This is really a bad idea, but say you have a need like I recently had to setup an account so that you don’t need a password in order to log in. Most linux distributions make this pretty easy, just issue a passwd -d command on that user (as root) and the password prompt goes bye bye.
Apr
21
I just updated my install guide for putting ESXi onto a thumbdrive to reflect Update 4. Find it Here
Apr
21
WMI is microsoft’s attempt at making SNMP “better”. Whether they succeed or fail at that is subjective, but querying wmi from a non windows hosts has been a problem in the past and has required lots of hoops and weird proxies. No more! wmic is a command line wmi client that you can install on linux. On a debian based host, just use
apt-get install wmi-client.
Once installed, a simple test like the following should get you lots of wmi goodies. Just remember that you need to use a valid windows account that has permissions to query wmi for this to work.
wmic -U $DOMAIN/$USER%$PASSWORD //$SERVER “Select * from Win32_Service”
$DOMAIN is your AD domain where your user exists
$USER is your username
$PASSWORD is your users password
$SERVER is the server name
A real world example
jason@workstation:~$ wmic -U AD/jason%ohnoes //server.cyborgworkshop.org “Select ProcessID,Started,State from Win32_Service where Name=\”Dhcp\”"
Note that I escaped (\) the quotes on DHCP. It’s important. Do it.
Outputs
CLASS: Win32_Service
Name|ProcessId|Started|State
Dhcp|1196|True|Running
Apr
21
I don’t usually write about specific products, but I have to drop a line about this new Atom 330 based board that I picked up from newegg. First off, it’s a dual core Atom CPU (with HT) that clocks in at 1.6ghz in 8 watts. Two SATA 2 ports and a single IDE attach the storage, 1 PCI slot, 1 DDR2 DIMM slot, onboard RTL gigabit LAN and Intel analog video with s-video out. Pretty much a 3 generation old PC. But here is the kicker, this little board runs EVERYTHING! Right now, I’m triple booting OSX (Kalyway with 0 tweaks, it just works) Mint Linux XFCE and VMWare ESXi (!). The ESXi did require me to smack in an intel based NIC, but the ICH7 chipset allows you to use the onboard sata storage as VMFS. The only real drag about this board is that it tops out at 2 gig of RAM, otherwise I would be ordering these things in bulk!