JamesBallenger.com

james August 23rd, 2010

iTunes is hugely popular and ubiquitous. I am updating my music collection and trying to organize it so apparently this is a good method. Pandora is a great music system too but sometimes I want to hear my music that is not available elsewhere… from anywhere. I have nice Linux servers so a quick search reveals that a firefly music server is a good option.

To stream this music to yourself on your local network is simplicity itself. Turn on iTunes / Media player and select the shared music.

To stream this music to yourself on your remote network at work, on the road, etc is a little harder. For a firefly server this is straightforward:
Link for Firefly Client -> Firefly Client V 0.9b. There are other options like fireflash but most can connect to a firefly / iTunes music server, so choose your client as desired. I think the iPhone and other Apple products can link up seamlessly. You will need to forward your external ip on port 3689 to port 3689 on your home music server box so some understanding of routers and port forwarding is necessary at the host site but not at the client site. Generally you can just point the client to http://ipa.ipb.ipc.ipd:3689.

Moving forward, we have the increasingly complex scenario where you might want to administrate or actually use iTunes on your remote / work computer but reference your home server where are your music files are stored. Perhaps you hear a song on the radio or you buy a new CD and rip it at the office or just want to define new playlists, etc.

Now, we have to do some more work:

1) Open port 22 from your home music server to some port on your router (I recommend not using 22!. I recommend masquerading this port as some other value on your wan while having it point to port 22 on your lan). This step is only necessary on the host system, not the clients.

2) For client stations, you don’t need any port work, just install the SSH Tunnel Client:

Link for SSH Tunnel Client -> SSH Tunnel Client V 4.0.2.73

Once installed, go to tunnel, then add. Fill out the gui as shown below (the ip can be an FQDN):

images notes

There are some more options for auto-connection that some may wish to choose. Once connected, the icon in the software should show a lock indicating an SSH Tunnel has been created.

3) For client stations, install the Rendezvous Proxy:
Link for Rendezvous Proxy -> Rendezvous Proxy V 0.22

Once installed, go to file, then add new host. Fill out the gui as shown below (the ip can be an FQDN):

images notes

4) Fire up iTunes and/or your music manager and you should have access to your home media as if you were there (provided your connection is fast enough).

As a note, this works with iTunes v7, 8 & 9.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james August 22nd, 2010

I ordered a ReadyNAS Pro (RNDP6000) and filled it with 6 Western Digital 2TB drives (WD20EADS-32S2B0) that were on the Netgear compatibility list. I immediately ran into a few issues.

I installed the WD drives in the ReadyNAS, plugged it in and installed the RIADar tool on my primary workstation. On first boot with the brand new drives in place, I could not connect to the ReadyNAS. I pushed the power button for 5 seconds and restarted the ReadyNAS which came up and I went through the setup process thought RAIDar, then the web but was never asked about my raid choice. This being my first time using the device, this just seemed odd. After setup, I received an error message to the effect of “No volumes exist.” I called support at 3am on a Saturday and got a foreign fellow who spoke english well and was well informed. He had me shut the device down and then reboot with the reset button in the back held in with a paper clip. I then went through the menu option with the backup button on the front to select Factory Default. I pressed the reset button with the paperclip on the back again to select this option. After the reboot, I was able to choose setup with RAIDar and choose X-RAID2 with dual redundancy (a flexible RAID6 basically).

After this was established, I had an error with one of the drives. It took me some time but after swapping drive positions and playing with a few settings, I concluded that the netgear frontview (web) status messages were correct in that the drive was dead/had errors.

Moving on, I needed to upgrade a TiVo on my network to a 1TB drive. I realized that I needed to change the intelligent drive parking on the TiVo drive (WD10EVDS) and the WD20EADS, so I might as well do them at the same time.

Link for WD Diag Tool -> Western Digital Diagnostic Tool V 1.21
Link for WDidle3 -> Western Digital Idle / Parking tool V1.05 (wdidle3)
Link for WDTLER -> Western Digital TLER Tool (Raid Tool)
Link for bootable iso with WDidle3 & WDTLER -> Bootable CD (ISO) with wdidle3 & wdtler
Link for WinMFS Beta 9f -> WinMFS Beta 9f

Steps to get TiVo migrated:
1. Unplug TiVo, get a T10 torx wrench and open it up and pull out drive.
2. Burn bootable iso with WD Tools. Turn off computer, open up computer and hook up WD10EVDS drive to sata & power inside workstation. If you have WD drives in your workstation, you might want to disconnect them now.
3. Boot computer with bootable cd in drive & immediately go straight to the bios. In my case, I had to turn AHCI mode off, SATA Native port mode off & IDE Controller / compatibility mode on. Make sure your bios is set to boot from CD!
4. Hit enter to enter tools at boot prompt for fdos. Type wdidle3 then enter. It should report that your WD10EVDS drive(s) have this setting on and set to 8 seconds. Type wdidle3 /D then enter. It should report the idle setting is disabled.
5. Remove the boot CD and turn off computer. Connect any workstation drives that you disconnected before. Connect your original TiVo drive.
6. Turn computer on and be damn sure you go into the bios first and turn back on AHCI mode, Native ports and turn off IDE controllers if these were your original settings.
7. Once bios settings are saved and you have rebooted into Windows, install the WinMFS tools (you can use dos based tools too). Basically select your source and destination and copy. Once done, expand the data to the new drive. Turn off the computer.
8. Unplug the WD10EVDS and go install it in the TiVo. Put the old TiVo drive away for safe-keeping just in case of disaster or failure. Close up computer. Hook up TiVo. Done!

Steps to get ReadyNAS working with WD20EADS drives with wdidle3 and TLER on.
1. Burn bootable iso with WD Tools. Turn off computer, open up computer and hook up WD20EADS drive(s) to sata & power inside workstation [I did two drives at a time]. If you have WD drives in your workstation, you might want to disconnect them now.
2. Boot computer with bootable cd in drive & immediately go straight to the bios. In my case, I had to turn AHCI mode off, SATA Native port mode off & IDE Controller / compatibility mode on. Make sure your bios is set to boot from CD!
3. Hit enter to enter tools at boot prompt for fdos. Type wdidle3 then enter. It should report that your WD10EVDS drive(s) have this setting on and set to 8 seconds. Type wdidle3 /D then enter. It should report the idle setting is disabled.
4. Type TLERSCAN and hit enter. This should report the TLER settings which are likely disabled on your drives. If you type TLER_ON and then enter, it will run the command WDtler -r7 -w7. Some people recommend only using a read setting of 7 seconds so you could type WDtler -r7 and that would be fine.
5. Turn off machine and rotate drives as necessary to operate on all drives. Remove the boot CD and turn off computer. Connect any workstation drives that you disconnected before.
6. Turn computer on and be damn sure you go into the bios first and turn back on AHCI mode, Native ports and turn off IDE controllers if these were your original settings.
7. Go put drives back in ReadyNAS now with the idle park setting disabled and with TLER on (for proper raid response to avoid the raid dropping drives)!

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james January 20th, 2010

The conclusion here is that there is little to no reason to upgrade to TB3 when using large gmail imap accounts. In fact, TB3 is a serious downgrade unless the default settings are heavily changed. In another bout of poor performance, I found that whenever copying messages to/from various folders or accounts in TB, I get the message “The current command did not succeed. The mail server responded:could not parse command.” When this occurs, the entire process is killed. Moving 1,000 messages? Nope, now you have to try and do it in smaller chunks and take great care in trying to move chunks properly.

The single benefit I have identified so far, is the improved password system that does not continue to ask your username/password when having connection problems as in TB2. I am still debating and trying to look at the benefits of migrating to TB3 but the reasons are slim at best.

So, if you have a large imap account and want to go to TB3 you will need to take some pro-active steps to un-f#@# your computer before TB3 sticks it to you. Here are the preliminary steps:

1) Go offline right away after upgrading, do not download anything. (File -> offline - Work Offline)
2) Turn off Global Search and Indexer. Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Enable Global Search and Indexer.
3) Determine which folders, if any, you would like to sync. Tools -> Account Settings -> choose any imap account -> Synchronization & Storage -> Message Synchronizing -> Advanced. I recommend only your inbox, sent mail, drafts and any frequently used folders. Sub-folders must be expanded and unclicked manually to prevent massive, all-consuming syncing. You can also look at only syncing messages that are recent or below a certain size. Just remember that if you choose poorly, it will hurt and you will need to start deleting the cached folder .msf files directly to correct this or rebuild the index of each folder you need to reduce.
4) Go back online again and let TB3 work for a LONG period of time re-downloading and re-indexing many of your folders and thousands of messages.
5) Get used to rebooting often after trying to read or send a message as TB3 just freezes in process with an extremely long timeout. However, if you restart TB3 and try the same action it seems to work often. TB3 works well when initially started and gets fouled quickly with heavy imap use, bogging down and eventually becoming useless until you restart it again.
6) When doing large folder copies, I find it is easiest to go offline, then copy or move bulk information, then go online again. It doesn’t run into the “The current command did not succeed. The mail server responded:could not parse command.” error and completely fail the process but rather keeps trying until success is achieved.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james January 19th, 2010

After having used TB3 as my primary email client for about a week, I have concluded that TB3 is a MAJOR step backwards for email function. I will be rolling back all syncing / downloading of imap folders and only syncing a select few folders on this workstation.

Here are the major issues (as a supplement to my prior TB3 post):
1) Massive processor utilization even on powerful 64bit, 8gb of ram, ssd drive, 3ghz multi-core machines. TB3 kills laptops and endlessly tries and fails to perform its function.
2) Failure to send, failure to copy, freezing. As I write this, TB3 is using 60% of my processor and sending of messages is failing. My smtp is not down and everything else regarding that mail account is functional. If I were to restart TB3, it would work for a few emails before eventually failing on some particular email or freezing entirely.
3) 20gb of usage to massively sync up email on this workstation has only led to constant failure with TB3, I will be rolling back all syncing and only selecting a few common folders as I had done with TB2.
4) TB3 rarely ends its process when closed. I have to manually go to Windows 7 Task Manager and kill the process manually.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james January 13th, 2010

I am upgrading my primary workstation to Thunderbird 3. This process is a hopeless failure though I hope to create the necessary step changes to be able to upgrade other employees here as there are many features in TB3 that I like. Let’s start with a step by step of the failure:

1. Upgrade from TB2 to TB3. The default setting is to sync all folders. To put our demand in perspective, we have corporate google accounts with our sales account sitting at over 330,000 messages and 10GB. My work account is lower than this but still over 50k messages and my personal gmail account is over 100k messages. That is three accounts climbing to 480k messages and over 20GB of stored email. We use email a LOT and search with it often. This is part of why we were excited to see new features in TB3. However, this means all 480k messages and 20GB will be downloaded on my local station AGGRESSIVELY, bogging down the processor and everything on this workstation for days. NOT GOOD!!!! This should NOT BE A DEFAULT SETTING and should not be this aggressive (or there should be options for how aggressive this process is). Gmail trash, all mail and spam folders should not be cached by default as they are either redundant or uncessary.
2. While other programs like Google Chrome have shown the beauty of a lightweight, simple, fast UI with multi-process infrastructure and it’s own task management system, TB3 is a throwback to single-threaded evil. While aggressively downloading 20GB and 480k messages, it is nearly useless for other functions. NOT GOOD.
3. The download process appears to be happening in small blocks. I have fast fios and many work environments have good connections. For massive transactions like most new TB3 users will experience who have over 50k messages, there should be some sort of a mass import/export or large block operation available. There has to be a better way than this silliness of 20 messages at a time that account for only a few kb per transaction.
4. Lightning with google calendar. Explicit guide / process for google calendar please… it’s hugely popular and a function many, many people will be using so this should have far greater automation.

Here are the solution steps:
1. DO NOT ALLOW SYNC. Add one directory at a time over a period of several days and load up several each night. TB3 should be smart enough to do this on it’s own but failing such advancement I may try to write scripts for rollout.
2. No solution. I am 1/4 of the way through importing now and the main db file is already 1.5GB. This is not efficient and is a major blow to larger email accounts and/or corporate systems with large email volumes. Though this may be a good system for the average user with less than 10k messages and a few GB stored, it is a nightmare scenario for IT in serious environments.
3. I know there are block size settings which I changed in TB2 and I will likely be working on this and will post recommendations as I find them for larger blocks. browser.cache.memory.capacity was already 30720 and all fetch_by_chunks variations were false. I changed browser.cache.memory.capacity to 32768 which I do not forsee having any effect.
4. I will have to dig for the steps in the current version and figure it out.

I am not even able to get to a review of this software because the initial steps are simply broken. My typical rule is to wait 6-12 months after a release to buy or install but the supposed improvements to gmail and searching would be a huge benefit for our staff. In the end, this is the very cause of the failure and clearly sufficient testing has not been done. I feel for the average user with large amounts of email who will enter a s&!@storm when installing and using this software as compared to the TB1 or TB2 experience.

NOTE: This was written quickly and mid-failure which should help explain the broken, convoluted English… good luck with the translation to proper English grammar!

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james January 13th, 2010

I purchased a cheap Harbor Freight (HF) 1195 Lb. Capacity 48″ x 96″ Heavy Duty Foldable Utility Trailer with 12″ Wheels, pn 90154 several years ago. It has served my needs over the years but after many failures, I would have been better off buying a nicer trailer in the beginning. Being fresh out of college at the time, I had little money hence the choice.

So, here are the issues and resolutions:
1. Constant bulb burnouts - Solution: LED submersible lights from Northern tool for $60 as well as new crimps, adhesive heat shrink and weatherproof connectors on the lights.
2. Weak frame - Solution: 1/8″ diamond plate steel top instead of plywood - $100 - 200. Reduces capacity by about 200 lbs (1450 GVWR - 262 for trailer - 197 for plate = 991 lb payload which is still fine for two sportbikes). I also put thin shims under the middle framing so that there would be a flat deck for the steel sheet for additional structure.
3. Dust cap falling off - Solution: $2.99 Revised design dust cap from HF, pn 93833 or bearing buddy pn 2047 with cap / protector pn 19b ( I chose the bearing buddy at around $30 shipped for both parts)
4. Bearing Failure - Solution: $4.99 bearing from HF, pn 93834 or pn 30205 from bearingsdirect.com at $11 ( I chose the later, hoping for a better quality part)
5. Bearing Oil Seal - Solution: 30×52x7TC from bearingsdirect.com at $6 (not offered by HF)
6. Sticking Ball Coupler - Solution: 1-7/8″ x 2-1/2″ Ball Coupler from almost anywhere. The new HF ones are nicer than the older design which was sticky from day 1
7. No trailer jack - Solution: Wheeled trailer jack from many sources. I welded a plate on the inner frame for more support for the wheeled type jack.
8. No sides or ramp - Solution: Lots of options, basic instructions are in the manual now (I don’t think they were years ago) HF Trailer Manual
9. Electrical faults - Solution: Find the fault and fix it or replace the whole harness as it is of very poor quality
10. 4 pin connector length - Solution: Get an extension or adapter with some length if your truck doesn’t have a 4 pin connector
11. No spare wheel - Solution: Spare wheel carrier from HF, pn 93341 or other companies. 12″ wheel from HF or Northern Tool.
12. Not many tie down points - Solution: Lots but I chose removable ancra tie-downs in for the flooring, you can also use bed bolts. Then large fixed, circular bits for the sides.

I had to search for a while for some of the parts like bearings, oil seals, etc. Hopefully this list will help others out there with similar issues and bring together a lot of the information required to own and operate one of these trailers for thousands of miles.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(7)

james October 7th, 2009

Here is the quick list of my problems with Windows 7:

1) This is by far my biggest gripe and most persistent problem I have 3 monitors, 2 HP LP2065 (1200 x 1600) monitors tilted vertically with 1 Dell 3007 (2560 x 1600). I power the Dell 3007 with a Quadro FX 580 and the side monitors with a Quadro NVS 285. The same system has 8gb of ram, e8400 processor, intel g1 80gb ssd and gigabyte P35-DS3L motherboard. The new Win 7 system of transparent windows and taskbar selection is brilliant, IF IT WORKED. Instead, roughly twice a day when I am moving too fast or have too much going on, I am treated to my screens blacking out and flashing twice on and off over a 30 second period. Then I get an error message saying “NVIDIA Graphics Driver has stopped working properly.” This slows me down and is a constant annoyance.
2) Network driver problems. When this computer was an XP station, the networking was reliable. Very reliable. With Windows 7, I have to reboot 1-5 times before the networking driver will come up and work properly. I cannot disable my nic at any time either because it will not come back up properly. The hardware is not flaky, the windows driver is and this is an unacceptable problem.
3) Until late September the error “This driver is blocked due to compatibility issues” would appear constantly while using Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0.4. An upgrade to 11.0.5 solved the issue however I expect many non-compliant anti-virus programs to cause problems with Windows 7.

My initial impressions of Win7 were good but as I use this computer on a daily basis to evaluate putting Win7 across our network, I can see that it is not yet ready. I am running the newest drivers and have tried various fixes all to no avail. So for my situation and for our company, Windows 7 will have to wait until the reliability is there. Many of our employees have the same monitor configuration I do and this is an immediate show-stopper for corporate installation!

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james October 2nd, 2009

Gmail has gone unresponsive and/or our users are seeing response times of 1-2 minutes when sorting their email in Thunderbird rather than the usual 1-2 seconds if it works at all.

We have seen gmail downtimes of several hours in the past month and this month is not starting off well. For personal use, this would not be a huge issue. For business use, this IS a HUGE issue. With the September outages, many bloggers have commented that this is acceptable for a free or low-cost service. This is not how I see it. If I could pay more for better service with google, I would. We are currently using their “premier” business service and the downtime affects our productivity.

Another point many bloggers make is that corporate email downtime is typically higher than the gmail downtime we see on average. Here again, I disagree. Perhaps we are unique but our email downtime is correlated to our dedicated server downtime which is approximately 99.99% (four nine) reliability. Even if our downtime was the same numerical value as google, so far less than 99.9% (three nine) reliability, it would not pose the same issue as our down time is nearly exclusive to maintenance performed late at night outside of normal working hours.

Another interesting point is that they claim “99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and 24/7 support.” I would have to start logging their times but in September, they failed to meet their 99.9% and their support is awful even with a support plan.

I want (and am willing to PAY MORE FOR):
- 99.99% uptime
- Better support / remediation for performance issues

Apparently I need the Super Enterprise Premier MAXX edition of google apps and I bet MANY other business users would be interested in a higher reliability plan.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james July 9th, 2009

If you install a driver, program or just accidentally delete an entry in your registry, Windows can blue screen on your next boot and won’t properly recover. The simple manual fix here requires you drop the hd into another machine or have another bootable disk in the original computer.

1) Pull the busted boot drive out of the bad system and put it in another machine that is working and bootable or just switch bootable drives if you have two boot drives in your pc.

2) Set the permissions in the System Volume Information folder on the boot drive you are fixing to readable by everyone (you should delete the everyone entry when done). If you have xp home, you may need to download this file ( SCESP4I.EXE ) and once extracted right click on the setup.inf to install it -> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/195227/EN-US/ . This will give you the security tab in Windows XP Home that is otherwise not available. Note, you must also be able to see hidden system files which you can change under tools -> folder options -> view -> show hidden files and folders and hide protected operating system files.

3) Once you can get into the system volume information folder, go to the restore folders. Each folder is an RP folder named for the restore point instance. If you look in a detailed view, just select the last RP point by time before your computer went to hell. Go into the RP folder and the snapshot folder.

4) Now you are going to copy:
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM -> %SystemRoot%\system32\config\SAM
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY -> %SystemRoot%\system32\config\SECURITY
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE -> %SystemRoot%\system32\config\software
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM -> %SystemRoot%\system32\config\system
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_.DEFAULT -> %SystemRoot%\system32\config\default

5) Put the boot drive back in the PC and/or switch bootable drives. Reboot your machine and your computer should now have a recent restored registry.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

james May 11th, 2009

Apache Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/httpd stop
/etc/init.d/httpd start
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Qmail Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/qmail stop
/etc/init.d/qmail start
/etc/init.d/qmail restart

Courier (IMAP & POP3) Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/courier-imap stop
/etc/init.d/courier-imap start
/etc/init.d/courier-imap restart

DNS (BIND) Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/named stop
/etc/init.d/named start
/etc/init.d/named restart

Dr. Web Antivirus Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/drwebd stop
/etc/init.d/drwebd start
/etc/init.d/drwebd restart

MySQL Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/mysqld stop
/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

ProFTP Stop, Start and Restart Respectively
/etc/init.d/proftpd stop
/etc/init.d/proftpd start
/etc/init.d/proftpd restart

Reference Documentation:
http://kb.parallels.com/en/3158

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)