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So I was having a little trouble adding a USB device permanently to a Virtual Machine guest with VirtualBox. The trick is to use the VBoxManage command to add a USB filter into the Machine’s configuration which will automagically attach whenever the VM is run.

First, find a list of all usb devices on the host, remembering to run these commands as the user your VirtualBox machine is under. In this example we’ll be using a Canon MX7600 printer as a test USB device.

$ VBoxManage list usbhost

UUID:               6bac41f4-cc44-40e4-a726-4d9655a49f63
VendorId:           0x04a9 (04A9)
ProductId:          0x171c (171C)
Revision:           1.3 (0103)
Manufacturer:       Canon
Product:            MX7600 series
SerialNumber:       102787
Address:            /proc/bus/usb/007/004
Current State:      Captured

Now we use the details of the USB device to filter adding into our VirtualBox machine. In this case our VirtualMachine name is winxp.

The usbfilter command requires four options at a minimum.

VBoxManage usbfilter        add
--target ||global
--name
--action ignore|hold (global filters only)
[--active yes|no] (yes)
[--vendorid ] (null)
[--productid ] (null)
[--revision ] (null)
[--manufacturer ] (null)
[--product ] (null)
[--remote yes|no] (null, VM filters only)
[--serialnumber ] (null)
[--maskedinterfaces ]

So armed with this info let’s add our device.

VBoxManage usbfilter add 0 –target winxp –name canonmx7600 –action hold –active yes –vendorid 04A9 –productid 171C –revision 0103 –manufacturer Canon –product “MX7600 series” –serialnumber 102787

TightVNC is a great opensource remote administrating program.

For Vista you need to massage it a little for optimum results, I just thought I’d write down some notes here to share how I use it with Windows Vista machines.

-= Don’t run TightVNC as a Service =-

Unfortunately you can’t run TightVNC effectively as a Windows service. As a work-around you can copy the TightVNC Server Icon into the Startup folder.

-= Disable Windows Aero =-

You’ll find under VNC Windows Vista machine screens wont refresh properly, windows appear black, don’t look right, and generally painful. It’s easy to fix though, you just have to disable Windows Aero.

1) Right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize. Click the “Window Color and Appearance” link:

2) Click the link near the bottom for “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”

3) Now disable Aero altogether by choosing Windows Vista Basic instead of Windows Aero. You could also switch to Windows Classic but some users complain with this.

I was suprised this information wasn’t contained more prominently in the APT-HOWTO. It’s very useful to have your own packages, especially in a format you can download them.

First of all install the ‘dpkg-dev’ package, create a directory to hold your packages and source files then run:

dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz
dpkg-scansources . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Sources.gz

et voila you should now have a repository which is apt-gettable! (ripped from www.steve.org.uk)

Simply throw it on a Apache web server and add something like this

deb http://localhost/apt ./
deb-src http://localhost/apt ./


Unattended Windows Installations are critical if you want to roll out applications via logon scripts or other automated means. Since most sites I work with don’t have the wonderful Zen Works or the not so wonderful Microsoft SMS available I often use extensive Kix scripts for Windows domain logon scripts.

It works well, and I found this great website that lists most of the popular windows installation programs and their switches! Unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.html is where you need to go to check it out.

Soapbox: Mozilla/Thunderbird – IMAP setup for Windows

Mozilla Mail comes with all newer versions of Mozilla. These instructions assume that you are using Mozilla 1.4 (or greater) or Thunderbird 0.7 (or greater) for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. The configuration might be slightly different for other versions of Mozilla/Thunderbird.

Before this process you need to have a few details with your email system. These are:
- Email Address (such as yourname@example.com.au)
- Your email address password
- Domain name (name of your company, such as example.com.au)
- Mail server address (such as mail.example.com.au or an IP address 192.168.1.1)

1) When you launch Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird for the first time the Account Wizard may start automatically. In that case, skip to step 2 below. If it does not, you can add a new account via the menu bar Tools->Account Settings and pressing the button ‘Add Account’.

2) The first screen asks what kind of account you want to set up. The default Email account" is correct, so just click Next.

3) Type in your name as you want it to appear on outgoing email in the Your Name box. Type in you email address in the form "yourname@example.com.au" where ‘example.com.au’ is your own domain name. Then click Next.

4) Change the incoming server type to IMAP.
In the Incoming Server box, type your mail server (i.e. mail.example.com.au) and your e-mail address.

5) Enter your e-mail user name as the User Name. Typically your user name is your first and surname combined.

6) You may be asked to name your account. You can leave the default, which is your email address, or change it. Then click Next.

The final screen summarizes the information that you just entered. Verify that it is correct and then click Finish.

7) The process is almost complete and requires one last setting to allow you to send e-mail outside your office.
Open your e-mail account details via the menu bar Tools->Account Settings. Then highlight the ‘Outgoing Server (SMTP)’ section.

Tick the box ‘Use name and Password’ and hit Ok. This will authenticate your e-mail server when sending e-mail’s outside the office.

Conclusion: You should now have a configured mail client. You should send a test e-mail to another work mate to test if you are sending email and have them reply back to see if you are receiving e-mail.

Soapbox: Setting up Outlook for e-mail

This document explains how to configure Microsoft Outlook to access a Soapbox e-mail server. This assumes that Outlook is installed and has the latest security service packs applied.

Before continuing you need to have a few account details. These are:
- Email Address (such as yourname@example.com.au)
- Your e-mail address password
- Domain name (name of your company, such as example.com.au)
- Mail server address (such as mail.example.com.au or an IP address 192.168.1.1)

1) Start Microsoft Outlook. From the Tools menu, select Email Accounts.

2) Click Add a new e-mail account.
Click Next.

3) Select IMAP the click Next.

4) Type in the information Outlook XP asks for. This includes your name, email address, your Unity logon ID and password, and the incoming and outgoing mail servers. It is fairly straight forward if you have the details required. Here is a list to help explain what needs to be filled out.

Incoming mail server (IMAP): Enter your mail server detail such as mail.example.com.au
Outgoing mail (SMTP) server: This should be the same as your incoming server such as mail.example.com.au
User Name: Enter your email username – such as yourname@example.com.au
Password: Enter your email password
Remember password: Check this box and you won’t be prompted each time you start Outlook. When you change your password on the system, remember to come back here to change it to match.

Once filled out, click on the ‘More Settings’ button to continue.

5) You will now have the ‘Internet Email’ dialogue box open. Click on the Outgoing Server tab to continue.
You must check the box with the text "Outgoing mail server: My server requires authentication", otherwise you will not be able to send email when you are not in the office.

Click OK to complete the configuration.
Click Next, then Finish to complete the Email Accounts dialogue.

Conclusion: You should now have a configured mail client. You should send a test e-mail to another work mate to test if you are sending e-mail and have them reply back to see if you are receiving e-mail.