Mounting VHD files in Windows for fun and exploration

This past week I was able to find a “smidgen” of time at work to apply myself on practicing some system-capture work with a forensic LiveCD.  More on that in a upcoming post.

Once I had my dd image file, I then had a number of Windows tools that allowed me to mount it and access/view it for “examination” practice.  Sure, I know that’s old-hat for your forensics professionals but it is cool and useful even to us system admins.

I routinely acquire and “on-line/off-line” mount ImageX WIM’s and can extract files, modify files in the WIM, and perform other actions.  Sure, because it is a file-based image, it isn’t a forensics level sector-based image but if some WIM’s were captured off a suspect system, these techniques would allow easy review and exploration of the contents.  Standard stuff.

That got me thinking; what options exist for mounting VHD files? 

VHD files can be quite interesting.  Not only do they contain “sector” remnants when items are moved/deleted internally to the VHD, but depending on how the VHD was created, it might even inadvertently have captured unused sector information from the original host physical device it was created on.

Or suppose a target was doing something tricky like dual booting Windows 7 on Vista via VHD file (or on Win7 for that matter).  Or maybe they are particularly geeky and attempting to evade a footprint by Running Windows from a USB flash drive via a VHD file (Hyper-V Server in that case).  Probably not a very common (or easy) thing to do but technically it looks possible.  And Vista/Win7 use the VHD format for “Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore” images; for more info see these Vista and Win7 links.

If the incident responder captured the VHD file either as part of a larger system capture or off a USB drive, they could examine the contents forensically at the sector-level, or they could install Virtual PC/Hyper-V and then try loading/running it there.  But what if they wanted to really explore the “system” or VHD file contents “natively”.

Could it be mounted to a Windows system like we can mount WIM files for examination and review?

It appears so!

The easiest method seems to be to just have a Windows 7 system around handy.  VHD mounting is supported natively in Windows 7 (and Vista with a few tweaks).

• WIM tool enhancements and Fiddling with VHD’s – Grand Stream Dreams Blog

• Virtual Hard Disk - Create and Attach VHD - Windows 7 Forums

• Mount, attach and create VHD files in Windows Vista and Windows 7 – 4sysops blog

• VHDMount without VHDMount – Dave Northey’s Blog

But maybe you want alternatives?

OK!  Try these on for size.

• Gizmo Drive – freeware – Amazing utility that contains support for Win2K-Win7 builds.  Allows you to mount ISO,BIN, CUE, NRG files to a virtual CD-ROM drive BUT also allows you to mount VHD files as a virtual drive! Also supports mounting of IMG files to a virtual drive.  Supports mount/unmount commands from Windows Shell and command line.  32/64 bits both supported.  A very headache-free solution in a can.

• WinMount – commercial ($) - Mount rar, zip, DVD, CD, HDD images (VHD, VDI, and VMDK) as read-only or writeable mode. 32/64 bit supported.

“What” you say?  You want to do it the hard-way in XP/Vista because you just don’t trust such a simple solution and you don’t have a Windows 7 system laying around your work-bench?

Fine.  Be that way.

Be aware that I’m not responsible for any global-warming, polar ice-shelf melting, or scrambling of your own system if you proceed! M’kay?  (It probably will be ok…)

The final trick involves using a Virtual Server tool called VHDmount to mount the VHD file directly into your host Windows OS.

Because this is some serious voodoo, I’m providing quite a few links to get you the foundational knowledge to strike-out on your own.

• Mounting VHD files with VHDMount - Microsoft Virtual Server – Daniel Petri

• Mounting a Virtual PC disk image with VHDMount in Vista – SharePoint Voodoo Magic blog

• Offline VHD file mounting on the host operating system with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 - B# .NET Blog

• Tell me a VHDMount Story (Installing just VHDMount on Windows Vista and then mounting a VHD as a drive letter...) – Greg’s Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

• Server 2008 Hyper-V: Alternative to VHDMOUNT - NetworkWorld.com Community

• VHDMOUNT for Hyper-V - Updated Scripts - Ravikanth Chaganti

• Script Update: Right click to Mount & Dismount Hyper-V VHD - Ravikanth Chaganti

• How to mount a VHD under Vista by double clicking – Clemens Schotte’s Blog

• Windows XP/Vista: How to Attach a VHD File - Tech-Recipes

• Frequently Asked Questions: Virtual Hard Disks in Windows 7 - Microsoft TechNet

Anyone know of any other techniques or utilities to mount a VHD file apart from those mentioned here?

--Claus V.

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Virtual PC and XP Mode Linkage

As is often the case, not only has it been a very busy week at work, but it has been so on the Webs as well.

I’ve ended up crossing paths with a slew of high-interest topics I follow and my to-blog pile is overflowing.

The morning pre-heat yard-work has been completed with Alvis’s assistance. I have cleaned off the dining room table so I can dual-monitor with the laptop in with the girls.

A community college party with friends is on the schedule for this afternoon, followed by a seafood dinner at a local Houston Ship Channel favorite follows with mom and bro.

So many things to play with and explore…so little time….

• Windows XP Mode RC Now Available - Windows 7 Team Blog - “Old” news now in blog-o-sphere terms.  However, if you are running Windows 7 versions a new Windows XP Mode Release Candidate is available along with a new Windows Virtual PC Release Candidate .  There are some new features and requirements.  The newly updated Windows XP Mode now works with the RC and RTM versions of the Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise SKUs.  So with the inclusion of “Ultimate” home-users will now have this accessible (if they meet the other stringent hardware requirements). Quoting from the post:

New Features in Windows XP Mode RC

Based on feedback from the Windows XP Mode beta, we’ve made several improvements to the usability of Windows XP Mode for small and medium-sized business users:

• You can now attach USB devices to Windows XP Mode applications directly from the Windows 7 task-bar. This means your USB devices, such as printers and flash drives, are available to applications running in Windows XP Mode, without the need to go into full screen mode.
• You can now access Windows XP Mode applications with a “jump-list”. Right click on the Windows XP Mode applications from the Windows 7 task bar to select and open most recently used files.
• You now have the flexibility of customizing where Windows XP Mode differencing disk files are stored.
• You can now disable drive sharing between Windows XP Mode and Windows 7 if you do not need that feature.
• The initial setup now includes a new user tutorial about how to use Windows XP Mode.

• Windows Virtual PC RC now Available! – Virtual PC Guy blog’s Ben Armstrong expands the list of features even more:

  Granular drive sharing
  In the settings on the virtual machine, you can select specific host computer drives to share with the virtual machine.

  Jump list for virtual applications
  Right clicking on the virtual application icon for Windows XP Mode, on Windows 7 taskbar, displays a jump list that allows one to easily launch virtual applications from the taskbar.

  Faster Windows XP Mode Setup
  Windows XP Mode Setup completes more quickly than in Windows XP Mode Beta.

  Compact differencing disks
  You can compact the differencing disks to decrease the file size.

  Ability to install Windows XP optional components
  Windows XP optional components can be installed in Windows XP Mode RC without prompting for Windows XP media.

  Ability to choose a location to store virtual machine files for Window XP Mode RC
  When you are setting up Windows XP Mode RC, you can choose where to store all virtual machine files for Windows XP Mode RC. The default path is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\.

  Option to turn off and discard changes when Undo disk is enabled for a virtual machine
  An additional option is available when you are turning off a virtual machine: Turn off and discard changes. This option will delete the current Undo disk, and turn off the virtual machine.

• Windows Virtual PC and XP Mode release candidates – Mark Wilson’s blog – Mark points out a few more important things I didn’t notice elsewhere.  He says that you cannot upgrade from the XP Mode beta to the XP Mode RC so you will need to do an uninstall of the beta, then do an install of the RC.  Also, Mark makes the following observation which I thought was very interesting.

“Interestingly, Microsoft is now saying you need an additonal 1GB of RAM for XP Mode (2GB recommended). Of course, you don’t need 1GB of RAM in order to run a copy of Windows XP and a virtual machine manager but that tells you what you might want for any level of performance. In addition to the requirement for hardware that offers virtualisation assistance, this is just one more reason why XP Mode is not a solution for clients looking to sweat their existing hardware assets a while longer… this is purely a software sticking plaster for legacy applications.”

• Starting Virtual Machines via Scripting with Windows Virtual PC– Virtual PC Guy – Great tips and techniques for kicking VHD’s off via scripts…because you know you really want to! 

• Windows Virtual PC Executables– Virtual PC Guy – Ben breaks down the different processes that can be observed running in the Task Manager while Virtual PC is executed.   Until you get used to things, this might be a good resource to keep handy.

• Windows Virtual PC + Seamless Applications + Task Bar = Wrong Icons?– Virtual PC Guy Blog – Finally, Ben shares a wonderful taskbar tip that will help clear up the way Windows 7 identifies “seamless”apps running via Virtual PC XP Mode.  Probably not too important for occasional users of XP Mode but hard-core users will likely find it more helpful.

• Windows Virtual PC release candidate – Microsoft Downloads

Overview

Windows Virtual PC (RC) is the latest Microsoft virtualization technology that allows you to run many productivity applications on a virtual Windows environment, with a single click, directly from a Windows 7-based PC.

For more information about Windows Virtual PC, please visit the Windows Virtual PC website.
Windows Virtual PC supports the following Host and Guest Operating systems

• Host: Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise.

• Guest: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Professional, Windows Vista Enterprise Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista Ultimate Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista Business Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise.

Note: Virtual application feature not supported on Windows Vista Business Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 7 Professional SKU's

Note: Upgrade from Windows Virtual PC Beta to Windows Virtual PC RC is not supported. Uninstall Windows Virtual PC Beta and Windows XP Mode Beta, before installing this RC release. Click here for more information.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7

Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise.

Note: Windows Virtual PC Beta requires Windows 7 RC.

• Processor: Processor capable of hardware virtualization, with AMD-V™ or Intel® VT turned on in the BIOS.

• Memory: 2GB of memory recommended.

• Hard disk requirement: 20MB hard disk space for installing Windows Virtual PC. Additional 15GB of hard disk space per virtual Windows environment recommended.

Also released this past week:

• Windows XP SP3 RemoteApp update – Microsoft Downloads.
• Windows Vista SP1 RemoteApp update – Microsoft Downloads.

Both of these packages let you to run many Windows XP/Vista productivity applications from Windows 7-based PC using Windows Virtual PC.  Se the download links above for more details on how to “upgrade/install” these newer versions

So what’s the takeaway?

There is still no news of if/ever XP users will see an updated version of Virtual PC 2007 that packs any of the bells and whistles (primarily for me USB support) that the new Virtual PC release does for Windows 7. (Sigh)

You need to have the System RAM to support your Virtual machines…apparently even more than ever.

You still need to have the hardware-based virtualization support on your system/core(s).  If you don’t got dat, you got nothin’ but plain-vanilla Virtual PC 2007 for now and no XP Mode.

I’ve not had the chance to see if DOS-based applications/OS (DOS 6.22) are supported in this new VPC environment, though I suspect they would work generally OK.  Nor have I had a chance to try to fire up some Linux LiveCD blends in it to see what happens.  I suspect it will remain spotty as it is currently under Virtual PC 2007.

--Claus V.

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Security and Forensics Linkfest: Duck & Cover edition

Public domain photo: taken by U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Julianne Showalter

Black Hat 2009 Highlights

All eyes are on Vegas this week.

The Black Hat ® Technical Security Conference: USA 2009 is in full swing and it’s been a doozie so far.

Aside from all the security experts being pwned, there appear to be some very interesting presentations going on.

See this Black Hat ® Technical Security Conference: USA 2009 // Archives page for PDF whitepapers, presentation slides, and a few video/audio files as well.

Here are ones that I found particularly fascinating:

• Bill Blunden’s “Anti-Forensics: The Rootkit Connection” [White Paper] (PDF) and Presentation Slides (PDF).

• Alfredo Ortega & Anibal Sacco’s “Deactivate the Rootkit: Attacks on BIOS anti-theft technologies” - [White Paper] (PDF) and Presentation Slides (PDF).  Fascinating look how CompuTrace technology that “protects” systems in event of theft could actually be exploited while the system was “safe in custody” of the owner.

Lots more there as well covering both traditional technology, social-engineering, software, and even hardware lock-picking forensics.  Neat stuff!

Bootkit Fun with Stoned-Vienna

Remember when we were all looking at Kon-Boot: Bypass Windows Login Security (and some helpful blocking solutions) and Kon-Boot post (minor) update?  The Kon-Boot application was a “boot-kit” that allowed complete bypass of Windows user authentication password.  In the follow-up post it appeared that whole-disk encryption solutions and/or TPM enablement on supported systems prevented such an attack from working.

Well…not much longer (at least for True-Crypt).

• Bootkit bypasses hard disk encryption - The H Security

• Stoned-Vienna.com - Peter Kleissner’s project page for this latest boot kit iteration. Lots of very good technical information.

• White Paper (PDF) and Presentation (PDF) – Peter’s Black Hat ® Technical Security Conference: USA 2009 presentations on Stoned-Vienna.  The white paper is particularly detailed in technicals on how the injection process occurs as well as the methodology.  Great stuff and must-read material for boot-kit researchers.

• 4.16: Kon-Boot – Piotr Bania never did publish any technical information on how the Kon-Boot process worked.  Luckily for us, Peter’s got the stuff to sort it out for us.  If you are still wondering how Kon-Boot works, this is the reading material source to go to for now.

• Stoned Bootkit Blog – Peter’s ongoing updates on Stoned Vienna developments.

I didn’t get to see the presentation, and I’m still trying to find the time to pour though the technicals but it appears (and I am open to correction here) the following facts are in play with this “True-Crypt bypassing boot kit”:

• It is a boot kit as it injects itself into the Windows kernel after the BIOS by hi-jacking the bootloader process,

• It does not bypass the need for the user to still authenticate themselves to the TrueCrypt volume; by that I mean it does not “break/crack” the encryption itself,

• It does co-exist with the TrueCrypt boot-loader, survives that process, then goes on to actually “infect” the kernel post-loader to do whatever the “payload” offers.

• It could, possibly, be crafted to intercept and capture the passphase/id and send those to the attacker, thus providing them future authentication credentials needed to bypass WDE in future local attacks.

Those second and third points seem critical because in my Kon-Boot mitigation testing, the boot kit could not share the same memory space (in most BIOS’es) as the WDE boot-loader so either one or both failed…thus protecting the system.

The last one is just conjecture based on my current level of reading of the boot kit.

Stoned-Vienna is able to work around that successfully.  In theory it could also possibly work (with development) against other commercial whole-disk encryption solutions/products as well.  The encrypted volume would still need to be authenticated to but once past, the boot kit could go on to do its thing.

And to be clear…this isn’t a blast at any TrueCrypt weakness, it’s really still a function of how (most) Windows systems/deployments are weakened by the bootloader/kernel hand-off process.  Unless the boot-loader file as it loads into memory can be authenticated, along with the kernel files (see VBootkit vs. Bitlocker in TPM mode for a great example) the basic vulnerability will exist.  Disk encryption developers can only do so much to protect their own boot-loaders; the rest seems to be a Windows architecture issue.

Stay tuned as I am sure this will be dissected more in the coming weeks.

Malware Watch

• H1N1 Shortcut Malware - F-Secure Weblog – Clever malware file masquerading as a “link” shortcut file. Though it looks like it is seeded with junk, there is enough executable code (batch-file stuff) that it can actually ftp the payload (a vbs script) when clicked.

• Malware embedded in the Windows registry - Eternal sunshine of the geeky mind – Lead link to executable malware in the Windows registry of all places.

• Malware IN Registry a.k.a If It Can’t Be Done, Why Am I Looking At It? - Security Ripcord – Don Weber provides a technical examination on just how this malware exists and executes from an embedded state (as opposed to a call to an executable file) in the registry.

• Persistence is futile - SophosLabs blog – More notes on the malware.

That all reminded me of another (different technique…similar result) technique for hiding malware launch points in the Windows registry from a few years ago.

• Reports: Long Registry Names Could Hide Malware - eWeek

• Updated Windows Registry Concealment Info;Symantec AV Vulnerability  - SANS-ISC Blog – more analysis and a link to the “LVNSearch.exe” tool which can scan Windows registry hives and display long value names that typically do not display correctly in Windows (and thus hide the malware launch point) from regular reviews.

• Panda USB Vaccine with NTFS Support - Panda Research Blog – Notice of an updated version of the Panda USB Vaccine tool that prevents a USB device from being infected by a autorun malware modifier.  This new version now supports NTFS formatted USB devices…not that common to the general public but often seen in IT shops.

• Panda SafeCD 3.4.3.5 Released - Panda Research Blog – New LiveCD boot disk that allows for “off-line” scanning and cleaning of an infected system.

• New Virut Strain Blocks AV/Security Web sites - Fortinet FortiGuard Blog – Great analysis of a new malware strain that does some tricky things to both stay alive/hidden as well as block access by the local system to anti-virus/anti-malware websites.

Don’t just stay safe; stay informed!

--Claus V.

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Windows 7 Linkfest: fresh meat edition

CC Photo Credit: by Choctopus on Flickr

Miscellaneous Windows Fun.

• Logon Windows7 Automatically – What’s My Pass blog – While I’m all for all Windows systems having a requirement for a user id/password for login, I know that under normal configurations this doesn’t mean it is “secure” and can be bypassed.  That said it could help discourage casual logon of system accounts around the home or office.  However, if you have Windows 7 and this just really annoys you, this is a nice tutorial on how to “auto-logon” to a user account after boot.

• Managing Windows 7 with DISM - Springboard Series Blog - The Windows Blog – Really helpful overview of the Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management Tool Microsoft offers to system deployments and imaging management.

• Changes to the Windows 7 install process – istartedsomething – Long Zheng clarifies how the versioning works for the Win7 install process as well as providing a small “hack” tip to make manual selection possible during the install process.

• Windows 7 activation cracked via OEM licensing exploit, 85 days ahead of general release – istartedsomething – Long also details that Win7 WGA authentication has been cracked.  Bummer.  He doesn’t bother to explain how.  So, we turn to….

• Bypassing the Windows 7 activation – Wouter Veugelen blog for just a bit more detail but it provides a link to…

• Windows 7 Ultimate Cracked and Activated Permanently with OEM SLP Master Product Key (with SLIC 2.1) – My Digital Life blog.  That breaks down the issue in detail.  I’m not at all posting this as an endorsement for someone to actually use this to steal activations (and $$) from MS.  However, I find it a good technical understanding of the deeper workings on product activation and WGA.  Seriously.

• Using virtual machines on Windows 7 RC with Windows Virtual PC beta - Harold van de Kamp’s Blog.  I need another post just on using Virtual PC beta on Win7.  It’s much different than on XP.  Took me a while to find the control interface for it (it’s on the Explorer bar now…). That said, it was a great help being able to run a virtual machine, shut it down, then mount the VHD file to extract files off.  Cool!

• Showing Our Thanks to Windows 7 Beta Testers…. - Windows 7 Team Blog & Microsoft does a 180: Tech testers to get a copy of Windows 7 for free - All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com.

For some reason, many folks who were testing the beta/RC releases of Windows 7 were hoping that Microsoft might out of the kindness of their deep pockets offer everyone a full key for the RTM build when it was all done.  Initially MS said no-one would be touched by the god of Redmond to receive this blessing.  However, favor seems to have been allocated a few.  Mary-Jo Foley in that last post above sums it up thusly:

The free copies of Windows 7 Ultimate will go to technical beta testers only — not every individual who participated in the public Windows 7 Beta and Release Candidate testing programs.

So it’s not good news for us peons but the dukes look happy now.

--Claus V.

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BOSSIEs You Might Like!

While tracking down a utility, I noticed the developer had a BOSSIE award banner prominently displayed on the website.

Normally I don’t judge by awards alone, but I hadn’t heard of this and as it was associated with InfoWorld, I thought I would check it out.

InfoWorld Bossie Awards – InfoWorld

InfoWorld Bossies (Best of Open Source Software)

Each year, InfoWorld's Bossies (Best of Open Source Software awards) recognize the best open source software for business. The InfoWorld Test Center's central mission has always been to identify the most promising and cost-effective products available to IT organizations. Increasingly, those products -- from application development tools to platforms and infrastructure software to CRM and ERP applications -- come from the open source camp.

Two years running (2007 & 2008), the 2009 winners will be announced August 3, 2009.

I used the Infoworld Bossie Awards as listed on Wikipedia to do my rapid-scans looking for any nice/new tools or software packages.  Or you can look at the 2008 InfoWorld Bossies and 2007 InfoWorld Bossies official pages for a bit more info on why the winners were selected.

So here were the ones I am highlighting as particular interest to me:

• Intalio, The Enterprise Cloud Company » Community Edition – A business process management software solution.  Much more highly geared to developing and documenting complex business processes than Word and Visio.

• Drools : Business Logic integration Platform - “Drools 5 introduces the Business Logic integration Platform which provides a unified and integrated platform for Rules, Workflow and Event Processing.”
  Oohhh!  As a process and procedure documentarian for our IT group I’m salivating at the thought of what these tools might offer!

• inSSIDer – MetaGeek – This wonderful Wi-Fi network scanner is positively awesome. I installed in on my Win7 (x64) laptop and in no-time was monitoring and observing over 8 wireless access points around our home.  If I can have this much info at home, I can’t wait to see how useful it will be to do Wi-Fi policy auditing at work.
  The following related items aren’t BOSSIES but seemed appropriate to place here for the curious.
  • WirelessNetView – No-install NirSoft utility to monitor and find wireless networks.

  • NetStumbler – One of the leading tools to monitor and audit Wi-Fi networks.

  • Using Wireless Network Audit Techniques – 2004 article by Michael T. Hoesing at the ISACA website.  Good intro to some basic info.

  • Wireless Security 802.11  - Wirelessdefence.org “A Wireless LAN (WLAN) security site provided for 802.11 (aka Wireless, aka WI-FI) - Security Auditors and Penetration Testers.”  Tons of good info here.

• dotproject - Open Source Project and Task Management Software – clearly one of the best “free” alternatives to Microsoft Project.

• Puppy Linux – When I was prepping Alvis’s old Linux desktop to donate to our church fundraiser project I needed a light but featured OS to install on it.  She had been using PCLinuxOS but the latest version didn’t support the older hardware any longer.  So I turned to Puppy Linux.  In under an hour I had it downloaded, installed and configured.  It can breath new life into very old computer hardware.

• WinMerge - “WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.”

Take a look a these as well as the full list of 207 & 2006 Bossie winners to see what else might strike your fancy.

There are lots and lots of other categories and winners.

I can’t wait to see what next week offers for the 2009 winners!

Claus V.

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Tweak SharePoint and NAS Links

While working on a recent project, one issue we ran into was trying to upload very large files to the SharePoint server.

Some files were in excess of 500MB and the SharePoint server rejected them outright.  So then we used a compression program to slice them up in smaller chunks.  This worked, but if the files took to long to transfer the file transfer was terminated.

Long story short it took a lot of extra time and effort to transfer the files to a network share when everyone needing them could access them.  What compounded the problem was that the persons needing the files were using a shared system otherwise we might have had some more clever options.

Had the SharePoint administrator been available they could have made some temporary tweaks to the SharePoint parameter to allow us some extra room.

• Error message when you try to upload a large file to a document library on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site: "Request timed out"

• SharePoint File Upload Size Limit - Bryan Worthy

• SharePoint Upload Size Limit on Server 2008 - IIS 7 - Windows Live

Typically, we just jockey files around between protected volumes of our local Novell servers.  The only problem with this is that not only do we have to share bandwidth with the production sites, we also have to busy (not really but to some degree) up the production server with the file transfer/access.

What this exercise really illustrated is that it might be nice to look at putting some Network Access Storage (NAS) points around at key locations that have some large pipes.  These would get around file-size restrictions on a single SharePoint server and as they aren’t performing production work, would be better behaved.

In my mind having a NAS solution that supported multiple NIC’s, had a web-client interface (for roaming technicians to access), and could be highly configured with both group and user policy and storage allocation limits would be great.  It would helpful if the software allowed for both file and folder/container transfers to save time.

We have lots of slightly older equipment and drives that could be easily repurposed for this task.  Certainly there are a lot of commercial solutions for NAS devices that range from enterprise-level support to SOHO needs.  And although there are some really disaster-event supporting solutions, we really wouldn’t need to use it for any critical or secure data.  Mostly just installer programs, utilities, and sharing one-time file-transfers across the map.

I’ve looked into Open Source NAS solutions and these two seem to stand out.

• FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home

• Openfiler — Openfiler - Open Source Storage Management Appliance

I know there are others as well but I think I will focus on these for now.

Storage Utility Roundup

In the process of researching (starting with this Intel’s NASty little test tool InfoWorld post) I also found a few nice utilities to help test/benchmark storage media.  So here they are as well:

• Intel® NAS Performance Toolkit - Intel® Software Network – Really nifty tool.

  The Intel® NAS Performance Toolkit (NASPT) is a file system exerciser and analysis tool designed to enable direct measurement of home network attached storage (NAS) performance. Designed to emulate the behavior of an actual application, NASPT uses a set of real world workload traces gathered from typical digital home applications. Traces of high definition video playback and recording, officeproductivity applications, video rendering/content creation and more provide a broad range of different application behaviors. With the latest version of NASPT, users may even add their own custom traces. NASPT reproduces the file system traffic recorded in these traces onto whatever storage solution the user provides, records the system response, and reports a rich variety of performance information.

  NASPT includes an intuitive graphical user interface to get teams up and running quickly, a graphical data analyzer for in-depth performance investigations, and a convenient batch mode feature for performing multiple test runs with a single click.

• Iometer project – Storage device stress-testing and performance measurement tool.

• Iozone Filesystem Benchmark – Filesystem benchmarking tool.  Really cool in that it provides a variety of graphical data outputs so that you can get a better sense of what is going on.

• Bart's Stuff Test 5 - Says Bart, "Bst5...is a small win32 application for long term heavy stress testing storage devices. Bst5 supports testing at file and device level. File level support enables you to test any local or remote volume by file access. This makes it possible to test almost any storage device. As long as the operating system can write or read files from it, you can use bst5 to test it. In Bst5 this is seen as a "high" level test, you write/read data to/from a file using the file system support from your operating system. Device level support enables you to test local devices directly block-by-block. You can use this to test any removable or fixed logical drive, physical hard disk, or tape device. In bst5 this is seen as a "low" level test, bst5 writes/reads data directly to/from the storage device without the use of any file system. In other words, the storage device or media does not need to be partitioned or formatted before testing. If any file system exists on a storage device or media, a non-read only test will overwrite any data on it. Bst5 supports very large volumes, up to 16 exabyte (17.179.869.184 Gigabyte) enough to last for at least 30 years."

• smartmontools – Two “CLI” programs “…(smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI harddisks.” Versions are available for most all OS flavors.  The primary download link provided to the “stable” versions was down but this Index of /smartmontools link provides some to beta/testing versions that are very new (but maybe not as stable). Note: the installer used often is flagged as “malware” by AV software.  I had to disable mine to download the file and then unpack it.  That said it seemed otherwise safe.

• GSmartControl – Provides a GUI wrapper that may be easier to use for folks.  Also offered in numerous OS supporting versions, though expects some additional supporting applications (GTK+ for Windows Runtime) to be installed on the system

• USBDeview – Nirsoft – Use this tool to get information on USB devices that have been connected to a system. However, for this discussion the latest version from Mr. Sofer now contains a USB read/write test so you can check the performance of the device. Designed to work with flash-media it does seem to work with most drive-based USB storage devices as well.

• Grand Stream Dreams: Pocket Hard-Drive Utilities – For even more storage utilities and tools, please see this recent post.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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GSD Blog Redo: v 3.0

Please do not change your browser settings.

The GSD blog has been redesigned.

For some reason, in a fit of summer boredom and bravery I decided it was time for a redo.  Maybe it was the recent redo of the NPR website.  Maybe it was the Chron.com redo (or Dwight’s TechBlog ) .  I’m not sure.  Anyway I decided it was time for change.

And yes…your eyes don’t deceive you.  That indeed is a recent image of Lavie and I snuggling away in our real-life vectorized skins.  No need to imagine our mugs any longer.

I spent a few hours (honestly) poring over the Blogger Templates at btemplates.  There were lots and lots of really great templates.  Only problem I kept coming back to is that many of them looked way too commercial or polished for the tone of the GSD blog.  In addition, I just didn’t like having to depend on images or banner-images hosted off-site.

So I reviewed the default ones on Blogger and ended up really liking “Sand Dollar”.  It was a two-column template which was a bit hard to adopt from my previous three-column style.  However, I really liked the way the post-body section auto-resized (floated).  And the font worked quite well.

I did use this tip BP Web News and Tips: Template MakeOver - Procedure 3 to swap the body and sidebar columns.  I was just so used to having the body-text on the left that I had to get it back that way with the sidebar on the right.  This worked perfectly.

I did break the tag-cloud horribly with the new template.  However, I did find that the code I previously used by phydeaux3 was updated and refined a bit more since: New Blogger Tag Cloud / Label Cloud.  I think it looks smashing!

I did drop the “Links from Japan” as though I still RSS feed a number of Japan-centric blogs, I really didn’t find the length of the sidebar items pleasing going from a double-sidebar to a single one.  So it got cut.

I finally hard-coded the HTML code for the “apostrophe” character in “Claus’s Toolbox” so that darned “quote” character previously in it as “Claus”s Toolbox” is now fixed.

I also tweaked the colors (Blogger now has added a nice WYSIWYG Fonts and Colors editor) with Lavie’s help providing a critical eye  Simple borders were added to better separate the body from sidebar.  Padding and font sizings were manually adjusted as well.

The real killer-diller for me on this was the comment widget.  The original widget transferred over fine but the text was all jammed together and it was next to impossible to differentiate between comments.  It’s a JavaScript creation and while I am comfortable with basic HTML/XHTML coding, JavaScript is a different manner.  Through trial-n-error and careful studying of the code layout I finally figured out where to add a JavaScript language “linebreak” of sorts.  I think the comments look quite sharp now.  I also expanded the amount of allowed characters so it is easier to get a sense of the comment on longer ones before they are truncated.

I’ve still got some additional fine-tuning to do.  I’d like to separate the posts a bit more as they seem to run together just a bit. And with the new-found extra room I might be changing some of the other graphics on the side-bar just a touch.

I’ve checked it in Firefox, Chrome(ium), and IE8.  I’ve not jumped over to my Vista (dual-booting) OS yet so I haven’t seen it yet in Opera or Safari.  I imagine it is rendering fine there.  I really hope this particular template design fixes the annoying habit of long-lines breaking the previous three-column template in IE.  Specific HTML code I found in the template seems to address that issue.

Of course, I had to remember to update (refresh) my theme in Windows Live Writer so it now correctly formats according to the revised template.

All things said, I think the changes are pretty refreshing and makes a much more eye-friendly blog.

What say you?

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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