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By Matthieu, 2012-12-29 23:46

Once again, my dear old WordPress blog has been terribly negelected for the past little while. I do however have good reasons for this.

1. Life and stuff has been busy this past year. This has given me a lot of new material to write about, but I’ve lacked the will to actually spend time and write any posts.
2. I spend a lot less time tinkering with computers in my free time. When I do, a lot of it has to do with enterprise software and such which is not as fun to write about.
3. OSx86 is no longer a part of my day-to-day. Since getting a job, and hence having the $ to be able to buy legit Apple products, there isn’t as much incentive for getting Mac OS X running on commodity PC hardware. Also, I’m not sure I like where Apple is going with their 10.7+ OS releases, so my hackintoshes and real Macs remain on 10.6.x.
4. There are too many ways to post things on the Internet. Twitter. Tumblr. Google+. Facebook. Pinterest. LinkedIn. WordPress. Posterous. Evernote. imgur. reddit. Springpad. the list goes on and on. I can’t decide what medium to use and what I actually want out of the whole thing.
5. My Internet “image”.  I have a pretty unique name – pretty sure I’m the only “Matthieu Yiptong” on the planet. So, when anyone googles my name, this blog is usually the top result. Nowadays it’s common practice for everyone from parents to employers to new acquaintances to girlfriends to google peoples’ names. Being slightly paranoid, I’ve been over-analyzing every potential idea I’ve had for a new blog post this year.
6. Platform choice. This blog probably has more technical posts than anything else. One of my colleagues at work has switched to using MediaWiki for his personal technical documentation. This makes sense because it’s easier to organize and format documentation on a wiki than on a blog. There are even wikis designed for documentation. This may be something to consider.
7. Domain name. I own matthieu.yiptong.ca, matthieuyiptong.ca and a few other domains. I’m trying to decide what the url for my blog should be –  whether or not changing it would be worth it and should I decide to change it, if there’s anyway to keep my google ranking and permalinks.

Hopefully now that I’ve gotten these reasons written down, I can get around to addressing each of them and streamline my blogging/posting/documentation in 2013!

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By Matthieu, 2012-12-09 23:25

I’ve been having issues with the OOBE on my Nook Simple Touch. It will simply not register to my BN.com account.

Fortunately, there is a way to skip the OOBE and get the device to a mostly-working state:

Skip OOBE:

On the first screen that appears on the NST without tapping any button.
1.Hold the right top button and move your finger from left to right on the top of the screen.
2.The factory button will appear at the bottom right of the screen, tap it.
3.Hold again the right top button and tap the right bottom part of the screen, where the factory button appeared
4.A button labeled skip oobe will appear, tap it, your done

For the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight and Nook Simple Touch with 1.2 firmware, the “Factory” button appears on the top left, and the “Skip OOBE” button will appear in the blank space at the bottom right.

References:

• http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=29987480&postcount=19
• http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=20121721&postcount=17

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By Matthieu, 2012-12-08 19:50

Interesting article from Forbes. This is exactly the problem with media today.

Piracy is not raiding and plundering Best Buys and FYEs, smashing the windows and running out with the loot. It’s like being placed in a store full of every DVD in existence. There are no employees, no security guards, and when you take a copy of movie, another one materializes in its place, so you’re not actually taking anything. If you were in such a store, you’d only have your base moral convictions to keep you from cloning every movie in sight. And anyone who knows how to get to this store isn’t going to let their conscience stop them, especially when there is no tangible “loss” to even feel bad about.

The is of course some degree of “loss”, but it’s hard, if not impossible, to assign a dollar value to it.Who is to say that a customer, who when placed in this hypothetical store took a copy of every movie, would actually have bought a copy of every movie or any movie at all?

The other problem with the movie industry is that every “legal” way of watching a movie is a pain in the a**. For instance:

Buy a Blu-Ray/DVD (assuming you already own a player)

1. Go to store/Amazon.
2. Buy disc
3. Go home/wait for shipment
4. Insert disc into player
5. Watch FBI warning
6. Watch Trailers (or skip trailers)
7. Watch movie.

Advantages of this method: You “own” the movie on physical media. You can pass it to your friends, look at the box, use the disc as a frisbee, whatever.
Disadvantages: Physical media. Waiting time. Investment in home video equipment.

Watch in theatres

1. Look up showtimes
2. (Buy tickets online)
3. Go to theatre
4. Buy/pick up tickets
5. (Pay extra money for an pick up annoying 3D glasses)
6. Find a seat in cinema
7. Watch movie trivia
8. Watch ads
9. Watch trailers
10. Watch movie.

Advantages of this method: Gigantic screen. Excuse to go out.
Disadvantages: Excuse to go out. Overpriced food. Crowds.

Watch on Netflix

1. Get tablet/phone/Silverlight®-capable PC/approved set-top box or TV
   1. If using Linux (Ubuntu or Fedora), check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfte5su5DIA. It popped up in my Twitter feed literally just as I was writing the previous line.
2. Sign up for/log in to Netflix
3. Find your movie (hope it’s there)
4. Watch movie.

Advantages: Watch almost anywhere, almost instantly.
Disadvantages: Limited selection, requires active internet connection, don’t own anything – need to keep paying monthly fee.

Pirate

1. Get some BitTorrent-capable device. (PC, Mac, Linux, BSD,  Android, your router, NAS, ….)
2. Find a torrent of the movie you want.
3. Download
4. Watch movie.

Advantages: Own movie forever. Works on any device with proper codecs and processing power. No DRM. Free. Huge selection.
Disadvantages: Morality? Need more hard disk space. Some sites are questionable.

Clearly, “Pirate” is the most viable option. Netflix is a close second, but the inability to watch offline and limited catalogue are annoying.

Existing movie distribution channels are dated, inconvenient and expensive. What’s the solution? I don’t know. But there needs to be a big change in the way Hollywood does business if they really want to “stop” piracy. Not that they really need to, movies are still very profitable despite all their complaints about how piracy is killing them.

Some propose a sort of “Steam for movies“. Others would have Netflix’s model. Others still, iTunes.

I’m both excited and apprehensive about what’s to come.

via You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You – Forbes.

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By Matthieu, 2012-11-21 13:22

For some reason, Android versions greater than 2.3 no longer come with the Google CarHome app. This is an app that gives your phone a simplified interface for easier use in-car.

To install on a rooted device, download CarHomeGoogle.apk

Copy it to /system/app, set permissions to -rw-r–r– (644) and user/group owner to root.

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By Matthieu, 2012-11-07 22:08

I have a few old reliable AR5005G (5212, PCI 168c:0013) cards, both MiniPCI and Cardbus from the heyday of Wireless-G back in the early ’00s. Back then, Atheros 500x series cards were THE cards to have if you wanted to have some fun with aircrack, or if you just wanted your WiFi to actually WORK, especially under Linux. The madwifi (aka ath_pci) drivers were probably the most stable wireless drivers at the time. Even on Windows, you could use 3rd party drivers to put the cards in monitor mode and capture packets.

Times have changed and madwifi has been superseded by ath5k (and indirectly ath9k).

For some reason I decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 on an old Fujitsu Lifebook (Pentium III 600MHz, upgraded 512MB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon M4) without built-in wireless, using a Netgear WPN511 Cardbus adapter. I expected everything to work as it did in the old days, but for some reason the WiFi wouldn’t stay connected.

It seems the hardware encryption capabilites on the card don’t quite support WPA2/CCMP-AES, even though the ath5k driver says it does. So the solution is to disable hardware encryption support:

echo "options ath5k nohwcrypt=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf

Then reboot, or reload the ath5k module (modprobe -rv ath5k, modprobe -v ath5k).

Now I can enjoy my surprisingly not-extremely-slow 10-year old laptop wirelessly.

http://madwifi-project.org/

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By Matthieu, 2012-10-29 14:46

apt-cache search [searchterm]

search local apt-cache for a package  containing [searchterm]

apt-file list [packagename]

lists all files associated with [packagename], even if the package is not installed

apt-file search [/path/to/file]

search for the package that “owns” [/path/to/file]

apt-cache madison [packagename]

displays all available versions of [packagename]

apt-get install [packagename]=[version]

force apt to install a specific version of a package

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By Matthieu, 2012-09-24 18:34

I sometimes have to work from home, which means using VPN. Cisco VPN works quite well, but it’s just not the same as being on the corp network.

Using a spare DD-WRT router (ASUS WL-520GU) running the VPN build of DD-WRT, I set up a persistent VPN connection. Now when I connect my work PC to this router, it behaves just like it’s on the corporate LAN.

How to do it

1. First, get the recommended DD-WRT VPN build from dd-wrt.com and flash the router.
2. Connect the VPN router’s WAN/Internet port to your home LAN.
3. Make sure your router’s LAN IP doesn’t conflict with any subnets in the corp network or your existing home LAN. I used 192.168.133.0/24.
4. Add your corporate domains and DNS servers to the dnsmasq config (Services tab)
   
5. Next, customize the script at the end of this post and paste in the Administration>Commands section. Click Save Startup.
6. Reboot the router. Wait about 5 minutes (it takes a while to start up) and verify you can ping/access servers on the corp LAN.
7. Done!

This isn’t exactly the most stable solution, but it works and I haven’t had any disconnects so far. Also much cheaper and much less trouble than setting up a site-to-site VPN using a real Cisco router.

One sticking point is that from now on any changes to router config (DHCP, WiFi, etc.) will require a reboot. Otherwise your VPN tunnel will die and won’t come back for some reason.

Also, speeds are limited by the router’s processor. Mine is only a 266MHz ARM, so IPsec puts quite a load on it, meaning I can only sustain speeds of about 2Mbps – sadly still better than some of our WAN sites that are using T1 lines.

Script

mkdir /tmp/etc/vpnc
rm -f /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpnc.sh
#Create the VPNC startup script in /tmp
echo '
#!/bin/sh 
vpn_concentrator="your.vpn.gateway" ##enter ip or hostname of your Ipsec vpn concentrator
vpn_keepalive_host1="some.server.corp"        ##enter the ip or hostname of a computer that is only reachable if vpn connection is established.
vpn_keepalive_host2="other.server.corp"        ##enter the ip or hostname of a computer that is only reachable if vpn connection is established.
vpn_groupname="groupname"  ##enter the group name here
vpn_grouppasswd="grouppass"   ##enter the group password here
vpn_username="user"       ##enter your username here
vpn_password="pass"        ##enter your password here

#--do not edit this--
#Written by Alain R. 28.Sep.2007
#updated by Matthieu Y. 2012-09-24
vpnc-disconnect
rm -f /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpn.conf
#Create vpnc config file
echo "
IPSec gateway $vpn_concentrator
IPSec ID $vpn_groupname
IPSec secret $vpn_grouppasswd
Xauth username $vpn_username
Xauth password $vpn_password
" >> /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpn.conf
# allow dnsmasq to forward dns replies for LAN subnets
sed -i "s/stop-dns-rebind//g" /tmp/dnsmasq.conf
killall dnsmasq
dnsmasq --conf-file=/tmp/dnsmasq.conf 
#Check if we can ping the IPs specified above
pingtest1 () {
 ping -q -c1 $param1 >> /dev/null
 if [ "$?" == "0" ]; then
       echo 0 #reachable 

 else
	echo 1 #not reachable
 fi
}

pingtest2 () {
 ping -q -c2 $param2 >> /dev/null
 if [ "$?" == "0" ]; then
       echo 0 #reachable 

 else
	echo 1 #not reachable
 fi
}
doloop=true

while [ $doloop==true ]; do
			param1=$vpn_keepalive_host1;

			if [ "`pingtest1`" == "0" ]; then
				sleep 300
			else
				param2=$vpn_keepalive_host2;
				if [ "`pingtest2`" == "0" ]; then
					sleep 300
				else
					doloop=false
					vpnc-disconnect
					vpnc /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpn.conf --dpd-idle 0
					sleep 1
					if [ "`pingtest1`" != "0" ]; then
						sleep 10
					fi
					tundev="`ifconfig |grep tun |cut -b 1-4`"
					iptables -A FORWARD -o $tundev -j ACCEPT
					iptables -A FORWARD -i $tundev -j ACCEPT
					iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $tundev -j MASQUERADE
					sleep 9
				fi
			fi
done

return 0;
' >> /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpnc.sh
chmod 700 /tmp/etc/vpnc/vpnc.sh
/tmp/etc/vpnc/vpnc.sh&

References:

• http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/VPNC
• http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=509683

Comments (1)

By Matthieu, 2012-09-05 16:28

The loss of your Drobo’s shared resource settings (i.e., the volumes do not show) can be caused when the server service in Windows starts up before the iSCSI Initiator service does. The server service needs the iSCSI service to have already started file shares.

To fix this issue, open a command prompt, type: “sc config LanManServer depend= MSiSCSI” and press Enter.

via Drobo Support.

WRONG WRONG WRONG. If you run the above command, the LanManServer (Server) service will fail to start.

The correct command for adding the dependency on the iSCSI service (on a stock Win2K8 box) is

sc config lanmanserver depend= SamSS/Srv/MSiSCSI

Running the other command deletes the original dependencies of the Server service and replaces them with only  MSiSCSI.

Correct answer via User Error.

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By Matthieu, 2012-09-03 17:59

Tomorrow on CityTV Breakfast Television!