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

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Archive for the ‘VMware Workstation’ Category

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Running ArchiveTeam Warrior version 3.2 on ESXi

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/05/05

A while ago I wrote about Helping the WayBack ArchiveTeam team: running their Warrior virtual appliance on ESXi.

Since it was scheduled before my cancer treatment started and got posted when still recovering from it, I missed that version 3.2 of the [Wayback] ArchiveTeam Warrior appliance appeared in the [Wayback] Releases · ArchiveTeam/Ubuntu-Warrior at [Wayback] Release v3.2 · ArchiveTeam/Ubuntu-Warrior. You can download it form these places:

These two sites have not yet been updated, so they contain the older versions:

The source code now has been moved three times:

  1. [Wayback] ArchiveTeam/warrior-code
  2. [Wayback] ArchiveTeam/warrior-code2 · GitHub
  3. [Wayback] ArchiveTeam/Ubuntu-Warrior at master (this is version 3 and up)

The docker container

The new version of Archive Team Warrior now is basically a shell around [Wayback] Watchtower and the [Wayback] ArchiveTeam/warrior-dockerfile: A Dockerfile for the ArchiveTeam Warrior docker container. This makes updating the core way easier.

More on the docker container (in case you want to run it yourself) is at [Wayback] ArchiveTeam Warrior – Archiveteam – Installing and running with Docker:

You’ll need Docker (open source) and the Warrior Docker image.

  1. Download Docker from the link above and install it.
  2. Open your terminal. On Windows, you can use either Command Prompt (CMD) or PowerShell. On macOS and Linux you can use Terminal (Bash).
  3. Use the following command to start the Warrior as well as Watchtower, which will automatically keep your Warrior updated: 
    docker run --detach --name watchtower --restart=on-failure --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock containrrr/watchtower --label-enable --cleanup --interval 3600 && docker run --detach --name archiveteam-warrior --label=com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true --restart=on-failure --publish 8001:8001 atdr.meo.ws/archiveteam/warrior-dockerfile

    (For a full explanation of this command, see items 3 and 4 here.)

  4. Using your regular web browser, visit http://localhost:8001/.

The virtual appliance

The virtual appliance is released as virtual appliance aimed by default at VirtualBox and steps to run with VMware: [Wayback] ArchiveTeam Warrior – Archiveteam.

Totally agreeing with Kristian Kohntopp, I do not understand why people use Virtualbox at all: I just run in too much issues like [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “Hint: Wenn die Installation einer Linux-Distro in Virtualbox mit wechselnden, unbekannten Fehlern scheitert, hilft es, stattdessen einmal VMware Workstation oder kvm zu probieren. In meinem Fall hat es dann jedes einzelne Mal mit demselben Iso geklappt.”.

Inspecting the .ova file, which is basically a tar compressed file consisting of an OVF directory as per Open Virtualization Format:Design – Wikipedia

The entire directory can be distributed as an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) package, which is a tar archive file with the OVF directory inside.

Inspecting the disk image inside the directory learned me that pure one-file binary VMDK disk images start with a KMDV signature in big-endian and KDMV in little-endian (first four bytes are 4b 44 4d 56). More on the VMDK file format can be found in these links (all via [Wayback] vmdk file format specification – Google Search):

So here are some steps to get the .ova image to run on ESXi. I think it should work for ESXI 5.1 and up, but I have tested only on ESXi 6.7:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Cloud, Containers, diff, Docker, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Infrastructure, Internet, InternetArchive, Kubernetes (k8n), patch, Power User, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

Some links that should me help shrinking the virtual disk files of Windows VMs

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/04/03

With virtual disks, at least these three levels are involved:

  • partition or volume (often called drive) size
  • virtual disk size
  • virtual disk backing store size

When talking about shrinking disks, they usually explain about below steps, assuming there is a 1:1:1 mapping of the above and backing store of the disk is dynamically growing:

  1. defragment the files on a partition/volume
  2. zero-fill the non-used space
  3. shrink the virtual disk assuming it is a dynamically growing one

For various reasons, virtualisation environments can have pre-allocated virtual disks ensuring the space on the backing store is firmly reserved.

One such occasion can be in VMware (often required for instance with vSphere/ESXi/ESX based infrastructure, but can also be used in Workstation/Fusion/Player) or Virtual Box in fixed disk mode (default there is dynamic).

Here are some links that should me help shrink in those situations:

More on conversion:

–jeroen

PS: a useful tip by Joe C. Hecht on shrinking:

Oh… On shrinking VM Disks, I make a new growable disk, then use a utility to “smart copy” the partions to the new disk (then replace the disk files in the VM). The “smart copy” just copies the file system – IE what is used (I use an old copy of Paragon Hard Drive Manager). It works out a lot better than writing “zeros”. I then make a compressed image of the whole VM using  rar5 compression with a 1GB dictionary size. I then have batch files that can unrar the VM’s on a moments notice (from a collection of over 300).

Posted in Fusion, Power User, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

Always use SCSI for your VM guest disks – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/01/20

Rephrased from [WayBack] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+:

If you install a virtual machine, ensure the disk controller and disks are SCSI based.

This has many advantages, including:

  • speed (usually the SCSI drivers can be paravirtualised)
  • hot addition of new disks

It holds for virtually any virtualization platform including all non-ancient (less than ~10 year old) versions of:

  • VMware (Workstation, Viewer, but I expect this also to work on vSphere, ESXI, Fusion)
  • Hyper-V
  • KVM (and therefore Proxmox)
  • VirtualBox

Based on my notes in the above link and the links below:

Note this isn’t just for Linux guests/hosts: Most guests (including Windows) can do a SCSI bus re-scan and detect new SCSI devices.

The trick here is that the guest must already have a virtual SCSI controller (adding that will require a reboot of the guest).

Then adding a new SCSI disk on that controller from any host (Windows, Mac, ESXi, vSphere) should work fine.

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Fusion, Hyper-V, KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine, Power User, Proxmox, View, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

airbus-seclab/crashos

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/30

Cool repository, but contact your cloud provider before trying…: [WayBack] airbus-seclab/crashos.

via:

–jeroen

Posted in Fusion, Hyper-V, KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine, Power User, Proxmox, View, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

Check If A Linux System Is Physical Or Virtual Machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/08

One day I am going to try to extend this for a few other virtualisation environments and Linux distributions: [WayBack] Check If A Linux System Is Physical Or Virtual Machine

Via: [WayBack] Check If A Linux System Is Physical Or Virtual Machine #Linux – Joe C. Hecht – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Fusion, Hyper-V, KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine, Power User, Proxmox, View, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

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