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1) Regardless of connection limits or licensing issues, you will always be able to connect to a server using a console session and an administrator account
2) The console session will often allow you to see errors and popups that won’t appear in other sessions
3) As documented in this MSKB article, you will also be able to have the local user see what you are doing in this session, and vice-versa. This is called a shadowed console session, and is very handy.
There are a few ways to get a console session in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista:
- Open your default.rdp file (typically in My Documents) and add the following line to the bottom:
connect to console:i:1 - In the RDC window, after the address, use the switch
/console - From start, run, type:
mstsc /console - Make a shortcut to RDC, edit it, and add the
/consoleswitch to it - If you are using visionapp Remote Desktop, there is a console session checkbox that you can use per connection
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In a security notice posted on Cisco’s web site recently, the networking giant unveiled its new patch program that will see them regularly updating its IOS software for Cisco switches and routers on a timely basis, similar to Microsoft’s “patch Tuesday”.
From the note:
“This schedule change will not restrict us from promptly publishing an individual IOS Security Advisory for a serious vulnerability which is publicly disclosed or for which we are aware of active exploitation.
Cisco is adopting this approach in response to extensive feedback from customers, who seek further predictability for support planning and deployment cycles.
The current format of IOS Security Advisories will remain the same. The software table in the Advisory includes a list of recommended releases (where possible) for each software train that addresses all of the security vulnerabilities included in the bundle.”
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UPDATE - it looks like the figure on this one is around 100M.
Microsoft has announced that they are planning to acquire VDI solution provider Kidaro today, according to Reuters.
From the Reuters article:
“Microsoft said Kidaro’s technology will be incorporated into its desktop virtualization product, which allows companies to deliver over an Internet network a “virtual” computer desktop different from the software running on the local machine.”
The VDI market is starting to be the place everyone is buying into, with a bunch of companies operating below the radar just waiting for things to happen and hoping for an offer.
Kidaro brings some nice features to the table including vDNA - the “self-cleaning” virtual desktop, and virtual desktops for enterprise data recovery.
It’s warming up in here!
An overview of vDNA from Kidaro:
Kidaro’s desktop virtualization platform works by running an encrypted, corporate-controlled virtual machine (VM) image on top of any PC, providing a secure and standardized environment for enterprise computing. Because the VM runs locally on corporate or third party PCs, the platform enables user mobility and disconnected use, without the need for expensive server farms.
Kidaro vDNA enables a stable, self-cleaning desktop by virtualizing and isolating two different kinds of “virtual DNA”:
- Personal data: includes end user files, passwords, configurations, bookmarks, and registry settings that make a desktop “yours.”
- Corporate desktop image: includes operating system, applications, configurations, and security tools that make up the standardized enterprise desktop.
By encapsulating and managing personal data separately, Kidaro vDNA enables the underlying virtual desktop image to be continually repaired and updated. In contrast to normal PC operation, where errors, corruptions, and unwanted software continually degrade performance, Kidaro vDNA insures that desktops always run clean, while enabling ongoing updates and upgrades from corporate IT. Users retain the ability to personalize their virtual desktop environment and to run personal applications on the underlying host PC.
So from what I can tell, this is a type of “sandbox” or “jail” technology similar to the “bubbles” in the SoftGrid product - a good match for Microsoft for sure, and the end of my quotes and italicized text!
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A nice offshoot of MIX 08 is the public availability of Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 1 as of yesterday. While the new browser has many features, the standards support is what has me tickled pink, and you’ll be happy to hear blandname still renders properly in the new version.
So head on over to the IE8 page Microsoft has put up, and grab the first beta of the new next thing.
Some general info from the release notes, including some help on using certificates from within Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, as well as a quick heads-up that the help is merely copied from IE7:
General information
Help content
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 contains help content from Internet Explorer 7. Some topics will be broken or irrelevant. The help content will be updated in a later release of Internet Explorer 8.
New home page in home page set
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 will add a new page to the home page set. This page will be automatically removed from the home page set two weeks after you install Internet Explorer Beta 1. You can remove this additional home page from your home page set at any time. Uninstalling Internet Explorer Beta 1 earlier than its automatic removal will not remove the additional home page. In that case, you can remove the home page manually.
Turning off the in-page WebSlice button
You can turn off the in-page WebSlice button in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 by using the following method:
However, when you turn off the in-page WebSlice button, WebSlice discovery is also turned off in the Feed Discovery button that is located on the frame.
Viewing certificates in Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
Windows XP
When you click the View certificates icon after you click the Security Status Indicator lock icon in the address bar, you incorrectly receive the following message:
This type of document does not have a security certificate
To view the certificate, follow these steps:
| 1. | Right-click the document, and then click Properties. |
| 2. | In the Properties dialog box, click Certificates. |
Windows Vista
To view the certificate of an encrypted page, click the View certificates icon after you click the Security Status Indicator lock icon in the address bar.
If you right-click the document, you click Properties, and then you click Certificates, the certificate is not displayed.
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From the official Riverbed RiOS 5.0 announcement:
“[]announced the launch of version 5.0 of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS(TM)), which powers the award-winning Riverbed(R) Steelhead(R) product line. RiOS 5.0 extends the Riverbed lead in delivering to its customers the best speed for the broad range of applications important to businesses of every size and across all industries. With the introduction of RiOS 5.0, Riverbed is the first vendor to provide application-level protocol optimization for Microsoft Exchange 2007. This makes Riverbed the first and the only vendor to accelerate Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007. In addition, Riverbed is building upon its lead in delivering solutions to enhance IT flexibility and capabilities with new scale, simplicity and security features, including the new RiOS Services Platform (RSP) for delivering virtualized edge services without the need to deploy additional branch office servers.
More Application-Level Acceleration
In RiOS 5.0, Riverbed adds to its existing HTTP and HTTPS acceleration capabilities by further improving the performance of enterprise Web applications, including SAP NetWeaver, Oracle, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Microsoft and Siebel CRM, SharePoint, and Outlook Web Access (OWA). In RiOS 5.0, Riverbed can further reduce the chattiness and delay often associated with enterprise Web-based applications. Users of RiOS 5.0 will see additional performance improvements of up to 10X for their Web applications.
RiOS 5.0 also delivers acceleration capabilities for Oracle 11i applications running in HTTP mode. This acceleration builds on the existing RiOS support for Oracle 11i Jinitiator socket mode optimization and targets the Oracle E-Business suite of applications, particularly Oracle forms traffic and reporting, as well as other application operations. Riverbed is the only vendor that provides application-level optimization for Oracle 11i.“
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From Microsoft:
“We know that many of you are anxious to get your hands on the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RTM bits. And to that end, we have some good news. We are pleased to announce that–while broad RTW availability is still scheduled for March–the SP1 Update RTM bits are available now to TechNet subscribers. If you are subscriber, please visit TechNet Plus Subscriptions and sign in to access Top Subscriber Downloads. If you have a prior version of the SP1 beta installed, you must uninstall it prior to installing the final version. Check out Things to know before you download Windows Vista SP1 for more information, and for updated details on all aspects of Windows Vista SP1, stop by the Windows Vista TechCenter. “
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The Register is reporting that Citrix will be letting everyone know tomorrow that it plans to acquire XenSource tomorrow.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise as we know Citrix has been looking long and hard at a virtualization platform.
While this seems to be a very good move on behalf of Citrix, it remains to be seen what the fate of the open source Xen project will be.
As predicted, 2007 is shaping up to be the year of the virtual machine with Microsoft, SWSoft, EMC/VMware and now Citrix ready and set to keep spending and marketing this paradigm.
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It happens, you enable a display mode that doesn’t work properly and you can no longer see a display on your screen.
Luckily Microsoft Windows Vista has a low-resolution boot mode you can access by press F8 as Windows Vista loads that will allow you to boot into 600×400, then set the video back to a more reasonable setting.
But if you feel like doing this without rebooting, want to impress you friends, or if you don’t want to loose work you had open, do the following:
- Hit the Windows key and M in order to minimize all windows.
- Right click your mouse button.
- Press the up arrow, then enter. This brings up the personalize applet.
- Press the tab key, then press the down arrow 6 times, and press enter. This will bring up the “Display Preferences” applet.
- Press tab, then press the left arrow a few times, then enter. This should apply a more standard resolution, and you should now be able to see your desktop again.
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I can now confirm that the Windows Vista MSDN x86 ISO is fully installable using Virtual PC 2007 Beta on Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.
Even though these are both MSDN images, neither of them was activated, nor did I enter a serial number during the install. Just click next when they ask you for a serial, and make sure to confirm that you do not wish to enter a serial number by pressing the “no” button.
(click on thumbnails for 1600×1200 images - the virtual machine is running at 1280×1024)
The installation took some time, even with 1GB of RAM allocated to the Virtual PC 2007 virtual machine, but after about 30 90 minutes or so, Vista Ultimate x86 virtualized on Vista Ultimate x64 using Virtual PC 2007 is a definite go-ahead-and-try-it install.
Follow normal VPC installation procedure, select Vista as the guest operating system, and chug along as the install proceeds.
Coming up next: full installation instructions.
Note: Unfortunately Virtual PC 2007 is beta, and I don’t see any plans for adding 64bit virtualization any time soon. If you have info that states otherwise, please let me know is this appears to be the only viable option for Vista VMs at the moment.
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Since installing bbPress on the forum.blandname.com subdomain, I’ve become addicted to the rapid posting workflow: add topic, title, description and post! It’s 4 steps and is over so quick I’ve been thinking about making a bookmarklet that will automate the task for me. Here’s the latest smaller posts I sent there, but should some day expand upon here (I’ll use blandname for longer posts from now on):
- vTiger CRM Virtual Machine
- RDP Manager for your Windows System Tray
- HOWTO TrixBox - VoIP Virtual Machine
- Online Virtual Machine Builder
- Microsoft Distributes Demo Software via VHD
- FREE Terminal Server Monitoring Tool
- VMware Workstation 6 Feature List
- Multi monitor support for RDP 6
- Add Reflections to bbPress Images
- Google PageRank and Alexa in Your Firefox 2
- Display Digg in WordPress - Digg Dugg Plugin
- Google Analytics Plugn for bbPress
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Currently the only way to get Vista on Vista virtualization running is to either use Virtual Server 2005 with some tweaks, or if you are part of the Virtual PC 2007 beta you can install Virtual PC 2007 (VPC 2K7) on Vista with no tweaks or hacks needed whatsoever. Unfortunately neither of these solutions can virtualize a 64bit operating system, but VMware Server should be Vista compliant soon - so I’m holding me breath until then.
Following my friend’s guide to setting up Virtual PC 2007 on Windows Vista found over at WebandRaptors, I was able to get VPC 2k7 set up quickly and without pain.
Next came the Windows Vista install, which was pretty straightforward. Something to note: you don’t actually need to use a CD key during installation, you can simply click the “next” button and the installer will inform you that a CD key will be needed later, I think it’s about 30days before it becomes necessary.
Once Vista is installed and configured for remote access from within VPC, all you need to do to get Aero Glass running is to connect to the virtual machine using the Remote Desktop Connection (RDP 6) client. If your host, or physical, machine supports Aero Glass, the virtual machine will allow you to take advantage of it, giving you transparent blurred windows, mouse-over taskbar previews, and cool windows+tab animation!
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In the coming weeks I will be working more on Microsoft’s Windows Vista as it ramps up to release to manufacture (RTM) status.
Although you can currently run Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 in 32 bit mode on a Windows Vista physical machine, I’ve learned that I was recently accepted into the Virtual PC 2007 beta tester program, and that Virtual PC 2007 can run on 64bit Vista.
If you are interested in joining the Virtual PC 2007 beta program, I highly suggest you sign up, then play some fantastic Rod Stewart albums until you are accepted.
By the way, this does in fact mean you can run Vista on Vista reliably now. VMWare Workstation and Server still don’t work at this point, but it’s on the way, just stay tuned.
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OK, so everyone is very excited about Firefox 2. I’m excited, your excited, all the social networks are ablaze.
But development does not stop at whole numbers, and the testing must go on - which is how we got here.
So I’m testing Firefox 3 (Minefield). That’s right, I won’t be outdone. I must run the most unstable software. Well at least on the test boxes. So currently the Vista, Leopard, and Edgy boxes are running “firefox-3.0a1″.
The first things you will notice are the graphics - everything has a nice sheen to it (in fact, looks just like Firefox 2!), while remaining true to the normal Firefox UI. Also of note is the fact that favorites are now run using a SQLite3 database. For the full list of features, head on over to the Burning Edge page.
Firefox 3.0a1 Toolbar
New Tabs in Firefox 3.0a1 Minefield
As far as I can tell this is just as stable as Bon Echo was (that’s right - was stable for me), with inline spell-checking and some other fancy goodies.That’s all for now, some more screenshots from other platforms (other than Windows XP of course) and crash reports as they happen
Note: of course this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I’m sorry for the Mozilla devs. We all need to stop worrying about the cutting edge and appreciate what we have - fantastic browsers! Opera, Safari, IE7 and Firefox are all great, really.
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Via MSDN:
Continuing on our saga through the undocumented Virtual Server WMI interfaces, we now arrive at disk usage information. Here is a sample script that will create a list of the currently running virtual machines, and display the amount of disk activity they have had since they were powered on.
Set vsWMIObj = GetObject(”winmgmts:\\.\root\vm\virtualserver”)
Set vms = vsWMIObj.ExecQuery(”SELECT * FROM VirtualMachine”,,48)
For Each vm in vms
Wscript.Echo “==============================================”
Wscript.Echo “Virtual machine: ” & vm.Name
Wscript.Echo “MiB read from disk: ” & vm.DiskBytesRead / 1048576
Wscript.Echo “MiB written to disk: ” & vm.DiskBytesWritten / 1048576
NextAs you can see these disk counters usually report values in bytes. It is important to note that these counters are also reset to zero every time the virtual machine is turned off.
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SSH is one powerful tool. You can do just about everything under the sun using an SSH login to a remote computer. SSH works very well in low-bandwidth situations like dialup, or satlinks.
But wakeup, we’re no longer in the 80s - people want GUIs, let’s give them fancy-pants graphics, bouncing cursors and silly linux wizards. Remotely.
Enter Xming, what I would name as top of my favorite applications. Xming is just like X over SSH, for dummies (or people who would rather spend more time working).
Xming allows you to connect to remote or local Linux workstations and servers and run full graphical applications on those remote machines on your local Windows computer.
Here’s how it works: all of the applications are run remotely, but when it comes to the graphics, the information that would invoke the graphics is sent to your local computer, not a bitmap or a sequence of bitmaps like VNC. Xming uses a local X server on your Windows computer in order to display your remote applications. This local X server is 2D accelerated, and it’s sometimes difficult to even notice that you are working remotely.
Since Xming can run in windowed or full-screen modes, you can establish thin client connections in this fashion, or you can publish applications Citrix-style.
Xming is completely free to install and setup. It is a great way to manage virtual machines, and in fact is often faster than Microsoft’s Virtual Server ActiveX control (surprised?), VMWare’s Virtual Machine view (even with VMWare tools!), and even Parallels speedy virtual machine view.
To set the whole thing up, you’ll need a computer running Microsoft Windows, one Linux box, a network connection between the two, but you won’t need much effort.
First install the Windows Xming server on your Windows computer. We’ll use Windows XP SP2 in this example, but it could easily be other varieties. Xming can be found on Sourceforge quite easily, download it, run the install (use defaults), and start XLauncher.
On the Linux computer this are slighlty more complicated, but not by much. For Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu Edgy, go to the System>Administration menu in your menu bar. In Administration, we’ll select login preferences as we’ll be setting up a new logon method (we’re using XDMCP). Select the Remote tab, and enable remote logon (same as local) to your Edgy Eft machine.
Now on your Windows machine, set up XLaunch to logon to your Linux machine using it’s IP address. Save the setting if you want, and connect. You will be presented with a logon screen to your Linux desktop!
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Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released in its final form, a lot of people are rushing out to install it as soon as possible. However, some web designers will want to keep a working version of Internet Explorer 6 to make sure their designs for IE7 aren’t broken in IE6. Jon Galloway has a great tool to have both versions of Internet Explorer installed and working at the same time, using a launcher comprised of a batch file and some registry hacks.
I tested the hackish launcher, and had no problems whatsoever.
Another mention: very soon IE7 is going to be a forced (pushed) update, so it’s going to be installed without you noticing, and Microsoft is going to reboot your computer, regardless of what you have left open overnight. To prevent having Internet Explorer 7 from being installed in the fashion, you’ll need to download the IE7 blocking tool from Microsoft.
Finally, if you don’t pass the WGA check to download the blocking tool, SnapFiles is providing a mirror of the IntelliAdmin IE7 Blocking Tool.
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This is a list of my favorite Windows applications that I honestly couldn’t live without that also work on Microsoft Windows Vista RC as well, much to my surprise. All of the software is free to download and use, and in fact most of them are open source.
ConTEXT - ConTEXT is a free and lightweight editor for programming or can be used as a notepad replacement. ConTEXT supports find and replace in multiple files at once so changing one method in loads of files is no longer an issue. Works in Vista with no problems whatsoever.
Synergy - Synergy is like a software KVM, but only shares keyboard and mouse capabilities. Synergy is multiplatform, and I currently use it to have my keyboard and mouse work in Ubuntu, Vista, and my Mac Mini running Leopard with no problem at all! This way I get to use my favorite keyboard and mouse and get to free up some space on my desk at the same time.
VLC - VLC has been my favorite media player for years now. VLC comes with most of the codecs you will need to watch videos on your PC already. VLC is very lightweight, and JUST WORKS, something that can’t be said about many media players. The only issue with VLC in Vista is that it turns Aero Glass off while it is playing.
FileZilla - I use FileZilla to interface with clients that still haven’t moved to SCP. FileZilla is an open source FTP client that gets the job done, supporting drag and drop, SSL, and NAT to NAT connections. The only thing it is missing is FXP support, but that’s not really a big deal in my case. Works fine in Vista with no problems at all.
IMGBurn - I love IMGBurn. This is hands-down the easiest way to burn .IMG, .ISO and BIN/CUE disk images to backup CDs or DVDs. Free, open source, and awesome. Works a treat in Microsoft Vista Beta 2 as well.
WinSnap - I use WinSnap to make many of the screen shots you see on blandname. WinSnap supports full screen and windowed screen shots, and also allows for rotation and drop shadows if you feel the need.
Electric Sheep - I often refer to Electric Sheep as “the best screensaver ever”, but truth be told, it’s really a collection of computer-generated screensavers that allow users to vote on them using a Digg-like system. On Windows, Electric Sheep uses bit torrent to transfer the sheep data. Again, working just fine in Vista!
Xming - Xming is my prefered interface to remote Linux boxes. Xming is for Linux what RDP is for Windows - you get a local X server and acceleration that displays data from remote applications running on Linux machines. Tested more than a few times to a remote Ubuntu computer, and one Gentoo box with no caveats.
WinSCP3 - SCP is now my preferred file transfer method. Luckily my favorite client also works on Vista, or I may not have used it at all. Much like FileZilla, WinSCP3 has a very simple, streamlined interface that is feature-rich and gets the job done, even on Vista.
So there you have it: 9 free applications I couldn’t live without that work just fine on Vista, and make it easy for me to do my day-to-day tasks. Hopefully someday this list will include F-Spot and Amarok, but I’m happy with this as a start considering neither of them work on Windows XP SP2 either!
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