Tomas Quintero

http://www.ict-blog.nl/2008/08/13/vmware/disabling-root-access-via-ssh-on-vmware-esxi/

Also disables root access via SSH

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/06/22/ISCA2009KeynoteIHowToWasteAParallelComputerKathyYelick.aspx

My favorite point is #10.

• Learn (and use) Vim
• (Begin to) Learn Python
• Improve SQL knowledge
• Improve shell script knowledge
• Begin testing Xen

Typically I work with Windows for day-to-day tasks, however I do use *nix for various tasks both personally and professionally. My background is primarily with FreeBSD and recently I’ve transitioned over to the Debian/Ubuntu camp (although they’re far from the same camp).

I’m looking to take a crack at CentOS though, it seems popular, companies like it, etc. The best way to work with a new OS - run it in a virtual environment!

To turn this into a short story, I was attempting to boot the CentOS 5.3 installer using VirtualBox (2.2.4 r47978) on Windows Vista64 Ultimate. Unfortunately, the install kept hanging at the message of “NET: Registered protocol family 2″. Strange.

Next I began poking around and found that checking off “Enable IO APIC” in VBox’s advanced options proved to become a solution.

Now, my CentOS installer boots up, with no problem!

Looking for a LAN party in the St. Petersburg / Tampa Bay area? PNPLAN is for you! We meet once a month at The Minnreg, from 11am to midnight. Our next LAN is on June 6th, so you should check us out if you’re into computer gaming. Also, feel free to check out our website, http://www.pnplan.com.

When I get time, I want to read http://xenamo.sourceforge.net/. It deals with live migration of Xen virtual machines, on the cheap.

I built a new desktop last week around AMD’s Athlon64 X2 7750 Black Edition on an ASUS M3A78-EM (which in a year or so will be retired to be used as an HTPC). Currently OC’d to 2.9GHz (from 2.7, nothing extreme).

I will be switching from stock cooling to a Typhoon I picked up off of Marcus and OC’ing up to 3.1GHz. The M3A78-EM has voltage issues and supplies 1.32v to the CPU at 2.7GHz, which produces heating issues. I’ve managed to lower that voltage to 1.15 and maintain stability (I have not tried going lower yet, I will during the week). Currently I am at 42C, whereas I was at 57C at 2.7GHz. In order to lower the voltage on this board (not supported via BIOS) you must use AMD OverDrive and enable Advanced Mode in the preferences menu.

My fresh install of WSUS 3.0 SP1 was downloading at pathetic speeds. I’d let it run all day and pulled down only 700MB (of 13,465.69MB).

Googling this problem came up with few results, most of which talked about WsusDebugTool.exe, which unfortunately does not work with WSUS 3.0.

The solution: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922330. I found it on a random forum, the kb article title is awful, but the insides work.

From the article:

If you are using WSUS 3.0 with a Windows Internal Database that was created by a default WSUS installation, type the following command (all one line):

%programfiles%\Update
Services\Setup\ExecuteSQL.exe -S %Computername%\MICROSOFT##SSEE -d
"SUSDB" -Q "update tbConfigurationC set
BitsDownloadPriorityForeground=1"

Restart the Update Services service. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
2. In the Services dialog box, right-click Update Services, and then click Restart.

I was checking my Google Analytics key words, and noticed I was getting hits for my JeOS posting, but also people looking to find out what the “root” password was for Ubuntu. I figure I’ll write a quick article, and maybe it’ll get me more hits on the Google’s!

Ubuntu, by default, does not have a password configured for the root user. That is, the user cannot logon through means authenticated via password.

Instead, ’sudo’ is advised to be used on Ubuntu systems. The first user created (when you are following the setup processes during the installer) is added to the file /etc/sudoers. This allows this user to execute commands with super-user privileges when they are prefixed with ’sudo’.

Typically, when a user wants to run many commands as root, they will issue the command

sudo su

… which will prompt them for their password (unless you have disabled that), and drop them into the root shell.

Alternatively, on my systems I like to run ’sudo passwd root’ as soon as I login, which allows me to set a password on the root account. Doing so allows me to login as root if I need to recover my system, say for instance my username has been removed from the /etc/sudoers file, and it gives me the warm and coozy feeling.