Install ESXi on MB GA-H87-HD3

ESXi 5.5 can be run on the motherboard Gigabyte GA-H87-HD3 Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI ATX Motherboard.

This is component list

• Gigabyte GA-H87-HD3 Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI ATX Motherboard
• Toshiba 2 x 3TB Internal Hard Drive 
• Crucial 4 x 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Ballistix Sport Memory
• Intel Core i5 4670 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
• Coolermaster Elite 330 Case With Coolermaster eXtreme Power 500W PSU

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An Alternative to IDA Hex-Rays

Recently I found a very good reverse engineering tool, Hopper. The pseudo code on Mac Objective-C is much better than IDA Hex-Rays 6.1.

Nothing compares to it, as you can afford to buy it, the on-line price is only less than $60! I am going to buy it!

If you are going to install your own credential provider to a machine where Citrix virtual desktop agent is deployed, you may have the same problem I experienced with DualShield Windows Logon credential provider - Citrix simply filtered out DualShield.

Can they co-exist? How?

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Make Certificate fully chained

Some web server, like Tomcat or Nginx, needs a fully chained certificate to provide SSL service.
However,  normally you are not given a fully chained certificate when you purchase a web server certificate from some famous public CA, instead they send you back a couple of certificates. You need to merge them yourself. In this link, I described the problem and provided a way to do the combination.

DVC (Dynamic Virtual Channel)

MS discarded static virtual channel(SVC) in Visual Studio 2012, so we decided to move on - using DVC.

In normal user mode application,  it is fine to call the API WTSVirtualChannelOpenEx. However it returned error 2 in Credential Provider. We are not alone, as someone else also reported the same issue.

We opened a support case with Microsoft more than two weeks ago , haven't got any positive answer from them.

If you are interested in solving this mystery, here is my test code and rough explanation.

Update: After one month email exchange, MS finally admits it is a BUG (Case NO REG:113102410891026). In addition, SVC Sounds like back in VS2013, as in this link, I see someone said

“cchannel.h is present in the Windows 8.1 SDK that will come with VS 2013.”

Here is their conclusion,

PROBLEM
========
You are calling WTSVirtualChannelOpenEx() from your Credential Provider (Windows Server 2008) and it is failing with error code 2 to the built-in "echo" listener. (Dynamic Virtual Channel)  The API succeeds after the user has logged on.  You need to transfer data from the client to the credential provider on the server for authentication data.

RESOLUTION
============
This is currently by design.

You cannot call WTSVirtualChannelOpenEx() from a Credential Provider.  It can only be called once the Remote Desktop Connection has been established which happens after the Credential Provider returns.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
================================================
Based on some additional testing, the issue only happens if the RDC role is installed.  Static Virtual Channels (SVC) would be a work around.  (SVC support has NOT been removed from Windows).

The Remote Desktop Team is aware of your request for accessing a DVC from a Credential Provider.  You may see support for this in the future.

Cisco ASA virtual appliance on ESXi

I followed the forum thread ASA 8.4(2) on QEMU and created a cisco ASA virtual machine ISO which can be used on ESXi.

Please read this link for the details. It also tells you how to

• create and attach a serial port
• activate a new license
• change ip address of NICs
• upload ASDM through tftp server.

Serial Port made easy under ESXi

When you are first time to configure your cisco device(router, switch and firewall), you need a console cable to connect to its console port, and attach the other end to PC serial port, then use HyperTerminal (on Windows).

What if it is a virtual appliance on ESXi? With the new type of virtual serial port "Connect over Network", the job becomes easy. Please read this link for the details.