A (functional) OpenVPN bridged server setup

OpenVPN is a handy tool for the mobile tech guy who like to have access to his/her home/office network or just prefers some privacy when browsing on-the-go.  OpenVPN is not the only solution out there for this sort of task, but it costs nothing and works on all platforms.

The problem I have run into in the past and very recently is that the documentation for configuring OVPN in bridged mode on the server side is very incomplete.  Most of the scripts on the internet simply do not work the way I need them to in my setup... My personal server has only one NIC and sits behind the router.  Additionally, most of the instructions do not include the facts that IP forwarding and default gateway settings need to be enabled in order to use the VPN to securely browse the Internet.

More tabs? No problem.

No good tech guy would argue that 4 gigs of RAM is sufficient for a modern system.  Why Apple even sells a machine with the option of 4 gigs is beyond me.  The good thing about the low SKU machine is that adding RAM yourself after the fact is ridiculously easy and is so much cheaper than buying it from Apple.  The 2012 Macbook Pro (non-retina) that I purchased this July came to me with 4 gigs, and is only officially, according to Apple, upgradeable to 8 gigs.  Unofficially, you can put 16 gigs of RAM in the machine, the same amount the Retina can be configured to hold.

Corsair's Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM will work just fine and cost you the same as 8 gigs from Apple.  Unibody Macbook Pros are so easy take apart and install RAM into.  I did it in my pajamas in 10 minutes before I was even "awake".  Just be sure the machine is off fully, not just idling in standby mode.

With the default 4 gigs of RAM,  I experienced some serious slowdowns when I had G+ hangout running along with another 20~ tabs,  Apple mail, and a few terminals.  That is a very average system load for what I do and my brand new machine was choking on it.  After changing to 16 gigs of RAM, I was able to open up 166 tabs in Chrome, Apple mail, and type up this article with no problems.  And there is still memory to spare.

Here are a few shots of the Macbook Pro that I took shortly after getting it.  I apologize for the crappiness of the photography; I only had my phone to take pictures with.

Simple is better

Despite the name of this blog, I have never actually written anything about coffee.  I very much enjoy a good cup of coffee, especially in the morning.  However, a bad tasting cup of coffee will ruin a morning, if not the entire day. On most days I drink a cup or two of my own coffee at home and take a cup with me to work.  The last one never tastes good though, and it's all about the mug.

A run-of-the-mill cheapo mug:

The most common design of terrible coffee mugs has so many flaws that it doesn't have any positive points.

The lid of the poorly designed mug (right) has lots of places for liquids to leak out from.  It also features a multitude of creases and seams for hot cocoa and coffee creamer to build up and harden into, making cleaning the lid a real pain in the ass.  The nice coffee cup lid has no seams or slots for liquids to escape from or build up in.

Simple is ALWAYS better.  A flip top may not be as convenient as the slider, but it is better.  It actually seals liquids inside the cup.  It also doesn't build up a disgusting goo from the coffee cream, unlike the slider which traps residue off to the sides.

The inside of the cheap mug is plastic of course, so the worst flavors tend to become part of the plastic. A little history of everything you have been drinking is in every sip.  Not exactly the 23 flavors that are in every Doctor Pepper.  

My new 20 dollar mug is stainless steel on both the inside and out.  It also has no seams at the top between the inner and outer layers, so no water can be trapped in between when the mug is washed.  The coarse, rounded threads and curved edges also contribute to easy cleaning.  There are no places for goo to become trapped.

I picked out this new white coffee mug from *bucks today basing my decision solely on the idea that simple is better.  The world would be a better place if everyone thought this way.

Root, Recovery, and ROM on a classic Droid (A855)

This week I picked up an original Motorola Droid from a co-worker who had upgraded to a Droid Razr. Since I use Linux, most of the rooting and recovery flashing we completely useless to me.  After piecing together enough information from various sources, I was finally able to perform a manual root of the Droid, followed by a bootloader upgrade to install clockworkmod which will allow me to install a new ROM.  I will document my procedures here, so you don't have to go through all the hassle that I did.

First things first, this tutorial is for LINUX users (it may also be applicable for Mac users).  If you have Winderp, there are plenty of other tutorials out there for you.

Prerequisites:

• Motorola Droid
• adb installed on you machine

Downloads:

• Super One click [xda] -- You will need to grab version 1.9.5 from the OP
• SBF file for flashing bootloader
• Clockwork mod recovery
• SBF flasher tool

Rooting the phone:

1. On the phone itself, navigate the settings menu to Applications > Development and enable "USB Debugging."
2. Back up one level and enable "Unknown sources."
3. Plug in your phone and open terminal.  Then type adb devices .  You should see a string of characters.  If you see nothing, then you need to troubleshoot adb.
4. Extract the contents of superoneclick on your computer and then upload the psneuter file from the "exploits" folder using adb push psneuter /data/local/tmp .
5. Jump into adb shell by typing  adb shell, then run chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/psneuter .
6. Change directory and execute the psneuter exploit.  cd /data/local/tmp,  ./psneuter
7. You will be disconnected from adb shell.  Run adb kill-server and adb devices on your local box.
8. Reconnect to adb shell and you should see the # sign instead of $.  If you dont see #, you don't have root.
9. Remount the system partition: mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system
10. In another terminal, copy the su and busybox binaries to the system bin folder: adb push su-v3 /system/bin/su and adb push busybox /system/bin/busybox
11. Switch back to the adb shell terminal and run the following: chmod 4755 /system/bin/su  and chmod 4755 /system/bin/busybox .
12. Type "su" in adb shell. If you get a blank line then you are good to go. If you get an error, you may need to push a different version of busybox.
13. Install SuperUser.apk by typing in adb install SuperUser.apk in the other terminal.
14. Remount the system partition as RO in adb shell with: mount -o remount,ro -t yaffs /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system .
15. Reboot the phone with adb reboot in the local terminal.
16. Dowload the root tester app from the Market and test root access.  If all went well, you have full root access.

The recovery installation portion will come at a later time, when I get a chance to develop the topic fully.

Chainload chimera with grub

If you want to dual boot your hackintosh with Linux using grub to select the operating systems, add the following lines to the 40_custom file and rebuild the grub menu.

menuentry "Mac OS 10.7 loader"{
set root=(hd1)
chainloader +1
}


The "40_custom file is located at "/etc/grub.d" .  To update the grub menu, run "update-grub" from terminal.  Once you run the update script, you will want to remove or comment out the other Mac OS entries that grub finds, as these will not work. (OS X needs chimera to boot from a normal BIOS.)

This scenario works only if you have Linux and grub on one hard drive and Mac OS on another.  Substitute  (hd1) for whatever hard drive you are running Mac OS from.

Mail not sending on iPhone? Check SMTP settings

Today I fixed a coworker's iPhone which could not send emails from both of his email accounts on his phone.  I discovered that the problem stemmed from the SMTP settings configuration, which did not enable authentication by default.  To correct the problem you will need to enable authentication under the SMTP settings pane; most people will be fine choosing password authentication.

 

The final pane is where you need to be in order to change the SMTP settings.  The server port will vary depending on your service provider.  Newer implementations will use port 587, some servers will use port 25, and yet others will use port 80.  Not all mail services will support SSL, but I highly recommend using it if it works with you server.
One last thing to note: In my example, I use gmail.  Setting up a gmail account using this method should not be necessary, as iOS implements gmail correctly and automatically configures the settings correctly.

Quick fix for Google Chrome Crashing in Windows

Over the last few days I have run into a few PCs people have given me to fix with Google Chrome installations that crash immediately upon opening.  By crashing I mean Chrome's way of crashing, where the tab shows a big blue page with a sad face that says "Aw snap."

If you delete the users folder in Chrome's directory (please back it up first), Chrome should start working again. Keep in mind that this will clear all of your settings, extensions, bookmarks, etc.  To delete this folder, enable the display of hidden files in windows explorer.
For XP: C:\Documents and settings\your user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
Vista / Win7:  C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data.
Delete the user data folder and fire up Chrome again.

Side note: It seems that the crashing in this manner may be related to spyware/adware installing bad extensions in Chrome.  Both of the computers I experienced this problem with were laden with all sorts of crapware.

Things I Hate

Why does Dell think it's necessary to do this?  Why the hell would I ever need a power supply with a 180 degree AC connector on it?  This makes absolutely no sense to me. Every time I use one of these the cord ends up being to short because I have to bend the cord back over.  Dell, please stop making these lame pieces of crap.

Dear ATI,

I really like your GPU hardware, it kinda kicks ass, but the drivers are another story. Please make some linux drivers that don't suck completely.  I am sick of driver installs that break every time the kernel gets updated or I switch monitor configurations.  Soon, I will trade off my Radeon 6850 for an older nVidia part just because NV drivers actually work.  If you want me back as a customer, please put more effort into making linux drivers.

Sincerely,

Ben

Fixing the media not found error in Subsonic

The latest version of Subsonic (4.6 beta 2)  for Debian seems to have an issue with  android phones and streaming out of the box.  The official instructions do not list two steps which should be there.  After you have configured the server, you need to manually create the music and playlist folders under /var for standard configuration.  As soon as I made the playlists folder, my android phone was able to list all the music on the server.

Subsonic webiste

Download for Linux

Instructions

Setting Fan speed for AMD GPUs under linux

If you need to set the fan speed for your ATI / AMD card manually for whatever reason, this is how it is done. I assume you have the fglrx drivers installed and configured correctly.

Type in terminal the following line (including quotes):

aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get fanspeed 0"

This command fetches the current fan speed.

Set the speed to something higher using this command:

aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 X"

X is the fan speed %.  In both commands 0 represents the first video card in the system.

Nook Color hacking update: Video

I have been using my Nook Color for over a month now, and I have still not settled on a specific ROM that I like.  When I first bought the NC, I went for the simple root which opened up the possibility for me to install Android market apps.  The problems that the stock rooted firmware presented, such as the ugly interface, led me to try using custom ROMs. First, I flashed a Froyo (2.2) ROM to an SD card and used that for some time.  Later I installed a Honeycomb (3.0) based ROM to my internal memory. I quit using Honeycomb because the interface was too laggy, and apps tended to crash often.  At that point I moved to Gingerbread (2.3) based ROM including Cyanogenmod, Ultimate Droid, and Phiremod.  All of these had their good and bad points.  Unfortunately, none of them could do video playback correctly.  YouTube either didn't work at all, or had unwatchable frame rates. 

A smart phone for the cheapskate: LG Optimus V

Is it an iPhone? No.  If it's not an iPhone, why would I want it?

Having to pay your own cell phone bill is a double-edged sword.  Finally I can get whichever phone I want on any network I choose.  Oh darn, all the good phones are on the Big 4 carriers with plans starting at an organ donation per month.  So what did I do?  I chose option three.  Virgin Mobile.  For only $25 dollars a month, yes that says $25 a month,  I get unlimited text and data along with 300 minutes.  Did I mention that it's only 25 dollars per month?

"Surely a prepaid carrier can only have the bottom bin of crap phones" was something I used to think all the time.  I was wrong.  Finally catching up into the 21st century, VM is offering two Android phones on their network.  I selected the LG Optimus V to be my new phone for two reasons: Price and usability.  Firstly, the Optimus V was cheaper than the alternate Samsung phone offered on VM by at least 50 dollars.  Second, the LG Optimus received much better reviews for usablility than the Samsung phone. 

User Account Control In Windows 7 and Vista

Question:  What is User Account Control and why does it keep popping up?

Answer:  Simply stated, User Account Control, or UAC for short, is a "security" feature built into Windows Vista and Windows 7.  I use the word security lightly, because I have yet to see it actually protect against anything. The idea behind UAC was to make users verify that they were the ones which initiated a program capable of modifying computer settings and data, and that it was not some rouge process or malicious software trying to install itself.

Google pushing "Cloud" agenda with Chrome apps

As a follow up to my recent cloud computing article, I thought it appropriate to share a little bit about what Google is doing with Chrome.  If you run Chrome on your computer, you may have noticed recently a  section on the "New Tab" page called "Apps."  If you click on the "Web Store" button, you will be taken to a page that look much like an app market place that you would see on your smart phone.  Most of the apps in the Chrome store at the moment are free.  If you enjoy the app experience that you get from your phone, but want to experience apps on a larger screen, try Chrome apps.  Many of the same free apps you find in the Android market place are available in the Chrome store.

The addition of apps to Chrome comes as no surprise.  Google is going full speed ahead with the development of cloud based software, and what better way to accustom people to using cloud software than by adding it to their desktop web browser.  Chrome apps is merely a bridge from desktop computing to full cloud computing.  Eventually, Google will have a production version of Chrome OS; essentially an operating system which will run nothing but a Chrome browser.  Since Chrome OS will not have any software but the browser, apps running in a Chrome browser will be used instead.

If you already use Chrome, open up a new tab and check out the Chrome Web store.  If you aren't using Chrome yet, you are probably stuck in 2005, in which case you won't read this article for another six years.  Do yourself a favor and check out Chrome apps.  Not only will they enhance your web browsing experience, they will also make your life easier.