GMail omnibar search settings

I'm still alive :)

If you want to set your Google Chrome omnibar to have a GMail search shortcut:

• Chrome (triple dots)
• Settings
• Manage Search Engines
• Add
• (Give it a name, such as "GMail Search")
• (Give it a keyword that you will enter into the omnibar, such as "GMail")
• https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/%s

Happy finding!

Can't add fingerprint with Windows Hello - stuck at "Get Started"

History:

Swapped out motherboard on Lenovo T460P.
PIN no longer identified and biometrics flakey.
Deleted PIN and fingerprint data in Hello.
Can't add new data.

Symptoms:

When adding a new fingerprint, it goes through the usual process of asking for you to touch the biometrics reader etc. but at the end, when it prompts you for a PIN, the fingerprint is not saved, nor is the new PIN you've entered.

If you first set up a PIN, then try to add a new fingerprint, it gets to the Welcome to Windows Hello screen; when Get started is selected, it freezes.

Solution:

Etherpad - awesome free collaborative online tool

There are a few handy tools out there that I consider to be game-changers.

Etherpad is one of them.

According to http://etherpad.org/ it's an open source project that is designed to allow you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time. You can also add in tons of plugins that allow your instance to suit your needs.

You also can run it online from one of the public repositories.

This little tool has a lot going for it and it's just simply fantastic. It is so simple to set up, so simple to use, and has great functions. It's ideal for a group collaboration and doesn't require the added fluff of Google Accounts etc. (although Google accounts do have their own merit, this is a sure-fire way to get a simple solution up and running quickly and is more like a use-once-and-then-burn option).

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/

or check out my live demo here, and say hi :)

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/brattexblogspotexamplepost

or, check out a very good and populated demo here with some extra features:

https://board.net/p/testboard2

Beat the price increase with Xbox Live Gold : South Africa

So Microsoft is doing a douche financial move - they're more than doubling the SA Xbox Live subscription fee. There's only one thing for it - stock up now before the price increase hits!

Here's my simple (possibly painfully complicated :)) process:
(pardon the hastily drawn up blog post with terrible screenshots and indentations)

1. Go to your Microsoft account page
2. Select Service & Subscriptions
   and select show more
3. Get more Gold
4. (as an aside, I currently have 30.5GB free space on OneDrive but MS is reducing that to 5GB ... good luck to all the businesses running Office 365... MS isn't showing much favorable behaviour at the moment. They've even acquired Sunrise calendar and now they're discontinuing it :( ).

Choose your subscription, then follow the confirmation prompts, and voila! You'll get no confirmation of the purchase and will be dumped at an Xbox settings home page, none the wiser ...

To verify your subscription status, go back to the Services & Subscriptions page and confirm the new expiry and renewal dates. The best thing about doing the R50 monthly thing is you won't be screwed royally if you accidentally forget to cancel the auto-renew. You'll get enough warning to cancel it yourself before you are hit with a massive 12-month subscription price increase... you'll suffer one month of losses but that's better than the equivalent 12-month subscription auto-renewal coming off your account. 

Mac OS X local HDD read-only

Recently had to run a recovery for someone on Mac OS X - the local disk was mounted read only.

To fix this:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21666054#21666054

mount -uw /

Voila!

iSCSI connection failure in RHEL / Linux

Condition

We're running a Dell PowerVault MD3600i iSCSI connection to a RHEL server. From time to time (rarely but more frequently than I like it) it seems to lose the mount and needs intervention.

Herewith the script that I've written to repair the lost mount connection - hope it's useful for someone. 

Script solution

Run a cronjob to check the mount exists and if not, perform a mount repair...

(note the *** portions of the below script are going to be different for your personal setup)

if grep -qs /data /proc/mounts; then

date >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "/data is mounted" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "---" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

else

date >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "!!! /data is NOT mounted !!!" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "^^^" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "attempting repair" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "..." >> /belfry/logs/checkdatamount.log

iscsiadm --m node -T iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3600i.6f0******2d788ac --portal 10.***.***.1**:3260 -u

iscsiadm -m discovery -t st -p 10.***.***.1**

iscsiadm -m node --targetname "iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3600i.6f0******2d788ac" --portal "10.***.***.1**:3260" --login

iscsiadm -m session

vgchange -an MD3600i***01

vgchange -ay MD3600i***01

mount /dev/mapper/MD3600i***01-MD3600i***Vol01 /data

echo "... repaired (possibly)" >> /belfry/logs/checkdatamount.log

fi

PXE booting from Primary PXE server to Secondary PXE server

PXE Chaining.
PXE chainloading.
PXE cross booting.

I don't really know the correct term but I know what I wanted to do. Surprisingly, through my efforts, I found it very difficult to get a straightforward answer from the interwebs, but after doing this-and-that etc. I've drawn up my own notes; perhaps they may be helpful to someone else.

Setting

We run an old Windows 2003 (ahem, not my choice) server with DHCPdNT service which seems to emulate the Linux DHCP configuration (we have a DHCPd.conf file, /tftpboot/ folder, etc.).

I shall refer to this as a hybrid setup.

We run standard PXE boot menus referenced inside our DHCPd.conf file for various subnets; inside each boot menu are more options, with one being "boot diskless Linux". When this is selected, the pxelinux.0 image file is invoked, and off we go inside /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ and look for a matching config file (you know the drill, start with the MAC address, work your way down until eventually you get to default if nothing else is available).

Challenge

I now wanted to add Clonezilla SE to the PXE menu option but Clonezilla SE insists on using DRBL for its functionality. This is how it works, in a nutshell (or outside of a nutshell too):

1. Boot up Live DRBL CD (or from local install)
2. Initiate DRBL / Clonezilla Server
3. It will likely create an IP alias for the local NIC if you only have one NIC
4. Initiates DHPC / PXE
5. Waits for clients

I wanted to have my primary PXE server have a menu item that links to the secondary PXE server; if I ran the secondary PXE server on the same network as the primary DHCP we could have conflicting DHCP issues, and some of the clients would pick up the secondary PXE menu when they didn't ask for it. I avoided this by running the secondary server on a totally separate subnet (with its own potential problems but we will ignore them for now :)).

How do I get a solution along these lines:

PXE Menu 1

option 1: boot local

option 2: memtest

option 3: diskless linux

option 4: load PXE menu 2

Solution

(some tips from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/35409/pxe-boot-chaining-to-hardcoded-tftp-server)

1. Download pxechain.com from  syslinux project archive
1. copied pxechain.com to c:/tftpboot/ on Primary PXE / DHCP server.
2. within C:\TFTPBOOT\pxelinux.cfg\
1. edit default (for all PCs, or if you want to be safe and troubleshoot / test with a single PC, create new blank file 01-00-0c-29-ca-1a-81 [YMMV])
2. Add the following text to configure the menu item:
   

default Clonezilla-live menu title Modified Menu timeout 300 label Clonezilla-live  MENU LABEL Clonezilla Live (Ramdisk)  KERNEL pxechain.com  APPEND [[IP Address of 2ndary server]]::pxelinux.0

3. This will run pxechain.com which prompts for a server and filename, which are fed above (using the Clonezilla DRBL default options for testing purposes)
1. Only the defined MAC address machine will load this PXE configuration

That's about it :)

Easy trick to synchronise Google Chrome browser tabs across devices

If you have a tendency to use Google Chrome on multiple devices, there's a nice and easy "hack" to get your tabs to travel with you from one device to another.

All you need to do is bookmark all the tabs (using either keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+D or as the screenshot below shows, right-click on a tab, and then select Bookmark all tabs). I usually save mine into a Bookmark folder called Saved Tabs which I can then access from any other device that has Google Chrome sync'ed with my Google Account. This will only bookmark the current window so you'd need to do this for each window you want to save.

It's a bit nasty but it is a low resource intensive and simple method to take your tabs with you.

Step 1: Bookmark all tabs

Step 2: from another computer open your Saved Tabs* folder
(*or whatever you called it)

Android Angles: Sony Xperia C insufficient disk space woes and a general intro. on Android file systems

[ EDIT - some widgets won't function properly when moved to SD card, so bear that in mind ]

I recently said goodbye to my BlackBerry love affair. It wasn't like I wanted to go off BlackBerry but there just wasn't anything available to replace my (really run into the ground) 9800. If I was going to get a touch screen I figured I may as well try out Android (iPhone was too expensive).

Anyway, I ended up with the Sony Xperia C - a budget phone with reasonable spec's. The real downside (and at the time, all the advice I got said this could be fixed by installing an SD card) is the small memory partition - device memory of 1GB which is clearly not enough, especially when apps store their data in this same 1GB partition.

It was not long after using the phone that I started to get errors trying to install applications - "error: insufficient disk space". Hitting my limit on the 1GB!

0.98GB of device memory is just simply not enough
(in this picture I have cleared the cached data and already moved most apps off)

Remote Desktop Protocol via web browser (RDP bypassing site firewall)

Sometimes I have the need to RDP to a remote site but having to file a request with the IT dept. in order to get through the firewall can sometimes delay a quick 5 minute task into a 3 or 4 day task. Just not practical at all!

Thankfully, Ericom has come to the rescue with Ericom Access Now - a web-based "application" that lets you use their site as a gateway to the RDP connection you want. It's obviously not ideal, can slow the process down possibly, and adds a layer of complexity but at least it is an alternative that is (currently) free.

Check it out: http://app.ericomaccessnow.com/ *

Enjoy :)

* PS - I had this installed as a Chrome App on my browser but I am sure you can run it just from the website, although I have not tried this.

ExtraPuTTY for XMODEM over Serial

Managing HP ProCurve switches is a breeze when you've got an HP ProBook 6570b handy with its (really under-rated) RS232 connector.

Some of the switches don't have a USB port (which itself is a hassle to get working) so I've found the easiest way to pull config files over the wire in Windows is with ExtraPuTTY - this little fork of PuTTY integrates file transfer protocols like XMODEM which have made my life a lot easier.

http://www.extraputty.com/

Just log in via COMx over Serial, then when you initiate the transfer, click on Files Transfer and follow the prompts!

Windows Easy Transfer issues from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1

I attempted a Windows Easy Transfer from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 and it all backed up wonderfully smoothly. The restore, however, landed me in some trouble when it said the settings couldn't be restored, only the files.

I didn't really have any option, so I accepted this and it promptly restored all the files to the new installation. Many objects worked, others didn't, but the worst part was, there were now some legacy files stashed away in my computer that caused fresh installations of these programs to not work.

Not only is this highly irritating but it's also left me with anything else but a fresh install of Windows 8.1.

The next couple of posts will be outlining how I remedied particular programs that were not behaving since my standard uninstall options were not available to me with a fresh Windows.

Google Chrome: Extensions vanished and replaced by a drop-down

If you've suddenly noticed that your Google Chrome Extensions have all been replaced by a minimalist >> drop-down menu there's a way to get your Extensions back:

• Hover the mouse over the region between the omnibar and the >>

• Cursor changes to a left-right arrow
• Drag it along
• Voila!

Cut and Paste not working in VNC Viewer between Linux and Windows

A simple solution to a simple problem:

My cut and paste between my Windows 8 box and my RHEL box (running a VNC session) stopped working. After doing some reading (thanks to http://almost-a-technocrat.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-to-enable-copy-and-paste-between.html for assistance) I realised it's a simple answer:

In a terminal, run 

# vncconfig &

And that's about it ... at least, it solved my copy & paste problems!

VMware ESXi not supporting onboard NIC - how to customise VMware ESXi

Trying to deploy VMware ESXi 5.5 on a Dell Optiplex 7010 threw out this error:



To get around this, I found this post http://bohemiangrove.co.uk/tag/esxi/ which I've repeated here for your benefit:

So here how I did it:

1. Download ESXi-Customizer (by Andreas Peetz) from here: http://v-front.blogspot.co.uk/p/esxi-customizer.html
2. Download the drivers that have been adjusted for ESXi from here:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27246203/E1001E.tgz
3. Start ESXi-Customizer, browse to the ESXi ISO, browse to the above drivers, browse to where you want the new ISO going! Click RUN!
4. Bun the ISO and jam it in your 790!!

Pairing LG remote to LG TV

Had a major headache trying to find how to pair an LG remote for a DR165 with an LG CRT TV.

Found out the way to do it was to hold down the numbers 1, 2, or 3 on the remote while simultaneously pressing the power button of the TV section of the remote while aiming at the LG TV you want to pair it to. This then trained the two to talk.

Hope this helps someone out there who's been trying to figure out this little nuance as much as I have!

Resetting Google Chrome Sync to fix Sync errors

When setting up a Windows 7 laptop, a Windows 8 Laptop, and a Linux desktop, I use Google Chrome Sync to keep everything standard across the platforms. This worked beautifully with Windows 7, Ubuntu Chrome, and Windows 8 on a tablet but when I brought Windows 8 onto my laptop and started to use Fedora as my desktop, I noticed that the Google Extensions (applications, specifically) didn't synchronise.

After much troubleshooting and patiently waiting to see if more extensions would eventually appear (the bookmarks were fine) I decided the best course of action was to reset my Chrome Sync.

Here are the steps:

Can't add rows or columns in Excel after Format As Table

If you find that once you highlight a few columns or rows in Excel and tell it to "Format as table" you are unable to add any more rows or columns (the option is greyed out in "Insert") then you have accidentally formatted the entire spreadsheet as a table. In other words, you've max'ed out on the columns and rows available.

To fix this, you must delete everything you are not currently using (i.e. select from the last column and go to the end of the spreadsheet, or from the last row and go to the bottom of the spreadsheet and then right-click and "delete").

You will now find the "Insert" option is available again for rows and columns.