If you've never had to run Linux under HyperV you'll know that it runs, although it could be better. You'll also be aware that Microsoft supply drivers via connect, in a binary state with official support for only a few distros. So you can imagine how I felt when I saw the announcement on the LKML. Drivers for Linux guests, in the kernel. Ok, so it's not in the mainline yet, but it is the start of good and great things.

I've rambled onabout Karmasphere in the past, but I've not actually done anything with it since mentioning it. Sadly today was the day when spam started getting through my crazy system. This clearly was a signal from the gods themselves; to take the next step. The dreaded DNSBL. You might be surprised, but I don't like DNSBLs. In the past they've made my life hard at work - especially when we've inherited an IP that was previously used by spammers, in some way, shape or form.

We use HyperV a lot at work, and for small scale Windows Server platform deployments I actually quite like it as our chosen virtualisation tech. However, backing up any virtual machine, regardless of platform, can be “fun” sometimes. We actually use a script that I put together using diskshadow (VSS) and a set of batch scripts, which works really well. However I hadn't actually really put much thought into what was happening and although I've done test restores for Windows machine I'm yet to do one for a *ix box.

I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with Powershell, but in this case it's turned into a bit of love. Importing users with Powershell is relatively easy to do when combined with ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory, from Quest, which adds a handful of rather useful functions. PSCXsupposedly has something similar, but I'm obviously missing them completely. import-csv C:\Path\To\Users.csv | foreach-object { New-QADUser -FirstName $_.givenname -LastName $_.surname -SamAccountName $_.

Being the good little customer that I am, I tend to try and keep an eye on what upstream are doing. To that end I've been keeping an eye on VPS.net; UK2.net's newest business venture. I'm one of the lucky 80 or so that have gotten into the beta, and I've got to say, I'm really impressed with what the guys have put together so far. Basically what they're providing is a fault tolerant, brilliantly easy to use virtual server infrastructure, based on Linux and Xen.

Since I didn't come across an existing plugin after a quick google, and nor is there one in the official Munin repository that works on my Debian installations, I thought I'd post my implementation. It's exceptionallysimple, however it might save someone 10 seconds of research and coding in the future. #!/usr/bin/perl if ($ARGV[0] and $ARGV[0] eq "config") { print "graph_args –base 1000 -l 0\n"; print "graph_title Uptime in days\n"; print "graph_category system\n"; print "graph_vlabel uptime\n"; print "uptime.

New Years eve the extra bits of hardware I needed for my Xenbox arrived (cheapo motherboard for VMX (Intel VT-x in my case) and power supply). As you can imagine with a house full of people, and corresponding day of pain afterwards, it wasn't the best time to be faffing with setting it all up. However, a few days later and it's all there and working like a dream. I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised and also taken back by a few things.