Category: Macos

MacOS in VMware Workstation

June 6, 2025 / chronoit / 0 Comments

I recently decided to virtualize macOS on my Windows workstation in order to create an environment for testing software installations within a snapshot-capable setup. VMware Workstation does not support this functionality by default; however, as is often the case, the open-source community has provided a solution through a tool called Unlocker.

https://github.com/paolo-projects/auto-unlocker

The key point to remember about this product is that it must be uninstalled using the same executable file before performing a software upgrade, as failing to do so can lead to problematic issues. Once the software has been updated, the tool can be run again to restore the unlocked functionality.

Encrypted DNS

May 21, 2025 / chronoit / 0 Comments

I recently began looking into encrypting dns traffic for general security reasons. Thankfully I wasn’t the first person to look into this and there is a very robust ecosystem already in place.

https://github.com/paulmillr/encrypted-dns

I chose to use the cloudflare resolvers but Paul has put together a great list of other providers that provide access to both general as well resolvers who provider dns filtering to protect against known malicious sites.

Cloudflare talks about the different methodologies in detail but it falls into 3 categories:

DNS over TLS (DoT): https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/encryption/dns-over-tls

DNS over HTTPS (DoH): https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/encryption/dns-over-https/

Oblivious DNS over HTTPS: https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/encryption/oblivious-dns-over-https/

I personally would recommend DoH as it provides both security and slightly obscured network traffic while not requiring additional third party services.

VMware – Installing Powershell for Intel Macos

January 26, 2024 / chronoit / 0 Comments

As a system engineer who uses a mac I often run into problems with software that wasn’t really designed or documented properly for macos users. This guide will get you up and running with a basic PowerCLI environment.

Recommended Software Versions

macos Ventura 13.6.4
macos Python 3.9.6
PowerCLI Recommended Python3.7.X (no longer available in brew)

Install brew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install prerequisites

brew install xz
brew install pyenv
brew install [email protected]
pyenv install 3.7.17
/Users/<youruser>/.pyenv/versions/3.7.17/bin/python3 -m pip install six psutil lxml pyopenssl

Since Python 3.7 has been removed from brew (fully deprecated) we will want to move to pyenv to manage your python installs (which you should probably do anyway). You need to install [email protected] as this is a requirement for powercli and is a package that brew held back as it's used by multiple packages so it's still installable separately from brew python.

Install Powershell

brew install powershell/tap/powershell

Install PowerCli

 pwsh
 Install-Module VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

Configure PowerCLI

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -PythonPath /Users/<youruser>/.pyenv/versions/3.7.17/bin/python3  -Scope User

You now have a functional Powershell environment.

Other Useful commands

Listing all available versions of powercli
Find-Module -AllVersions VMware.PowerClI

Discover your currently installed version of modules
Get-Module -Name VMware.* | Select-Object -Property Name,Version

Reset your Powershell environment
Get-InstalledModule | Uninstall-Module -Force