All posts by bsdman

Currently working as an IT Manager. Worked for an OIT company as a Network Engineer in 2011. Worked for a Medical IT company as the Network Administrator 2009-2011. Worked as the Senior Systems Administrator at a computer reseller from 2005-2009. Worked as a Computer Consultant for several small companies from 2007-2009. Worked as a Computer Technician at a computer reseller from 2002-2004.
Microsoft

EACCESS Violation

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I try to reboot as few times as possible. The only problem with that logic is when something I do breaks the system but I don’t know about it until after a reboot. Case in point is when I installed a program demo called TuneBite about 2 weeks ago. I just restarted today to get a Realtek error:
“EACCESS Violation”

Yay. I had no idea it was caused by TuneBite either. I figured something was corrupt in my sound drivers. Sounds were still working, but not the way they should have been (internal speaker worked, external jacks did nothing).

I installed the newest versions of the Microsoft HD Audio driver and the newest release of the RealTek Audio driver. Rebooted. Same error.

Uninstalled TuneBite software – Rebooted – Error is now gone. I’m not a big fan of software that always loads in the background either, especially when that software shouldn’t be loading in the background. I had only used TuneBite one time, but according to the add/remove programs it said the last time I used it was today. Today != 2 weeks ago.

I can not recommend this software.

Linux

Moving VMWare Machines Around

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I recently setup a new VMWare server on one of our older Dell servers (2850 with 8GB RAM 6X300GB SAS). And since I’m eventually redoing the primary VMWare server, I wanted to move all the critical virtual machines to the secondary server (for obvious reasons).

So far everything has been moving great, but I did have one issue:
After moving our collaboration helpdesk server, I could no longer remotely access the virtual machine.

ifconfig showed that only the l0 was loading.
nano /etc/networking/interfaces displayed both the l0 and eth0 settings
ifconfig -a informed me that in the transition, the virtual machine decided to change the ethernet device to eth1
nano /etc/networking/interfaces and I changed all the eth0 to eth1
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart or just reboot the server

Microsoft

Windows Check Disk

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Growing up on Macintosh Computers (1988 was my first computer – a Macintosh SE with a whopping 8MHz, 9″ B&W screen, 20MB HD, and 1MB RAM), my knowledge of some very basic Windows operations is sometimes lacking. Moving from the Mac to a linux world probably didn’t help much either. Hey, at least I started to learn what IRQ’s were.

I had no idea how to use the DOS command prompts to do what I wanted. I was used to the linux style commands (who knew that dir was the same as ls?). I was also used to the fact that the Mac had no utilities to defrag, clean up, or otherwise alter data. The Mac just worked.

Windows, however, sometimes needs a gentle (read “harsh”) push to do what I want it to do. This is where my love of the command line and my necessity to Windows comes into play.

We all know that Windows 98 and ME forced you to run the Check Disk utility on startup if you shutdown the computer improperly. Probably a good 99% of the time I would bypass this check as I already knew the issue. That and I’m impatient.

So without further ado, here’s the command to run check disk:
Start >> Run >> CMD
chkdsk This will run Check Disk in read-only mode and will not repair any issues it finds
chkdsk C:/f This will run Check Disk in forced repair mode, but it will not check for bad sectors on the HD
chkdsk C:/r This will run Check Disk in repair mode, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information

With all that out of the way – I’m thinking about moving this site to a new one. The only problem with that is the fact that google has this site already cached for searching. We’ll think about it.

***EDIT***
chkdsk c: /f /r will do the same as both of the commands. This will scandisk your entire system – ie it’ll scan for bad sectors etc.

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

MCE Remote on XBMC

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In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on an XBMC bender. I recently setup an older system as a file server, put a crap load of storage in it, and threw some movie ISOs on there. Then I installed XBMC on my main rig. The rest is history. I was fine with the wireless keyboard and mouse, but The Fiance says we must use a remote control.

My lucky day happened last week: woot had a woot-off AND they had some MCE remotes on sale. I bought two. They’re some crappy Pinnacle ones, but at newegg they run almost $40 and I got both with shipping for less than $35.

Trying to get it to work was another issue. Out of the box Vista will recognize this remote, but XBMC wouldn’t hear anything. Works great on Windows Media Center though. So I ended up trying a program called LMRemoteKeyMap. Pretty nifty, but I didn’t feel like learning all about xml, codes, remotes, and commands. I felt like being lazy.

So then I ended up with another program called IRServer Suite. Now this one worked out of the box. Every function works as advertised. The only change I made was to get the giant green button to act as the Windows key (so I can press start). Others have made it automatically open up XBMC, but for now I just wanted start to work.

Basically you’ll just open the Translator program and follow along to have it automatically do your work for you. See how lazy I’m being?

I might include some screen shots eventually.

Miscellaneous

Virus/Trojan Alerts

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I usually don’t do this: if you get infected by a virus/trojan/adware etc it’s almost 100% YOUR FAULT. No way around that – you probably clicked on something and installed it. Just be safe.

But since a lot of phishing sites/bad people are getting rather clever with new sites…

Here’s what is hitting work now and in the past:
Bank alerts – Subject “Bank Of America AIert: OnIine Access Suspension Message” Link to .html internet page for phishing scam.
eCard – Subject “You have received an Greeting eCard”, Filename “ecard.zip”
Account suspension – Subject “Your internet access is going to get suspended”, Filename “user-EA49943X-activities.zip”

It’s never good practice to open zip files from any source. Some problems arise when the ecard is coming from a friend or family member, but those will never be in .zip format.

Use virus protection – a standard consumer firewall (either built-in on your wireless router or a software piece such as “zone alarm”) will NOT protect you from downloading a virus. That is a common misconception.

Linux, Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Test SMTP Using Telnet

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I’ve been using this more and more and have finally memorized most (if not all) of it. But this is for those of us who don’t really like to remember useless information.

Start -> Run -> CMD
telnet
open mail.mailserver.tld 25
At this point the server should respond with a 220 mail.mailserver.tld ESMTP Mail Service.
ehlo test.com
The server then should respond with 250 mail.mailserver.tld along with all the supported features of the mail server
mail from:tester@test.com
250 Sender OK
rcpt to: admin@test.com
At this point, the server should say 554 Relay access denied. This means your server is not an open relay.
rcpt to: actualemailaddress@mailserver.tld
250 Recipient OK
data
354 Start Mail input; end with CRLF.CRLF
subject: subjecthere
You’ll have to hit enter twice after the subject, then go on and type the body.
body here.
Note the . at the end – you’ll have to type a return and another . to finish.
Then there should be a server response 250 Queued mail for delivery. You can quit now.
quit

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

XBMC Keyboard Controls

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Since my memory isn’t what it used to be (they say the memory is the first to go), I have decided to put down the keyboard controls for XBMC. This is for DVD playback. Long story short:
I have a server with a ton of ISO’s of movies
I have a decent computer hooked up to
A very nice HD TV via DVI-HDMI cables
XMBC allows me to play any movie I want, whenever I want.

x – stops the movie, returns to movie list
s – brings up shutdown window
p – pause / play
space bar – pause / play
r – rewind
f – fast forward
up arrow – next chapter
down arrow – previous chapter
right arrow – fast forward 30 seconds
left arrow – rewind 30 seconds
t – show title and real life time
i – info on data stream
o – status on chapter number and time
s – subtitles on/off
m – menu