Blank Dragon's Adventures in Information Technology

Helpful shortcuts to the Windows' Start Run dialog

2008-06-10T10:01:00.004+03:00

I use a lot of Start menu's Run-command by pressing the Windows Key + R. It is quite convinient to type "iexplore" to open up a new browser (or "firefox", if you prefer). However, making Google searches this way is a little bit too awkward when you have to type in "iexplore http://www.google.com/search?q=SEARCH+TERM+HERE".

In order to make internet searches more convenient, I've created a set of small VBS scripts, and placed them into the "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer" directory.

The files are "g.vbs", "img.vbs" and "mov.vbs" for making Google searches (g.vbs), Google image searches (img.vbs) and IMDB searches (mov.vbs). All of the files are almost identical, containing a short piece of script code as shown here:

I haven't really optimized the code because it is only a short helper script. It combines all of the provided command line arguments into a single string and then passes it onto "iexplore.exe". The arguments are prefixed with a string such as "http://www.google.com/search?q=". The mentioned prefix is from "g.vbs", which results in a Google search with the provided command line arguments. Below is an example of making a Google search directly from the Command Prompt.

In order to integrate these shortcuts into Windows' Start-menu's Run-command, I needed to modify the registry. So, I opened up the registry editor at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths" and added a new key for each of the VBS-scripts. Please note that the new keys need to be created with a file extension of ".exe" instead of ".vbs". The value of "(Default)" needs to be changed to the full path of VBS-file which is to be run. In other words, the registry key "g.exe" will point to "g.vbs" file. Value of "Path" needs to point to the directory that contains the script file.

After the registry change was done, I was able to launch a Google search straight from the Run-box. In the example below, I am making a search for images by using the "img.vbs" file.

The results from this image search will conveniently open up in a new browser, as shown below.

This method of customizing the Run-command can be extended to many more uses besides Google search. I've created helper commands for MSDN searches, Wikipedia searches, Discogs, etc, etc. The VBScript code example shown in this posting can be performance-tuned, but since it is currently working just fine, I haven't really seen the need to mess around with it any further.

This blog posting was inspired by Wes' Puzzling Blog: Customizing Windows Run Command.

Installing VMware Server 2.0 Beta on a dual core Windows Vista box

2008-04-19T13:37:00.014+03:00

( Note: This blog entry discusses Beta software, and things may have been changed after writing. )

My home computer is equipped with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ processor, both cores running at 3013 Mhz and with 8 GB of installed physical memory. The box is being operated with Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit version. It is more robust than my office PC, so I decided to test how easy it would be working with my home PC.

So, since we’ve got VMware in use at my office, I decided to try how well it can handle my PC’s high-end hardware (well, quite high-end at least, at the time of writing ... and yes, the AMD 64 X2 6000+ isn't really top-of-the-line any more).

Getting VMware server to install and running on my computer was a bit tricky however, at least when compared to my previous experiences with Virtual PC 2007. Of course, to do any justice to VMware, I'd have to compare the installation to Microsoft's Virtual Server product.

Installation experiences

Installation was easy, and allowed VMware Server 2.0 Beta to be installed in a directory different from the default “Program Files”. For convenience, I went for the “Next Next Next” –approach and let the defaults remain as they were. There is, however, one dialog that might require some more attention.

VMware Server 2.0 Beta is administered through a web application, which will be installed to a URL specified by an External Name and two port numbers. Since I’m just testing, I clicked “Next” to accept the default values. However, the “External Name” seems to default to computer name, which is not always a good thing (read on).

Firewall

During the installation and test use, I needed to allow VMware Server to go through my firewall. Luckily, for my McAfee firewall, it was as easy as clicking “Allow” a few times.

VMware Server Console

With the 2.0 Beta version, VMware no longer supports the Server Console application. Instead, you have to use something called “VMware Infrastructure Web Access”, which is basically the same thing as VMware Server Console but in a web browser.

If you install and try to open up VMware Server Console, you’ll only get the following error: “501 Global command GLOBAL server-vmdb to non-host agent targets not supported”. Of course we’ve all seen cryptic error messages but this one ranks rather high on my list. Oh, the joys of beta software.

You can find the appropriate shortcut to VMware Infrastructure Web Access from your desktop, but it is named “VMware Server Home Page”. Having read the name, I immediately thought it will just be an advertisement link to the product home page, such as http://www.vmware.com, but actually it is the Web Access application.

Launching the Web Access application

There are some things that need to be taken care of before the VMware Infrastructure Web Access application can be used. Some of the steps may not apply to your setup.

Adjusting the hosts file

Since my box is not normally used for hosting web sites and I’m not running in a domain, I had some initial trouble launching the Web Access application; mainly because the VMware Server installation program assumes that my computer’s name is automatically interpreted as 127.0.0.1 in the web browser. However, since this is not the case, I needed to adjust my hosts –file.

After opening Notepad in administrator mode, you can associate your computer’s name with the address 127.0.0.1. If Notepad isn’t run as administrator, the hosts file cannot be saved over. The hosts file resides in “c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts”.

A note about the site certificate

When launching the VMware Infrastructure Web Access application, I had to go through a dialog complaining about the site’s certificate, and then I had to accept the risk of using the site without a valid certificate.

I just clicked OK to that one, and “Continue” to the next one. It is not a big deal to me, but someone could argue that even a local administration site should have a valid certificate – maybe it could be user selectable during server installation procedure. However, this is still labeled as Beta Software, so maybe the certificate will get fixed in the final release.

VMware Server 2.0 installation also installs an Apache Tomcat server on the same box, to host the Web Access –application. The files are installed under “Program Files (x86)”, to the VMware Server’s application directory.

Add your Web Access site to the Trusted Sites list

In order for everything to work, you need to add your Web Access site to the Trusted Sites list. This can, of course, be achieved in Internet Explorer by clicking “Tools > Internet Options > Security > Trusted Sites > Sites > Add”. Adding the site to Local Intranet Sites didn’t help, by the way.

Administrator account surprise

This is something that I really hope VMware will fix for the official 2.0 release. It turns out that even if I’ve installed VMware Server 2.0 Beta correctly with my own user account, I can’t administrate the VMware installation at all. If I try to log in with my own user account, I get a nasty “Access denied” surprise.

However, it seems that the VMware Infrastructure Web Access application does indeed check my credentials, because just trying some random account with an invalid password gives the error “Login failed due to a bad username or password”.

It seems to me, that VMware Server 2.0 Beta assumes all users to be running under the Administrator account and not under their own accounts. This is something they will need to fix, and they probably will.

However, in the meantime, to get the VMware Infrastructure Web Access application up and running, I needed to enable the local Administrator account via Computer Management. Just clear the “Account is disabled” checkbox, and hit “OK”. Since I’ve never used the Administrator account, I had to reset its password also (hoping there’ll be no adverse effects later).

After enabling the Administrator account, I was finally able to log in by using the Administrator account.

The main screen of VMware Infrastructure Web Access application is pictured below. In the Inventory on left, you can see a list of all your virtual machines (initially empty, of course). I had copied an existing VMware machine from my workplace, and added it to the VMware Server 2.0 Beta installation by clicking on the “Add Virtual Machine to Inventory” link.

Adding an existing machine

It was fairly straightforward to attach an existing virtual machine into my new 2.0 Beta installation. I had previously copied the files to my SATA hard disk drive. Earlier I’ve used external USB 2.0 drives to contain my virtual machines, but due to the performance limitations of USB I have switched to SATA drives.

When first powering up a copied virtual machine, a question about the copying process is presented.

This is a good clear dialog, and simple enough to understand. “I copied it” and clicked “OK”.

Memory limitations

One interesting thing to notice was that even if I have 8 gigabytes of memory installed, I was only able to allocate 3600 MB of it to a single virtual machine. When I first tried to allocate 4096 MB, I received the following error message: “We cannot power on this virtual machine because it has an invalid amount of memory configured”.

This was an interesting thing to run into, since when I adjusted the amount of virtual machine memory, it was only stated that 3600 MB is the recommended maximum, and not the absolute maximum.

Small things like this make a world of difference to the end user experience. When using some terminology, it should be consistent throughout the whole application family. Also, I’m still not sure which is the case: is it the recommended maximum or is it indeed the absolute maximum? If it is the absolute maximum, then VMware should rectify the Memory Settings dialog. If it is the recommended maximum, then VMware should allow the user to run with over 3600 MB of memory if he or she wishes to do so (the above error message “We cannot power on this virtual machine” could be rephrased into a question something like “Do you still want to power on this virtual machine?”).

Using the Console inside the Web Access application

After powering up a virtual machine, I wanted to see it in action. In order to see what is happening on the virtual machine, there is a “Console” tab located in the Web Access application’s main window. However, it’s not easy to get it working straight away.

If the Web Access site isn’t properly added to Internet Explorer’s Trusted Sites list, the following error will occur.

If the hosts file hasn’t been fiddled with (see above), the following error might occur.

Initially, you need to install VMware Remote Console plug-in to your web browser.

Installing this on my Vista 64-bit box didn’t help, because the plug-in is a piece of 32-bit software and won’t run on my 64-bit Internet Explorer. So in order to get it to work, I needed to start a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer. I’ve pinned my 32-bit Internet Explorer to the Start Menu, but unfortunately Microsoft Update keeps renaming it from “32-bit IE” to “Launch Internet Explorer Browser”.

Since I don’t remember the URL for my VMware Infrastructure Web Access application, I need to go into “Program Files (x86)” folder and check out the contents of the “serverui.lnk” file. This file is the same as the “VMware Server Home Page” which is installed on Windows desktop during VMware Server 2.0 Beta setup.

From here, I can copypaste the correct URL to my 32-bit browser and finally get the Console plug-in working.

Usability

All in all, running VMware Server 2.0 Beta on a high-end machine seemed to be rather workable. While running a virtualized Windows Server 2003 instance with Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, I was able to write this document on Word 2007 at the same time as doing some image processing, running Windows Live Messenger, browsing through the internet, reading my mail on Outlook 2007 and having 7 gadgets running on my Vista’s Sidebar.

There are some notable flaws in the 2.0 Beta still, but I hope VMware will iron them out for the final release.

It would be futile to compare this product to Virtual PC 2007, but maybe I'll someday install VMware Workstation and let you know how it went.

Installing a Windows Server 2008 Core Domain Controller

2008-03-18T20:02:00.018+02:00

In this post, I'll go through the steps to install a Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller, and to join a computer to that domain.

First of all, I've setup a new virtual machine with 512 MB memory and 100 GB of disk. This amount of memory is the bare minimum that W2k8/Vista will require to even begin installing. The amount of disk is excessive, but since I'm running this installation on a virtual machine, I don't care too much.

So, after starting up the virtual machine and attaching the Windows Server 2008 CD image, I am prompted to choose a language and a locale for this installation, alongside with the preferred keyboard layout. After this, I am greeted with the familiar Windows setup screen.

Since I'm doing a fresh install, I'll just click on "Install now". The other options are fairly useless for now: the "What to know before installing Windows" option is simply a link to a static chm-file, and the "Repair your computer" option is useful only in a situation where your Vista/Server 2008 installation has broken. Interestingly, the repair dialog states that it "cannot repair operating systems earlier than Windows Vista", implying that it could repair the next version of Windows after Vista. Probably just a bad choice of words, perhaps?

I'm running multiple virtual machines on my physical box, and I want to connect them all to a single new domain. I also want to have my Domain Controller to be a dedicated server, just as it would be in a physical setup. Therefore, I'll go for the resource-friendly "Core" -installation. Windows Server 2008 Standard is enough for Domain Controller.

Again, since I'm doing a fresh install, I'll just go with "Custom (Advanced)". One could find a case for bad usability design here, but I'll let it pass since this is a server installation, and the users running this particular setup are hopefully knowledgeable enough not to be scared by the "Custom" and "Advanced" words.

I don't want to mess around with my new domain controller's disk partitions etc, so I'll just hit "Next". After this, Windows installation will roll ahead on it's own, until rebooting the new virtual machine.

When logging on the first time to a new Windows Server 2008 installation, a password for the administrator account needs to be provided.

This is accomplished by clicking on the "Other User" button. The button is just a placeholder of some sort, and not a real user account.

After hitting it off with the other user, I can log on as the administrator by simply clicking on the arrow icon shown next to the password field. Free tip: write down the password on a notepad and save the text file next to your vmc-files. And yes, at one point I did have to reinstall some of my virtual machines because I forgot the password. Or, if you've really got the extra juice, you might want to go ahead and create a password reset disk.

First things first, I wanna get rid of the awfully small confines of the regular 80x25 command prompt window and set the layout to whatever pleases my eye. I'll admit that tweaking the colours would be too much at this point, even for me.

And, before doing anything else, I'll install the Virtual Machine Additions. However, since AutoPlay is disabled, I need to manually run "D:\Windows\Setup.exe".

Of course, these steps aren't strictly necessary, but I do feel very strongly about my working conditions - and the Virtual Machine Additions just bring a little more comfort to my work experience.

After the mandatory post-setup reboot, I can finally get to mess around with my new virtual machine. A quick ipconfig tells me that I'm at least alive.

Another thing I want to check after ipconfig is netsh interface listing of all my IPv4 interfaces. I can see that I've got two interfaces for IPv4, with number 2 being my Local Area Connection.

Since all my virtual machines are working in the 192.168.42.xxx address space, I want to configure my new domain controller to that space too. I'll just almost randomly decide that it will have the address of 192.168.42.1. You will, of course, have different addresses, masks and IPv4 interface index numbers.

I then run ipconfig /all to check that the IP address really has changed, and also to see what happens to be my virtual machine's current name. Being rather picky, I decide to change it from "win-qgybl3q9kkq" to something more humanely bearable. This requires a reboot, which is luckilly not automatical, but requires the use of shutdown /r command.

After yet another reboot, it is time to examine the dcpromo command. A simple /? switch gives some insight into the workings of dcpromo, but not nearly enough to set up a new domain for my virtual machines.

But wait, there's more! The /? switch can be refined with a request for more details, such as /?:Promotion or /?:CreateDcAccount. Since I'm creating a new domain, I choose to overload my text processing capabilities via the "Promotion" switch.

That's roughly about 100+ rows of information for using dcpromo to create, or promote, a new domain. After some trial and error, I come up with a list of satisfactory switches to create my new domain.

I want this box to be my virtual domain's DNS server, so I specify the installdns switch. This will be a new domain, so I specify both newdomain:forest and replicaornewdomain:domain switches. The name of the domain will be MyVirtual, as specified by newdomaindnsname.

Now, running this is a real bundle of joy, unless you're cunning enough to apply the /rebootonsuccess:No switch. I wasn't that smart - so all I got to see was some text swooshing by, and then... darkness. And to my horror, I realized that my server had rebooted when I saw the next screen.

Well, now I know that there's a hidden reboot trap in there. And luckilly this wasn't production environment. Actually, I have no idea what happened during the supposedly succesful dcpromo execution, but since ipconfig looks promising I guess everything went okay. This is what virtual machines and undo disks were made for.

One more thing to make sure is that Windows Firewall isn't running. Disabling it is done via the netsh command. This is a virtual network, and I'm running all my machines in shared networking mode, so I don't want to keep the excess firewall enabled.

Since my domain looks to be in order, I'll fire up another of my virtual machines and try to join the new and shiny "MyVirtual" domain, while it's still hot and trendy.

I'll leave the domain controller running, and try to join the other computer in my domain. So, through the Control Panel we go, and into the System settings window.

Once in System settings window, I want to click on the Advanced System Settings link. There are other ways to join a domain too, so you can use whatever approach suits you best.

And from here I can find the familiar XP-style dialog for changing computer name etc. I'll just click on "Change".

Type in my new domain name, and with much anticipation, I click on the OK button.

Yeah, this is the prompt for credentials that I've been working towards. Of course there is a lot more to administering a domain, but for me this is a big success and worthy of pouring myself a beer.

And so I joined my first computer to my new domain.