Cedarboy.com

Got my Motorola Xoom today! I have been looking at them for quite some time because when I held one for the first time it just felt so sturdy. I LOVE things that feel sturdy and reliable. This applies to guns, phones, laptops… the list goes on. If something feels cheap to me I really don’t want to use it.

After charging it up and booting it up for the first time I got the itch. You know what I’m talking about. The best way to break in a new Android device is to void the Warranty and ROOT IT!

I found some handy tuts that covered the ins and outs of simple rooting:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1477024

http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/Motorola_Xoom#Unlocking_the_Bootloader_.28All_Models.29

The rooting went along smoothly and I was up and toying with all my favorite apps.

Now to see if I can make a smooth looking interface for my http://cedarboy.com/informational/ultimate-carputer/!

Anywho, I’m going to play with it some more and maybe do some programming. Later Days!

Back in the day it was an adventure to image a system and restore it on a virtual box image. Those days are gone now that vBox now supports images from VMWare. Using the VMWare converter, you can simply use a magical wizard and have a fully functional vBox server.

To start, download the converter from VMWare on the machine you want to convert. (Yes, you’ll have to register):

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/get.html

Read more…

I was browsing around the web regarding beyond sight flying of R/C airplanes and I came across DIYDrones.com . This site is an amazing resource regarding amature DIY Drones. After looking through the site I made the jump and decided to do my own little project.

First I need a plane of course. I want something with a huge wingspan, something that can glide under low power. I browsed the ever popular nitroplanes.com and found a totally appropriate plane.  (http://www.nitroplanes.com/mq9.html)

I’m ordering it later this week and will post details as this project goes on. Videos will be done via QIK – in the webcam section.

http://diydrones.com

http://www.nitroplanes.com/mq9.html

Read more…

Heres some good little snipets for backing up with robo copy and having an email confirmation with attached log file.

REQUIRED PROGRAMS:
7zip command line tool:
http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

BLAT emailer:
http://www.blat.net/

-Just download these and throw em in your c:\windows\system32 folder

Read more…

I stumbled across this error today while doing windows updates on several new windows 7 laptops.  The error was  ”Error 66a” and it prevented me from installing the .NET 4 security patch.

The fix for this little bugger is below.

Click on Start and click on Control panel.

B.    Go to Program and Features.

C.    Scroll down to Microsoft.Net Framework 4 Client Profile, right click it.

D.   It will give you a choice of Uninstall/Change, click it.

E.    Then, it will give a choice to Repair it, pick Repair  it. It will take about 4-10 minutes to repair (with my PC) your experience may vary.

F.     When completed, go to your update center, and update it again

I havn’t worked with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 much, but today I got thrown into the lions den when a client asked if I could update the SSL certificate because they were getting an error that the certificate was outdated. I searched and searched, but simply could not find the answer I wanted.  After an hour, I FINALLY found the solution on microsoft’s technet, the magic line is below.

1) Open up the Exchange Management Shell

2) Type the following -replacing the information for your server below

New-ExchangeCertificate -DomainName “exchange1.domain.com”, “exchange1″ -Services “SMTP”

The console will ask you if you want to replace the existing certificate. Type “Y” and then ENTER.

DONE!

What a relief! I was finally able to continue the mass of other support calls coming in today.

Sources:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851505(EXCHG.80).aspx

I inted to convert my 2003 Chevrolet Silverado into a wandering mass of technology.  Follow me as i design and build this hefty project. Below are the features that i intend to include. Though there could be much more capability i will work to obtain the below first.

Hardware:

• EEE PC netbook with SSD and Ubuntu OS
• USB ODB II Interface ($29)
• Relay control system for remote starting ( option 1 Spinneret Webserver, option 2 USB Relay ) (~$50)
• Secondary 12V power system ( If i decide all this technology will leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere with a dead battery)
• USB GPS Reciever ($20)
• Verizon Aircard (tethering with Droidx may eliminate this. -im cheap.)
• Ubnt bullet 2.4 ghz
• External 1 TB HD
• Multiband antenna for gps, wifi and cell booster
• Willson Cellphone Booster
• Logitech HiDef usb camera(s ?)
• Touch LCD Display or Android powered Tablet

Designated Functions

• Remote file sync
• GPS navigation
• Remote Start (keyless unit / web) (Relay system / OBDII Interface)
• Remote Diagnosing (web based) (ODB II USB Interface
• Mobile Hotspot (UBNT pico station HP)
• Wifi leeching (using open wifi)
• Entertainment System (music, videos, games)
• Interface for Android OS
• VOIP (with cab microphone) Skype / Ventrilo (microphone pre-installed)
• Full control of vehicle lights, audio. (USB ODB II Interface / Relay system)

Read more…

Here are some tips to detect whether you are being DDOS’d

1) SSH into the terminal and type the following

netstat -anp |grep 'tcp\|udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

This should tell you how many connections each IP has to the server. Anything over 50 is pretty excessive.

2) Check bandwidth graphs

See if your host offers Cacti bandwidth graphs, if they dont, why not install it yourself?
Visit http://www.cacti.net/ for more information

See what the current bandwidth usage is, if it is way higher than normal, obviously there is something going on.

5) See what traffic is going through your server, it could be extremely excessive.

tcpdump -l should only average merely a few lines per second.

type the following and you can try and pick through the data with wireshark.
tcpdump -i <interface> -s 65535 -w <some-file>

Heres the simple version of information ive found on howto verify a file transfer with md5 checksums in linux. (cygwin works too)

cd into the source directory and type the following

find -type f -exec md5sum "{}" \;  >> md5source.txt

next, navigtate to your destination and use the following

md5sum -c /path/to/source/md5source.txt

You can also use the diff command to verify the files are the same

diff --recursive /DIR1/ /DIR2/

Posted for personal reference, maybe it will help someone out there.

Later days!

Ive been battling an HP Color Laserjet 3000dn for a while now. When it loads i get an error saying

RFU LOAD ERROR
DOWNLOAD FILE NOW
SEND RFU UPGRADE

I found what to do and will share my wisdom below.

For Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

1) First, plug the printer in with a USB cable

2) Add the printer using the gnome printer utility found in
System > Administration > Printing

Look for a printer with the name “Upgrade” in the name, mine was Hewlett-Packard-HP-LaserJet-USB-Upgrade.

Now finish the printer install by selecting the default PS driver.

3) Once the printer is added Set it as your DEFAULT printer

4) Goto HP’s Website and download the .RFU firmware file
http://welcome.hp.com/country/ca/en/cs/support.html
It’s usually in the “Cross operating system (BIOS, Firmware, Diagnostics, etc.)” category

5) Download the UNIX version and uncompress the file to your desktop

6) Open a terminal and type the following

lpr /home/USER/Desktop/FILENAME
USER being your username and FILENAME being the name of the .RFU file you downloaded.
ex:
lpr /home/bcl/Desktop/lj3000fq_46.041.2.rfu

The printer will now show a progress %

Once the upgrade is complete the printer will reboot and be good as new!

Hope this helps!