Author: Rob Nidschelm

Ubuntu 22.04

Veeam warning: “Unable to initialize indexing: mlocate was not found” on Ubuntu Server 22.04

After playing with Veeam 11 for a bit, I decided to get my Linux Docker physical host on the backup schedule. The hardware is getting older (Some would call it vintage or just plain ancient as it’s a 2nd gen i7, but it gets the job done) and it won’t last forever. The onboarding of this physical machine was deceptively simple. A few mouse-clicks here, an IP address there and some SSH credentials. This was just too easy, so I decided to manually run the job and keep an eye on it. I didn’t have to wait long.
After a few minutes, the job completed already. With a warning. I knew it had been too good to be true.

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Vintage Hardware

Windows 98 issues on a Dell Latitude D600

Windows 98 Setup Freezes when “Setting up programs on the Start Menu”

When installing Windows 98 SE on a Dell Latitude D600, the installation freezes at the point after it finishes “Setting up programs on the Start menu” but before it installs Help. Rebooting the laptop does not help. It does a Scandisk, continues to setup, again wants the TimeZone settings, Control Panel and freezes again after finishing Setting up programs on the Start menu. The mouse cursor moves, but there’s no hard drive or CD-Rom activity at all.

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Malware

Emotet malware botnet is back

The Emotet malware botnet is back and running one again almost ten months after an international law enforcement operation took its command-and-control servers earlier this year in January.

  • Once described as the “world’s most dangerous malware,” Emotet worked by sending massive waves of email spam to users all over the world in order to infect them with its malware strain.
  • Once infected these systems would allow the Emotet gang to download and install additional payloads4.
  • On Monday (15.11.2021), several researchers spotted indicators that Emotet has returned.

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Browsers

Chrome can now hide the padlock

As of the latest beta today it seems that Google Chrome has the option to no longer display the padlock that shows if a website is is actually SSL encrypted. Even though I like the little indicator, with everything going on, less is more, so less clutter is better in my opinion.

Here is how to hide indicator in the latest beta:

  1. Type “chrome://flags” in the address bar and press the enter key
  2. Search for “security indicators”
  3. Where the “Omnibox Updated connection security indicators” flag is displayed, click the pulldown menu that displays “Default” and select “Enabled”
  4. Restart the browser

Chrome will now notify you when a site is insecure.

Abandonware

LeMenu 3.1 (1988) – Installation on Dosbox

As the name suggests, LeMenu is a menu making package that includes a directory manager. Menus and sub-menus can be created, you can run Batch-files from the menu directly as if these were normal programs and even a basic activity log is kept. The menu itself supports up to 4 different levels and can hold 26 items each, an item for each letter of the alphabet, which gives the possibility of setting up more menu items than the largest collection of software running within Dosbox that I’ve ever seen.

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Hyper-V

Windows NT4 / 2000 Server and Workstation on a 2019 Hyper-V Cluster

Sometimes it’s necessary to install an old Operating System, but you really cannot (or don’t want to) get the old hardware out, even if it would still work.
I was in such a position that I had to install Windows 2000 Server. After locating the installation media, I decided it was a good idea to get it running on the 2019 Hyper-V cluster. This actually can be done, but there are a few hoops to jump through.

Update: This was written with Windows 2000 Adv. Server in mind, but I’ve since discovered the same procedure works for Windows NT4 with SP6a slipstreamed.

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Dosbox

Windows ME on Dosbox ECE, even on Raspberry Pi4b

If you search the web you’ll find a lot statements that the installation of Windows Millennium or Windows ME on Dosbox is just not possible, that it will not work, that it will not even complete setup, no matter what.
I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t found differently. Nowadays it is indeed possible to run Windows ME on Dosbox and, even though it’s not supported, it is fairly stable. At least more stable than I expected and a lot more stable than Windows 98SE on the same environment.

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PowerShell

Extract various archives with PowerShell

Nowadays, instead of using .zip, .rar or .7z files, I find myself using virtual harddrives (.vhdx) more and more as it’s so much more convenient. However, extracting large amounts of compressed files, can be a very time consuming endeavor. Here a quick and dirty PowerShell script to do this. I’ve added a check for determining if the archive one folder in the root of the archive or if it contains multiple files and folders. If it contains just the one folder, the script won’t create a new folder and extract that one folder into the new folder. Instead it will “extract here”. If multiple files and/or folders are found, it will create a new folder based on the archive name. The script assumes you have 7zip installed on the default location.

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Abandonware

Command & Conquer – Play in Dosbox

When Command & Conquer was released in 1995 and its companion with a different tone Command & Conquer: Red Alert in 1996, it was something of a revolution in the RTS game play. Of course Dune II had been released a few years before, also developed by Westwood studios, setting the tone for many RTS games that followed in the years to come. (This includes Warcraft, which eventually let to World of Warcraft, DOTA and many others that a lot of people still play daily nowadays)

Now that the remastered edition is announced for 2020, the 25th anniversary of the game, I got interested again in the original Dos game. Since the original is 2CD’s (GDI and NOD) and later an expansion was added named: Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations, I thought it was time to create a quick batch file to load which ever disk instead of having to type the commands in Dosbox every single time.
Batch files are the reason that I’m using non-standard commands and add-ons to Dosbox, so here the bat-file that I’ve written for C&C:

:menu
echo 1) C&C: GDI
echo 2) C&C: NOD
echo 3) C&C: Covert Operations
echo 4) Exit to Dos
choice /C:1234 /N Option:

if errorlevel = 1 goto GDI
if errorlevel = 2 goto NOD
if errorlevel = 3 goto COVERT
if errorlevel = 4 goto EXIT

:GDI
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:NOD
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:COVERT
imgmount d “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-Cov.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD1.iso” “c:\temp\dosbox\e\cd\C&C\C&C-CD2.iso” -t cdrom
d:\C&C
goto menu

:EXIT
exit

The CD’s can be cycled with CTRL-F4 if C&C asks for it.