vmware @ 64-bit host

I not a fan of 64-bit technology, besides at work we have 4 64-bit hosts and only two of them have a 64-bit OS... which both have vmware gsx...

As a sysadmin I need automation and vmware use a perl tool called vmware-cmd with 32bit library dependency. 64-bit host is not supported according with this official document and is a known issue which will probaby not be resolved cause gsx is to be replaced with vmware server and other technologies, besides vmware states that 64bit support is experimental for gsx

After being disappointing by the fact, I decided to use the gnu/linux power and looked for a hack in vmware forums and the procedure is the following...

Copy library and perl32 binary from 32bits-host to 64bits-host
host32# scp -rv /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi host64:/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5
host32# scp -r /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi host64:/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5
host32# scp /usr/bin/perl host64:/usr/bin/perl32

Edit /usr/bin/vmware-cmd to use perl32 and libraries
< #!/usr/bin/perl -w -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib -I/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux -I/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0 -I. --- > #!/usr/bin/perl32 -w -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib -I/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux -I/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5 -I/usr/lib/vmware/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux -I.

Not too difficult considering that almost give up when I saw there was not support for 64-bit host

vim 7.0

I've to accept that the hidden geek besides me is dying....

The new vim features like "On the fly spell checking", "Open files in tabs" and "Undo Branches" keeps vim as the flexible text editor of all times.

Take a look at a visual walk through.

Squid power

I've to say that squid have a powerful regex capability and a flexible delay_pools feature.. and if both are used to decrease the bandwith of audio/video files you should get a performance improvement...

acl regex_progs url_regex -i \.rar$ \.msi$ \.bz2$ \.zip$ \.exe$ \.cab$
acl regex_progs url_regex -i zip\?.*$ exe\?.*$ rar\?.*$
acl regex_audio url_regex -i \.mp3$ \.avi$ \.mpeg$ \.mpg$ \.qt$ \.ram$
acl regex_audio url_regex -i \.mov$ \.flv$ \.wma$ \.asf$ \.wmv$ \.wav$
acl regex_audio url_regex -i mp3\?.*$ mpeg\?.*$ wma\?.*$ asf\?.*$ wmv\?.*$
acl regex_audio url_regex -i videodownload\? get_video\?

delay_pools 3

delay_class 1 2 # pool 1 is a class 2 pool
delay_class 2 2 # pool 2 is a class 2 pool
delay_class 3 2 # pool 3 is a class 2 pool

delay_access 1 allow all !regex_audio !regex_progs
delay_access 1 deny all
delay_access 2 allow all regex_progs
delay_access 2 deny all
delay_access 3 allow all

# Network is 50kbits and a bucket of 300KBytes
delay_parameters 1 -1/-1 6250/300000
# Network is 20kbits and a bucket of 300KBytes
delay_parameters 2 -1/-1 2500/300000
# Network is 2kbits and a bucket of 50KBytes
delay_parameters 3 -1/-1 250/50000

I don't agree with blocking content and I've to give service to 300 users with 1MB
P.D. The regex is just to give an idea of what can be done, beside they can be stripped a bit more.

Samba virtual servers

At work I've set multiple samba personalities with virtual servers about a year ago... I've read many times about it and even set my machine for testing purpouses, unfortunatelly, there was a malfunction not recognizing or mixing shares between servers so I finally looked up at google groups and found a parameter called "smb ports" which should be set at smb.conf

Just to understand the protocol, I looked up the purpouse of 445 port of NBT and found a explanation at ntsecurity.nu which explains exactly the roll of 139 and 445 ports in the protocol.

I should say that samba docs are comprehensive and RTFM rule keeps working.

Administrating upgrades with Debian

I'm back from the lovely Utrecht... so posts will continue as usual

I have broken my debian a few times while doing an "upgrade" and a few weeks ago I found a package called apt-listbugs which is run before installing and reports open bugs of packages, and with the usage of apt-listchanges and reportbug I think I can get an even more stable etch/sid, I recomend reading upgrading unstable machines safely to understand a little more about it.

And I you just break it, read Rescuing systems using the Debian snapshot server to get back your old package which is no more in the official repository.