The Japan Page

Here's a simple way to replace one line of ext with two using Texttools32 from firefly software.

Example - Before

blah=true
Name=robot-0001
blahblah=true

Example - After

blah=true
Name=robot-0001
Mode=1
blahblah=true
Command

type inifile.ini | t repl 'Name=robot-001' 'Name=robot-0001#0d#0aMode=1'

So by adding #0d#0a or a line feed, we can add an extra line of text.

Posted by John Seaman at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got around to playing with VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. VI3 is ESX server 3 plus the additional management application Virtual Center 2.o, and the other slick features for backup. Anyway, what I wanted to do first is get ESVA 1.6 (available here) or the E.mail Security Virtual Appliance going. This is one of the most popular VMware appliances and runs postfix, postgrey, mailscanner/ MailWatch , ClamAV all on one small footprint VMware appliance.

Drop it into the VMware player or free VMware server and you've got an instant open-source e.mail AV / SPAM filter. The build looks solid enough for any SMB install, and you'd want to to a redundant full install of the components at the Enterprise level anyway.

The trick is to getting the image onto the ESX server and properly formatted to run.

So, here's my install notes. This is redundant to any hard core VMware guru types, but I'm new to ESX myself. And for the record it's so far superior to GSX that I'll never touch that OS again with a 10 foot pole.

1. Download the latest version of ESVA, currently it's 1.6. Available here
2. Copy all the files up onto the ESX server, into a newly created folder under /vmfs/volumes//esva . Where storage1 is your VM storage area and esva is for the virtual machine you plan to create.

I tried Veeam FastSCP, a Windows SCP utility that has a really slick GUI and fails on all large size file transfers on 2 different ESX boxes. It's v.1.o software, so I'll stick to the good old command line and use PSCP (Putty SCP client for Windows, available here).

The PSCP command was pscp -v source_file(s) root@esx-server-name://vmfs/volumes/storage1/esva

4. SSH into the console on the ESX server and run vmkfstools -i ESVA16.vmdk esva16.esx.vmdk . This will convert the VMware player formatted VM to run on ESX. Note vmkfstools is located under /usr/sbin , consider adding it to your path.

5. After that, create a new VM, choose custom, then grab the esva16.esx.vmdk file as the disk, make it persistant and your done. You can SSH back into the ESX server and delete all the original ESVA16 files, just don't kill any of the files esva16.esx.* .

After that, run the standard ESVA setup and you're done.

Posted by John Seaman at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my original post Setting the Record Straight and my followup post The Japan Page has Erectile Dysfunction I posted an e.mail exchange with Shanon Fernwald, the owner of www.japanpage.org. This was formerly my home page that I allowed to lapse, and which she now owns.

My original post was merely a critique on the sad state of the Internet in general, when an exceptionally low traffic site like my former homepage is turned into a content-sparse landing page most prominently featuring advertisements for drugs to treat your erectile dysfunction, among other conditions.

Well, stoopid my I went and check my Junk E-mail folder in Outlook, only to find another e.mail from Shanon. I do have to give Microsoft credit here for correctly identifying this as Junk.

I've decided not to reply back to Shanon, after reading the e.mail below you'll understand why... too bad none of those drugs are for anger management. :-)

Note: Shanon uses some really gosh darn bad words, and apparently doesn't use a spell checker either.


From: Shanon Fernald [mailto:sfernald@gmail.com]
Sent: Tue 10/3/2006 10:55 AM
To: John Seaman (japan-page.net)
Subject: Re: hey