JT's Blog

As always, googling found the answer to my problem, and to save myself having to look for it again, I figured I’d document it here.

Open a terminal window and:

hdiutil convert /path/to/mac_image_file.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/standard_image.iso

The short answer, don’t plug your uplink into the internet slot, instead plug it into one of the four internal ports. This page on Netgear’s web site does a so-so job explaining, but the diagram is pretty good.

Before you do this, make sure you’ve configured the LAN IP of your WGR614 to be a member of your IP network, preferably with a Static IP rather than as a DHCP client, so you can find the device later should you want to admin its setup.  Technically though, that’s not really necessary as a network bridge will simply pass the traffic regardless if it is addressable or not!  This can make your Access Point very secure by only being addressable on another logical IP network (although security through obscurity is probably not the only thing you should rely on).  Also, don’t forget to deactivate the built-in DHCP server, unless you actually want to use it in which case make sure your DHCP scope is consistent with your existing network and doesn’t overlap with the scopes of other DHCP servers… but if you’ve read this far and know what I’m talking about, you probably knew that.  We can simply ignore the WAN setup since it’s not at all used.

If you’re at all curious why I did this, here’s the full story…

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So I decided it was finally time to set up a little ESX cluster with OpenFiler. Everything was going smoothly until it came time to configure OpenFiler… being that I’m not a storage guy. Then the OpenFiler people seem to want to make money off selling the admin guide. *sigh*. Fortunately, there is a *great* little howto here. Thank you Lee Wynne.

Then I got the first ESX host connected no problem, but the second wasn’t connecting despite every bit of troubleshooting I tried. Fortunately, it seems that other people have not only done this before me, but they’re smarter than me. Crumpuppet figured it out here. (scoll down into the thread.) Basically, it looks like a bug – either with ESX or with OpenFiler.  The fix is in the /etc/initiators-allow and /etc/initiators-deny files, a TCPwrappers sorta way of controlling access by iSCSI initiators. It basically only lets the first one in and rejects everything else. Nice. I wasted 2 hours of my life on this one. The fix, in a nutshell:

I was scratching through the openfiler settings on the console, and found two files – initiators.allow, and initiators.deny. I did a couple of tests on OF in adding initiators to the local network. When adding one, it added an entry for it in the “allow” file, as you would expect.

But – the deny file had one single entry that looks like this:

iqn.2006-01.com.openfiler:tsn.6ef258ca57df ALL

I figured, the allow one gets processed after this one, so my “allowed” initiators will be given access anyway. This was not the case. Every time I made a change to the list of initiators on the OF web interface, this line was added to initiators.deny. I put a comment in front of it and restarted the iscsi-target service. I finally managed to discover my iSCSI target on my esx hosts.

So remember to check these files! If you also have the “ALL” line in initiators.deny, just put a # in front of it, and run:

service iscsi-target restart

This will probably have to be done every time you add a host. I’m not prepared to write-protect the initiators.deny file for in case OF cries about it, but can anyone think of a fix for this?

I recommend you read the entire thread and consider the security implications of this hack. For now at least, I’m up and running.

OK, so if you know me, you’re probably tired of hearing me complain incessantly about how my windozeXP machine was nailed by a virus/adware/malware crap recently.  Something called Virtumode as well as some ridiculous program that corrupted all .doc and .jpg and .mp3 files, a mere seconds before the windows popup bubble says “Windows has detected corrupt files, click here to download File Fix Professional 2009” , which clearly is not something by windows.

I mean, would you believe the nerve of these people, infecting your machine with a virus that corrupts all your data, and then selling you the tool to fix it!?  Talk about extortion!

Fortunately, I have a fileserver and I use SecondCopy to constantly sync my data on my desktop with the fileserver.  Then if anything changes, I have it configured to move the original to a “deleted” folder while sync’ing, and keep that for up to 3 generations.  It’s a pretty slick app and it’s saved me on more than one occasion.  Well worth the $20 if you ask me. MAC users can try ChronoSync, not that you’d be attacked by a virus, but I digress.

So back to the point, configuring windows to not run stuff automatically, like when you insert a CD or a USB key or a camera or anything.  First, there’s a registry hack that was the solution to a recent malware attack on USB keys:

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If you’re not a geek and for some odd reason you regularly look at this blog, you’re probably wondering what on earth that title means.

Translation:  set up a windows 2003 server to share data using methods from UNIX rather than Windows.

Why on earth do such a thing you ask?  Why not use OpenFiler or FreeNas?  Why burden myself with a win2k3 machine?  Well, because it does other stuff too.  That’s why.

Basically, I’ve got a decent sized chunk of disk space for my stuff which now includes VMs (Virtual Machines).  I need my ESX server to be able to save VMs here, but ESX does not speak Windoze.

I had a hell of a time getting SFU working (no, not STFU)  SFU=Services For Unix, which is what allows a windows machine to speak UNIX protocols, like NFS.  Basically, I had no idea what I was doing, and it’s a bit too complicated to just BS your way through it.

Turns out, you have to create user and group mappings, which sounds awfully insecure, but ESX only does root (at least, as of 3.5):
Users:  root –> administrator
group: root –> administrators

Then, surprise, it just works.  I actually found the answer here, in a VMware forum.

Now, if only I didn’t need this machine as a Fax / print server / CIFS file share, I could go 100% linux… except for VirtualCenter.  Darn it.