Chris Farris

So, I’ve finally finished revamping my command center since I decided to stay at my current employer and will continue to work from home. I no longer even have a cube at the office anymore, I camp out in a conference room when I need to be in the office. As such, I’ve virtualized both my laptop (XP) and workstation (Ubuntu) onto ESXi and run them from the office. Now, only screen re-draws need to transit down my U-Verse connection, and the shared apps I run on the corporate network are much faster.

Well, _I_ find it interesting. Built a Cisco VPN JEOS so that I can have multiple home PCs connected to the corporate network. I’ve got a fascinating TCP problem I’ve not worked out with iptables masquerading and vpnc. Need to research that one a bit more. Installed VMWare Fusion and built my Windows box on the Mac. My XP CD was a SP1, so I’ve had two service packs, and numerous updates to get it up to snuff.

So here is a knowledge-base article for Google to pickup. I recently converted by Residential Gateway to DMZPlus. I have a Linux box I use for my DHCP, DNS and Firewall. I placed all my Set-tops directly attached to the residential gateway (RG), and all my PCs behind my linux box. RG —- Linux Firewall —- PC & Laptops |—— Set-top(s) U-Verse has a “feature” where-by if a device on the network has too many connections it will tell the other computers on the network (assuming that PC in question is infected with a virus).

VMware Self-Service- Setting up mirrored folders for your Mac and virtual machine. This looks kick-ass. I wonder how the performance is.

I need to blog more about my nefarious methods by which I make Windows and Unix play nice, but this link today was invaluable in getting an Ubuntu server talking to our AD install at work. A few points of note: Step 3.1 should be preceeded by mv /etc/samba/smb.conf etc/samba/smb.conf-dist PAM settings work, but if you’re only doing one domain remove the %D from “template homedir”

AppleInsider | Microsoft’s Sidekick/Pink problems blamed on dogfooding and sabotage. The article posits two questions: Was MSFT trying to pull a hotmail and convert the service to its own products (like it did in the 90s when it converted the stable Unix Hotmail infrastructure to NT4) or was it sabotage by a disgruntled employee. I think it would be pretty damn hard to corrupt the systems, corrupt the data, and corrupt all the backups to the point that recovery isn’t possible.

So it seems like the anti-cloud fanatics are all popping open beers in celebration of MSFT’s failure to restore user data for T-Mobile’s sidekick. I’m not sure I’d blame clouds, cause I’m not sure I’d consider that T-Mobile service a cloud to begin with. Unless you consider your IMAP box at your ISP a cloud, or your corporate exchange server a cloud, or wiki a cloud. Sidekick is a service. Services go down.

Of course we could just stop storing so much damn data no one will ever use. 🙂 RAID’s Days May Be Numbered – www.enterprisestorageforum.com.

“When employees are too effective at hiding the consequences of bad management decisions, they act as enablers and do nobody any favors.” -Craig

I’ve not tested this as I don’t have a Win7 VM anywhere (yet). Cavet Emptor. VMware vSphere Client on Microsoft Windows 7! | Virtual Lifestyle.