Written by lazyllama on May 10th, 2006
Microsoft released two versions of the Windows 2000 SP4 Update Rollup 1 package, one which can cause machines using SCSI to blue screen on reboot, and one which doesn’t.
Unfortunately they didn’t provide any easy way to tell the difference (like a version number on the installation executable). If you’re converting a machine to run with SCSI (or virtualizing it as I am), you need to know which version is installed.
Here’s how:-
Look for “scsiport.sys” in \WINNT\system32\drivers
The BROKEN version in v1 is dated 29 Dec 2004 and is version 5.0.2195.7017
The FIXED version in v2 is dated 14 Jul 2005 and is version 5.0.2195.7059
If you boot the system with a SCSI device using the BROKEN version it will blue screen.
You can fix it by copying back “scsiport.sys” from \WINNT\$ntupdaterolluppackuninstall$ to \WINNT\SYSTEM32\drivers while in the Recovery Console or WinPE. Then install the newer version of the Rollup which can be obtained from Microsoft.
Posted in Windows | No Responses »
Written by lazyllama on May 2nd, 2006
I’ve found one of the most useful add-ons for my Powerbook.
At work, I’m commonly juggling between Virtual PC, Microsoft Remote Desktop, my mail, a web browser, and maybe an X11 connection to my Linux machine at home.
On a 12″ screen with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels that’s a lot to get in a little space so I’d end up constantly minimising applications and switching windows.
I recently saw a demo of xgl/compiz running on a Linux machine with a groovy ‘cube’ technique of switching between multiple desktops and thought that looked like something I would find useful. Not available for OS X though.
Then I saw a post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog about a video of someone running Linux and Windows XP under Parallels Workstation on an Intel Mac, using Virtue to switch between the various machine desktops.
Virtue is a great open-source virtual desktop manager for OS X which enables you to run multiple desktop displays and switch between them at the press of a key. And even better it uses Quartz transformations to switch the displays including the ‘cube’ rotation (also used by OS X’s user switching). It’s a Universal binary so will run on PowerPC or Intel Macs.
So I can now have one destop displaying Windows XP under Virtual PC in full screen mode, one display with my mail, another for web browsing, one for my X11 display and another for terminals and the like. Ctrl-Shift and an arrow key navigates me between desktops and the screen. You can tie applications to desktops so your email is always in the same desktop, and when you select an app whcih is on another desktop Virtue will switch you automatically to that desktop.
It’s very neat, and I’ve made a short video file of Virtue in action. It’s a Quicktime .MOV file, about 800k in size.
Posted in Mac, OS X | No Responses »
Written by lazyllama on April 8th, 2006
I have an old Linux machine with no monitor attached (i.e. headless) which I use as a server.
It was running an old version of Linux so I updated it to Ubuntu using the process to upgrade an existing Linux installation over a network connection. Worked like a dream.
At the end of the process I rebooted the machine but then realised that Ubuntu doesn’t run a ssh server by default.
I couldn’t log in on the console because I had no monitor and the default Ubuntu install boots to the Gnome GUI which is impossible to drive ‘blind’. Here’s how I sorted it.
- Open one of the alternate text terminals by hitting
ctrl-alt-F2 on the machine’s keyboard.
- Enter your username, press
return.
- Enter your password, press
return.
- Enter
sudo apt-get install openssh-server, press return.
- Enter your password, press
return.
With careful typing, that should get you logged in and install and start the ssh daemon. You can then log in remotely.
Posted in Linux | No Responses »
Written by lazyllama on April 8th, 2006
I found that to get more than 128GB of disk available on Windows 2000 SP3 (not sure about XP) you have to make a registry change to enable access to the full disk. This is due to a limit in Windows 2000 and its default ATA disk support.
Save the text between the lines below into a file called BigDisk.reg, double-click the file and reboot. You should now be able to access the whole disk. You should also check that your BIOS supports large disks, and look at updating your BIOS if not.
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
"EnableBigLba"=dword:00000001
To save you the effort, I’ve also created the file for you – BigDisk.reg
Posted in Windows | No Responses »
Written by lazyllama on April 7th, 2006
The place I’m currently working has an IP telephony system. Each phone has an extra LAN port which you can plug a laptop into.
All very handy, but the port is trunked so plugging my Apple Powerbook 12″ into it doesn’t result in any sort of useful connection.
Googling around indicates that only OS X Server (10.3.3 onwards) has a GUI tool for configuring VLANs on an Ethernet port. The OS X client that you get on your iBook, iMac, Powerbook and PowerMac as standard doesn’t have anything obvious for VLAN support.
Digging further reveals that the standard Terminal ifconfig does support VLAN commands.
sudo ifconfig vlan0 create
sudo ifconfig vlan0 vlan VLAN-TAG vlandev en0
sudo ipconfig set vlan0 DHCP
The first line creates the VLAN pseudo device vlan0, the second line that connects that device to the physical ethernet port (in this case en0) and tells the machine which VLAN tag to use.
You will need to replace VLAN-TAG with the relevant VLAN tag which your network administrator should be able to supply you with.
The third line sets the vlan0 pseudo device to use DHCP. If you need to set up a static IP address use something along the following two lines instead:-
sudo ifconfig vlan0 inet 192.168.0.10 netmask 255.255.255.0
and then
sudo route add default 192.168.0.1
to set your default gateway.
When you've finished with the VLAN connection you can destroy the pseudo-device with:-
sudo ifconfig vlan0 destroy
The Ethernet port in my Powerbook 12" (2005 model) supports VLANs, and I suspect the ports on most recent Macs will be the same.
Posted in Mac, OS X | 13 Responses »