VMWare Player 5 and Drive Shrinking

It's been a while since I play with VMWare at desktop level. Since I need a Delphi development environment that I could easy transfer between two machines, I thought to give it a try.

VMWare Player just rocks on the new i5 processors. Creating the Virtual Machine and playing around was really easy, until I get into VMWare Tools.

I remember that there was a control panel applet to start VMtools. There isn't any more. I google around for a couple of hours, and I get no information about this. And googling for "Shrink VMWare Disk" always mention the VMTools applet.

I run into the uninstall / install process for some times, until I give up. Something should be really wrong.

Finally I noticed that the applet is not available since version whatever.  You need to use the command line tools. On a Windows 7 guest this is as easy as opening a command line with administrator rights, and invoke the VMWareToolBoxCmd.exe utility.

But before you use the shrink option, you should "zeroing" the hard disk. You can do this using SDelete utility from windows sysutils: download it here.

Use SDelete with -z parameter on each drive before you run the shrink utility. Something like:

sdelete -z C:\

After it, you are ready to go:

<Open Administrator Command Line>
cd "\Program Files\VMWare\VMWare Tools"

This will show you some interesting information:
VMwareToolboxCmd help disk

but if you just want to shrink all disks just run:
VMwareToolboxCmd disk shrinkonly

SDelete it. Shrink it. Stay Free.

Things to do on a new Ubuntu Box

This is a "note to self" list:

1) apt-get install joe
joe is the best linux editor ever

2) joe ~/.bash_aliases

alias rm='rm -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias cp='cp -i'

[work in progress]

Dear Ubuntu,

I'm an experienced linux sysadmin.

I used a bunch of linux distributions all over the years, and I just got my first Ubuntu box to admin.

I just notice that there isn't by default an alias rm = rm -i.

I don't love you anymore.

Artur

Using lkJSON - an example with Google Drive data

lkJSON is free (BSD license) JSon parser for Delphi. It works great with Delphi 7.

lkJSON Source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lkjson/

When you are looking for a JSon parser, you look for someting that you can use in the next minute. There is no documentation for lkJSON, just a few examples included with the sources. I hope this quick and dirty example can save you some time.

A Google Drive API returns you something like this:

{ "kind": "drive#fileList", "etag": "\"ia2FS23424234234ANFYAdsc1Tyua2KKA-HnMs\"", "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files", "items": [ { "kind": "drive#file", "id": "0BwtHRVB3TFRHVllvRVE", "etag": "\"ia2H5NSXK_wk/MTM0MTc3MTMwMTU5Mg\"", "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/0BwPgllvRVE", "alternateLink": "https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BwPgllvRVE/edit", "permissionsLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/0BwPgllvRVE/permissions", "title": "Folder0", "mimeType": "application/vnd.google-apps.folder", "description": "Folzer Zero", "labels": { "starred": false, "hidden": false, "trashed": false, "restricted": false, "viewed": true }, "createdDate": "2012-07-08T18:13:51.185Z", "modifiedDate": "2012-07-08T18:15:01.592Z", "modifiedByMeDate": "2012-07-08T18:15:01.592Z", "lastViewedByMeDate": "2012-07-08T18:15:07.039Z", "parents": [ { "kind": "drive#parentReference", "id": "0AAPgHUk9PVA", "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/0BwPgllvRVE1/parents/0AA6_KcYtHUk9PVA", "parentLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files/0AA6_KcYtHUk9PVA", "isRoot": true } ], "userPermission": { "kind": "drive#permission", "etag": "\"ia2FSHMEjvcFQvtI4rH3hoJimnEgfM\"", "id": "current", "role": "owner", "type": "user" }, "quotaBytesUsed": "0", "ownerNames": [ "Artur" ], "lastModifyingUserName": "Artur", "editable": true, "writersCanShare": true }, { "kind": "drive#file", ... } { "kind": "drive#file", ... } ] }

And here is some Delphi code:

procedure TForm1.BlaBlaBla( JSonString : string ); var js, itjs: TlkJSONobject; ii : integer; Str : string; Trash : boolean; begin // Parse the String js := TlkJSON.ParseText( JSonString ) as TlkJsonObject; // Values on the first level are as easy as this selfLink := js.getString( 'selfLink' ); // let's digg into each document ... for ii:=0 to js.Field['items'].Count-1 do begin // each document is a TlkJSONobject ... ijs := (js.Field['items'].Child[ ii ] as TlkJSONobject); // So, it will be so simple to get something like this... Item.etag := ijs.getString( 'etag' ); Item.Id := ijs.getString( 'id' ); Item.title := ijs.getString( 'title' ); // Or a little bit different... Item.IsTrash := ijs['labels'].Field['trashed'].Value; end; js.Free; end

stay free.