Niggling Aspirations

Exchange 2010 HTML Mailbox Size Report

2011-07-01T17:04:00.000-04:00

Not the prettiest thing in the world but gets the job done by printing each user's mailbox size & total items into a HTML table:

get-mailbox -database "Mailbox Database 1706745955" | get-mailboxstatistics | where {$_.objectclass -eq "Mailbox"} | sort-object totalitemsize -descending | select-object @{label="User";expression={$_.DisplayName}},@{label=
"Total Size (MB)";expression={$_.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB()}},@{label="Items";expression={$_.ItemCount}} | convertto-html | out-file report.htm

May need to modify the mailbox database name.

Windows Vista Update Error 0x80072EFD

2011-02-10T19:50:00.000-05:00

Could not update Vista SP1 due to 0x80072EFD error, so I started out by manually updating to SP2. No success. This was driving me absolutely insane until I actually read the C:\windows\windowsupdate.log file.

First, try resetting the HTTP proxy through an elevated command prompt with the following command:

netsh winhttp show proxy

If you are still receiving this error, be sure you follow this KB:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/836941

If this does not resolve the problem, try resetting Windows Update Components with the following Microsoft Fix It:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058

If this still does not work, be sure that WSUS GPO & registry settings are NOT in place!

First check GPO:

Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Windows Update, under the setting "Configure automatic updates." If this is already set to "Not configured," then check registry settings under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

For any WSUS keys. Deleting the WSUS keys I found in the registry remediated my issue.

Android Corporate Exchange Setup - Username or Password Incorrect

2011-02-01T23:17:00.001-05:00

I spent a lot of time ensuring ActiveSync was working properly for a client on Exchange 2010--they have a lot of iPhones and I wanted to be sure everything top-notch.

When attempting to activate a Motorola Droid 2 with the Exchange server, I kept receiving the error "Username or password incorrect" despite the fact that the username & password were both in fact correct. I was also unable to enter a server name no matter what.

I managed to solve the issue by entering a completely incorrect email address (user@blah.com) before finally being prompted for the server. After entering the FQDN of the mail server, I was able to successfully authenticate the account.

Exchange 2010 - Can't Download OAB

2011-01-31T17:24:00.000-05:00

During a migration from Exchange 2007->Exchange 2010, I could not figure out why my OAB would not download after deleting & re-creating it.

Originally, we were having an issue where Outlook 2003 clients would throw "Task 'Microsoft Exchange Server' reported error (0x8004010F): "The operation failed. An object could not be found." when attempting to send/receive. I tracked the issue down to the OAB after a short Google search.

Our OAB virtual directory was actually empty, and there was no GUID folder before I found the solution below.

When attempting to download the OAB directly from Exchange 2010, one would receive the message: "An error occurred while opening the Microsoft Exchange Offline Address Book files," and event ID 27 (source: Outlook), "The operation failed," would be recorded in the application event log.

This post provided the solution. After running the command in Exchange Management Console on the 2010 server:

update-FileDistributionService

I was able to download the OAB successfully from Outlook 2010.

Disable OTA Updates Android

2010-12-25T14:43:00.000-05:00

Ok Verizon was just pissing me off by pushing the OTA updates to my phone. After dealing with "Install later" for 3 weeks, I finally managed to disable OTA updates using a trick I found on a forum.

First, make sure you have adb installed & that it can pick up your device. Next, adb shell into your device & type the following commands:

su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/etc/security
mv otacerts.zip otacerts.zip.bak
mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
sync
reboot   

Building MochaUI.js From Git

2010-11-03T03:22:00.010-04:00

This one really drove me insane. I recently discovered JavaScript MooTools library & it's UI component, MochaUI. MochaUI provides a powerful & easy-to-use library for developing rich internet applications (RIAs).

My issue began after finding that the version on the website was highly out of date. I was looking to use OmniGrid alongside MochaUI, but the latest released version is mochaui-0.9.7.

After cloning the Git, I discovered that the new Demo contained far more features, and was much better laid out than the 0.9.7 release. I also found that the JavaScript files were provided as "source" to MochaUI. This confused the hell out of me, as how would I "build" JS files?! Three hours later after scouring Google & the terrible documentation on github, I managed to find this blog post which pointed me in the right direction.

It turns out each MooTools component contains a "package.yml" YAML file which is fed to a PHP script called "Packager." Package simply concatenates the source files listed in the manifest (package.yml) together. So much for "building" the JS :/.

Here's the complete steps to produce a "mochaui.js" file from github.

First, clone the MochaUI codebase & cd to the new directory:

[user@box:~/Desktop/test]$ git clone git://github.com/mui/mochaui
Cloning into mochaui...
remote: Counting objects: 11437, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4806/4806), done.
remote: Total 11437 (delta 6610), reused 10172 (delta 5745)
Receiving objects: 100% (11437/11437), 3.29 MiB | 2.85 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (6610/6610), done.
[user@box:~/Desktop/test]$ cd mochaui/

Next, I had to modify the "package.yml" file to point to the correct sources directory. The original was incorrect, containing the wrong path & core files. Note: You must have the source files listed in this exact order, lest nothing will work properly.

My new "package.yml" file looked like so:

name: "MochaUI"

version: "0.9.8-dev"

exports: "mochaui.js"

web: "[mochaui.com](http://mochaui.com/)"

description: "MochaUI, A web applications user interface library"

license: "[MIT License](http://mochaui.com/demo/license.txt)"

copyright: "© [AUTHORS.txt]"

authors:
- "[Chris Doty](http://polaropposite.com/)"
- "[Greg Houston](http://greghoustondesign.com/)"
- "Scott F. Frederick"
- "Joel Lindau"
- "Harry Roberts"

sources:
- "Source/Core/Core.js"
- "Source/Core/Canvas.js"
- "Source/Core/Content.js"
- "Source/Core/Desktop.js"
- "Source/Core/Column.js"
- "Source/Core/Panel.js"
- "Source/Core/Dock.js"
- "Source/Core/Window.js"
- "Source/Core/Modal.js"
- "Source/Core/Themes.js"

Next, I proceded the use the same steps above to clone Packager from: git://github.com/kamicane/packager.

Once cd'ed into my packager directory, I ensured that I had PHP installed. That's an entirely different subject, but if you have access to the "php" command, enter the PHP interactive shell with the command "php -a"

[user@box:~/Desktop/test/mochaui/packager]$ php -a
Interactive shell

php > require_once('packager.php');
php > $pkg = new Packager('replace_with_path_to_package.yml');
php > $pkg->write_from_files('mochaui.js', $pkg->get_all_files());
php > exit

Once in the interactive shell, we need to include the "packager.php" file with the require_once() method. Once PHP knows about the Packager class, we can create a new instance.

As per the git's documentation (https://github.com/kamicane/packager), we can see that the constructor to the Packager instance is simply the path to the "package.yml" manifest file. In my case, this is simply the parent directory. Next, the write_from_files() method takes two parameters, but we really only need to know about the first. This is the output file name. Considering we are building the "mochaui.js" file, that's what the parameter will be.

After exiting the PHP shell, your Packager should now contain the fully "built" mochaui.js file.

Hopefully that'll save you some time & research :).

Windows XP Left Pane Missing

2010-11-01T16:16:00.002-04:00

A client recently struggled when his XP workstation's left pane disappeared. This pane contains commons tasks such as emailing files.

A simple registry modficiaton was needed to remediate the issue:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"WebView"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"ClassicShell"=dword:00000000

After applying the fix, I killed the "explorer.exe" process, then re-opened it. The pane was now visible.

Gnome Decent Dual Monitor Wallpaper Span

2010-10-06T03:34:00.003-04:00

Tired of trying to use compiz to have wallpaper span both screens, only to find your desktop icons disappear?

A few months ago I embarked on a relentless search through mountains of RGBA patches, custom versions of nautilus, and failed attempts at allowing desktop icons to pierce through compiz's iron curtain.

Finally created a decent method of having wallpaper span dual monitors in Gnome by overriding Gnome's "Spanned" desktop setting (I don't think it works right anyway) with a "Zoomed" dual monitor setting. I first tried this by scaling the image directly, but it looked like crap so I figure Zoom would be better to use. The result is not perfect, but definitely better than waiting 15 years for the Gnome team to come up with a plausible solution.

The steps I took were for Arch Linux, but you can apply them equally well to any distribution, as long as you know how to make packages from source.

After reading through this bug, I realized I should be modifying the desktop settings directly.

I checked my Gnome version through pacman, and proceeded to download the PKGBUILD straight from the Arch SVN. After receiving the source code, I ran "makepkg" once to ensure the source would compile properly, then proceeded to comment out the following lines in the PKGBUILD file:

#source=(http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/${pkgname}/2.32/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.bz2)
#sha256sums=('blahblah')

To ensure that the source code would not be downloaded again & overwrite my modifications.

Next, I proceeded to open the "src/gnome-desktop-2.32.0/libgnome-desktop/gnome-bg.c" file, and commented out the following line, simply copying the Gnome "Zoom" option's code to the "Span" section of the case statement:

#if 0
    g_print ("original_width: %d %d\n",
        gdk_pixbuf_get_width (pixbuf),
        gdk_pixbuf_get_height (pixbuf));
#endif

    switch (placement) {
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_SPANNED:
                // new = pixbuf_scale_to_fit (pixbuf, width, height);
        new = pixbuf_scale_to_min (pixbuf, width, height);
        break;
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_ZOOMED:
        new = pixbuf_scale_to_min (pixbuf, width, height);
        break;

    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_FILL_SCREEN:
        new = gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple (pixbuf, width, height,
                           GDK_INTERP_BILINEAR);
        break;

    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_SCALED:
        new = pixbuf_scale_to_fit (pixbuf, width, height);
        break;

    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_CENTERED:
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_TILED:
    default:
        new = pixbuf_clip_to_fit (pixbuf, width, height);
        break;
    }

Finally, in the next section continaing the "GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_SPANNED" (around 20 lines down from the previous section), I made the following modification to the code--commenting out what is commented in blue, and replaced with the code in red:

    scaled = get_scaled_pixbuf (placement, pixbuf, dest_width, dest_height, &x, &y, &w, &h);

    switch (placement) {
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_TILED:
        pixbuf_tile (scaled, dest);
        break;
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_ZOOMED:
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_CENTERED:
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_FILL_SCREEN:
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_SCALED:
        pixbuf_blend (scaled, dest, 0, 0, w, h, x + area->x, y + area->y, 1.0);
        break;
    case GNOME_BG_PLACEMENT_SPANNED:
        // pixbuf_blend (scaled, dest, 0, 0, w, h, x, y, 1.0);
        pixbuf_blend (scaled, dest, 0, 0, w, h, x + area->x, y + area->y, 1.0);
        break;
    default:
        g_assert_not_reached ();
        break;
    }

    g_object_unref (scaled);

From here, I saved the source, ran "makepkg -f" again, installed the package, and restarted Gnome. Not perfect, but they are nice ;)

C++ -- Why do we not dereference when passing by reference?

2010-10-04T11:39:00.000-04:00

I recently got back into trying to teach myself C++, mostly through YouTube tutorials (this guy's are pretty good). I only went to IRC for an answer at one point, but would like to share something I found & wasn't able to Google on.

Everyone should know how to use pointers when working with C++.. say we had:

#include
using namespace std;

int main()

{

    int num = 5;

    int *pnum = &num;

    cout<<"integer num (@"<<<") = "<<*pnum;

    return 0;

}

Then we can see that integer num is set equal to five, and integer pointer pnum is set to the address of num. Normally, in C++, the "&" operator refers to the address of the object the operator is being applied to.

In the case of passing values to function by reference, I was quite confused when I found that we do not in fact need to dereference the reference passed as an argument. For example:

#include
using namespace std;

void increment_variable(int & x)
{
        x++;
        return;
}

int main()
{
        int num = 5;

        increment_variable(num);

        cout<<"integer num (@"<<&num<<") = "<<
        return 0;
}

In the increment_variable(int & x) function, we would think that to increment the value of the x variable, we would need to dereference the address of the x variable, which has been passed as a parameter. As shown by the code, this is not in fact the case!

In reality, the "&" operator when used with pointers is a completely different operator than the "&" used when passing values to functions by reference.

Do not get the two confused!

VirtualBox Adventures & Recovering plaintext data from damaged drive

2010-09-25T16:29:00.001-04:00

As a network tech, I should always follow the golden rule of backup up data. I recently attempted resizing a partition (after neglecting this pinnacle of IT) & completed destroyed a PHP web application I had been working on.

The PHP web application was stored in a VM on the host's ext4 partition, and I had managed to destroy both the superblock & journal of the host's filesystem. After an unsuccessful attempt to restore the superblock from a backup on the drive, I figured the FS to be toast, but couldn't accept that the data had been completely lost.

What I really should've done was taken a DD image from the get-go with the following command:

# dd if=/dev/sda4 of=/media/Storage/Drive_Backup.img

After a bit of research and IRC chat, I was directed toward the following page: http://wiki.yak.net/592. The script seemed perfect for what I had needed to do. I knew the destroyed partition had only been 0.1% non-contiguous, so my hope was to completely recover the virtual hard disk image, or at least a repairable copy.

To begin, I created a test, dynamically expanding VDI file & opened it within a hex editor:

I could now see that each VDI file began with the string "<<< Sun Virtualbox Disk Image >>>"--the idea was to copy a large amount of data past where the script managed to locate things string, and to chop off the residual data with a hex editor.

I proceeded to test the procedure by placing the small test VDI file on an ext4 drive, searching for the data by reading the drive byte by byte, and copying only a small amount of data (~1mb) past the point where the magic string was found. The test was successful, though I still doubted I'd be able to recover a usable VDI file.

After a bit of modification to the script posted above (http://wiki.yak.net/592), I was able to successfully pick up around 10 VDI files off my dead drive (arbitrarily sized to 4GB past the magic string). After a bit of searching through these recovered VDI files, I found the exact file I was looking for. Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed when GRUB was found, but damaged beyond repair.

At this point, after a bit more research (http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/howto-read-a-virtualbox-vm-disk-wout-starting-the-vm.html), I began to realize that all a VDI file did was encapsulate the virtualized file system within VirtualBox metadata.

From here, I scrapped the whole idea of recovering the VDI and went directly for the plain text data off the drive itself.

To search through the drive, I ran the command:

$ grep -ab "php" /dev/sda4 > grepped

As I knew I was searching for plain text files that began with "php"--the search worked flawlessly. The "-b" option on grep, also records the decimal memory address where each instance of the string was found.

When the search completed, I had a list of the location of every instance of the "php" tag on the drive. This was a massive amount of data to sift through, but I managed to find the location (or at least get close to the location) of the important data I needed, by refining the search with the code's filename; for example:

Basically, we can see that a reference to the filename "MY_Controller.php" & a memory address of 391021232450 (decimal). After heading over to the offset through wxHexEditor, I can see quite clearly that my PHP code is in fact intact:

And it's complete with formatting & indentation :). From here, I've simply copied & pasted out each file as I found them, though some were not quite as straightforward.

It'll take a lot of hard work & determination to get your files back, so you need to decide whether it's worth it.

Also try out PhotoRec & foremost if you need to recover stuff that isn't plain text.

(I may post a condensed version of this document with only a short summarization of plain text data recovery techniques if anyone actually reads this)

-CJ

Linux Enable Write-Caching On Disk

2010-09-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

When booting a VM recently, I received the error message below regarding I/O writecaching & virtual hard disk corruption:

After Googling for a bit, I found that the first thing to check with this error is whether I/O write caching is enabled on the VM. In my case, it was.

Next, a lot of the posts I was reading were stating the corruption was occuring on "ext4" partitions. I assumed that the write caching was a filesystem option. I had heard of the disk write cache when working on Windows servers, but never really knew the specifics.

After a bit more research, I found disk write-caching was actually a drive option that could be set with the hdparm command. It will improve performance by 10-20%, but can also cause system instability.

To enable write-caching on the drive, I ran command:

[user@box ~]$ sudo hdparm -W1 /dev/sda
Password:

/dev/sda:
setting drive write-caching to 1 (on)
write-caching = 1 (on)

And rebooted the machine, effectively taking care of the error.

Exchange 2007 Offline Address Book 0x80070422

2010-08-10T10:48:00.000-04:00

If you're getting frustrated by Outlook 2007 clients receiving error 0x80070422 when trying to Send/Receive the Offline Address Book, the first thing to check is your Exchange 2007 service URL's.

The quickest way to test this from the client end would be to hold CTRL & right click your Outlook 2007 Icon. Choose the option "Test E-mail Autoconfiguration..."

This will open up a new window (see below). In this window, uncheck the options "Use Guessmart" & "Secure Guessmart Authentication." Enter your password & hit "Test."

If your AutoConfiguration test completes successfully, then you're probably wondering why you're still receiving error 0x80070422. If your email AutoConfiguration test does not complete successfully, please verify your Exchange 2007 Web Service URL's as per this article.

Once you resolve any issues with email AutoConfiguration, many Outlook 2007 issues will also follow! A good example would be when you know that your server certificate is valid, yet you're still receiving a security warning similar to:

Check those service URL's!

Now, the next step to remediating your 0x80070422 error (which is a CLIENT SIDE ERROR), enable the BITS service on the client PC.

USB Drive Fstab UUID (Arch Linux)

2010-07-18T17:08:00.001-04:00

Just had an issue where I could not mount my USB drive at boot time I was getting an error along the lines of UUID=blah not found...I previously had performed the standard "sudo blkid" and received the following output:

[corte@ashbox ~]$ sudo blkid
Password:
/dev/sda1: LABEL="Boot" UUID="3a31d197-0436-4b87-9f06-b03080a3772f" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda2: UUID="ea73d633-0f71-43a3-9101-6461f19b1222" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Root" UUID="63b1459a-3ee6-4d7a-9afa-9ad40db800bd" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda4: LABEL="Home" UUID="00e59ee8-019b-4ad2-9171-e8501a1022c3" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Elements" UUID="7da36762-56c3-471d-bfa1-5b4895bfa0d7" TYPE="xfs"

Noting the UUID of my external USB drive (Elements), I added the following line into my fstab file:

UUID=7da36762-56c3-471d-bfa1-5b4895bfa0d7 /media/Elements auto defaults 0 0

Everything went dandy with a "mount -a" yet at the next reboot, I received an error stating that the device with the UUID 7da..could not be found. A bit of research lead me to the solution...
Including "usb" before "filesystems" in the hooks section of your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file:

HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usb filesystems v86d"

Regenerate your mkinitcpio file with:

sudo mkinitcpio -g kernel26.img

Then be sure to make a backup of your old /boot/kernel26.img

sudo mv /boot/kernel26.img /boot/kernel26.img.bak

Finally, copy your new kernel26.img to /boot.

cp kernel26.img /boot/kernel26.img

Now reboot and your external drive should be mounted automatically with no issues.

Completely Unrelated...

2010-06-18T20:14:00.001-04:00

Completely unrelated to the song, but quite a dope ass song:

1773 - Broken Star

Broken star,
I see you from afar,
With your upper torso pressed up against the passenger side of a car,
Attention directed towards some cat,
Pullin' over in the Cadalliac,
Cause he noticed your back was fat,
But the fact is your attempts are to supplement what you lack,
Trapped into believing what some stranger had promised you,
Mainpulating, stating, that this ain't nothing that you gotta do,
Conning you before you know he turns to you and speak,
Don't worry it's just gonna be,
Herpes you and me,
Now disease and the sea symoblize your promiscuity,

I knew a similar star that was already broken,
I'm speakin' on something that you already knowing,
Traveling all roads,
That long have been chosen by a man who control,
Her mind and her soul,
Always treated her cold, and always needed to know, where she would be,
And what time she was there 'til,
If he thought she was lyin',
He would give her a black bruise,
As a youngin',
She was always a tad lewd,
The story of her life,
Struggle to survive but barely staying alive,
Wanting to end the strife,

[Chorus]
Broken star,
Can't you see that you are falling oh so fast?
This won't last
She was a broken star and couldn't travel far,
Broken star,
Can't you see that you are falling oh so fast?
This won't last,
She was a broken star and couldn't travel far,

This broken star was constantly filled with pain,
No one was able to see, the tears in her name,
She was a slave, to the fear, that had claimed her life for so long what else can go wrong,
She could hardly hold on,
She said his grip was so strong,
And she couldn't break free,
And she get loose,
His hands, tied around, her neck like a noose,
She was tired of it, and wanted something new but didn't know where to start,
Alone in her heart,
Wanting to get far was the state of this star,

Mentally damaged with emotions to manage,
Physically famished to the point your lists have anything that's handed,
Branded by beasts who won't deny,
What they demanded and that seed that's implanted suddenly forced to vanish,
Created by a stranger and we didn't plant it,
It's the thought that led you to your decision,
Cause you figured it'd be better of dead than with an infected one to livin',
Given' the circumstances,
You justify your actions,
By saying you were given a corner and forced by back in,
But really it was what you chose that made this happen,

[Chorus]

To get ahead you feel you're doing what you have to do,
But simultaneously spreading what was passed to you,
Back when you were half developing, initiated,
Enabled to count all the times that you been degraded,
Now you feel you kid your soul and you wished you saved it,
Jaded from being so misguided and the world divided,
Thought this was the plan for life but now you wanna revise it,
It be wise you changed before you're old and scarred,
And grow so far from being who you know you are,
Cause you use to shine bright now you're a broken star,

She finally gathered the strength to leave this man,
No longer, will her face come in contact with his hand,
She's starting to realize that she seems to understand,
What it is she has done,
And what she's gotta do,
Now she sees the sun and the sky so blue,
And for the first time in her life, she feels real peace,
Left another man in her life, initials J.C.,
He heard her cry out when she yelled "save me!"
He came to her rescue and said I will mend you,
No longer broken star, my love now protects you,

[Chorus]

You're a star, you're a star,
So let your light shine,
Cause the nigga's see the light and the light so bright,
Let your light shine,
Cause the nigga's see the light and the light so bright.

Searching Removable Drives Linux

2010-04-11T21:50:00.001-04:00

Had some trouble with something I'd had earlier trouble with in the past. When using the locate command (even after running updatedb), I was unable to search my removable USB drives.

The solution was to modify the /etc/updatedb.conf file, and remove /media from the prune path:

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="yes"
# PRUNENAMES=".git .bzr .hg .svn"
PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /var/spool /media"
PRUNEFS="NFS nfs nfs4 rpc_pipefs afs binfmt_misc proc smbfs autofs iso9660 ncpfs coda devpts ftpfs devfs mfs shfs sysfs cifs lustre_lite tmpfs usbfs udf"

Guess this was more a mental note to myself :).

Hiding a Window

2010-02-16T12:41:00.003-05:00

So I recently set up a VirtualBox VM on my Windows 7 machine so I could access my XFS hard disk through a network share.

Being there's no way to hide a VirualBox VM by default (even by running in headless mode), I went ahead & wrote a quick C# program to hide running windows.

First of all, I created a .bat file to run my VM headless...the contents are as follows:

cd "C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox"
VBoxHeadless.exe -s Ubuntu

Simple enough?

Here's my error-prone, crappy window hiding app:

http://rapidshare.com/files/351469010/HideWindow_Final.rar.html

MD5: B53BF803244C53C92E9447597BF6AA9F
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XTTQMSG1

If it crashes your system, doesn't work, etc.......too bad! :)

HTTP Traffic Blocked (Windows XP)

2009-12-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I got some work fixing a PC that was loaded with Trojans. After a repair installation of XP Pro w/SP2, I was brought to the activation window which could not hit the internet.

Thinking the problem was a driver issue, I quickly pulled the Windows key + U trick to pull up an explorer window. Finding the drivers were intact, I proceeded to both ping 4.2.2.2 & google.com, as well as nslookup google.com. Both were successful.

I opened an IE window, checked the proxy settings, reset all the settings, etc...still could not browse--was getting the error "Internet Explorer can not open the search page." & a page cannot be displayed error.

Thinking the trojan was still impacting IE, I installed Firefox from a flash drive, and ended up with the same result.

I next attempted to telnet to port 80 & 8080 on a number of web sites. All HTTP traffic was blocked.

After a few more hours of struggling & research, I realized the culprit:

Norton Internet Security Version 2006 (Symantec).

A run of the Norton Removal Tool (http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039) & reboot, and the issue was resolved.

Terminal Services Event ID 6037

2009-11-26T03:16:00.000-05:00

I recently struggled with this one for work, after I made a change to IIS on our terminal server (Server 2008 Standard). I could not launch TS RemoteApps, as credentials were being consistently rejected, though correct. The only error I could find in the event log was along these lines:

Log Name: System
Source: LsaSrv
Date: 10/27/2008 10:46:40 PM
Event ID: 6037
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Gateway
Description:
The program lsass.exe, with the assigned process ID 572, could not authenticate locally by using the target name TERMSERV/ts.xxxx.com. The target name used is not valid. A target name should refer to one of the local computer names, for example, the DNS host name.

This error may also contain address "HTTP/ts.xxxx.com"

Thanks to Chad A. Gross on the http://www.vistax64.com forums, I was pointed at a blog with a solution: http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/05/07/event-2436-for-sharepoint-services-3-search.aspx.

Though the blog states a solution for a different problem, it worked just as well for me:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0
Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the URL mentioned in the above warning event, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IIS service.

For good measure, I restarted the server and bam, the error was gone.

Installing .TTF Fonts in Slackware 12.2

2009-10-19T01:55:00.002-04:00

I was recently working on a project for my boss when I found I needed to install some new fonts for GIMP.

I had downloaded some free TTF's from http://www.1001freefonts.com/ & needed to install them.

Restarting X was a pain, so I found the following steps worked with only restarting GIMP:

1.) Move your fonts into the ~/.fonts folder. Create it if it doesn't exist.
2.) Run command makefontdir
3.) Run command makefontscale
4.) Run command fc-cache
5.) Finally, command xset fp rehash
6.) Restart whatever application you're working with, be it GIMP, OOo, or whatever.

Your font should now be listed!

Installing (Free) G729 Codec on Trixbox CE

2009-10-01T19:18:00.000-04:00

The G.729 codec is a low-bandwidth codec, excellent for use in VoIP.

In this case, a client which my company manages wanted to minimize bandwidth usage from VoIP phones traveling through a VPN. Both the G729 & G723 codec are freely available from here, though you can alawys purchase a copy from Digium.

First download the G729 codec appropriate for your processor & system type. A great way to find this information is to run a cat /proc/cpuinfo and a uname -m command. Search down through the list (ensure you download G729, not G723!) for your appropriate binary. In my case, we were running on a P4 with no ss3, so I stuck with the standard codec_g729ast14-gcc4-glibc-pentium4.so binary.

Now, I'm not sure if this is necessary, but I moved the /usr/lib/asterisk/modules/format_g729.so file out of the /usr/lib/asterisk/modules folder, over to /home/root. I did this to ensure we were starting fresh.

Next, copy the downloaded codec over to that same /usr/asterisk/modules folder. Connect into asterisk console with the command asterisk -r, and load the new codec with module load codec_g729-ast14-gcc4-glibc-pentium4.so, or whatever your codec was.

You would think the phone system would be ready for G729 use, but in my case, I needed to restart asterisk with the command restart gracefully. Ensure everyone is out of the office, as this will drop all live calls!

When asterisk comes back up, log back into asterisk and run the command show translation which should give you some output such as the following:

As long as there’s a # (in this case, 6’s) and not a – under the g729 codec, we know it’s working properly.

The next step would be to head into the web interface, under PBX->PBX Settings->Extensions, choose the extension you wish to enable the codec for, ensure disallow is set to “all” and allow is set to “g729”.

Once the extension is set up to allow g729, you can test whether it’s working properly by having a test call connected and running the command sip show channels:

trixbox1*CLI> sip show channels

Peer User/ANR Call ID Seq (Tx/Rx) Format Hold Last Message

10.100.253.91 4004 2e1225e1-27 00101/00002 0x100 (g729) No Rx: ACK

:).

Sharing LAN/Internet Connection to 2nd NIC

2009-09-07T02:46:00.002-04:00

I bought a PS3 several months ago, and wanted to try streaming movies to the PS3 using something like Mediatomb or PS3 Media Server (my personal favorite).

My first attempted involved transcoding & wireless..the combination resulted in endless lag & choppiness, that essentially made the movie unplayable. To resolve the issue, I decided to install a secondary NIC into my PC, to share the connection from the first NIC. This way, I could not only stream movies from my PC directly to the PS3 via crossover cable, I could also access the internet as well.

To begin, ensure that your NIC has been properly installed in your kernel. A quick lspci should do the trick:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333 AGP]
00:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)

Boom. Now let's proceed to ensuring that IPv4 forwarding is enabled. In Slackware 12.2, we can ensure this forwarding is enabled at boot time by by navigating over to /etc/rc.d/ & checking that the file rc.ip_forward has the execute permission (it's green when we type ls, if your bash is using colors). If not, we run the command su -c "chmod +x rc.ip_forward", then the command /etc/rc.d/rc.ip_forward start -- the final result should be as following: Activating IPv4 packet forwarding.

Next, I set a static IP on the secondary NIC as 192.168.2.2. My other NIC (and router) are on the 192.168.1.1 subnet. Here's a quick view of my topology:

|Router|
192.168.1.1
|
192.168.1.33 (eth1)
|PC|
192.168.2.1 (eth0)
|PS3|
192.168.2.1

As you can see the secondary NIC & PS3 are on a completely different subnet. This is to avoid having to add a route on my router to route packets to the PS3.

My NIC configuration on the PC's secondary NIC is set as following, in my /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf:

# Config information for eth0: (connected to the PS3)
IPADDR[0]="192.168.2.1"
NETMASK[0]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[0]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""

# Config information for eth1: (connected to the LAN)
IPADDR[1]="192.168.1.133"
NETMASK[1]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""

Once you save the configuration, restart your internet services with the command /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart -- your NIC's should now hold the proper IP addresses.

Now our next step will be to create a new start-up script in /etc/rc.d to properly forward traffic between the two NIC's. My file is named /etc/rc.d/rc.ps3 (appropriate, huh ;]), and contains the following:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Starting PS3 services..."
/usr/sbin/iptables -F
/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -F
/usr/sbin/iptables -t mangle -F
/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE
/usr/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -j ACCEPT
echo "PS3 crossover forwarding enabled."

In this example, my external NIC (facing the LAN/internet) is eth1, while the NIC connected to the PS3 via crossover is eth0.

Save the file, and set the execute bit with chmod +x rc.ps3 ....

Have fun streaming & surfing!

/proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?

2009-09-01T02:27:00.005-04:00

This is a bit of an irritating error, with a simple solution:

/proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver.
Added Linux *

First of all, we need to make sure that our kernel configuration has Device Drivers->Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) compiled in, with Device Mapper Support as a module.

Once device mapper support is compiled in as a module, if we still receive the error, we can run:

sudo modprobe dm_mod
sudo /sbin/lilo

The errors should now be gone:

Added Linux *

Compiz Fusion + Xfce 4.6 + Slackware 12.2 + NVIDIA

2009-08-30T16:01:00.003-04:00

This one should be relatively easy for people, but I'd just like to document the steps taken anyway--I had a bit of a time getting Compiz to start properly in Xfce. Please note these are not best practices & are simply the steps to get compiz working for me.

First of all, navigate your browser over to: http://www.slackbuilds.org & run a search for "compiz," under version 12.2. Your first result will be the "compiz-bcop" slackbuild. Select it, which will show you a quick description of the package, and the suggested build order of all compiz packages:

Suggested build order:
1. compiz-bcop
2. libcompizconfig
3. compizconfig-backend-kconfig (optional)
4. compizconfig-backend-gconf (optional)
5. compizconfig-python
6. ccsm
7. simple-ccsm (optional)
8. compiz-fusion-plugins-main
9. compiz-fusion-plugins-extra (optional)
10. compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported (optional)
11. emerald (optional)
12. emerald-themes (optional)
13. fusion-icon (optional)

Now, download it. If you're unfamiliar with SlackBuilds, they're actually quite simple:

Find which SlackBuild you'd like to download. In this case, it's the "compiz-bcop" SlackBuild. Please note that SlackBuilds do not contain the application's source, this is a separate download.
Download "compiz-bcop.tar.gz," "compiz-bcop-0.7.8.tar.gz," (or other appropriate version) and optionally, the "compiz-bcop.tar.gz.asc" file.
(Optional) If you chose to download the .asc file, you can verify the integrity of your SlackBuild by using the command gpg --verify compiz-bcop.tar.gz.asc
Extract the SlackBuild with tar -zxvf compiz-bcop.tar.gz
Move the source file, "compiz-bcop-0.7.8.tar.gz" into the newly extracted compiz-bcop directory, and extract this file too: tar -zxvf compiz-bcop-0.7.8.tar.gz
Now all that's left to do is to run a quick root command of: su -c "./compiz-bcop.SlackBuild" or sudo ./compiz-bcop.SlackBuild
You'll get some verbose build & other messages, which ultimately lead to a package created somewhere on your hard drive (in my case, which I believe is the default, the package created is /tmp/compiz-bcop-0.7.8-i486-1_SBo.tgz).
Run a quick su -c "installpkg /tmp/compiz-bcop-0.7.8-i486-1_SBo.tgz" or sudo installpkg /tmp/compiz-bcop-0.7.8-i486-1_SBo.tgz to install the package.

Work your way down the suggested build order list, installing each SlackBuild respectively (see above). In this case, we will install all the optional packages. NOTE: I did have an issue downloading #12. emerald-themes (optional), which I chose to skip over. You can find & install these themes if you'd like.

Now, being my guide is for NVIDIA video cards, I'm unable to give much direction on other cards. To set up your card, head over to the Compiz Fusion Wiki: http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/Hardware/NVIDIA and follow the steps for your appropriate driver version.

My /etc/X11/xorg.conf file's "Screen" section ended up look as such to get my extremely outdated GeForce MX 440 working:

# Allows GLX to work with composite.
Option         "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"

# Improves performance, enabled by default on driver versions >=1.0-9746
Option         "RenderAccel" "True"

# Always force Hsync & Vsync regardless of the mode.
Option         "UseFBDev" "True"

# I believe this was necessary to get window borders working as well. Please correct me if wrong.
Option         "AddARGBVisuals" "True"

# Improves performance. Currently incompatible with SLI and MultiGPU modes. As of nvidia driver version 100.14.09, it has been enabled by default.
Option         "DamageEvents" "True"

# Use the following option with caution as it may not work on all systems.
Option         "UseEvents" "False"

# Use the following option with caution as it may not work on all systems, especially with 6 series GeForce cards (it is known to cause freezes with compiz) but give it a try because it helps performance. It can also break Xinerama.
Option         "BackingStore" "True"

# Necessary to make window borders visible with nvidia driver versions prior to 100.xx.
Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

NOTE: This will more than likely be different for your card, but these options work well with GeForce MX 440's :).

The next step will be to configure nvidia-settings to load your configuration at Xfce's start. To do this, I wrote a very simple bash script:

#! /bin/bash
# Simple script to load NVIDIA settings on Xfce start.
nvidia-settings --load-config-only

Save this to ~/.init_nvidia, make make the file executable with the command: chmod +x ~/.init_nvidia and add it to your Xfce Settings->Sessions & Startup->Application Autostart tab.

Next time your restart your Xfce session, your NVIDIA settings will be loaded by default.

The next step is where I got tricked up, and want to document for anyone else who might be having issues. I attempted running the command compiz --replace to replace xfwm4 with compiz, but it seemed as if the two were litterally fighting over managing my windows, getting stuck in an endless loop of switching back & forth between themselves. After tinkering with this issue for hours, I found the simplest solution to RTFM. I found the solution on (ha) Arch Linux's Wiki (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compiz --using fusion icon, method 2). The steps are very simple, but only work for the current user:

Edit ~/.config/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc and add the following to the bottom of the file:

[Failsafe Session]
Client0_Command=fusion-icon

Comment out Client0_Command=xfwm4 if it exists.

This should cause compiz to be loaded instead of xfwm4,
though this didn't seem to work properly without a few extra steps.

To prevent the default session from being overwritten add or change
the [General] section to:

[General]
AutoSave=false
SaveOnExit=false

Now save the file.

Back in Xfce Settings->Sessions and Startup->Application Autostart->Add a startup entry for the command fusion-icon

Close Xfce & remove all current sessions with rm -rf ~/.cache/sessions

Once Xfce comes up, your windows should no longer be managed by xfwm4, but (hopefully) instead, by compiz.

Have fun :).