Noisy HP Z620 Workstation

April 5, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

HP-Z620-WorkstationI really like my new workstation, but it has one irritating habit. It makes a monotone sound that comes up and fades away. One of it’s numerous fans was driving me crazy. At first I had a look at the BIOS configuration. There is a BIOS configuration option named Fan Idle Mode under Power – Thermal. Moving the bar to the right resulted in a lot more noise because the fans went into high gear, so I switch back to the previous setting. Next step was to open up the case and started to pull fan power cords. It appeared the front and back case fans did the damage to my ears. I’ll leave them unplugged for now. In my opinion the remaining fans will keep it cool enough to survive the blazing Dutch summer.

Silence is golden!

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Upgrade Cisco IOS on the 877W

December 30, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Cisco LogoYesterday it struck me I was using a less secure wireless setup while the more secure was just a simple configuration change away. While adjusting the configuration I noticed the software version was pretty dated because my last IOS update (12.4.24T1) was from May 2009. To stay current I decided to upgrade my home router.

12.4.24T8 is the latest IOS in the 12.4T series. This version was released on 19 September 2012. I don’t have enough flash capacity to store the new 15.1.4 release, so I will stick with the 12.4.24 release. So I downloaded c870-advipservicesk9-mz.124-24.T8.bin from Cisco.

I have described the steps below so it will be a walk in the park next time.

[Read more...]

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Improve wireless security on the 877W

December 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

cisco-877w-frontI just discovered my three year old Cisco wireless router was configured to do WPA encryption instead of the more secure WPA2 version, which is the standard nowadays. WPA uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) while WPA2 is capable of using TKIP or the more advanced AES algorithm. Doing a search on Google it appears it’s just a IOS configuration option.

Change:

interface Dot11Radio0
no ip address
!
encryption vlan 2 mode ciphers tkip
!

To:

interface Dot11Radio0
no ip address
!
encryption vlan 2 mode ciphers aes-ccm
!

If the option is not there, your IOS version does not support it. I’m currently using: C870 Software, Version 12.4(24)T1 (c870-advipservicesk9-mz.124-24.T1.bin).

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VirtualBox snapshots using the CLI

December 27, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

oracle-virtualbox-logoThis is how I use the VirtualBox snapshot option on my headless server. I use this feature for creating a restore point for a critical mail server upgrade I will soon post about. Because I will use this option more often it comes handy when recorded somewhere.

Specs:

  • Debian 6.0.6 “Squeeze”
  • Virtualbox 4.1.22-80657

See the Virtualbox snapshot syntax below

VBoxManage snapshot         <uuid>|<name>
take <name> [--description <desc>] [--pause] |
delete <uuid>|<name> |
restore <uuid>|<name> |
restorecurrent |
edit <uuid>|<name>|--current
[--name <name>]
[--description <desc>] |
list [--details|--machinereadable]
showvminfo <uuid>|<name>

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Linux, Oracle · Tagged With: , ,

Multipath with HP LeftHand on RHEL

December 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

HP has acquired LeftHand networks and re-branded the LeftHand storage product to the HP P4000 storage series. This is a iSCSI SAN product targeted at entry level businesses. We are using this product for various projects, where our Oracle RAC cluster is one of them. For this cluster where are setting up MPIO. Because we are using interface bonding at the moment the LUN’s are configured already and don’t have to be created.

Quick environment specs:

  • RedHat EL5.8
  • 2 NIC’s in the storage network (eth3 and eth4)

[Read more...]

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Bash autocompletion for ssh and scp

November 19, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Bash autocompletion is really something you can get used to very quick if *nix is part of you daily routine. It comes with a ton of auto complete features, but one of them really stands out. It’s ssh and scp autocomplete, where scp goes one step further. When using scp with autocomplete it will not only complete the hostname you are about to copy files from, but it will also login in the background and autocomplete directories and files on the remote host. This last function will only work when using ssh key based login.

$ sudo apt-get install bash-completion

When on Ubuntu don’t forget to turn of hashed hostnames in the ssh known_hosts file by creating or editing ‘~/.ssh/config’.

HashKnownHosts no

I stumbled upon this by accident, and using it since then. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

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Updated i’m Watch to 0.6.0

November 14, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Yesterday I have updated my watch to version 0.6.0. It took 10 minutes to complete. After using the updated watch for a day I can say the promised Bluetooth stability fix turns out well. Before this update the watch had some Bluetooth connectivity issues when reconnecting after the Bluetooth connection was dropped, those issues are solved.

This is what the change log looks like for version 0.6.0 (released on november, 6th 2012):

  • Improved first-boot user experience
  • Added calls log for incoming and outgoing calls
  • Improved Bluetooth connection stability
  • Better Bluetooth status notifications and user interface
  • Lots of minor bug fixes and user experience refinements

[Read more...]

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Sensors on Intel DQ67EP

November 8, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

On my previous board I was using the information from lm-sensors for Cacti and phpSysInfo, so after upgrading to a new system board it turned out lm-sensors did not work out of the box for my Intel motherboard DQ67EP. A sensors-detect gave me the following information:

Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.

Driver `to-be-written':
* ISA bus, address 0x290
Chip `Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Note: there is no driver for Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors yet.
Check http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices for updates.

Doing some research it turned out I had to install a separate driver as kernel module on my Debian 6.0.6 (Squeeze) system. You can find the driver on this website.

[Read more...]

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