PCGrind

Why Microsoft Window gets in the way, why it sucks.

2011-04-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Example #1: I want to go home for the night so I right click CLOSE on the group of Notepads I have open, as well as paintbrush, etc. Windows just blinks the icon in the tray. Nothing else. WTF? How lame. I have to then go to each and every instance of Notepad and Paintbrush I have open and pull up the "SAVE?" option. But can I see what I am saying Yes or No to? Of course not, who in their right mind would want to be able to SEE what they are selecting to save or discard. I have to cancel out of every single one of them and then pull them up. This means that to close down I have to spend a lot of time saying YES I AM SURE I WANT TO CLOSE DOWN! If I have a lot of notepad and paintbrush scratch pads up, it can take 10 minutes just to close them all.

Example #2: Program blows up. Dr Watson fires off. Locks up the program for 10 minutes. Dr Watson locks up in doing dumprep, launches anothe Dr Watson and performs a dump prep of the first Dr. Watson. This goes on until the NIC become unresponsive and the PC drops off the network.

WTF? How can an OS be so lame? Switch to Mac software writers. Those of us in the enterprise are ready to ditch Windows XP, Vista, and 7 for OS X. We want your software to work on OS X. Just look at the Apple Stores!

Optimize Citrix Web Client for WAN caching

2009-12-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this like really sucks because it's a catch 22. Citrix web client by default disables caching of everything except for 8MB of RAM cache.

The fix is to go into your default.ica files and add these lines;

[WFClient]
PersistentCacheEnabled=On
PersistentCacheMinBitmap=2048
PersistentCacheSize=64424508
PersistentCachePath=%appdata%
Compress=On
MaximumCompression=On
OutBufCountHost=118
OutBufCountClient=118
OutBufLength=512
OutBufCountHost2=118
OutBufCountClient2=118
MouseTimer=200
KeyboardTimer=50

[Application]
PersistentCacheEnabled=On
PersistentCacheMinBitmap=2048
PersistentCacheSize=64424508
MaximumCompression=On
PersistentCachePath=%appdata%
Compress=On

The problem is that persistentcachepath does not allow variables such as %userprofile% until the 11.2 client, and that users do not have access to the default paths.

If you don't specify PersistentPathCache, then PersistentCache is disabled.

And if you stick the cache in c:\temp and grant everyone full rights, it's a security issue.

The 11.2 client also removes PNAgent and program neighborhood. So it's a catch22. If you upgrade to 11.2, you can't connect to old farms. If you don't then Webclient bitmap caching doesn't work right.

If you have bandwidth detection enabled, then these settings will be different. In our setup, we have only low bandwidth users. The low bandwidth ica is not combined with default. Only the settings in the specific ICA are used. Not merged.

Using IrfanView to make major image modifications.

2009-06-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

This is posted mainly for my future reference, but it probably is helpful to others.

What I am doing is taking single page TIF Files of various sizes and DPI and creating a multi page PDF with proper formatting and aspect ratios. Below is the settings and code to do this using IrfranView. What I'm actually doing is much more complex than this, but this is enough of the code to figure it out without trial and error like I did. Ifranview has a lot more power than is documented.

The source files are single page TIF files of varying sizes at 200DPI. The destination is a PDF of same sized images which view and print nicely.

The INI file i_view32.ini has the following added to it to make these transitions;
[Batch]
AdvCrop=0
AdvCropX=0
AdvCropY=0
AdvCropW=0
AdvCropH=0
AdvCropC=0
AdvResize=0
AdvResizeOpt=0
AdvResizeW=966.00
AdvResizeH=1020.00
AdvResizeL=0.00
AdvResizeS=0.00
AdvResample=1
AdvResizePerc=0
AdvResizePercW=0
AdvResizePercH=0
AdvDPI=120
AdvResizeUnit=0
AdvResizeRatio=0
AdvNoEnlarge=0
AdvCanvas=1
AdvAddText=1
AdvUseBPP=0
AdvBPP=0
AdvUseFSDither=1
AdvAutoRGB=0
AdvHFlip=0
AdvVFlip=0
AdvRLeft=0
AdvRRight=0
AdvGray=0
AdvInvert=0
AdvSharpen=0
AdvGamma=0
AdvContrast=0
AdvBrightness=0
AdvSaturation=0
AdvColR=0
AdvColG=0
AdvColB=0
AdvSharpenVal=1
AdvGammaVal=0.00
AdvContrastVal=0
AdvBrightnessVal=0
AdvSaturationVal=0
AdvColRVal=0
AdvColGVal=0
AdvColBVal=0
AdvDelOrg=0
AdvOverwrite=1
AdvSubdirs=0
AdvSaveOldDate=0
AdvAllPages=1
AdvFineR=0
AdvFineRVal=0.00
AdvBlur=0
AdvBlurVal=1
AdvMedian=0
AdvMedianVal=3
AdvRbg=0
AdvBgr=0
AdvBrg=0
AdvGrb=0
AdvGbr=0
AdvAutoCrop=0
SaveExtension=tif
Work=0
RenamePattern=image###
UseAdvanced=1
OpenIndex=1
UseAdvanced=1
OpenIndex=1
[Effects]
UseResample=0
CanvB=1110
CanvW=1110
CanvColor=16777215
OilPaint=0
RotateDegrees=0
CanvL=0
CanvR=966
CanvT=0
[BatchText]
AddText=www.YourWebsite.com
TextCoord=830;1050;960;1100;
Corner=0
Orientation=2
TranspText=0
FontColor=0
TxtBgkr=16777215
FontParam=-13|0|0|0|400|0|0|0|0|3|2|1|34|
Font=Arial

The code below is VBScript for applications which makes this change.

This is a subsection of code.

for looper = 1 to cnt2
WriteInfo "mailfile:" & PDFFileName, TIFFilename
'Convert all the TIFs in the owerns folder to 120 DPI for printing to look right;
Shellto = "C:\Progra~1\IrfanView\i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "\" & Cstr(looper) & ".tif" + chr(34) + " /advancedbatch /silent /dpi=(120,120) /crop=(0,0,966,1110) /append=" + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "aaaa.tif" + chr(34) & " /convert"
WriteInfo "Shellto:" & Shellto
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
rc = oShell.Run(ShellTo,4,false)
'need to add code to wait until shell is complete
set svc=getobject("winmgmts:root\cimv2")
sQuery="select * from win32_process where name='i_view32.exe'"
set cproc=svc.execquery(sQuery)
iniproc=cproc.count 'it can be more than 1
Do While iniproc <> 0

set svc=getobject("winmgmts:root\cimv2")
sQuery="select * from win32_process where name='i_view32.exe'"
set cproc=svc.execquery(sQuery)
iniproc=cproc.count
Loop
set cproc=nothing
set svc=nothing
next

'Take the TIF
'Shellto = "C:\Progra~1\IrfanView\i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + TIFFileName + chr(34) + " /silent /dpi=(120,120) /convert=" + chr(34) + PDFFileName + chr(34)
Shellto = "C:\Progra~1\IrfanView\i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "aaaa.tif" + chr(34) + " /silent /dpi=(120,120) /convert=" + chr(34) + PDFFileName + chr(34) & " /convert"
WriteInfo "Shellto:" & Shellto
'Dim oShell
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
rc = oShell.Run(ShellTo,4,false)
'need to add code to wait until shell is complete
set svc=getobject("winmgmts:root\cimv2")
sQuery="select * from win32_process where name='i_view32.exe'"
set cproc=svc.execquery(sQuery)
iniproc=cproc.count 'it can be more than 1
Do While iniproc <> 0

set svc=getobject("winmgmts:root\cimv2")
sQuery="select * from win32_process where name='i_view32.exe'"
set cproc=svc.execquery(sQuery)
iniproc=cproc.count
Loop
set cproc=nothing
set svc=nothing

Understanding it. The INI addes a white border to the right at bottom of the image. It is X and Y are the page width and lenght of the largest page. Think of it this way. If you get a TIF image which is 1x1 then this will add a border to make it a full page. If it's already a full page, you have a huge image. But that is ok at this point. I specify white for this border as this is a text image. This is the settings CanvR CanvW CanvH.

The INI also puts a watermark in an X Y position which in this case will be the lower right corner of the page. www.Yourwebsite.com.

i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "\" & Cstr(looper) & ".tif" + chr(34) + " /advancedbatch /silent /dpi=(120,120) /crop=(0,0,966,1110) /append=" + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "aaaa.tif" + chr(34) & " /convert"

So this says take a source TIF, run it through the advanced batch conversion settings explained above, do this silently if there is an error (don't stop), modify the print DPI to 120x120, then crop that result down to 966x1110 and append that to a multipage TIF. /convert at the end tells Irfanview to close after all of this is done.

C:\Progra~1\IrfanView\i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + TIFFileName + chr(34) + " /silent /dpi=(120,120) /convert=" + chr(34) + PDFFileName + chr(34)
Shellto = "C:\Progra~1\IrfanView\i_view32.exe " + chr(34) + "c:\temp\stm\" & OWNERCLEAN & "aaaa.tif" + chr(34) + " /silent /dpi=(120,120) /convert=" + chr(34) + PDFFileName + chr(34) & " /convert"

This takes the resulting multipage TIF file and converts it to a multipage PDF using the Alternatif PDF Pluging (You have to have the addon plugins.)

This is the result of several weeks of discovery. Many of these features of Irfanview seem poorly documented. Once you discover the true power of the program, it is an amazing piece of software.

DL320 G3 drivers for non 2000/2003

2009-04-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

The IDE is a Mega Raid IDE 100 from LSI; http://www.lsi.com/obsolete/megaraid_ide_100_2567.html?remote=1&locale=EN

The NICs are Broadcom nc7761 which are BCM5704. Find the BCM57xx series NIC drivers and you are set.

Bypassing P2P restrictions by utilizing SMTP/POP3

2009-01-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

I'm on the other end of the blocking side here. I actively try to block and or rate limit P2P traffic on my company LANs. We pay for bandwidth and it is many thousands of dollars extra a month to allow this, as we have over 100Mb/s worth of connectivity to the Internet.

I see the battles being played out. First it's a port range, now it can be any port. Then we were able to detect based on signatures in the unencrypted traffic so p2p was switched to SSL. Then we found out we could rate limit anything on a port other than 443 that was SSL but had an invalid certificate (with some exceptions.) So protocol obfuscation was added so we can't tell what protocol it is. But that has a pattern too. Some use bursting limits to detect this, some use packet counts to remote IP's.

There is a thought that this can be moved to UDP to bypass these restrictions due to the lack of SYN control. Plus with UDP and a remote "server", one can poke holes into any firewall and bypass inbound restrictions. But this counts on UDP being opened up outbound. While serving DNS from a local server, we could easily block UDP with a few exception sites.

My idea is to use SMTP and POP3 as additional protocols, not replacement. Using a dedicated real e-mail address for this. If I detect a very tight network such as what I have (eMule gets 1kb/s, Gnutella about 10kb/s on the open network, completely blocked on the closed network) then send my "p2p" e-mail address out to peers, and ask for theirs.

Do an initial exchange setup verify. A remote peer sends my e-mail address an e-mail to verify it can talk to me, and I send one to it. If the software verifies connectivity then packets are sent out via SMTP and downloaded via POP3. This can been over SSL if needed. This is done to prevent some innocent from getting bombarded with these mails.

The e-mails would have nothing in the headers to do pattern matching against. They would generate a very basic envelope. The subject would be completely random set of words. The body would also include a random set of words or phrases. The math behind this would be ever changing to prevent Bayesian filtering. The e-mail body (not attachment) would contain the “packet” to be transferred in lines that are between 5 and 70 characters in length. These lines would be SMTP RFC character set compliant. Each e-mail would be no more than 1Mbit in size. This would be data that is encrypted using something like AES or TwoFish and then mime encoded.

The peer I am requesting data from would send this to it's SMTP server, which would end up making it to my POP3 server. My P2P client would download the e-mail and decode it. I would send back an ACK to the peers e-mail address and await the next packet via POP3.

This would place a huge load on ISP mail servers. Most ISPs block outbound port 25, mandating the use of their SMTP servers though. If we used any other port, then packet shaping would work again.

The idea is that this would be just one of many ways to transfer data. The P2P client would try and figure out which was was the fastest by trying each method. If it finds one method is much faster than another, then it would prefer that for a period of time. If the ISP has their bandwidth shaping between the Internet and their own networks it is possible that this could bypass those filters. If you are on ISP#1 and 20 other peers are too, and you are using their mail servers, all such transfers are local and would not pass by such a bandwidth filter.

An example of an exchange;

From:
To:
Subject: One was fast not enough more time
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:53:11 -0700
Message-ID: <12394@ru.dot>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Importance: normal
Priority: normal

This time once fast was enough blow down sky tonight. Lost ever more not as such. Could be nice review this.

ADSK3K39VK2KJN3LKC0A9DFLKJ23LKNL2K3N4K3909DFALDFK
ASLKFJ2LK3J4L2K3L2K3J490GBLAK1JH2LH509BUASDLKFJASED
9A99DLKD988323JHLKBN2LK3HJLKB09ASDFL23KHL5908GKLAA

Why cloning sucks

2008-11-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I am against cloning. I do it because I am told to.e

We ordered a batch of HP DC5750's. We made a clone doing sysprep et al. Life was good. But then after the PC's were installed 1000 miles away we discovered that we built the clone from a dual core system and most of the PC's are single core.

Now every time we lauch notepad, control panel, my computer - the system freezes for up to 2 or 3 minutes. The PC's are also reporting hard drive errors.

The fix is to go in and hardware manager and swap the dual processor APIC driver for a single processor.

Windows Active Directory issues with Binding

2008-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

These are the errors;

Windows cannot bind to domain. (Local Error). Group Policy processing aborted.

Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects. A message that describes the reason for this was previously logged by the policy engine.

Ends up that one of our network guys installed a new server and it was running Computer Browser, and causing constant elections. So the Computer Browser service was down as much as it was up.

We run 3 Computer Browser servers on our LAN to prevent these elections and the guy forgot to disable the service on the new server. Once he disabled the service, I was able to run gpupdate without errors.

This was causing slow logins / logons as well.

Making a Ghost 8.2 clone of my Dell R300 server.

2008-09-19T08:06:00.001-07:00

I have historically used Compaq/HP Proliant servers with Intel NICs and chipsets that I have boot disks for. I typically use an older version of the Ultimate Boot Disk which contains Bart's Network Boot Disk, the Microsoft DOS version. I boot to the network in DOS, map a drive, and run ghost.exe to back up the SCSI drives to the LAN.

This doesn't work on my Dell R300. It has too much memory so I run into that issue. Plus there are nasty problems with B57.sys in this environment.

The solution was to download from NU2.com Bart's PE Builder. I installed that and pointed it to my XP SP3 CD (or the parent of the i386 Directory on a network.) Then I took the B57 drivers from Broadcom's site. The drivers are the small K ones, unsigned. The Zip has win_xp_2k3_32 and in that it has b57win32.inf 03/19/2008,10.78.0.0 for the 5700 series. This Dell has 5722 NIC's.

Then I went to LSI's site and did a search for the XP drivers for the SAS controller. The ZIP file has symmpi_xp_x86 and in that lsipseud.inf driver version 06/03/2008,6.5.0. The link is http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_ics/lsisas1068/index.html and click on downloads. The driver is the XP one which is 1.28.03.00. I did not use the WHQL one. I tried the Windows 2003 one from Dell, but that doesn't work in a WINXP OS.

So those are downloaded and put in the C:\pebuilder3110a\drivers\ directories.

I then went into addons and added the Ghost 8.2 files.

Then I created a bootable DVD using the PE builder interface.

I booted up off the DVD and started up the NIC's. Once started, I mapped a drive and ghosted to the network. I was able to see speeds over 1GB/min writing and over 2GB/min on verify. Much quicker than I ever got in DOS.

Anyway, this is how you can GHOST 8.2 a Dell R300 server for disaster recovery. I'm sure you could use this for DD or any other disk cloaning software. I have yet to try restoring the GHOST yet. Hopefully I never will have to try that.

How to grab still images off AXIS cameras and generate time lapse movies from them.

2008-05-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

This depends on several free programs. mencoder which comes with mplayer2, sleep from Microsoft resource kit, and Irfanview 4.10 or better.

The first batch file grabs the images and looks like this;


e:
cd \
md xvid
cd\xvid
md 8080
md 8081

:top
wget -O8081.jpg --tries=1 --timeout=5 "http://user:pwd@domain.dyndns.org:8081/jpg/1/image.jpg"
wget -O8080.jpg --tries=1 --timeout=5 "http://user:pwd@domain.dyndns.org:8080/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1&resolution=1024x800&compression=50"

rem If you want an e-mail of the image, use this;
rem E:\Blat250\Blat250\full\blat.exe - -body "8081" -serversmtp gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com -f fromuser@domain.com -subject "8081" -to user@gmail.com -attach 8081.jpg -noh2 -alttext Camera


setlocal

call :GETDATEPARTS "%date%"
call :GETTIMEPARTS


ren 8081.jpg "8081-%yy%%mm%%dd%_%h%%m%%RANDOM%.jpg"
ren 8080.jpg "8080-%yy%%mm%%dd%_%h%%m%%RANDOM%.jpg"

move 8081*.jpg 8081\.
move 8080*.jpg 8080\.
sleep 10
goto top

:GETTIMEPARTS

for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=:." %%a in ('echo %time%') do call :SETTIMEPART h %%a&call :SETTIMEPART m %%b&call :SETTIMEPART s %%c

goto :EOF

:SETTIMEPART

set %1=%2

if 1%2 LSS 100 set %1=0%2

goto :EOF

REM ***************************************************

:GETDATEPARTS

set dt=%~1
set tok=1-3

if "%dt:~0,1%" GTR "9" set tok=2-4

set yyyy=

for /f "tokens=%tok% delims=.:/-, " %%a in ('echo %~1') do (
 for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=/-,()." %%x in ('echo.^|date') do set %%x=%%a&set %%y=%%b&set %%z=%%c
)

if not "%yyyy%"=="" set yy=%yyyy%

if 1%yy% LSS 1000 (if %yy% LSS 70 (set yy=20%yy%) else (set yy=19%yy%))
if 1%mm% LSS 100 set mm=0%mm%
if 1%dd% LSS 100 set dd=0%dd%

goto :EOF

==== That is the end of the first batch file. It will grab an image from two cameras and save them with a date and time stamp in separate directories. Obviously you must change this as is appropriate for your hard drive and LAN.

The next batch file is below;



md e:\xvid\8080\old2
md e:\xvid\8080\old3
md e:\xvid\8081\old2
md e:\xvid\8081\old3
del e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg /q/s
del e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg /q/s

e:
cd\xvid
cd 8080
move *.jpg old2\.
cd old2

rem cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
rem c:
rem fails
rem start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8080\old2\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /silent

dir /b *.jpg > proc.txt
@for /f "delims=| tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i in (proc.txt) do (
@echo %%i
@echo %%j
@C:\zentemp\unsecure\screenc\i_view32 "e:\xvid\8080\old2\%%i" /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\%%i" /silent
)
cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
c:
@start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /aspectratio /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /silent

@e:

@e:
@cd e:\xvid\8080\old3

@mencoder mf://*.jpg  -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o "c:\temp\8080-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.mpg"
rem remove ,harddup from the line above to make this remove
rem duplicate frames.  Resulting file is MUCH smaller, however quality does suffer.


:try2
@rem o now cam 8081

e:
cd\xvid
cd 8081
move *.jpg old2\.
cd old2

dir /b *.jpg > proc.txt
@for /f "delims=| tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i in (proc.txt) do (
@echo %%i
@echo %%j

@C:\zentemp\unsecure\screenc\i_view32 "e:\xvid\8081\old2\%%i" /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8081\old3\%%i" /silent
)
@cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
@c:
@start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /aspectratio /convert="e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg" /silent



@e:
@cd e:\xvid\8081\old3

@mencoder mf://*.jpg  -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o "c:\temp\8081-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.mpg"

That's a pretty big batch file. What it does is take all of the JPG's and normalizes them using Irfan view. Irfan view has some bugs, so we can't batch convert except for the resize. AXIS sometimes returns back color images, sometimes black and white. The encoding changes. If we don't specify the size on the wget, then sometimes the size can change. mencoder doesn't like any of this. To make a movie, the images must all be the same. Irfan view fills this role.

The mencoder settings are set for high quality, not much compression. You can adjust as needed. This file plays very well in VideoLan (VLC player) if you have problems with codec's in your default media player.

Surfcontrol EUM issue

2008-04-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

There is a post "Surfcontrol EUM issue" in another site, which I have the answer to but can't reply - so here it is in case you do a Google search on this;

--- The question on that site ---
The problem is this:
1. Windows user logs onto our domain.
2. The EUM logon agent sends their domain\username and IP information to WebFilter.
3. User shuts down and leaves office.
4. MAC user boots up some time later and is DHCP'd the same IP (as the lease has since expired) 5. WebFilter incorrectly tracks/reports the browsing activities of the MAC user against the cached domain\username of the Windows user!!!

Right now, we don't have a solution for the MAC situation however, for the momentI'd be more than happy if MAC activity was simply tracked by IP - but certainly not in the name of the previous Windows holder of the IP addresses.

It seems to me that we need a way to regularly flush the EUM information that Webfilter stores.

Please advise, as this problem completely voids the integrity of the data reported.

-- The solution ---

There is a EUM agent that runs through logon scripts. It it ScEumLoginAgent.exe. What you do is launch that on your clients with the /intlogoff option which will remove that user's mapping to the IP address.

You can also run a logout script ScEumLoginAgent.exe /logout which will do the same thing, though Windows logout scripts are flaky at best.

I'm using the first method.

Plotting uptime MRTG in Windows the easy way

2008-04-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

First, snmputil locks up way too often. So I've replaced it with net-snmp.

Using net-snmp batch we are able to output uptime into a format which MRTG can plot.

Step #1 is to output the data into a format which MRTG can utilize;
----BEGIN BATCH FILE snmpED.bat----


@echo %~1 > c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug.txt
@if exist c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt del c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt

@rem snmputil get %~1 %~2 .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0 > c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug2.txt

@rem @snmputil get %~1 %~2 .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0 | find "Value" > c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt
@g:\usr\bin\snmpget -O svt -v 1 -c %2 %~1 .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0 > c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt
@sleep 1
@SET _substring="not found"
@set string="not found"
@if not exist c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt goto end
@rem FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i IN (c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt) DO @SET string=%%l
@FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i IN (c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt) DO @SET string=%%i
@SET _substring=%string:~0,15%
:end
@echo %_substring% 
@echo %_substring% 
@echo UNKNOWN
@echo %~1
@rem echo %date% %time%,%_substring% >> c:\temp\%~1.snmp
@if exist c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt del /q c:\temp\snmp.%~1.txt
@if exist c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug.txt del c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug.txt
@if exist c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug2.txt del c:\temp\snmp.%~1.debug2.txt
@rem echo %date% %time%,%_substring% >> c:\temp\%~1.snmp    
@REM Code by Edwin www.Acmenews.com ACMENEWS LLC
@rem Use the above line to export for things such as Kavachart or other charting

----END BATCH FILE snmpED.bat----
So I save this as %windir%\snmpED.bat and I call it with
snmpED 192.168.11.1

I get a file 192.168.11.1.snmp which has just the uptime ticks, in an MRTG format.

The next step is to plog this in MRTG.

So I take an existing working MRTG cfg file and append


Title[^]: System:Cisco uptime by Edwin www.Acmenews.com ACMENEWS LLC
Background[Cisco_uptime]: #e0e0e0
Title[Cisco_uptime]:Cisco uptime
PageTop[Cisco_uptime]: Status of Cisco
Target[Cisco_uptime]: `c:/winnt/snmped.bat 192.168.11.1 public`
RouterUptime[Cisco_uptime]: public@192.168.11.1
Options[Cisco_uptime]: gauge, growright, nopercent, unknaszero
ShortLegend[Cisco_uptime]:  
YLegend[Cisco_uptime]: uptime
Legend1[Cisco_uptime]: uptime
Legend2[Cisco_uptime]: uptime
LegendI[Cisco_uptime]: uptime
LegendO[Cisco_uptime]: uptime
MaxBytes[Cisco_uptime]: 100000000000000
WithPeak[Cisco_uptime]: ymwd

One thing to note about target. Those are carats and not apostrophes. That took me a few hours to grasp. It's the character under ~ and not the character shared with the " key.

With the above chart, you should end up with a saw graph showing the ever increasing uptime. When the saw drops back to 0 and climbs up, that is when a reboot occurred. If you couldn't query the device, you will see a saw with missing segments.

This is plotting uptime -- it is not plotting downtime. With this you can see when reboots occurred, but you can't tell for how long you were down. At least not with any great accuracy.

How to grab images off an Axis camera and save them in a time lapse format

2008-03-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

I have two Axis Cameras which I want to grab an image from every 10 seconds and store offsite.
My Firewall is configured to pass traffic on ports 1081 and 1080 to the two Axis cameras.

Below is a batch file to accomplish this. It relies upon WGET and SLEEP which is free to download if you search.

:top
wget -O1081.jpg http://user:password@yourdnsname:1081/jpg/1/image.jpg
wget -O1080.jpg http://user:password@yourdnsname:1080/jpg/1/image.jpg
ren 1081.jpg 1081-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.jpg
ren 1080.jpg 1080-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.jpg
move 1081*.jpg 1081\.
move 1080*.jpg 1080\.
sleep 10
goto top

Store that in a batch file in an empty directory along with WGET. Create two directories named 1080 and 1081.

Launch the batch file -- it will loop forever, storing your images in these directories.

Now, turn them into a time lapse film using mplayer..

Download mplayer (Search Google) and extract mencoder from the zip file. Place that in this directory..

Create another batch file with these contents;
c:
cd \yourdir\1080
mencoder mf://*.jpg -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o c:\yourdir\1080.mpg

cd \yourdir\1081
mencoder mf://*.jpg -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o c:\yourdir\1081.mpg

Of course replace c:\yourdir with the proper location. This will generate an mpg video of all these JPG's, and it will remove any duplicate images. Change fps from 25 to 5 for a slower view. Change maxrate and bitrate higher to get better quality.

If you have problems playing the mpg, you can use mplayer to play it or download VLC Videolan and play it through that. I use VLC because it can also stream directly from the AXIS camera and has it's own recording options.. But that's a different post.

Mac OSX 10.5.x Leopard

2008-02-22T11:27:00.000-08:00

So I've been running a Mac OS X Leopard machine from 10.5.0 to 10.50.2 and it has been a journey for this Windows user.

While the OS looks pretty, and many things are dumbed down for use, there are still many issues with this OS that make me wonder why so many people praise it's tunes.

Issue A, in no particular order) Lockups. I have had many lockups on 10.5.x. They still continue. Many patches have been released, but the issues still occur. Most of the time it is while I am playing something either in iTunes, DVD Player, or Front Row. It will often hard lock requiring a power cycle.

Issue B) Bugs. There are many plain bugs in the system. They just released a firmware update to resolve an issue where you type a key stroke and nothing happens. This has been a royal pain to deal with, especially on passwords. Things are better now, but not resolve. In Mail if I change an account from IMAP to IMAPS it will show the port 993 (usually) in the screen - but it tries to connect with port 143 per the firewall logs. Have to mess with it over and over and finally it will take. The Network Neighborhood seems to only check for clients at startup, and then drop them off as they sleep - but never update with new clients. The only way to get the list back again that I've found is to drop Airport and bring it back online. iChat bombs out during video chats.

Issue C) The thing gets very hot, especially in bootcamp. No temperature controls in Windows.

Issue D) Can't listen to unprotected WMA's in iTunes. WTF?

Issue E) Hardware. Only two USB ports and only one providing the full mA of power. No media buttons. Metal case shocks the crap out of you if you have a static charge. Plugging something into the speaker jack often kills the audio signal completely. Especially in games. Restarting the audio in the game will fix it, if it has that option.

Issue F) Nothing like NTBackup included. Must purchase .Mac or some other tool to get backup software. Time Machine hardware is expensive. Why can't I do system recovery backup to my USB drive with out of the box software?

Issue G) No NTFS read/write built in. Again, wtf? I'm not installing NTFS-3G et al when the projects are either dead, have known issues which say do not install in production environments, or commercial. This should be out of the box.

For the most part, I like the Mac. But these are some rather major issues. Especially when I paid almost twice as much for the Mac over a very similar Dell.

IE7 IEAK upgrade causes all Internet Zones to be treated as Local Intranet

2008-01-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, this bug again. I've seen it crop it's nasty head up a number of times all the way back to IE 4.x.

After using an IEAK upgrade to upgrade my stations from IE6 to IE7, Internet Explorer treats all Internet sites as Local Intranet. For me, this means they have additional rights to install spyware & because we don't allow passwords to be saved on our Intranet via a GPO, the users can't save ANY of their passwords for any website.

I've seen this times before. So I had a hunch. I checked my settings. Everything seems right in the GUI. The settings match my machine. Mine was updated via WSUS, not through IEAK installer. But we both run the same .INS configuration file. We run security zones for IE as HKLM only as described in KB182569. This allows us to set the settings once per PC and be done.

So my first test was to disable "Automatically Detect Intranet settings". And behold, the Internet zone was detected correctly now. Go back into the settings and IE7 had reset this setting back to enabled. But that didn't matter, the detection was working now. I tested this on 3 machines and repeated the experience.

So I found the registry location and dumped it into a .REG file

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap]
"AutoDetect"=dword:00000000

Notice this is in the HKCU location and not the HKLM location, where my settings should be coming from. However, running this via REGEDIT /s ie7fix.reg in a login script resolved the issue on 3 machines. So this triggers IE to fix whatever is wrong. Since my settings come out of HKLM, the IE GUI still shows autodetect enabled. And it detects correctly.

This is obviously a bug. IE7 must not be looking at HKLM in every case where it should when Security_HKLM_only is enabled. My guess is that the IEAK installer couldn't access the HKCU hive of the user. Somehow setting the AutoDetect value in HKCU triggers IE7 to fix what is wrong there.

--- Correction below----

This was caused by my own doing. I followed these directions;
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=75475&mode=linearplus

Which had me set the runonce to 1 so that the annoying welcome to IE7 didn't appear. Apparently it is this flag that also upgrades HKCU settings from IE6 to IE7. So I caused the problem myself.

Ubuntu, Cron, Logrotate, and Squid

2007-12-28T08:08:00.000-08:00

So you have that nice new Ubuntu server running. You get Squid up and configured, and have it using an effective user and group of squid. But each day at the same time, the squid server just stops. The logs show that it can't write to access.log. You take a look at /var/log/squid/access.log and find out that the file is owned by root:root. So it's an ACL issue.

You modify logrotate for squid adding chown and get squid back up. But the next day it fails. What gives?

Ubuntu 6.0.6 runs a cron job daily /etc/cron.daily/sysklogd. This archives your log files to save disk space and rotates them, independent of logrotate. If you look at this, you'll see it does a chown root:adm. Ooops.

So modify sysklogd to have this at the end;

touch /var/log/squid/access.log
chown --silent squid:squid /var/log/squid/access.log
chown --silent -R squid:squid /var/log/squid/access*
test ! -e /var/run/squid.pid || /usr/sbin/squid -k rotate

Of course, if you use a different user:group than squid:squid, replace with what you use. The last line gets squid to start logging into the new access.log, versus access.log.0.

Enjoy.

Forcing a PC to reboot through task scheduler

2007-11-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

So you want to schedule a PC to reboot through the task scheduler. It works sometimes, but not every time. Microsoft has created multiple shutdown commands. Below is a batch file which seems to work 100% of the time in my environment. We use the built in XP shutdown command first, then the old NT4 resource kit shutdown command, then again try the XP.

It seems that sometimes during shutdown, a program will hang the process. These additional shutdown commands seem to get it past that.

rem Reboots this PC

shutdown -r -t 90 -f -c "Nightly reboot occuring in 90 seconds to apply patches"
shutdown2 /L /R /T:160 /Y /C "Nightly reboot occuring in 90 seconds to apply patches"
shutdown -r -t 60 -f -c "Nightly reboot occuring in 90 seconds to apply patches"
sleep 100

Sometimes I stick sleep commands between the shutdowns. I don't fully understand this issue, but the above batch file works for me.

Fixing WSUS for all the various reasons.

2007-11-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

So you cloned a PC and it has the same WSUS GUID. Sysprep didn't help.
Or you put a volume license onto an OEM, and now WSUS fails.

Whatever the reason, here is the batch file to fix it.

net stop wuauserv
rem Transflo depends on BITS and must be stopped first
net stop "TRANSFLO Client Agent Service"
@rem one known dependent service. Add others you know of.
net stop "Background Intelligent Transfer Service"

@rem Make sure the proper GPOs are applied
gpupdate

@rem re register services that may be broken

REGSVR32 /s WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 /s WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 /s ATL.DLL
REGSVR32 /s WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 /s WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 /s WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 /s WUWEB.DLL

REGSVR32 /s ATL.DLL

rem Remove the temp directories.

rd %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\logs /s /q
rd %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore /s /q
rd %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download /s /q
rd %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\EventCache /s /q

rem Some machines will fail to re-install MSI 3.1 after
rem all of this. About 1%. The fix is below.
rem It is up to you to determine if you want to download
rem and install these fixes. Remmed out.

rem call WindowsXP-KB927891-v3-x86-ENU.exe" /quiet /norestart
rem call Windows2000-KB927891-x86-ENU.EXE" /quiet /norestart

regedit /s resetGUID.reg

net start wuauserv

wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow

---------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the resetGUID.reg file
---------------------------------------------------------------
REGEDIT4

// Registry file generated by the Application Launcher.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate]
"AccountDomainSid"=-
"PingID"=-
"SusClientId"=-

I've ran this on hundreds of machines with no problem. This is provided as-is. I provide no warranty.

Example code in VB to set color of subitems

2007-11-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Here is code that rips through a file to set the color of a listview item color and subitem color.

This is VB6. I found a lot of people asking how to do this, but no real solutions. It's not that hard after you know what the syntax is;

Do Until EOF(fnum1)
Line Input #fnum1, Linein
aRRy = Split(Linein, ",")
If UBound(aRRy) = 10 Then
SSN = Trim$(Replace(aRRy(8), Chr$(34), vbNullString))
Doctype = UCase(Replace(aRRy(9), Chr$(34), vbNullString))
TIFfile = UCase(Replace(aRRy(7), Chr$(34), vbNullString))
BatchID = Trim$(Replace(aRRy(10), Chr$(34), vbNullString))

ListView.ListItems.Add , , SSN
ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).SubItems(1) = Doctype
Debug.Print TIFfile

ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).SubItems(2) = TIFfile
If Len(SSN) <> 9 Then
ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).ForeColor = vbRed
Else
ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).ForeColor = vbBlack
End If
If EXIST(TIFfile) Then
ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).ListSubItems.Item(2).ForeColor = vbBlack
Else
ListView.ListItems.Item(ListView.ListItems.Count).ListSubItems.Item(2).ForeColor = vbRed
End If

End If
Loop
Close #fnum1

Further work - FW1 R65 on Dell 2950

2007-10-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

So far this install is flaky as can be. The FW.SYS (Firewall kernel level driver) BSOD's the machine once a week and quits routing daily. We've upgraded to HFA2, we have the latest Dell drivers, and have all services off except for those required.

SmartDefense isn't the problem, that's been eliminated. The problem with the BSOD is always processing NDIS. Sometimes when routing stops, the fw ctl zdebug drop shows that inbound packet queue is full. This is getting ridiculous. I think R65 just isn't stable at this point in time. I have had open tickets for many weeks now.

Firewall-1

2007-10-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

FW1 NGX R65 install onto Windows 2003R2 on a Dell 2950 with Broadcom NICs and an Intel E1000 add on NIC.

Thing's I have learned;

1) fw ctl zdebug drop will show drops not logged in the normal log viewer
2) They have previously had issues with Broadcom NICs, though R65 should have that fix. They recommend N1000 type cards from Intel.
3) Make sure your IP addresses are setup right.

4) Make sure Duplex is right. Double check.

5) NDISWAN must not be installed. That is your 0.0.0.0 in topology. Windows 2003 uses this for remote access and routing. FW1 isn't compatible with this.
a) Go into device manager and look at your Network adapters.
Select VIEW / SHOW HIDDEN DEVICES. Disable all the WAN MINIPORT items, including the VPN-1/Fireall miniport.
Disable the service Routing and Remote access. With the WAN MINIPORT items disabled, Routing and Remote access service will fail upon boot.
b) Go into the registry and go into HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\services\tcpip\parameters and make IPEnableRouter set to 1.
This will enable routing without the Routing and Remote access service. This is what FW1 wants. Reboot to get all these changes in place... You might also add to this registry location MaxUserPort and set it to 65534. Default in Windows 2003 is 5000 ports. So you can only have 5000 connections at a given moment. 65534 is the maximum possible, so set it to that in decimal. It's 0X0000FFFd in Hex. Google search this fact and you'll find it numerous places.

c) In this same place in the registry as b, go into Interfaces and for each interface configure DontAddDefaultGatewayDefault as a dword set to 0. This prevents the interface from ever having a 169.254.x.x address.

d) Instead of typing in every route table entry again, if you are moving firewalls, simply take the PersistentRoute portion of this registry and export it as a .reg and import it to your new firewall & then reboot. It's also a good idea to export this for backups every now and again.

Office 2003 SP2 removes TIF and TIFF association

2007-09-21T14:55:00.001-07:00

In Microsoft's infinite wisdom, they have removed program association to .TIF and .TIFF files as well as .MDI.

So now hundreds of people are calling me asking why they can't view imaging. Thanks, Bill, for making my life easier.

Anyway, this is documented in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938813 and the fix is these registry changes;

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tif]
"Progid"="MSPaper.Document"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tif\OpenWithProgids]
"MSPaper.Document"=hex(0):

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tiff]
"Progid"="MSPaper.Document"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tiff\OpenWithProgids]
"MSPaper.Document"=hex(0):

So it's per user, meaning you have to run this in Zen per user, or login script over and over.

Surround sound enabled in Media Player DVD playback

2007-09-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

So I have nVidia dolby surround sound, 8 channels. Got speakers. When I tell media player to switch to surround sound mode (other than the old 2.1 version) It automatically switches back to Stereo mode.

Go into nVidia mixer and setup your sound to the appropriate surround sound mode. (5.1, 7.1, etc)

Download media player classic.

Play a DVD with surround sound but one that isn't copy protected.

Right click on the video and select FILTERS/AC3 audio decoder. Switch the Decode to speakers from STERO to the appropriate Dobly settings. In my case, AC3 is set to 2 front, 2 rear and DTS is set to 2 front + 2 rear. I have PCM set to 32bit, default was 16. I have AAC set to downmix to stereo turned off, SPDIF off -- leave on if that's what you use. LFE off. Dynamic Range Control OFF.

Now I'm getting Dolby 5.1. Woo hoo.

Acronis True Image home 10

2007-09-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

I have had nothing but problems with Ghost here lately. I've been using it for years, but suddenly the images we create either can not span to a 2TB drive because it's out of space for some odd reason. We have plenty of room. Or if I go to an older Ghost, it creates the image but then says it is corrupt when I try to restore it.

We have many licenses of Ghost, but this is wasting too much time for my personal PC. So I install it.

Issue#1) It creates a shell add on called "Backup" which allows me to backup a file or folder by right clicking on it. Well, this is fine for a home PC but when trying to right click across the WAN, it is a killer. Just like Winzip, one must remove the shell entry. Unlike Winzip, there is not a menu option to do this.

So locate {C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751} under hklm/software/classes/clsid and go into InProcServer32. Modify the string "(Default)" and make it an empty string, deleting the Acronis DLL. No more Backup shortcut, and no more slow downs.

Issue #2) This software installs upper filters on the DVD/CDROM drive. These conflict with existing filters. So locate the upperfilter in registry and remove the new entry for Acronis. I didn't write it down, but it is rather apparent. If it's not apparent to you, then you should not be making these changes as they can cause a system to not boot if done wrong.

This is pretty good software. I'd like to have a stripped down version that doesn't have all the integration though. This software installs services, schedulers, many new tasks, and modifies a huge chunk of the registry/system. It also installs device drivers.

I have successfully moved two computers with this software. XP with 1 CPU to XP with 2 CPU's and more memory worked well. XP autodetected the additional CPU, PnPed, and rebooted. The machine that went from a P733 Dell to a P1.8 SuperMicro didn't fare as well. System just keep rebooting. But, as usually, you just do an in place re-install of XP and we're back in business. Of couse, the Dell had an OEM license of XP so this causes me to have to purchase & install a new license of XP and toss the old one. It's always something, eh?

The ultimate l33t g33k gift.

2007-06-28T11:39:00.001-07:00

This is too cool. A USB powered & controlled missile launcher with PC control. Call me a cynic, but I bet that you manually position and aim these and the PC only control's launching them. But it's still too cool.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB-782&cat=GDT

XP can't keep files from corrupting.

2007-06-26T20:47:00.001-07:00

This has occurred on a work PC after uninstalling Symantec PCAnywhere, and on a Windows 2000 server for an unknown reason. Now, after uninstalling Weather Channel weather app, my wife's XP HOME SP2 can not boot due to corrupt \windows\system32\config\system file. This is the system portion of the registry.

Of course, the only manufacture option is to nuke the hard drive, loose all data, and be back to oem. I have Mozy, sure, but after a month only 1GB of the 1.6GB of data has uploaded.

So I use BART PE to get into the NTFS file system and restore an old SYSTEM file to replace the corrupt one. This is the original SYSTEM file, so it's back to the initial install of XP HOME. But at least I keep my data.

After an hour, bootup ends up going into a resolution that the Laptop's LCD doesn't support. Boot into VGA mode and re-install the drivers. Set the resolution to a proper one. Reboot.

Ok, so re-install the antivirus and reboot is the next step.

Then activation. But what is this? Activation tries to launch IE via an HTA, and fails. This is because the re-install of XP replaced part of IE with 6.0, even though I have 7.0 installed. IE is fried. So I went into the firefox directory and launched it. God, I love programs that don't require the registry. From firefox, I re-downloaded firefox and properly installed it. The I downloaded IE7 from Google (Microsoft wouldn't let me from Mozilla) and tried to launch it. But it fails because it gets confused about having some IE6 files and some IE7 files & patches.

So, Remove IE7 and reboot. C:\WINDOWS\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe uninstalls IE7. I am in the process of downloading SP2, which will take hours, so I won't know if IE6 works or not until the morning. But I was able to activate now. And apparently that is the problem with the IE7 reinstall, as it will get past the initial error. Though I don't plan on re-installing until I reboot.

Automatic Updates service is no longer listed. I did the re-register to get it to appear, but it will not function because it's still not installed right. I guess that's because I have the 1.0 version from the reinstall mixed in with the 3.0 version released not long ago.

Thanks, Microsoft, for a fun evening. Why can't a system restore point create alternate system.sav files and if system is corrupt, give me the option to use a previous system file?

OpenSUSE 10.2 day 5

2007-06-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

The video lockups in SUSE at the startup are normal. It's not really locked up. It is just so slow that it stays on that screen for a while.

I ended up booting up into failsafe, running YAST, and then installing the 1.2GB of updates it desired. I installed 5 optional add ons.

After this, the video lock up still occurs, but I do get logged in and KDE is so much faster. At least for the moment. No lockups ever few seconds like with 10.0.

Now that the OS is usable, it is time to play around with server type services. BIND and DHCP are next.

Fighting the Linux upgrades. Suse 10.0 to OpenSuse 10.2

2007-06-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today I set out to upgrade SUSE 10.0 to OpenSuse 10.2. I began the DVD download from the WIKI link, and then proceeded to update 10.0 with the latest patches. It always seems an upgrade works best if one is fully patched.

The DVD downloaded rather quickly for a *nix ISO. I left the computer on over night and it was downloaded the next day as I returned to the computer. Mandriva 2007 spring took a week VIA bitorrent, for comparison.

So I began by creating a VMware snapshot of 10.0, mounted the DVD ISO as a CDRom in VMware, and rebooted. The DVD didn't boot, so I rebooted and set the BIOS to boot to CDROM. Another reboot, and the DVD ISO booted off the virtual CDROM.

The upgrade was horribly slow. After many hours, X locked up and the PC had to be rebooted. I believe it was auto detecting my video card. Much to my surprise, the install picked up where it had left off. Many hours later, and the upgrade was complete. It asked me to subscribe to some sort of Zen service, but wouldn't let me. So I canceled out of that.

After rebooting, Grub launched. Then it tried to start X. Lockup & odd graphics. The day was over so I turned off the VM.

A few days later I booted this back up and went into failsafe. Logged in as root and mounted the VMware tools. cd /tmp then mount /dev/cdrom /mnt (it wouldn't mount into /mnt/cdrom for some odd reason.) Then I did an rpm -Uhv /mnt/VMwareTools-5.5.4-44386.i386.rpm. That took a while & then came back with an error about waiting for the database to unlock. Another run at this told me the RPM was already isntalled. Reboot.

This time KDE started right up and I was able to log in. YaST was nice enough to tell me that after never running any updates, I was fully patched. Typical. So many distro's tell me that I am fully patched when I have absolutely no patches at all. Why can't they get this straight? I right clicked on the YaST updater and did "refresh" and added myself as a privileged user.

Anyway, OpenSUSE is running in VMware workstation 5.5 with VMware tools. It doesn't lock up every 5 seconds for 1/2 a second like it was doing in 10.0. It is still the slowest of all distro's that I've installed onto VMware. FreeBSD being the fastest and Mandriva being in the middle. But it is the nicest build I've worked on. I love YaST. Everything in one place. I don't have to go to console nearly as much as with other distro's.

Now to install Webmin, DHCPD, and NAMED and have a test at this handling some basic server services.