Category Archives: Aaaarghh!

Frustrating stuff and hopefully, their solutions.

SkyCity 802.11n USB 2.0 driver for Windows

Posted on by
Reply

Bought a very cheap DealExtreme WiFi USB adapter with this info:

Driver Information for Realtek RTL8188CU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter / ECS H61H2-M3
Device Name
 Realtek RTL8188CU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter
Hardware ID
 USB\VID_0BDA&PID_8176&REV_0200
USB\VID_0BDA&PID_8176 <—- Device ID matches with our database

Compatible IDs:
USB\CLASS_FF&SUBCLASS_FF&PROT_FF
USB\CLASS_FF&SUBCLASS_FF
USB\CLASS_FF
Version
 1006.1.713.2010,2010-07-13
Device Type
 net
Driver Version
 1015.6.210.2012
OS Support
 2K,XP,2K3,VISTA,WIN7,WIN8/32bits
Driver Date
 2012-02-10
Manufacturer
 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

And finally found a working Windows driver:

http://www1.medion.de/downloads/index.pl?op=detail&id=11727&type=treiber&lang=us

Just wanted to share :-)

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

Reverse DNS & Telecom Italia (Interbusiness)

Posted on by
Reply

Per cambiare il Reverse DNS (rDNS) di Telecom Italia (Interbusiness) da loro nome di default tipo host113-249-static.47-98-b.business.telecomitalia.it in il nome del vostro nome del dominio / mail server, tipo mail.nomedeldominio.it, basta fare una chiamata a

800-018914, opzione 5

e chiedere il cambio. Tutto lì.

Dopo il cambio, potreste controllare qua se tutto funziona:
http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3anomedeldominio.it
…cliccando sul SMTP Test

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

Debian 6 and slow DNS lookup & resolving

Posted on by
Reply

Just installed a basic Debian 6 server and was amazed about how much time it took to resolve any domain name; at least 4 seconds. But I found the solution: if you don’t use IPv6 then disable it.

Check the IPv6 alias:

grep ipv6 /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

This should give you this entry:

# alias net-pf-10 ipv6

Edit that file and change the line to:

alias net-pf-10 off ipv6

Then reboot. As always, YMMV.

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

Windows 2008 R2 Server & Windows 7 Pro: Unidentified network unchangeable

Posted on by
Reply

After installing Windows 2008 R2 inside VMware, I changed the network driver from E1000 to VMNET3. No problem, Windows 2008 R2 recognized the new adapters after a reboot. I only had to change the DHCP IP address to fixed IP. And then the problems started: apparently Windows 2008 (or Windows 7) won’t let you change the network location as soon as it has put the network in the ‘Unidentified network’ category. Trying ‘to fix’ this problem using the Windows ‘Diagnose’ tool just removed the fixed IP address and put it back on DHCP (and strangely, now the network category is Public).

This, of course, sucks.

However, this little trick should work:

1. Start –> run –> MMC –> press enter

2. In MMC console , from menu file select Add/Remove Snap-in

3. Select Group Policy Object editor –> Press Add –> select Local computer –> press OK –>press OK

4. Open Computer configration –>Windows Settings –>Security Settings –>select Network list manager policies

5. Double click –>Unidentified networks

Then you can select the option to consider the Unidentified networks as private.

This worked for me !

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

VMware ESXi 5 and LSI1068E controller crap

Posted on by
Reply

Had lots of problems using my IBM BR10i and Dell SAS 5I/r controllers; performance under ESXi 5 was terrible.
Just 3.5 MB/s on write. Under Linux, write performance was around 110-120 MB/s. So WTF ?

I thought that all this was needed (disable Interrupt Routing):

# esxcli system settings kernel list -o iovDisableIR
# esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE iovDisableIR (just the above command wasn't enough)
# auto-backup.sh
# auto-backup.sh (yes, twice!)
# reboot

Check:

# esxcfg-advcfg -j iovDisableIR
# esxcli system settings kernel list -o iovDisableIR


But in the end, this wasn’t it. Seems that LSI1068E based controllers disable all disk caching built into the drives by default.

If the server has battery backup you can enable basic drive caching on the Logical Volumes without risk (or, without a battery, WITH risk).

Goto www.LSI.com (The controller is made by LSI) and download and install MegaRAID Storage Manager. In short, install the VIB on your ESXi machine, the Manager on a Windows or Linux machine, sync their host names and enable all ports on the ESXi firewall for incoming TCP traffic.

Highlight the Virtual Raid Volume, right click, properties. Enable Cache and save. You have to do this on every logical raid volume.

Your performance difference is incredible.

And I just lost a day of looking for the solution. Crap.

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

[solved] OS X 10.7 Lion and mail search not working…

Posted on by
9

I was stunned to find out that the search function on the Mail.app wasn’t working anymore since I’ve upgraded my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to (the very cool) Lion 10.7. Thought it could be Spotlight not working, or something else.

Well, as it turns out, it’s a combination of 2 problems:

1) turn Spotlight indexing on: sudo mdutil -i on /
2) when using IMAP, configure your account to Keep a message for viewing offline

That’s it! Where Snow Leopard was able to search thru already downloaded mail (although the above option was enabled), Lion can’t.

Now the search is working great!

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

Poste Italiane: International shipments price list 2011

Posted on by
Reply

Seems to be it’s impossibile to find out how much the Italian Postal service is charging for a simple shipment of a box outside Italy. In fact, on their site they ONLY show you the more expensive ways (PaccoCelere Internazionale, QuickPak Europe, EMS) but these services have a starting price of € 28 ! There’s NO direct link on their site towards this page: http://www.poste.it/postali/ordinario/estero.shtml

So, if you’re in Italy and you need to ship something, ask for “pacco ordinario per l’estero’. They won’t have any documentation about it and the price will depend on weight, country and if you’ll be using air or ground services.

But how to know what it’ll cost… Well, see the attached image of an internal document of the Poste Italiane! Should be valid from 2011 but your mileage may vary: prices are always subject to change (mostly without notice).

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook

Aumento tariffe Paccocelere di Poste Italiane

Posted on by
Reply

Eccomi qui a fare l’ennesimo post per annunciare l’aumento delle tariffe postali del “pacco celere” che è operativo dal 24 agosto scorso e che, ovviamente, è avvenuto in sordina, senza nessun avviso per gli utenti.

Per chi vende online o per chi partecipa a swap, baratti, scambi e simili (come me) è l’ennesimo salasso ingiustificato, ingiustificato perché essenzialmente la qualità dei servizi postali nazionali peggiora invece di migliorare, malgrado gli aumenti costanti e abbondanti!
Stessa cosa per chi ama comprare online (come me ancora una volta) che si vedrà addebitate spese di spedizione ancora più care.

Per calcolare l’aumento basta aggiungere il costo dell’IVA al 20% ai prezzi del paccocelere, quindi la postacelere 1 passa da 10 a 12,00 euro, mentre il pacco celere 3 passa da 9,50 a 11,40 euro (quasi quasi conviene di più il primo tanto per 60 centesimi di differenza…) e il pacco celere 1 (da 0 a 3kg.) passa da 13,00 a 15,60 euro!

Però una buona notizia c’è, sono venuta a conoscenza di un nuovo servizio privato, per spedire in Italia, che ha costi un po’ inferiori, devo solo provarlo e poi preparo una bella recensione a “blog unificati”… Si chiama www.spedireweb.it.

Post to Twitter Tweet Post to Delicious Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to Facebook