February 4, 2012
February 4, 2012 – 12:01 pmI’ve long been annoyed that Windows 7 didn’t include the QuickLaunch bar. But I finally decided to search for a solution and found two great links :
January 8, 2012
January 8, 2012 – 5:13 pmSo I’ve been struggling with my Sharp Blu-Ray player - its the BD-HP24u(a) model, and its occasionally hanging on the startup menu, or sits for 5-10 minutes with a pure black screen. I’ve tried to update firmware, but there is nothing - not via the menu, and not via the Sharp website. After getting fed up tonight trying to watch CARS 2, I decided to do some research. what I found is that trying a reset was a good idea - so I did that via the “settings | system | reset” menu options - but no luck. So after resetting my IP again, tried - but no luck. The ticket was to turn off the BD-Live option in the settings menu. It seems that the hanging and lockups were due to the player trying to get network data that it couldn’t reach. I guess some folks don’t know how to code for trapping of error conditions and all that. Anyway - turning off BD-Live, and this thing came RIGHT up, and played just fine.
January 1, 2012
January 1, 2012 – 3:26 pmI wanted to put some pictures up on the big screen, but I didn’t have DLNA configured at home. I’m using OpenFiler NAS, not one of the over the counter NAS devices. So I had to build it in. I’m trying MediaTomb for mine, and have documented what I’m doing so far here.
I was doing good with MediaTomb, but still couldn’t get the pictures working. On a hunch, I tried miniDLNA and loved it - right out of the box, no hassles, just worked. That’s now documented here.
November 6, 2011
November 6, 2011 – 10:00 pmAfter much (and I mean much) testing of OpenFiler 2.99.1 and FreeNAS8, I’ve decided to go with OpenFiler as my next gen NAS. I’ve been a user of FreeNAS7 for quite a while now and it works great. But I wanted iSCSI shares, and had to up my share sizes - so a new environment was needed. I ran into issues with OpenFiler not auto starting my software RAID volumes, and saw lots of folks with similar issues - but nobody had solutions. Now I do - a script that runs at startup and fixes everything. It should work in any environment, if anyone needs it … no guarantees, no warranty and no claims of any kind though … you know the drill. Its all going to be documented in my Wiki, once I get around to finishing that doc up.
Update : its worth noting though - I ended up choosing FreeNAS8 (v8.0.2) for my iSCSI based SAN duties, to shares storage out to my virtual servers - and I’m using OpenFiler 2.99.1 for my NAS duties, sharing volumes to my pc’s, laptops, audiotrons, and video devices. I had both functions on OpenFiler for a little while, but noticed the slightest performance benefit by using FreeNAS8 for my iSCSI shares. So my DL380G3 is the FreeNAS8 host, and my DL385G1 is now the OpenFiler host. This offers me the most flexibility and least impact when doing maintenance, new volumes, etc, etc.
October 31, 2011
October 31, 2011 – 11:32 pmLost my firewall to disk corruption in the power losses of late. The power up/down cycling seems to have caused enough data corruption issues that I could not recover the data - so I had to build a new one. I could salvage my home grown scripts, rules, etc - but some of the key libraries were lost, and some of /var was toast. So everything is back online now on the “new” firewall, and all is good again.
October 17, 2011
October 17, 2011 – 12:56 pmToday just another update to my July 31 2008 post about Firefox plugins. This is now also part of a new “Firefox Extensions” category in this blog to make them easier for me to find. Today’s additions are :
- Google Redesigned — http://www.globexdesigns.com/products/gr/#!products/gr/install.php
- Session Manager — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/?src=cb-dl-featured
- Better Privacy — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/?src=collection&collection_id=4f45af7f-8117-2a9a-3dcb-32e1a2a59166
- TinEye Image Search — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tineye-reverse-image-search/
- Memory Fox — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/memory-fox/
- Tab Preview — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-preview/?src=collection&collection_id=4f45af7f-8117-2a9a-3dcb-32e1a2a59166
October 4, 2011
October 4, 2011 – 7:01 pmMy basement audiotron (Gateway version) had been giving me issues lately. So I found one on eBay for about 15 bucks and ordered it. Just got done setting up, and now its all good. Swapped out “gatetron” for the new “basetron” instead.
September 24, 2011
September 24, 2011 – 9:21 amI’m sure I’ve posted about at least one of these before, but just wanted to make note of a couple “gotchas” for anyone that uses Netflix steaming media service and the Untangle software based network appliance, or FreeNAS home grown NAS solution and the Audiotron (1) streaming audio server.
- Netflix and Untangle : Most people know NetFlix, but the Untangle device is the key here. Untangle is used to do mail virus filtering, intrusion prevention, malware detection and so many other great things. However, it gets in the way of Netflix in its default setting. So to play NetFlix smoothly, be sure to “Disable HTTP Resume” option for Untangle’s virus blocker in the advanced section or you won’t be able to pause NetFlix streaming media and restart from the paused/stopped point
- FreeNAS version 7 and Audiotron : The Audiotron is quite possibly one of the coolest devices I use since I’m a big music fan, and is something I got almost a decade ago. Lately, with the proliferation of audio content that I have, I’ve moved all my music onto one share now - a share in FreeNAS. However, to make things work smoothly, in the FreeNAS CIFS setup, be sure NOT to use the large read/write option, or it kills the Audiotron playback.
September 7, 2011
September 7, 2011 – 9:13 pmHad been having some issues recently where I was unable to send to Gmail users from my Zimbra server - I was getting a bounce message back with this link in it. So I tried a few things, and read through the Gmail bulk sending guidelines
(http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126) and all that. In the end, found that creating the SPF record as shown here :
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=178723 , seemed to do the trick. Of course it took 24 hours for the record to be available/usable as needed, but once that happened, all was good again.
September 4, 2011
September 4, 2011 – 10:30 amFound some additional firefox extensions that are good, but only one I’m posting here which is the one that pulls mp3’s from youtube. There are a ton of choices out there, but I find this one to be the easiest to use : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-downl-10137/
July 24, 2011
July 24, 2011 – 10:52 amFound a bad drive in one of my DL380G3 servers today, which for some reason didn’t alert me. Good thing I did an unusual server room walk through today. Anyway - after replacing the failed drive, updated big brother to include the “cma” string in the bad messages field, so that it would catch/page on any “cma*” daemon errors, which are the PSP alerts.
June 28, 2011
June 28, 2011 – 9:46 pmFound a few good Google Chrome extensions and tricks to help me out today :
- In chrome, in address bar, type “about:flags”, search for print preview, and enable.
- Add “Service Pages” extension here : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fjmhjjohhiehaoljianalpmfcceojaff?hl=en-US# . What this does is to give nice buttons for all the trick features
- Add “Printly” extension here : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/joiehkpdmaemlmjkhedjojomlbhjimea?hl=en-US# . What this does is to put a nice print button in the toolbar.
June 17, 2011
June 17, 2011 – 9:33 pmWork today around trying to get Firefox to work with SharePoint. Cant do WYSIWYG editing, so I’m trying to use the “write area” plugin for that, and its been mostly good. Also, a SharePoint designer bug fix, just in case it helps anything :
- Sharepoint Designer Fix — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/microsoft-net-framework-assist/?collection_uuid=55afefb5-620d-ae0c-d5d1-b602b44e6428
- Write Area — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/write-area/The big fix though, is allowing FireFox to seamlessly authenticate against domain signon’s like IE does. This is something I had never had a fix for, but now do. Here are the steps :
- open up firefox
- in the address bar put “about:config”
- search for “NTLM”
- set the value of “network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris” to your own domain, with a leading dot. So for pluzzi.com as an example, it would be “.pluzzi.com”
- thats it!
May 9, 2011
May 9, 2011 – 9:55 pmWell, my final verdict is in on the OpenNMS product I started testing back in late March. Its just too heavy, bogs down the server, and doesn’t offer enough value. I love the auto charting, but I cant combine charts the way I wanted, so I’m better off sticking with Big Brother plus LARRD. So that’s that. That OpenNMS vm is now shutdown.
May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011 – 9:24 pmMy new monster TV and blu-ray players were having trouble with NetFlix lately, but tonight I figured out what was wrong. It turns out that my Untangle device that is used for intrusion protection, anti-virus, web filtering, and other network appliance type features has a setting that was getting in the way. The fix is to go into the settings for the “Virus Blocker” application, “Web” tab, “Advanced” settings, and to disable the checkbox for “Disable HTTP Resume”. Now they stream just fine. I bet this fixes the issue with the TivoHD and NetFlix too - where it streamed, but pausing would reset it back to the start of the movie.
April 27, 2011
April 27, 2011 – 10:05 pmFirst, an update to my July 31 2008 post about Firefox plugins, this really should be its own entry, but I’m so used to searching for this July 31 entry that I don’t want multi steps. But Firefox 4 has dropped the keyboard shortcut for F6 to take you to the address bar. This fixes that :
F6 Fix — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/f6/
Another thing - recently, I’ve been having trouble with some of the HP DV series laptops. Specifically with the well known wireless issues. The first few of these that I had, I was getting motherboards from Alibaba at about 150-200 bucks, and swapping them out … which is no simple/quick effort. But now I’m finding that this little AirLink 150n USB ultra mini wireless adapter is all that is really needed! I fire up the laptop, connect it to the network via cable, plug this little guy in, let it download the drivers, shut it down, remove the internal, and fire up. Now laptops that wouldn’t go 24 hours are going 2 weeks and beyond. And its so small you can hardly even notice it. So so much easier. To make it even more attractive? Its always 100% signal where my built in was like 70-80%, and its not dropping persistent web sessions like the built in was. Should have done this long ago. Success so far on dv9008nr, dv9417cl, and tx1000z.
March 29, 2011
March 29, 2011 – 11:05 pmWorking on a newly updated monitoring suite - this time the OpenNMS package. I’ve been a user of BigBrother for many many years - I guess its 13 or 14 now, since I began in 1997 or so. Its been ultra solid, ultra reliable, but has a very dated look to it since I still run a combination of 1.5 and 1.2 releases. So the OpenNMS seemed modern, easy to configure, etc - so I’m giving it a try. Good links for that are here, here, and here. Basically, if you can live with remote monitoring only, and snmp polling - its really solid. But if you need host side monitoring (checking service status on windows, or process status on unix/linux) - then I still prefer BB.
March 28, 2011
March 28, 2011 – 8:12 pmA very good article in Information Week at the end of February about the fact that everyone feels I.T. is too slow in delivery. Based on all the ITIL stuff, we were slowed to a crawl to meet regulations, and now we’re all being penalized for it. Its not exactly fair, but it is reality.
March 2, 2011
March 2, 2011 – 9:32 pmWell, this turns out to be the first post this year, but there has been much activity just not a lot of posting about it. Most recently I took a troublesome print server out of the mix. I was using a Linksys WPSM54g to USB connect my HP LaserJet 2550 color laser printer to the network. The printer comes with parallel and usb connections, and when connected via either method to a pc, it was flawless. But using the USB connection to the WPSM54g was troublesome. After any settings change on the WPSM54g, the USB link would drop. And after every single print job, the USB would drop. To restore, I had to unplug the usb from the WPSM54g, then power cycle the WPSM54g, then plug the USB back in again. Simply pulling the USB alone wasnt enough, nor was power cycling the WPSM54g. What I found did work, is to pull the USB from the printer side, wait 2 seconds, then reinsert. But that was too much to tolerate for every print job - especially now that its network connected. The resolution was to get a Linksys WPS54gu2 which offers both USB and parallel connections. Setting up the parallel made all my problems go away and now it never loses connection.
December 21, 2010
December 21, 2010 – 11:31 pmWell, completed a few laptop updates today. Using Acronis True Image, I swapped a dv9008nr and dv9208nr (bad wireless), and similarly swapped a dv9825nr with a dv9812us (bad sound card).
Also repaired my 4PSA DNS Manager tonight. 4PSA was very responsive to my question about why it expired when they claim that its free up to 10 zones. They send me a link to their site where they have the free 10 zone key and then I was able to get a license to get going again.