[Tutorial] How-to install VMTools on CentOS 6

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Here is a quick tutorial on how to get VMware Tools up and running on a CentOS 6 Linux machine. Although the instructions are shown with the GUI, we'll use terminal so the guide works with both gui and non-gui based installs.

Mount the VM tools installer to your VM
Open up Terminal
Execute the following command (this will create a mount point for our CD drive)
1. mkdir /cdrom
Execute the following command (this will map the CD drive to our cdrom mount point)
1. mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom
Execute the following command to move to your temporary files folder
1. cd /tmp
Execute the following command to extract the VMware Tools tarball
1. tar -xvf /cdrom/VMwareTools (tab to autofill the rest of the package)
Execute the following command to run the VMware Tools installer
1. ./vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl
Press Enter/Return through each of the questions, using their defaults
Verify VMtools is running by looking at the client status in vSphere

[Tutorial] Upgrading the firmware on a Cisco 5508 Wireless LAN Controller

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This guide will show you what steps are needed to get your Cisco 5508 Wireless LAN Controller to the latest and greatest state.

Download and install a TFTP Server program
1. TFTPD is the recommend program to be used by Cisco. It is a free and can be obtained from here: http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32_download.html
Ensure your TFTP server instance is running and pointed to a directory of your choice.
In this tutorial, I will be using C:\TFTP-Root as my directory for hosting firmware.
Ensure you have an inbound firewall created to allow incoming connections to your machine on UDP port 69 if you will be using the TFTP option.
Copy the firmware you want to transfer to the WLC to the TFTP server's directory
Login to your Cisco WLC and select the Commands tab
Ensure the following settings are entered and then click the Download button
1. File Type: Code
  Transfer Mode: TFTP
  IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP Address to your machine)
  File Path: / (Use a relative file path; for example, if your firmware was located at c:\tftp-server\cisco5508\AIR-CT5500-K9-7-6-110-0.aes, use /cisco5508/)
  File Name: AIR-CT5500-K9-7-6-110-0.aes (or whatever your firmware is called)
Click OK when prompted to transfer the firmware
Once the firmware has finished updating, click on the Click Here link to reboot the WLC.
On the System Reboot page, hit the Save and Reboot button.
Click OK on the Configuration will be saved and the controller will be rebooted prompt.
Once the wireless LAN controller reboots, you should now be on the firmware version you provided. You can verify on the Monitor page.
At this point, you can can be done with your upgrade, however, it is highly recommended you also upgrade to the latest (or compatibile), version of the Field Upgrade Software (FUS) in additional to the WLC firmware (provided Cisco has a new version). The same steps to upgrade the FUS are of steps 6-10.
1. Additional note, the FUS takes a considerable amount of time to upgrade the WLC. It is normal for the FUS to take 30-50 minutes to upgrade after applying the firmware. If you are not busy or intersted, you can watch the FUS upgrade various components if you console into the WLC during boot to keep an eye on things.
Once the WLC and FUS firmware versions have been upgraded to their compatbile versions, you should be good to go! 🙂

Pushing firmware through CLI

If you wish to push the firmware manually via TFTP or FTP, you can use the following commands below (order doesn't matter as long as transfer download start is entered last). The process is the same for uploading the firmware to the WLC, you only need to swap out the filename for either the FUS firmware or WLC firmware.

(Cisco Controller) > transfer download datatype code
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download mode tftp (can use ftp as well)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download username user (only needed if using ftp)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download password password (only needed if using ftp)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download filename AIR-CT5500-K9-1-9-0-0-FUS.aes
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download path /
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download start

As of 4/14/2014, here are the latest firmware versions:

Release 1.9.0.0 for the Field Upgrade Software

Release 7.6.110.0ED for the Wireless LAN Controller

Notes: While upgrading our WLC from stock firmware, I received a strange error stating % Error: Code file transfer failed – Error while writing output file. Please see my other blog post in regards to upgrading really old firmware on this device to the latest version: http://jackstromberg.com/2014/04/cisco-wlc-firmware-upgrade-error-code-file-transfer-failed-error-while-writing-output-file/

Cisco WLC Firmware Upgrade - % Error: Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output file

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Symptom: When trying to upgrade your 5508 Wireless LAN Controller from an older firmware version (6.0.199.4 in my case), you receive the following error:

% Error: Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output file

Solution: When upgrading the firmware on the 5508, greater versions need to be applied incrementally. Stock 5508 WLCs appear to be shipping with Software Version 6.0.199.4, the following firmware versions should be applied to reach the latest and greatest versions.

I applied the following upgrades to reach higher versions:

6.0.x to 7.2.x ED

7.2.x ED to 7.x

DirSync - Unable to establish a connection to the authentication service. Contact Technical Support.

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Symptom: You receive the following errors when running the Windows Azure Active Directory Sync tool Configuration Wizard or the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization Configuration Wizard.

Synchronization Service Manager shows stopped-server-down status.

You receive the following events inside of event viewer:

Log Name: Application
Source: Directory Synchronization
Date: %Date%
Event ID: 0
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: %ComputerName%
Description:
Unable to establish a connection to the authentication service. Contact Technical Support. GetAuthState() failed with -2147186688 state. HResult:0. Contact Technical Support. (0x80048862)
Log Name: Application
Source: Directory Synchronization
Date: %Date%
Event ID: 102
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: %ComputerName%
Description:
Unable to establish a connection to the authentication service. Contact Technical Support.

Log Name: Application
Source: FIMSynchronizationService
Date: %Date%
Event ID: 6803
Task Category: Management Agent Run Profile
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: %ComputerName%
Description:
The management agent "TargetWebService" failed on run profile "Delta Confirming Import" because the server encountered errors.

The Windows Azure Active Directory Sync tool Configuration Wizard presents you the following error message:
Unable to establish a connection to the authentication service. Contact Technical Support.

Solution: This turns out to be an issue with the provided credentials entered in the Windows Azure Active Directory Credentials step. Please make sure you verify the following.

Do not use a federated Global Administrator service account. Federated service accounts are not allowed to be used with the synchronization tool. You should have a non-federated Global Administrator account with an @mydomain.onmicrosoft.com UPN.
Ensure your Office 365 Global Administrator service account's password has not expired.

ADFS v3 on Server 2012 R2 - Allow Chrome to automatically sign-in internally

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Symptom: When upgrading from ADFS v2.0 to ADFS v3 built natively into Server 2012 R2, I noticed Chrome stopped auto-logging in people when trying to hit the ADFS server from inside the corporate network.

Solution: We need to allow NTLM authentication for the Google Chrome useragent.

Login to your primary ADFS server
NOTE: This step is no longer applicable on newer versions of Chrome.
This is only applicable if running extremely old versions of Chrome (v50 or lower) -- the fix has been added in Chrome v51 and higher.
Execute the following command to disable Extended Protection TokenCheck (See notes for what this is at the bottom of this article)
1. Set-ADFSProperties –ExtendedProtectionTokenCheck None
Execute the following command to get the current list of supported user-agents for NTLM authentication
1. [System.Collections.ArrayList]$UserAgents = Get-AdfsProperties | select -ExpandProperty WIASupportedUserAgents
Execute the following command to inject the user agent into a temporary array of user agents already added to ADFS.
1. $UserAgents.Add("Mozilla/5.0")
Execute the following command to commit the change.
1. Set-ADFSProperties -WIASupportedUserAgents $UserAgents
Restart the Active Directory Federation Services service on each of the ADFS farm servers for the changes to take effect. You do not need to make any changes to the proxy servers.

Notes

Shout out to Jon Payne in the comments section below for the idea of putting all the values into an ArrayList and then committing the arraylist to ADFS vs adding in all the strings manually.

ExtendedProtectionTokenCheck - Copied directly from technet - Specifies the level of extended protection for authentication supported by the federation server. Extended Protection for Authentication helps protect against man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, in which an attacker intercepts a client's credentials and forwards them to a server. Protection against such attacks is made possible through a Channel Binding Token (CBT) which can be either required, allowed or not required by the server when establishing communications with clients. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee892317.aspx

PowerShell command to find all disabled users in Active Directory

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Here is a quick powershell command to find all users inside of your Active Directory domain that have been marked as disabled (this will exclude disabled computers):

Get-ADUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $false} | FT samAccountName

Additionally, you can specify which additional options you would like to show by change the filter table command we are piping the results to. For example, this command will show the samAccountName, first name, and last name of the disabled users.

Get-ADUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $false} | FT samAccountName, GivenName, Surname

If you want no formatting whatsoever and have AD spit a bunch of information back at you, try running just the Get-ADUser part with the filter applied.

Get-ADUser -Filter {Enabled -eq $false}

The following command below can be used to pull a list of disabled users and computers:

Search-ADAccount -AccountDisabled

[How-To] ThinApp Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 x64

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Here is a comprehensive guide on how to ThinApp or virtualizate Internet Explorer 9 so you can run it in tandom with other Internet Explorer versions.

Start your VM
1. For this tutorial, I am using a blank Windows 7 64-bit instance (not with SP1) using ThinApp Setup Capture 5.0.
Make sure you have the Internet Explorer 9 pre-requisites package installed. The prerequisites can be found in this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2399238
Use Windows6.1-KB2454826-v2-x64.msi or Windows6.1-KB2454826-v2-x32.msi depending on your machine (one is 32-bit the other is 64-bit)
Run the MSI
Click Yes when it asks to install
Restart your machine when prompted
Copy the IE9 offline installer to your machine
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/ie-9-worldwide-languages
Run the VMware->ThinApp Setup Capture program
Click Yes on the UAC Setup Capture dialog
Click Next on the Setup Capture - Welcome screen
Click the Prescan > button
Run the installer IE9-Windows7-x64-enu.exe when you get to the Install the Application Now! screen
Click Yes on the UAC screen
Click Install
Click Restart now when prompted
Click Yes on the UAC popup to launch the Setup Capture process again
Click Next on the Continue installation process window
Launch the Internet Explorer 9 program
Customize Internet Explorer how you want it on your main machine. You can set security settings, default homepage, etc. (I like to set my homepage to about:blank since the ThinApps I have usually get deployed in virtual environments). Close Internet Explorer when you have things the way you want.
Click Postscan > when you have finished customing Internet Explorer 9
Click OK on the Setup Capture screen
Uncheck the desktop.exe and inetcpl.exe Entry Points and click Next >
(I suppose you could leave the inetcpl.exe, but I feel leaving it unchecked is a cleaner solution).
Click Next >
Click Next >
Click Next >
Click Next >
(you can select No if you want to)
Click Next >
Change the Inventory name to Internet Explorer 9 and click Next >
Ensure Use seperate .DAT file is checked, check Generate MSI package if you want to deploy this as an installer, click Save >
Click Next if you receive some capture warnings provided they look like they aren't Internet Explorer related.
Note: Your warnings could look a little different than mine, that is ok.
Optional Step: Deploying a desktop icon
1. Click Edit Package.ini
2. Scroll down to Internet Explorer.exe and change the Shortcuts line to contain %Desktop%;%Programs% and change [Internet Explorer.exe] to [Internet Explorer 9.exe]. Save and exit notepad.
3. Click on Open Project Folder
4. Click New Folder
5. Click Continue on the UAC popup
6. Enter %Common Desktop% on the new folder name
7. Drag the Internet Explorer icon from your start menu into your new %Common Desktop% folder
8. Click Continue on the UAC popup
9. Rename the icon to Internet Explorer 9
10. Click Continue on the UAC popup
11. Right click on the icon and select Properties
12. Change the Start in path from %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\" and click OK
Click Build >
Click Finish
Test your Internet Explorer 9 Thinapp on another machine! 🙂

Set a user's password to never expire in Office 365

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In the event you need to set a user account's password to never expire in Office 365's environment (a domain.onmicrosoft.com account for example), here are the steps involved.

Please Note: It is always recommended to set passwords expire at some point rather than never. To extend the default expiration time, rather than set the password to never expire, please see the following Microsoft article: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-suite-help/set-a-user-s-password-expiration-policy-HA102816546.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA102816049

Open a Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell prompt
Execute the following command to connect to Office 365's environment
1. Connect-MsolService
Enter your administrator credentials to connect to Office 365's environment
Execute the following command to set the user's password to never expire
1. Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName user@mydomain.onmicrosoft.com -PasswordNeverExpires $true
Execute the following command to verify the setting has been applied
1. Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName user@mydomain.onmicrosoft.com | Select PasswordNeverExpires

Notes: An official article on this process can be found on Microsoft's website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-suite-help/set-up-user-passwords-to-never-expire-HA102816049.aspx

VMware Horizon View Guest Error - SvmException occured The volume is not mounted

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Symptom(s): The VMware Horizon View Administration console shows a VM stuck on the "customizing" state and the VMware View Composer Guest Agent Server service stops when trying to start it on the deployed VM. Additionally, inside of the c:\windows\temp\viewcomposer-ga.log file you see the stack trace in red below.

For reference, at the time of writing this article, I was running I was running 5.3.0 build-1427647 of the View Composer Guest Agent on a Windows 7 SP1 x64 VM.

[01/28/14 14:53:05] Status: (svmGa:195) Got kernel32 dll handle.
[01/28/14 14:53:05] Status: (svmGa:206) Obtained func for enabling process DEP.
[01/28/14 14:53:05] Status: (svmGa:212) Enabled process DEP.
[01/28/14 14:53:05] Status: (svmGa:419) VMware View Composer Guest Agent service started 5.3.0 build-1427647
[01/28/14 14:53:06] Status: (svmGa:439) SvmException occured
[01/28/14 14:53:06] Error: (svmGa:444) SvmException occured The volume is not mounted:
StackTrace:
----Backtrace using dbghelp.dll----
Module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe
Module directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\
backtrace[00] ebp 0x0117ee4c eip 0x0046304e params 0x0117ef74 0x00c50b28 0x0117ef4c 0x0117f200 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x0006204e] (no symbol information)
backtrace[01] ebp 0x0117ee6c eip 0x0040924e params 0x0117efd4 0x0117f394 0x00c50b28 0x00c50b44 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x0000824e] (no symbol information)
backtrace[02] ebp 0x0117f20c eip 0x00433bf2 params 0x0117f34c 0x002b7cf8 0x00c50b28 0x00000002 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x00032bf2] (no symbol information)
backtrace[03] ebp 0x0117f37c eip 0x004341f0 params 0x00c50b70 0x0117f394 0x0065e6d0 0x00000012 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x000331f0] (no symbol information)
backtrace[04] ebp 0x0117f3e0 eip 0x00417c53 params 0x0117fa48 0x7c3a1ce3 0x00c50e78 0x0065e6d0 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x00016c53] (no symbol information)
backtrace[05] ebp 0x0117faf0 eip 0x00419be5 params 0x0117fd98 0x00000001 0x0117fe38 0x004c1914 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x00018be5] (no symbol information)
backtrace[06] ebp 0x0117fe10 eip 0x0041b139 params 0x00400000 0x00000010 0x00000002 0x00000085 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x0001a139] (no symbol information)
backtrace[07] ebp 0x0117ff24 eip 0x00401e23 params 0000000000 0x002af6e0 0x002af6e0 0000000000 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x00000e23] (no symbol information)
backtrace[08] ebp 0x0117ff74 eip 0x00403e75 params 0x00000001 0x002af6f0 0000000000 0x0117ff94 [C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\View Composer Guest Agent\vmware-svi-ga.exe base 0x00400000 0x0001:0x00002e75] (no symbol information)
backtrace[09] ebp 0x0117ff88 eip 0x76f575a8 params 0x002af6e0 0x0117ffd4 0x77769f72 0x002af6e0 [C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll base 0x76f50000 0x0001:0x000065a8] (I_ScIsSecurityProcess + 0x0269)
backtrace[10] ebp 0x0117ff94 eip 0x7654336a params 0x002af6e0 0x768af8a4 0000000000 0000000000 [C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll base 0x76530000 0x0001:0x0000336a] (BaseThreadInitThunk + 0x0012)
backtrace[11] ebp 0x0117ffd4 eip 0x77769f72 params 0x76f57587 0x002af6e0 0000000000 0000000000 [C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll base 0x77730000 0x0001:0x00029f72] (RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 0x0063)
backtrace[12] ebp 0x0117ffec eip 0x77769f45 params 0x76f57587 0x002af6e0 0000000000 0000000000 [C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll base 0x77730000 0x0001:0x00029f45] (RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 0x0036)
----End of backtrace----

Troubleshooting: Tried uninstalling all VMware products, and reinstalling the following in the following order: VMware Tools, VMware View Agent, VMware Horizon View Feature Pack.

Additionally, tried applying the appropriate guest customization script provided in the following VMware article: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf

Solution: I called VMware's support line and they have had no reports of this issue, nor an answer for solving this issue. Unfortunately, the only solution was to recreate the VM from scratch.

Windows 7 - Windows created a temporary paging file on your computer because of a problem that occured with your paging file configuration when you started your computer.

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Symptom: Every time you boot your Windows 7 machine or access system settings, you receive the following error:

Windows created a temporary paging file on your computer beause of a problem that occurred with your paging file configuration when you started your computer. The total paging file size for all disk drives may be somewhat larger than the size you specified.

Solution: In this case, the page file had grown too large and corrupted itself. I was able to resolve the issue by deleting the pagefile.sys file and having Windows recreate it from scratch. Here are the steps on how to complete this task.

Click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties
In the left pane, select Advanced system settings
On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance
On the Advanced tab, click the Change button under Virtual memory
Clear the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box and check No paging file
Click Set button next to No paging file
Click OK on all open windows and restart your machine
Open up Windows Explorer
Navigate to the root of your system drive (C:\)
Enable the showing of System Files
1. On the View menu, click Options
2. On the View tab, click Show All Files, and then click OK
Delete the pagefile.sys file
Click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties
In the left pane, select Advanced system settings
On the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance
On the Advanced tab, click the Change button under Virtual memory
Check the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives checkbox and click OK
Restart your machine

Jack Stromberg

A site about stuff

[Tutorial] How-to install VMTools on CentOS 6

[Tutorial] Upgrading the firmware on a Cisco 5508 Wireless LAN Controller

Cisco WLC Firmware Upgrade - % Error: Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output file

DirSync - Unable to establish a connection to the authentication service. Contact Technical Support.

ADFS v3 on Server 2012 R2 - Allow Chrome to automatically sign-in internally

PowerShell command to find all disabled users in Active Directory

[How-To] ThinApp Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 x64

Set a user's password to never expire in Office 365

VMware Horizon View Guest Error - SvmException occured The volume is not mounted

Windows 7 - Windows created a temporary paging file on your computer because of a problem that occured with your paging file configuration when you started your computer.