polywogsys

I was trying to build a BartPE windows boot CD for use with Pointsec encryption. Everything went OK except for the SATA controller being recognized. I was getting a warning that "iaStor.sys" was not being found. An easy fix for this was to edit the layout.inf file to include iastor.sys driver.

First you must copy the Windows XP installer disc, to your C drive. Make sure the iastor.sys, iastor.inf, and iastor.cat file is located in the i386 directory. Then edit layout.inf to add the following line under "[SourceDisksFiles]":
iaStor.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

Now when you build the BartPE disc, it would be OK with the Intel SATA controller. The controller in question was part of the Intel Integrated chipsets 82801H.

The following URL was helpful: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=123813

So apart from the irony that I started recompiling my kernel recently with 2.6.30 and my first kernel was 2.0.36... I noticed some amazing speed improvements when I recompiled my kernel on my AMD 64-bit laptop. I took the stock .config file from Fedora 11 which came with the latest available kernel (config-2.6.29.5-191.fc11.x86_64) and copied it into the expanded kernel's directory as ".config" then ran "make menuconfig".
I basically really just tinkered with the processor settings and that seemed to do the speedup trick. I didn't think it was going to be *that* much quicker, but it is most definitely noticeable. I took out a lot of the "generic" features that they have to put in there so the kernel could run on a wide array of hardware/processor types. Below is the diff from the stock config and the tinkered config.
For example, I will never have 64 processors! Each of the allocated (non-existant) processors is a hit. I took out a lot of the Xen virtualization stuff, since I use VirtualBox. Selected the correct processor family. Took out a lot of stuff that I know I don't have (DELL/Toshiba optimizations). Everything else (device drivers, etc) I left the same... but those could be paired down too. (i.e.: I will never have an iSCSI card...) but since they're modules (for the most part) I am not too concerned.
( config.diff )

It's official, am holding a Mets ticket to a Phillies game in NYC. The owners of POPE and Side Car threw together this event from renting a bus to free beer and bar hopping before the 13:10 game on Aug 26th.
FTW!

So in bringing Jezebel up to Brad's parents didn't know until I was in the car that it wasn't just going to be the parents. It also included the extended family. The problem is had I known *before* dressing I would have selected more appropriate reserved attire instead of shorts and my "communism! It doesn't pay" t-shirt with the hammer & sickle. Thank goodness my "terrorist fist jab" shirt in fake arabic (english letters styled to look like Arabic) was in the hamper. Though I suppose if you're gonna be caught in Amish country with a loud t-shirt it's better to be in something other than that terrorist fist jab t-hirt.

So what started as a nice way to spend an outdoorsy sunday and finish the night early (@22h) at Bubble Tea house in West Philly has turned into a world wide thing. :)
The latest news apparently is that LA is now getting a Sundae Party which Lars Behrenroth introduced and will be spotlighting Carlos Mena.
Lee Jones, Lars keep up the good work, and selection of the Piazza was one of the best decisions yet!

So I found this program on freshmeat (which Fedora 11 had a yum package for, but not installed by default). It's a drop in replacement for "top"... more like "top" on crack!! It's called "htop"!

So instead of regenerating a new SSL key, Signature, and Certificate, I just resigned my old (self signed) CSR from last year. To do this, you need your old PEM/KEY and your old CSR. If you do, then the command is simply:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in LAST_YEARS.CSR -signkey LAST_YEARS.KEY -out THIS_YEARS.CRT

FYI, If you wish to generate a new new self signed cert with an unencrypted key (so you can restart apache without typing a password):

OUTFILE=my_server_ssl
TMPFILE=`mktemp`
dd if=/dev/urandom of="$TMPFILE" bs=1024 count=1
# Create a randomly generated file to seed below
openssl genrsa -des3 -rand ${TMPFILE} -out ${OUTFILE}.key 1024
# Decrypt the ${OUTFILE} key, b/c Apache will hang asking for a passphrase
# if we use the above ${OUTFILE}.key
openssl rsa -in ${OUTFILE}.key -out ${OUTFILE}.pem
# Generate a request
openssl req -new -key ${OUTFILE}.key -out ${OUTFILE}.csr
# Self signed bit
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in ${OUTFILE}.csr -signkey ${OUTFILE}.key -out ${OUTFILE}.crt

Grrr, so I installed a library (libmowgli) into /usr/local because I want to compile audacious for F11 with the non-free codecs. Then I downloaded and tried to configure libmcs to be installed in the same --prefix. And it crapped out on me saying the libmowgli could not be found. So I tried to run pkgconfig to see if it would find it. Sure enough, it was not found because PKG_CONFIG_PATH was not set to /usr/local/lib/pkg-config. OK, so I set it based on the freaking man page from pkgconfig. NOPE, it STILL won't find it. Apparently you have to set PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR instead. So either fix the man page, or fix the freaking program!

So I tried to use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill a bad config I had applied to my X11 server, and was surprised to find out that Xorg project has disabled it by default. GRRRR! I found this tidbit of information from the release notes for Fedora 11: "The key combination Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill the X server has been disabled by default as a decision of the upstream Xorg project." With instructions on how to enable it.

So I finally sat down and decided to try and configure Sun Java as my primary java provider over the OpenJDK which comes with F11. What prompted this was my requirement to use the official Sun Java for my plugin. After unsuccessfully trying to install Sun's plugin in my ~/.mozilla/plugins directory, I decide to try and do it "the right way" using /etc/alternatives. After reading many a docs, I finally found the correct syntax to use, and I will provide you with the full script for implementing your own. Some prerequisites though: when I downloaded Sun Java, I did the self-extracting installer and placed the resulting files under /opt. Then I made a symlink /opt/java -> /opt/jdk1.6.0_14. I set my $JAVA_HOME to /opt/java. The numbers listed below 16000, 16001 are priorities. The higher the number the more "best" autoconfigured alternatives choose.

gzip -9v /opt/java/man/man1/*.gz
alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/java/bin/java 16001 \
	--slave /usr/bin/javaws javaws /opt/java/bin/javaws \
	--slave /usr/bin/keytool keytool /opt/java/bin/keytool \
	--slave /usr/bin/orbd orbd /opt/java/bin/orbd \
	--slave /usr/bin/pack200 pack200 /opt/java/bin/pack200 \
	--slave /usr/bin/policytool policytool /opt/java/bin/policytool \
	--slave /usr/bin/rmid rmid /opt/java/bin/rmid \
	--slave /usr/bin/rmiregistry rmiregistry /opt/java/bin/rmiregistry \
	--slave /usr/bin/servertool servertool /opt/java/bin/servertool \
	--slave /usr/bin/tnameserv tnameserv /opt/java/bin/tnameserv \
	--slave /usr/bin/unpack200 unpack200 /opt/java/bin/unpack200 \
	--slave /usr/lib/jvm-exports/jre jre_exports /opt/java/jre/plugin \
	--slave /usr/lib/jvm/jre jre /opt/java/jre \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/java.1.gz java.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/java.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/keytool.1.gz keytool.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/keytool.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/orbd.1.gz orbd.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/orbd.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/pack200.1.gz pack200.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/pack200.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/policytool.1.gz policytool.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/ \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/rmid.1.gz rmid.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/rmid.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/rmiregistry.1.gz rmiregistry.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/rmiregistry.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/servertool.1.gz servertool.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/servertool.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/tnameserv.1.gz tnameserv.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/tnameserv.1.gz \
	--slave /usr/share/man/man1/unpack200.1.gz unpack200.1.gz /opt/java/man/man1/unpack200.1.gz

You can find where the originals point to by opening the appropriate database file for whatever you're creating the alternate for. So for example, if I wanted to find the alternatives for java, then I would open /var/lib/alternatives/java and the first line says that it's pointing to /usr/bin/java, its slave "javaws" is "originally" in /usr/bin/javaws, etc. After doing all of this, though I realised that the Java plugin for mozilla is no where in here. I really didn't care so much because I finally figured out how to beat this blasted alternatives system - what ever happened to $PATH settings, huh? So I did a "ls -l /etc/alternatives |grep -i iced" (because the "about:plugins" in my browser had mentioned something about IcedTea being the java). Sure enough "libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 -> /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/lib/amd64/IcedTeaPlugin.so". Using the trick above to open the alternatives database file, I found out that the "original" was in the mozilla plugins directory.

# cat /var/lib/alternatives/libjavaplugin.so.x86_64
auto
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/lib/amd64/IcedTeaPlugin.so
16000

So I installed the alternatives to the 64-bit version of the Sun Java plugin for Firefox:

# alternatives --install /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so 16001
# alternatives --display libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 
libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 - status is auto.
 link currently points to /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/lib/amd64/IcedTeaPlugin.so - priority 16000
/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so - priority 16001
Current `best' version is /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so.

Refresh your "about:plugins" page and there ya go! I got the official Sun Java running as a plugin, got the official Java Sun "java" running with alternatives, made it portable across upgrades (except for that gzip -9v line at the top) and learned how to use the alternatives system. HTH.

So I have been having this problem where when people call me the name of the person is not showing up in my blackberry. I have double confirmed that the phone number is in the same format, and that they *do* indeed exist in my blackberry.
Today I missed a phone call from the alarm company because I assumed that the 972 number was a vendor. Now I was pissed. Some long laborious searches on the net confirmed my problem. Apparently, it's related to the fact that I have encryption turned on. If the phone is locked, then all content is "protected". Makes sense, but you can unlock just your contacts.
Options - Security options - General settings - include contacts=NO

Let's see if this works!

Thanks to: http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=Bold&thread.id=18318

So a co-worker just showed me this command that's part of the GNU coreutils: "yes". From the man page:

YES(1)                           User Commands                          YES(1)

NAME
       yes - output a string repeatedly until killed

SYNOPSIS
       yes [STRING]...
       yes OPTION

DESCRIPTION
       Repeatedly output a line with all specified STRING(s), or ‘y’.

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie.

So far so good. Everything seems to be working fine (including, surprisingly WPA2). I had to download an updated driver from NVidia. But that was it.The only thing I am having an issue with is with the track pad. Apparently the "scroll wheel" feature (dragging your finger on the right hand side of the pad) and clicking by tapping on the pad is borked. To be honest I have been watching movies all morning so I haven't been paying too much attention. Though Taxi Driver is such a contrast from Psycho Beach Party... egads.

So I tried to contact NBC to give some feedback on how much their forced implementation of subtitle suck. Alas, the only thing the "feedback" and "contact us" link did was force me to some third party marketing site. So I now gripe. NBC forces the spanish subtitles to show up on my TV and there's nothing I can do to turn them off. In fact, I avoid NBC after 11:30 for that specific reason. Once my TV lands or surfs past NBC after that hour, the subtitle stays on the screen and there's nothing I can do to turn it off. I have to turn off the TV and turn it back on. It's the one reason why I don't watch the Tonight show... which kinda sucks because I love Conan. The subtitles are just annoying. <end gripe>

After much awaited release, pushed back several times - it should have been released June 1st - Fedora 11 is now out. I am downloading it as we speak from http://mirrors.kernel.org and will let you know what woes await. My desktop at work has been MIA since I tried to upgrade from F9 to F10... I had to do a complete reinstall. Luckily I copied off my home directory to an external drive. Considering as I just got F10 installed last night, I am just going to install F11 on top of this... nothing to lose really.

I am slowing down
As the years go by
I am sinking
So I trick myself
Like everybody else

The secrets I hide
Twist me inside
They make me weaker

So I trick myself
Like everybody else
I crouch in fear and wait
I'll never feel again

If only I could remember
Anything at all

So between unhappy birthday, money changes everything, rubber ring, and oscillate wildly, i can't choose... currently it's rubber ring.
Then again, there's always bloodflowers... 

So I was playing around with the blackberry SDK because I have an awesome idea for an app for which I don't have to learn the equivalent of Portuguese (objective-C) to my Spanish (C/C++) and I realised that the recent version of VirtualBox has "seamless" mode. Check out the embedded image below:

So I've written about how cool the Containable behavior is. I just found another cool feature about Containable. You can embed options like sort order! For example... $this->Client->contain(); in your controller will limit the return to just the model in question. In this case it's the Client model. Nothing new here. $this->Client->contain(array('Address')); in your controller will limit the return to the model in question, and its associated model. In this case the client's info and his associated addresses. Again, nothing new.

The coolness comes when you feed an array into the associated model which would be valid in a normal find operation. In this case, I am giving it a sort order!
$this->Client->contain(array('Address'=>array('order'=>'Address.zipcode DESC')));

I think i figured out what the issues was. I only figured it out because of the unique position of my job, I have administrative access to our RADIUS (TACACS) server. First off it has everything to do with selecting the correct CA Certificate. If you have access to the RADIUS server then go to "System Configuration" -> "ACS Certificate Setup" -> "Install ACS Certificate", the "Issued By" line should be what you select in the drop downin your blackberry. In my case it was "Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority".

If it's a self signed cert, then you might be able to ask the admin to email you the certificate listed under "ACS Certification Authority Setup"then manually sync it.

If can't determine the company who signed your organization's certificate you can do trial and error (use every CA Cert in the list on your blackberry) until one works. If it was a self-signed cert, then you're out of luck. You'll have to obtain a copy of the cert (somehow) and trust it implicitly.