Category Archives: Aaaarghh!

Frustrating stuff and hopefully, their solutions.

Synology Cloud Station and the pesky TailCharacterConflict error

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At my (previous) company we’re using Synology Cloud Station with 20 users and lots of files. One user was complaining that the folder names were renamed with this nice addition:

Company Name B.V._PC_Name_UserName_Jan-27-145750-2015_TailCharacterConflict

Everything I tried didn’t help: renaming the folder, deleting it from the server, resyncing, everything. Google wasn’t a big help either. The folder kept being renamed with this very irritating TailCharacterConflict.

Until I saw the pattern.

You CAN’T let you folder name end with a trailing PERIOD. In this case, the folder name was Company Name B.V.

Changing the folder name to Company Name BV (with the periods) solved the problem. Insane, but true!

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Get the latest BlackBerry App World update; without getting stuck in the loop.

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Browse to this link with your BB to get the latest App World update; without getting stuck in the ‘You need to update App World before you can download App World using the App World app’-loop.

http://mobileapps.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=appworld

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Solved: “[Firmware Bug] ACPI No _BQC method”, initial brightness problem when installing Linux

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Tried to install OpenElec and Ubuntu on a mini-ITX Sapphire White system and every time I tried to run the installer, I got a blank screen.
So I booted OpenElec (and Ubuntu) without the ‘quiet’ option from the kernel parameters and I was able to see this error:

[Firmware Bug] ACPI No _BQC method, cannot determine initial brightness

IMG_4599

My system is NOT a laptop so I don’t care about brightness. Searching for a solution on the internet got me nowhere; it involved recompiling kernels but that’s not very useful when I still need to install the Linux distribution.

But I found a solution! Forcing this entry into the kernel parameters while booting the installer:

acpi_backlight=vendor

… it solved my problems! So, OpenElec and Ubuntu are now installing without problems.

BUT, don’t forget to modify your installed distro to reflect the same parameter! If you use OpenElec, you’ll need to manually add the parameter when booting it, SSH into your box and remount the /flash mount as RW (mount -o remount,rw /flash), so you can edit the syslinux.cfg file and add the parameter.

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Cisco SG300 / SG500 switch SSH Public key authentication

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Argh! I wasn’t able to paste my public SSH key into the switch’s GUI (keeps on giving me a very annoying error:

“Invalid key string.
When a Key is entered, it should contain the “BEGIN” and “END” markers.”

So, let’s try the CLI. I presume you already know how to handle a Cisco from the terminal.

– Enable ssh-server on the switch

switchxxxxxx(config)# ip ssh server

– Enable public key authentication

switchxxxxxx(config)# ip ssh pubkey-auth auto-login

– Add a user:

switchxxxxxx(config)# username martijn password SecretPassword privilege 15

– Then, add user’s public key

switchxxxxxx(config)# crypto key pubkey-chain ssh
switchxxxxxx(config-pubkey-chain)# user-key martijn rsa
switchxxxxxx(config-pubkey-key)# key-string

(paste your id_rsa.pub here)

– Check if the fingerprint is correct:

switchxxxxxx# show crypto key pubkey-chain ssh

Username Fingerprint
————– —————————————————————
martijn 35:ea:60:06:fc:d7:f7:d3:3b:d1:0f:10:63:f7:0b:02

Now try to ssh to your switch; no password should be asked.

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SkyCity 802.11n USB 2.0 driver for Windows

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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 🙂

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Reverse DNS & Telecom Italia (Interbusiness)

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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

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Debian 6 and slow DNS lookup & resolving

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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.

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

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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 !

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VMware ESXi 5 and LSI1068E controller crap

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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.

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

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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!

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