Year: 2011

IT

PXEboot with CentOS 5.6 and dnsmasq

Install the required software:
yum install dnsmasq

Open up the firewall:
/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -m udp -p udp --dport 67 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -m udp -p udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT

Then run:
dnsmasq -d --interface=br0 --dhcp-range=181.30.68.111,static --dhcp-host=84:2b:2b:78:30:79,181.30.68.112 --dhcp-option=option:router,181.30.68.65 --dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0 --enable-tftp --tftp-root=/var/ftpd

Put all required files, such as pxelinux.0 from the package syslinux in /var/ftpd

Ubuntu/Debian

I'm running RedHat-based software on all of my machines. Above information may be useful for Ubuntu/Debian users, but it's not tested and I'm not supporting it.

Servers: RedHat Enterprise Linux/CentOS is more suitable for servers, as there's a lot of professional level support available. I think that's important, because if I say, get a car accident, I want the servers to be managable by another professional.

Desktops/Laptops: RPM packages are pretty exchangable between RedHat-based platforms. That's a good reason to run Fedora on the desktop.
© GeekLabInfo PXEboot with CentOS 5.6 and dnsmasq is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Windows 7 network awareness

After switching my network to a more strict proxy server recently, I found that Windows 7 machines were reporting they weren't connected to the internet anymore. While this is partly true, unauthenticated users can no longer just access http, users don't need to get this message.

The probing software is called Microsoft NCSI. What it does, is:

  1. perform a DNS lookup on www.msftncsi.com, and request http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt. This file is a plain-text file that contains only the text Microsoft NCSI.
  2. then do a DNS lookup request for dns.msftncsi.com. The answer should be an A-record resolving to 131.107.255.255. If no answer, or a wrong answer is given, NCSI assumes the internet connection is faulty.

I whitelisted www.msftncsi.com in my proxy to allow outbound http-connections from unauthenticated users to this domain.

© GeekLabInfo Windows 7 network awareness is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

VMWare Data Recovery is crap

VMWare Data Recovery is crap:

  • VMWare Data Recovery cannot be monitored and does not send out any warnings.
  • Running one instance of VMWare Data Recovery is too heavy for the appliance, causing the backups to be corrupted all the time
  • When running multiple instances of VMWare Data Recovery, say one instance per host, the whole thing is still slow as hell
  • Every few weeks, one backup gets corrupted. Of course the appliance does not notify you, no, instead you must login to the appliance to check the logs.
  • When you find a backup that is corrupted, you need to manually flag the restore point as "marked for deletion" and then start the integrity check.
  • When doing the integrity check, better pray that none of the other instances starts using the same nas/fileserver, as it gets so slow that the whole integrity check never gets completed.
  • I just tried to split the backups to multiple destinations, so that we can backup each virtual machine to its very own destination, and reduce the shitload of work the integrity check has to do when another backup is broken. Appears that VMWare Data Recovery only supports 2 destination per appliance instance.

I seriously consider VMWare Data Recovery to be the worst backup solution I've ever used.

© GeekLabInfo VMWare Data Recovery is crap is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

HylaFax needs fonts

Trying to use HylaFax on CentOS 6, I got the following message:

/usr/sbin/textfmt: No font metric information found for "Courier-Bold".
Usage: /usr/sbin/textfmt [-1] [-2] [-B] [-c] [-D] [-f fontname] [-F fontdir(s)] [-m N] [-o #] [-p #] [-r] [-U] [-Ml=#,r=#,t=#,b=#] [-V #] files... >out.ps
Default options: -f Courier -1 -p 11bp -o 0
Error converting data; command was "/usr/sbin/textfmt -B -f Courier-Bold        -Ml=0.4in -p 11 -s default

This means that the font Courier-Bold is not installed on the system. On my CentOS 6 installation, I got it working by performing the following actions:

  • adding /usr/share/enscript/afm to both FontMap: and FontPath: in /etc/hylafax/hyla.conf
  • run sed -i "s/Courier-Bold/cob/g" /etc/hylafax/typerules
  • also, you need to install the package enscript: yum -y install enscript
© GeekLabInfo HylaFax needs fonts is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Un-hide the “http://” in Firefox 7

Firefox 7 has this annoying feature to hide the http:// in front of an address and to hide a single trailing forward slash. What's most annoying, is that when copying the url to a clipboard, it prepends the http:// again. So when I enter a website, then copy the domainname to a console in order to ping/trace/whois it, I have to remove the http:// manually.

To restore the prefix, enter the url about:config. Search for browser.urlbar.trimURLs and toggle it to false. That's all folks.

© GeekLabInfo Un-hide the "http://" in Firefox 7 is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Reconfigure nspluginwrapper

Yay, I just upgraded my nspluginwrapper and everything broke. Again. Couldn't use youtube or any of my other favorite sites anymore.

Running firefox from the console gave me some feedback:

*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: NP_Initialize() get args: Message argument mismatch
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: rpc_end_sync called when not in sync!
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NP_Initialize() wait for reply: Connection closed
NOTE: child process received `Goodbye', closing down

When I google'd around a bit, I found some commands for older/different versions of nspluginwrapper. Finally, I tried the parameters of the old binary on the new binary:
/usr/lib64/nspluginwrapper/npconfig -a -v -i
and got the output:

Auto-install plugins from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Looking for plugins in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Install plugin /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
Auto-install plugins from /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
Looking for plugins in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-gmp-plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-gmp-plugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libtotem-gmp-plugin.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/skypebuttons.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/skypebuttons.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.skypebuttons.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-cone-plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-cone-plugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libtotem-cone-plugin.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-mully-plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-mully-plugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libtotem-mully-plugin.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libjavaplugin.so
Auto-install plugins from /home/username/.mozilla/plugins
Looking for plugins in /home/username/.mozilla/plugins
Install plugin /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/libnpgoogletalk64.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/libnpgoogletalk64.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libnpgoogletalk64.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** ERROR: /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/libnpgtpo3dautoplugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Install plugin /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/libnpgtpo3dautoplugin.so
  into /home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libnpgtpo3dautoplugin.so

After this, my Firefox was running as usual.

© GeekLabInfo Reconfigure nspluginwrapper is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

WordPress: Posting images using XML-RPC

The following code uploads a file using xmlrpc... and without using all kinds of libs, you just need the regular php-xmlrpc module.

$rpcurl='http://www.enter-your-domain-name-he.re/xmlrpc.php';
$username='admin';
$password='your-password';
$blogid=1; //Post ID
 
$file=file_get_contents('file.jpg');
$filetype = "image/jpeg";
$filename = "remote_filename.jpg";
 
xmlrpc_set_type($file,'base64'); // <-- required!
$params = array($blogid,$username,$password,
            array('name'=>$filename,'type'=>$filetype,'bits'=>$file,'overwrite'=>false));
$request = xmlrpc_encode_request('wp.uploadFile',$params);
 
$result = go($request,$rpcurl);
print_r($result);
 
function go($request,$rpcurl){
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$rpcurl);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$request );
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    return $result;
}
© GeekLabInfo WordPress: Posting images using XML-RPC is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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