Virtualization: Testing Proxmox and ESXi

After evaluating my home environment I thought it was time to repurpose the home server into a dedicated host for virtual machines. Ideally one of these will run my Minecraft server and as time goes on I might find other uses that I can launch additional VMs for. 

However instead of running a Type 2 Hypervisor, such as a Oracle Virtualbox on top of a Window 11 machine, I wanted to see if I could get a Type 1 Hypervisor to run bare metal. I have some experience working with VMware workstation and vSphere, but not installing one. So this is a documentation of my journey, more than a  guide. Note that VMware ESXi did not work on my Dell Optiplex, because it did not find the ethernet adapter. So then I tried Proxmox instead.

Downloading the .iso for ESXi

1. I started downloading the software which required me to register on Broadcoms website. In the top corner I clicked on register and followed a simple registration process.

2. After login in I went to the free downloads portal and looked for "VMware vSphere Hypervisor".

3. There I clicked my way to version 8.0U3e. I had to accept an agreement before I could download the .iso with the cloud icon. The download itself was just about 600mb and it is already licenced.

Installation issues with the .iso for ESXi

According to guides online it is as simple as booting from the .iso.

So I was going to put that to the test, but first - backup the current installation of course!

I wrote the .iso to a USB and booted from it, so far so good, but in the middle of the installation I ran into a common problem, the ethernet adapter was not supported by the OS. So here the journey ended.

Going with Proxmox instead.

I started by getting the .iso and wrote it to a USB with Rufus.

Then I booted my server from the .ISO and let it install. One learning I took away from this was that I had to put AHCI mode instead of the RAID, this is because the Proxmox installation didn't find the harddrive.

After a while I was faced with a login screen on the computer and an IP. This was my cue to get on my usual computer and browse into the IP.

The username is defaulted to "root", password is the password you set up in the installation.

You get into a view that is segmented into "datacenter", "username", "localnetwork", "local (username)" and "local-lvm (username)".

Creating my first test VM

My first takeaway here was to upload the .iso that you want into the segment called "local (username)" and ISO-images. It is a simple upload.

Next step is to press the segment just called "username" and do the create VM button.

You fill in name, ID, select cores and an amount of RAM that will be sufficient.

I had some easily fixed issues in my first attempts, too many cores and too much ram.

After fixing that I could start it with no issues. Surprisingly enough even the network worked.

I loaded in a Win11 x64 .iso with 8gb om ram and a couple of cores to do my first testing.

After that it was a usual Windows setup.

Updating the Proxmox

You can either login on the computer directly, or use SSH root@ipaddress with your password.

Then do the usual apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get update -y and you will update the OS.

Fiction: The Descendant, a short story

The Descendant

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-09-17

A couple of pigeons were strutting around on the ground as a cool breeze swept across the plaza. It was early spring when I decided to have my coffee outdoors for the first time this year.

One of the birds stood out against the others, it was white and slightly spotted. They were living in the moment, scouring for crumbles that had been left on the ground from earlier guests.

After a while they took off flying towards another part of the city, and I was once again alone with myself and my thoughts.

Glancing at my wristwatch, I knew it was time, they would be here any minute so I took my cup and went inside and found a secluded corner in the café.

As expected, and as they usually are, they were on time. Temporal agents were coming through the door and gracefully coming over to my corner where they sat down, face to face with me. Apart from their wildly different clothes, they all shared the same face. My face. Or maybe I carried their face.

When you work for The Time Council you are sometimes provided a new identity. Instead of looking like a nobody, they make you look like everybody. Should one agent be caught, then the opposition would simply think that they have captured the only agent. Perhaps they would even dismiss the person as a regular time traveler as there would be photos of the same person in multiple points in time.

One of them handed me a letter addressed to Ramel Loveworth, which read:

“Mr. Loveworth, you have been permanently dismissed from the Council for interfering with the timeline. As an agent you are there to observe and not be observed. Your actions have costed us greatly. The rules are clear and despite this you intervened. Hand in your device to agent Sidney Bardlet and continue your civilian days in time alone from this point onwards.”

I stared at the paper, deep down I knew that I had broken the rules but even now I was also convinced that I did the right thing. Countless lives had been saved from a terrible fate no one knew about now. A brief moment followed and I removed the wristwatch and put it in the outstretched hand of agent Bardlet.

Without a word they got up and left as proudly as they had entered, leaving me alone in the corner again. My eyes drifted to my wrist, realizing what it all had costed me.

As we had been to every point in the past and the future, we also developed a near perfect understanding of cause and effect. What people sometimes attributed to random occurrences or accidents we always knew how to trace back to the source.

What is difficult with having access to any point in the timeline is not that you don't know what to change, because you will not run out of such things.

It is knowing that you are able to but shouldn't change it, and now I know the price for doing so.

 

Fiction: The Returned, a short story

The Returned ❄️

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-10-29

What is scarier than entering cryo sleep? Well, that would have to be waking up from it. That's at least what the scientist told herself when she was looking down at the cryo chamber laying before her in the subterranean vault. A plaque with the name Rose Monime was the only thing giving the metal box a purpose to the unknowing eye. 

To the scientist this was a purpose greater than herself, the box had been there before her, and it had originally been intended to be there after her. In fact, no one at the Ark facility alive today had personally seen Rose. She had been frozen in time since a previous era, when cryo sleep, cloning and factory made humans were illegal, and at best instantly deadly. A horrible fate awaited most brave souls participating in the early, secret, trials. Rose had been one of the first to successfully enter cryo sleep.

Every day the scientists painstakingly ran checks and documented the vital signs provided by the now dated technology. Every day also meant a world that became more different from the world that Rose had known, should she ever return. 

And the day eventually came when the union between cutting edge science and luck were put to the test. With specially crafted microwave instruments and state of the art quantum particle analysis the scientists brought her back from this undefined state of being, neither alive or dead.

The pain of thawing after decades or centuries was indescribable. Every cell waking up from deep slumber was making it clear that this was against the wishes of any creator and the laws of nature.

The scientist looked at Rose as she became conscious after an almost 24 hour long recovery process. Her old memories, being electric impulses, were gone and new impressions flooded an almost factory reset brain. No one really knew what to expect either. In the same room, cryo chambers stood empty like open caskets gathering dust, indicating that there once had been others. She was the first one to not only make the journey but to also make it back, but some journeys make the traveler a different person. 

Rose's bewildered gaze met the scientist's and for a moment it looked like the two women shared a silent understanding. She spoke to Rose, but the woman in the cryo chamber said nothing. Her eyes had lost their human quality and she was just blankly looking at the scientist as if there was no one inside. As if the human spirit had left the body, leaving only a primitive animal behind.

Fiction: The Exception, a short story

A chaotic scene unfolded, the phones had been ringing nonstop for the past hours.

There was some kind of breach in the firewall, programs that weren't supposed to interact with one another had suddenly been interconnected.

Milvago Tintie was one of the latest workers that had been hired to upgrade the systems in the company some week ago. While waiting for the interview he had met Ella Rove, a girl that had been at the company for a year or so.

There was something about Ella that sparked a thought in Milvago, something he hadn't encountered before. A door deep within had opened and simple logic was not enough to explain this strange algorithm.

A few weeks passed by at the office and he recognized how different he was from the other colleagues working there. They never asked him to have coffee together and others thought that it was strange that he never ate lunch while sitting alone at the table in the lunch area.

It was not the first time he had experienced this kind of exclusion because of who he was. So it came as a great surprise when Ella one day sat down at this table. They had a lively conversation about everything and nothing, getting so caught up that they lost track of the allotted three quarter of an hour long lunch break. 

Getting back late from the lunch that day he was still focused on her and the regular work tasks soon received less attention. He looked forward to the next moment they would speak, and the next moment after that. 

And so the weeks kept churning, they would meet often and spend time talking and one day he simply came to the conclusion that he was in love with her. Caught up in these thoughts he decided he would visit her one day, bring a gift and ask her if she felt the same way.

It was a Thursday before a public holiday when he dressed in his best shirt and suitable clothes.
There was a bit of rain, so he brought an umbrella and got into the taxi.
It arrived just outside of the building and he stepped out, looking at the top floor.
"This is it" he said as he opened the door to the lobby and headed for the elevator.

He rang the bell at her apartment. He smiled wide and waited with anticipation.
This was the most important occasion in a long time, perhaps in his whole existence.

She opened the door carefully, smiled at first when she saw him. Her eyes moved towards the gift he carried and the smile faded somewhat as if she already knew his intentions. She looked him in the eye and a brief silence followed.

He started speaking but she cut him off gently but decisively.

"We can't be together Milvago" she said while the rain trickled down his face, "you know they would never allow it". 

A tear traveled down her cheek and she now smiled a broken smile as tears started forming.

This was an emotion he could never show. It was only reserved for humans. 

Fiction: The Castling, a short story

The Castling ♟️

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-09-17

Change was in the air. But there was a storm brewing far off in the distance as well. The days were shorter and the first falling leaves were a sign of the change of seasons. 

A man was walking along the seashore as the wind swept in over dried seagrass and crushed seashells.  

He stopped by the edge of the water, where the ocean met the grayish sand. His boots sank into the sand as he looked at a puddle to see his own reflection. He had not yet grown used to the face looking back at him. 

Somewhere out there he knew a stranger was in the same predicament. Someone looking into the reflection, perhaps as confused as himself. Maybe someone was trying to find out the truth at this very moment. Even if it was possible, would he want to transfer back to an aging body, stuck in a monotonous life? Whoever had taken his place surely wasn’t the winner.  

Judging by the name driver license in the wallet, he had somehow taken over the body of Anton Fossa, a young banker living in an expensive apartment in the city center. He himself was registered as Cody Poe Belmont, a reserved immigrant living a simple life as a priest without really leaving much of a paper trail. 

A distant sound at sea pulled Cody back from deep thought. Ever since the castling of souls had occurred, one thought had kept him awake at night, keeping him in fear. 

The life that he had ended up in had everything most people could ever dream of. He was young again; the gaze of people wandered toward him with attraction and his job paid well. Yet the question lingered echoing in the back of his head at all times.  

If the other person could find him, after all Anton was probably quite established, why did Anton never contact him? Had the stranger found hidden potential in his life that he himself had missed all these years? 

Later the same evening, as Cody was looking through the library in his new apartment, he pulled out a book that looked different from the other business, sociology and psychology books. A leather-bound book that gave him chills merely by touching it with his fingers. 

He realized that this was a book of great evil, and the illusion that he desperately had held onto that the whole situation was an accident was dispelled, as the title taunted him with jagged letters. 

“Satanic rituals, sacrifice and the transference of souls” 

Hardware: Replacing thermal paste on Framework Laptop 13

Hello,

This will be a shorter post covering how I dealt with the overheating Framework Laptop 13.

Essentially I had bought the laptop pre-owned, and thus it is difficult to get a complete picture of how worn the computer was at the time of the purchase.

However, you can run simple diagnostic tools for your CPU, memory, SSD and battery to get an estimate.

What I noticed, essentially from the beginning, was how was the PC would become even from a medium CPU load. Trying a lot of things from a software point of view I decided to look over the hardware.

After a fruitful dialogue with the Framework support I decided to give it a go and replace the thermal paste.

This is how I went about it:

1. Unscrew the bottom screws, they are captive so they remain in the bottom part.

2. Carefully lift up the keyboard cover from the lower right corner, don't pull too much or you will hurt the touchpad cable.

3. Gently lift the connector for the touchpad cable from the motherboard (there should be a tab, you pull straight up)

4. With the cover off, you unscrew the fan using the T5 screw still, also remove the connector for the fan. One screw I couldn't get fully loose but it worked like a captive one.

5. Unscrew the heatsink, carefully remove it together with the fan. The heatsink has captive screws.

6. You will notice a lot of thermal paste probably, in my case it has solidified to such a degree that alcohol didn't remove it, I had to carefully scrape with away with the spudger and the cotton swab, together with the alcohol.

7. When it was dried I applied generously with thermal paste. Screwed everything back, plugged back the touchpad cable, put the keyboard cover back and put the screws back in the bottom part of the PC.

The computer showed a lower temperature, but most importantly I could no longer feel the burning heat.

Kali Linux: Using the Framework fingerprint reader

As a Windows user I am also using facial recognition and fingerprint scanning as means of unlocking the operative system. In the same spirit I wanted to connect it to my Kali Linux dual boot.

A quick look at Bing gave me the following information. 

Start by opening the terminal, use Ctrl + Alt + T for example, then run each of these commands.

sudo apt install fprintd libpam-fprintd

sudo pam-auth-update

This will open a dialogue box, where you can select the "fingerprint authentication" option.

fprintd-enroll

Now you will touch the fingerprint sensor repeatedly until it says complete.

fprintd-verify

This let's you confirm functionality.

sudo fwupdmgr refresh

sudo fwupdmgr get-updates

sudo fwupdmgr update

Finally, lock your screen with Windows-key + L. It should allow you to test the fingerprint reader.

Hardware: Upgrading Framework Laptop 13

At this stage I have had my Framework Laptop 13 for almost a year I think, and by now I have accepted it for its strengths and shortcomings.

A brief overview of what I think about the machine to this day is as follows. It is a great machine, it looks and feels really good and the keyboard is amazing. The main issue I have is that the i5 1340p processor gets very hot. After talking to the support there are a few things I can do about it to start with. New thermal paste, cleaning it with compressed air and of course replacing the fan module (which I consider the last step). 

Running a battery report I found out that I am running the 55wh-battery, and it is down by approximately 20% battery health. Usually I run the laptop plugged in and capped at a maximum charge of 90%, so it is rare that I notice this. But my next purchase would probably be the slightly bigger battery.

So what did I upgrade in my first upgrade session? I got a new bezel that is green and translucent, an additional USB-C expansion card (as I never use HDMI, which I got when I bought it on Ebay), and a keyboard in the second generation, with my own native language. Which was sorely missed, due to the lack of pipe symbols. I am writing PowerShell scripts every so often, and a pipe symbol is essential for that.

The upgrades were easy, when you replace the Bezel, make sure to flip down the screen towards the table complete, start removing the bezel from the top right corner and be careful of the cable in the bottom left corner. Follow the manual that they provide on the website.

The expansion card replacement is the easiest part, just unlock the slot, remove the old one and insert the new one. Plug and play.

The keyboard was the trickiest, for this you should absolutely follow the guide and make sure to unscrew the right screws and also place them back where they belong. It takes a lot of time and is tedious, but not difficult.

Windows: Process Monitor

This post will cover some basics of Process Monitor, a program that is part of the Sysinternals Suite, which is a set of tools that was created by Mark Russinovich.

To download just the tool click here or if you want the entire Sysinternals Suite (170 mb) press here.

Writing the draft for this post I felt the need to research the difference between Process Monitor and Process Explorer, which can be generalized as the following:

Process Monitor (Procmon64)

Captures live information about the processes on your system, how processes interact with the file system, registry and network. Much like Wireshark you can open and save capture logs, which you then can filter.

Process Explorer 

Displays other aspects of the processes, such as handles, DLL:s, memory usage and resources. It shows how processes are related to each other as parent or child process in a tree view. Process Explorer can also be used as a "task manager on steroids" and replace task manager as the default app.

Using Procmon64

This section will explain how to create a basic capture and how to save it with an applied filter. Process Monitor starts gather information as soon as you start it so should you want to stop it press Ctrl +E. To clear the view in the window press Ctrl + X.

When you are ready to start the program that you are troubleshooting or analyzing, start "capture event", with Ctrl + E.

When you have reach the point where you want to stop, stop the capture.

Next you might want to apply filters, use Ctrl + L to get into the filter view.

As an example I took powershell.exe.

Select filter "program name" and "contains", write the name of the program in the textbox (for my example I just wrote powershell). Take add and apply, and then it filters out the data in the main window for you.

Maybe you want to filter out only registry queries for example, then you can add the additional filter "operation", "contains" and "RegQuery".

To save your log use Ctrl + S, it natively saves it in the .pml format but you can choose .xml and .csv as well.

Cybersecurity: Living of the land

Living of the land means to use resources that are already on the machine, as opposed to bringing external or homemade tools to the target device for example. The LOTL technique uses native tools which can make intrusion detection difficult as they leave minimal footprints and often are considered trusted. 

These native binaries can be used to break out of restricted shells and here are some examples that exist for both Unix (GTFOBins) and for Windows (LOLBAS).

Recently I watched a video from John Hammond that covered this cybersecurity technique. The YouTube video was in turn largely based of the research from Grzegorz Tworek.

I had previously seen how replacing utilman.exe with cmd.exe could grant administrator level command prompt from outside Windows before and in a similar fashion the video showed another replacement action. Grzegorz example that John is covering in the video shows how the native program tpmtool spawns cmd.exe which in turn calls for logman.exe in an unsafe way. The way this is executed is similar to "binary planting" and "DLL hijacking", the computer is simply tricked to execute something else than intended.

This is how he demonstrated the technique:

With Procmon64 actively gathering information about processes the command line tool "tpmtool drivertracing stop" was then run in cmd which resulted in an error. He then filtered out results for tpmtool which he was investigating and ran the command in cmd again. By doing this he could see that the tpmtool opens another cmd.exe window in a "process create" operation. 

Another filter for cmd.exe was also applied, which showed both a process create and process start, that according to the event properties starts yet another program in cmd, named logman and it is this program that could theoretically be replaced with something else. 

The reason why this exploit works is because logman.exe has no directory specified, you are essentially telling the computer to see if there is a program with that name where it is currently looking. If another exe-file is placed in the working directory of the initial cmd ("C:\Users\username") and is renamed to logman.exe, then the next time "tpmtool drivertracing stop" runs in cmd it calls on the fake logman.exe file.

For more information on how to use Process Monitor, I have written another post covering some basics here.