3rd party Exchange ActiveSync servers
I’ve recently been looking for a comprehensive list of mail/groupware servers/services that offer Exchange ActiveSync integration, e.g. for the iPhone or Windows Mobile. Since I couldn’t find one, I’m...
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iOS 4.1: Undocumented VPN API, used by Cisco AnyConnect
A few days ago, Cisco AnyConnect was admitted to the App Store. This was mentioned by a few blogs, but they didn’t seem to notice the relevance of it. AnyConnect is an enterprise SSL VPN technology by...
View ArticleHTML to ePub using Sigil
I was looking for a way to convert HTML books into an ePub file. The general layout of the file should be preserved (including images), while all the stuff that doesn’t make sense on an ebook reader...
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Extending Active Directory for Mac OS X clients
After I wrote about building your own OpenDirectory server on Linux a while back, I decided to do the same thing on Windows Server 2008 R2. The process of extending the AD schema to include Apple...
View ArticleISC DHCPd: Dynamic DNS updates against secure Microsoft DNS
ISC DHCPd is capable of Dynamic DNS updates against servers like BIND that support shared-key authentication or any other server that supports unauthenticated updates (such as BIND or Microsoft DNS...
View ArticleIPv6 router on Linux
Setting up Linux as an IPv6 router is really easy. Even if your ISP doesn’t do IPv6 yet (like mine), there’s no reason not to get an IPv6 tunnel from Tunnelbroker.net and be IPv6-ready within minutes....
View ArticleUsing motd to warn you of upcoming fsck
Has it ever happened to you that you remotely rebooted a Linux server and wondered why after 10 minutes you still couldn’t Ping or SSH into it? Quite often, this is caused by a lengthy run of fsck on...
View ArticlePatching DSDT in recent Linux kernels without recompiling
Up until a year or two ago, the Linux kernel let you replace the ACPI DSDT by adding a customized version to the initrd. However, more recent versions disable that by default. If you’re using Grub2 as...
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NFS Performance: rsize and wsize
NFS is supposed to be a very simple and fast network file protocol. However, when I tried to use it on my Xen box between a Debian Squeeze DomU and an NFS server running on the Debian Squeeze Dom0, I...
View ArticleAsterisk: Change Callee-ID using CONNECTEDLINE
It’s easy to change your Caller ID (assuming your phone provider doesn’t filter it) in Asterisk using something like Set(CALLERID(name)=blah). This is often used to choose which number to use for an...
View ArticleAsterisk: Compile SRTP Module without recompiling Asterisk
I recently installed Asterisk 1.8.3 (the Asterisk team now provides pre-built Debian packages at http://packages.asterisk.org). Unfortunately, that package came without the res_srtp SRTP module....
View ArticleAsterisk: Remotely retrieving voicemail by pressing *
Many howtos around the internet on how to remotely access your voicemail box involve a dedicated extension reachable from the outside or an IVR menu entry. But wouldn’t it be much nicer if you could...
View ArticleXen 4.0 and Citrix WHQL PV drivers for Windows
Xen 4.0 is supposed to be able to use Citrix’s WHQL certified Windows paravirtualization drivers. Their advantage over the GPLPV drivers is that they are code-signed, meaning they run on 64-bit Windows...
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Using Intel AMT’s VNC server
Newer Intel Chipsets with vPro/Intel AMT, such as the Q57, Q67 and C206 (as long as they’re paired with a Core i5/i7 or Xeon with integrated graphics), have a feature called Remote KVM. To use it,...
View ArticleHow-To: Converting Xen Linux VMs to VMWare ESXi
I have a couple Linux VMs I created on Xen using xen-create-image (as such, they are using pygrub and have one virtual disk file per partition). Now I want to migrate those over to a VMWare ESXi box....
View ArticleMount ext3 VMDK in VMWare Fusion using VMDKMounter
VMWare Fusion 3 comes with a tool called VMDKMounter.app. It allowed you to simply double-click NTFS or FAT32 VMDKs and they would be mounted on your desktop. VMWare Fusion 4 dropped this tool, but you...
View ArticleIntegrating BIND with AD-integrated Microsoft DNS
I recently set up BIND9 to run secondary zones for an ActiveDirectory-integrated DNS server (the reason being that I hated effectively losing internet access when I rebooted my W2k8R2 server). While...
View ArticleActive PA speaker systems
During my high school time, I did a lot of work as a sound technician and lighting designer at all kinds of events, both as a volunteer at school and outside of school. Recently someone from the school...
View ArticleCreate a bootable Mac OS X Lion Server USB drive
Download Lion from the Mac App Store. Use Disk Utility to restore /Applications/Install Mac OS X Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport to a USB flash drive. Download Lion Server from the Mac App Store. Grab...
View ArticleTroubleshooting Apple Software Update Server
We are currently in the process of migrating towards a thin imaging approach for the Macs I manage at my university. One of the things we needed was an Apple Software Update Server, which is pretty...
View ArticleHashing and verifying LDAP passwords in PHP
I recently migrated a PHP web application that used LDAP for authentication and MySQL for data to something entirely MySQL based. I needed the users to be able to continue using their old LDAP...
View ArticleInstalling Apple Remote Desktop 3.6.1 without first installing the boxed version
Apple Remote Desktop 3.0 was released in 2006. The current version is 3.6.1, and as such your six year old boxed copy license still entitles you to run it. ARD has undergone some major changes during...
View ArticleMac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Review
So I finally upgraded to Mountain Lion. I completely skipped over Lion because I didn’t like how Apple was iOS-ifying everything and had just stayed on Snow Leopard until a few days ago. Personally, I...
View ArticleConverting Xen Linux VMs to VMWare
A year ago I wrote about how to convert from Xen to VMWare (which is a similar process to a Xen virtual-to-physical or V2P conversion). Now I found a much simpler solution, thanks to...
View ArticleFixing Microsoft Office 2011 SP2 Volume licensing
UPDATE 2012-11-15: The 14.2.5 installer no longer has this weird behavior (it does not include removables.txt files at all, however the postinstall script would still process them if they were there)....
View ArticleVMWare ESXi 5.1.0 breaks PCI Passthrough (Update: fixed in ESXi510-201212001)
After I upgraded to VMWare ESXi 5.1.0, my server crashed with a purple screen of death as soon as I fired up a VM that was using a passed-through PCI device (1244:0e00, an AVM GmbH Fritz!Card PCI v2.0...
View ArticleOpenVPN for iOS
Today, OpenVPN Technologies released OpenVPN Connect for iOS. Finally, we can use OpenVPN on all major platforms. I know many of my blog readers have been waiting for this: my article on the iOS VPN...
View ArticleUsing C++11 on Mac OS X 10.8
Recent Xcode versions for Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8 ship with Clang, a modern compiler for C/C++/ObjC based on LLVM. It fully supports C++11: simply add -std=c++0x or -std=c++11 to your CXXFLAGS. This...
View ArticleXserve RAID and Atto Thunderlink FC 1082 are incompatible if used without an...
We’re running a 2006 Xserve RAID at the university. Our old server was a 2006 Xserve with an Apple 2 Gbit Fibre Channel card. When we recently got a new Mac mini server to replace, we ordered an Atto...
View ArticleOpenWRT hardware recommendation: TP-Link TL-WDR3600
I recently replaced my WiFi access point, an ancient Linksys WRT54G v3.1. I was looking for something that supported simultaneous dualband, multiple SSIDs, and VLANs. I also wanted something that could...
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Two-legged OAuth between PHP and JIRA
If you want to use the JIRA REST API without storing plain-text passwords in your application, you need to use OAuth. If you want the application to directly talk to JIRA without binding it to a JIRA...
View ArticleTracking DHL Freight packages
I recently got a shipment notification with a tracking number starting with JND and followed by 17 digits, half of them zero. After searching around for a while, I figured it was shipped by DHL...
View ArticleHP StorageWorks P2000 G3 and ATTO Thunderlink FC 1082
Hardware To replace a 2006 Xserve and a 7TB Xserve RAID at the university, we recently got a Mac mini server, an ATTO ThunderLink FC 1082 Thunderbolt to 8Gbit Fibre Channel adapter, and a HP...
View ArticleOpenWRT on TP-Link TL-WDR3600: enabling Wifi channel 12+13 and higher power...
A few months ago I recommended the TP-Link TL-WDR3600 as an OpenWRT router. I did complain that it unnecessarily limits me to 50 mW in the 5 GHz. After I discovered that it also prevents me from using...
View ArticleUsing Serva with an existing PXE server
A long time ago, I set up a PXE server on my network from which I can boot all kinds of Linux tools. It uses the PXELinux boot loader to provide a menu etc. When I came across an article on how to PXE...
View ArticlePXE-booting Knoppix 7.2
I have a PXE server on my network so I can easily boot Linux live images and tools when fixing computers. Knoppix 7.2 however is unable to load a network driver on most PCs (it only works with Intel...
View ArticleBachelor Thesis: Like-Charge Attraction in DNA
My Bachelor thesis was published a few days ago. It is available at the Institute of Computational Physics at the University of Stuttgart as well as here. Download
View ArticleSSDs with TCG Opal or IEEE-1667 support
Recently, a few SSD models have been introduced that support Full-Disk Encryption per the TCG Opal standard. Many older SSDs already support AES encryption and use the ATA password for this, which is...
View ArticleCUPS on OS X hangs after a few days, reports “Internal Server Error”
If you set up CUPS on an OS X Server (version 10.8.5 in my case, but anything from 10.7 (where CUPS introduced sandboxing) through 10.9 (the current version) should exhibit this behavior), i.e. you...
View ArticleLeserbrief “Rentenpaket”
Am 29. Januar 2014 beschloss die Bundesregierung die als “Rentenpaket” bekannte Rentenerhöhung. Unmittelbar darauf präsentierte Arbeitsministerin Andrea Nahles eine Werbekampagne dafür; über die am 30....
View ArticleVMware ESXi 5.5.0 panics when using Intel AMT VNC
For compatibility with a new guest OS, I upgraded my ESXi to 5.5 today. During reboot, it crashes after a few seconds (it briefly flashes a message about starting up PCI passthrough on the yellow ESXi...
View ArticleCalling the parent constructor in PHP 5
Say you write a PHP class that needs to call the parent constructor. At first sight, this is simple: function __construct() { parent::__construct(); } Say you want to pass some arguments to the parent...
View ArticleWordPress Plugins
After I recently set up a blog for a friend, I thought I’d post a list of plugins I use on the various WordPress instances I run for various people and myself. Simple Custom CSS. Allows you to add...
View ArticleCUPS-to-CUPS printing with server-side processing and page_log
Printer sharing on Windows is easy: the client receives the driver from the server, presents the driver GUI and passes on an intermediate format along with the options selected in the driver to the...
View ArticleSipura SPA-3000 spontaneous reboots, reason 0x737208f4
I have a 10-year-old Sipura SPA-3000 VoIP phone adapter (SIP to FXS phone) which at some point started rebooting once an hour, even during calls. After enabling remote syslog, I saw that these reboots...
View ArticleWifi with WPA/WPA2 mixed mode encryption on Snom phones
When you try to connect a Snom phone to a Wifi network, make sure the network isn’t running in mixed WPA/WPA2 mode. The phone will see the network anyway, but fail to connect at boot. Disabling WPA in...
View ArticleAsterisk: Change number in To header
A long time ago, I wrote about changing the callee ID as seen by the caller using CONNECTEDLINE. Changing the caller ID as seen by the callee is also pretty obvious using CALLERID. That leaves two more...
View ArticleAsterisk 11 und Sipgate Basic
Für ältere Asterisk-Versionen hat Sipgate in seinen FAQs passende Einträge für die sip.conf aufgeführt. Unter Asterisk 11 hat sich leider die NAT-Behandlung etwas verändert (nat=yes gibt es nicht...
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Crossflashing Dell PERC H200 to LSI 9211-8i
OEM version of the LSI SAS 9211-8i, such as the Dell H200, H310 or IBM M1015 are quite popular for use with FreeNAS. However, they need to be flashed with a regular LSI firmware to disable their RAID...
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PHP 5: ldap_search never returns when searching Active Directory
I recently moved a PHP web application from a server running PHP 5.3 on Mac OS X 10.6 to a newer one with PHP 5.4 on Mac OS X 10.9. This caused the following code sample, run against an Active...
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