The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for July, 2022

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Editing your Windows hosts file as administrator from a “simple” batch file or PowerShell command

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/07

Sometimes you want to edit your Windows hosts file.

Next to that it is not in /etc/hosts, but in %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts., you also have to edit it elevated with an elevated Administrator token (see Source: User Account Control – Wikipedia).

The Windows GUI by default runs without that token, and for a keyboard person like me, doing the mouse clicking elevation can be cumbersome especially combined with the unintuitive path to the hosts file.

Basically the below batch file executes this, but than elevated:

start notepad %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

So I created a small batch file that does that for me: start notepad as an elevated user opening the correct file.

powershell -command "Start-Process notepad.exe -Verb runas -Args %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts."

I named it edit-hosts-as-administrator.bat, but consider naming it edit-hosts.bat as the elevation is mandatory anyway.

It is based on by blog post Run cmd as elevated user (via: windows – How to run batch file command with elevated permissions? – Super User).

It helped setting up the localghost address explained in my blog post The spookback localghost address to resolve 👻.

That one in turn needed unicode support which I showed last week in Unicode symbols in a batch file – Stack Overflow.

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Hardware MAC address formats (which I need for Wake-on-LAN.ps1)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/06

Early june, I blogged about Wake-on-LAN from a Windows machine.

My plan was to adopt [Wayback/Archive.is] Wake.ps1 into Wake-on-LAN.ps1 (as naming is important).

One of the goals was to support multiple hardware MAC address formats, especially as Wake.ps1 had the below comment, but did support the AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF, though not the AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF hardware MAC address format:

<#
...
.NOTES
Make sure the MAC addresses supplied don't contain "-" or ".".
#>

A colon separated hardware MAC address would result in this error inside the call to the [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.Parse Method (System.Net.NetworkInformation) | Microsoft Docs:

Send-Packet : Exception calling "Parse" with "1" argument(s): "An invalid physical address was specified."

So I did some digging, starting inside the above mentioned blog post, and adding more:

  1. Wake.ps1 uses the [Wayback/Archive.is] Parse method in the [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.cs source code in C# .NET,  which contains code like this:
                //has dashes? 
            if (address.IndexOf('-') >= 0 ){ 
                hasDashes = true;
                buffer = new byte[(address.Length+1)/3]; 
            }
  2. The Perl script at [Wayback/Archive.is] wakeonlan/wakeonlan at master · jpoliv/wakeonlan that started my first blog post in this series which mentions:
    • xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (canonical)
    • xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx (Windows)
    • xxxxxx-xxxxxx (Hewlett-Packard switches)
    • xxxxxxxxxxxx (Intel Landesk)

    I should rename the first one IEEE 802, as per this:

  3. The MAC address: Notational conventions – Wikipedia

    The standard (IEEE 802) format for printing EUI-48 addresses in human-friendly form is six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens (-) in transmission order (e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-AB). This form is also commonly used for EUI-64 (e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-AB-CD-EF).[2] Other conventions include six groups of two hexadecimal digits separated by colons (:) (e.g. 01:23:45:67:89:AB), and three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dots (.) (e.g. 0123.4567.89AB); again in transmission order.[30]

    The latter is used by Cisco (see for instance [Wayback/Archive.is] Cisco DCNM Security Configuration Guide, Release 4.0 – Configuring MAC ACLs [Support] – Cisco and [Wayback/Archive.is] Cisco IOS LAN Switching Command Reference – mac address-group through revision [Support] – Cisco), so another format to add:

    • xxxx.xxxx.xxxx (Cisco)
  4. [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.Parse Method (System.Net.NetworkInformation) | Microsoft Docs remarks:

    The address parameter must contain a string that can only consist of numbers and letters as hexadecimal digits. Some examples of string formats that are acceptable are as follows:

    • 001122334455
    • 00-11-22-33-44-55
    • 0011.2233.4455
    • 00:11:22:33:44:55
    • F0-E1-D2-C3-B4-A5
    • f0-e1-d2-c3-b4-a5

    Use the GetAddressBytes method to retrieve the address from an existing PhysicalAddress instance.

  5. After a bit more digging via [Wayback/Archive.is] “three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dots” – Google Search , I found that even more hardware MAC address formats are in use as per [Wayback/Archive.is] What are the various standard and industry practice ways to express a 48-bit MAC address? – Network Engineering Stack Exchange.

    I really do not have all the sources for the various representations for 48-bit MAC addresses, but I have seen them variously used:

    AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF
AA.BB.CC.DD.EE.FF
AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
AAA-BBB-CCC-DDD
AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD
AAA:BBB:CCC:DDD
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC
AAAA.BBBB.CCCC
AAAA:BBBB:CCCC
AAAAAA-BBBBBB
AAAAAA.BBBBBB
AAAAAA:BBBBBB

From the last list, which is far more complete than the others, I recognise quite a few from tools I used in the past, but too forgot the actual sources, so I took the full list from there and tried to name them in parenthesis after the links I found above and what I remembered:

  • AABBCCDDEEFF (Bare / Landesk)
  • AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF (IEEE 802 / Windows)
  • AA.BB.CC.DD.EE.FF (???)
  • AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF (Linux / BSD / MacOS)
  • AAA-BBB-CCC-DDD (???)
  • AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD (Cisco?)
  • AAA:BBB:CCC:DDD (???)
  • AAAA-BBBB-CCCC (???)
  • AAAA.BBBB.CCCC (Cisco / Brocade)
  • AAAA:BBBB:CCCC (???)
  • AAAAAA-BBBBBB (Hewlett-Packard networking)
  • AAAAAA.BBBBBB (???)
  • AAAAAA:BBBBBB (???)

Some additional links in addition to the ones above:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, HEX encoding, Network-and-equipment, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Bestel je op de @KVK_NL, zorg dan dat je *niet* in het handelsregister bent ingelogd: ben je dat wel, dan werkt de automatische incasso niet, lijkt het alsof je betaald hebt, maar krijg je geen product te zien of gemaild

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/06

Het staat helaas nog nergens op de site van de Kamer van Koophandel, noch hun Social Media accounts (ondanks herhaalde verzoeken per telefoon en Social Media):

De enige optie om op dit moment dingen op de site van de Kamer van Koophandel te bestellen en betalen is door middel van iDEAL.

De makkelijkste manier om dat te forceren is uitloggen van het handelsregister voor je iets bestelt: dan gaat de betaling automatisch naar “handmatig”, en kun je kiezen tussen iDEAL of creditcard.

Eventuele kortingsregelingen gelden dan niet.

Als je toch bent ingelogd, dan gebeurt er in Chrome dit nadat je je betaling bevestigd:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Powershell code formatting and coding style and style guides: some links and elaboration

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/05

I started doing occasional PowerShell “work” long before Visual Studio Code came along with its [Wayback] PowerShell Extension.

Back then, my tool of choice was PowerGUI: Settling on PowerGUI for PowerShell development. Before that it was PowerShell ISE.

Since then, I fiddled around a bit with Visual Studio Code, but not much. Then I got treated for rectum cancer, and when writing this, I’m back to Visual Studio code with the PowerShell Extension and already figured out a lot has improved.

One of the things is code formatting. Back some 7 years ago, this was all not set in stone. Now it is, so it is important to adhere to.

I already posted Code Layout and Formatting: Indentation · PowerShell Practice and Style last year, so now it is good repeat the link in it and add some more.

For my link archive:

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Posted in Development, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Technical Debt | Leave a Comment »

Nationale testdag: Test vandaag ook je rookmelders nu dat de sirenes gegaan zijn (via Jessica Reintjens op Twitter)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/04

[Wayback/Archive] Jessica Reintjens on Twitter: “De maandelijkse sirenes zijn straks om 12.00u weer te horen, omdat het de 1e maandag vd maand is, Dat is een mooi moment om u rookmelders vandaag ook weer eens te testen! #rookmelder #rookmeldersreddenlevens #rookmelders #veiligheid #testjerookmelder”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Awareness, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

The only practical way of running x86 VMs on Apple M1 seems to be QEMU based UTM

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/01

Few articles exist on running x86 VMs on Apple M1 architecture.

This is the best I found, and clearly states that QEMU based UTM is the way to go, but notably lacks 3D support: [Wayback/Archive.is] Apple Silicon M1: How to run x86 and ARM Virtual Machines on it? | by Dmitry Yarygin | Mar, 2021 | Medium

Without VMs, but running Windows x86_64 code is already possible using Windows 10 for ARM via Parallels: [Wayback] Windows 10 on M1 Macs: What you can do (virtualization, sorta) and can’t (Boot Camp) | Macworld.

VMware Fusion is not going to support x86_64 virtualisation anytime soon as per [Wayback/Archive.is] Fusion on Apple Silicon: Progress Update – VMware Fusion Blog – VMware Blogs

…

What about x86 emulation?

We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs. It makes total sense… If Apple can emulate x86 with Rosetta 2, surely VMware can do something too, right?

Well, the short answer is that there isn’t exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required, at least for the time being. For now, we’re laser focused on making Arm Linux VMs on Apple silicon a delight to use.

So, to be a bit blunt, running x86 operating systems on Apple silicon is not something we are planning to deliver with this project. Installing Windows or Linux from an x86 ISO, for example, will not work.

…

More on UTM, which is open source:

Now hopefully someone posts a Wiki of running x86_64 Windows on Apple M1 (:

This is a small start that it can be done [Wayback/Archive.is] Has anyone tried running Delphi on Windows ARM? – Delphi IDE and APIs – Delphi-PRAXiS [en]

It works well. I’ve managed to build and run my VCL and FMX projects on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac without any problems.
Note that both Windows ARM and the way it runs Delphi are still in preview so tread carefully!
On 4/18/2021 at 8:01 PM, Der schöne Günther said:
Can you confirm it cannot only build projects but also debug them?
I can debug Windows and Android no problem. I’m having issues debugging iOS as it’s stopping in the IDE but showing the CPU rather than code views. I believe this might be a badly built component I need to re-install rather than an issue with the environment but can’t confirm either way at the moment.

…

An update on the debugging issues on iOS – it’s all working now. My VM just needed a restart and I can debug without problems now.

--jeroen

Posted in Apple, M1 Mac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Qemu, UTM, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

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