Monday, December 13, 2010

mobile broadband 5720 evdo rev-a error 9999 when using dell mobile broadband card utility (dmbcu)

had this error on a work computer today, everything was up to date, reinstalled the latest drivers, no dice

after digging around i found the fix on the dell support forums here -
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/network-internet-wireless/f/3324/p/18789079/18912065.aspx

here's the fix -

So, to check for this situation, do this:
1. Launch Internet Explorer
2. Using IE's menus, Select Tools->Manage Add-ons->Enable or Disable Add-ons
3. In the 'Show' drop-down listbox, Select 'Add-ons that run without requiring permission'
4. If any of the MeadCo Zeepe Add-ons are disabled, Enable THEM!
5. Exit IE
6. Restart IE and check that the configuration stayed.

Try DMBCU!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

disable and turn off ipv6 in ubuntu linux

i am doing this on ubuntu linux 10.*

you must of course sudo or be root before proceeding

edit /etc/sysctl.conf

add the following lines to the bottom of the file:
#disable ipv6
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

now reboot, or reinitialize sysctl by issuing this command:
sysctl -p

Friday, May 28, 2010

outbound smtp on osx leopard, enabling postfix for mail blasting

if you have a mac lying around and not being used, it can be setup fairly easily to be an smtp email server

this could come in handy for a company that doesn't have exchange, is using hosted email with relay limits such as godaddy and their 250 relays per day, and needs to regularly send a large number of emails out to clients as well as internal staff

we are going to use the built in postfix email server that is part of osx leopard, we will set it up so that the email server will look to the local osx user database, any user account setup on the osx box will be able to be used for sending email, so when you need a new email user just add a regular osx user instead of having to setup sasl lists

first thing we need to do is enable it, to do so navigate to:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

let's open this file up and edit it, i prefer using the vi editor. right before the closing </dict> tag we need to add some parameters, these will enable postfix to start when the computer boots up, so add this line right before that tag:
<key>OnDemand</key> <false /> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/>

we can either use launchctl to start it up right now, or we can reboot, to use launchctl make sure you're root or sudo the command:
launchctl

once in the launchctl prompt do:
start org.postfix.master

after this, let's check netstat:
netstat -a | grep smtp

we should then see localhost listening for smtp connections, like this:
tcp4 0 0 localhost.smtp *.* LISTEN

next we need to make changes to /etc/postfix/main.cf:
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtpd_use_pw_server=yes
enable_server_options=yes
smtpd_pw_server_security_options=plain, login
smtpd_sasl_security_options=noanonymous
smtpd_client_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated, permit_mynetworks, reject
smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated, permit_auth_destination, reject
broken_sasl_auth_clients=yes
mynetworks = 192.168.240.0/21


lastly we will want to tell postfix which networks to accept mail from, for my purposes i only want to accept mail from machines in our local subnet, there is an option called mynetworks_style that has a choice of subnet that should be acceptable for most people's uses, since the box i am setting up will be multihomed with 1 of the ips being public, i don't want to use that option for obvious reasons, instead of the mynetworks_style option i will use the mynetworks option like this:
mynetworks = 192.168.240.0/21

i am in a cidr network, most folks won't be, if we were in a standard class c network it'd look something like this:
mynetworks = 192.168.240.0/24

last thing here, the default file size is far too small for my purposes, i need to be able to send out at least 5 dvd's worth of date, 5 * 4.7gb = 23.5gb, just kidding! seriously if we can send out 20mb then i'm happy and my users will be too (keep in mind, it isn't uncommon to run across a system you are sending to that has a 10mb file size limit!), so we'll open up our main.cf and change the parameter named message_size_limit, like this:
message_size_limit = 20480000

after this, restart the server or restart postfix, as root you can do this to restart postfix:
postfix reload

that should be it!

here are some handy commands for postfix

Reload launchctl after plist edit:
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

List active plist files:
launchctl list

Start up/test updated plist:
sudo launchctl start org.postfix.master

Send a test email:
mail name@domain.com

Check the mail queue:
mailq

Clear the mail queue:
sudo postsuper -d ALL

Editing the configuration file:
vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

Reloading postfix after changes:
sudo postfix reload

Starting and Stopping postfix:
sudo postfix stop
sudo postfix start

-----------------------
UPDATE - 01/03/2010 - i have noticed mac osx will sometimes overwrite values in /etc/postfix/main.cf

in particular the inet_interfaces value was changed on my installation. it was changed from all, to localhost, of course this made postfix only listen on localhost thus causing a connection error when clients attempted to mail through this system, changing inet_interfaces from localhost to all then rebooting is the simplest way to resolve this issue.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

another long progress bar, 152 hours!

copying 45,750 items to "design002"
39.63 gb of 2.56 tb - about 152 hours


Friday, March 12, 2010

long progress bar

this is the kind of stuff i deal with at work, it's a friday night and we got this crazy time going on:


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

why i no longer do business with dell

i received an email today from a dell account rep, they are on a campaign trying to reach out to businesses that have not worked with dell in some time

here was my response, included is a fun story that explains why this i.t. manager will never do business with dell again:

hello kara,

we are not interested in any further purchasing with dell

we do not wish to speak with anyone about this decision at this present time

if you have the time, here is my rant on why i will never do business with dell again:

early september 2008 i was waiting for a shipment of 7 pcs that i was told would ship 08/25/2008, order was placed 08/18/2008, next day shipping was used

i received an email about the order being cancelled, aaron even asked me if i had meant to cancel them. i replied, absolutely not! i did not cancel the order, my job was relying on that order!

so we then had a new order on 09/02/2008, i was supposed to have the machines by this date, they were scheduled to be rolled out 09/03/2008, i let aaron know that this situation was “screwing me”, in fact it very much was. i still have all of the emails from this incident, stresses me out just perusing through them to pick the dates out.

they finally arrived on the 10th. or 11th., by then i had already placed an order for 7 hp systems, ordered through pcconnection.com, they arrived the next day and deployed before the dell systems had arrived.

i have seen dell at big jobs i’ve been on, like the navy marine corps intranet, as well as the transportation security administration, these were all huge jobs with enormous purchasing budgets, maybe dell rocks for the big dogs like that, but for a small to medium sized business i do not feel at all that i could ever rely upon dell from that point forward.

i have not ordered dell since then. i have relayed this story to all other i.t. personnel in the apparel and creative circles i work with, i could have lost my job over that mess.

needless to say, i will not be purchasing any dell products in the future, there are far too many other options out there for me to have to go through this sort of stressed out chaos with your company ever again,

thank you,

nathon


Friday, January 22, 2010

virtualbox bridged networking osx host windows xp guest mtu bug!

if you are running windows xp as a guest os using bridged networking, and osx as the host os, using virtualbox for the virtualization software, then i am sure you have noticed some difficulty getting to various websites, such as microsoft's windows update site

the strange thing is that some sites do indeed load, my personal natefrogg.com site loaded without incident, google.com also loads just fine, you may even be able to access other machines on the lan without any issues as well!

it comes down to the mtu settings, for whatever reason, the standard 1500 mtu needs to be reduced in your guest operating system. it appears that the bridged networking mode in virtualbox actually interferes with packet size, packets larger than 1469 will not correctly transmit, seems to be that virtualbox is padding the packets

we need to change the mtu in windows xp, or whatever guest os you are using, to 1469 in order to resolve this problem

to do so, open up a registry editor, i am using regedit, and navigate to this key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\[Adapter ID]]

note that [Adapter ID] is going to be a unique alphanumeric sequence, you may have several, you need to find the correct one, usually the correct key will have more entries within it, to be safe you could add the mtu entry to all of them, it wouldn't do any harm to do so...

once in the registry key for your interface, create a new dword value and call it MTU

edit the MTU dword value, change the value itself to 1469 and make sure it is a decimal value and not hexadecimal

close up the registry editor, it is time to reboot

once rebooted, try to get to the sites you were having issues with, all should be well in the land of bridged networking now

the virtualbox.org site does in fact have record of this bug, it is filed as trouble ticket #3783 and can be viewed on the virtualbox site here: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3783