Building required VMWare Workstation Kernel Modules Ubuntu ** updated for Secure Boot **

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VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu requires another step to run. Sometimes the installer will install the kernel modules it requires in the installer, other times it won’t. There’s another step to the setup after running the installer that might as well be documented as part of the installation process.

It’s compiling kernel extensions for vmmon and vmnet – and Workstation tries to compile them out of the box, but it never works. It’s missing some essential kernel extensions that are only available from GitHub. Get used to it, because every time you upgrade your kernel, you’ll have to do this again (unless you create a hook for apt … I’ll have to put that in a later post).

I had to write a post about it since after doing it for the umpteenth time I realized this might be a problem for a lot of people that isn’t well documented and might be exceedingly confusing for first-time users.

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ESXi 6.7 – Forcefully Removing a Phantom NFS Share

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Interesting thing happened to me today. I had to do some work on one of my ESXi 6.7 hosts, so I powered it off (which is something I rarely ever do). I had just done some static configuration of ipv6 on my domain controllers, provisioned DNSSEC, etc. so I was playing with a relatively recently modified network.

Well, it must have been a little too different for my ESXi configuration to handle, because when I powered up my ESXi host again, two out 5 of my NFS datastores couldn’t reconnect. It was a little perplexing because ESXi doesn’t give you much of a sense of what’s going on – just a message saying:

Can’t mount NFS share – Operation failed, diagnostics report: Unable to get console path for volume

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Building NetBSD pkgsrc on Ubuntu 19.10

pkgsrc is a package manager and port tree, kind of like FreeBSD ports and pkg combined.

Messing around with my Ubuntu 19.10 rpool installation (ZFS is offered by default in the desktop installer now), and I couldn’t help but think to myself, “gee, it sure would be cool if the ARC was in top like it is in FreeBSD and OmniOS.”

So I thought I’d try to compile the NetBSD version of top using pkgsrc, since I figured the BSD versions of posix software might have more resources for ZFS.

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Want BTRFS CoW snapshots but need to use Dropbox?

Update: Not sure when this happened but I was checking the requirements for FS on Linux at Dropbox.com and apparently they DO support BTRFS once again. So the process outlined in this post is no longer necessary.

See announcement: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/07/22/1534200/dropbox-brings-back-support-for-zfs-xfs-btrfs-and-ecryptfs-on-linux

Old article: This is less of a write up and more of a PSA:

Want to put BTRFS on every device you have like me because you can’t get enough of CoW FS? Especially for operating systems? Because snapper? cgroups? timeshift? machinectl? The list goes on…

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Quick and dirty SSH key for pfSense / OPNsense gateway

PSA: Stop using password login for root on your router! NOW!!!

OK, now that I got your attention, here’s how I did it in Git Bash (MINGW64) on Windows LTSC. I promise this is QUICK and EASY, so there’s NO EXCUSE not to do it.

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Tricks for Importing VMware Workstation VMDK to ESXi 6.7

Turnkey Linux’s VM packages are available as iso, vmdk, qcow2, tar, and Docker images

So I’ve been playing with some of the Turnkey Linux VMs, which are nice a lightweight Debian Linux OS core packaged with purpose-built software.

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Asrock J4105-ITX 16GB and 32GB memory configuration tests

I saw this on a German web site called speicher.de and I thought it was pretty significant so I thought I’d share a copy of the translation to English

The Asrock J4105-ITX is a useful low-power build that has been confirmed to work as an ESXi IGD GPU passthrough computer with 4K@60Hz HDMI 2.0. It can be had for around $110 for the motherboard.

The real sticking point for ESXi, besides the realtek NIC, is who wants to run an ESXi host that can only support up to 8GB RAM? As that is the official specifications listed on the Asrock web site…

Well this group of hardware testers in Germany has laid that myth to rest by doing their own testing, and they confirm that configurations of up to 32GB work just fine. Have a look:

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Linux or MacOS lover, but have to use Windows?

editing bashrc in nano using a mingw64 (git-bash) terminal window on Windows 1809 LTSC

Make your Windows experience more nerdy!

I tend to notice Windows users fall into a few major categories:

  1. Unaware any OS besides Windows exists
  2. Uses Windows because that’s what they’re most comfortable with
  3. Doesn’t like Windows per se, but can’t afford a Mac, and doesn’t want to grapple with Linux
  4. Likes posix-compliant OS better, but trapped by vendor lock-in requiring use of proprietary software only available on Windows

If you’re like me, you’re in the 4th category. I love package managers, bash shells, am most comfortable with nix commands and regex, and while I think powershell is a step in the right direction, the syntax is unfamiliar enough that I still have to consult references in order to do most things. It’s also ridiculously verbose compared to posix OS.

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Musings about Home CCTV setup, and a review of Anpviz 5MP@15FPS POE security camera

Happy new camera watching garden grow at my modest home

This review is for the Anpviz IPC-B850W-D 5MP@15FPS security camera w/ mic and Micro-SD card support.

Full disclosure: I purchased this camera and was later reimbursed for writing this review. However, I will do my best to offer a totally objective viewpoint on the pros and cons of this model.

Since I was hired to do installation and maintenance of a TVI DVR system at a local restaurant, I’d been wanting to set up a couple cameras around my home.

I’m not so worried about theft or break-ins like the restaurant is, but even in a mellow, low-stress area like ours recording a few key areas can still be helpful. For instance, we share a fence with a parking lot, so it gets hit by cars occasionally and we’d like to know who did it if we’re not home. Also, you never known when someone might take an Amazon delivery off your doorstep, as that is becoming common even in nice neighborhoods.

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Using APFS features to migrate from a larger disk to a smaller one

Resizing an APFS container via diskutil terminal command

Disclaimer: Sorry for the phone pics of my screen, I was using an installer disk for this procedure and there was no screenshot feature.

I’m migrating a MacOS install but the source drive is 256GB and the destination is 250GB. It’s not too much of a mismatch, but still prevents a straight-across restore.

What ever to do?

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