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David Goodwin: Script to fix NFS (Debian Squeeze + Backports bits)

Planet WolvesLUG - Sun, 24/03/2013 - 21:09

I have a NFS server running Debian Squeeze. Additionally it’s using the 3.2.x kernel from backports, and the nfs-kernel-server from backports too.

Sometimes NFS breaks, and gives helpful messages like :

mount.nfs: connection timed out

or just:

Stale NFS handle on clients.

 

While I’m confident that my /etc/exports and other configuration files are correct, it still insists on misbehaving.

Below is a random shell script I seem to have created to fix the NFS server -

#!/bin/bash set -e /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server stop /etc/init.d/nfs-common stop /etc/init.d/rpcbind stop rm -Rf /var/lib/nfs mkdir /var/lib/nfs mkdir /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs for f in /var/lib/nfs/etab \ /var/lib/nfs/rmtab \ /var/lib/nfs/xtab; do [ -e $f ] || touch $f done /etc/init.d/rpcbind start sleep 2 /etc/init.d/nfs-common start sleep 2 /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start echo "NFS may now work" exportfs -f

Yes… “NFS may now work” … that sums it up about right.

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Andrew Savory: Microsoft .Net framework unhandled exception. http…

Planet ALUG - Sun, 24/03/2013 - 20:13

Microsoft .Net framework unhandled exception. sdrv.ms/16aXyJ2

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Steve Kemp: Want to fight about it?

Planet HantsLUG - Sun, 24/03/2013 - 11:08

So via hackernews I recently learned about fight code, and my efforts have been fun. Currently my little robot is ranked ~400

, but it seems to jump around a fair bit.

Otherwise I've done little coding recently:

I'm pondering libpcap a little, for work purposes. There is a plan to write a deamon which will count incoming SYN packets, per-IP, and drop access to clients that make "too many" requests "too quickly".

This plan is a simple anti-DoS tool which might or might not work in the real world. We do have a couple of clients that seem to be DoS magnets and this is better than using grep + sort against apache access logs.

For cases where a small number of source IPs make many-many requests it will help. For the class of attacks where a huge botnet has members making only a couple of requests each it won't do anything useful.

We'll see how it turns out.

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Adam Trickett: blipfoto: Adam's Images - Half a Thought - 23 March 2013

Planet HantsLUG - Sun, 24/03/2013 - 09:19

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Richard WM Jones: rich

Planet GLLUG - Sat, 23/03/2013 - 15:03

This is an excellent paper classifying bugs in Linux filesystems. The results seem to be generally applicable to bugs in open source kernel code.


Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Andrew Savory: Waffle mit heißen Kirschen http://t.co/TlhRwDec0m

Planet ALUG - Sat, 23/03/2013 - 13:07

Waffle mit heißen Kirschen sdrv.ms/10wfBYD

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Adam Trickett: blipfoto: Adam's Images - Power Plug? - 22 March 2013

Planet HantsLUG - Sat, 23/03/2013 - 09:19

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Adam Trickett: blipfoto: Adam's Images - Little Owl - 21 March 2013

Planet HantsLUG - Sat, 23/03/2013 - 09:19

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Adam Trickett: DA.org: New Desktop

Planet HantsLUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 22:30

It's a while since I bought my desktop PC. I tend to keep kit a lot longer than most of the people I know, indeed I still use kit that is older and slower than what some people throw away!

My desktop system is now getting too slow and full. I would never say I'm a good photographer but I do take pictures and the ancient 120 GB drive on my desktop system is full. I've got a lot of that backed up on my home server but even so the drive is just full. It also doesn't have enough memory or CPU grunt to edit a decent sized RAW image in GIMP. It's swapping far too much.

The best thing to do is buy a new box. I think that a 180 GB flash drive for root and a 2 TB hard disk for bulk storage should hold the OS and my pictures for a while. RAM is reasonably cheap so I'll probably go for 16 GiB off the stuff which should allow the system to breath more than it is with just 2 GiB that it has now. Not sure on the CPU, the quad-core AMDs are pretty cheap and come with a decent built in GPU but the twin-core Intels are faster if more expensive.

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Fitting mSATA Drive to the Novatech nFinity n1410

Planet SurreyLUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 21:47
Novatech nFinity n1410

As discussed in my earlier The Novatech nFinity n1410 Review, I made a mistake in sticking with the default 128gb SSD. I promised to write up how I carried upgraded my Ultrabook by adding an mSATA drive, but time has passed and I failed to take any notes.

The drive I ordered was a Crucial CT256M4SSD3 256GB m4 mSATA 6Gb/s Internal SSD.

The installation was not difficult, and to the best of my recollection followed these steps:

  1. Undo screws on bottom;
  2. Use knife to gently release the catches around the keyboard;
  3. Carefully remove keyboard;
  4. I seem to recall that there were additional screws behind the keyboard, which need to be removed;
  5. Fit mSATA drive, fixing with screw supplied with the drive;
  6. Close case.

Apologies that these instructions are so poor, but hopefully the photographs in the Picasaweb album opposite will help.


Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Martin Wimpress: Ployer Momo8 IPS Custom Firmware

Planet HantsLUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 14:35

I bought a budget Android tablet a little while back that turned out to be really rather good. However, there were issues with the initial firmware.

  • Connecting to, or maintaining connection with, some wireless networks was unreliable.
  • When the internal NAND was under moderate load the tablet would become unresponsive.

Ployer relased a firmware update in November 2012 which addressed these issues. Here's the translated change log.

  1. System, audio and video decoding, browser, Flash player, 3G module, boot animation module BUG repair.
  2. Update NandFlash, Mali, Wifi module drivers, while addressing some CTS tests BUG and the stability of the system as a whole has been further enhanced.
  3. Optimize Flash stability, improve the efficiency of the implementation of the DDR.
  4. Default input method Sogou input method.
  5. Update Google Pinyin input method.

However, the updated firmware comes pre-loaded with a selection of Chinese apps and defaults to a Chinese language.

Objectives

I decided to have a go a making my own custom firmware for the Ployer Momo 8 IPS with the following goals.

  • Pre-rooted.
  • Removal of pre-installed Chinese apps.
  • Removal of bloatware.
  • Extend `/data' partition.
  • Make it a "Google Experience" device.
  • ClockWorkMod Recovery.

I think I've been fairly successful. My firmware includes Android 4.1.2 features and even some Android 4.2 features. Until someone succesfully ports cyanogenmod to the Ployer Momo 8 IPS or Ployer release a 4.2.x update then my firmware is the most complete "Google Experience" you'll find for the device.

Changes

Below are the changes I made to the official Ployer Momo 8 IPS firmware.

13.080.1958 What didn't change
  • I haven't modified build.prop to make the Ployer Momo 8 IPS masquerade as another brand or model of Android device. I will not be making this change, please don't request it.
  • Although my firmware includes many features from Android 4.1.2 and some from Android 4.2 I haven't bumped the Android version or Build number. That would be dishonest and misleading.
Known Issues
  • Adobe Flash is enabled the first time the Browser app is run.
  • Although busybox is included in the ROM, no symlinks are created.
  • Using Launcher2 4.2 it is possible for icons to be positioned at the extreme edges of the home screens when in landscape orientation. The app drawer is not affected by this minor annoyance however.
  • I've tested Asphalt 7 to confirm the Gameloft fix works. The game runs but accelerometer control input doesn't work. Do other Gameloft titles work properly?
Downloads

You'll need RKBatchTool for the RockChip USB drivers and also to flash the firmware. I've modified RKBatchTool to default to English language and removed old logs and transient data to reduce the size of the download. You'll also need the firmware itself.

Unzip both archives when they are downloaded.

How to Flash Recommended Wipe `/data/` and `/cache` from the ClockWorkMod Recovery when installing my firmware for the first time.

This will effectively factory reset your tablet to factory defaults and wipe your installed apps, app data and preferences. If you have rooted your tablet your might want to consider making a backup with Titanium Backup * root. If you have not rooted your tablet then you could use Carbon - App Sync and Backup.

  • Install the Rockchip USB drivers included with RKBatchTool.
    • This was simple of Windows XP but I couldn't get Windows 7 to accept the Rockchip drivers. However, installing MoboRobo on Windows 7 provided the correct driver.
  • Turn the Ployer Momo 8 IPS on.
  • On the tablet go to Settings -> Developer options and untick USB debugging.
  • Start RKBatchTool.exe.
  • In RKBatchTool choose firmware file, click the Switch button. The device icon should change to green to indicate a successful connection.
Note The first time switching to upgrade mode is used Windows may prompt you to install additional Rockchip USB drivers.
  • Only if the device icon changed to Green, click Upgrade.
  • The firmware will be flashed and the tablet will reboot into ClockWorkMod Recovery.
  • If flashing my custom firmware for the first time consider doing the following from the ClockWorkMod Recovery.
    • wipe data/factory reset
    • wipe cache partition
  • Reboot the tablet and follow the Setup Wizard.

The first boot may take a little longer than usual. You will be presented with the Welcome wizard where you can configure language and locale, etc. You can optionally enter your Google Apps or Gmail account credentials and doing so will prompt for which Wifi network to associate with.

RKBatchTool Video

I've also made a video showing how to flash the firmware. Frankly, the hardest part is getting the Rockchip drivers installed.

ClockWorkMod Recovery

Booting to recovery can be achieved using the pre-install Quick Boot app.

The Ployer Momo 8 IPS only has one hardware button (power) so CWM is controlled with gestures.

  • Swipe up/down: up/down
  • Swipe left: select
  • Swipe right: back

The Power button also acts as select, which I find to be the most reliable way to select an action.

Feedback

Your feedback is welcome, please use the comments are below.

References
Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Martin Wimpress: Ployer Momo8 IPS Custom Firmware

Planet HantsLUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 14:35

I bought a budget Android tablet a little while back that turned out to be really rather good. However, there were issues with the initial firmware.

  • Connecting to, or maintaining connection with, some wireless networks was unreliable.
  • When the internal NAND was under moderate load the tablet would become unresponsive.

Ployer relased a firmware update in November 2012 which addressed these issues. Here's the translated change log.

> 1. System, audio and video decoding, browser, Flash player, 3G module, boot > animation module BUG repair. > 2. Update NandFlash, Mali, Wifi module drivers, while addressing some CTS > tests BUG and the stability of the system as a whole has been further > enhanced. > 3. Optimize Flash stability, improve the efficiency of the implementation of > the DDR. > 4. Default input method Sogou input method. > 5. Update Google Pinyin input method.

However, the updated firmware comes pre-loaded with a selection of Chinese apps and defaults to a Chinese language.

Objectives

I decided to have a go a making my own custom firmware for the Ployer Momo 8 IPS with the following goals.

  • Pre-rooted.
  • Removal of pre-installed Chinese apps.
  • Removal of bloatware.
  • Extend `/data' partition.
  • Make it a "Google Experience" device.
  • ClockWorkMod Recovery.

I think I've been fairly successful. My firmware includes Android 4.1.2 features and even some Android 4.2 features. Until someone succesfully ports cyanogenmod to the Ployer Momo 8 IPS or Ployer release a 4.2.x update then my firmware is the most complete "Google Experience" you'll find for the device.

Changes

Below are the changes I made to the official Ployer Momo 8 IPS firmware.

13.080.1958 What didn't change
  • I haven't modified build.prop to make the Ployer Momo 8 IPS masquerade as another brand or model of Android device. I will not be making this change, please don't request it.
  • Although my firmware includes many features from Android 4.1.2 and some from Android 4.2 I haven't bumped the Android version or Build number. That would be dishonest and misleading.
Known Issues
  • Adobe Flash is enabled the first time the Browser app is run.
  • Although busybox is included in the ROM, no symlinks are created.
  • Using Launcher2 4.2 it is possible for icons to be positioned at the extreme edges of the home screens when in landscape orientation. The app drawer is not affected by this minor annoyance however.
  • I've tested Asphalt 7 to confirm the Gameloft fix works. The game runs but accelerometer control input doesn't work. Do other Gameloft titles work properly?
Downloads

You'll need RKBatchTool for the RockChip USB drivers and also to flash the firmware. I've modified RKBatchTool to default to English language and removed old logs and transient data to reduce the size of the download. You'll also need the firmware itself.

Unzip both archives when they are downloaded.

How to Flash NOTE! I recommend wiping `/data/` and `/cache` from the ClockWorkMod Recovery when installing my firmware for the first time.

This will effectively factory reset your tablet to factory defaults and wipe your installed apps, app data and preferences. If you have rooted your tablet your might want to consider making a backup with Titanium Backup * root. If you have not rooted your tablet then you could use Carbon - App Sync and Backup.

  • Install the Rockchip USB drivers included with RKBatchTool.
    • This was simple of Windows XP but I couldn't get Windows 7 to accept the Rockchip drivers. However, installing MoboRobo on Windows 7 provided the correct driver.
  • Turn the Ployer Momo 8 IPS on.
  • On the tablet go to Settings -> Developer options and untick USB debugging.
  • Start RKBatchTool.exe.
  • In RKBatchTool choose firmware file, click the Switch button. The device icon should change to green to indicate a successful connection.
NOTE! The first time switch to upgrade mode is used Windows may prompt you to install additional Rockchip USB drivers.
  • Only if the device icon changed to Green, click Upgrade.
  • The firmware will be flashed and the tablet will reboot into ClockWorkMod Recovery.
  • If flashing my custom firmware for the first time consider doing the following from the ClockWorkMod Recovery.
    • wipe data/factory reset
    • wipe cache partition
  • Reboot the tablet and follow the Setup Wizard.

The first boot may take a little longer than usual. You will be presented with the Welcome wizard where you can configure language and locale, etc. You can optionally enter your Google Apps or Gmail account credentials and doing so will prompt for which Wifi network to associate with.

RKBatchTool Video

I've also made a video showing how to flash the firmware. Frankly, the hardest part is getting the Rockchip drivers installed.

ClockWorkMod Recovery

Booting to recovery can be achieved using the pre-install Quick Boot app.

The Ployer Momo 8 IPS only has one hardware button (power) so CWM is controlled with gestures.

  • Swipe up/down: up/down
  • Swipe left: select
  • Swipe right: back

The Power button also acts as select, which I find to be the most reliable way to select an action.

Feedback

Your feedback is welcome, please use the comments are below.

References
Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Andrew Savory: I actually quite like the WP8 user experience. Inn…

Planet ALUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 09:13

I actually quite like the WP8 user experience. Innovative and different. Not bad for a first attempt.

What’s that? 8th what? Oh well, um…

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Andrew Savory: Most niggles with Nokia Lumia 920 are really niggl…

Planet ALUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 09:10

Most niggles with Nokia Lumia 920 are really niggles with WP8. Most niggles with WP8 are really niggles with Windows NT. Lipstick on a pig.

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

MJ Ray: Wireless Networking on this Clevo

Planet ALUG - Fri, 22/03/2013 - 05:20

This Clevo laptop is a new machine and like a lot of new machines, not all of its hardware has drivers in the current stable release of debian.

Happily, there is a driver for its rtl8723ae wireless networking device in the later 3.8 Linux kernel versions. So it’s just a case of installing the package called “kernel-package” and following the instructions in it, to make a new linux-image package with the latest drivers in it.

One small thing which tripped me up is that you usually need to write “make-kpkg –rootcmd fakeroot –initrd kernel-image” now. I forgot the “–initrd” option at first.

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Martin Wimpress: Headless Debian 6.0 Torrent Server

Planet HantsLUG - Thu, 21/03/2013 - 18:35

I recently switched ISPs at home and now have unlimited high speed broadband.

Finally I can participate in torrenting Linux .ISO images. I always download the latest distros using BitTorrent and can now contribute to the community by seeding the distros I've downloaded.

I have a small (in size and resources) Debian 6.0 headless server at home that I wanted to turn into a torrent box. I'm a big fan of Transmission since it can be managed from the shell, web and Android phone/tablet. Sadly, the Transmission packages in the official Debain squeeze repositories are quite old, 2.03 at the time of writing, and there are no Transmission packages in Debian Backports.

However after flexing my google-fu I found a 3rd party Debian Squeeze repository that includes fairly current (2.73 at the time of writing) Transmission packages specifically for headless use. Yah!

Install Transmission Daemon

First become root.

sudo -s -H

Add the repository key.

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 92B84A1E

Add the repository.

echo "deb http://apt.balocco.name squeeze main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/balocco.list

Update the package list.

apt-get update

Install Transmission.

apt-get install transmission-cli transmission-daemon transmission-webinterface Basic Configuration

The Transmission settings can be found in /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json.

Information If `transmission-daemon` is running when you make changes to `settings.json` the changes you make will be discarded the next time `transmission-daemon` is started.

Therefore either stop transmission-daemon before you make any changes or you can make the daemon reload settings.json by sending it the SIGHUP signal.

Connect from anywhere

If you want to be able to connect to Transmission from anywhere on the Internet stop transmission-daemon, make the following changes to settings.json and then start transmission-daemon.

"rpc-password": "YourPlainTextPassword", "rpc-username": "YourUsername", "rpc-whitelist-enabled": false,

The rpc-username field will need adding but you can edit the existing entry for rpc-password. Enter the rpc-password as a plain text string, Transmission will automatically convert the password to a hash the next time it is started.

Connect via a browser

You should now be able to access the Transmission web interface via http://yourhost.example.org:9091. If you didn't change the username and password (you really should) the defaults are:

  • Username : transmission
  • Password : transmission
Connect via Android

I have an Android phone and an Android tablet. I use Remote Transmission on my Android devices to manage my torrent box.

Connect via the shell

If, like me, you spend the majority of you time at the shell. Then transmission-remote-cli is probably for you. All my workstation run Arch Linux so I install transmission-remote-cli as follows.

sudo pacman -S transmission-remote-cli

See the GitHub project page for tramission-remote-cli for instructions on how to connect to a remote Transmission daemon.

Block List

Regardless of how you intend to use Transmission you should enable a block list, this can be done via settings.json and the web interface. The following block list seems to be recommended.

http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=bt_level2&fileformat=p2p&archiveformat=gz

That covers the basics for getting Transmission running on headless Debian 6.0 and how to connect to it from just about anywhere and on any device. I recommend reading the Trasmission Wiki as Transmission is capable of so much more than I have covered in this blog post.

Happy torrenting.

References
Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Richard WM Jones: rich

Planet GLLUG - Thu, 21/03/2013 - 15:12

I wrote a small patch (intro, patch) which adds a Secure Shell (ssh) block device to qemu. With this patch you could access a remote disk image or device by doing:

qemu -drive file=ssh://host/path/to/file,if=virtio,cache=none

QEMU ssh’es into “host” and opens /path/to/file. For the initial version of this patch you will need to set up ssh-agent access to the remote server.

The motivation behind this patch is to allow libguestfs to access remote disks using ssh the same way we already do with NBD. Secure Shell is ubiquitous, so for the majority of users libguestfs-over-qemu/ssh would let them use disks remotely with zero configuration.


Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Adam Trickett: blipfoto: Adam's Images - Station Daff II - 20 March 2013

Planet HantsLUG - Thu, 21/03/2013 - 08:19

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

David Goodwin: Spam and Comic Sans.

Planet WolvesLUG - Wed, 20/03/2013 - 15:13

Today, I received a spammy email from an unknown golf club. There was no obvious unsubscribe link or instructions, so I blindly replied with :

Hi, Please remove 'xxxxxx' from your mailing list; we've no interest in golf… Thanks, David

 

They replied with :

REMOVED OK

But it was actually :

<FONT color=#0000ff size=4 face=”Comic Sans MS”>REMOVED OK</FONT>

i.e.


So I had to reply with :

<div style=”text-align: center;”><u style=”font-size: 144px; color: rgb(245, 236, 0); font-family: ‘Comic Sans MS’; “><b>Thank you!1!!</b></u></div>

 

I fear the intricacies of my reply were lost on them.

 

Categories: LUG Community Blogs

Andrew Savory: So @kevinc2003 and @kevinlynch have both left @Ado…

Planet ALUG - Wed, 20/03/2013 - 13:38

So @kevinc2003 and @kevinlynch have both left @Adobe since I joined. A guy could get paranoid! Was it something I said?

Categories: LUG Community Blogs
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