Westell UltraLine Series3 9100VM configuration tips

Wanting to make changes to the wifi and DNS settings of the new routers that Cincinnati Bell (CB) is routinely installing now, I went about researching and using trial and error. The goal was to implement WPA2 wifi security and OpenDNS at a router level, so as to help clients be a bit more secure.

Overview of high speed modem/router

Near as I can tell, Cincinnati Bell is using its installed fiber in urban locations to offer a high speed internet, combined with television channels via internet, so-called IPTV. Westell has long been a provider of equipment to our local phone company and this device is meant to offer “Advanced, dual-core processing power with Ethernet, MoCA, or VDSL2 WAN interface for fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-curb networks.” (link) These are hunka-chunka, white bricks and I’ll leave it to others to show us what’s actually inside them and perhaps explain their hugeness.

Getting access to advanced settings

As made clear on Westell’s web site their stuff is marketed to ISP’s, not thru retail / wholesale channels. As such, finding a manual is like pulling teeth. I must give credit to others’ posts on for helping me just figure out the interface and that you need to click on menus up top AND on the left.)

Level Platforms install does it all, but must add MWService to admin groups

Summary:
While installing Level Platforms (LPI) Onsite Manager onto a Windows Server 2003 (a member server running on as and ESXi guest and added to a SBS 2003 domain) all went well, but one service would not start. Final, solution was that the MWService account did not have sufficient permissions. LPI tech support said to add that account to Administrators, Domain Administrators and Enterprise Administrators. This solved the problem.

Details:

Open Office Unlocking “Locked for Editing” files needs to be friendlier

One day into using Open Office 3.x on my MacBook I found that one document I’d been working on was locked. That is, when I opened it I received the message “Document file qwerty.ods is locked for editing By…” My options were only to open read only or to open a copy. Hmmm. I even rebooted. Clearly I needed an option like, “Clear lock” since this file was on my Desktop and not needing to be locked.

After reading OpenOffice forum post it indicated I was looking for a hidden file. Being new to Macs I could find no way for Finder to show me a hidden file, so to the command line I went. Using “ls -a | less” I quickly found the file to be the same as the file name in question proceeded by “.~” It was the only such file as the command “ls .~*” proved so I issued a “rm .~*” and I the problem was solved.

No exactly  “user friendly”. If you know a simpler way, feel free to add a comment.

How to Restore using HP Vista Home Premium Recovery Manager

Posting this because I could find NO answer to this. Hope it helps somebody else.

Had a HP Pavilion notebook running Vista Home Premium that failed an update rendering the laptop unusable. (Tracking that sad fact down is another story.) But a wipe and reload using the Recovery Manager was in order. Upon pressing F11 at reboot, I went through the process, using the built in backup facility that was included.

However, after the recovery, finding out how to restore these files proved difficult. One HP page titled “Using HP Backup and Recovery Manager” would, one would think tell you how to backup, but it suggests you instead go to another link titled “How to Back up User Files” which has a section titled “Backing up your files using HP Recovery Manager” AND it tells you precisely how to do it. But it never tells you a thing about how to RESTORE!

HP chat support was more than useless: they told me it was really a Windows backup (which it wasn’t) and suggested I read “HP Notebook PCs -  Use Windows Basic Backup and Restore Center to Back Up Files in Vista” – wrong! Then they said that I had to use the HP Backup and Recovery Manager which is only available on HP “business notebooks” — presuming those with Windows Vista Business or better. Finally, they suggested I do a recovery – doh! I just had!! [As an aside, I was delighted that HP sent me a survey to complete, but found when I went to it, the site was broken with any browser I used. Sheesh!!]

So, with only another Nerds* guidance I went about solving this through trial and error. What I noticed was that the Recovery Backup had stored the stuff in a directory called “\MINWINPC\Backup Files 2008-10-16 143543″ It created in this folder two files: Backup001.exe and Backup002.fbw

Interestingly, the exe file was larger than the fbw file; a whopping 3.6GB. Hovering over it indicated that it had a file description of “RestoreWiz Application” with a file version of 1.0.3.26

So, having no other choice I double clicked the EXE file and waited while it tried to load that big file. Vista prompted me to see if I should allow the file to run. I said, okay.

It ran through the same process as the original backup, asking if I wanted to restore a series of file types with checkboxes. As I had backed all up, I left them all checked.

It indicated that it was going to put all of the files into a folder \System Recovery files. In that folder was a file called RestoreWiz.txt which had a very large log of what had taken place during the restore. Amazingly, it had a lot more than just data, it had 5.2 GB of everything from Program Files to Device Drivers, all stuffed recursively into a folder called “C”. I used this to salvage user data files and will scrap the rest.

*Thanks to James Perih, Nerds On Site for his helpful suggestions and for being a sounding board!

Dell server needs virtualization enabled to install 64 bit Server 2008 in ESXi

Problem: Using ESXi to setup Windows Server 2008 virtual machine, I was surprised to see a message after booting from the image of the install DVD:
Windows Boot Manager
File: \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
Status: 0xc000035a
Info: Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode.

Windows 2008 Boot Manager reports error

This is from a Dell 2950 III with one Xeon CPU (Quad Core Intel Xeon E5405, 2×6MB
Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB) This is from Dell’s virtualization server catalog with available VMware ESXi and ESX software as an option.
Solution: Turns out, you must go to the system BIOS under the CPU section, and change Virtualization Technology from Disabled to Enabled since the factory setting is Disabled.

Setting incoming SMTP port on SBS / Exchange

Having set up my SBS server some time ago, I couldn’t remember where I had set the incoming port number (falsely called 65535 here.) I find the button that pops open the dialog box for this quite forgettable, so I’ll document this here hoping to help someone — me included — in the future.

Running TCPView from SysInternals shows that inetinfo.exe is listening on port 65535.

This was set in Exchange System Manager, drilling down seven levels to the SMTP-Default, right-clicking Properties, Advanced and editing the incoming port number. By default, this is port 25 for SMTP.

Dial-a-fix allows Windows Update to succeed

Some fellow Nerds were discussing the problem of Windows Updates having patches that refused to install, Nerds Todd Myles and Barry Ball suggested Dial-a-fix http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix.

I had been having the same issue with an install of Small Business Server 2003, so I decided to try this out. It worked quite well and took very little time. A great utility.

Below are the screen shots showing the blow-by-blow.

99% isn’t good enough for a burned CD-ROM from an ISO – Using CRC305.EXE

In this post, I tell how to detect if a Windows installation CD is bad using the CRC305.EXE.

Recently I again downloaded Microsoft’s Small Business Server 2003 CD ISO images and began burning them to CD on my laptop. To be sure they’re good, The MS download manager checks that the CRC values check. I have the Sonic software verify the CD after the burn to make sure it’s burned properly. Should be okay, right?

Nope.

Ran through two complete installations of SBS only to find during and after CD #4 there are setup errors. The first indicates that a file for what appears to be a Korean help file just doesn’t exist. It’s one of two files, so I tried just copying and renaming the one file to be the name it wanted for the second file. I knew this was cheating, but what are the chances I’ll ever want help in Korean. It continues on until a final error indicates it cannot proceed. The errorlog.txt file showed numerous errors besides this one.

After re-burning CD 1 at a slower speed, I found I had the same error. I downloaded and ran CRC305.EXE from Microsoft’s web site and ran it against the CD on my laptop. It indicated that it was good. However, running it on the server on which I was trying to load the CDs indicated that ALL of the CDs had an error after the 99% point!

So I burned the CDs on THAT machine (yes there was a lot of time involved with this!), ran CRC205.EXE on that machine and it showed that the disks passed. I was able to install the complete system with the new CDs without errors.

Windows 2003 Small Business Server – Client Setup

For posterity sake, here are the screen shots for setting up client computers from an SBS server. I decided to include the initial user setup which provides for an automatic “next step” of setting up the computer. So there are two “push” parts: User setup and client computer setup and two “pull” parts: Assigning user to the computer / migrating their profiles and installing software via the Client Setup Wizard

Part I

OpenSource VirtualBox better than its proprietary competition

I remember my first experience with Firefox when I noticed that it was free AND better. Wait, something free should have some tradeoffs, right? Well I’ve had that experience again, this time with VirtualBox. Read on or just go get it now! Yes, it runs in Vista, XP, Linux and Apple (beta.)

How I got to VirtualBox

It was early ‘06 when my friend Mark Wash said I’d better get up to speed on virtualization technology. I yawned. I don’t get it; who need to run a machine inside a machine? Suffice it to say, I soon “got it.” So, I set out to find which would be best for my needs (multi-OS, need for sandboxing, etc.) and my budget (oh so low). Microsoft’s was out since I wanted multi-OS. I liked VMware’s functionality and experience. The trial version showed its stuff. The availability of the VMPlayer was great. The beta versions were ridiculously slow.

Then, there was Parallels. Can you say “carbon copy?” It seemed to be identical. But little by little, the gaps in what it could do became more apparent. Many VMWare features were listed in Parallel’s support forums as “maybe someday” features. But the price! How could I go wrong? Without making this a Parallel’s bashing post, it was clear that using an Ubuntu guest within an XP was somewhat frustrating since the guest tools didn’t really work, nor did USB support. And an XP guest within an Ubuntu host? Don’t even go there! I suppose the version for Macintosh is more reliable.

It was as I was lamenting these issues in an Ubuntu forum that someone asked if I’d tried VirtualBox. No, never heard of it. Turns out it only came out in January, 2007 as you can see in their progress log . Having worked with various open source projects, one tries not to set high expectations, but off I went.

Eureka! A “just works” experience

I can’t even guess how complex it must be to program a VM, but VirtualBox makes it look easy. It just works! The availability of a version for the most recently released version of Ubuntu was a nice touch. Installing this was amazingly easy for a Linux application. The interface is clean, new VM setup a cinch and maintenance of VMs is easy to monitor. Oh, and want to move a virtual drive from one OS to another? Just put it in an accessible spot, go to the virtual disk image manager and add it, then create a virtual machine linking to this disk. I setup a fat32 partition so these can be accessed from either OS without being moved.

The feature set of VirtualBox is impressive, providing a much more ambitious goal than Parallels. Taking snapshots (not an option in Parallels) works slick. Click to close the guest window and it can save the state of the machine very quickly. Just try stuff like the host + A to automatically resize your guest screen. So slick.

Figure 1-Note Shared Clipboard can have copy / pasting going in either direction, both or disabled.

You can have a remote display allowing you to setup a virtual machine on a remote server and send all only the KVM info across to your client machine. There’s a complete CLI functionality that provides for an amazing range of control. (These last two I’ve not explored yet.)

Issues

• VirtualBox now supports using VMDK files so that you can take a disk image created under VMWare and just start using it in VirtualBox (a wish list item in Parallels I might add.) Though I didn’t need this ability, I tried grabbing an old VMDK image I had backed up to try it. I received a nasty error message, perhaps because there were snapshots on that VM?
• Initially upon installing v. 1.4.0 into a Vista host, I found that after my Ubuntu guest auto-activated my mouse in the window, my keyboard was gone and the mouse was confined inside the edges of my Ubuntu guest! This required a hard reset of the machine. I uninstalled VirtualBox, reinstalled and have not had the same disconcerting issue.
• The default “host key”, the right Ctrl key, is not my first choice and so I change this to my scroll lock key. Now don’t laugh: It’s probably obvious to most, but when they say host + F they mean “hold down the host key while pressing F” Somehow, it just seemed wrong to hold down the Scroll key and this led me into wondering why no hot keystrokes worked.
• Note that when Ubuntu auto updates the Linux kernel, the VirtualBox will abend upon running after the next reboot. I panicked and changed the grub menu default to us the prior kernel at boot time until a nice forum poster named onero gave easy instructions for an update.

Port-Security: Devil in the “sticky” details?

Cisco’s port-security feature in its switches can restrict a switchport to a single, learned MAC address, potentially preventing such security issues as:

• A user bringing in their own router, switch or hub to create a rogue network.
• A user unplugging their corporate PC and plugging in an unauthorized laptop.
• Unauthorized use of a virtual machine (VM) on a PC which creates a new MAC address

It’s easy to see that the VM – Parallels in this case – uses a separate MAC address for its separate IP in the following screen shot:

We can mitigate problems from normal, non-hacker users; presumably hackers could spoof a laptops MAC address. Shoot, I can even plug in my old Linksys NAT router, have it “clone” my PC’s mac address and it will be able to circumnavigate all of the above listed exploits. But, it does afford some level of protection, so off we go…

Last time the Sticky wasn’t working quite right (thanks to errors in Cisco book!):

“During this practice setup, I found that the 3550 switch DID restrict use of multiple MACs it didn’t learn a “Sticky MAC” address and permitted me to swap out one PC for another. Though I followed Cisco’s instructions (ISBN-10: 1-58720-171-2) where it indicates that Sticky Learning is the default. However, later research on the Cisco web site indicates it’s not (see Note 1 below). I’ll try the switchport
port-security mac-address sticky command next time.”

So this time I used the right IOS, so we get to see some security in action.

Note: The running-config is actually changed to add new “sticky” lines with the actual mac addresses added “…sticky  ####.####.####” 

Also, I’ll note here, I attempted to proceed with DAI (Dynamic ARP Inspection) but the switch’s CLI simply returned an error that the ip arp… command is invalid. Also, the use of ip source binding was also unavailable. Hmmm. Our switches are running IOS Release 12.1Cisco’s web site shows this command supported on a 3550 using Cisco IOS Release 12.2(35) SE (See web page). Administration so far refuses to upgrade the IOS release (sigh!)

Now on to the blow-by-blow account of Port-security:

Slick, Yet Useless?

Plugging away at using Word 2007 (Office 2007) and finding some cool stuff (Like the BLOG posting facility) yet about every 3^rd posting I find that Word crashes. Uninteresting, even annoying in of itself, it IS interesting for a couple of reasons:

Today, after umpteen crashes, a dialog pops up and says something like, “It appears that Office is repeatedly crashing. We’re sorry about that. Would you like to run Microsoft Office Diagnostics in an attempt to resolve the problem?” Ah! They care! How kind! Sure, please figure out the problem!

So, it ran a very attractive diagnostic process for about 10 minutes and came up with nothing:

Hmmm. Looks good, but the proof is in the pudding and it didn’t solve any problem. At a referring web site, it provided no additional insight, but it did suggest I turn on an ability to routinely download a file to MS info about my system and maybe this would help. (See Word Options, Trust Center, Privacy Options, Download a file periodically that helps determine system problems.)

I did. Best I can hope for is a bug fix in the future I guess.

On the positive side, the crash recovery mechanism now takes place immediately, not just when you restart Word. This is a surprisingly smart, yet simple idea. Since the editing is freshly in your mind, better take care of damage control ASAP.