Bo Wu's IT Lab

Microsoft has an unsupported virtual CD-ROM program. Why buy alcohol or Daemon Tools?

Alcohol and Daemon Tools are excellent software packages that allow users to mount ISO files as virtual CD-ROMs. Yes, there is a way to use that ISO without burning it to a disk.

Although I love these tools, Microsoft has a free, 60kb program that does the same thing! Of course, it is not supported… and it’s not as friendly as the software listed above; however, it works and it’s free.

Here’s the download link:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe

Here’s the readme:

Readme for Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel v2.0.1.1

THIS TOOL IS UNSUPPORTED BY MICROSOFT PRODUCT SUPPORT SERVICES

System Requirements
===================
- Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional

Installation instructions
=========================
1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click “Driver control”
4. If the “Install Driver” button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click “Start”
6. Click OK
7. Click “Add Drive” to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click “Add Drive” until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click “Mount”.
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click “OK”. UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.

When I downloaded files from Microsoft’s MSDN website, a Download Manager will be popped up.

Sometimes, the Download Manager will be closed for unknown reason during the downloading. So, I had to restart it. The location for the program is at:

%windir%\Downloaded Program Files\TransferMgr.exe

Recently, I installed the latest openSUSE 11.2.  I like it very much.  However, I still need to do following things in order to make it work better for me.

1. Network:

The machine could not access network right after the installation.  The reason is that I found both eth0 and br0 are up.  What I did is just remove the br0 and set static IP address for eth0.

The location for changing this setting is at YaST –> Network Devices –> Network Settings.

2. Multi-media Files:

Please see my another post at http://www.bowu.org/?p=106.

3.  Terminal Server Client (tsclient):

You can access remote Windows machines through Remote Desktop Protocal and Linux machines throught XDMCP.

Please go to YaST –>Software –> Package Search –>Search “tsclient” and install it.

An out-of-box openSUSE doesn’t include any codecs which are required to play multi-media files like MP3, MPEG-4 and others because they are restricted format files.  So, you need to install the codecs manually.

If you are using GNOME Desktop Environment:

1-click installation
codecs-gnome.ymp

This will enable you to have:

* Flash
* Java
* Latest Amarok (with MP3 Support) for KDE, or Helix-Banshee for GNOME users
* Encrypted DVD (libdvdcss)
* Extra xine codecs, for MPEG-4 etc. (libxine1)
* K3b with MP3 Support (k3b-codecs)
* Win 32 Codecs (w32codec-all)

..as well as the option of installing many more applications (select Customise mode at the screen), including:

* Opera
* VLC
* ..and more

If you are using the KDE Desktop Environment

1-click installation
codecs-kde.ymp

Note 1: On 32-bit systems there’ll be a dialog asking for about architecture change for libxine1 from from i586 to i686, accept that change.

Note 2: If you have already installed xine components (most people) then there is a version conflict with two codec packs: libxine1-codecs and k3b-codecs. You are presented with a warning dialog and conflict resolutions. Select the topmost “install” option “with vendor change” for everything to work.

For more information, please visit: http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/11.2

After your installation of a 64-bit Fedora 12, you will find that you cannot web pages which have flash movies embedded.  Even you go to Adobe’s website to try to download and install the Adobe Flash Player plugin for Firefox, it still does not work.

The reason is that the plugin on Adobe official website is for 32-bit OS.  Adobe has a Beta version of 64-bit plugin which can be downloaded at http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_1_p2_linux_121709.tar.gz

After downloading and extracting the .tar.gz file, you will find a file call: libflashplayer.so.  Then, you can copy this file to your Firefox plugin directory like: ~your_user_name/.mozilla/plugins/.  Restart your Firefox and go to youtube.com to test if you can view Flash now.

About FTP

FTP is short for File Transfer Protocol, this page contains additional information about the FTP command and help using that command in Unix and MS-DOS (Windows). See our FTP section in our dictionary for a complete definition on FTP.

Windows FTP

From the MS-DOS prompt or shell type in FTP, once typed in you will have access to the FTP command line. In this command line type:

open ftp.address.domain

Where address is the name of the server and the domain is the domain such as .COM, .NET… In addition, the IP address can be typed in, such as 255.255.255.0.

Once connected you will be asked for a username and password; if done successfully, you will have access to transfer files between computers.

Unix FTP

Unix FTP is used much like Windows; from a command prompt or shell, type in FTP, from FTP you should be able to log into a server, providing you have the proper access.

FTP Commands

Depending upon the version of FTP and the operating system being used, each of the below commands may or may not work. Generally typing -help or a ? will list the commands available to you.

Command   Information
!    Using this command you will have the capability of toggling back and forth between the operating system and ftp. Once back in the operating system generally typing exit will take you back to the FTP command line.
?    Access the Help screen.
abor    Abort Transfer
append    Append text to a local file.
ascii    Switch to ASCII transfer mode
bell    Turns bell mode on / off.
binary    Switches to binary transfer mode.
bye    Exits from FTP.
cd    Changes directory.
cdup    Change to parent directory on remote system
close    Exits from FTP.
cwd    Change working directory on remote system
dele    Delete file on remote system
delete    Deletes a file.
debug    Sets debugging on / off.
dir    Lists files if connected.

dir -C = Will list the files in wide format.
dir -1 = Lists the files in bare format in alphabetic order
dir -r = Lists directory in reverse alphabetic order.
dir -R = Lists all files in current directory and sub directories.
dir -S = Lists files in bare format in alphabetic order.
disconnect    Exits from FTP.
get    Get file from the computer connected to.
glob    Sets globbing on / off.
hash    Sets hash mark printing on / off
help    Access the Help screen and displays information about command if command typed after help.
lcd    Displays local directory or if path typed after lcd will change local directory.
list    Send a list of file names in the current directory on the remote system on the data connection.
literal    Sends command line
ls    Lists files if connected.
mdelete    Multiple delete
mdir    Lists contents of multiple remote directories
mget    Get multiple files
mkd    Make directory.
mkdir    Make directory.
mls    Lists contents of multiple remote directories.
mode    Specifies the transfer mode. Available parameters are generally S, B or C.
mput    Sent multiple files
nlst    Send a full directory listing of the current directory on the remote system on the data connection.
open    Opens address.
pass    Supplies a user password.
port    Specify the client port number.
prompt    Enables/disables prompt.
put    Send one file
pwd    Print working directory
quit    Exits from FTP.
quote    Send arbitrary ftp command
recv    Receive file
retr    Get file from remote system.
remotehelp      Get help from remote server
rename    Renames a file
rmdir    Removes a directory
send    Send single file
status    Shows status of currently enabled / disabled options
trace    Toggles packet tracing
type    Set file transfer type
user    Send new user information
verbose    Sets verbose on / off.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

How do I send and receive files once connected in MS-DOS FTP?

To get files from the server and place them in your current working directory, on the machine you are working, type:

get myfile.htm

Where myfile.htm is the name of the file you wish to get from the computer connected to.

To send a file from your computer to the computer you are connected to (providing you have proper rights and the file exists in the current working directory), type:

send myfile.htm

Where myfile.htm is the name of the file that exists in the current directory; if you cannot recall the name of the file, use the ! command to temporally get back to a MS-DOS prompt; once you have located the file name, type exit to get back to the location you left in FTP.

In MS-DOS FTP I am only able to send files in the directory that I typed FTP in.

Set the LCD, for example, if you want to send files that are in the C:\Windows directory, type:

LCD c:\windows

How do I download multiple files from an FTP server?

Use the mget command, which is short for multiple get. Using the mget command you can get multiple files by using wildcards. For example, ” mget *.* ” would get all files in the current directory.

By default, prompting would be enabled; if you wish to get all files without being prompted, use the “prompt” command to disable/enable prompting.

When attempting to connect to an FTP address, receiving  “10061″ error

This error is caused when the server is refusing the connection.

Attempt to connect to an alternate FTP address.

If you are able to connect to other FTP addresses, it is likely the site generating the error 10061 is refusing to accept your connection because of security privileges or because it is not an FTP server.

If you are unable to connect to any address, it is likely an issue with the network or computer configuration.

1. Ensure that the network configuration settings are properly setup as well as FTP rights.
2. Verify that the firewall is properly setup to accept FTP access.

How to create a Windows FTP script

Create a text document with commands used when in FTP.  Below is an example of what such a script may look like:

open ftp.domain.com
username
password
cd public_html
dir
get file.txt
bye

The above script will log into the ftp site ftp.domain.com. Once connected, it will enter the username and then the password (substitute username for your username and password for your password). Once logged in, the script then goes into the public_html directory, gets a directory listing and then uses the get command to get the file called file.txt. Once the file is received, it logs off using the bye command.

Once the script file has been created, for example, if it was called script.txt, to execute this script with ftp you would type:

ftp -s:script.txt

If Windows FTP does not offer enough scripting options for you you may also want to consider WinSCP.

My Fedora 12 could not play any .wav and .wmv files and shown above error messages.  When I clicked the “Search” for searching the missing codecs, it could found nothing to install.  The reason is some codecs to play Microsoft media files are proprietary and cannot be included in the Fedora’s yum repository.

The solution is to download and install following w32codec:

URL: http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/2294486/com/w32codec-0.60-1.i386.rpm.html

After I installed it successfully, I closed the media player and clicked the .wav file again, but it still popped up the above first error message. However, when I clicked the “search” again this time, it could search, download and install codecs automatically.

Finally, I got my .wav and .wmv files played properly.

For more information about MPlayer and its codecs, you can go to ftp://ftp1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ and http://www.mplayerhq.hu.

NFS was developed at a time when we weren’t able to share our drives like we are able to today – in the Windows environment. It offers the ability to share the hard disk space of a big server with many smaller clients. Again, this is a client/server environment. While this seems like a standard service to offer, it was not always like this. In the past, clients and servers were unable to share their disk space.

Thin clients have no hard drives and thus need a “virtual” hard-disk. The NFS mount their hard disk from the server and, while the user thinks they are saving their documents to their local (thin client) disk, they are in fact saving them to the server. In a thin client environment, the root, usr and home partitions are all offered to the client from the server via NFS.

NFS Advantages

• Local workstations use less disk space because commonly used data can be stored on a single machine and still remain accessible to others over the network.

• There is no need for users to have separate home directories on every network machine. Home directories could be set up on the NFS server and made available throughout the network.

• Storage devices such as floppy disks, CDROM drives, and Zip® drives can be used by other machines on the network. This may reduce the number of removable media drives throughout the network.

Install NFS Server in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

When configuring portmap do =not= bind loopback. If you do you can either edit /etc/default/portmap using the following

sudo vi /etc/default/portmap

or use the following command

sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap

Restart Portmap using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

NFS Server Configuration

NFS exports from a server are controlled by the file /etc/exports. Each line begins with the absolute path of a directory to be exported, followed by a space-seperated list of allowed clients.

You need to edit the exports file using the following command

sudo vi /etc/exports

Here are some quick examples of what you could add to your /etc/exports

For Full Read Write Permissions allowing any computer from 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.255

/files 192.168.1.1/24(rw,no_root_squash,async)

Or for Read Only from a single machine

/files 192.168.1.2 (ro,async)

save this file and exit

A client can be specified either by name or IP address. Wildcards (*) are allowed in names, as are netmasks (e.g. /24) following IP addresses, but should usually be avoided for security reasons.

A client specification may be followed by a set of options, in parenthesis. It is important not to leave any space between the last client specification character and the opening parenthesis, since spaces are intrepreted as client seperators.

Now you need to restart NFS server using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

If you make changes to /etc/exports on a running NFS server, you can make these changes effective by issuing the command

sudo exportfs -a

Install NFS client support in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

This will install all the required packages for nfs client

Mounting manually

Example to mount server.mydomain.com:/files to /files. In this example server.mydomain.com is the name of the server containing the nfs share, and files is the name of the share on the nfs server

The mount point /files must first exist on the client machine.

Create files directory using the following command

sudo mkdir files

You need to mount the share using the following command

sudo mount server.mydomain.com:/files /files

Now you may need to restart services using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart

Mounting at boot using /etc/fstab

If you want to mount using fstab file

sudo vi /etc/fstab

In this example my /etc/fstab was like this

server.mydomain.com:/files /files nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

Change “servername.mydomain.com:/files”, and “/files” to match your server name,share name, and the name of the mount point you created.

Firewall Ports for NFS

If you have a firewall you need to make sure ports 32771, 111 and 2049 are open
Testing Your Configuration

Use the following command in terminal to test

mount /files

the mount point /files will be mounted from the server.

Reference

http://czarism.com/easy-peasy-ubuntu-linux-nfs-file-sharing

If you have an Ubuntu installation, and want to check what version it is, you have a number of options. The most “right” way I’ve found is to simply look at the /etc/lsb-release file, which should tell you explicitly what version of Ubuntu is installed, its codename, and its version number.

Or, if you like the command line, run lsb_release -a

Of course, you could do a number of other things instead, like looking at /etc/apt/sources.list to see what version of Ubuntu you’re pulling packages from. But I thought the above method was nice, and not often mentioned.

1. How to change the UUID for a vdi (Disk Image) file?

[vbox@myhost HardDisks]$ VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid mydisk.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.0.2
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

UUID changed to: ee32ff3a-1e86-4387-a753-a51d1528a0fe

2. How to delete eth0, eth1, eth2…?

(1) Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
delete lines, like eth0, eht1, eth2…

(2) In VirtualBox, set Network as Bridge Adapter, reset the MAC address, restart the Linux.

If you need to set the static IP address, go to /etc/network/interfces, edit the last several lines.

3. How to setup AutoStart Headless Virtual Machines in CentOS or RHEL?

Add following lines in /etc/rc.local

su vbox -c “VBoxHeadless -startvm vmachine1 -p 4000 &”
su vbox -c “VBoxHeadless -startvm vmachine2 -p 4010 &”

Remarks:
vbox: The user to start the virtual machine.
vmachine1: The name of the virtual machine.
4000: Port the VRDP server bonded to.

For more information about VBoxHeadless, please type VBoxHeadless –help.

4. How to Re-compile VirtualBox Kernel in CentOS or RHEL:

(1) When you run VirtualBox and get following errors:

(2) When you run following command, you get another error:

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

[vbox@myhost ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
Stopping VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ]
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module [FAILED]
(Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong)

Makefile:152: *** Error: unable to find the sources of your current Linux kernel. Specify KERN_DIR= and run Make again. Stop.

(3) Solution: Please install following packages in CentOS or RHEL:

yum groupinstall “Development Tools”
yum install kernel-devel

vbox@myhost ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
Stopping VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ]
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel module [ OK ]

For more reference, please visit http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Virtualization/VirtualBox

5. How to enable VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration?

When you started your VirtualBox and got following error, it meant that you have not enabled the VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration which is required for VirtualBox running on a 64-bit server.

The solution is restarting your server and enter to BIOS configuration interface and find following option and enable it.

Advanced Processor Options –> Intel (R) Virtualization Technology –> Enable.

After the server’s boot up, start the VirtualBox again, you should not meet the above error again.

For more information about VT-x and AMD-V, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization.