An Unquiet Wiki

Internet Explorer in Ubuntu 11.04 / 11.10

2012-01-18T18:19:00.001-05:00

I found some simple instructions for adding IE to an Ubuntu box: except WINE wasn't desiring of installing for me. So, some expanded instructions: this should also let you choose between 1.2 (stable) and 1.3 (development)....

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
2. sudo apt-get update
3. Download updated deb files for the following libraries: binfmt-support ; libmpg123-0 ; libopenal1 ; libopenal-data ; cabextract ; libesd0 ; esound-common ; libaudiofile0
4. (In the folder you saved the files) dpkg -i *.deb
5. sudo apt-get install winetricks wine1.2 wine1.2-gecko or sudo apt-get install winetricks wine1.3 wine1.3-gecko
6. Find "winetricks" in your Applications menu: run it; select the default prefix; install a Windows component; pick the version of IE to run. You may need to uncheck the update box.

Added: you may want to refer to the application compatability database, regarding IE versions that work. You may need to use winetricks to load additional components.

Microsoft, just put out Vista / 2008 SP3 already, please?

2012-01-06T21:33:00.000-05:00

Found even more Server 2008 hotfixes via a nice blog I found tonight. To anyone at Microsoft: 2008 is your last server that supports older 32-bit production software properly; some vendors are not known for changing with the times. Please put out a rollup or service pack, for the sake of all sysadmins that are tasked with making said software operate. Thank you.

* Logon fix
* Another logon fix
* Networking fix
* Another networking fix
* If you use a static IP, this might fix a problem you've been having...
* Networking fix for 32-bit programs on x64 servers

Added: I looked up some Windows XP fixes as well, since I still have 2 production units to support. Found this list, and looked up the more interesting fixes...

* Fix for GDI leak
* Fix for copying files with RDP
* Fix for file sharing within RDP
* Fix for memory leak in WinHTTP apps
* Another fix for file sharing
* Another memory leak fix , this time for multithreaded XML apps

More Server 2008 fixes found

2011-12-26T12:31:00.002-05:00

Fixes for LSM + print spooler error logging. I wish I found these a year ago...

* Print server error reporting: registry tweak

* Updated LSM.EXE

On the bright side, Microsoft seems to have dropped requiring passwords for the hotfix files.

How to enable / disable privacy addressing for IPv6 in Linux

2011-12-12T17:02:00.002-05:00

Per this documentation, there is a kernel setting for use of RFC3041 IPv6 "privacy addressing" in Linux. It seems to be enabled by default on Ubuntu 12.04: which is fine for general users, but not desirable for administrative purposes.

To disable privacy addressing, add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf , then restart the system...

net.ipv6.conf.all.use_tempaddr=0
net.ipv6.conf.default.use_tempaddr=0

To enable (or restore Ubuntu 12.04 default)...

net.ipv6.conf.all.use_tempaddr=2
net.ipv6.conf.default.use_tempaddr=2

Keeping an old Visual Basic app alive

2011-12-07T16:31:00.001-05:00

Trying to keep our production VB5 / VB6 application alive long enough for a web-based replacement to be installed. Server 2008 was never built to suffer the use I've made of it with this (see past blog posts).

* The RAMMap tool was very useful in tracking down active files to look up.
* Found updated Jet 3.5 libraries from 1999; we've been using the 1997 versions still.
* One of the main VB6 dll files was updated last year (to support IE8).
* Found an article on what the heck MSVCRT.DLL does.
* Found a memory leak analyzer that I intend to try out on the software: though I don't expect the original developers to act on my findings.

And for something completely different, a CodeProject essay I found 2 years ago on what not to do in programming.

Thanks Wikipedia

2011-11-18T17:41:00.002-05:00

Throw 'em a few bucks. Or at least some decent edits that don't involve vandalism.

fstab entries for btrfs on SSD

2011-11-10T13:41:00.000-05:00

After much finagling, I have an uptime of 13 70 days regarding a Debian Linux setup that uses btrfs for root on an 16GB Kingston SSD. The problem is related to an older post I made, but different situation. Using my attempts to fix that problem, along with a working Debian kernel 3.0 (they don't exactly announce what subversion they use); I haven't had to reboot the damned thing in two weeks. Change your /etc/fstab file to use the following options for the drive...

noatime,rw,ssd,compress,thread_pool=32

In layman's terms, these options set the drive to not update access times, treat the drive as an SSD, compress files as able, and use 32 threads (vs 1-8, whatever default is) to coordinate read/write activities. The reviews on the 8GB Kingston SSD leave me to believe it chokes on writes that happen too often.

* Jan 6 2012: uptime has exceeded two months with this fix.

Way to install Ubuntu 11.10 using a flash drive

2011-10-14T00:47:00.004-04:00

Edit: doesn't seem to matter which installer I use...
Edit2: issue I run into with 11.10 ISOs

Apparently, Ubuntu 11.10 is distributed on "hybrid" ISOs: you can use something like Universal USB Installer or UBootIn to copy the ISO to a USB drive, and it can still be modified afterwards. I do some preseeding for work, so I needed to still be able to do that like I did with the hd-media installer.

Sample entry for syslinux/txt.cfg or cfg file on USB root (UBootIn)

menu label ^Install Company Loadset
kernel /install/vmlinuz
append initrd=/install/initrd.gz file=/cdrom/preseed/company.seed keyboard-configuration/layoutcode=us --

Sample snippet from custom preseed file

d-i preseed/late_command string \
. /cdrom/dumpinstall.sh ; \
in-target sh /postinstall/postinstall.sh ;

So as long as you change your hd-media paths to cdrom , you should be able to get a customized install working on a flash drive. And you should be able to copy everything to a folder for replication to more flash drives, using syslinux to make them bootable.

Updated NetToggle

2011-10-10T00:47:00.001-04:00

Per suggestions and comments, that I received, I've made some substantial changes.

* Replaced "TCP Timestamps" option with a granular RFC1323 setting. Apparently Microsoft did something weird with the original netsh command.
* Added mouse-hover documentation + reference links for each option.
* Made all the IPv6 automatic tunneling options selectable: some people might use one of them.

Given the TCP Timestamp bug, I heartily recommend upgrading.

* New version <---- this is what you would need to download

* Website

Solution for AMD / ATI driver install problem

2011-10-06T12:16:00.000-04:00

For a few weeks now, my work system hasn't been able to properly install updated AMD drivers. It would seem that there's an issue with the installer conflicting with differing versions of the MFC framework on Windows: it doesn't always come up, but since I'm always trying different programs, I had at least 3 different versions of the same runtimes installed.

Source of this fix

1. Run the proper installer from AMD. Extract the files, then quit the installer.
2. Use an admin command prompt to go to the folder where the stuff was extracted (usually into a C:\ATI or C:\AMD folder). There will be a folder for the whole driver set, and two folders inside that: BIN and BIN64; pick the one you need for 32-bit or 64-bit use.
3. Run ATISetup.exe -Uninstall -output screen , then ATISetup.exe -Install -output screen
4. It doesn't say reboot, but I would suggest it. I noticed an immediate difference, even though my Windows graphics score dropped by .1

New tool for network tweaking

2011-10-03T01:42:00.001-04:00

Important! Updated app

For a good 3-4 years now, I've used a series of batch files to implement various netsh commands: either to disable errant automatic IPv6 tunnels, or to force use of Compound TCP, or to apply firewall rules for Hyper-V admin and server use (HVRemote doesn't get everything). This is my attempt to consolidate those command sets. Its not set in stone, and I've included the source code for anyone to modify and extend as needed. Ideas and feedback are welcome of course: I can make desired changes as I have time for (this took only 5 hours, not counting all the time I spent the past few years learning how to use them).

You can grab NetToggle via this link, or my programming page.

Free programming environment with Microsoft-based toolset

2011-09-25T18:38:00.000-04:00

Right now, MS is pushing for the Windows 8 / VS11 toolset for cutting-edge developers. But for many of us maintaining current systems, its still nice to know what you'd need to get started for their environment. I should point out that in the past, I've used SharpDevelop for my own projects: unfortunately, converting older open-source VS projects seems a hassle in SD.

* Visual Studio 2010 Express (C# / VB.NET / C++)
* Visual Studio 2010 Shell
* IronPython
* Python Tools for Visual Studio
* IronRuby
* F#
* Microsoft Windows SDK

Edit: it might also help to know where to grab non-Microsoft .NET parts: namely Mono & GTK# stuff to use cross-platform with Windows and Linux.

* Mono & GTK#
* MonoDevelop

Some Windows 8 finds

2011-09-16T13:21:00.000-04:00

1. Metro is nice, but the apps are still missing close buttons. If you want to go Metro-less, you can, but....

a. Expect some "Microsoft Confidential" notice to pop up from hereon.
b. No more fancy Task Manager.
c. No more fancy copy dialog.
d. No ribbon dialogs in Explorer.

2. Microsoft appears to have put their own anti-virus software in it. Pings the CPU load as I've seen it do in the past: hope we can still put Avast on it, or something.

3. Command prompt (cmd.exe) appears to not be admin-default, even with the user set as an administrator, and User Access Control turned off. Right-click cmd.exe to "run as admin". I'll have to check this further to see if UAC disables correctly or not across my setups.

4. I use some netsh tweaks for performance improvement: running my normal script triggered some errors; it looks like Microsoft might be adding support for DCTCP (it shows up as a congestion control option, along with CTCP). Example command to try: netsh interface tcp set supplemental internet

5. ActiveX controls that worked on IE8, and broke in IE9 (security cameras, etc), are still broken in non-Metro IE10 (you can use either with the default install).

6. It auto-installs network printers, and puts them in your Device Manager.

7. Application quirks: TightVNC gets an "Error 5" on its admin console; RDTabs works, but there's an additional permissions prompt from Windows for web-based something.

Ruby GTK findings

2011-09-09T15:18:00.000-04:00

I'm continuing to use my nascent Ruby skills for other purposes: in this case, a GTK app to cut down on repeated clicking of a FreeRDP launcher. People clicking on a RDP launcher multiple times tends to crash 2008 Terminal Server.

Ubuntu users need to install "ruby" and "libgnome2-ruby" to use this stuff.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

# Application desktop launcher
# Ubuntu requirement: apt-get install ruby libgnome2-ruby packages
# Reference: http://unquietwiki.blogspot.com/2011/09/ruby-gtk-findings.html
# Michael Adams, Sep 9, 2011
#
# Takes 1 argument: the username to login to

require 'gtk2'

class RubyApp < Gtk::Window

    def initialize
        super
        set_title "APPLICATION"
        signal_connect "destroy" do
            Gtk.main_quit
        end

        init_ui
        show_all
    end

    def init_ui
        fixed = Gtk::Fixed.new
        add fixed
        label = Gtk::Label.new
        message = "Application starting.\n\n If there has been a reboot, it may take 60 seconds.\n\n"
        message += "If your screen is frozen, reboot your computer.\n\n Thank you."
        label.set_text message
        fixed.put label, 10, 40
        set_default_size 350,200
        set_window_position Gtk::Window::POS_MOUSE
    end

end

Gtk.init
     command = "xfreerdp --plugin cliprdr --plugin rdpdr --data serial:COM1:/dev/ttyUSB0 -- -z -x m -g 961x691 -u "
     command += ARGV[0] + " -p PASSWORD SERVER"
     system(command) if fork.nil?
     window = RubyApp.new
Gtk.main

* Ruby-GNOME2 project for Ruby GTK
* Ruby GTK tutorials from ZetCode
* GTK reference manual
* Ruby process management

How to set the default printer in IronRuby

2011-08-12T15:29:00.000-04:00

Figured I'd convert a work script from Ruby to IronRuby, since its managing a Windows application.

1. Add the following to the top of your script...

require 'mscorlib'
require 'System'
require 'System.Management, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'

* Added: you can apparently change the "Version" to 4.0.0.0 if you have .NET 4.0 loaded.

2. Here's the function I wrote to set the default printer

# Set default printer
def setDefaultPrinter(defaultPrinterName)
Printer = System::Management::ManagementObject
printer = Printer.new("win32_printer.DeviceId='" + defaultPrinterName + "'")
printer.InvokeMethod("SetDefaultPrinter", nil)
end

References

* "Getting Started with IronRuby"
* System.Management.ManagementObject class on MSDN
* CodeProject article that uses the InvokeMethod for setting the default printer
* "Query WMI with IronRuby"

Stuck btrfs and thread_pool

2011-07-26T17:19:00.000-04:00

So I built a Linux box for backup jobs recently that runs off a flash drive, and saves its data to a btrfs filesystem on a RAID1 array. Kernel 2.6.39.x , using iSCSI-SCST to provide several targets. Oddly enough, there would be some btrfs worker process using 20% of CPU, and top would consistently show load of 2.5 to 10. I experimented with some btrfs mount options: adding space_cache,thread_pool=32 to /etc/fstab (and remounting with those options) seems to have dropped the load down to zero!

Recipe: .NET work console

2011-06-29T16:29:00.000-04:00

* An RDP control for C#
* Something for IE-based websites
* Something for real websites
* Something for chat

Blend in an appropriate IDE and tweak as needed. I've made something like this before, but that was 5-6 years ago, and I don't have that code handy. This will be fun...

MS SQL 2008 upgrade glitch

2011-06-16T15:58:00.000-04:00

Some time after SQL Server 2008 SP1, the upgrade logic went wonky. I lost my ability to upgrade past one of the post-SP1 hotfixes/cumulative updates because of an error 598, state 1, severity 25 bug. The June 2011 Patch Tuesday had an automatic hotfix for SQL Server that resurrected said bug: removing all post-SP1 hotfixes & upgrading to SP2 did not fix the issue. So I found this MS reference, and this blog post, and shutdown all the other servers that might be making SQL calls, and this is what worked for me (step 1 may not be necessary, given what I found)...

1. Per the DataZulu reference, I looked for registry entries in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer: I had none. I made DefaultData & DefaultLog string entries, and pointed them where my master databases and log files were respectively.
2. Coped the following into C:\fixit.sql

declare @SmoDefaultFile nvarchar(512)
exec master.dbo.xp_instance_regread N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultData', @SmoDefaultFile OUTPUT
declare @SmoDefaultLog nvarchar(512)
exec master.dbo.xp_instance_regread N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultLog', @SmoDefaultLog OUTPUT
SELECT
ISNULL(@SmoDefaultFile,N'') AS [DefaultFile],
ISNULL(@SmoDefaultLog,N'') AS [DefaultLog]

3. Ran net start MSSQLSERVER /f /T3608 & sqlcmd -A -i c:\fixit.sql -o c:\sql.txt from the command line: the first command starts an admin-only SQL server; the second command will process the SQL fix DataZulu posted.
4. The file made by the second command (C:\SQL.TXT) should list where SQL Server is trying to find stuff: in this case, it was a missing folder on E-drive. So I made the folder it wanted, and restarted the service.
5. The service started working properly, and created a 1KB MS_AgentSigningCertificate.cer file in that folder I made.

All this trouble, because I think Microsoft wanted to do something with a security certificate. (shakes head)

x64 Firefox on Windows

2011-06-05T22:17:00.002-04:00

Edit 11-25-2011: still no official x64 Firefox; nightly is still updated, and Flash supports x64 now.

I tried x64 Firefox a while back: buggy as Hell. June 2011 Nightly: working so far! There is an x64 Flash plugin in the wings, and there's an addon to help enable addons that might still work (StumbleUpon does).

* Firefox nightly x64 (look for x86-64 EXE)
* Add-on Compatibility Reporter
* Flash plugin non-IE x64
* x64 Java

If you're using an "IETab" plugin, those are still 32-bit only and won't work; use IETester for those sites.

Recipe for doing semi-routed ATA over Ethernet

2011-06-01T22:10:00.000-04:00

AoE is supposed to be a low-overhead competitor to iSCSI. Part of the reasoning is that its a layer 2 protocol, vs a layer 3. Not only that, but the iSCSI functionality is limited on use per IPv4 or IPv6 host compatibility, and network access. I already use tinc-vpn as a routing mechanism for IPv6 subnets via its "virtual ethernet" mode: could it be used to created disk storage that would otherwise require iSCSI? And how would you test its effectiveness?

Added: I've used btrfs with multiple disk drives per their wiki howto. Maybe that could be used with this to create high-speed distributed storage?

Debian 6.01 on Hyper-V

2011-04-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

I've had intermittent luck making Ubuntu work in a Hyper-V environment: its been cantankerous, to say the least. A few weeks ago, I got Debian 6 running on it: today, it hosed its btrfs filesystem; probably because of Hyper-V's time skewing. I needed to reinstall, and after finding some 10.10 stuff to try, went back to trying Debian again...

1. When creating the virtual machine, use a "Legacy Network Adapter" and IDE drives: it won't work properly otherwise. For added stability, consider enabling the "Migrate to different computer" processor option, and a static hardware network address.
2. Use the small CD ISO network installer: AMD64 or i386.
3. During install, consider using XFS or JFS for your filesystems; ext4 performance varies widely, and there are rumors ext3 and btrfs can corrupt (experienced the latter for myself).
4. apt-get install adjtimex after you're up and running: it'll help the system compensate for Hyper-V's time skewing.
5. For added insurance that you'll be able to access your filesystems on boot, consider adding them to your initramfs. nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules to make changes. I added the following so I could access XFS and BTRFS (to recover my older setup): btrfs zlib_deflate crc32c libcrc32c xfs exportfs
6. Debian 6 uses the 2.6.32 kernel by default. If you want to use the 2.6.38 kernel, check the sid 2.6 archive. For AMD64, you'll need to install: linux-base linux-headers-2.6.38-2-all linux-headers-2.6.38-2-amd64 linux-headers-2.6.38-2-common linux-kbuild-2.6.38 linux-image-2.6.38-2-amd64

References
* MS blog post on using 10.10 Ubuntu on Hyper-V
* Panterlo blog post on using 10.10 Ubuntu on Hyper-V

Some stuff for Mythbuntu

2011-04-03T14:07:00.000-04:00

1. Found an OVU400103/00 HP RC6 USB remote setup recently, and wanted to try it out with my MythTV setup. The Ubuntu wiki entry for LIRC was helpful: I selected the "Windows Media Center Remote" as my hardware, and set it to a profile for "Direct TV". Also added echo lirc > /sys/class/rc/rc0/protocols to /etc/rc.local , since I'm using a 2.6.38 kernel (otherwise, it'll double-click the arrow push).

2. I was having trouble getting videos indexed: turns out you can use "M" or the Windows-key on the remote to call up a control menu for Videos, Music, etc; I was able to rescan and find the videos I copied in.

3. I need to get an AMD / ATI card working with OpenGL properly. I found a ~~reference for 2.6.38 kernel usage~~; and as of this past week, AMD's 11.3 driver came out, so I should be able to make it happen. EDIT: use the unofficial AMD wiki to help install stuff.

---Added---
4. MariaDB doesn't seem to work with Mythbuntu properly.

5. I did find MySQL 5.5 in a PPA: try at your own risk!

6. Mythbuntu 11.04 is in beta: use this to avoid much pain with kernels and PPA stuff; you'll still need to follow tips #1-3 as needed.

Getting a cx88xx analog tuner to work on Ubuntu / MythBuntu

2011-03-20T14:35:00.000-04:00

The newest kernels don't autoset the correct tuner/card type for cx88xx cards...

1. As sudo/root, do an lspci -v and look for the Connextant card: you want the Subsystem & 4-character device ID (this should tell you the vendor of the card).
2. Search online for that 4-character ID to see what card and/or driver it belongs to.
3. This list has IDs for the card type in the kernel driver.
4a. As sudo/root, nano /etc/modprobe.d/options and add options cx88xx card=# i2c_scan=1 , the # being from the card # found in step 3.
4b. If you know the tuner make/model, look it up on this list, and add tuner=# to the previous command.
5. Reboot and scan for channels with MythTV/tvtime/etc.

List of good apps that don't like EMET

2011-03-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

I've been using EMET on "maximum security" in my work environment to cut down on malware infections. However, some legitimate applications don't work, and you have to set it to "recommended" for those to load; you should be able to set back to "maximum" afterwards.

* Oracle Java 6 installer: at least as of r24; JDK 7 loads fine. I think it has to do with the Yahoo/Bing toolbar offer it has.
* Google Talk

Followup from Reddit discussion...

* No EAF for: Skype, Silverlight-Firefox
* No DEP for: Brain Workshop
* No ASLR for: Anki

Quick List of Free Games

2011-03-05T00:13:00.000-05:00

I was asked to put together a list of free games to try, so I went over my archive...

Non-web-based

* Alien Swarm: free multiplayer game from folks that worked on Left4Dead.
* Eversion: Mario meets Braid
* Hedgewars: multiplayer puzzle-strategy; huge international fanbase.
* Mario Paint Composer: for anyone that played Mario Paint when they were a kid.
* OpenTTD: simulate roads, rail, and airplanes; I actually got in trouble for playing this too late once.
* Privates: maybe your teenager wants to kill Herpes instead of catch it?
* Scorched 3D: tank war; single or multiplayer.

Web-based

* Catan Online: also the official website for "Settlers of Catan"
* Desktop Tower Defense: a "spiritual successor" to Rampart
* FreeCiv.net: online Civilization clone
* Kingdom of Loathing: community-driven RPG; their unofficial radio station is awesome.
* Pirates Love Daises: comical HTML5 tower-defense
* Urban Dead: multiplayer survivor vs zombie RPG; you will often end up playing as both.

Compiling Openfire XMPP chat server with IKVM Java to .NET runtime

2011-03-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

Openfire is a rather nice and usable XMPP chat server. It does have one caveat: a dependance on Java; which, given your views of the Oracle takeover, is either good or bad. Another annoyance: on a Windows box, if you want IPv6 clients to connect, you can't run stone and redirect the necessary TCP ports (5222,5223,9090,9091) while Oracle Java is running (Java7 supports IPv6 on post-XP systems, but its currently still "non-production").

Solution: IKVM. It can recompile Java apps as .NET programs, using code that was open-sourced by Sun. There may also be some native support for IPv6 (IKVM 0.46.0.0 has some IPv6 support, but doesn't seem to work well enough yet).

Ingredients

*. The latest usable IKVM bin: usually announced on their weblog
*. An available Java Runtime: you'll need it to unpack some of the JAR files.
*. The latest ZIP file for OpenFire.
*. IPv6 client access may need stone installed as a service; I already have a package for that (add the extra ports to the correct stone.ini).

Install process

1. Extract IKVM to something like c:\ikvm
2. Extract OpenFire to something like c:\openfire
3. Install a working JRE as able.
4. Install the stone proxy service if you need it for IPv6 clients.
5. Copy the following batch file, and edit the SET paths to where to installed/saved steps 1-3.
6. To automatically run your chat server in the background, use Task Manager to create a new task (Vista/2008 or newer) for the openfire.exe the batchfile creates.
7. You can optionally uninstall the JRE.

Batch file to compile the software...

REM Build OpenFire with IKVM

SET jrebindir=C:\PROGRA~1\Java\jre6\bin
SET ikvmbindir=C:\IKVM\bin
SET openfiredir=C:\openfire
cd %openfiredir%\lib

REM Decompress
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r commons-el.jar.pack commons-el.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r hsqldb.jar.pack hsqldb.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r jasper-compiler.jar.pack jasper-compiler.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r jasper-runtime.jar.pack jasper-runtime.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r jtds.jar.pack jtds.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r mysql.jar.pack mysql.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r openfire.jar.pack openfire.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r postgres.jar.pack postgres.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r servlet.jar.pack servlet.jar
%jrebindir%\unpack200 -r slf4j-log4j12.jar.pack slf4j-log4j12.jar

REM Compile main
%ikvmbindir%\ikvmc -lib:%openfiredir%\lib -recurse:%openfiredir%\lib -target:exe -out:openfire.exe -main:org.jivesoftware.openfire.starter.ServerStarter startup.jar

REM Move results to BIN
move *.exe ../bin
move *.dll ../bin
move *.xml ../bin

REM Copy IKVM DLLs to BIN
copy %ikvmbindir%\*.dll %openfiredir%\bin

Enable Links / Favorites Bar in IE9

2011-02-25T14:08:00.000-05:00

IE9 doesn't auto-enable the Favorites (Links) toolbar: this has annoyed several of my peers used to having it in IE8. To enable it...

Manually

ALT -> View -> Toolbars -> Favorites Bar

Registry

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MINIE]
"LinksBandEnabled"=dword:00000001

Upgrading tips for 2008R2 SP1

2011-02-22T02:37:00.000-05:00

Having maintained several Hyper-V R2 and virtual 2008R2 servers, I obtained the service pack and have learned the following from upgrading them...

* If you need to have RSAT installed on a Windows 7 workstation, do it before upgrading it to SP1: the installer should be updated soon; otherwise, the original installer will refuse to load on an SP1 workstation.
* You may need to shut down busy virtual machines before rebooting a Hyper-V server during upgrade: VMs that don't cleanly shutdown on reboot can hang the reboot for all the other VMs.
* You'll need to "Insert the Integration Services Disc" in the Hyper-V admin console for VMs older than 2008R2: this is so they can properly support the new features and hotfixes in the service pack.
* If you want to use Dynamic Memory, check your setting in Hyper-V admin twice: the max memory setting likes to stick on 64GB instead of whatever you set max to be.
* Some security updates came out after SP1 went gold: be prepared to reboot a 2nd time; especially on Hyper-V R2.

See also this blog article from Microsoft on using SP1 features.

Remote Deposit Service and Windows 7

2011-02-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

1. It dislikes installing with EMET at "Maximum": use "Recommended"
2. It runs its own webserver on apparently UDP port 80: however, it conflicts with BranchCache; disable that service if its running.
3. If you're using a sandboxing anti-virus (Avast 6 for example), consider excluding the "C:\Program Files\NCR" folder.
4. Use the guide I found here for help on setting it up correctly: key points are installing it using "Vista SP2" compatibility mode, and permitting "*.bankofamerica.com" as a secure site.
5. If necessary, you might find a newer driver for the device here.

Windows 7 slipstreaming

2010-11-19T16:19:00.000-05:00

I've had a heck of a time finding tools to make automated Windows 7 installs. vLite is supposed to work, but the author dislikes its use for any commercial setting, and its finicky.

1. Any customization tool needs the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit and .NET 4.0
2. WinIntegrator can select components to add/remove, integrate updates, and add drivers.
3. 7Customizer can create an unattended file; plus integrate themes, service tweaks, updates, and drivers.

Websites related to IPv6 conference

2010-11-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

Attending GoGoNetLive in San Jose: will edit this over the conference to bookmark sites of interest.

1. California IPv6 Task Force
2. European IPv6 research group
3. Australian IPv6 effort
4. Checkpoint / Bob Hinden
5. IPv6 Forum
6. IANA
7. ARIN outreach
8. Tony Hain's IPv4 depletion blog
9. The IPv4 Depletion site
10. Silvia Hagen's site
11. Stan Barber's site
12. Texas IPv6 task force
13. Command Information
14. Carl Holzhauer
15. Joe Klein (joeklein on Twitter)
16. Juniper IPv6 support
17. GoGoWare IPv6 hardware
18. Mu Dynamics
19. Secure64
20. Auspex Technologies
21. DREN military IPv6 network / DREN wiki (request access)
22. Arbor Networks
23. Hurricane Electric / programming tips

Attendees: some sites for you to try

1. http://www.sixy.ch/
2. IPv6 Facebook
3. IPv6 Google
4. SixXS IPv6 forum & tunnel broker (GoGo & HE Tunnelbroker are better on that front)
5. IPv6 on Wikipedia
6. IPv6 subreddit
7. StumbleUpon: this can be used to share articles and sites; user TJEvans finds a lot of IPv6 stuff.
8. RFC lookup
*. Bug (not IPv6, just funny)

Updated IPv6 toolset

2010-10-25T20:32:00.000-04:00

Between an upcoming IPv6 conference & trying to do some stuff at work, I've put together an updated toolset for using IPv6 on Windows machines. Included: a working LPD setup for XP; 32-bit & 64-bit stone; the IPv6 VNC viewer; and relevant control batch files. Its a good starting point for doing any kludging of non-IPv6 software to an IPv6 setup.

Updated Windows IPv6 toolset

Avoiding proxy use for Orbitz & CheapTickets websites

2010-10-15T18:16:00.000-04:00

Orbitz-based domains do NOT proxy well or at all. Workaround...

Firewall / iptable rules (if using a transparent Squid proxy)

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d 198.151.61.0/24 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s 198.151.61.0/24 -p tcp -m tcp --sport 80 -j ACCEPT

squid.conf rules

acl orbitz dst 198.151.61.0/24
cache deny orbitz
always_direct allow orbitz

Browser proxy setting: add 198.151.61.0/24 to the no-proxy list.

iSight Firewire i1394 camera works on Windows 7 x64!

2010-10-10T01:08:00.000-04:00

My landlord loaned me & the g/f a webcam to use for Skype: however, it was also an attempted prank, as it is the discontinued iSight external webcam. Fortunately Windows 7 does recognize it as a "generic" camera, and while that alone doesn't work, it did inspire me to hunt for other Firewire drivers that might.

1. Have Firewire port installed on computer.
2. Download the Unibrain ubCore driver suite (don't need the Fire-i download).
3. Install the driver suite as "complete". Reboot if you feel inclined to.
4. Attach camera: you'll get notifications of unsupported hardware, but the necessary drivers for video will have been installed & show up as a Unibrain camera in "Devices & Printers".

How to pull Firefox history from a Windows system remotely

2010-10-08T14:01:00.000-04:00

1. Install SQLite Manager plugin for Firefox

2. Map the c$ (or other) drive of the IP/hostname of the desired system, using an Administrator account (i.e. map \\whatever\c$ to Y:).

3. Copy the sqlite.places file from the user's profile folder (example: Y:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\profilename).

4. Use the SQLite Manager in Firefox -> Tools: you want to open the file you copied and look in Tables -> moz_places

Mass shrinking image files on a Linux web server

2010-10-03T04:18:00.000-04:00

This is a script I made to mass-shrink my web-based photo library. If you're able to get the libjpeg toolset installed on your server, you won't need to compile it yourself (notice I did & put the binaries in my cgi-bin). The quality setting is managed by ImageMagick. I also used OptiPNG for PNG squishing: it can also convert BMPs & GIFs.

#!/bin/sh

#JPG
for IMAGE in $(find | grep 'jpg'); do
echo $IMAGE
convert -quality 85 $IMAGE $IMAGE
~/cgi-bin/jpegtran -copy all -optimize -progressive $IMAGE > new.jpg
mv new.jpg $IMAGE
done

#JPEG
for IMAGE in $(find | grep 'jpeg'); do
echo $IMAGE
convert -quality 85 $IMAGE $IMAGE
~/cgi-bin/jpegtran -copy all -optimize -progressive $IMAGE > new.jpg
mv new.jpg $IMAGE
done

#PNG
for IMAGE in $(find | grep 'png'); do
echo $IMAGE
~/cgi-bin/optipng $IMAGE
done

ADDED: the folks at Hurricane Electric say "find -iname *.jpg" works in place of "find | grep 'jpg'"

Idea for peer-updating Debian/Ubuntu systems

2010-09-21T14:56:00.000-04:00

Maybe someday I can setup a tool to do half of this for me in a peer-to-peer app: it'd be nice to run something that searched all local systems via IPv6 fe80 addresses to see if anyone has the latest set of debs & pull their copy; most of the sites I support use T1 or DSL connections, so downloading is a pain.

sudo bash (or su root)
cd /var/cache/apt/archives && sftp USER@COMPUTER:/var/cache/apt/archives

--- in sftp ---
get *.deb
quit
---

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -y --force-yes --fix-missing
apt-get dist-upgrade -y --force-yes --fix-missing
reboot

Blog on Blogs

2010-09-16T22:19:00.000-04:00

Needed to make a list of decent tech blogs / sites to followup on from time to time...

* Joel on Software: there's articles here, if you can find them.
* Coding Horror: I enjoy quite a bit of this guy's postings regarding Windows & such.
* Ben Fry: brilliant visualization stuff
* Eric S Raymond: hacker, libertarian, poly-amorous
* Wil Wheaton: the uber-geek
* /r/programming: a map of the programming world!
* OKCupid blog: this is what happens when geeks analyze 500k people...

Props also to Slashdot & Ars Technica for keeping me up-to-date over the years!

*ADDED: Jeff Masters' Blog; hurricanes; climate-change; solar storms; etc
*ADDED: Paul Graham's site; how did I forget to add him??? He writes good essays.

Quick HOWTO for making your own iSCSI host / SAN

2010-09-10T19:52:00.000-04:00

I recommend a Gigabit or better network card on the system you're making into a storage host.

Procedure

1. Grab your favorite Linux: I actually did this with the 9-10-2010 version of Ubuntu from cdimage.ubuntu.com so I could try this on a BTRFS filesystem. The kernel does need to be one of the latest available.
2. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install iscsitarget open-iscsi-utils
3. sudo nano /etc/default/iscitarget & change it to read ISCSITARGET_ENABLE=true
4. sudo /etc/init.d/iscsitarget restart
5. sudo rm /etc/iet/ietd.conf && sudo ln -s /etc/ietd.conf /etc/iet/ietd.conf
6. If you didn't set aside any drives for iSCSI use, you can make your own "file" drives with dd. Example: dd if=/dev/zero of=/testdrive count=10G bs=1
7. Install or run ietview as gksu: its a GTK Python interface for managing iSCSITarget.
8. After you create your iSCSI target, connect to it via Linux, Windows, or other OS. Newer operating systems can connect to it via IPv6 networks as well.

References

1. iSCSI on Wikipedia
2. dd on Wikipedia
3. iSCSITarget Homepage
4. Reddit thread

Some PHP + MySQL stuff to look at

2010-09-08T15:08:00.000-04:00

A coworker of mine is helping create a new company Intranet, and he despises .NET-based code, so he wanted to look for PHP-based stuff. We also have a mutual friend that is going to be posting photos online, and wanted to know what I use for that.

1. Content management: investigating MODx. Its a PHP+MySQL CMS that starts off pretty bare-bones, but has a slick management interface, helpful install process (flagged incorrect PHP & directory settings), and has an integrated addon manager that installs from user-contributed editors, pages, etc. It can also manage MIME types & import raw HTML: this would be perfect for starting up a regular website with.

2. Photos: using Plogger at unquietwiki.com. It hasn't updated in a few months, but its still good at what it does: skinnable interface; photo categories; mass-import of FTP/SSH-uploaded pictures; and text descriptions saved in a MySQL database.

3. Since these require MySQL to work, I'd like to direct you to MariaDB. With the Oracle acquisition of Sun, which acquired MySQL, I expect development to stagnate: MariaDB has some of the original MySQL devs, and has some extra goodies; already using it for my work environment.

Burning a BD-R / Blue-Ray data disc with InfraRecorder 0.51

2010-09-05T16:29:00.000-04:00

I pulled this off on a x64 Windows 7 Pro machine, using a WH10LS30 BD-RE drive.

1. Install the appropriate version of InfraRecorder for your system.
2. Go to the cdrtfe homepage & download the latest "portable" version.
3. Run the portable extractor.
4. Copy everything from cdrtfe portable's tools\cdrtools & tools\cygwin folders to InfraRecorder's cdrtools folder.

Whenever you want to burn data to a BD-R using InfraRecorder, you should use UDF (Project Properties -> Filesystem) & SAO when asked to burn.

* EDIT: clarification; the reason I did this is because cdrtfe 1.3.9 comes with version 3 of cdrtools, while InfraRecorder 0.51 still has version 2.

Interesting Windows hotfixes from July & August 2010

2010-08-30T19:41:00.000-04:00

Hotfix Blog had a lot of goodies from the last 2 months...

* Update for XP & 2003 networking on a 2008R2 VM host
* Update for accessing shared files & printers on Vista & 2008
* Rollup of Hyper-V hotfixes for 2008 R2
* Fix for 32-bit applications on x64 7 & 2008R2
* Fix for Windows 7 / 2008 install on a UEFI hard drive
* Enable Dynamic Memory support (2008 R2 feature) on 2008 VMs
* Fix for system hangs on Vista, 2008, 7, and R2

Windows 7 finds

2010-08-30T15:27:00.000-04:00

In (re)installing Windows 7 on different systems, finding the right disc is just as painful as its predecessors. Fortunately, I found some things that deal with that, as well as restore some old features.

* How to make a Windows 7 All-In-One DVD

* Tools to change a Windows 7 ISO to whatever edition you need

* Windows 7 DreamScene

btw, if you dig around http://code.kliu.org/, you'll also find the Notepad2 installer that replaces Notepad, and an "Open Command Prompt" menu addon.

Mass shrinking pictures in Windows (should be doable on Linux/Mac)

2010-08-26T17:14:00.000-04:00

I've had this nagging problem of posting pictures to my website, but since my account there isn't unlimited, I have to reduce my picture sizes. I used to manually resize pictures based on if they had people, were important, etc: now I just excise the bad ones and post wholesale; however, I cannot digitally afford to continue this practice. I did some digging and came up with a basic solution that should mass-convert my images for hosting without noticeably bastardizing their quality.

1. jpegtran : copy the EXE to somewhere in your system path (a tools or Windows folder even)

2. ImageMagick: I installed the x64 16-bit DLL version & added it to my system path.

3. Batch file called "jpeg.bat" I put where I saved jpegtran...

FOR /R . %%G IN (*.jpg) DO jpegtran -optimize -copy all %%G %%G
FOR /R . %%G IN (*.jpg) DO convert -auto-orient -quality 85 %%G %%G
FOR /R . %%G IN (*.jpg) DO jpegtran -optimize -progressive -copy all %%G %%G

4. Use "cmd" in Start-Run or Windows-R: "cd" to where your pictures are saved, and run "jpeg". Go do something else while you wait.

Additional References

* Tutorial on changing your system path (if you need it)
* JPEG on Wikipedia
* "FOR /R" reference

Adding a video card to a laptop

2010-08-06T20:25:00.000-04:00

EDIT 12-14-2010: newer ViDock options available; pick an appropriate card to load.

Had to research this for a roommate: found some interesting stuff out there. If you have a newer laptop, it probably has an ExpressCard slot you can use to add a PCIe device to.

* Offical list of ExpressCard addons
* "Magma" box: ~$700; need your own card
* ViDock 2 ~$350: Radeon 5670 prepackaged
* ExpressCard to PCIe x16 adapter ~$80 : add power supply, video card, and probably an enclosure too.

I saw a blog post a while back regarding the last option, so I know its doable.

Stuff for Android development and printing

2010-08-05T16:15:00.000-04:00

Me and my coworkers are getting visions in our eyes of using phones and tablets to replace bulky and expensive crap we're trying out now for processing things. We need to be able to scan & print stuff: something that's in demand amongst a lot of developers out there. I've done a basic survey of whats out there as of Mid-2010...

* This pops up regularly in discussions on printing: unlimited accounts are $10/month or $5 per device; basic is 20 pages.

http://www.printeranywhere.com/mobile.sdf

* A printing API & subsystem: looks geared towards network printers ala CUPS

http://www.openintents.org/en/node/278

* This is a library for handling barcodes: "Zebra Crossing"

http://code.google.com/p/zxing/

* This is a scripting layer for Android: one person used it to barcode scan books on Google with Python

http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

* A non-free SDK for printing to Bluetooth and network printers

http://www.iprintsdk.com/

* This is an application for handling credit cards via Android...

http://www.3aspen.com/solutions/android/merchant

Package Hell

2010-07-20T22:43:00.000-04:00

Well, having had some luck backporting zlib 1.2.5 to my OpenWRT router installs, I figured I'd try installing the Debian version I found on some of my XUbuntu installs: big mistake. Syslogs show gdm crash after first or second reboot. Digging deeper, things get a bit odd...

1. The zlib binaries I attempted to use: met all requirements to use the packages.

http://packages.debian.org/experimental/zlib-bin
http://packages.debian.org/experimental/zlib1g

2. The Ubuntu package set: as of Lucid, GDM is version 2.30 & libc6 version 2.11.1; libpixmap (also used by Xorg) is version 0.16

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/gdm

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/libpixman-1-0
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/libc6
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/libc-bin

3. The available Debian package set at time of writing: GDM is still at version 2.20; libc6 at 2.11.2; libpixmap at 0.18.

http://packages.debian.org/sid/gdm
http://packages.debian.org/experimental/libpixman-1-0
http://packages.debian.org/sid/libc6
http://packages.debian.org/sid/libc-bin

Despite upgrading to the newer libc6 & libpixmap, GDM was still busted. I dug deeper & found more packages: in fact, the pthread one stuck out as part of the error messages...

http://packages.debian.org/experimental/i386/gcc-4.5-base
http://packages.debian.org/sid/libpthread-stubs0
http://packages.debian.org/experimental/libgcc1

Another reboot: this time the logs mentioned libxml2 & libxklavier12 (can't seem to install that one)...

http://packages.debian.org/sid/libxml2

NOW IT WORKED!

I think I'll look into backporting zlib myself for Lucid, unless someone beats me to the punch. 7 other library updates for 1 basic compression library???

EDIT: don't forget the -dev & i686 packages for libc

EDIT2: complete package list for working set...

gcc-4.5-base_4.5.0-8_i386.deb
libc-bin_2.11.2-2_i386.deb
libc-dev-bin_2.11.2-2_i386.deb
libc6-dev_2.11.2-2_i386.deb
libc6-i686_2.11.2-2_i386.deb
libc6_2.11.2-2_i386.deb
libgcc1_4.5.0-8_i386.deb
libpixman-1-0_0.18.2-1_i386.deb
libpthread-stubs0_0.3-2_i386.deb
libxml2_2.7.7.dfsg-4_i386.deb
zlib-bin_1.2.5.dfsg-1_i386.deb
zlib1g-dev_1.2.5.dfsg-1_i386.deb
zlib1g_1.2.5.dfsg-1_i386.deb

Attempted list of useful hotfixes for Server 2003R2

2010-07-19T00:25:00.000-04:00

I'm helping my landlord/friend refurb a 2003R2 server for domain controller & app-server work. Since SP3 seems absent for 2003, I figured I'd reload it with 2003R2SP2 & find relevant hotfixes: I searched back over the past year for what looked useful. I'm not even sure all of these will install on R2: will have to come back & edit, else this should be useful for non-R2 users. For sake of continuity, start from the bottom up.

* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975830 DNS service patch: load the (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949316 CTCP patch first, then http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979230 after the DNS patch)

* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028684 mrxsmb.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028773 rmcast.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953527 dfsmgmt.dll
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979646 DFS replication service patch
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953325 ntfs.sys (important)
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954968 quota.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028587 Rpcxdr.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982362 Win32k.sys (important)
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982893 Lsasrv.dll
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983280 msi.dll
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980276 localspl.dll (print spooler)
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979550 dfrgntfs.exe
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979457 volsnap.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979272 ipsec.sys
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979730 IIS 6.0 patch
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979522 rdpdr.sys (fixes Terminal Server crashing from many users)
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981544 Virtual Disk Service patch
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979554 snmpincl.dll
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979451 atapi.sys (allows more than 1TB drive formats)
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973871 HBA driver update
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972623 VSS patch
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970706 rpcxdr.sys

Web editing toolset for Windows

2010-07-15T13:32:00.000-04:00

I'm helping my boss move some websites between a Windows 2003 & a 2008R2 server: we've been running ASP pages as HTML on the old one; not so easily done on the new. Fortunately, some bulk editing fixes this.

*. Nodesoft Search And Replace: text replacement tool; can recurse through subdirectories

*. Bulk File Renaming Tool: this thing is like a swiss army knife for filenames & directories.

*. Notepad2 or Notepad++ : use these for hand-editing files. I've used PSPad on other projects.

Also, don't forget to update any sitemaps. Google has a sitemap generator. (EDIT: doesn't like 32-bit sites on 2008R2 hosts; if you have a problem, remove its DLL from applicationHost.config) (EDIT2: found a decent web-based sitemap generator).

Hotfixes & Windows 7 / 2008R2 SP1 beta

2010-07-13T03:26:00.000-04:00

Some new hotfixes spotted from Microsoft

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2065362 updates user profile service for Vista / 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983466 updates the NTFS driver for 7 / 2008R2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2159238 updates the 7 / 2008R2 3D screensavers to work properly

Also, Windows 7 SP1 beta is out

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179094/Microsoft_releases_Windows_7_SP1_beta
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ff183870.aspx

MySQL over IPv6

2010-07-07T14:59:00.000-04:00

You need to connect one server to another's MySQL host via IPv6. MySQL currently does not support IPv6 natively (halfway into 2010 even: this Oracle business doesn't help matters). Here's a workaround.

1. Download Stone : if you're running Windows boxes, extract it to C:\stone on both targets; Linux, you can probably setup commands in your startup scripts to achieve the same result.
2. Your stone.ini for the server hosting MySQL should have "127.0.0.1:3306 3306/v6 --" in it.
3. Your stone.ini for your MySQL client system should have "ipv6servername:3306/v6 localhost:3306 --" in it.
4. Firewall settings: allow port 3306 on both systems; if using a pre-2008 system, the "subnet-only" option should work.
5. If using a Windows box, you can install as a service by using "stone -C c:\stone\stone.ini -M install v4v6"; be sure to change Service Manager to run it Automatically.
6. You'll need to assign MySQL permissions for whatever user to connect to localhost to gain access on the server.

Android network selection & information

2010-07-07T04:06:00.000-04:00

Someone had a post on how to access an test menu on Android by dialing *#*#4636#*#* without hitting send. The menu has information on application use, battery usage, and an information screen that allows selecting preferences for your non-WiFi data network. The menu also has an "SMSC" option to change your text message server: but I don't think most people need to bother with that.

Networks options available on my Sprint HTC Hero: WCDMA ; GSM ; EVDO ; CDMA

Around here in Orlando, its pretty much EVDO, and my phone currently says thats what its using. Phone was set to a CDMA option: trying EVDO-only & see how that works out. Forcing the correct network setting is supposed to prolong battery life by reducing the phone's attempts to auto-seek new networks.

Adventure in Android phone flashing

2010-07-03T20:23:00.000-04:00

Since it was announced that HTC + Sprint was not going to port Android Froyo to the Hero & other phones, and their software kept causing my phone to hang & eat power (for example: it kept trying to load a Sprint TV thing in the background that I never used), I dove into the Android developer scene for rooting phones and using customized Linux kernels & Android builds.

1. To backup stuff on my phone, I made use of Astro File Manage & *nix sync to save stuff to my CF card.
2. XDA Developers Forum is more or less THE place to get custom Android builds for compatible phones.
3. Being that I have a month-old HTC Hero, these rooting instructions applied to me.
4. I applied Darchstar 2.7 to my phone: its derived from Cyanogen (Android-Eclair build: they're still porting Froyo) & runs an optimized 2.6.34 Linux kernel (newer than Froyo).
5. Despite my best attempt to backup my phone contacts beforehand (even using some other apps that I didn't link because of their apparent failure), I ended up with squat. I think the contacts are saved somewhere else in the HTC software, vs synching with my Google account: so I spent some of this afternoon building up a new contact list (thankfully I had saved some caller & message log data that had some #s I was missing).
6. I have most of the apps I was using reinstalled: the Remote Desktop app I use for work re-downloaded from Market without a 2nd purchase; the Sprint Voicemail app reloaded per the forum discussion (though I apparently get text messages about voicemails now: those should go away since I called it back or something). I'm using the official Twitter app, as well as different clock+alarm apps, since I don't have HTC's anymore: no biggie.
7. When I was rebuilding my contact list, I wanted to import it into Thunderbird: however, the CSV export from Google is horrific, and Thunderbird has no native VCF import. However, I did find MoreFunctionsForAddressBook, which can import VCFs just fine.
8. One more app I found useful: Mr. Number; crowd-sourced Caller-ID. While I was passed out in sleep, it correctly identified a call from CVS.

Overall, performance is excellent: the phone is very responsive & using less power than it was before (maybe 1% of batt per 10 min while idle). As someone who works with Linux a lot, I wish the phone devs would look into the newer kernels and take advantage of their features as this guy did: this phone build even supports CompCache, which compresses memory into virtual swap files (can run more programs).

*EDITED to add mention of *nix sync: that was the app I used to recover my call logs.

Dealing with slow or problem file transfers in Windows

2010-06-26T23:48:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to migrate stuff between servers at work, and in my research for faster file copies, I came across stuff I've seen before, old arguments, and a newer thing or two I wasn't aware of (like updated tweaks for 2008R2 / 7). A summary of my findings...

System settings

* Search this blog regarding my previous findings on Jumbo Frames: if you have Gigabit Ethernet & a decent switch, you can use that to speed up your transfers.
* Give this SpeedGuide article a look: there's plenty of tweaks you can try in Vista, 2008, and 7.
* Using a 2003 or newer server/OS? Enable Compound TCP.
* Vista/2008 SP1 & newer systems have some enhancements: there may be inevitable slowness communicating between an older system and these systems due to supporting those changes.

IPv6 is a Red Herring

A LOT of people complain about IPv6 & say its (insert lousy argument). Biggest problem from my own experience seems to be Microsoft's tunneling mechanisms they started implementing back in Windows XP & onward. Rather than disable it, disable the automatic tunneling (its also why some consider it a "security risk"): run the following commands in a command prompt (as Administrator-type user in Vista or newer systems)...

netsh interface ipv6 6to4 set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 isatap set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 set teredo disable

Programs to help with copying

* TeraCopy is something I use regularly at home for making sure stuff copies.
*. If Teracopy doesn't cut it for you (or falls out of your licensing ability), RichCopy is a copy on steroids: multi-threaded copy operations; how to save your files; etc.
*. SyncToy can synchronize one folder to another: you can tell it to copy one side to the other with its changes, or copy both sides & their changes.

More interesting hotfixes for Windows

2010-06-24T18:21:00.000-04:00

I don't like their new formatting of late, but found some good hotfixes on Hotfix Blog...

* File-sharing bug on Vista/2008
* Memory leak by networking service
* Hopefully these stop BSOD from happening with iSCSI in Vista/2008: Fix 1 & Fix 2
* More-reliable TCP/IP stack for Vista/2008
* Slow file-sharing on Vista/2008
* Slow networking on multi-processor systems: Windows 7 / 2008 R2

Getting DWA-140 / RT2870 working on Ubuntu 09.10 Karmic

2010-06-17T18:05:00.000-04:00

1. Install the 2.6.34 kernel or newer from Kernel Mainline PPA.
2. Grab the latest RT2870 firmware from RALink's website.
3. Unzip the firmware download & copy the bin to /lib/firmware.

If using an older kernel, you can download the source driver from RALink & compile + install that: remember to copy in the newer firmware .bin file to its "common" subdirectory before installation (or copy to /lib/firmware afterwards).

A Folded Web

2010-06-13T04:07:00.000-04:00

This morning, I announce my scrappy little "FoldedWeb" initiative. I hope to get more feedback & content posted, but basically I want to nudge people to look at and implement newer standards available for saving bandwidth and routing data. PNG, not GIF. IPv6, not IPv4. 7z, not ZIP. Stuff like that. Check it out, and feel free to contribute whatever you feel is appropriate!

http://foldedweb.com/

An evening spent cranking out Windows x64 ports & compiles

2010-06-12T02:15:00.000-04:00

I wanted to port over some software to 64-bit Windows to see if that'd help with some performance issues: I came across the MinGW-w64 project & was able to make use of it for my purposes.

Setup

* Selective install of MinGW (GCC & Core)

* Copy of the x64 toolchain: it can be installed on top of 32-bit MinGW (you'll need some of its tools).

*~~Make a copy of "mingw32-make.exe" as "make.exe" for easier compiling.~~

JonY of MinGW-W64 recommends using MSYS. He offers the following...

mingw32-make.exe and MSYS make.exe are distinct, with the former designed to run under plain cmd and the latter under MSYS.

mingw32-make does not quite understand UNIX paths, MSYS make does not know of cmd built-in commands like del and move.

Since MSYS is for supporting mingw, mixing them together as both make.exe could get hairy with the command constantly failing mysteriously.

* It helps to have the bin folder (ex: "C:\MinGW\bin") of the combined toolchain in your PATH.

* The x64 toolchain uses filenames prefixed with "x86_64-w64-mingw32-": lengthy, but it keeps them distinct from the 32-bit toolchain and you can quickly change commands in Makefiles to reflect its usage.

* I did learn that it may be useful to copy other 64-bit .lib files as .la or .a files to the x64 toolchain's lib folder: especially since not all libraries out there "support" this version of MinGW out-of-box.

* It also helps to have a copy of Perl handy: I came across Strawberry Perl; it does run as 64-bit, as well as 32-bit, portable, etc.

Ports I compiled tonight

* Stone simple repeater: IPv6 port forwarder; original site here.
* Sloppy x64 compile of the GNU Regex library
* 64-bit version of OptiPNG: original site here.
* zlib: zlib1.dll, libz.a, and libzdll.a were all compiled successfully; original site here.

Other reference websites

* 32-bit & x64 builds of OpenSSL for Windows
* HOWTO for compiling libraries with GCC
* The cross-compiling instructions for Wormux give some useful hints. Since I play Hedgewars myself, I'll leave it to someone else to work on that. ;)

Fix for Brother wireless printer issue

2010-06-04T13:22:00.000-04:00

I should've wrote a note about his a while ago: when I got my company to start using Brother printers, I noticed that the 2170W printers would stop printing network print jobs after a while. Same issue's been recurring with the 5370DW printers (successor to the 5250N). Here's the fix...

Hold GO button ~14 seconds until it starts printing again.

For some reason, the wireless mode overrides the wired NIC & disables it; the GO button method switches it back to wired mode. Still good printers overall: I think this was meant to be a "feature" of sorts. Otherwise, standardized consumables & IPv6 support ensures my continued loyalty.

Apple Griefs

2010-06-01T21:29:00.000-04:00

I was asked to quantify my griefs with Apple....

*Photo app banned for allowing widgets & multitasking

*Google "apple cease and desist" & see what pops up: currently, there's a story about a 9-year-old submitting ideas to Apple; a C&D from 1-2010 regarding offering a bounty to photograph the iPad; something from 2000 regarding comments on a website before a keynote address; a C&D from 2006 asking some podcasting company to stop calling their program "myPodder" (its still available)...

There seems to be a good analysis of this trend from back in 2005.

*OSx86: the idea that its unwelcome and "illegal" to run OSX on a non-Mac, Intel platform / can run Windows not withstanding, is rather absurd.

*Apple ban of non-Apple compilers for its platform.

Vertical integration anyone?

Install WebM-VP8 on your Windows box

2010-05-22T15:08:00.000-04:00

A commenter was kind to post that version 0.9.7 has an installer.

Caution: original script was made on Windows 7 with an Admin-rights user; if you have to "run as admin" to make this work, adjust your instructions accordingly.

Came across this HOWTO for installing VP8 on Windows.

1. Grab the "webmdshow" ZIP from Google's page.
2. Unzip it somewhere safe.
3. Create the following files with Notepad/Notepad2/whatever in that directory...

install.bat
copy *.exe %systemroot%
copy *.dll %systemroot%
regsvr32 %systemroot%\webmsource.dll %systemroot%\webmsplit.dll %systemroot%\vp8decoder.dll %systemroot%\vp8encoder.dll %systemroot%\webmmux.dll

uninstall.bat
del %systemroot%\makewebm.exe %systemroot%\playwebm.exe
regsvr32 /u %systemroot%\webmsource.dll %systemroot%\webmsplit.dll %systemroot%\vp8decoder.dll %systemroot%\vp8encoder.dll %systemroot%\webmmux.dll
del %systemroot%\webmsource.dll %systemroot%\webmsplit.dll %systemroot%\vp8decoder.dll %systemroot%\vp8encoder.dll %systemroot%\webmmux.dll

Poking around with Hyper-V Server R2

2010-05-21T18:22:00.000-04:00

Some of these things are useful; some of these things MS would not approve of. That being said...

* Network optimization commands work: use these to streamline & lock-down your Vista & 7 machines also.

netsh interface tcp set global congestion=ctcp
netsh interface tcp set global time=enabled
netsh interface tcp set global chimney=enabled
netsh interface ipv6 set privacy state=disable
netsh interface tcp set global ecn=enabled
netsh interface ipv6 6to4 set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 isatap set state state=disabled
netsh interface ipv6 set teredo disable
fsutil behavior set memoryusage 2

* You can use a flash drive, CD/DVD, or \\machinename\c$ share from another PC to copy over files to the server.

* Hotfixes for Server 2008R2 work fine: copy over and run them from the command line.

* Trying to follow these instructions for disabling complex passwords, I went ahead & tried using Notepad2 replacement and was amused to find that it works.

* CCleaner, PeaZIP, and Firefox all installed & work: you can copy over working shortcuts from another system to the local user/Admin directory. CCleaner can be used to uninstall things.

* Google Chrome does not install: needs OpenGL. .NET 3.5SP1 won't load: says it has to be loaded as a Role. .NET 4 won't load: not supported.

* Tried copying over Hyper-V folder from the 2008 Server I'm using to manage it otherwise, but the MSC doesn't work: no mmc to run it with.

Suggested experiments: accessible shell; BOINC client testing

Making sense of NTP / time service

2010-05-19T15:08:00.000-04:00

I've usually had no trouble with setting up a Linux NTP server in the past: currently I have one going, but some of my Windows servers dislike it. Here's some references I found to use while I figure it out...

1. Global NTP pool: use this to synch your time against.
2. A Linux HOWTO on configuring an NTP server.
3. What some of those flags mean for restricting access in NTP
4. Even better description of NTP flags
5. Microsoft's fix for getting NTP to work in Windows Server: notice the bouncing back & forth between registry, w32time, & net time.

2008R2 + Windows 7 hotfixes of note as of May 2010

2010-05-18T19:37:00.000-04:00

*Hyper-V-specific hotfix list from MS
*CPU powerstate hotfix
*Slow startup on computers using large fonts on high-resolution monitors
*Heavy network or CPU load hotfix
*Crash on something using a lot of memory
*Memory leak on Win32 service
*Hotfix for copying files on 4K sector hard drives
*Can't print web pages to an IPP printer
*Service manager memory leak
*RemoteApp shows up as a black window instead
*Home folder problem with Terminal Services
*iSCSI has a chance of causing a blue-screen

---ADDED---
*Also found an updated storport.sys for regular 2008 / Windows Vista.
*Also found Microsoft's site for cataloging SQL Server updates
*Microsoft's "Hot Blog" for latest hotfixes

SQL Server using too little memory? Check your worker threads...

2010-05-15T05:54:00.000-04:00

SQL Server 2000 instance for work seemed stuck at a GB of RAM despite having 40GB of data to use & 4GB to play with (minus RAM+Supercache). Turns out my 2048 worker thread setting precluded it from passing 2GB usage limit (512K is allocated per thread). Dropped count down to 768 & told it to use 1.25GB for the database: hasn't hit that mark yet, but I'll monitor.

* Max Worker Threads on MSDN
* EggheadCafe posting I found

Fun with IPv4!

2010-05-11T00:43:00.000-04:00

* Earlier this year, two more subnets were added to document IPv4 with.
* A study of unofficial IP pollution: never expect to use 1.2.3.0/24 or 5.6.7.0/24 when you read this.
* Non-XKCD map of IPv4 from 2007: there's a semi-updated interactive version too.
* I ask Reddit about updating the XKCD comic version
* Initiative launched to be ready for IPv6 by May Day, 2011: weirdly enough the HE.net counter had jumped to run out of IPv4 by that date, but its been corrected for now.

Microsoft releases some interesting hotfixes

2010-05-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

I checked Microsoft's hotfix blog & saw some interesting ones from the last few weeks...

* Possible fix to the Please Wait Local Session Manager issue on Terminal Services 2008. You can read about my attempts to fix it in a previous post.
* A TCP/IP race condition in Windows Server 2003 SP2.
* A problem with yanking printers from 2003 SP2.
* A shared printer is stuck offline in 2008 or Vista.
* A problem installing things with Installer 4.5.
* Problems sharing files in Vista or 2008 if there's a junction point involved: a junction point is another way of sharing stuff (previous post).
* Hyper-V update for newest Intel CPUs (Westmere chips: aka Intel 2010 & six-core chips).

Latest overnight project: modify ClearOS to install on an newer Atom board

2010-05-06T08:19:00.000-04:00

Attempt to modify ClearOS with a newer kernel at install time

Use "linux all-generic-ide pci=nommconf" as a workaround, else I started a discussion regarding my attempt to avoid said workaround by modifying the install: something I was quite deep into when I found the workaround.

Found a cool 3D desktop

2010-05-04T01:21:00.000-04:00

Google's buying up BumpTop & I never heard of it before: turns out its a neat 3D desktop. I ended up with an older copy from CNet the other night & it worked for me, but turned my landlord off when it failed to run on XP. I did snag the last version from the BumpTop site though.

*Mirrored copy
*Wikipedia article

Things to check on file-sharing for XP & Vista/7

2010-04-08T02:15:00.000-04:00

Friend of mine needed some help with file sharing between XP Pro & 7: from my own experience, plus some digging, here's some basics + sites to use...

Fundamentals

1. File & printer sharing need to be enabled on all computers involved.
2. Windows Vista & 7 have a network profile setting in Network & Sharing: it should be Work or Home; Public will cut-off sharing for privacy.
3. Windows Firewall: enable File & Printer sharing. Other firewalls: enable TCP+UDP ports 135-139 & 445.
4. If you can't ping a computer, it may be blocking ICMP: check firewall settings for that.
5. If your XP box can't access remote shares consistently, or at all, it may have a corrupted Winsock from a malware infection: there are instructions & tools online to wipe it out; you may have to plug any static IP settings back in if using such.
6. If you're just sharing a printer, consider using the LPD service: you can install it in Add/Remove Programs (its with the other Windows parts); you'll need to allow TCP port 515 on the firewall; also, in XP, the service doesn't automatically start on boot (set to automatic).

References

*MS: How to configure File Sharing in XP
*MS: Internet firewalls can prevent browsing & file sharing
*Windows XP Pro File Sharing
*Share Files & Printers Between Windows 7 & XP
*Repair/Reset Winsock Settings
*Allow Pings (ICMP Echo Request) Through Your Windows Vista Firewall

Solved an Ubuntu / Debian preseed problem after 3 years...

2010-04-06T16:26:00.000-04:00

Also cross-posted to Ubuntu Forums

A snippet from my finally-working preseed command to run a "postinstall". btw, this works on Lucid 10.04

The "working command" from Debian+Ubuntu (semicolon missing on end)

#d-i preseed/late_command string apt-install zsh; in-target chsh -s /bin/zsh

What works on my setup (separated commands + semicolons)

d-i preseed/late_command string \
 . /hd-media/dumpinstall.sh ; \
 in-target sh /postinstall/postinstall.sh ;

References

*Working example I found
*Ubuntu 9.10 preseed guide

Added: full modified (removed account creation) example file

# Install the Ubuntu desktop.
tasksel tasksel/first   multiselect ubuntu-desktop
d-i base-installer/kernel/image string  linux-686
d-i hw-detect/load_floppy       boolean false

# If you want the preconfiguration file to work on systems both with and
# without a dhcp server, uncomment these lines and the static network
# configuration below.
d-i netcfg/disable_dhcp boolean false
d-i netcfg/dhcp_failed note
d-i netcfg/dhcp_options select Configure network manually
d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true

# Is the system clock set to UTC?
d-i clock-setup/utc     boolean false
d-i clock-setup/ntp     boolean true
d-i clock-setup/ntp-server      us.pool.ntp.org

# Partitioning
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string boot-root :: 500 10000 1000000000 ext4 method{ regular } format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext4 } mountpoint{ / } . 64 512 2048 linux-swap method{ swap } format{ } .
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition        select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
d-i partman/confirm                 boolean true

# Software
d-i netcfg/get_nameservers      string  208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
d-i apt-setup/universe  boolean true
d-i apt-setup/non-free  boolean true
d-i apt-setup/partner   boolean true
d-i apt-setup/restricted        boolean true
base-config     mirror/http/proxy       string
d-i mirror/http/proxy   string
d-i mirror/http/hostname        string  mirror.anl.gov
d-i mirror/http/directory       string  /pub/ubuntu

# No encrypted user directory
user-setup-udeb user-setup/encrypted-private boolean false

# Autodetect monitor
xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/autodetect_monitor boolean true

# Finish install
d-i preseed/late_command string \
 . /hd-media/dumpinstall.sh ; \
 in-target sh /postinstall/postinstall.sh ;
d-i prebaseconfig/reboot_in_progress    note
d-i cdrom-detect/eject  boolean true
d-i grub-installer/only_debian  boolean true

Please Wait Local Session Manager problem mitigation

2010-04-03T14:04:00.000-04:00

EDIT 5-9-2010: MS has a hotfix that seems to address this.

Cross-posted

Hey, I've been running into the LSM issue on a 2008 32-bit Terminal Server for a few months now. I've been able to tie it down to either a high volume of handles (usually excess of 100K), competition of programs with Local Session Manager for CPU resources, or too many running processes (300-400). Mitigation strategies....

1. Disabled Windows Indexing service: this recovered 20-40K handles in itself.
2. Something I found today: a CPU load balancer that resets affinity on processes to individual CPUs. Running every 5 minutes.

BRELS CPU Balancer

3. The programs I run as login applications: I encapsulate them in a Ruby script that checks the user name & computer name against a text file; if there is a match, future login attempts fail; the file is cleared every 10 minutes by a scheduled task.
---- The following is a version of my script that calls a simple IE browser ----

# User throttle
# Michael Adams, unquietwiki.com, 2010

# Working class
class Working

 # Initialization
 def initialize(userlist)
  require 'CSV'
  @client_cpu = ENV['CLIENTNAME']
  @client_user = ENV['USERNAME']
  @userlist = userlist
 end
 
 # See if in userlist.txt
 def in_userlist
  found = false
  if File.exist?(@userlist)
   users = CSV.read(@userlist)
   users.each do |user|
    if(user[0] == @client_cpu)
     if (user[1] == @client_user)
     found = true
     end
    end
   end
  end
  return found
 end

 # Add to userlist.txt
 def add_userlist
  CSV.open(@userlist,'a') do |users|
  users << [@client_cpu,@client_user]
  end
 end
 
 # Del from userlist.txt
 def del_userlist
  begin
  oldusers = CSV.read(@userlist)
  CSV.open(@userlist,'w') do |newusers|
   oldusers.each do |user|
    if (user[0][0] == @client_cpu)
     if (user[0][1] == @client_user)
     else
      newusers << user
     end
    end
   end
  end
  rescue
  end
 end

 # Run program + variable
 def throttle(site)
  if in_userlist == false
   add_userlist
   system('dummie.exe '+site)
   del_userlist
  end
 end
end

# Check for aguments: quit if none
if ARGV.length < 2 then
 puts "Synatx: throttle.rb userfile site"
else 
 process = Working.new(ARGV[0])
 process.throttle(ARGV[1])
end

Ubuntu 10.04 in Hyper-V

2010-04-03T00:58:00.000-04:00

Alright, I wanted to keep our MariaDB (MySQL) instance from choking up our Hyper-V server (we moved it there in an emergency when its previous host started crapping out), so I'm migrating it to an Ubuntu VM. We use Ubuntu for our Linux boxes, and I know Hyper-V doesn't come with "snapshot" stuff for it, but apparently Kernel 2.6.32 absorbed some code to work with the virtual Ethernet adapters. I had tried making the VM with the Legacy driver (emulates a Tulip card), but it kept dropping packets.

Procedure (assuming you know when to sudo)

1. Download the 10.04 Beta, RC, or Final (depending on when you're reading this). You can use x64 if you want, since this is going to be running on an x64 host anyway.
2. While that downloads, make a VM: I used 2GB RAM, 2 virtual CPUs, an 80GB IDE HDD, and a mapping on the virtual LAN adapter (don't need to put it on the WAN).
3. Mount the ISO to the VM and boot it. You probably won't see networking access right away, else you can still set the host name, main user name, and your partitions (I used Guided, but changed EXT4 to JFS per a paper I found on what was a good filesystem for MySQL).
4. When the VM came online, I added the following to /etc/modules & /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

hv_vmbus
hv_storvsc
hv_blkvsc
hv_netvsc

5. Run update-initramfs –u to regenerate the boot image.
6. Edit /etc/network/interfaces & if there are any eth interfaces, change them to seth and add networking parameters as needed. "seth" refers to Microsoft's "synthetic Ethernet". If you're not using DHCP, remember to add nameservers to /etc/resolv.conf
7. Reboot the VM. Assuming Ethernet works, you can apt-get dist-upgrade & optionally load a newer kernel from mainline (The 2.6.33 DEBs don't seem to support seth adapters).
8. If you want to use MariaDB, the Debian 5 repositories appear to work fine.
9. There's a chance the seth adapters won't pickup IPv6 addresses: you can assign static addresses and routes.

References

* Forum thread with Tulip card settings
* "Hyper-V 2008 R2 and Linux guests"
* Blog post on Hyper-V & synthetic network adapters
* Basic networking in Hyper-V
* /etc/network/interfaces guide
* Linux IPv6 HOWTO

The Devil in the Gigabit Network

2010-03-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

Nov 2, 2010: late edit..

For a good while now, despite trying to weed out sources of EMI, different switches, different cords, jumbo frames, no jumbo frames, 2003 or 2008 Windows Server, etc, there has been a problem at my work's Accounting department, wherein use of Quickbooks or "large" (say Excel files bigger than a few MB), would intermittently coincide with a temporary disconnect from the domain controller or network shares. As far as I could tell, smaller operations involving Internet use, non-domain, and non-Gigabit activities are not impacted. Still waiting to see if we can track down some known EMI sources that may be interfering, but meanwhile I believe I found some things that help us and a lot of people out...

Interrupt Coalescing / Adaptive Interrupt Moderation
Intel has it. Via has it. Broadcom has it. Realtek has it. Regardless of the name, the concept is that as an adapter receives a lot of Ethernet frames, it can tax the CPU by having it "interrupt" on each one: this feature would avoid that by bundling frames together into multiple frames per interrupt. From what I can tell, latency will probably be higher if it works properly, but more data will pass through: however, it seems at least at the consumer / business level, it does more harm than good & the O/S is better at managing this traffic (especially Windows Vista / 2008 / 7, given its default use of adaptive windowing).

I turned it off in the adapter settings on the problem machines: I can get 40-50% network utilization on a 200MB file, and early results with QB & Excel are promising (its worked longer than half-hour without hiccup).

Offloading (IPv4 + TCP + UDP + Checksum + Large Receive)

1. Turn off IPv4 & IPv6 protocol offloading on non-server-grade adapters.
2. TCP & UDP checksum offloading do not seem to hurt things.
3. I've also been turning off Large receive offloading: supposed to buffer reception of packets for processing.

Conclusion

Interrupt moderation may be fine for an Internet-facing server, but when big files and traffic are regularly generated, it may be confusing the heck out of the adapters in question. Funny enough, it seems the Killer NIC we were using on the server (while getting the Intel NICs figured out) was decently stable for a reason: no interrupt moderation & offloading is done by its 400mhz PowerPC chip; however, no jumbo support, and its driver can get BSOD-unstable on a 2008 setup.

References
*"Interrupt Coalescence (also called Interrupt Moderation or Interrupt Blanking)"
*"How Does Interrupt Coalescing Affect Low Latency High-Performance Messaging?"
*TCP Wikipedia article
*Forum post on a gamer's encounter with Interrupt Moderation

Quick local backup with rsync & btrfs

2010-03-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

I needed to put a spare eSATA drive to use as a backup for my main Corporate box, but I also wanted to try out Btrfs & use its snapshot capabilities to aid in that effort. Using Ubuntu Karmic / 9.10 ...

1. Make sure a newer kernel is loaded from mainline: I'm using 2.6.33 @ the moment.
2. sudo apt-get install btrfs-tools
3. Attach the backup drive & partition as needed using fdisk.
4. mkfs.btrfs (new partition)
5. Create a directory to mount to, such as /media/backup
6. Edit /etc/modules to add btrfs
7. Edit /etc/fstab with the following modified for your needs...

(new partition) /media/backup btrfs compress 0 0

8. Update your boot files with update-initramfs -u
9. Make a backup script to run daily: example /etc/backup.sh

#!/bin/sh
DATE=`date +%F`
rsync -avlh (folder to backup) /media/backup/(folder to backup)
btrfsctl -s /media/backup/$DATE /media/backup

9. Add the script to your /etc/crontab file (and maybe run /etc/init.d/cron restart afterwards)

30 20 * * * root sh /etc/backup.sh

References

* Btrfs Wiki
* "Back up like an expert with rsync"
* Blogger's entry on getting btrfs to work with Debian/Ubuntu

If I had 48 cores at my disposal...

2010-03-20T23:25:00.000-04:00

Given the question of whether I could have 48 CPU cores at my disposal, it would really depend on what I'm applying it towards.

If I were building such a system for work, then given a massive pool of RAM, I could virtualize my employer's entire server setup: it would be highly efficient power-wise, and much easier to manage. I imagine our server rack would be a lot cooler as well.

What would I do with it personally though? My government is currently on a push to encourage more high-speed broadband use by its citizens. However, this will take some time to come to fruition: in the meanwhile, there are plenty of places with "high speed" connections that barely manage 1.5mbit download rates, and upload rates much smaller. I am aware of file-management techniques such as: alternative compression formats; re-compressing existing archives; re-compressing image files without quality loss; minimizing scripting files; and optimizing web pages to be less redundant. I could build an online facility to take archive submissions from users, and create download-able versions of their websites, that would be faster and use less bandwidth than before. Gains per optimized site would probably yield a 10-25% improvement. I could implement this with open-source tools, and provide the platform freely, so that others could provide this service as well.

Disk caching and speedup methods

2010-03-18T15:54:00.000-04:00

I started a Reddit thread on finding an experimental filesystem, that used RAM to speed up drive access. However, there isn't a clear-cut use of this in anything since it was proposed ~10 years ago.

* SuperSpeed hawks some patented drivers and software for accelerating drive IO in Windows. Most of their product line is geared towards pre-2008.

* Lookup "cache file system" or "CacheFS" in regards to methods on Unix & Linux to accelerate use of network or optical drives via HDD cache (I assume a RAM-drive could be used with this).

* Windows Vista / 2008 and later auto-cache files into available memory: its rather sloppy though, and had to be fine-tuned in 7 / 2008R2. There's a programmable service the Windows Debugger team put together to apply this tuning to pre-7 versions of Windows: Dynamic Caching Service

Intel gigabit hang fix & XP Professional hang solution

2010-03-13T07:04:00.000-05:00

* Been fighting with a server for 3 months now to figure out how to make the onboard adapters work properly. Make sure you have decent switches in place (D-Link units that support Jumbo Frames in our environment: decomm'd some Netgear a few days ago). As for the fix, I stumbled upon some Intel errata that suggested disabling the PCIe link state setting in BIOS: the onboard NICs can't handle the constant throttling L0/L1 does to them. May have to change the setting in 2008/Vista/7's power plan as well: I did.

* We still have one PC in accounting running XP Pro for stuff: it decided to hang on logon for me more than once overnight while I was adjusting the area's networking setup; I found a Microsoft article regarding disabling the WebClient service: that seems to have done the trick.

How to get x64 Windows 7 loaded on a Dell with no Dell x64 disc

2010-02-26T03:45:00.000-05:00

I had the "joy" of working on a new laptop that came with 32-bit instead of 64-bit 7 Professional. 2.5GB out of 4GB usable RAM + no XP mode: I wasn't going to allow that.

1. Obtain a 4GB flash drive & any x64 disc of Windows 7.
2a. Install MagicDisc & follow this guide to copy over the files to the USB.
2b. Install & use the DVD to USB tool.
3. Edit sources/ei.cfg on the USB drive with a Notepad variant: it should be Retail + the version of 7 you have the key for on the computer.
4. Boot the system with the USB drive & install Windows 7 as normal, using the key that came with the computer.
5. When you are satisfied the system is stable, activate Windows: you'll more than likely have to call the Microsoft automated activation.

Reference: How to install any version or sku of Windows 7

NTFS file & directory linking

2010-02-15T19:51:00.000-05:00

In Vista & 7, you can link to existing files & directories, even networked ones, using the mklink utility in the command line. Alternatively, you can use some GUI-based tools that support older types of linking known as "junctions".

*NTFS symbolic link & how to create with command line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

*Review of different kinds of links
http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=284

*GUI Tool to create junction points & hard links
http://elsdoerfer.name/=ntfslink

Some PHP & MySQL finds & updates

2010-02-09T00:10:00.000-05:00

Over the last few days I've helped the boss go over some of our web server stuff, and I've found a few things.

*. Our MySQL connectors were old: I found new ones.
*. Microsoft has a plugin for IIS to accelerate & cache PHP 5.2 & 5.3
*. If you try upgrading to PHP 5.3, some of your stuff may break because of updated password code for MySQL: one blogger posted a solution that is more or less "reset the password".
*. There's a developer that's been patching Wordpress to run with PHP's MySQLi driver.

Squid + Polipo to make a high-speed transparent proxy

2010-02-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

Squid: complex beast of a proxy software that can do transparent / intercept proxying. I'm going to assume you're using this already.

Polipo: great proxy program, but author opposes transparent / intercept proxying on technical and political grounds.

* Install polipo
* Configure polipo: "allowedClients" should have 127.0.0.1 & your local subnet; uncomment "diskCacheRoot = """; uncomment "dnsQueryIPv6 = no" (edited 2-2-2010: treat cache as shared & only resolve IPv4 addresses, since you can't transparent-proxy IPv6)
* Add "cache_peer localhost parent 8123 0 no-query no-digest" to the squid.conf file.

You may need to tweak Polipo & Squid still regarding memory sizes and cache performance, but with Polipo as a memory-only prefetcher, you should find your caching performance to be much improved.

Reference on parent proxies in Squid

Tweaks to a Squid transparent proxy on Ubuntu

2010-02-01T19:12:00.000-05:00

Some adjustments regarding getting a Squid proxy going on Ubuntu...

*
Squid Wiki instructions on transparent proxying: I'm not using a MASQUARADE rule on my setup, but rather an SNAT rule...

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s (local subnet) -j SNAT --to (external IP)

* Ubuntu Karmic isn't using the newest Squid by far: it currently uses Squid 3.0.8, but you can install 3.0.19 just fine. I also updated iptables from 1.4.4 to 1.4.6

*Debian Sid SQUID3
*Debian Sid SQUID3-Common
*Debian Sid Squid-langpack
*Debian Sid iptables & ip6tables

Free ways to make Flash movies perhaps?

2010-01-29T01:12:00.000-05:00

* How to use ffmpeg to convert video to Flash / SWF
* FlashDevelop: open-source ActionScript editor & packager
* SWFTools: convert different formats to Flash
* Somewhat messy list of open-source Flash projects

iSCSI for SQL use?

2010-01-28T04:33:00.000-05:00

Poking around other options for our slow SQL server, it may be possible to setup an iSCSI box with Linux and some drives to work around the current slow drive system: it has an unused gigabit NIC I could cross-over to such a box as a dedicated line.

* Good article on networked SQL storage
* iSCSI for 2003 Server (2008 has it already)
* Microsoft article regarding use of SQL on network storage

Useful Articles on Memory Management in Windows

2010-01-23T04:59:00.000-05:00

Trying to combat handle leakage from older Windows apps, I did find some useful Windows tweaks that at least apply to XP & 2003, but may also have use for 2008 / Vista / 7. These involve registry editing: if you don't know what I'm talking about, read the source articles or do not attempt!

Added 1-31-2009: hotfix for data objects

For older programs using databases, Vista / 2008 / 7 can choke up after a while. This hotfix seems to be helping with my 60-user appserver: it hasn't needed a reboot in a week!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978042

Session Manager tweak

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems

Look in the "Windows" string and change the middle number of "SharedSection=1024,3072,512" to 12288 to match Vista/2008's setting; 32-bit users may be able to push it a little further, but 64-bit users can probably go to 65535. System instability may result with a bad setting.

GDI and other handle tweaks

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows

Change all the values that say 10000 to 16384: be sure to set it to Decimal when you edit each setting.

References

* ASP.NET article on GDI handle limits & Session Manager tweak
* Rage3d thread on Session Manager tweak

Articles on Windows Memory Management

EDITED: found more articles in the series & linking to them

Mark Russinovich has as nice series on how Windows manages memory: keep these in mind regarding the 4GB limit on 32-bit systems; handle limits; etc.

* Physical Memory
* Virtual Memory
* Paged / Non-Paged Pool
* Processes & Threads
* Handles

ADDED: found references for modifying EXE flags

Related

*Discussion on modifying EXEs for /3GB & large address support
*EDITBIN options reference
*DumpbinGUI
*Visual Studio Express C++ has dumpbin & editbin

Speeding up an SQL server

2010-01-23T00:32:00.000-05:00

At work, we have a server of several years age that struggles to keep up with the 40GB database we use to maintain our rental software. I've tried researching this issue before, and it would seem I actually came across some things that work for people...

1. Add more database files: I kept noticing a rule that suggested 1 file per database per logical CPU; this is supposed to spread out read/write activity. This can be done without affecting any data in the database, and by running an optimize plan, it seems to begin spreading out the data to the new files.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190970.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175890.aspx

2. tempdb can go on a RAMDrive: its recreated as needed, and its used as a buffer for other databases on the server. I found some RAMDisk software a while back: I went back to check it out again & setup a compressed NTFS 512MB drive (the SQL server instance never seems to use more than 1GB, despite allowing it up to 3 @ times). I repeated #1 by splitting the tempdb into 4 files of 120MB each. I can't seem to get the system to stop using the original file at the moment: I'm sure there's a way.

Article on tempdb optimization
RAMDrive software

3. The databases can have their indexes defragmented. We've done this in the past, but it gets harder to do as database filesizes grow: it took 17 hours last time I tried it.

MSDN article on defragging SQL indexes

Found updated tinc for OpenWRT Kamikaze 8.09

2010-01-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

Newer versions of OpenWRT Kamikaze omit the latest versions of Quagga for some reason, so at work I've been using the 8.09 version on my company routers. However, newer versions of tinc haven't worked: fortunately, some hackers published tinc 1.0.11 that works on 8.09 for use with ChaosNET.

*EDIT 2-14-2010: the porter was kind enough to update tinc to 1.0.12 @ my request.

On your OpenWRT router (first run df & make sure you have space to use)...

cd /tmp
wget http://0x1.net/openwrt/tinc_1.0.12-1_mipsel.ipk
opkg install tinc_1.0.12-1_mipsel.ipk

I have his old binary mirrored @ http://unquietwiki.com/savedutils/tinc_1.0.11-1_mipsel.ipk

WINE on Ubuntu 9.10

2010-01-19T02:46:00.000-05:00

I've been having trouble installing WINE on Ubuntu 9.10. Turns out I had an old kernel instruction hanging around in my setups. Yank anything with "vm.nmap_min_adr" in /etc/sysctl.conf & make sure the WINE repository is setup correctly.

*WINE repository instructions
*Ubuntu forums post

Recursive open & locked-down OpenDNS BIND options

2010-01-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

My BIND caches for work weren't setup too well: I needed a recursive one from a site not using OpenDNS & one that did and honored its restrictions. Changes should be made in named.conf or named.conf.options , depending on when BIND was installed and what version it is.

Changes for restricted OpenDNS recursive cache

1. Use the following for options...
forwarders { 208.67.222.222; 208.67.220.220; };
forward only;
listen-on-v6 {any;};
allow-recursion {any;};

2. Comment out the zone "." section.

Changes for good working recursive DNS

1. Use the following for options (forwarders can be any DNS server set)...

forwarders { 8.8.8.8; 208.67.222.222; };
forward first;
listen-on-v6 {any;};
allow-recursion {any;};

* Saved copy of NetDig: can't seem to download this from the original site anymore.
* BIND Query Command Reference

MTU and Jumbo Frame enabling for better Gigabit

2010-01-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

Some information I've assembled regarding enabling jumbo frames to get more bandwidth out of Gigabit Ethernet installations.

Regardless of OS

Update the network driver for your adapter and change its properties to enable any MTU or Jumbo Frame setting. There's a standard 14-byte offset that comes into play: driver settings may use that; the OS setting won't. Also make sure your switch can handle this: some may support it, but only at 4K or 9K frames.

Standard: 1500
Mix/Match older Realtek & Intel: 4K / 4074 / 4088
Mix/Match newer Realtek & Intel: 9K / 9000 / 9014
High-end Intel & switches allow 16K

Linux

ifconfig ADAPTER mtu #

2000 / XP / Server 2003

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\

Set MTU as Decimal; save as DWORD

Reference

Vista / Server 2008 / 7

netsh int ip set subinterface "ADAPTER" mtu=# store=persistent

Reference

Trying to solve some Windows problems...

2010-01-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

I've attempted to address a number of issues in my environment of late. Hopefully I've found some fixes for them...

Hotfix & KB article lists: this is how I found a number of patches to try...

*Microsoft's "The Hot Blog"
*Microsoft Knowledge Base monitoring
*ITsVista hotfix list

Fixes I'm trying to use

*Microsoft registry patch & article on reducing network traffic
*You cannot open a Web folder by double-clicking it in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008 (actually has a newer SHELL32.DLL suggested by the Microsoft article)
*The computer stops responding when you access some shared files from a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista
*A patch for an LSASS memory leak (trying this on my servers)
*RDP shadowing hotfix
*RDP/networking hotfix
*A patch for 2008 DNS to turn off excessive broadcasts

Someone found a "god mode" master control panel for Windows 7

2010-01-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67180

Make any folder with "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" as the name. The folder is a condensed list of all the main Control Panel options (267 total for me in Home Premium).

How to recover data from a corrupt Intel RAID array

2010-01-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

RAID5 array on a newer Intel controller, using 4 SSDs. One drive offline + another flagged error = array down.

1. Intel's answer: you're screwed

2. Community answer: flag all RAID members as non-RAID; recreate array with exact same type and stripe size as before; use TestDisk (Ultimate Boot CD has this) & let it recover whatever partitions exist; rewrite bootloader with the OS CD (assuming its Vista/2008/7). Original & Intel forum threads.

3. My answer: assuming you tried step #2, reload Windows using a newer Intel Rapid Storage Driver and then with only a minimal setup, recover the necessary data with Partition Recovery software from DiskInternals (costs $200 for business use, but cheaper than forensics).

Website compression stuff

2009-12-18T05:11:00.000-05:00

Running the Vigos Analyzer on a number of sites, and there's still quite a few that don't compress their pages. Any decent web browser from the last 10 years can handle compressed pages. Looking at my own host, they don't enable it by default: apparently I can tweak my .htaccess to fix that.

* "How to load your website faster: HTTP compression"
* Gzip compression for PHP
* Enabling DEFLATE in Apache 2.0
* Manage compression in IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003)
* Manage compression in IIS 7.0 (Windows Server 2008)

EDIT 12-21-2009: Found another article regarding setting IIS compression

Flying High

2009-12-14T04:16:00.000-05:00

As I've been doing a bit of travel for work of late, I've been boning-up on aircraft and such. One question I don't hear people ask much of is "how high do jetliners fly?" This is known as the service ceiling, and most fly between 25000' and 35000'. The newest planes (the A380, B787, A350, and B747-8) max out at 43000' & the Concorde flew up to 60000'. So how high should we fly?

The U2 operates at up to 85000', but its obviously small and supported in lift by large glider wings. The operation of the A380 at 41000-43000' was granted by an FAA waiver on a 38000' ceiling by suggesting one pilot be wearing an oxygen mask in the event an engine blew apart and hit the plane: that same FAA waiver also suggested reduced CO2 emissions from lower fuel requirements (less dense air = less fuel needed to fly). One thing you also have to do as you go higher is to fly fast: none of these planes mentioned, save the U2, operate with less than Mach 0.85 speed at 35000-38000'. Flight, is all about avoiding a free-fall back to Earth.

Back to the part about the A380 needing a mask for the pilot: a few weeks ago I read this, which goes into some detail about exposure to vacuum. You have 15 seconds top to get decent air in your lungs when you're above 45000', else you'll pass-out from hypoxia and die within minutes. And apparently, the current masks that pop out during air leaks don't really work above 40000': the FAA waiver on the A380 asks for more study on this. Standard procedure for any plane: get down to around 25000' (below Mt Everest height) ASAP.

Last thing to address before planes can start cruising higher: radiation. Concorde had a radiometer for measuring excess radiation from cosmic rays or solar storms: get below 47000' if the count was too high. NOAA has charted exposure levels and links to some sites regarding exposure: apparently frequent fliers and crews can get dosed within the safety limits of other radiation-sensitive work, and prenatal women are advised to consult a doctor about their exposure. There's also a large European document regarding this situation I haven't had a chance to look at yet.

Free games you should play that aren't on Facebook

2009-12-11T01:56:00.000-05:00

* I played Kingdom of Loathing back when it was a bloated Visual Basic/ASP mess circa 2003. Since then, they switched to PHP, started a neat online radio station, and a wiki: I'm playing again as of a week ago.

* What if the world looked like this? Play eRepublik to help shape it: I virtually live in eFlorida, which happens to be the capital of eUSA after a protracted war with members of the PEACE alliance that nearly broke the nation; that alliance has since weakened and new ones forged.

* Urban Dead: I've already "beaten" as in reaching level 41/42 without becoming a semi-revivable zombie. However, you can play different human classes, or stay a zombie, or treat fellow humans or zombies like crap if you want.

* If you're not worried about playing with others, time-wasters galore can be found on Newgrounds or Adult Swim.

Postfix & IPv6

2009-12-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

I was trying to get the main MFC here to route its SMTP jobs via a Postfix install I have here, and I noticed the relayed jobs weren't using the v6 VPN, but rather v4 Internet. I've bastardized parts of my main.cf to show what commands you need to activate v6 support. Remember that the mail server needs to be v6-capable (or use portproxy or Stone Repeater as a forwarder), and that it has an AAAA record in your DNS for it.

relayhost = mail.example.com
inet_protocols = all
mynetworks = [2001:db8:abcd::]/48 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 192.168.2.0/24 127.0.0.0/8
relaydomains = example.com
inet_interfaces = all
smtp_bind_address = 0.0.0.0
smtp_bind_address6 = ::

* Postfix main.cf documentation
* "IPv6 Addresses" on Wikipedia

Climate Change and How Jodie Foster Met Aliens

2009-12-08T04:17:00.000-05:00

This is barely computer related, but it is tech-related, and well I don't have spot for this other than my original Facebook note, so enjoy.

I've only seen part of the movie Contact: because I read the book beforehand, and I didn't want it spoiled by the obvious changes that had to be made post-Cold War. Carl Sagan's "Contact" came out as a book back in 1985, positing a challenge of how a divided world would handle the arrival of alien blueprints for a machine. The world did rise up to build the machine: several in fact; except because of setbacks it collaborated on an American-based project that had mixed results. The Americans wanted something for the trouble: what they got was a scientist blabbing about meeting an alien like her Dad, nothing else substantial; they locked her up in an observatory for life (meanwhile, the Russians were hailed as heroes for meeting aliens).

Okay, what does that have to do with Climate Change/Global Warming? Well, the book mentions that despite the Americans thinking the machine was a joke, the aliens a hoax, they still went on to create new machines and industries based on the alien transmissions. Even now as we make Al Gore our next "Ellie" and say he's doing the eco-stuff for money, we're switching to lower wattage bulbs, efficient computers, less-wasteful buildings, and less waste in general to process. The "solar and wind that will never work" are being slowly integrated into the global economy: in fact I believe Thomas Friedman loves to make a point that the largest producers of this tech hail from China and Germany.

What amazes me even more is people's defense to do more of the same. I read some comments regarding use of limos at Copenhagen: the Danes are expected to calculate and offset those emissions, and people were still commenting on "liberal elitism" and to "drill drill drill." Its not okay for Al Gore to make money on investing in his ideals, yet its entirely permissible for the oil magnates to generate record profits? I remember learning in Economics and Junior Achievement that you take your profits and stockholder investments to MAKE stuff, not to TAKE their money and do whatever you damn well please with it. Where are the business people standing up to invest in new tech, vs drawing out as long as possible to do the same old extraction business, and spend money to fight any change to it? At least that's what we're doing here.

So China's building solar panels, wind farms are popping up overseas, and we're chasing around Obama and Gore with pitchforks about the fraud called Global Warming. (sigh) Maybe Sagan was onto something 24 years ago.

Wikipedia and Programming

2009-12-06T22:25:00.000-05:00

Back when I was a help desk tech, I spent a lot of free time on Wikipedia. This enabled me to explore and play with assorted programming languages. Of ones I have found...

* Brainfuck
* Dylan
* A collection of articles on PHP
* A collection of articles on Ruby
* A collection of articles on BASIC