Pierow’s Prattle

There are lots of places on the ‘net that tell you how to create a bootable USB key using the infamous HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.  The guys at Bay-Wolf.com not only have such a write-up but were also kind enough to host the files and the appropriate Windows 98 boot files to make the operation successful.

[How to Create a bootable USB Memory Key]

Is your Internet access blocked by your company’s web filter an oppressive Communist government?  Maybe you’re just looking for a way to protect your wireless traffic when you jump online from a cafe?  You could always use The Onion Router (TOR) but access speeds tend to be slow and since there’s no way to control what your source IP is going to be when you exit to the ‘net, pages like Google and Wikipedia will try to customize results in your language.  If you don’t read German or Vietnamese, this can present a problem.

The question came up recently, “Can’t I just buy VPN access from someone?”  Well, it turns out that you can.

• Relakks – 1 month € 5,00 or 12 months € 45,00

• Cotse.net – $5.95 a month for standard access or add a high speed socks proxy for $9.95

Of course, real geeks will use other methods to circumvent filtering – but real geeks wouldn’t ask about buying a pre-packaged VPN service.

Searching for a way to install ESXi from USB instead of CD or to install ESXi onto bootable USB media so that you can try it out?  The following should get you started…

To install the actual ESXi image to USB flash (ie you don’t want to install ESXi onto a local hard drive)

Thanks to Duncan Epping’s post on Yellow Bricks for the following walk-through:

1. First get the following tools: 7-Zip (Free), WinImage (Demo)
2. Download the ESXi ISO
3. Open the ISO with 7-Zip
4. Extract “install.tgz”
5. Open “install.tgz” with 7-Zip
6. Click on “install.tar”
7. Browse to “usr\lib\vmware\installer\”
8. Open “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd.bz2?
9. Extract “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd”
10. Open WinImage and go to Disk, click on “Restore Virtual Harddisk Image on physical drive”
11. Select a physical drive
12. Select “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd”
13. And click “yes” to write the DD image to the USB Disk

To create INSTALLABLE media on a USB flash drive (ie you want to boot from the USB flash disk and ultimately install onto a local hard drive):

Thanks to this post on the squishnet.com blog:

1. Format USB drive with FAT32
2. Extract VMware iso to USB drive
3. Extract SYSLINUX onto C: drive
4. Navigate to syslinux-3.72\win32 and run the following command
syslinux.exe -s -m -f -a e: (e: was my usb drive)
5. This will create a file called ldlinux.sys (hidden file so you need to view hidden to see it)
6. Navigate to the USB drive and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. You do not need to change anything in this file. The config file boots the mboot.c32 kernel that is included with the esxi install.
7. Make sure your server is set to boot from USB and you are good to go.

Brendan Gregg has put together a collection of freeware tools for system administration written in Perl.  One of my favorites is onstat:

$ onstat
Server is ON.
$

The Air Boss carry-on travel bag was designed by the guy that runs onebag.com and has received rave reviews from the carry-on travel community.  There seems to be a large fan-base over at FlyerTalk as well (and those guys know a thing or two about travel).  The bag is only available by ordering direct from the manufacturer and sells for $225.  I’m sold on this thing…Now for the pressing question – which color to buy?

Kiplingers Red Oxx Recommendation

Happy New Year!

The yellowsnOw hack to unlock/jailbreak the iPhone 3G was released today.  iClarified has posted a how-to for unlocking the iPhone 3G and CrunchGear has one too.

There are a few caveats though:

“…you must have a jailbroken iPhone and you must be on the 02.28.00 baseband (modem firmware). This means that you must be running the 2.2 firmware. If you used PwnageTool to update to 2.2 from 2.1 you will have to rejailbreak using a QuickPwn jailbreak tutorial for the time being.”

iPhone 3G iPwned

The Scottevest Signature System is a jacket with integrated pockets for all of your electronic devices.  With a total of 52 pockets  (including one big enough for a laptop computer) it’s both the ultimate geek clothing accessory and a great gadget for traveling.  The two jacket system retails for $340 but this coupon gives you 20% off and a free hat.

X-Ray View of the Pockets in the Scottevest System

Shadeone  over at the EDC Forums came up with a really outstanding idea.  He’s modified a small Leatherman Micra so that it can hold a spare set of keys.  The idea is basically to disassemble a Micra, grind down your spare keys to similar dimensions of the tools that came out of the Micra and reassemble.

[Original Post at EDC Forums]

Modified Leatherman Micra