Category: Technology (Page 27 of 47)

Adding a virtual network interface on Debian

March 26, 2010 / halfgaar

When clustering machines, you make it possible for a failover node to be accessible on the same address as the primary node by having a virtual network interface. In Debian, you can add one like this:

iface eth0:0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.75
    network 192.168.1.0
    broadcast 192.168.1.255
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.1.251

By leaving out the auto eth0:0, I prevent the interface from becoming active automatically. I can do “ifup eth0:0” to enable it. This can also be left to clustering software, but clustering software can also get in the way, so often you just want to do it by hand.

Preventing the creation of $RECYCLE.BIN on Samba shares by Windows 7

March 25, 2010 / halfgaar

Windows 7 kept creating a $RECYCLE.BIN dir on the network share. This in itself is merely annoying, but there were also errors resulting from it. Whenever a file would be deleted, this message would appear (translated from dutch): “The recycle bin is damaged, do you want to delete the contents?” Everything froze until that question was answered.

Samba has an option “veto files” which can be used to stop the creation of that directory. Put this in each share’s section in your smb.conf:

veto files = /*$RECYCLE.BIN/

The slashes are not directory separators in this case. Also, I don’t know if the preceeding * is necessary, but it does no harm.

MAC address space for Xen

March 24, 2010 / halfgaar

The MAC address space reserved for Xen is 00:16:3e:xx:xx:xx. Source.

Show fields in a SSL certificate with openssl

March 23, 2010 / halfgaar

To use OpenSSL to get the certficate information (source):

Signing Request	openssl req -in cert.req -text
Signed Certificate	openssl x509 -in cert.crt -text
Encrypted Private Key	openssl rsa -in www.closetheloan.pem -text
Unencrypted Private Key	openssl rsa -in www.closetheloan.key -text

Configuring Thunderbird to have newest mails at the top by default

March 22, 2010 / halfgaar

Thunderbird sorts its mails in such a way that the newest mails are at the bottom of the list by default. You can change it, but you have to change it for each folder separately, which sucks.

The solution is to set the order option with the advanced config editor before you open the folders (before you let Thunderbird create the index):

mailnews.default_sort_order = 2

Migrating user accounts when upgrading from samba 3.2 to 3.3 or 3.4

March 22, 2010 / halfgaar

Because I wanted to be able to give Windows 7 machines access to our domain controller, I needed to upgrade samba to 3.4 from lenny-backports. Because the database backend changed, a consequence of this was that the user database was empty; it didn’t migrate it.

pdbedit has an option to import the old smbpasswd file:

pdbedit -i smbpasswd:/etc/samba/smbpasswd

That should take care of it. I didn’t test it this way though, because I already fiddled with the user database by creating new users by hand. I imported one user with which I still had problems correctly this way, but I don’t know if importing this database from the start would have prevented all my errors.

Console commands for Unreal Tournament

March 20, 2010 / halfgaar

This site has a comprehensive list of Unreal Tournament 99 console commands. Some necessary ones (for some you have to do adminlogin first, provided you’re playing on a dedicated server):

Restart map	admin servertravel restart
Change map	admin switchlevel (or servertravel) [map name]
Kick player	admin kick [player]
Kick and ban player	admin kickban [player name]
Remove all bots	admin killall Bot
Screenshot	shot
Show player ip’s	showips
Show player id’s	showid
kick player with ID	kickid [id]
kick and ban player with ID	banid [id]

Adding a quick launch in Windows 7

March 18, 2010 / halfgaar

Windows 7 doesn”t have a quicklaunch by default. Luckily, there is a fix. To enable it, add toolbar, other toolbar and include this as location:

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

That site also states you have to save your theme, so do that, to be safe. Just do desktop right mouse, adjust to preference, rightmouse on unsaved theme, etc.

Listing samba users

March 17, 2010 / halfgaar

Newer samba versions no longer have a human readable password file. To see the passwords, use pdbedit. Do “pdbedit -w -L” to get a classic password file layout.

Fixing extremely slow domain logon windows 7

March 17, 2010 / halfgaar

I just installed two Windows 7 machines and both of them take a very long time to logon to the (samba) domain controller. I’ve found several reports on the internet about people with the same issue. This was one of the pages I found. I tried it and it works. It says:

Run gpedit.msc.
Go to computer configuration.
Go to Administrative templates.
Go to System.
Go to User profiles.
Enable “Set maximum wait time for the network if a user has a roaming user profile or remote home directory” and set to 0 seconds

You’d think that this means it can’t logon, because it suggests the wait period was because of network connection problem. However, I tried adding files to the profile on the server and logged in, and the file was synced to the PC. So, it does seem to work.

While I was at it, I also changed the setting not to allow logons with temporary profiles. It’s in the same list as the option above. In Dutch, it’s “gebruikers niet aanmelden met tijdelijke profielen”.

I also found this about slow logons. It’s for Windows XP, but perhaps it’s useful. It sets “Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon” to true. For some reason, the asynchronous loading of the network caused slowdown for that person.

Finally, I also found people who fixed slow logons by setting the desktop to an image, as opposed to solid color. I tested it, and indeed seemed to influence it.