Ravindra's Tech Corner

ESXi 5.0 installation on my LAPTOP

2011-12-28T16:07:00.000+04:00

I know many people tried different ways to have vmware based labs for their testing purposes. I have tried with vmware workstation and hyper v. I’m not not forgetting Fusion on my mac. But i always wanted to run ESXi on my laptops. i have tried ubuntu and windows 7 as host operating system on various laptops. But non of them could not cater my VM’s cause those operating system are bound to take at least 1 GB memory for internal process.

There were many tricks during the ESX 4.0 as well ESXi 4.0 about the bare metal installation which was specific to very limited amount of hardware. But with ESXi 5.0 installation i manage to do it with my laptops. One was my Pavilion DV-3 monster with 8 GB memory and the other was my NC6400 with Core2Duo processor. Cant wait to start my labbing again.

New Start

2011-11-27T17:03:00.001+04:00

Hello My beloved readers :)

This update going to be a dry one if you are in to my technical writings. Apologies i haven’t write any thing for a long time. I was distracted with work and depressed with my living situation for sometime. So things are falling down to one place again (Fingers Cross)

I must thank you each and every person who ping me during my long silence. i have found some interesting things about life than technical things during my hard time. This note is just to let you know that I’m alive.

Thanks for the love :)

Welcome to MacJournal!

2011-11-27T17:03:00.000+04:00

Welcome

To get started, create a new entry by clicking on “New Entry” in the toolbar or choosing “New Entry” from the File menu. You can also drag files from the Finder in to the Sidebar or the Entries list to import them as an entry. Show the Inspector from the View menu to see settings for the current entry, journal, and document.

What's new in version 5?

All new interface.

Add any kind of content, not just text. Drag PDFs, QuickTime movies, images, and more into the Sidebar to create an entry with anything on your computer.

Open more than one MacJournal document at a time and save them wherever you want, or just use the default document and never worry about saving.

Create Smart Journals from searches you perform.

Create aliases to entries that you can store in other journals.

Assign each entry a rating, status, and priority, and sort any journal by those values.

Record video from your iSight and attach it to any entry.

Performance enhancements for working with large numbers of entries.

Import from Journler

vmware workstation crashes in Ubuntu 11.04

2011-05-20T11:58:00.001+04:00

You guys know me i dont like Ubuntu at all. But i really wanted to see how is unity interface. I installed that. I'm quite impress with the GUI work. Feels like MAC. But anyway i tried to install vmware workstation 7.1.4 in that it was crashing everytime i try to open virtual machine. GRRRR (BTW i was able to run vmware in windows 7 with out any issue in first shot) It was giving me some glib related errors. After searching here and there i found the solution.

before starting vmware execute

$ export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0/libglib-2.0.so.0

Then execute

vmware

works like a charm.

I don’t know what to say to you brother

2011-05-20T07:20:00.001+04:00

I’m sorry this wont be another tech note that I came across while doing something crazy.

This is about a blog writer that I never met or talked. But I was so in to his writing, I knew your creativity machan. I’m sorry I never appreciated that and talk to you back. I was just reading to collect my self together. I admit when I read some of your writing I cried. Your writing really took me through a emotional roller coaster. In my hard times I found peace in your poems.

But now you have gone. But I want to tell you this. I never subscribed to your blog. Not because I don’t like it. Every morning before I start my day I will just go through 3 blogs just to feel that I’m alive. every morning I just went to your blog hoping for a new post. By subscribing to your blog I never wanted to loose that hope. Now I know I don’t have that hope anymore.

You went too soon machan…..I really thought things will be fine after sometime. Thanks for reminding life is just a short stay in planet earth. I will keep that in my mind. Thanks for everything brother. Rest is peace.

OVF and OVA templates and VMware workstation (Still getting OVF Descriptor file could not be parsed)

2011-05-15T15:28:00.001+04:00

OVA and OVF file formats are not new if you are in to virtualization. Few years back if you need Cisco software such as Call manager or Unity for demonstration purposes you can download the Virtual Machine that compatible with the vmware workstation. I still remember I got Cisco Meeting place express version 2 image. It was Gem in those days. it was that difficult to install meeting place express in the vmware workstation. Later this approach move in to vmware appliance market. Its nothing but virtual machine that contains pre configured a software. One year back had a chance to implement a Acme packet SBC that works on top of vmware workstation as well. So this virtual appliance market still evolving.

Anyway now things have change a lot. Now virtualization open to everyone. Now lot of virtual appliances are in open virtualization format (OVF). VMware workstation 7.1 is compatible with the OVA or OVF file formats. You can import those file formats and work with out an issue. (Oh if you are wondering what is the difference between OVA and OVF….Its very simple. OVA is nothing but tar file that contans OVF file inside. )

But anyway sometimes you might hit in to “OVF Descriptor file could not be parsed” error, when you are opening a OVA file in vmware workstation. Its quite a dead end when its come to vmware workstation. Log’s contains very minimum amount of data. I came across this issue back in 2008 with vmware workstation 6.5 but today I was working with a OVA file, again I got the same error again. To tell you the truth I don’t know that actual technical issue behind this error massage. But I know the solution for this.

VMware have a tool called “VMware OVF Tool” this is a command line based tool. You can download this for free from VMware. Its available for windows as well Linux. To create virtual machine from this OVA file its very simple. Just type

ovftool <Location of OVA> <Virtual Machine Location>

In the destination folder now you can see the vmx file. Just open the vmx file from the vmware workstation.

GNS Work Bench

2011-05-11T14:07:00.001+04:00

I know I have to complete OCS post series. But these days I’m kind of pressured on my studies. So don’t expect long posts from me. But I came across this nice utility for simulating router platforms.

I still remember when I was doing CCNA back in 2005 we had BOSON router simulator was my savior. But when I was studying for the CCNP it was very hard to work with that. Yes I was not gifted with real routers and stuff on those days.

In that time one guy shared a link in one of the forums about running Cisco IOS files through a software. that is nothing but the Dynagen. In that time it was capable of running 7200 series IOS images only. And when I run 4 routers my CPU was on peak. there was different mechanisms on reducing the CPU utilization and all. It was a killer method to learn Cisco stuff. Because when we were using Boson or any other simulator main difficulty was IOS command availability.

In that time I was spending quite a bit of time on this Dynagen configuration. I had my own network topologies for different kind of labs. I shared those on forums and if some one wondering y I still keep my forum and most of my public usernames to rc7200 is this dynagen developments. When I was lecturing CCNA I used these topologies a lot. comparing to the lab facilities that I had in lab everyone liked my topologies more than the crappy lab equipment's.

But anyway yesterday night I wanted to run gatekeeper for some testing. So I thought of trying out GNS 3 a nothing but a sugar coated front end for Dynagen. When I was googling I came across this vmware appliance called “GNS work bench”. Wish I had time to write a review for that. but for more information go to

http://rednectar.net/gns3-workbench/

So far my experience is mind blowing…..indian will say mind blasting No crazy CPU spikes and the best part is its having labs for CCNA. and if you are CCNA student this is your gem. You don’t have to spent money on crappy router simulators.

Enjoy

VMware Workstation 2011 AKA Ver 8

2011-05-11T12:14:00.001+04:00

I’m not going to write anything I don’t want to violate NDA

But one word virtual box S**K it

OCS 2007 R2 (Idiot’s Guide) Pt 02

2011-05-03T13:33:00.001+04:00

Thanks for all the feedback you have given to me. I know I suppose to write the 2nd part few days back. But I was kind of busy over CUCM 8.5 and the new found love that I have for the Opeth.

Ok we have a out DC up and running. Now we are going to prepare this DC for OCS 2007 R2 installation. As I explain earlier im using windows 2008 R2 Service pack 1. If you just popped in OCS R2 2007 DVD on any other operating system such as windows 2003 or windows 2008 you can skip this step. Because installation wizard of OCS is so user friendly it will install all the missing components such as VC++ and .NET packages.

But if you tried to install .NET 3.5 on windows 2008 R2 machine it will give you an error.

“You must use the Role Management tool to install or configure Microsoft .Net framework 3.5 SP1”

Because windows 2008 R2 comes with .NET 3.5. You just have to Enable it. Go to settings –> Under Programs select turn windows features on or off. It will open a New MMC window called The Server Manager. Then click on features and click add features. Select .NET Framework 3.5.1 features and proceed with the wizard. There you go now you have .NET 3.5 in the Domain Controller.

Note – You have to do this on every windows 2008 R2 server that you are planning to add for the OCS R2 suite. In my case I ll be using another windows 2008 R2 server for the back end server. But for other servers OCS wizard it self will install the missing components such a VC ++ and .NET

Ok we are ready to say hello to our most user friendly wizard !!! Yeah I love this wizard. Go to your DVD –> OCS2007R2 –> Setup –> amd64 and select depoyee setup. Deployee stands for the Enterprise Edition where deployse stands for the standard edition. In this process im going ahead with the EE.

Click on Prepare environment.

Click Prep Schema. It very straight forward wizard just click run it will do everything for you. At the end of wizard there is a check box you can enable it and see the status of the installation. I love this log file mechanism.

Skip the step two where you are doing manual checks on the schema replication. This is my lab and this is only Domain controller so no replication. Moving along to the step 3 where we are going prepare the domain according to the OCS requirement. Go ahead with the wizard. Select location to store global settings. I will select the default option which is “Configuration Partition”

Key here is go ahead with the default configurations. Don’t try to change anything if you are not familiar with the DC configuration. In the next windows wizard will detect your domain.

At the next level automatically wizard will populate the “SIP Domain” according to your domain name configurations.

You are almost done. at the next level it will summarize what you have done up to now. Finish the wizard. All right we are done with the Forest Preparation now we are moving to Prepare the domain by clicking on the “Prep Current Domain. Another simple wizard. At the end of this point we are done with the preparation.

If you remember in the part one I have install the DNS with in the Domain controller. I’m going to add 3 DNS records that are specific to the OCS R2 instance. First one will be sipinternaltls” This record will make sure that MOC clients will login automatically. Go to your DNS service via administrative tools. Expand “Forward Lookup Zones”. Right click on the domain (voss.net in my case) and select add “Other new records” And specify the settings as per the screen shot.

Don’t worry about the “host offering this service” part. It is nothing but the name of the pool that you are going implement. You can always change this. I’m planning to go ahead with the name R2pool01 and the domain name. Port number is 5061 that is for the TCP – SIP over TLS.

In next step will be adding two host records one for the pool and other one is for the sip.domain name. Both should resolve to the IP of the front end server

Next activity will be installing certificate authority in domain controller. For that task please refer this link

http://aaronwalrath.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/install-an-enterprise-certificate-authority-in-windows-2008-r2/

Nothing specific just a regular CA.

In next post I will write about SQL installation for the backend server.

How I felt about Black Water Park ?

2011-05-01T16:52:00.000+04:00

First of all Who I’m to write album review ??

but still I thought of writing about the Opeth’s 5th studio album Black water park. I heard this album (Yes Heard) in 2003. In Sri Lanka its hard to stay up to date when its come to Heavy Metal. In those days I was on 16.8 Kbps dial up connection. So online download was not a option and you tube was growing back then. Anyway past is past. I start listening again to this on last Thursday night. (Yes alone in my apartment in the middle of my routers, IP-Phones and Laptops)

This album took me out in emotional roller coaster. Very few bands were able to do that up to now. If some one claims being a metal head means having long hair, wearing a black t-shirt and head bang on every note that u hear I’m not a metal head. In my view metal head look at the society through a conceptual frame work. That conceptual frame work is something defined by him self. For some person it can be very dark theme like wearing a inverted cross and cursing god to creating this world. (Do we really have to think about it now ? ) For someone it can be his arrogant attitude. For someone it’s depression or isolation.

If some one asked from me why I listen to metal I will reply saying my adrenaline rush and traditional Sri Lankan society drag me in to my arrogant mood. But when things started collapse around me, when so called friends disappeared in thin air, when care givers becomes care takers, my arrogant attitude and the passion that I had for technology bought me out from my own emotional prison. Stop the crap Ravindra you are doing it again !!!!

Opeth is a Swedish progressive death metal band. Bit heavy if you are listening linking park or Jay Z. For more information about the band go here . Black Water Park is their 5th studio album which was released in 2001

Journey began with the “Leper Affinity”….That track started with some ambiance feeling slowly ascending to higher and higher and breakup with growling vocals and highly distorted guitars….amazing guitar solos in the middle and end up with soothing piano part. When I listen to the growling vocals I felt like this guy talk about a Rape. Ha ha ha I guess not. This song narrates a person who has died and been buried.

We entered Winter once again
Naked, freezing from my breath

If you think like you gonna live forever….if you cant wear unbranded t-shirts….This is for you. One day we will leave everything. So be good be happy and life is short.

Continuing the tempo next track is “Bleak” Growling sounds….soothing piano and amazing memorable guitar riffs. When I listen for the first time I felt like a murder scene. But vocalist explains a dying relationship which was killed by hate and anger. I will say I have a lesson here.

And music variation begins with the 3rd Track “Harvest” its such mood drifter. Very clean vocals. This track comes with nice amount of jazzy touch.

From this point onwards “The Drapery Falls”, “Dirge for November” really slow things a down. I have write a word about “Dirge for November”. Its such an emotional song. Start with clean cut vocals. It will continue the acoustic touch for one minute and BAM !!! amazing guitar riffs and growling sounds.

“Funeral Portrait ” very heavy metal grove. It kind of power metal touch. Next track “Patterns in the IVY” is one minute instrumental. really sooth you down. Calm you down and it will make sure you are ready to accept the heaviest of all. The Title track “Black Water Park” Its start with one note……when you concentrate it grows in to 12 minute long distorted guitars and amazing drum combination with the key boards.

I really have mix comments about the lyrics. Some are amazing some are quite raw…. but who I’m to judge the writer. But I love Black water park !!! up to now my favorite track was “Nemesis” by arch enemy…..Sorry angela you are out of the list. Enjoy !!!

Cisco Unified Communicaitons manager and Cisco Unity Connection 8.5 installation in vmware workstation

2011-04-30T18:13:00.001+04:00

Hmmm I know nothing so specific to UC8 and vmware. Recently I was having a chat with one of my friend. He told me that he faced some issues on Cisco unified communication’s software installation in vmware workstation. As I explain in one of my previous posts UC 8 products installation on Vmware workstation should be quite easy. But I heard lot of fuzz about installing unity connection 8 on vmware and recently one of my office mate told me about post installation issues such as ETH 0 of the CUCM or CUC is not coming up properly.

CUCM \ CUC is well capable of handling 64 bit processor architectures. But when you are installing UC8 products on vmware workstation you should create virtual machines with 32 bit support. Specially with 8.5 versions. Later part you have to install vmware tools inside these virtual machines.So this is very important that you select as “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4” in the wizard.

Select the file path to save your virtual machine. Assigning hard disk space is tricky. If you are planning to install just CUCM 8.5 you a can assign 80 GB hard disk. But when you boot from the DVD you will notice that Unity Connection option is disabled. To install unity connection 8.5 under vmware workstation, you have to assign 160 GB hard disk. As a best practice I assign 2 GB memory for any Cisco product. (Yes yes I’m bragging I have 16 GB memory in my laptop). So as per the screen shot now you can see CUCM and CUC options are enabled.

Before you proceed with the installation make sure that you have NTP server in your environment. Your installation will stop at the NTP server verification level. There is no way to by pass that. Go through the wizard finish the installation. Enable the services. Start registering phones. But fun begins if you restart the virtual machine !!!

You will notice that you don’t have network connectivity to your virtual machine. (Don’t get excited its not your virtual machine configuration issue) Look at the below screen shot.

It allows you to ping after eth0 initialization but it stops after sometime. CUCM 8.5 is the first virtualization ready version. Looks like it comes with vmware tools as well. If you are new to vmware, vmtools is like a driver package. To verify this you can execute

utils vmtools status

Looks like this vmtools package causing us this issue. To correct this we have to upgrade the vmtools. Click on the VM –> Update VM Tools. It will mount the correct driver package inside your vm. If you select wrong operating system at the first level then vmware workstation will mount incorrect vmtools inside the CUCM.

Then execute

utils vmtools upgrade

Then it will give a warning press Y and proceed with the wizard. It will uninstall the currect vmtools package and it will install the correct vmtools package that matches to the vmware workstation.

Hmmm it took more than 5 minutes. But anyway problem resolved. Ok guys you have to do the same for unity connection as well. After the upgrade execute

utils vmtools status

Now you can see the new version is being installed to the CUCM. No more network issues.

Hope this was some good information for you. Enjoy !!!.

OCS 2007 R2 (Idiot’s Guide) Pt 01

2011-04-28T12:59:00.002+04:00

Hmmm this will be a long series and I don’t know how far I ll write this. But I thought of giving it a try

I was going through much documentation related to Microsoft OCS and Lync configurations. But I understood all those documents require some sort of pre knowledge of each and every technology. But we all aware lot of voice engineers who are interacting with Microsoft unified communication technology’s they do not have prior knowledge about AD, SQL server and all those crap. Let’s face the facts guys we are look at signaling and type in the CLI where Microsoft clicking here and there on fancy GUI’s :-P

Ok As per a start first things first. Installing Active directory service we all know all Microsoft services are attached AD. That’s one of the great facts I really admire when it’s come to Microsoft. In this series I ll be focusing OCS 2007 R2 Enterprise edition. Standard edition will be in another series

In this example I’m using windows 2008 R2 Enterprise edition for the active directory.

01. I have logged in to the windows server then to command prompts and i execute "dcpromo" it will take me through a wizard (yes i love these wizards). It will show the following details about new security policies of windows 2008 R2 Domain controller. For your reading

02 . This is a new infrastructure so select “Create New domain in a new forest”

03. Specify the fully qualified domain name as per your requirement.

04. In the next window we have to specify the forest functional level. This setting is very handy if you are having old domain controller such as windows 2000 (good old days….I still love it cos I did MCSE on that ). but for the OCS 2007 R2 minimum requirement is windows server 2003. So I ll set according to that.

05. Next one is to set the domain functional level. for the OCS functionality we have to set it up as “windows 2003”

06. since I don’t have a DNS server I will have to install one for this domain. So I will use this wizard to go through that. put the check box for the DNS server and go ahead.

7.Then it will give an error about authoritative parent zone. Yes indeed we don’t have another DNS servers in this lab so accept it and continue by clicking yes.

8. In this window it will ask for the file locations of AD database and log files. just accept as it is. we don’t want to have advance setups in this labs. Its just to have OCS .

9. Ok we are done with the active directory now. (The easiest part of the whole process)

10 next one is to add more servers to the domain. We will need many servers as we progress through this test. But for the first level labs I will use two more servers. one is for the OCS backend (OCS-BE) which we will install SQL server 2005. For the backend I will user windows 2008 R2. Other server will be OCS frontend (OCS-FE). For that I will use windows 2008 (not R2) or windows 2003. To add these servers to the domain right click on the my computer and click on the “Computer name, Domain and workgroup settings” then click on the change button. in that window specify “Computer Name” and the domain name and click ok. Then it will ask for windows domain credentials for the VOSS.NET domain which we created before. You will have to do it for the all the servers that you will add to this domain.

Right shuh !!! done with the first part. Will continue tomorrow with the DNS settings for all the servers.

Wife Of CCIE To Be ....by Muhammad Zubair

2011-04-27T17:51:00.004+04:00

Guys this is not my creation but this is really good you will really understand this if you are in to this crazy lab exam. Thank god that im not married :)

Enjoy

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Loneliness, boring hours and silence is for me,
meet me I'm the wife of a CCIE-to-be,

Nothing to do but to read the stories of wizards and witches,
while my husband stare at his routers and switches,
...
My days have become long and drab,
only because he has to give his lab,

To him I wouldn't look so dull and drony,
If only he'd leave alone his IP Telephony,

For me, no outing no romance no disco,
ah! how I hate this word "CISCO",

We could better discuss and plan OUR future,
but no! he's more interested in MPLS architecture,

I love him with all my heart and body and soul,
but he has eyes only for the routing protocol,

I have to beg him to take me to a mall,
between him and me is always a "firewall",

My good old "Cisco-free" days are lost in a mist,
I sure wish I could use his "access list",

My woes are as vast and as deep as a sea,
meet me I m the wife of a CCIE-to-be.....

Cisco UC 8 Products on VMware.

2011-04-03T14:21:00.003+04:00

I know my previous blog posts were quite famous for UC + vmware stuff. still when i check statistics google have bought fair bit of users for those technical aspects. i remember back in 2007 everyone questioned what is the correct method to install Cisco Call Manager 4.2 on top of vmware. i think there were two or three pretty confusing methods to do that. But anyway im wondering who really wants to install CCM 4.2 now. Everybody talks about CUCM 8 and the next big thing where Cisco UCS + Cisco UC. Lot of people under the impression that this is a new approach. of-course not !!! Cisco UCS is nothing but a server with intel processor and virtulization oriented design. But key point that everybody missing is the operating system that we are using to deal with this hardware. That is hyper-visor that sits on top of the heardware. vmware ESX !!!. So i asked this question from my self. What is the big fuzz. it was there. But anyway it took me some far in the memory lane.

I installed Call manager 6.0 on top of vmware ESX 3.0 back in 2007. But there were no Cisco documents that explained those. So my testing was quite handy on those days. Thanks for that i did my first POC on CUCM 6.0 on top of vmware ESX, and later part i installed CUPS 6 too. For both virtual machines i used HP DL 380 G4 server with 4 GB memory. Ah good old days.

But when i look at the today situation i feel like laughing my ass off. Because now everything is virtualized and its the biggest thing. But one more heads up installing CUCM 8 on ESX is not that straight forward like it used to be. You have to download the OVA template create the virtual machine in vSphere. That will have the proper configuration that is designed by Cisco for specific software. For example i have notice difference OVA templates for the CUCM and Unity Connection. This is quite a good approach specially for the users that doesn’t believe in the virtualization. Still some people thinks virtualization means running EXCHANGE and ISA under single windows 2003 instance.

And i have notice there is quite a process when you are installing these products on the little monster (vmware workstation). i will document these process in my future blog posts.

How to use Cisco IP communicator in remote desktop

2011-03-30T21:43:00.000+04:00

Anyway this is a cheap post :)

purely this is only for testing. Recently one guy asked this question from me. All of sudden my mind said this is possible. When i was working back in 2007 i played a cheap trick related to remote desktop. I wont talk about it….it was very embarrassing.

Procedure is this. When you start CIPC it will check for the audio components. in case where it cant load that it will get failed. Simple procedure. From the CIPC prospective you cant escape from this check. There is one configuration change that you can perform on the remote desktop connection. Before opening the remote desktop session. click on the options and go to local resources.

Then configure the remote audio settings. It will try to play audio from the PC that you are trying logging from. But change setting from “Play on this computer” to “Play on remote computer.” This will force CIPC to use audio device that available in the remote pc. that mean if you make call to that CIPC and if you start talking you can hear it from the remote machine instead of the machine that you logged from. Its not a good process but still we can use this for the testing.

Hope this helps to someone.

How to find the unity connection APP ADMIN username

2011-03-30T17:13:00.000+04:00

I know i’m not writing as i used to do. But i thought of dropping a quick note today about a unity connection. Today i wanted to test a sip integration between CUCM and CUC. But unfortunately i forgot the APP Administrator’s username. yeah yeah i know i suppose to have one username for all the Cisco unified communication boxes. (Silly Me)

But i knew they platform administrator username and the password. My next option will be running “utils reset_ui_administrator_password” along with the app admin username. But if you forgot the username this command not gonna help you at all. so I have to find the username first to run that utility. (A dead lock isnt ?)

Mighty SQL to the rescue

run cuc dbquery unitydirdb select * from tbl_alias

that command will list down all user accounts. From the get the correct administrator username. In my case it was ccmadmin (Yeah Yeah i know im a lazy ass sometimes) then i ran the utility as

utils reset_ui_administrator_password ccmadmin

Then configure the new password. and log in again.

I blog about this early morning because i didnt had proper sleep last night due to bad stomach and this stupid issue really ruined my morning for me. Have a nice day people.

Back To Blogger

2011-03-30T16:33:00.004+04:00

I tried to banned this blog and continue in the word-press. But i was keep on getting buzzes from my geeks regarding this blog. many thanks for that. still lot of people comes to this blog compare to my word-press one. i don't know the reason. But working with blogger always being easy. taking care of two blogs is hectic. i ll be using this blog from now on :)

Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Many thanks.

Non Technical Update

2010-11-14T08:08:00.003+04:00

Howdy :-)

its almost 3 months for my UAE picnic. So finally i decided to go ahead with the CCIE. there is no better time. now or never. I have went through a hell in this year. But i found my way back to the place that i came from. Always i had a faith about my self than religions and so called self deployment crap. I always screamed in confidence. But what will you do when you lost that confidence. Give up ? Today i tell you Self deployment methodologies are not crap. it gave me peace after hell lot of suffering. It was so instant and I'm surprised how much garbage that i have carry for last 26 years. all will unfold when the right time comes.

one thing for sure im back in the horse and I'm riding it so fast that you may not see me. Adioz guys.

(Sorry if you thought this is another technical update. Those will start to come again)

Recovering CISCO OS password.

2010-06-03T13:21:00.002+04:00

Hi Guys,

Im on quite break at home and having sometime for testing. I wanted to test more things related to Linux. Yeah Yeah You guys know how much i hate linux. But i thought of give it a shot (Since i love CLI)

But its not the case here. I found some old CUCM 6.X vmware images that i created for a testing. Then i though of using those but unfortunately i could not remember the OS password in another words platform administrator password.

Did some googling and im mazed how much wrong information that people have provided regarding this error. So this is the procedure that i used it took 5 minutes trust me less than that.

login to your CUCM vm using username pwrecovery and password pwreset. Then it will ask you to remove cd rom media and press anykey. (Yes any key is not in the key board) and then enter cd rom and press any key. and then its a peace of cakes. it will tell u the username of the admin and then you can specify the new password.

How sweet is that. Ok guys back to the shell. :-)

CUCM 8 Beta on Vmware

2010-02-06T12:12:00.002+04:00

Hello Guys,

My first post in the new year. :-)

Yes i got a beta version of CUCM 8. This article will cover only the installation aspect of the CUCM 8.
In this exercise i used vmware workstation 7.0. I just create a virtual machine as we are creating for the CUCM 7 with basics settings for redhat OS with 1024 MB of ram.

I just boot it from the DVD image. These screens are much more similar like the other linux based CUCM's. But i notice one important fact. that is NTP server configuration.

In other CUCM version we could set the publisher as the main NTP source. But in this case we cant set the publisher as the NTP server. When its asking for the NTP servers (you can give up to five NTP servers) i try t give the same IP of the publisher. but later part it gave a error and ask for the NTP server again. then i gave the IP address of the router that i have setup as a NTP source. Then installation went smoothly.

I saw some different in the CLI as well. when user logs in to the platform administration it will tell the current hardware configuration. In my case that is vmware and 1024 Mb ram. But personally i feel this taking much more resources than the other CUCM version.

Next experiment was i tried to run this with low memory (768MB). Then CUCM gave a error in the boot saying that it does not have enough memory to run and recommending 1024 MB ram . But user can confirm that its gonna run with low memory. But performance sucks big time. i ll come up with more updates. :-)

BFN

Network Active Webserver

2009-12-29T23:41:00.002+04:00

Hi Guys,

Hope you are having a great holiday time. Anyway for me holidays means more testing.

These days im doing some testing on QOS. To test my policies i had to get some HTTP and FTP traffic flows. But unfortunately i could not setup the web server in my machines. Cos i have left the XP cd's at office. So no chance of installing IIS. I start using Google for suitable web server. I cam across few including apache and X-server.

But those were bit complexed. all i required was just to transfer 1GB file as HTTP and FTP traffic. after all this hazel i installed network active web server, i'm pretty impressed i should say. withing 2 minutes of time my web server was up and running.

have a look. this is the easiest web server configuration that i have ever done. anyway i dont know about the scalability but this is toooo easy to setup. Happy holiday people.

here's the link.

http://www.networkactiv.com/WebServer.html

Back to Back E1 for testing

2009-10-28T04:28:00.002+04:00

Recently i bought 2 nos of NM-HDV modules for setting up my CCIE lab.

Ah no forgetting 5 nos of PVDM chips.

i have plug that module in to my Cisco 2621-XM routers for testing.

I really wanted to play around voice E1 and links for sometime.

so i used a cross cable to connect both the VWIC-MFT E1 cards back to back.

then i did this configuration on the first router.

R1(config)#
!
isdn switch-type primary-qsig
!
controller E1 1/0/0
pri-group timeslots 1-31
!
interface Serial1/0/0:15
no ip address
encapsulation hdlc
no logging event link-status
isdn switch-type primary-qsig
isdn incoming-voice voice
isdn bchan-number-order ascending
no cdp enable
!

and in the other router

R2(config)#
!
controller E1 1/0/0
clock source internal
pri-group timeslots 1-31
!
interface Serial1/0/0:15
no ip address
encapsulation hdlc
no logging event link-status
isdn switch-type primary-qsig
isdn timer T310 120000
isdn protocol-emulate network
isdn incoming-voice voice
no cdp enable
!

run sh isdn stat for the verfication.

Cisco IP Communicator and windows XP 64bit

2009-07-03T11:15:00.002+04:00

Guys recently i upgrade all my machines to 4 GB memory and i installed windows xp 64 bit version with SP1 there. it was very successful. i install cisco ip communicator. It was working fine without any error. i could make calls and receive calls.

But one of LAB buddies complained me about installation issues of the CIPC. and he has use windows XP 64 bit with the service pack 2. later he moved to XP 64 bit SP1 version and had no errors.

So guys looks like we cant install CIPC in windows xp 64 bit SP2. thats for your reference guys.

Hope that will help you out.

Hmmm Ubuntu 9.04 and My HP pavilion TX 2000

2009-05-02T09:51:00.003+04:00

Yes i installed ubuntu 9.04.

Anyway im not a Linux fan at all. But when windows 7 is in the corner i really wanted to see how Open source heroes have replied to the Microsoft challenge.

First of all i have to say im pretty impressed by the efforts.

In 8.10 installation in was some what hard to configure Ubuntu....No wireless, No Speaker, Graphics sucks. there were lot of workarounds for that but for a Linux newbie like me it was bit hard.

out of the box Speaker is not working at all. for that i had to do the same old work around.

For the wireless and graphics i had to go to "hardware Drivers" and install the suggested driver. After that it start working with out any issue.

And did a SAMBA config to share my files with the windows machines in my LAB. after that, no issues. everything went smoothly.

The following video that i have found in youtube which is really east and interesting approach.

hope it will help for SMB configs. :-)

ESXi vs XEN

2009-04-06T22:04:00.004+04:00

I been using Vmware virtual infrastructure 3 for sometime anyway its not the product for personal usage :-). ya of course reason is the price. anyway for the practice purposes i have manage to install ESX in IBM x 346 server. No issue there works like a charm. i have one HP NC 6400 laptop. and i knew i cant install ESX there cos of the restricted hardware compatibility. but then came to my mind about the free ESXi. lot of people were saying that this some sort of revolutionized product. so i thought of giving it a shot.

Unsuccessful !!!!

It was saying that "Storage device was not supported".

Then i gave up i did google for some info related to that. but no luck. Then i thought of trying out XEN server 5.0. I downloaded the ISO from the web and start installing. No errors nothing. it got installed in 5 mins. But i tried to create virtual machine for the CUCM 7. for that i have to a allocate 80 GB Hard driver. i have assign 80 GB hard but its showing somewhere around 36 GB. i still dont have any idea about it.

But after that i installed XP virtual machine. It got installed after that i manage to install XEN tools top of that.

I think its time to pay some attention to XEN server. It has change a lot and its in a position to challenge VMware and Hyper -V

Installing Cisco Unified communications manager in VMware.

2009-04-05T08:53:00.003+04:00

Yes you can install CUCM 7.0 in vmware. Procedure is similar as CUCM 6.

Create New virtual machine and select guest operating system as "Red hat Linux 4".

Select what ever location you want to save your VM.

Select 1024 of Ram. select what ever Network type you need. im using Bridge Networking :-)

Use LSI logic as the SCSI adapter type. Then select SCSI disk type. And allocate 80 GB hard disk.

ya then you good to go. But there is one issue in this CUCM 7.0.1.11000 disk. You cant install this top of Vmware where you are running AMD processors. You can start the instalation but in the middle it will give a error. this might get corrected in next releases.

And one more thing. you dont need license for this installation. automatically you will hv the license by the time u finish the installation.

DMA tool

2008-10-07T21:38:00.008+04:00

DMA tool hmmmm i hate this tool in first place. what i feel is this is not user friendly as we are expecting. Anyway expecting everything in a easy way is not good for IT professionals.

Basically DMA stands for "Data Migration Assistant". This is very basic tool that we are using for the Cisco Call manager upgrade process. SO far Cisco has two types of call manager platforms. one is on windows platforms and the other one is on Harden Linux appliance base platforms.

Cisco call manager 3.X and 4.X was on windows and the 5.X , 6.x and 7.x on linux based. when you want to upgrade call manager version that is running on windows platform to Linux based platform you have to run DMA tool and it will give a .TAR file. when you are installing any of Linux based call managers it will ask from you whether "this is upgrade from windows based call manager" you have to say yes and then it will ask the IP of the SFTP or FTP, or else directly attached tape drive. i haven't try the tape drive yet. but i have tried the SFTP and FTP methods.

In my personal experience is don't format the publisher. go ahead and try it on a another MCS server. Your current publisher should be your fall back plan :)

When you are taking the DMA backup it will show you the status. It should be backup successful and validation successful. it is very important. But that doesn't mean that you gonna install CUCM directly. You might experience lot of bugs. (like i have experience )

So best thing is that you should not format the publisher because those bugs results you in deleting or modifying some files in CCM 4.2. So keep your publisher until you done with CUCM installation.

Cisco IOS hidden command.

2008-09-12T06:26:00.003+04:00

Greetings guys. i was absent for son long isn't ? Yeah i lost the edge of the earth and fall in to black hole where i cant see the light anymore. WTF ??.

Forget it guys. Here is the story. You know how i hate to work with ISDN and reading Debug reports ? but i had to do it on last few days. The main reason was that i have upgrade the call manager 4.2.3 cluster to 6.0.1 cluster. i have lot of things ti write about that. its one hard week in my life. the main issue was when Extension dials to PSTN. Call flow is from

IP phone --> CUCM 6.0.1 --> H.323 GW --> Telco

when user dials from Extension it goes to call manager after that it goes to H323 GW. when PSTN user hangup the call my Extension should get disconnect automatically. But what happens is once PSTN user disconnect the line its showing the time count of the phone. (like i'm on the call with the user.)

i have run debug isdn q931. i was searching for the call clearing massage from the telco end. but i'm getting the clearing massage. then finally had to get the help from cisco tac. and they instruct me type a hidden command.

voice call disc-pi-off

after that problem got solved. i'm wondering how many hidden commands there in cisco ios. any idea ??

How to install Dyanagen on the Ubuntu 8.04

2008-06-13T11:00:00.002+04:00

This is the main reason that i have choose to install Ubuntu over windows. Lot of guys at hacki forum says linux is the best for this software.

Installing dynagen in Ubuntu is somewhat easy. i went to the

Systen --> Administration --> Synaptic package manager

through the Synaptic package manager you can search for the packages for your installation. i searched for the Dyanagen and automatically i got both the dynagen and the dynamips. i select the both packages and i moved with the installation. it took somewhere around 5 mins to get installed under my ADSL connection.

Then i transfer the extracted IOS image to ubuntu os.

after that create a test lab. for that you can gedit text editor. like in windows you have to specify where is the IOS images and the working directories. once everything done you can execute dynamips -H 7200 & [1] 15052

then from the location where your .net file located you can execute dynagen test.net. then my dynagen lab start working. looks like it was easy. i applied the idlepc values also. cpu usage is around 20%. thats what i wanted.

Ubuntu Grub Error when multiple disks located in your pc

2008-06-13T10:31:00.004+04:00

I have wrote earlier about the installing Ubuntu using the WUBI installer. i installed it to my laptop and to one of my desktop. but when i tried to install it to my other pc i got a error. it got installed successfully with out giving any errors. But when im loading ubuntu from the boot menu its says :-

root (hd1.3)ubuntu/disks.
ERROR 22 : No such partitions

i was wondering hd should be "0" right ?? not the one. so i pressed "e" key and went to edit the grub from the boot point. from there i edit it to the "disk 0" boot up the machine by pressing "0". then it start working. i was wondering why its taking my DISK 1 instead of DISK 0 ??

but anyway i logged in to my ubuntu installation using that trick and i have reconfig the grub so it will go to disk 0 with out going to disk 1.

"sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst"

I hope that will help you guys out.

First step towards the Cisco Unfied Personal Communicator - 1 (Intergrating LDAP with the CUCM)

2008-06-11T06:38:00.006+04:00

Cisco unified personal communicator (CUPC) is a software that facilitate Easily access voice, video, instant messaging, Web conferencing, voice mail, and presence information from a single, multimedia interface on your PC or Mac. i tried to installed this several times but i couldn't do it for various reasons. But now i have the CUCM and CUPS server with me. Those are the basic requirements for that CUPC needs.

First thing is to integrate the LDAP directory with the CUCM. It was some what easy comparing to the good old days of call manager 4.X. i remember that i had to run schema upgrade on the DC to import all the user accounts to the call manager. here theres no schema upgrades :)

Under systems theres a option called LDAP. from there you can enable the synchronization with the LDAP directory. there are two options to choose from. one is Microsoft AD as well as the Netscape or the Sun LDAP. in my case i choose MS LDAP. In the LDAP directory's you can create new LDAP directory.

From there i can add the name for the LDAP directory. Then LDAP Manager Distinguished Name as username@domain.name (administrator@test.lk). then you have assign the LDAP password. then set LDAP User Search Base as dc=domain; dc=name (dc=test; dc=lk).

As the LDAP server information you can set up the ip address of the server. and it will take the default communication port as 389. from there you can add the redundant LDAP directories also.

In the next option "LDAP authentication" you can add a directory information as you have given the previous screen. but any way i will attach screen shots of my setup.

What a way to install Ubuntu ......

2008-06-10T20:28:00.004+04:00

I know lot of people know me as anti Linux person as well as a Microsoft guy. Yeah im still MS guy and i have lot of respect for their products except for the Vista (ok thats not part of this post) I been testing Dyanagen cisco open source software for long time. And My friend Nanthi also tryed to install linux and test this. anyway before testing dynagen on linux i had to find which version im gonna use. I hate redhat for some reason. i always loved debian linux. thanks for the Anuradha Rathnaweera's lectures. ( Still love good old days, link for his blog :) http://anuradha.sayura.net/ )

Looks like Debian kernel comes in good package these days. thats nothing but the UBUNTU. then i download the ISO file of that. and when im searching for more information i found out this wonderful utility called as Wubi installer.

http://wubi-installer.org/

as it explains i copy ubuntu ISO image and ubuntu exe in to a separate folder i execute the setup. then it asking where to install. i had a partition of 50 gb and there was data of 30 gb. then i select that partition and i choose use only up to 10gb. i had a small fear of loosing the data because i had a tough time with my first Linux installation. but anyway i proceed with the installation. it took some where 20 mins to complete the set up on intel core2duo 2 ghz and 2 gb ram. when i reboot my lap after the installation i saw another OS option as ubuntu. but i was expecting grub. i select ubuntu from the list and i log in to the system. its using the same winxp user name and the password. (sweet isn't ?)

thats it. thats the whole process. i was blank for sometime. then i log in to my XP installation and check to where i have installed this OS. its in the same partition which i select and setup has create another folder for this setup and they have copy the whole ubuntu system files to a single folder within the partition that i have choose. it was nice experience. GUI is wonderful. But my main intension is to run VMware and the Dynagen there and check the performance. thats a another post.

ROCK on Brothers \m/

CUPs (Cisco Unified Presence)

2008-06-08T17:49:00.001+04:00

Hi guys another Boring technical information as usuals This is about Cisco Unified Presence. When im working everyday I'm messing with cisco call manager 4.X. I went through lot reading and I went through the CBT nuggets by Jeremy Cioara. But one day I heard from one of my customers that they going to buy Microsoft office Communication server (OCS). I was like what a F***?

yeah that was my impression. Then only I understood that People required more things than just the dial tone. Then I directly start reading about the new cisco unified communication products. Other than CCM and UNITY I didn't know that cisco is having very large set of UC softwares. I start doing it by using cisco unified call manager 6.X. As I mention in my previous post it was successful effort. But had a tough time on finding the features . They have put it here and there.

Installing presence on Vmware is not tricky. But before doing anything from the CUCM you have add presence server as a new application server. After that start installing the Cisco unified presence server. (CUPS). It will ask for you CUCM publishers information. After that it will start installing. It will take some time. I installed top of the Vmware ESX 3.5. I mounted my ISO from pc. It took more than 1 hour for the completion. In next time I copy the ISO image to VMFS. Then installation got completed with in 30 mins.

In my next post I will explain how to integrate presence with CUCM 6.x

Installing call manager 6.x(CUCM) in VMware

2008-05-19T19:08:00.003+04:00

Again VMware + CCM. yeah im having fun with these testing. i successfully installed call manager 6.0 in vmware without any issue. Yeah issue means no reg cracks no additional installations nothing. all you have to do is create Vmware machine with 72 gb hard disk and 1024 ram. After that CCM setup will give you a warning that this is not a supported hardware platform. Just wait till in finish the setup and start working with that.

Installing call manager 4.X in vmware

2008-05-18T18:02:00.004+04:00

Yes you can install call manager 4.x on vmware as well as on generic pc. by the way this is the last version of CCM's that you can install in generic pc's.
1. Create a virtual machine in vmware. Conflagration is hard disk space = 10gb Ram = 1gb or 512mb depending on your memory

2. Install windows 2000 server or advance server on the virtual machine. install service pack 4. dont forget to install vmware tools. that will improve the performance of the virtual machine.

3. install Microsoft virtual java machine. you can download it from this link. http://support.centra.com/msjavx86.exe

4. You have to run the registry crack. thats very important. copy following file to note pad and save it with the extension of .reg. after that merge it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems\Model]
"Hardware"="7825I03"
"Speed"="2800"
"Memory"="2048"
@="2048"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems\Spirian]
"Deployed"="0000000000000000"
"ProductKey"="BTOOVQESCCJUIEBI"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System Info]
"Security"=dword:00000003
"Hardware"="7825I03"
"Speed"="2800"
"Memory"="2048"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System Info\OS Image]
"Version"="2000.4.3a"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System Info\OS Service Release]
"Version"="2000.4.3aSR8"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System Info\OS Upgrade]
"Version"="2000.4.3a"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System Info\OS Upgrade\Patches]
"DevPackName"="2000.4.x.Common Package 06"
"DevPackType"="DP"
"DevPackRelease"="2000.4.3a"
"DevPackDeployed"="060000"
"PatchName"="2000.4.3aSR8"
"PatchType"="SR"
"PatchRelease"="2000.4.3a"
"PatchDeployed"="080000"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Spirian]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Spirian\System Info]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Spirian\System Info\OS Image]
"Version"="2000.4.3a"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Spirian\System Info\OS Service Release]
"Version"="2000.4.3aSR8"

through this crack its emulating as MCS7825 box. i have highlight line which add that to the configuration.
5. After that install shutdown.exe from this link
http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/utility/shutdown/
after that extract it to c:\utils\ directory. don't change this path for any couse.

7.Install Cisco OS 2000.4.4a Upgrade. this process will restart your pc once. if that happened you crack has worked successfully.

8. Everything done. So start installing call manager 4.x.

I think that will help you out guys. i want to install unity in this virtual machine i ll update you with the progress.

Traffic Generators

2008-02-09T10:20:00.000+04:00

when I'm doing call manager configuration i came across a very strange issue. call is initiating but with no way audio. as usual i checked SR versions and all. everything matching without any issue. then i came to know that my customer is having firewall between call manager publisher and subscriber. No way audio means theres a problem with UDP. thanks to SCCP i can see the call is generating. SCCP means its TCP. i ping both ends. there is no issue in that. i knew this is something related to firewall. but how to check UDP through firewalls.

then i thought of traffic generators. yeah i used one named as traffic emulator. and i used wireshark as the monitoring tool. i asked from lot of pros where i can find a traffic generator. no one didnt had a proper answer so i thought of listing traffic generators.

Mtools	http://www.grid.unina.it/grid/mtools/
MGEN	http://mgen.pf.itd.nrl.navy.mil
Rude/Crude	http://www.atm.tut.fi/rude
UDPgen	http://www.fokus.fhg.de/usr/sebastian.zander/private/udpgen
Iperf	http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/
UDP Generator	http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/qbone/generator.html
Network Traffic Generator	http://sourceforge.net/projects/traffic
MxTraf	http://mxtraf.sourceforge.net/
NTGen	http://tochna.technion.ac.il/project/NTGen_v2.0/html/index.htm
Netperf	http://www.netperf.org/
Traffic Generator Tool	http://www.postel.org/tg/tg.htm
TfGen	http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~yumo/pub/tfgen.html
Packet Shell	http://playground.sun.com/psh/
Real-Time Voice Traffic Generator	http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~msamidi/projects.htm
Self Similar Traffic Generator	http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~kramer/code/trf_gen1.html
PacGen	http://sourceforge.net/projects/pacgen/
IPGen	http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipgen/
IP-Packet	http://sourceforge.net/projects/ip-packet/
GenSyn	http://www.item.ntnu.no/~poulh/GenSyn/gensyn.html
Netspec	http://www.ittc.ku.edu/netspec/
Surge	http://cs-www.bu.edu/faculty/crovella/surge_1.00a.tar.gz
Poisson Traffic Generator	http://www.spin.rice.edu/Software/poisson_gen/
FTP traffic generator	http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~jishac/software/
Brawny and Rough Udp Traffic Engine	http://netgroup-serv.iet.unipi.it/brute/
Jugi's Traffic Generator (jtg)	http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jmanner/software/jtg/
TrafGen	http://www-lor.int-evry.fr/~vincent/java/trafGen/trafGenEn.htm
SPAK, Packet Generator	http://ww.xenos.net/software/spak/
TTCP, Test TCP	http://www.netcordia.com/tools/tools/TTCP/ttcp.html
PIM-SM, Protocol Independent Multicast Packet Generator	http://www.pim-sm-generator.com/
KUTE-- Kernel-based Traffic Engine	http://caia.swin.edu.au/genius/tools/kute/
GEIST - Generator of E-commerce and Internet server Traffic	http://kkant.ccwebhost.com/geist/

Finally CCVP completed.

2008-02-02T18:56:00.000+04:00

I had a tough time in last 8 months. I tried many times to finish this certification. But I was really busy with the projects and lecturing stuff. But finally I manage to nail the certification. First of all I want to tell something about this certification. I thought going for the security path. (I still want to go to that goal) but I found out that voice is really attractive side. Its challenging. People can live without their computers but not with out their extension. It is critical. This is a one big challenging career. I came this far thanks to one person that Dhammika. He is the one who gave me this vision. I study his Books and his experience. I’m thankful to everyone who supports me. What I can do is I have self study lot of things I will write those things one by one in this blog as a help to others.

F-Secure removal

2008-01-09T19:08:00.000+04:00

I have used F-secure for sometime now. But I thought of changing F-secure and try out the Node32. I installed it but I notice Memory consumption in Dr Watson. I was bit amazed why? After I went through all the sites forums I found a solution. There is a F-secure removal tool.

You can download it from this location.

http://support.f-secure.com/enu/corporate/downloads/removeav.shtml

after that machine got fast. Interesting isn’t it ?

Cisco IP communicator vs IP Blue for the testing.

2007-12-30T10:49:00.000+04:00

Finally i came up with something technical. we know for out testing we are using Cisco ip communicator. It is the only tool available right? (Yeah we can't buy 7971 for testing). But i have noticed from this communicator software peace we can’t test the features of the phone. Like what’s there in 7912 and what’s there in 7970. Solution is IP-BLUE. This is not a free software. but u can download limited version of IP-Blue from http://www.ipblue.com/. Only issue is u can’t have calls for more than 2 minutes from this version. Anyway we are not using this to make calls right. We are just using this for testing. i think this is the best tool so far. From the ip-blue phone you can select what sort of phone that it has to simulate. If u selects 7912 in the option and if u registers that in the call manager, it detects as 7912 phone not as a soft phone. (If we register Cisco ip communicator, It will be always ip communicator). It is really handy tool. I’m using it right now. it is a nice piece of software. Try it.

Imate Ultimate 6150

2007-12-22T13:29:00.000+04:00

i got this device. yay !!! i feel like im having my old jamin in my hand. this is a power house. i'm a big imate fan. but i dont know why mobile planet keep on bashing this wonderful product. i know this is bit bulky than jamin. but speed is something to think about. and other thing is WM6. man i been dying to use this WM6 ver. basically it is the same thing. But it is having some colorful updates. Ok here are the specs. go for it guys, it is a cool device.

General
Network
HSDPA / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
Announced
2007, February
Status
Coming Soon
Size
Dimensions
118.5 x 60.5 x 15.7 mm
Weight

Display
Type
TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Size
640 x 480 pixels, 2.8 inches

- Handwriting recognition
Ringtones
Type
Polyphonic, MP3
Customization
Download
Vibration
Yes
Memory
Phonebook
In shared memory
Call records
Yes
Card slot
microSD (TransFlash)

- 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM- Intel Bulverde 520 MHz processor
Data
GPRS
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD
No
EDGE
Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G
HSDPA
WLAN
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/e/i
Bluetooth
Yes, v2.0
Infrared port
Yes
USB
Yes, miniUSB
Features
OS
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Smartphone
Messaging
SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser
WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML (PocketIE)
Games
Yes
Colors
Silver
Camera
2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video

- Java MIDP 2.0- Stereo FM radio - Voice memo- Windows media player 10- Video/audio album- File manager- Built-in handsfree

IPTT exam passed

2007-10-09T21:09:00.000+04:00

Hi guys, do i have to say that I’m busy. i don’t think so. Anyway i had this fear of completing IPTT before expire date. But i manage to sit for this exam before one day for the expiration. heee heee i got like 985 for that. Most of the exam content came from Cisco unity and CCM configurations. Luckily i had the UNITY training from Global knowledge thanks to ETPL guys. Thank you so much guys. Credit should go out to my voice guru Dhammika.

Lot of guys asked what this status massage is saying that “PLAYING WITH THE VMware”. Keep your fingers cross man. Good things about to come.

Safari time

2007-09-09T08:08:00.000+04:00

Hi guys,

Yeah i'm bit busy ass always and couldn't write that much things. Thank you soo much for your mails and comments. I'm sorry i dont have time go through each comments and allow it. But we will see.
You know what i was fed up with the traditional web browsers. Mozilla was good. but i needed a change. SO i installed Safari. Man this has a nice layout. (Thats something you are getting with all the apple products) This browser was there for sometime now. First this was released with the mac. but now it is there for windows also. this is free product. i'm enjoying it. anyway i hate opera. not that much happy with the mozilla also. but never mind this is a product for test run.

See for your self
http://www.apple.com/safari/

Are you ready for the virtual catalyst ???

2007-08-29T21:34:00.000+04:00

Ok guys soon we ll be in a position to kick lab instruments and do everything virtually. Yeah i been counting my days to VM-WORLD. i know there will be announcements of enhancements to vmware current editions. but ....... guess what ? We going to see third party virtual switches in ESX family. then who is going to be the first to develop such thing ?? Of course its cisco.

here read more
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/07/cisco-to-announce-first-3rd-party.html

Ok vmware will give us a network with pc's and switches and how we going to interconnect these networks. We got DYNAMIPS / DYNAGEN which running on the real IOS images. cant wait for the key note of cisco CEO.
Looks like he is happy with the investment of 150 million dollars to vmware.

Need for Speed ver 1 to pro RACER !!!

2007-08-29T20:36:00.000+04:00

OK guys you know i'm not a hardcore gamer. There were only few games which i have played to the end. Like brother in arms and Red alert. but NEED FOR SPEED is the game which i have played from my youngest years. yeah true i still remember how i played nfs one and nfs two in my cyrix machine with 32 mb ram. ha ha ha good all days. but comparing to the graphics in those days need for speed two is the best.
Then we received NFS 3. but it didnt work well in my pc. got stuck. how can any one play that on 32 mb ram and 4 mb VGA. then we got ver 4. damn i couldn't even install this one on my pc. then i played it with my budy asantha on his home pc. yeah man we rock. we kick police cars and we challenged police helicopters. i still can here cops screaming Irresponsible driver crossing the south bridge need air assistance.
oh yeah then we got the best graphical game that we have ever scened. NFS 5 porche . wonderful game. and i remember My budy playing that game with one hand. (He got broken arm those days) then six came smiler to version 4 but graphics was cool. then we got the real challenge oh yeah i'm talking about the street racing . UNDERGROUND. lot of features was there like modify ur car with new gadgets. (i'm not that much genius in modifying cars)
then we got underground 2. yeah good game. Street gangs added to the game.
then MOST WANTED. yeah nice graphics. hardly played with my 128 radian card. then got the carbon . man i love it i love it i love it. graphics, sounds, story damn everything sooooo perfect. oh yeah i changed my VGA to 256 Nvidia 7200 to play this game.

Then we going to have pro racer.

it will release on 10/30/2007. i watched the trailer on youtube. this going to change the whole gaming experience. cant wait till i get this to my hand. ROCK ON BROTHERS

http://www.mylivesearch.com

2007-08-28T09:32:00.000+04:00

Wondering what my topic is ?

http://www.mylivesearch.com

man this is wonderful search engine which is still on beta stage. The difference between this and google is this is gving in the results which are available right now. normally google give you result set from its cache. but its not like that. amazing technology behind the screen. here is the link for see how this work ??

http://www.mylivesearch.com/how.php

CVOICE done.

2007-08-26T22:04:00.001+04:00

oh man more than glad to type this note on my blog. Finally i finished the first exam of CCVP. i got 925 . Credit should goes out to my voip guru Dhammika. thank you for everything bro. Thanks everyone who helped me out.
Peace

ETPL rocks.

2007-08-26T21:49:00.000+04:00

oh yeah. i know i'm bit late to write this note to my blog. but what to do i was really busy with my CCVP studies. We had a friendly 6 side match tournament with moratuwa university. no body thought that we will reach the second stage. but we came to finals. we couldn't win the final match. but we did our best. i had a nice time with the guys. Amila , Sara, Asanka (Ice cream) , Kanchana, Sanjeewa and Dhammika was our team. you guys rocks. Thumbs up for the ETPL.

Edit your windows mobile registry from the your pc's Keyboard

2007-08-19T11:07:00.000+04:00

The Mobile Registry Editor (MRE) allows you to remotely edit the Registry of an attached Windows Mobile device. By using MRE, you don't have to contend with your mobile device's interface to do the editing; you can do it from the relative comfort of your own keyboard.

The program requires the .NET Framework 1.1 to run and, of course, the presence of a Windows Mobile device to connect with. Once the program finds a suitable mobile device, it will display a screen similar to the classic Regedit application: in the left-hand pane a tree view, and in the right-hand pane a list of available values to edit from the selected key.

MRE lets you do many of the things that are possible in the conventional Regedit application: add or delete keys, change or rename values and copy information from the Registry to the clipboard. The program also has a feature -- a Favorites tab -- that's not present in Regedit. If you click on it, you can add shortcuts to commonly used Registry keys or values so you don't have to manually hunt for them later.

The current version of MRE is 1.1. Enhancements scheduled for future editions include the ability to import keys en masse via a .REG file (a broadly requested feature).

Re-starting windows with out restarting your pc

2007-08-17T06:53:00.000+04:00

A modern PC with Vista Home Edition takes about one and a half minutes to boot. An older machine with XP is about the same. That’s 30 seconds for the PC itself (the BIOS) to boot up, plus a minute for the Windows operating system to boot. Sometimes, you need to reboot Windows (e.g. when installing new software), but there is no need to restart BIOS, too. However, the default is to reboot both. (That’s called doing a “cold boot,” rather than a “warm boot.”) There’s a trick that works on both XP and Vista to get it to do a warm boot instead, thus saving you 30 seconds per cycle.

The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart.

Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice.

Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

Back on A+

2007-07-29T19:48:00.000+04:00

yeah im teaching A+ again. one my friend set me up with the class. but good to see the spirit of the young kids about the computers. they want to know more on every topic. i love to see that type of environment. that motivate me to do more . yeah now all i need is a good SQL class to teach then my gaps are filled

OH yeah JAQ3 babe

2007-07-12T19:05:00.000+04:00

hi guys , most of my close friends know that my imate jammin (core of my life) stop working in Singapore. damn dont talk about the last week. i used n70. dont talk about it man. nokia should know nothing can beat the windows mobile. ok guys after trading my imate jamin to the infinity (SL imate agents) i got the jaq3. actually i thought of moving my self to a imate pdal. small pda type phone. but no key board there. most of the time im using the word recognition tool. damn im writing on my mobile screen. thats freak me out. i have change 4 screen protectors in last 6 months. (DAMN)
So for a change i thought of going for the jaq3 model. this supports windows mobile 6.0 aka crossbow. (yay) i have use this tool for 5 hours when im writing my comment. this has micro sd. thats bad. cos i dont have micros sd card. My principle is no point of using a PDA as your music player. i tryed to use jamin as my walkman. damn i hate that sound quality. when i listen to slipknot i feel like im listen to amaradewa. (No offense guys). but when i listen to wait and bleed from that phone , man i felt like i m slipknot concert. sound quality is amazing.

here some videos from youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uokq3iE-Et8

c ya

VMware free tools

2007-07-08T08:01:00.000+04:00

No doubt vmware is one of the best virtual machine softwares in the world. but vmware client is is not for free. but i dont see any reason for worry about it. i been using vmware client ver 5.x for like two years. its good but i dont think that you should pay it and buy right now. they have two impressive tools called

1. VMWARE server
2. VMWARE player

vmware server is very similar to the vmware client. only difference is this is running on web based. and it needs IIS for that. perfomence wise its good in server operating systems . but not that god in xp. you can download this fro free and register your self there and get free serials. god tool if u cant find the client version.

vmware player is a small software which is using to play *.vmx files. vmx file is the configuration file which is used for the virtual machine. you cant create it with the vmware player. but dont get confused you got a a solution for that. go to http://www.easyvmx.com and create the vmx files. i'm not going to specify the mathod for that cos its very simple. thts it guys. if u have any problem u know wht to aight ??

Singapore training

2007-07-03T19:26:00.000+04:00

yeah yeah i went to Singapore for a training. that was a wonderful one week. at the first night i had a difficulty in finding hotel. but i found a hotel near sarangun plaza. i cant believe how this country has grow like this. anyway next day i went for the training in global knowledge. my friend chanaka wasn't a visitor for that place. he has come to many trainings here and whole staff of global knowledge know him.
then i met Mr. Lee our lecture. man i dont know what else there left for him to do. he has done million certifications and sharp techie. more than everything he is a good human as well as good Buddhist. he was our lecture, lab assistant, tour guide etc....
chanaka helped me a lot in this trip. he was like native Singaporean he know each and everything about Singapore. with out him i may not able to think about this journey with good memories. i must thank him for that. i'm new to voice technologies. he thought me lot of things about this field. i have lot of things to do after this training. and i dont have much time to tell more about this. c u sooooon guys

Linux 32bit vs 64bit

2007-06-10T08:49:00.000+04:00

after long time guys, you know how much i hate linux. i see lot of system guys say that linux is wonderful system. good security good speed. no arguments. (I know now lot of people has draft what they going to send me via mail. be patient guys) this is a simple issue which we came across Linux implementation project in CFHC. it is good to see government people shift in to linux. we cant effort cost of windows. i agree. but my point is linux is not organized up to end user level.
here this is small example which i came across. we have install linux to 40 computers and its working pretty good. for a expansion we bought another 10 pc's. when we are receiving those pc's windows xp (32 bit) was up running with out any problem . we have format those pc's and we install redhat linux 4 (32 bit edition). it didnt gave any error massages and worked with out giving any problem. but when we are shutting down pc it is not responding. (it is not showing how linux system kill process one by one.) just a black screen. CPU power indicators are working with out responding to my command. we tryed "poweroff - reboot - etc..". but problem stay same.
As a solution i install 64 bit edition. BAM now it is shutting down. but i still don't know the reason for that. my point is linux is still not organized for the end user level. still windows rocks. no one cant argue with that.

Are we ready for SATA ?

2007-05-31T17:30:00.000+04:00

Guys i'm going to tell you some funny thing about current storage method of most laptops. it is non other than the SATA. most of people who using notebooks have native sata support but non of them using this. in my presario c300 also having this feature. so i thought of enabling it and see the difference. according to HP guys i should get performance increase plus good battery life. (Who says no for such features ??) so i enable it and try to restart my pc. BAM !! i got the blue screen error saying my device drivers are not supported.

finally i found some device driver update on this link.

but when im installing this it gave me a error saying that ny chip set is not supported. but google came to rescue and i manage to use my sata facility. lot of users having this problem but no one was having the correct answer. but compiling all the data bits from net i got the solution. so here what i have done.

Here's how I did it on my presario c300 running Windows XP (32 Bit version):

- Download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software from HP's website, it is currently SP32492

- Run it, by default it will save some files to C:\swsetup\SP32492 before it runs setup and tells you that the software is not supported on your chipset

- Now open up a command prompt, go to C:\swsetup\SP32492\ and run the following command to extract the CAB files:

setup -A -P C:\swsetup\SP32492\

- Accept the license agreement, it extracts some files. The files you're interested in are now at C:\swsetup\SP32492\Driver\ and include the following:

iaahci.cat
iaahci.inf
iastor.cat
iastor.inf
iastor.sys
TXTSSETUP.OEM

- Now go to Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers you should see: Intel 82801GBM (ICH7-M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller

- Right-Click on that and select Update Driver
- Say no to connecting to Windows Update to search, hit Next
- Select Install fro a list or specific location (Advanced), hit Next
- Select "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install", hit Next
- Select Have Disk
- Browse to C:\swsetup\SP32492\Driver and highlight the iastor.inf file, hit Open
- Select OK
- Now you should have a list of controllers, for the Compaq presario c300. choose Intel 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller, hit Next
- You'll get warned that installing the device driver is not recommended, click Yes to continue installing
- Click Finish
- Click Yes to restart your computer

When your computer boots up, you need to hit F10 to enter the BIOS. Change SATA Native Mode to Enabled, save changes and exit.

After you log into Windows, your computer will find the "new" hardware. Wait until you get the popup message to restart your computer, say Yes to restart one last time.

That's it.

***** one of buddy's always saying that my lap top is a charter one. heee heee i guess now its not that much bad. ******

teaching MCSE

2007-05-19T19:29:00.000+04:00

Man do i have to say this ? i love lecturing MCSE. it is a good experience for me. they are lost and they don't have any idea what they have done buy starting this. I'm trying my best to help them to become a MCSE. once i was like them. i know how it feels

I-pod NANO vs Sony NW-S705F

2007-05-18T23:01:00.000+04:00

ok people wish list time. what u guys think about the topic. most of you thinking that i'm mad. yeah I-pod sux when ur comparing to the sound quality of Sony NW-S705F new mp-3 player. battery life is sooooo cool. 50 hours damn. it takes no time to charge. this is something handy to have in hand.
take a look

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Sony_NW_S705F_2GB_black__6633699

Virtual box vs Virtual pc

2007-05-18T22:32:00.000+04:00

I been using Virtual pc for quite a long time (from connectix VPC). but i wasn't satisfied about it. the amount of time it takes for installing a OS is no good at all. (At that time i was using 2Ghz intel processor with 1 gb memory) but it was a handy tool when i was doing my MCSE. But i always thought that there should be much better emulation tool. i have used vmware also. hmmm lets say no comments about it. (basically its the same thing.) i used virtual pc on duel core processor with 2 gb memory but i didnt got the result as i expected.

Now i'm using a software call virtual box. it is like a total different definition for the emulation. man this works like a real machine. will u believe that i have install this on my lap. configuration is 1.8 celeron mobile processor with 1 gb ram. but i running 3 windows 2003 servers. there are some problems like using the same hard disk on multiple virtual machines. but this is for free. thats the important thing. processer usage is very low. try this out guys.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

I hate boson router simulator - 01.

2007-05-15T08:06:00.001+04:00

I don’t see these things as bugs in this software. This error is there from the boson net sim 5.0. In 3560 switch you can get in to the fast Ethernet 0/1. We can specify port speeds duplex modes and everything. (ok that’s great). But we cant issue “show interface fastethernet 0/1” what type of joke is that. I have lot of bad things to tell you about the boson. But I ll write about it later.

Yeah this is it !!!! Cisco talks about dynagen project

2007-05-13T19:41:00.000+04:00

I been supporting this project since i complete my CCNA. Greg and Chris worked really hard to open the eyes of the CISCO people. F**K boson. BOSON era is over suckers. stop selling that crap for students. GNU still rocks. FOSS for life. this is the source link from cisco, if we could simulate cat 3560 with collaboration with cisco thats IT.

http://dfw.cisco-users.org/downloads.htm

Dynamips/Dynagen

Dynamips is a free software that emulates Cisco routers on your Windows PC. You can emulate multiple routers with Ethernet, Frame Relay, and ATM connections. The routers actually boot Cisco IOS. This meeting will be more of a demonstration than a presentation. The goals of the emulator are mainly: 1) To be used as a training platform, with software used in real world. It would allow people to become more familiar with Cisco devices, Cisco being the world leader in networking technologies. 2) Test and experiment the numerous and powerful features of Cisco IOS. 3) Quickly check configurations to be deployed later on real routers.

Dynamips Cisco router emulator - The Cisco 7200 Simulator
Dynagen - The Dynamips Configuration Generator. Download the Win XP Setup file - it include Dynamips.

Joe Harris, CCIE# 6200 (R/S & Security) - Cisco Systems - 2/7/2007

For the 100th time im starting another blog

2007-05-11T21:56:00.000+04:00

Guys i'm going to start another blog. i'm sorry i'm not that much of organized person. but here we go. here i'm attaching some of my old posts which i have publish in my previous blogs. Thank you guys.