Category Archives: Windows

Sep 29

Host Only Networking Setup With VMWare Fusion 4

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I have used VMWare Workstation and Fusion for many years now on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X host operating systems. I have used the “host only” networking on Windows and Linux host operating systems, but never on OS X with VMWare Fusion until recently when I had the need to test some new firewall software setups.

On VMWare Workstation or Server, it is pretty easy to set network addresses for the virtual networks and hosts, but turns-out it is kind of a pain with VMWare Fusion (the Mac app.) For whatever reason, they didn’t include the configs in VM configuration GUI. This makes the whole setup more of a pain than it should be. I suppose they didn’t add this level of configuration because of the way the VMWare Tools may or may not integrate with the guest OS or something in OS X. Also, maybe Mac users just don’t really request the need to have this in a nice GUI due to lack of overall interest. Whatever the case, there are some great reasons to have it operational.

In testing the recently released IPCop 2, I needed to play around with settings and see how the configurations I use in production would and could work on the new build. VirtualBox, VMware and Parallels are great applications for these sorts of development testing situations. I have always had a preference for VMWare because of their commitment to have the vm images be able to move back and forth between host operating system applications versions of VMWare. It has come in handy many times when I have moved from Windows to Linux or back as I have changed my main operating system.

By default, a VMware Fusion guest OS will initial be setup with an initial network interface. You can set in the VMWare settings whether you want it to act as a NAT or Bridged. That is all standard, in the VMWare Fusion application host config settings. In my case, I need the VMWare guest to have at least two network adapters so I can test different network nodes as I try to mimic servers with multiple physical network cards running the Linux-based firewall. So, in my case, I added an additional network adapter in the guest settings interface.

VMWare Fusion 4 Guest OS Settings

At each of the network adapters, you can set the use setting. In my situation, I  wanted the first network adapter to be used to provide access to the real network my MacBook Pro is using to access the real network (wired or ethernet) on the machine.

It will want to make the first network adapter use NAT by default so nothing crazy here except, I did flip the “Advanced options” and generated a MAC address and kept generating addresses until I got an “A” in the final segment so when I am testing and looking and packets coming and going from device addresses, I can know that the host with the “A” is this first network adapter. You don’t need to do this, but if you can insert some sort of label to help troubleshoot or tag traffic/addresses/information in this sort of setup is useful to me. My VM is titled “ipcop2″ but it could have been titled “Linux” or something else.

VMWare Fusion 4 Network Adapter 1 Settings

The second network adapter is when I dip into virtual / host only world. I create it and designate it as a private network only available to the host mac I am running VMware Fusion 4 on, then keep generating a MAC address until I get one that has a “B” in the final segment to continue the configuration pattern of tagging the network interfaces.

VMWare Fusion 4 Network Adapter 2 Settings

I also had to go into the guest OS and assign the virtual network interface to the correct address that matched the one I will put in the VMware config for the host only. Because it was IPCop 2, it looks like this. But, your setup will differ if you are running something else and want a fixed ip across the configs.

Assigning Virtual Host Only MAC To IPCop Green

Assigning the NAT MAC To IPCop RED

Assigning the fixed IP to the virtual network host only adapter in the guest OS (IPCop)

Then I went in a edited the networking file where VMWare maps the IP addresses to the virtual network interfaces. In VMWare Fusion 4, they moved it to /Library/Preferences/VMWare Fusion from the previous location under Application support. I gave my private network adapter a fixed IP in the reserved space since I will also be assigning the address to one of the settings in the guest host as a fixed address. You can hit this via an OS X terminal.

$ sudo vi /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/networking

and modify to assign the interface a IP. My example is changing it from the default setting or DHCP and setting it as 10.111.1.1

editing /Library/Preferences/VMWare Fusion/networking

Anytime you modify this config, you need to restart the the VMWare Fusion application to get it to use the new settings. I would also restart and confirm the settings in the guest host on network addresses on any testing or modifications. After all settings and restarts of guest OS (if they were in a suspended state) and the VMWare Fusion app, make sure the ping the address. You can also arp -a the network from the OS X terminal to see if you get a bite. You should see the MAC address you generated and the IP you set in the networking config.

arp -a in OS X terminal confirms vm network address

This process will at least get you a basic host only networking between the host and guest OS in a contained way. It is my hope that VMWare makes this easier in later updates of VMWare Fusion 4 and regardless of what host OS you are running (Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, etc.) At the time of this post, we were at VMWare Fusion 4.0.2.

May 10

The New Microsoft Bing-ified Skype Next Generation User Interface

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Now that Microsoft is spending $8.5 Billion on Skype. I am guessing it will go under their internet division and perhaps be closly linked with Bing. Here is my rendering of what the new Skype Microsoft user interface will look like. Should be exciting (once you are able to locate where the controls are!)

The New Bing-Inspired Skype Interface

Sep 15

Using VLC as a workaround for DVD Region Codes

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Despite industry efforts to enforce DVD region limits, there are a lot of legitimate times for using DVDs coded for other regions in the in the US. A great example of this is in schools. Most international DVDs that are perfect for History courses and specifically for World Language courses where teachers want students to see and hear the language with native speakers in local context. Since the typical built-in applications with Windows or OS X have artificial limits to the number of times you can change regions, something is needed to bridge the gap.

Enter VLC. This is a wonderful piece of free and open source software for multimedia playback. They are even branching out into media conversion. It is a very mature tool and highly recommended. Using it instead of the Apple DVD Player.app or the built-in Windows apps you may be using is a great solution.

Other workarounds might include resetting the region change counts, etc. with the programs but that is a waste of time IMHO. Once you download and do the drag and drop install (on Mac OS X) you will be able to go into your CD/DVD System Preferences and change the mapping of what to do when you insert a DVD from the Apple DVD Player to VLC.

Changing the Insert a video DVD Preference

After you have mapped it there in your System Preferences (in OS X) when you insert a DVD of whatever region, VLC will launch and give you an initial controller palette. Pressing play will then prompt for the user to tell it where to obtain the media and in general all you will need to do is click over to the ‘Disk’ tab as it will recognize the DVD and click play. You also have full-screen viewing options as well. Playing the DVD through VLC will not prompt for a region code change.

VLC is not only great for handling region code issues with DVDs, but great as an all-around media player for Quicktime movies, .avi and other formats.

Sep 01

USB Device Sharing: Solution for Old Printer Driver

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I had a situation where we have a perfectly fine Epson Stylus Photo R2400 that is a few years old now but still a quality printer but we had been using it with 3 iMacs in a lab area. The Epson printer driver has some nicer features than the Gutenprint one that ships with the Apple drivers and we wanted to have the printer driver be set to that.

Via direct USB, the printer driver worked fine. The Epson driver was developed for PPC I believe and since it is such an old printer, it probably is the last version we will see. Rosetta also needs to be installed to handle it, but that is pretty-much automatic. So direct USB is fine and if you do printer sharing on the iMac that has a direct USB connection, you could get the machine that was piggy-backing on the sharing iMac to work with AppleTalk. But, when we upgraded to 10.6.x we lost AppleTalk on those iMacs and we lost the Epson driver nice stuff on two of the three computers. Sharing via Bonjour or IP did not work for the Epson driver, so we had to figure another solution out or re-purpose the printer.

So, enter the IOGEAR GUB431 4-Port USB Automatic Printer Switch

IOGEAR GUB431

It can be used without software, but the software is a critical piece because it can be set to do automatic switching. After setup, we got the old R2400 going and the three iMacs into the switch. Each iMac sees the native USB so the driver is happy and shows all the options the users like and the USB switch is smart enough to handle switching between the computers when a print job is dished to it. The default software setup is to have the computer printing grab hold and own the printer for 3 minutes then let go, but I changed the settings so it would automatically let go when needed by other iMacs. It seems to be working well and we will keep testing it with users to see if it can handle what we need. I like the solution and well worth a try to keep a perfectly good piece of hardware going even if the vendor might have some driver issues across the network. We could have tried a print server on ethernet, but I was hesitant to try it since printer sharing wasn’t even working. To clarify, one could print via Bonjour printer sharing, but NOT with the extra driver features Epson bakes-in to the USB type of connection which is a major deal for us.

The device has Mac and Windows software and seems very solid. So far, so good.

For more info checkout

http://www.iogear.com/product/GUB431/

Jun 03

Synology DS410 Review and Experience

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Here are just a few initial notes on setup of our Synology DS410.

Packaging
Out of the box
Installing the drives

Drives in and chassis off
Running LEDs
Building the RAID-5


 

Drives: Installing easy, one drive lower than fans, notice it runs a littel hotter too. To install the lowest of the 4 trays, you need to remove the back fans, but no biggie. The sleds are nice and simple. The kit comes with little baggies of screws so that is great. Also, the drive sleds slide right in and the SATA connector is aligned perfectly so you can just nudge the drives into place without any stress on the drive or sled. I went with some Western Digital 2TB Green drives. I have never had great luck with WD, but the power consumption on these newer drives seemed like a good call and the price point was great.

Operation: It is just amazingly quiet! Geez, you put in 4 2TB drives and you expect the thing to be noisy, but it is super quiet. This is a huge benefit for me as I hate the electronics sounds around the house, so this is great even though it will be the garage. I have a Nextstar simple RAID-1 with a couple of SATA drives and it is super loud in comparison.

Building the RAID: RAID-5 took forever due to size of the logical volume. I could have gone with the fast/rapid option, but anyone who has ever been burned by a bad RAID setup because they did the quick format only to have to do a full low-level format later knows why I went this route right off the bat.

Little Things: There are many things to appreciate throughout their setup process I wanted to note. After setting up a ton of different network devices, we all know changing network address is a pain because the device can get confused during the process and if the configuration is web-based, it can get messy when you lose contact with the old address.  I was waiting for that to happen when I went from DHCP to fixed IP through the web GUI, but to my surprise it redirected to the new IP address (nice!). I am so used to HP, Cisco, Linksys and other that don’t care to take this into account and force the admin to enter the new URL / IP address but when it is done right, it is so nice to see. Nice GUI touches throughout. They use AJAXy stuff, but not overdoing it. Linux support in documentation. Date and time already correct due to network time.

Initial Setup: The box came with CD with a Mac, Windows or Linux installer. I am really happy that Synology has Linux ‘baked-in’ to everything they do with their products and I really want to support that.  My DS410 came with DS v 2.2, so had to upgrade to latest 2.3. I downloaded the updated firmware (v2.3) and in the expansion process, Archive utility expanded a little too much so it didn’t keep the .pat file in-place for the GUI to recognize that the update was a legit firmware update. But, in going to their support site and FAQ, they had an article for that and I had change archive utility to not expand more.

Support Site: As mentioned above, their support website rocked. The FAQ area was great and exactly what I needed. They have this down.

Testing: after initial setup, I went to move the DS410 and the power cable was loose causing the DS410 to lose power. Plugged it back in and all was well! Copied some files across the network and the drives and throughput felt great. I also turned-on the various applications and have been testing with a great success on the internal network, from work and from remote on my iPhone using the Synology iPhone Apps. Being able to consolidate music and stream anywhere will be awesome the more I consolidate it on the Diskstation.

Very happy camper right now…