Building your own OpenDirectory server on Linux
OpenDirectory is a feature included with Mac OS X Server. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use it without having to spend hundreds of dollars on a server license? Wouldn’t it be great if you could add...
View ArticleUSB to SATA/IDE adapter
If you often find yourself needing to temporarily connect bare hard drives (2.5″, 3.5″ or 5.25″) to your computer, a USB to SATA/IDE adapter is a nice investment. A while ago, I bought the Sharkoon...
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Laptop Theft Tracking Software for Mac OS X
Over the past 2.5 years or so, I’ve been developing a piece of software that allows tracking a stolen Mac laptop (works for Desktops too, though they are obviously less likely to get stolen). Once...
View ArticleSlim down Final Cut Studio’s Media Content using HFS Compression
A full installation of Final Cut Studio 3 with all media content (for Motion, DVD Studio Pro, and Soundtrack Pro Loops) takes up around 40-50 GB of hard drive space. How about regaining 5-10 GB of...
View Article3rd 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...
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