vSphere 5 Lab Setup pt 3

In part 2, the management workstation host (glados) and its components
were configured.  This post details the installation and initial setup of
the physical ESXi host (pesx0).  I was hesitant to include the following
as a separate post since it is mostly just the installation process of

vSphere 5 Lab Setup pt 2

Continuing from part 1, this post details the configuration on the
management workstation host (glados) and its 2 components, the generic
infrastructure host (lns1) and the management client (fenster).
Our details for this are:

vSphere 5 Lab Setup pt 1

Recently, I decided to setup a vSphere 5 lab at home to help me prepare
for taking the VCP 5 exam.  Its purpose is basically to provide me a
setup to get better acquainted with certain vSphere features and maybe
testing of various fault / resolution scenarios.  This post is to help me

Extracting Individual Files from an Archive

Too often, I only need a single file or a couple of files from an archive.
One answer to this is to just extract the entire archive so that I can
get to those particular files.  The more precise answer is to simply
extract only those files that I need and place them where I want them.

Fixing an Overly Eager chmod in Linux

A while ago, someone asked me how to recover from a mistyped recursive
'chmod' they performed.  Similar to the write-up on an "overeager chown",
they mistyped the path and it executed against the root FS (/).  Ideally,
one would have a backup to recover from, however that wasn't an option

updated utility, getldp.pl v0.1.7

An updated version of 'getldp.pl', v0.1.7, is now available on the Tools
page.  This update adds handling (long overdue) for reaping any child
processes getldp.pl might spawn while listening for CDP / LLDP packets.
Previously, if getldp.pl timed out and exited while waiting on data,

Manual P2V with Linux

We recently had a situation wherein we were replacing a physical host
with a virtual machine (VM) instance.  Rather than simply install a
new VM and reapply software packages and configuration, the need was to
retain the existing installation.  To do so, we effectively cloned the

updated utility, getldp.pl v0.1.6

An updated version of 'getldp.pl', v0.1.6, is now available on the
Tools page.  This version adds details of the sending host including
OS version (CDP only), device capabilities, and management address
(assuming those fields are in the CDP / LLDP packets):