HeXagon’s Hut

This is a laptop I bought for school. With a pricetag of about $700, it isn’t too shabby, assuming you don’t plan to use the DVD Burner.

Processor
This machine is fast. With a Dual core 2.2Ghz processor, this thing can easily run Windows 7 Ultimate with little or no hesitation. However, the motherboard on the system does not support 64bit memory isolation, making it impossible to run 64bit virtual machines inside VMWare, an inconvenience for myself but could be a deal-breaker for others. The processors do sport a two step frequency listing. Low power is at 1.2Ghz and Full power is at 2.2Ghz. Newer intel processors can do many more frequencies based on load. 2MB L2 cache is sufficient for this machine. The heatsync does its job quite well on this laptop, it has a separate cooling device from the video card and the laptop has tons of airflow. There are times when the system can burn your leg from heat exhaust but that can be solved by elevating the rear of the laptop. This system could heat a small room in the winter when being used at full speed.

Memory

The laptop comes stock with 4GB of memory. The sticks are matched Kingston memory modules. The memory is a Dual Channel 400Mhz DDR2. This allows for a full speed of 800Mhz memory. This matches the FSB of the processor and allows for the memory to be able to keep up with the front side bus. This keeps bottlenecks down. The memory is NON-ECC, NON-FBDIMM, This makes performance memory very cheap since DDR2 is the memory in highest production at this time.

Graphics
The graphics card in the laptop is very powerful. With 1GB of dedicated onboard memory it allows for a significant gain since the laptop does not have to share memory with the video card. This video card does have problems running GTA4 as it doesn’t have the internal horsepower needed. The video card also has built in power management that allows it to scale down to 275Mhz Core Clock when running a 2D desktop up to 500Mhz Core Clock when running a 3D application. The video card has it’s own built in fan and heatsync to allow it to cool separately from the processor and the rest of the system. It doesn’t get nearly as hot as the processor but does come on when gaming.

Physical Characteristics
The laptop is rigid and doesn’t feel light or flimsy. The keyboard is responsive and very easy to get used to. It follows the same standard as most IBM keyboards and avoids some of the pitfalls of the Lenovo keyboards. The CD Tray (Also a DVD Burner) has an ejection button that sits out WAY too far. I am usually able to run my hand down the side of the laptop, or able to pick it up and the tray will pop open.

Problems
Oh, don’t get me started here. Since I have owned the laptop I have ran into a few problems.
#1 – Laptop APM doesn’t play well with hard drives. Sometimes the hard drives will attempt to enter a safety mode when they detect a “drop condition”, the motherboard doesn’t like this and instructs the drive to wake-up. This causes an endless cycle of clicking until the laptop is rebooted due to whatever firmware bug exists in the motherboard. BIOS and Hard drive are up to latest manufacturer releases and this error is present in different drives. While this doesn’t appear to do any long term damage to the drive it is a real inconvenience. A simple nudge or bump in the wrong direction can make the drive enter this condition and make the laptop have to be hard rebooted.

#2 – Mouse key clickers wear out very quickly. Whenever you ‘click’ on an item with a mouse you get that actual ‘click’. After about 4 to 6 months my left mouse clicker wore out and makes no sound at all now. There is no snapping resistance like there is with the right mouse clicker.

#3 – DVD Burner. The DVD burner is junk. It cannot properly burn a DVD. The geometry that the burner uses to put data on a disc is very incorrect. I burned a Windows 7 Ultimate backup copy on the laptop and was unable to boot it on the same laptop. I burn the CD on a MAC in the next room and I am able to see the physical differences between the two DVDs. The MAC burned at a higher speed but still produced more pronounced pits indicating a higher burning power. The MAC also used more of the surface area, this indicates that the laptop does not use the correct geometry and does not have the correct power level setting on the DVD drive to properly burn a DVD.

#4 – Case squeeks. At the front of the case on either side of the trackpad there are large open areas to rest the wrists. When enough pressure is placed on the edges the laptop creeks as the plastic bends and rubs against the top and the bottom. This can get quite annoying when using the laptop at a desk.

#5 – HDMI Placement. HDMI Placement is on the back of the laptop. the ONLY connector on the back of the laptop. With plenty of room along the sides still available I am not sure why the manufacturer chose to put the HDMI on the rear of the laptop.

Conclusion
The laptop is a good piece of equipment overall but does need some engineering changes to be a real work of art. Moving the HDMI sensor, fixing the case squeeks, a different DVD burner (with a low profile or recessed ejection button) and a drive chipset that plays nicely with modern drives.

TL;DR – I would not recommend this laptop to anyone as it seems that it wears out very quickly and I’m sure soon the keyboard will begin to malfunction.

So, I have this G5 case laying around. What to do with it… I KNOW! I’m going to build a new desktop computer. I’ve stripped down the case to the bare minimums and I have a plan.

1. Install Lian-Li 6x Motherboard Caddy
2. Install liquid cooling
3. Fabricate and install a custom hard drive holder.
4. Fabricate and install a PSU and CD-Rom holder.

Here is a picture of the stripped case. Stay tuned!

Few months ago I got a brand new ASUS Laptop. I felt like king. My ex’s laptop dies. She gets a brand new MacBook Pro. I’m jealous, until today.

She is on the internet, using the laptop and all is well. She walks away to go eat. Comes back about 20 minutes later at which time the display is off (power saving) but the laptop is not asleep. She clicks the mouse and gets a scrolling wheel. Great. Simple fix… Reboot.

Laptop attempts to reboot and doesn’t get past the gray screen with the apple logo and rotating status circle. She tries this, 3 to 5 times. We decide with the help of my father who has 3 Macs that a Genius Bar appointment would be nice. I make an appointment for 8:30 at the Stonebriar, Frisco Apple Store.

We show up, laptop in hand. I decide to boot it up to replicate the problem for them. Sure enough it locks again. The Apple certified technician, as he called himself, inserted a USB drive, indicated that the system had no mechanical problems and did a disk geometry repair. This is the point where little red flags went up in my head.

I ask him if he could check the entire S.M.A.R.T. status instead of just looking for ‘errors’. S.M.A.R.T. can have problems without logging any sort of error. I’ve been around enough enterprise level hardware in the last 3 years to know that S.M.A.R.T. status is not the almighty ruling authority on hard drive health. This guy gives me some run around on how it is the “Apple standard policy” that if a drive doesn’t reflect S.M.A.R.T. errors, its not broken. I mention again to him that I have been around my fair share of hardware and S.M.A.R.T. does not always report problems correctly and if he could show me the full output of S.M.A.R.T. Again, this guy gives me a run-around on it. I give up at this point. He is obviously in his own little world.

After the geometry repairs complete he tells us more than likely it wouldn’t fix the problem. Wait, so he just wasted 5 minutes of my time? Thanks. He says an Archive and Install would be needed and that we can do it from the CD’s at home since they charge for it. With my ex becoming agitated at me for talking to this guy and pressing him for information, i give up. We leave and go home.

I get home and try and install Snow Leopard to her MacBook Pro again. Wait, why can’t I install to the drive? Oh what the F(@# now? As it turns out the file system is so trashed on the drive, probably due to drive failure and repeated hard cycles because of the failing drive, that the kernel can’t handle it. The kernel reports a file system problem, flips out, and removes the device from the kernel’s register of devices. Now I’ve got the drive removed, hooked up to my fault tolerant, user repairable, and user friendly ASUS Laptop running Windows 7 with HFSExplorer pulling her data off.

Thanks Apple, you wasted my gas, money, and time to give me a run-around and bullshit.

If anyone is interested in who to steer clear of in the Apple store in Frisco, TX:
Here is his business card info. He is a complete moron in my opinion and has no business working there if he isn’t going to do anything but spout his “I’m holier than thou,” crap.

Name: Douglas Parker
Title: Lead Genius

This guy wasted my time and money and treated me like another dumb customer. I resent it and I refuse to do business with Apple ever again.

Note: This requires some knowledge of command line interfaces and networking on Apple computers.

I have an Apple Xserve sitting in a datacenter with VMware Fusion 3.x. The virtual machines that run on it run this blog and about 23 other websites. Recently I fell prey to a bug that affects some versions of VMware Fusion 2.x regarding 3D errors even when 3D is disabled. I decided to update the Operating System and VMware to the latest versions. Server uptime before the reboot: 211 days. Rebooted and installed VMware 3.x but I fell prey to another problem. My custom vmnet bound to my backend interface got lost.

So, for anyone wondering how to configure a secondary bridgeable network. Here are the steps

1. Shut down VMWare and gain root on the system through SSH or a terminal.

2. Change directory to /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/

3. Run ./boot.sh –stop

4. Patch /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh using the following patch: Change  en0 and en1 to the appropriate interfaces.

— boot.sh.old 2010-03-29 21:16:50.000000000 -0500
+++ boot.sh     2010-03-29 21:11:15.000000000 -0500
@@ -532,10 +532,17 @@ case “$1″ in
touch “$LEASEDIR/vmnet-dhcpd-vmnet8.leases”
touch “$LEASEDIR/vmnet-dhcpd-vmnet1.leases”

-   ret=`”$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge” -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet.pid`
+   ret=`”$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge” -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet-0.pid vmnet0 en0`
if [ "$ret" = "0" ]; then
logger -s -t “VMware Fusion 232708″ \
-         “Error: Unable to start the bridge daemons. Error: $?”
+         “Error: Unable to start the bridge daemons (en0). Error: $?”
+       exit 1
+   fi
+
+   ret=`”$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge” -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet-0.pid vmnet3 en1`
+   if [ "$ret" = "0" ]; then
+      logger -s -t “VMware Fusion 232708″ \
+         “Error: Unable to start the bridge daemons (en1). Error: $?”
exit 1
fi

5. Using a terminal, edit the .vmx file inside your Virtual machine and append the following files (be sure to change the mac):

ethernet1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet1.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet1.vnet = “vmnet3″
ethernet1.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet1.addressType = “generated”
ethernet1.pciSlotNumber = “35″
ethernet1.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:04:2d:5c”
ethernet1.generatedAddressOffset = “10″

6. Go back to the directory that boot.sh is located in and run ./boot.sh –start (as root)

7. Start up VMware and your Virtual machine. Your secondary interface should show up and will be tied to your secondary ethernet interface.

If you need help getting ppp and pptpd installed, check out this blog post, however substitute the networking rules for the ones listed here.

Recently I had to setup a PPTP gateway that was behind a NAT setup. I had to scour the internet for about an hour to finally figure out what I needed to do. My problem was forwarding GRE packets to the internal server. There are about 50 tutorials on the internet to setup PPTPD and get it running, the key here is the firewall rules on both the server doing the router and the server doing the PPTP gateway.  This assumes that all PPTP / GRE traffic is destined for your PPTP gateway server, pptp is already setup, and /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward is 1

Firewall (IPTables) rules for gateway / router

Rules to allow GRE through

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p 47 -j DNAT \
--to-destination 192.168.1.90
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -p 47 -j SNAT \
--to-source 192.168.1.90

Rules to allow PPTP Control connection

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 1723 -j DNAT \
--to-destination 192.168.1.90

Replace eth0 with the external interface (WAN), and replace 192.168.1.90 with the IP address of your server running the PPTP Gateway.

Firewall (IPTables) rules for PPTP Gateway

Rule to masquerade outbound (NAT) packets. All PPTP clients will use the IP of the PPTP Gateway to access other hosts / the internet.

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Replace eth0 with the interface on your PPTP Gateway server.

Yes, I am plagued by another problem on my data storage system. I have a bad stick of RAM and I’m trying to find it. I have booted memtest86+ on this machine before (Old Pentium Celeron 2.0 Ghz) with no problem. Why so different this time?

According to a bug report filed on bugs.debian.org new systems have a problem with loading memtest86 into reserved memory  due to the fact that newer motherboards use more memory for extended BIOS operations. Well, wait, this is no where near a new machine, this is an old-school Pentium Celeron on an old-ass motherboard (doesn’t support SATA 3.0). So, why would I be falling subject to this problem?

I start to think about the problem and I rattle around in my mind what else would reserve this memory. What else loads at boot time? BIOS, check. On-Board RAID,check. Secondary… RAID… At this point, I figured it out. Secondary (PCI or PCI Express) RAID cards reserve some memory when they boot up because they have to load their own kernel and firmware into running memory so that the system can interact with the card. Sweet, just unplug the card…

Voila, i get that nice blue screen with green title bar in the top left known as memtest86+.

Solution: Disconnect any PCI or PCI Express RAID cards that may be installed and try again.

Modern day printers should have cheap ink, right? I mean, pens you can get a 20 pack for about $2 at any store. Why should printer ink be so damn expensive still?

About 3 to 4 years ago manufatures made a transition, they used to have the most expensive part of a printer, the jets (tiny little nozzles that squirt the ink onto the paper) on a disposable cartridge that would cost $50 to replace. Now they are placing that on the device and selling only cartridges of ink. Now we are still paying $20 to them for every color we need. That is still, in my case about $100. 3 colors, and 2 black inks.

So why are these little tanks of ink so expensive? This is how the manufacturers make money, they offer free printers and cheap printers ( < $30 ) to the public. They then charge an arm and a leg for ink, and maybe your first born if your still using HP. The tanks also trick you, they have a little chip on board that counts the amount of ink that has been used, or the number of pages printed. When it hits a certain number, even if it isn’t out, it will stop printing. The printer will refuse to print no matter what. Cheap trick, right?

In my search for cheap ink I came across a site ( http://inkrefillable.com/ ) which has a wide selection of compatible ink cartridges that are refillable, the even better part is, they have an onboard chip that automatically resets when you power off the printer to refill it. You don’t even have to refill it, so if you really wanna run it out, go for it.

My printer has 5 cartridges, at retail price, I’m looking at probably $80 – $100 to replace all 5. So lets do the math.I searched for compatible versions for my printer. Holy crap, low and behold I can get a bundle of 4 of the 5 for $18. Add the additional black cartridge, and it is $24. So, I have just replaced all of my 1 time use cartridges that I would have paid $100 for for 1/4 of the price.

Oh, here is the best part. Since they are refillable they sell ink too for them. Dye based color ink is $7. Dye based black ink is $2. Each container of ink has 30mL. Each cartridge can hold 13mL. So, I can fill 2 black cartridges for $2 once. and I can fill 3 color cartridges for $7, 2 times. So now, going forward it will cost me $3.50 to fill my color, and $2 to fill the black. thats $5.50 to replace ALL the colors in my printer. So now I have just replaced all of my 1 time use cartridges that I would have paid $100 for 1/20th of the price.

We are in an economic crunch! Everyone should use these and send a message to the printer manufacturers of the world to quit overcharging for ink!

Site: http://inkrefillable.com/

After the Postfix developers said F*@&  you to anyone who wants user management and the new ability to add plugins. Here is what I have come up with. Donations are welcome!

This installation assumes a few things:

1. You have PostfixAdmin already installed somewhere.  (While it is not required. It is nice to have since this doesn’t do domain admin.)
2. You are using the default database structure that comes with PostfixAdmin
3. You know what you are doing.  (You have to modify the postfix database.)
4. You are using the latest subversion release of RoundCube that supports plugins.

It also does have some limitations:

1. It only allows for add/removal/editing of  accounts under a single domain. The accounts that are being edited must match the domain of the logged in user.
2. I am not an excellent programmer. This version is a complete mess of code and may or may not break on you. If it does, please tell me how, when, where, and why and I will do my best to fix it.
3. You must manually edit the database to create the superuser that cannot be deleted.
4. This must be done perfectly or stuff will break.
5. It does not remove account data.
6. This also currently must be installed on the same server as the e-mail.

Installation Steps:

Altering the database structure + configs.

1. Add a field to the mailbox table

   ALTER TABLE `mailbox` ADD `is_admin` TINYINT NOT NULL AFTER `active`;

2. Create a table called quotacron

   CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `quotacron` ( `path` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `bytes` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `time` datetime NOT NULL) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

3. Modify dovecot and postfix configuation (Make sure to do this for ANY query that checks the database for a virtual user.
4. Change the SQL string to use WHERE username = ‘%u’ AND active > 0′ instead of ‘WHERE username = ‘%u’ AND active = 1′
5. Okay, now reload postfix and dovecot. The reason we did this is because a normal user will be active = 1 and is_admin = 1. The super user will have a value of 2 for both fields. This is so that we can make sure that if we grant another user admin, they cannot steal it.

Installing the Plug-in

1. Download the Plugin

   http://hexhost.net/files/roundcube_plugin-manage_users.zip

2. Unzip the plugin in the roundcube plugins directory

   unzip roundcube_plugin-manage_users.zip

3. Edit roundcube configuration file (/path/to/roundcube/config/main.inc.php)

   $rcmail_config['plugins'] = Array('manage_users');

4. Edit Plugin configuration file (/path/to/roundcube/plugins/config.inc.php)

   $rcmail_config['postfixadmin_user'] = 'postfix'; // Username to access the postfix database$rcmail_config['postfixadmin_pass'] = 'password'; // Password to access the postfix database$rcmail_config['postfixadmin_db'] = 'postfix'; // Name for the postfix database$rcmail_config['postfixadmin_host'] = 'localhost'; // Host for the postfix database$rcmail_config['physical_mail_path'] = '/path/to/virtual/mail/root/';  //Path to virtual Mailboxes (MUST HAVE BEGINNINGAND TRAILING SLASHES!

5. If you want quota’s to work, Create a cron for the user that is owner of the virtual mailboxes. In it add the following line (editing it appropriately):

   */5 * * * * cd /path/to/roundcube/plugins/manage_users/; php quota_cron.php

Configuring the superuser

1. Using SQL administrator change the is_admin and active field for your superuser to a value of 2 in the MySQL database. This will make the superuser irremovable and nobody can deactivate it without manually editing the database.

Using the plugin

1. Log into RounCube interface as super-administrator
2. Go to User Preferences
3. Click on User Admin
4. You can now edit users.

In the end

• This probably will break. It might or might not work. Remember you HAVE to know what your doing. And, this is VERY alpha, and you are charged with knowing what you are doing!

So I’m sitting here scouring the internet looking for a plug-in for RoundCube that will let me administer a Postfix database from within RoundCube.

Everyone in the community seems to think that RoundCube should never have the distinction between a user and an administrator. I think differently. I have embarked on an adventure to create a plug-in that will allow an ‘administrator’ user as defined in the Postfix database to be used in RoundCube. I deem it.. PostCube

Once I have a beta / release-candidate I will post it here. Should be here within a week.

So today, one of my close friends gets an e-mail stating that she had been invited to a scholar program. The “North America Scholar Consortium”. It was delivered to her UNT e-mail. By the lack of information in the e-mail, and the fact that it was the following:

3 April, 2009

Dear K*****, K**** L,

As a result of your dedication to scholarly success in University of North
Texas, North
America Scholar Consortium extends to you an invitation to apply for
membership in the NASC Honor Society. Membership application is by
invitation only; therefore, membership is a special honor afforded to
a small group of outstanding students.

Membership applications are available at
http://inv.naschonor.org//lt.php?id=ZkgDBQxQxxxITQMfBxxxCAME Please use
your
assigned invitation code when you apply.

Invitation Code: xxxxxxx

To learn more about the opportunities that accompany NASC Honor
Society membership, please visit
http://inv.naschonor.org//lt.php?id=ZkgDBQxQV1EBTQMxxxVCAME for more
information. I encourage you to seize this valuable and rewarding
opportunity and look forward to seeing your name among the next list
of new NASC Honor Society members!

Sincerely,

Louis Birch
President 2009-2010
NASC Honor Society

So I start to do some digging. I had never heard of this scholar program and shes psyched that shes done so good in school that she’s gotten this e-mail. Just by the way the e-mail was formatted, a lack of phone number and further details as to what they do got me suspicious and made me smell a rat.

So I google the name to find the #1 search result to see if this may be a phishing scam. Nope, the website referenced is the #1 result. Okay so far so good. Whois returns:

Created On:30-Oct-2008 17:55:00 UTC

okay, 6 months old… kinda fishy but not completely out of the question.

Registrant ID:GODA-055102752
Registrant Name:Registration Private
Registrant Organization:Domains by Proxy, Inc.
Registrant Street1:DomainsByProxy.com
Registrant Street2:15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Scottsdale
Registrant State/Province:Arizona
Registrant Postal Code:85260
Registrant Country:US

You would think a legitimate organization would have contact details. Strike 1.

Membership Application Form

By Invitation Only

Application submission is free of charge. Please DO NOT send us any payment at this stage.
A life-time membership fee of $68 will be required only if your application is approved.

BZZZZ strike 2. Something like this is usually sponsored and free.

No phone number on the contact us page? Strike 3. Its a scam.

I go to tell my friend this and she has called her mom and told her how cool it is and i tell her its a scam. I swear she almost started crying.

UPDATE: As it turns out. She did cry after she left the room. ASSHOLES I’m going to find you.

It’s one thing to phish and spam. But to use something like a fake scholars program, that’s just not cool.

Thanks assholes, now i feel like a douche bag for something you got her hopes up on.

Jackasses. I hope you burn in hell.