can start sending packets back to the network, so we need to slowly increase the amount in #DATA field. Give the following command.

#aireplay-ng -3 –b $BSSID –h 00:11:22:33:44:55 ath0

Once you think the #DATA has climbed to a decent amount, open a new shell prompt and type the following

Aircrack-ng –n 64 –b $BSSID wepcrack-01.cap

(INFO: aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA/WPA2-PSK key cracking program. It can recover the WEP key once enough encrypted packets have been captured with airodump-ng. This tool uses 2 methods to determine the WEP key, 1 is PTW(Pyshkin,Tews,Weinmann) which requires few data packets to crack the WEP key and other is FM/Korek method which incorporates various statistical attacks to discover the WEP key and uses these in combination with brute forcing. There are other methods like dictionary method or a wordlist file or airolib-ng )

Congratulations!! You have got a Cake….. now you can restart your lappy with your regular O/S and connect to the network for which we have the WEP key.

Step 7: Now as we have successfully completed our journey till here , Let's try MITM(Man In The Middle) attack on friend to forward his internet traffic to our laptop . So lets get the tool “Ettercap NG-0.7.3” you can get that from http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/ This tool is available for almost all the O/S platform like Linux, FreeBSD, openBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS, windows 2000/xp/2003 and Solaris 2.X, you can download which ever you like, for the friends who wants to know what is Ettercap , Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones) and includes many features for network and host analysis.

After installing if you are on linux, give the command

#ettercap –G on the shell and you will get the below GUI.

Step 8: Now go to Sniff -> unified sniffing and then choose your interface in my case it was ath0 Then go to hosts-> scan for hosts

Step 9: Now let’s see what all hosts are up for us to play with, to check this navigates to Hosts-> host list and you will find the list of ip address and Mac address. Get back to your basics of ip addressing, We all know *.*.*.1 IP is for the router which I am going to add to target1 and since I don’t know what all are the other ip’s I will put all other ip’s to target2

Now go to MITM-> arp poisoning and press ok, NOTE: Don’t check any other boxes here..

Lets start the Sniffing by navigating to Start-> sniffer

Step 10: Now we need to analyse the the traffic from their network , to do this we need 1 more tool (wireshark ) which you can download it from http://www.wireshark.org/ , but you have to be very much patience and get all your luck here, because they have to be using their internet when you are playing with their connections ;-).. now if you are using linux give the command #wireshark and you will get a GUI

Step 11: Navigate to capture-> interfaces and choose the interface you would like to use. To choose it, chick start that is next to the interface , you can get an idea of what interface to use by the amount of packets going in and out of it.

Now we have to sit back and wait till we get a bunch of packets , to make this test working I left my laptop for more then 2 hrs and got around 50K packets, now I had lots of packets to skim through on a laptop and it will take forever to search for one query so I have saved the pcap file (file -> save ) and will analyze it

Now lets see what all we got , click CTRL+F and clieck the by String bubble,

I am more interested in other persons password so I will look for password into that file and see what all I got and what all I see in the results was 2 account name and password.

You can now right click the packet highlighted and follow TCP stream you will be prompted with.. if you look into the results , you should be getting something like Email_textbox= nameofid@domain.com and Password_textbox=textpassword.

Play Safe !!

Cheers,
All the Best ...... :)

Cuckoo's Egg

2010-03-13T10:08:00.000+02:00

Friends!! I came across this very interesting concept,which I would like to share with you all, We might be doing something like hatching egg's everyday but you would really be surprise after reading the below lines and you will agree with me that everything has a technical reason behind it.

Let me tell you something about this project first.

The Cuckoo Egg Project!!!!

It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer cracker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).

The Cuckoo Egg Project began with Michael and Stephanie Fix.Stephanie Fix is a musician who is concerned about the illegal availability of copyrighted music through Napster.

The concept centers on the idea of how a real cuckoo bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest. To the Fixes, the Napster system is like a huge nest of MP3 files, a perfect environment in which to lay cuckoo eggs.

The first cuckoo egg was laid on June 10, 2000. Since then, Napster users have posted hundreds of angry messages at the Cuckoo Egg Project's Web site. Whether it's deterring them from downloading other songs has not been determined.

There is an ironic twist to the Cuckoo Egg Project, According to the official Web site's FAQ, cuckoo eggs are also not legal, because they also use unauthorized portions of copyrighted songs. But they claim that only a sample portion is used compared to the entire song being used with Napster, which is more defendable according to fair use laws. Anyone who creates and distributes MP3 files can create cuckoo eggs

An MP3 file that typically contains 30 seconds of the original song with the remainder of the song overwritten with cuckoo clock noises, white noise, and/or voice messages such as, "Congratulations, you must've goofed up somewhere."

The purpose of cuckoo eggs is to deter the downloading and sharing of MP3 files using Napster and similar approaches. Typically, a Napster user downloads an MP3 file and sometimes share it with others before listening to it.

The Cuckoo Egg project was started as a method of attempting to slow the distribution of illegal copyrighted MP3 files.The basic technique behind the Cuckoo Egg project is to download an illegal MP3, edit the file so that the first few seconds of it contain the copyrighted material and the rest has been replaced with non-copyrighted cuckoo bird sounds or other random sounds. The overall file size, name, etc. remain the same so users downloading the new file don't realize that it does not contain what they think it should contain

The Nasty Thing about These Eggs

Napster users are more likely to download songs to completion even if they listen to a bit of the song as it downloads - which most don't.

If they don't listen to it right away and discover the true contents then the file will be visible to other Napster users as whatever artist name and track title it was originally labeled with and therefore is likely to be downloaded from them... further spreading the eggs.. It's important to note here, that the first batch only appeared to be a particular band when downloaded from one of our machines because it was stored in that bands folder on our hard drive.

We are only using music that is album material, not live or unrecorded and therefore somehow excusable according to the way some Napsterites view the habits

By monitoring the habits of those who download the latest eggs and it appears that 2/3 of those who download to completion immediately share the new song. This observation bears out or theory that there are more of these eggs out there than most folks think.

"The Cuckoo's Egg" is about a year-long effort to apprehend Mark Hess. Hess was a West German hacker who broke into computers all over Europe, North America, and Japan through a tangled web of computer networks. Until his capture, Stoll watched Hess attempt to break into over 400 computer sites on Milnet and Arpanet. Hess was successful in about 40 of his attempts

Stoll first became aware of the hacker's presence when he discovered a 75 cent accounting error in the Unix system he was administering. One thing led to another, and he soon realized an unauthorized user was on his system. Instead of getting rid of the account and locking out the hacker, Stoll methodically kept notes and records on the hacker's every move. Stoll alerted all the government agencies that he thought could act upon the case. He started performing traces with the help of Tymnet, a data carrier on which Hess was placing his calls.

As his activities grew, the more interest government agencies showed in Hess. It became apparent the hacker was coming from Europe and showed a strong taste for documents concerning the Star Wars project. The slow wheels of bureaucracy started to move. The FBI, the only agency with the authority to act on the case, officially asked for help from West Germany. With their help, the FBI was quickly able to identity the hacker. He was arrested nearly one year after Stoll first discovered the accounting error in his system.

Now Let be share a very brief way of How to Lay Cuckoo's eggs, Dont worry I won't ask you to become a cuckoo. ;-)

How To Lay Cuckoo's Eggs

Step 1: Download and install Kazaa or BearShare

Step 2: Download or rip songs for use as eggs.

Step 3: Edit the songs adding noise, sounds, and other info

Step 4: Copy your MP3 file into the Napster directories.

Step 5: Connect to Napster and start laying eggs

Do you know while you are Browsing …………The Eggs Are Hatching.

I see the project as bit of hactivism aimed at promoting debate regarding on-line file trading and artist’s rights in the digital age. The project is essentially a monkey wrench in the machinery of online piracy. The method is relatively simple - by creating an mp3 and renaming it to whatever your devious mind desires you can subvert the machinery.

This project have no illusions that they brought down Napster. They merely wish to encourage them and the various warring parties to create a fair use method for listening to and trading music online; one that respects the artists and the consumer.

Cheers,

All the Best ....... :)

Cannot launch vSphere Client on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2

2010-02-26T18:17:00.000+02:00

This is a very common issue going around where most of the people are facing the errors with Win7

Error parsing the server "" "clients.xml" file.

The type initializer for VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy' threw an exception.

if you can update your vSpear 4 to vSpear 4 update 1 then your problem ends here. if you cant update for some reason then below is the work around that might help you.

You have to Bypass the normal .NET framework, to bypass the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism follow the below steps

Step 1:

Download the file system.dll. This file is typically located in %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ directory of a non-Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machine with .NET v3.5 SP1 installed.

Step 2:

Copy the file to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\lib.

Note: If the lib directory does not exist, create it.

Step 3:

Open VpxClient.exe.config to edit.

Location of the file will be under C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher.

Add the following three lines to VpxClient.exe.config, just before :

Step 4:

From Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7 right click on the computer -> properties ->system Protection -> select Advance tab -> Environment Variables.

and create a new System variable called DEVPATH and assign the value:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib

Note: For 32bit operating systems, replace Program Files (x86)with Program Files.

you are done, but You may have to right-click on the vSphere Client icon and choose Run as administrator.

Cheers,

All the Best ....... :)

File Sharing across Linux Machines

2010-02-26T16:25:00.000+02:00

To share the Files across the Linux machines we need to setup the NFS share.

NFS (Network File System) is a protocol used by UNIX/Linux computers to share disks across a network. Similar to the Common Internet File Services (CIFS) protocol used by Windows, NFS is older and more light-weight, and performs much more efficiently on UNIX and Linux systems.

Lets check the steps.

Step 1:

First, open /etc/exports as root and enter the folder you want to share. If this file doesn't exist you will need to create it.

#vi /etc/exports

Esc + i (use the Esc and i key to insert)

/folder_to_share *(rw) --- (These lines indicate folder to share with all giving read & write permission)

Esx + : + w + q + ! (use these combination key to save and exit)

Step 2 : now lets start the services

#/etc/init.d/nfs start

This script may have a slightly different name in your distribution that you need to figure it out but more or less it should resemble this name

So now we are done with the NFS server, this is were you have your share folder, Now lets see how we can mount this folder on the client and use the share files.

Step 3 :
login to the Clients , These can be any linux box where you want to access these files and give the following command.

# mount -t nfs IP_OF_NFS_SERVER:/SHARE_FOLDER /MOUNT_POINT_ON_YOUR_LOCAL_SYSTEM

eg: #mount -t nfs 192.168.1.100:/share /local

once the work of the share folder is completed. just execute the below command to unmount

#umount /mount_point_on_your_local_system.

eg: #umount /local

You are done...

Cheers,

All the Best ..... :)

Runnig Windows applications in Unix/Linux Platform

2010-02-16T23:45:00.000+02:00

So you want to run windows application/software on Unix/Linux machines??

below are the 2 ways you can do.......

First way is for the lazy people or I can say for the people who have more money and less time to crack their heads ;-)

Just download the product
corssover from below link whichever suites best to you and install on the linux and enjoy.. yuppi !!! You are done..

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/download_trial/

If you want to go with the HARD and FREE way, carry on with the below method.

-> Have you heard about WINE?

Yes Wine is an implementation of the Windows Application Programing Interface (API) library, acting as a bridge between the Windows program and Linux. Wine makes it possible to run Windows programs alongside any Unix-like operating system, particularly Linux. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer, when a Windows program tries to perform a function that Linux doesn't normally understand, Wine will translate that program's instruction into one supported by the system.

Let’s see Installation of Wine

Wine is supported for many Unix flavors like Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva, Slackware, FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenSolaris for which you can download their related packages from the link below.

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

Lets try to install Wine on the Suse Linux,

Below steps can be followed for most of the Linux distros

Step 1:

Download latest wine package from the below link

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wine/files/Source/

Step 2:

Extract the package , Usually the package is in tar.bz2 format.

#bunzip2 filename.tar.bz2

You will get the file with the .tar extention.

# tar –xvf filename.tar

You will get the all the binaries into a folder say wine

Step3:

Navigate into the wine directory and give the following commands

#./configure

# make depend

# make

# make install

Hurray!! You are done with the installation.

Now let’s configure Wine

Step1:

Run the command

#/usr/local/bin/winecfg

When the program starts you'll notice there are tabs along the top of the window for:

• Applications

• Libraries

• Graphics

• Desktop Integration

• Drives

• Audio

• About

Carefully change the settings in the Applications and Libraries tab as it impacts on getting an application to run, Wine has the ability to mimic the behavior of different versions of Windows. In general, the biggest difference is whether Wine behaves as a Win9x version or an NT version. Some applications require a specific behavior in order to function and changing this setting may cause a buggy app to work. Within the tab you'll notice there is a Default Settings entry. If you select that you'll see the current default Windows Version for all applications. A troublesome application is best configured separately from the Default Settings. To do that:

Click on the Add application button. -> Browse until you locate the filename.exe -> After it's been added you can choose the specific Windows version Wine will emulate for that application

-> To run an Application in Wine

Just execute the following command

You could run the file c:\windows\system\myappli.exe with:

# wine myappli.exe

if you want to run the file c:\myapps\myappli.exe with this command:

# wine c:\\myapps\\myappli.exe

Plz Note the backslash used here are for escape "\"

->Tricks to add different devices

->To add your CD-ROM, just create a new link pointing to it:

# ln -s /mnt/cdrom ~/.wine/dosdevices/d:

NOTE: we are using the DOS-style naming convention here for links - the format is a letter followed by a colon, such as "a:". So, if the link to your c: drive points to ~/.wine/drive_c, you can interpret references to c:\windows\system32 to mean ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32.

-> To add Serial and parallel port

Its very similar to drive configuration - simply create a symbolic link in ~/.wine/dosdevices with the name of the device.

#ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1

#ln -s /dev/lp0 lpt1

->Do you have shares on windows?

Windows shares are mapped into the unc/ directory so anything trying to access \\myserver\some\file will look in ~/.wine/dosdevices/unc/myserver/some/file/. For example, if you used Samba to mount\\myserver\some on /mnt/smb/myserver/some then you can do

#ln -s /mnt/smb/myserver/some unc/myserver/some

to make it available in wine (don't forget to create the unc directory if it doesn't alrady exist).

Cheers,

All the Best ..... :-)

How to create Multiple Instances of Yahoo Messenger

2010-02-13T12:19:00.000+02:00

This is for few of my friends who have been asking me couple of times How to create Multiple Instances of Yahoo Messenger?

Here you go.......

Most of us have more than 1 yahoo messenger id with us and want to login at the same time. Well its little annoying for me to login to yahoo messenger with one id and other at the yahoo mail or using different IM clients.

you can link to one of the below sites - most likely not all will be blocked by schools/offices (most schools/offices allow access to secure http sites by bypassing the firewall/proxy; meebo has https access)
meebo - https://meebo.com/
WebAIM - http://webaim.net/
eBuddy - http://www.ebuddy.com/#AOL
AIM Express - http://aimexpress.aim.com
QuickBuddy - http://toc.oscar.aol.com/tic.html
ILoveIM - http://iloveim.com/
Kool IM - http://koolim.com/

But Nhaaa , This is not what we are looking here . …

For the folks who like Ymessenger, below are the steps you have to follow to have multiple instances

We have to edit the registry a little

(1) Go to the Start menu and click the Run button.
(2) Type " regedit " without quotes and hit the enter button as hard as possible.
(3) The window that opens will have a list of folders in the left pane.
(4) Goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software-> Yahoo -> Pager -> Test.
(5) Now in the right pane do a right click and create a new DWORD and name it "Plural"
(6) Right click over " Plural " and select Modify. And change the value to 1

If you are feeling lazy!?!?! then Follow the below steps

1) Download the file from the link http://www.fast-files.com/getfile.aspx?file=35659
2) Extract the content of the files and right click on the "start_ymulti" file and select merge, Surprisingly you are done .. ,Personally I love such methods.. ;-)

Now enjoy messaging with multiple instances of Yahoo messenger....

Cheers,
All the Best ..... :)

How to Disable Ctrl+alt+del ?

2010-02-13T02:08:00.000+02:00

This might be little old thing but I think that still many people would like to know about it. So let me try to put it across to you all guys.

To the people who don't know the history about the Ctrl+alt+del ,This keyboard combination was implemented by David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC.

Bradley originally designed Control-Alt-Escape to trigger a soft reboot, but he found it was too easy to bump the left side of the keyboard and reboot the computer accidentally. He switched the key combination to Control-Alt-Delete, a combination that was impossible to press with just one hand (this is not true of later keyboards, such as the 102-key PC/AT keyboard or the Maltron keyboard).

As a security feature of Windows NT based operating systems (NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP as a domain member or under certain settings and Windows Server 2003) you are required to press Ctrl-ALT-DEL before being prompted for a user name and password at log-in. Personally I don’t like the feature but some people do, so I'll show you how to disable it, but don’t be afraid, this will not auto-login for you, it will only disable the Ctrl-ALT-DEL prompt and jump right to the login screen.

Below are the steps

1) Go to start and click run

2) Type gpedit.msc and press enter, this will open Group Policy object Editor

3) Click on “+” sign on Windows Setting tab at the left panel.

4) Under Windows Setting -> click Security Settings -> local Policies -> Security Options

5) Click on the security Options and you will see list of Policies and its security settings on the right panel of the window.

6) Find “Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL” from the list on right panel and double click on it and change the selection from Disable to Enable then click apply and then ok.

Voila you are done !!!

Cheers,

All the Best ..... :)

Bumps on the F and J keyboard keys

2010-02-13T01:09:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered why is there bumps on the F and J keyboard keys? , The question itself gives a very strange feeling; we techies play around on the keyboard alot but have never given a thought why there are bumps on F & J keys.

These bumps are for people who type without looking. They are on F and J because, if you type properly, both of your index fingers are on them. which some people call them HOMEBASE.

The bumps or nipples found on the F and J keys on the keyboard helps users correctly position their left and right hand on the keyboard without having to look at it. For example, without looking at the keyboard you can easily position your left index finger on the F and the right index finger on the J, which then positions all the remainder of your fingers in the correct position.

Happy Typing ;-)

Cheers,

All the Best ...... :)

Performance tuning of VMware using Large Page

2010-02-13T00:45:00.000+02:00

Lets talk on the subject to understand what we are going to do here.

VMware® ESX Server supports the use of large pages inside virtual machines. The large‐page support enables server applications to establish large‐page memory regions. Memory address translations use translation lookaside buffers (TLB) inside the CPU. The use of large pages can potentially increase TLB access efficiency and thus improve program performance. This study examines the performance of this feature. Most modern processors support memory pages of large sizes, called “large pages” or “super pages.”
For example, the x86‐64 architecture supports the large page size of 2MB in addition to small 4KB pages. X86‐64 and x86 PAE support large page size of 2MB; x86 non‐PAE supports 4MB. The large translation lookaside buffer (TLB) covers a larger memory range than the small TLB, thus the use of large pages can possibly reduce TLB misses. As a result, many applications can benefit from large pages. For example, an Oracle database uses many large shared memory regions and can potentially benefit from large pages.

Now let’s stop on English and start working

To Enable the large page support for the entire ESX Server host.

Perform the following steps using the VMware Infrastructure Client:

1 In the left pane of the VI Client, choose the ESX Server host.

2 In the right pane of the VI Client, click the Configuration tab.

3 Choose Software > Advanced Settings. The Advanced Settings dialog box opens.

4 In the left pane of the Advanced Settings dialog box, choose Mem.

5 In the right pane of the Advanced Settings dialog box, set Mem.AllocGuestLargePage to 1.

6 Click OK to close the Advanced Settings dialog box.

Now lets Enable Large Page support in Guest Operating Systems

Enabling Large Page Support in Windows Server 2003

To enable large page support in Windows Server 2003, the system administrator must grant appropriate users the privilege to “Lock pages in memory.” This privilege is not enabled by default when Windows is installed.

To grant this privilege, take the following steps:

1 Choose Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy.

2 In the left pane of the Local Security Settings window, expand Local Policies and choose User Rights

Assignment.

3 In the right pane of the Local Security Settings window, choose Lock pages in memory and choose Action > Properties. The Local Security Setting dialog box opens.

4 In the Local Security Setting dialog box, click Add User or Group.

5 Enter the appropriate user name, then click OK to close the Select Users or Groups dialog box.

6 Click OK to close the Local Security Policy Setting dialog box. The Local Security Settings window shows the user assigned to the policy

You need to log out, then login back or reboot to free memory. Now, applications running as this user can access large pages.

Enabling Large Page Support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux

To enable large page support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the root user must preallocate the large pages from the command line.

1) If you need 2GB large pages, enter the following command to preallocate 1024 2MB large pages:

# echo 1024 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages

2 The system may not allocate all the pages you specified. To see how many large pages were actually

allocated, enter the following command:

#cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages

3 Some applications, such as the BEA Java Virtual Machine, use /mnt/hugepages to allocate large pages. If

you are using such an application, you must create the mount point for mapping the large pages. To do

so, enter the following commands:

#mkdir /mnt/hugepages

#mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/hugepages

#chmod 777 /mnt/hugepage

cheers,

All the Best ....... :)

What is Clustering .........

2010-02-09T00:51:00.000+02:00

-> What is clustering?

In computers, clustering is the use of multiple computers, typically PCs or workstations, multiple storage devices and redundant interconnections, to form what appears to users as a single highly available system. Cluster computing can be used for load balancing, parallel processing as well as for high availability. Clustering approach can help an enterprise achieve 99.999 availability in some cases. One of the main ideas of cluster computing to the outside world is that the cluster appears to be a single system.

Clustering can be implemented at different levels of the system, including hardware, operating systems, middleware, systems management and applications. The more layers that incorporate clustering technology to more complex the whole system is to manage. To implement a successful clustering solution specialists in all the technologies (i.e. hardware, networking, software) are required.

-> History of Clustering

If we peep in the history of the clustering, it’s says that the first commodity clustering product was ARCnet, developed by Datapoint in 1977. ARCnet wasn't a commercial success and clustering didn't really take off until DEC released their VAXcluster product in the 1980s for the VAX/VMS operating system. The ARCnet and VAXcluster products not only supported parallel computing, but also shared file systems and peripheral devices. They were supposed to give you the advantage of parallel processing while maintaining data reliability and uniqueness. VAXcluster, now VMScluster, is still available on OpenVMS systems from HP running on Alpha and Itanium systems. The history of cluster computing is intimately tied up with the evolution of networking technology. As networking technology has become cheaper and faster, cluster computers have become significantly more attractive.

-> Typical Architecture of Clustering

A cluster is a type of parallel or distributed processing system, which consists of a collection of interconnected stand-alone computers cooperatively working together as a single, integrated computing resource A node:

A single or multiprocessor system with memory, I/O facilities, & OS
generally 2 or more computers (nodes) connected together in a single cabinet, or physically separated & connected via a LAN
It appears as a single system to users and applications
provides a cost-effective way to gain features and benefits

Three principle features usually provided by cluster computing are:

1) Availability

Availability is provided by the cluster of computers operating as a single system by continuing to provide services even when one of the individual computers is lost due to a hardware failure or other reason.

2) Scalability

Scalability is provided by the inherent ability of the overall system to allow new components, such as computers, to be assed as the overall system's load is increased.

3) Simplification.

The simplification comes from the ability of the cluster to allow administrators to manage the entire group as a single system

->Types of Clusters

Basically there are many types of clusters or we can say clusters can be categorized in many ways, I would classify them into four basic category.

a) a) High-availability (HA) clusters

High-availability clusters (also known as Failover Clusters) are implemented primarily for the purpose of improving the availability of services that the cluster provides. They operate by having redundant nodes, which are then used to provide service when system components fail. The most common size for an HA cluster is two nodes, which is the minimum requirement to provide redundancy. HA cluster implementations attempt to use redundancy of cluster components to eliminate single points of failure.

There are commercial implementations of High-Availability clusters for many operating systems. The Linux-HA project is one commonly used free software HA package for the Linux operating system..

b b) Load-balancing clusters

Load-balancing is when multiple computers are linked together to share computational workload or function as a single virtual computer. Logically, from the user side, they are multiple machines, but function as a single virtual machine. Requests initiated from the user are managed by and distributed among all the standalone computers to form a cluster. This results in balanced computational work among different machines, improving the performance of the cluster system.

c c) Compute clusters

Often clusters are used primarily for computational purposes, rather than handling IO-oriented operations such as web service or databases. For instance, a cluster might support computational simulations of weather or vehicle crashes. The primary distinction within compute clusters is how tightly-coupled the individual nodes are. For instance, a single compute job may require frequent communication among nodes - this implies that the cluster shares a dedicated network, is densely located, and probably has homogenous nodes. This cluster design is usually referred to as Beowulf Cluster. The other extreme is where a compute job uses one or few nodes, and needs little or no inter-node communication. This latter category is sometimes called "Grid" computing. Tightly-coupled compute clusters are designed for work that might traditionally have been called "supercomputing". Middleware such as MPI (Message Passing Interface) or PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) permits compute clustering programs to be portable to a wide variety of clusters.

d) Grid computing

Grids are usually computer clusters, but more focused on throughput like a computing utility rather than running fewer, tightly-coupled jobs. Often, grids will incorporate heterogeneous collections of computers, possibly distributed geographically, sometimes administered by unrelated organizations.

-> Some of the business applications of the clusters are

Google search Engine

Petroleum Reservoir Simulation

Protein Explorer.

Earthquake simulation

Image rendering and more

Cheers,

All the Best ..... :)

Contents of VMware tools and their functions

2010-02-07T04:26:00.000+02:00

Hi Friends,

I have found many people who are working on VMware struggle to get the list of drivers or contents of VMware tools, below are the contents of VMware tools and their functions.

–>Firstly What is VMware Tools?

It is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Installing VMware Tools in the guest operating system is vital. Although the guest operating system can run without VMware Tools, you lose important functionality and

convenience.

–>When you install VMware Tools what all components it gets installed?

VMware Tools service. The program file is called VMwareService.exe on

Windows guests and vmware-guestd on Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris guests.

–>This service performs various duties within the guest operating system:

Passes messages from the host operating system to the guest operating system.
Executes commands in the operating system to cleanly shut down or restart a Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris system when you select power operations in Workstation.
Sends a heartbeat to a VMware Server, if you use the virtual machine with VMware Server.
On Windows guests, grabs and releases the mouse cursor.
On Windows guests, fits the guest’s screen resolution to the host’s and vice verse .
Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time in the host operating system.
Runs scripts that help automate guest operating system operations. The Scripts run when the virtual machine’s power state changes.
The service starts when the guest operating system boots.

NOTE: The VMware Tools service is not installed on NetWare operating systems. Instead, the vmwtool program is installed. It synchronizes time and allows you to turn the CPU idler on or off. See “Using the System Console to Configure VMware Tools in a NetWare Guest Operating System” on page 139.

What are the Device drivers VMware contains ?

These drivers include:

SVGA display driver that provides high display resolution and significantly faster overall graphics performance.
The vmxnet networking driver for some guest operating systems.
BusLogic SCSI driver for some guest operating systems.
VMware mouse driver.
A kernel module for handling shared folders, called hgfs.sys on Windows and vmhgfs on Linux and Solaris.

What is VMware user process? The program file is called VMwareUser.exe on Windows guests and vmware-user on Linux and Solaris guests. This service performs the following tasks within the guest operating system:

Enables you to copy and paste text between the guest and host operating systems, and copy and paste files between the host operating systems and Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest operating systems.
Enables you to drag and drop files between the host operating systems and Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest operating systems.
On Linux and Solaris guests, grabs and releases the mouse cursor when the SVGA driver is not installed.
On Linux and Solaris guests, fits the guest’s screen resolution to the host’s.

NOTE: The VMware Tools user process is not installed on NetWare operating systems. Instead, the vmwtool program is installed. It controls the grabbing and releasing of the mouse cursor. It also allows you copy and paste text. You cannot drag and drop or copy and paste files between hosts and NetWare guest operating

systems.

What is VMware Tools control panel?

The Tools control panel lets you modify settings, shrink virtual disks, and connect and disconnect virtual devices. So, in short, it significantly enhances the speed and efficiency of your guest machine. It also adds capabilities. VMWare strongly recommends that you install VMWare Tools in all of your virtual machines, and I fully agree with this recommendation. Lastly, note that you must have the guest operating system installed and running in the virtual machine in order to install VMWare Tools. It literally installs itself into the guest operating system.

Cheers,

All the Best ..... :)

How to Configure Jumbo frames in ESX 4 for iSCSI

2010-02-07T03:49:00.000+02:00

Jumbo Frames !!!!!!

-> Lets understand what’s Jumbo Frames first and how it benefits us ...

Jumbo frames are Ethernet frames with more than 1,500 bytes of payload (MTU). Conventionally, jumbo frames can carry up to 9,000 bytes of payload.

Jumbo Frames allow ESX Server to send larger frames out onto the physical network. The network must support Jumbo Frames end‐to‐end for Jumbo Frames to be effective.

iSCSI with jumbo frames gives better or rather much better performance .If you are getting sluggish performance then try enabling jumbo frames

So let’s activate it, I have used Jumbo frames only with SW initiator not HW one so if some can comment on how it works on HW it would be in for a great benefit.

Most probably you might have your VMkernel setup with 1500 MTU so we need to delete it and start over again. Its recommend to start from 0 but if you wish you can enable the jumbo frames on the fly, it won't throw any errors.

In my case vSwitch1 was used as VMkernel for iscsi.

Step 1:
[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -d vSwitch1

Step 2:

Then I went ahead and did a listing

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

As it can be seen no VMkernel

Then lets start the stuff .........
Step 3:

Add a vSwitch

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch1

Step 4:
List it....

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1       64          1           64                1500

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

Step 5:
Lets set the jumbo frames AKA MTU

If you wish you can execute the below command on the fly to your vSwitch without deleting it
[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch1

List it to see the diference

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1       64          1           64                9000

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

As it can be seen MTU is now 9000 not 1500

Step 6 :
Lets assign a NIC to the newly created vSwitch

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1 vSwitch1

The result

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1       64          2           64                9000    vmnic1

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
Step 7:
Lets give it a port group

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -A VMkernel vSwitch1
Step 8:

Lets see Whether we got desired output

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1       64          2           64                9000    vmnic1

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VMkernel            0        0           vmnic1
Step 9:

Now lets give it IP

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 192.168.0.11 -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 VMkernel

Hmm the output is ........

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vswitch -l
Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch0       32          3           32                9000    vmnic0

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VM Network          0        0           vmnic0
Service Console     0        1           vmnic0

Switch Name    Num Ports   Used Ports Configured Ports MTU     Uplinks
vSwitch1       64          3           64                9000    vmnic1

PortGroup Name      VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks
VMkernel            0        1           vmnic1

Property of vmknic

[root@esx sysconfig]# esxcfg-vmknic -l
Interface Port Group/DVPort   IP Family IP Address                              Netmask         Broadcast       MAC Address       MTU     TSO MSS   Enabled Type
vmk0       VMkernel            IPv4      192.168.0.11                            255.255.255.0   192.168.0.255   00:XX:83:91:23:14 9000    65535     true    STATIC

Cheers,

All the Best .... :)