Download version 1.4 here.

Download ADPassMon v1.3

ADPassMon user Cesar Gonzalez sent me a nice note to let me know that Apple engineers suggested using ADPassMon to work around a problem he encountered after deploying FileVault 2. Due to the EFI boot authentication passthrough, his users are no longer notified of the pending password expirations at the login screen. Since ADPassMon runs after the login process, it works whether FileVault 2 is enabled or not.

Adding to ADPassMon’s feature list without any additional work seems like a big win to me. :) Thanks again, Cesar!

Grab the latest version here.

A commenter requested a 32-bit version of ADPassMon so his older Intel Macs can run it. One quick setting change in Xcode and a short recompile later and it’s ready. Version 1.1 support both 32 and 64-bit Intel architectures.

I’ve updated the link on the ADPassMon page and you can download directly here.

I just released my very first “real application” — written in that wonderful mashup language that is AppleScript ObjectiveC. ADPassMon is a menu bar app for Mac OS X 10.6 and higher — Lion, too — that monitors your Active Directory password’s age. It does a few more things that you may find useful. Please visit the product page for complete details and a download link.

I can only hope the victim of this screensaver has a great sense of humor should he find out about this. :)

Click here to download your copy. (NOTE: This is an updated link and should work better than the last one.)

Not to worry, though. After about 30 minutes of trying various solutions and just poking around in Windows 7, I found that the solution is pretty simple. The following procedure assumes you already have Printer Sharing enabled on your Mac.

I. Get your printer’s LPR Queue Name from CUPS admin

1. On your Mac, open a browser and go to http://127.0.0.1:631 — the CUPS admin page.
2. Click the Printers tab and look at the list of printers.
3. If you’re using Snow Leopard, you’ll see a Queue Name column. Take note of the Queue Name for the printer you want to access from Windows 7. If you’re using Leopard or earlier, the Queue Name is the reddish link above a horizontal black line. (See pic below.) There are no spaces allowed in queue names, so if your printer shows up as Canon MP830 in the Print & Fax pref pane in System Preferences, the queue name will likely be Canon_MP830.
   

II. Enable LPR Port Monitor in Windows 7

1. On your Windows 7 computer, go to your Control Panel and select the Programs item.
2. Under the Programs and Features section, click Turn Windows features on or off.
   
3. Expand the Print and Document Services item and then enable the LPR Port Monitor item.
   
4. Click OK and wait for the change to be implemented. You should not need to reboot.

III. Add a new LPR printer

1. Click the Start menu and select Devices and Printers.
2. Click Add a printer in the toolbar.
   
3. Select Add a local printer.
   
4. Select Create a new port and then select LPR Port from the menu. Click Next.
   
5. Type the name or IP address of your Mac in the first field and then enter the Queue Name you got in step I above in the second field. Click OK.
   
6. The computer will attempt to verify the destination. If Printer Sharing is enabled on your Mac and you entered the info correctly, then you should not get any errors. If you see the following error, verify the settings on your Mac.
   
7. You should now see the Install the print driver screen. Choose a postscript printer driver, regardless of the kind of printer you are connecting to. This is very important. You do not need to pick a matching driver for your device. The only consideration is whether to use a color driver or a b&w driver. (I’m using an HP Color LaserJet 3000 PS driver and it works well.) When you’ve selected a driver, click Next.
   
8. Name your printer and click Next. The printer will now be installed.
9. Select Do not share this printer and click Next.
   
10. If you want this printer to be the default, check Set as default printer. Now click Print a test page.

Success?

If everything worked, you should have in your hands a familiar windows printer test page. If you still can’t get anything to print, please let me know about it in the comments.

Update: Bonjour Print Services for Windows

If the above method does not work for you, you should install Bonjour Print Services for Windows.

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with vSphere Client and can find your way around. Read on beyond the break.

The Procedure

This entire procedure must be repeated for each ESX host you want to set up iSCSI multipathing on. If you have a clustered VMware environment, you should set up multipathing on each node in your cluster. Each VMkernel interface you create for the purposes of iSCSI multipathing will need an IP address, so it’s important to make sure you have enough available IP addresses in the appropriate subnet(s) before proceeding.

For convenience, here’s the procedure summary, with links to the tutorial sections.

1. Create the vmkernel interfaces
2. Use your iSCSI management tools to allow these new interfaces to connect
3. Configure the software iSCSI initiator to use the new vmkx iSCSI ports
4. Configure Round Robin path selection for all iSCSI datastores
5. Reboot the ESX host

I. Create the vmkernel interfaces

The first step is to create at least two VMkernel ports, bound to unique physical NICs. This is done in the vSphere Client.

1. Select the Networking view from the ESX host’s Configuration tab.
2. Find the vSwitch that is connected to the physical NICs you’d like to use for iSCSI multipathing and click the Properties link.
3. Click the Add button, select VMkernel and click Next.
4. Give a descriptive network label. I recommend “vmkx-iSCSI”, where x is the actual port number. I’ll be using this naming convention during this tutorial. (If you only have one existing VMkernel port, then it is vmk0. The next one you create will be vmk1. The one after that will be vmk2, etc.) Do not enable VMotion on this port. Click Next.
5. Enter the port’s IP address and subnet mask, then click Next and Finish.
   
6. Select the new port from the list in the vSwitch Properties window, click the Edit button, and then select the NIC Teaming tab.
7. Enable Override vSwitch failover order, and then select one vmnic to be in the Active Adapters section and move the rest to the Unused Adapters section. (Make sure you choose a different vmnic for each vmkx-iSCSI port!) Click OK.
   
8. Repeat steps 3 – 7 for each additional you wish to create, then close the vSwitch Properties window.

II. Use your iSCSI management tools to allow these new interfaces to connect

Since all environments are different, I can’t tell you how to do this step. Our iSCSI setup uses IP address access lists, so in this section, I would add the IP addresses of the VMkernel interfaces I added in the previous section to the access list.

III. Configure the software iSCSI initiator to use the new vmkx iSCSI ports

1. In vSphere Client, select the Storage Adapters view from the ESX host’s Configuration tab and note the iSCSI Software Adapter device name. It’s vmhba33 in our environment.
2. Using a command-line interface to the ESX host, add a vmk adapter to the software iSCSI initiator with this command:

   esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmkx -d vmhba33

3. Repeat step 2 for each vmkx interface you created in section I.
4. Back in vSphere Client, right-click on the iSCSI Software Adapter and choose Rescan to discover the additional paths to your storage. After a short wait, you should see in the Details section the available paths multiply by the number of VMkernel ports you added. E.g. If you are attached to 16 datastores and you added two iSCSI paths to them, your paths count should increase from 16 to 32.

NOTE: It is common for the path number to be incorrect at this stage. In my case, it showed 48 paths — which is the original 16 plus the 32 new ones. Rebooting the ESX host will fix this, but you can save the reboot until the entire process is complete.

IV. Configure Round Robin path selection for all iSCSI datastores

To actually take advantage of these multiple iSCSI paths, you need to set your datastores to use the Round Robin path selection method so all paths can be active. The following procedure must be completed for each iSCSI datastore your ESX host accesses.

1. In vSphere Client, select the Storage view from the ESX host’s Configuration tab.
2. Select one of your iSCSI datastores and click the Properties link.
3. Click the Manage Paths button.
   
4. Select Round Robin (VMware) from the Path Selection menu and click Close.
   
5. Click Close, and then wait for the task to finish.
6. Repeat steps 2 – 6 for each iSCSI datastore.

V. Reboot the ESX host

If your environment is clustered, rebooting an individual host shouldn’t be too much trouble. After the reboot, the correct number of paths to your datastores should be reported.