Checking TPM information with Linux

I recently had a laptop that supposably had a TPM, although the BIOS clearly stated it was enabled Windows 7 was unable to see this. So I decided to see whether I could identify the TPM information via a Debian live CD instead:

sudo -s

We will enable the revelent modules:

modprobe tpm_bios modprobe tpm modprobe tpm_tis force=1 interrupts=0

Install the relevent packages:

apt-get install tpm-tools trousers

And finally we run the following command to return TPM version, vendor ID etc.:

sudo tpm_version

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Synchronizing problems the time with VMware tools on Windows Server

When running a virtualized host with VMware tools installed; time information (by default) is syncronized against the ESXI host. Although it is far to easy to take this feature for granted and not actually understand how this process actually works. Initially assuming that the ESXI host setup an NTP server and the Windows host was consuming from this on the ESXI host was my initial thought, although it turns out the process is much simpler than this, by invoking the VMwareToolboxCmd.exe utility using the 'timesync' switch you can perform time related operations. If for some reason you are having syncronization issues with the time you should firstly ensure that it is currently enabled:

 cd C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools  
 VMwareToolboxCmd.exe timesync status  
 VMwareToolboxCmd.exe timesync enable  

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Implementing SCOM with Linux Hosts

System Center 2012 Operations Manager provides a management pack for a selection of Linux distributions (including the likes of Debian, Ubunutu and some other well-used distros.) They are available as part of the Universal Linux management pack which is available with System Center 2012 SP1 onwards.

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