The fakirs tonsils

I just had quite a scare. I noticed an unknown script in the source of many of my websites.

At the beginning it had added:

<script src=“http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js” language=“javascript”>script>

And at the end:

<script language=“javascript”><!– bmi_SafeAddOnload(bmi_load,”bmi_orig_img”,0);//–>

My first idea was that either my server or connection was compromised, but it is actually part of the HTTP accelerator used by my UMTS/3G provider (KPN Mobiel Internet) to save traffic.

So there is probably nothing to worry about.

If you enable ETHoA bridging on your Thompson Speedtouch to delegate the IP to a new router and you want to use the original MAC address of your Speedtouch, to make your new router get the old Internet IP of your Speedtouch or because your ISP mandates it, you need to change the MAC address of your Speedtouch.

Otherwise bridged traffic to the old MAC will be eaten by the Speedtouch instead of passing it through to your new router.

My old MAC was 00:14:7f:cf:ad:29, so I changed this to 00:14:7f:cf:ad:28 with the following:

{Administrator}[ip]=>:ip ifconfig intf=loop hwaddr=00:14:7f:cf:ad:28
{Administrator}[ip]=>:ip ifconfig intf=LocalNetwork hwaddr=00:14:7f:cf:ad:28
{Administrator}[ip]=>


Trying to figure out what the error above means while connecting to your SQLBase server? So was I. It’s actually quite silly, but I was not able to find this error in any documentation or Google and it took me way too long to figure out and fix.
Apart from possibly setting the servername in your DSN, it’s also configured in the sql.ini. For linux this is:

[linuxclient.tcpip]
serverpath=SERVERNAME,HOSTNAME,PORT/*

I had the SERVERNAME set incorrectly.

Hope this helps.

Want to recover a machine which has a “PC Angel” recovery partition, but the MBR is hosed so you can’t recover with “F10″ like the manual states?

Boot the system with KNOPPIX (or any other recovery disk with a partition editor), then use fdisk to change the partition with ID 12 (”Compaq Diagnostics”) to ID 7 (”NTFS”) and mark it bootable. Then reboot and voila, recovery boots.

After recovering, you’ll have to change the partition table back to how it was before, because the recovery software will not fix this for you. However, it will fix the MBR so recovering with F10 will be functional again after this.

If you don’t change the ID or the partition table is hosed in an other way, you’ll get a blue screen of the recovery software with error 0xC000003A (STATUS_OBJECT_PATH_NOT_FOUND). This was the problem I had, so I put it in the blog post to aid people searching for this problem to find it.

Another way to recover the recovery partition could be the software on http://www.headstartservice.nl/downloads_details.aspx?id=2225. I have not tried this myself.

Update (2008-05-10): The website above is no longer functional, so you’ll have to fix it through the procedure above.

Update: Claude Henchoz shows an easier way to do this in the comments, check below.

It seems like Apple is only distributing the AirPort Utility on the CD with the unit. This tool is required to manage AirPort Basestations. On their website there are only updates which require a previous version to be installed. So if you’ve lost your CD or if you forget to grab it with you when you loan somebody’s AirPort, you’re screwed.

I found a workaround for this for Mac OS X, but not for Windows. However, these days most ‘updates’ usually contain the entire original application which is also the case with this. There are two ways to fix this. They both start with getting the .MSI file.

Start the installer and get the error “This update requires AirPort version 5.0 to be installed.”. Before clicking the error away, go to your temporary directory (Start -> Run -> %TEMP%). In a subfolder there is a file called ‘APSetup.msi’.

Then there are two ways to continue. The first just gives you the utility to work with. The second patches the .MSI to install properly.

1. Extract the file ‘APUtil.exe’ from this with a tool like Less MSIérables. Open this file and voila, AirPort Utility.
2. Extract scripts.vbs from this tools with ORCA (Tables -> Export Tables -> [x] Binary). Take binary/scripts.vbs.idb and replace

Session.Property(”AP50ISINSTALLED”) = “”

with

Session.Property(”AP50ISINSTALLED”) = “1″

Then put this file back (Tables -> Import Tables -> “Binary.idt”) and save (File -> Save). Then run the APSetup.msi and voila, installer works. There are probably easier ways to fool the installer, but this worked for me.

WARNING: Using the commands below may void your warranty!

Some previous-generation 3Com hardware has a ‘Debug Console’ with interesting features. I have confirmed this to work with 3300XM, 3300SM (debug console 1.4), 4200 and 4912 (debug console 2.0).

It does not work on the recent H3C (4200G, 5500, 7700, etc.) or Accton-based (38(12|24|48) and 3870) hardware. Also not the antique Corebuilder hardware, I have tried 9400.

You can reach it with ‘?d’ (short for ?debug):

Menu options: --------------3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4900---------------
bridge             - Administer bridge-wide parameters
feature            - Administer system features
gettingStarted     - Basic device configuration
logout             - Logout of the Command Line Interface
physicalInterface  - Administer physical interfaces
protocol           - Administer protocols
security           - Administer security
system             - Administer system-level functions
trafficManagement  - Administer traffic management

Type  ? for help
-----------------------------------4900 Gigabit (1)---------------------
Select menu option: ?d
Debug Console 2.0
'exit' to quit
(1) debug 1  />

You can browse over the VFS which contains directories with debug commands.

(1) debug 1  / > dir
events                   0 r xd - debug
radius                   0 r xd - debug
PDS                      0 r xd - debug
...
list                     0 r x  - Outputs registered debug functions
u_server                 0 r x  - Display upgrade server data
nistats                  0 r x  - Display current value of Network Interface statistics
API                  60593 r xd
backup               41981 r xd
bin                  27609 r xd
cli                  21532 r xd
cs                     133 r xd
css                   2438 r xd
debug                15248   xd
gifs                 81429 r xd
gsw                      0 r xd
hgsw                   240 r xd
html                 89007 r xd
index.rhtm              99 r x
java                 15783 r xd
js                   45910 r xd
layer3                 826 r xd
tree                 10629 r xd
Total               165680
(1) debug 2  />

The debug directory contains a number of useful scripts and programs:

(1) debug 1  / > cd debug
(1) debug 2  /debug/ > dir
smtpDebug                0 r x  - SMTP Debug
MM_Free                  0 r x  - Report MM free memory.
_pmon.rscr            1233 r x
abort.rscr             210   x
alias.rscr             251   x
cat.rscr                59   x
clearPostFailLog.rsc    52 r x
cont.rscr              150   x
copyport.rscr          242 r x
exec.rscr              241   x
help.txt               613 r
history.rscr          2588 r x
initHistory.rscr       178 r x
kill.rscr              255   x
lic.rscr               564 r x
map.rscr               495 r x
map_listen.rscr        135 r x
mb.rscr                 24   x
md.rscr                238   x
ml.rscr                 24   x
mw.rscr                 24   x
next.rscr               40   x
pmon.rscr               96 r x
postFailure.rscr       735 r x
proc.rscr              395   x
prof.rscr             3051 r x
restart.rscr           133   x
sel.rscr               228   x
smtp.rscr             1189 r x
sprof.rscr             234   x
stack.rscr             344 r x
step.rscr               40   x
stop.rscr              175   x
trace.rscr             357   x
untrace.rscr           310   x
unwatch.rscr            60   x
watch.rscr             285   x
Total                15248
(1) debug 3  /debug/>

For instance, the history of the box:

(1) debug 2  / > his
3Com SuperStack 3
System Name     : 4900 Gigabit
Location     :
Contact      :

Time Since Reset        : 5346 Hrs 22 Mins 5 Seconds
Operational Version     : 4.21
Hardware Version        : 0
Boot Version    : 1.00
MAC Address     : 00-30-1e-5e-1e-80
Product Number          : 3C17700
Serial Number           : 7RGV45E1E80

Module Slot 1           : 3C17710 Quad 1000Base-SX module H/w ver: 0.00

No entries in POST Failure log
========================================
Last POST: Passed
========================================

Watchdog handler is RESET

Stack dump to serial port is OFF

No option available to dump stack data
The History Log
Id    No   S/W Rel          Reason                  UpTime     SysErr
5     0                    Power                   Unknown
6     0                    Power                   Unknown
7     0                    Power                   Unknown
8     8
Manual Reset (r)     0 Hrs 12 Mins  4 Secs
9     9 4.21
Power (r)                   Unknown
10    10 4.21
Power (r)                   Unknown
11    11 4.21
Power (r)                   Unknown

This shows you all kinds of historical logging from the box that 3Com does not normally expose, this might be useful in debugging strange crashes or other problems.

For instance, it gives this error if you’re adding too many units to a stack. This way you can show an incompetent person was fiddling with your switches:

27    27 2.50      Stack Conflict     0 Hrs  0 Mins 53 Secs
Uptime Hours 22336 Reset 26

It’s too bad 3Com hardly if ever logs anything or shows any info like this in the regular interface..

Another useful command is the process monitor:

(2) debug 1  / > pmon on
(2) debug 2  / > Calculating RTC Resources...RTC Resource Last 2 Secs (Time=1333773 sec)Cur  HWM
0%|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |100%
Timers      :<                                                    0%   0%
Sys Process :************<                                       24%  24%
Idle        :***<                                                 6%   6%
Low         :<                                                    0%   0%
Med         :********************************<                   64%  64%
High        :<                                                    0%   0%
Heaps      0%|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |100%
200         :*********************<                              42%  42%
155         :***********<                                        22%  22%
220         :*****************<                                  34%  34%
230         :<                                                    0%   0%RTC Resource Last 2 Secs (Time=1333775 sec)Cur  HWM
0%|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |100%

This might help you debug issues.

The CLI of your box is available in /cli:

(1) debug 94  / > dir /cli/cmds
?debug.rscr           1390   x
bridge               37397 r xd
fabric                2945 r xd
feature               7134 r xd
gettingStarted.rscr   4376 rwx
logout.rscr             30 rwx
physicalInterface    18001 r xd
protocol             60677 r xd
security             18191 r xd
system               32845 r xd
trafficManagement    13051 r xd
Total               196037
(1) debug 95  />

Unfortunately, the .rscr scripts are not in text, so I was not able to make sense out of this:

(1) debug 88  /cli/cmds/system/license/ > cat /cli/cmds/system/license/add.rscr
ä4°À`[ÿÁ~Enter license Activation Key: [ÿ;Please confirm installation of this license (yes,no)[yes]: [ÿÒ Q IãÚ"b%sÁ ÿ"À¡âÿÀ Q IèÄ"|"" is not a valid selection. ÿ"c
%sÁ ÿ"À À¡âÿÀ Q»IãÖ"a
ÿ¡âÿäáÀÒ Q[ÿÿÀ"b%UÀ [ÿÃ"Àa-( [ÿÄ"à [ÿÅ`[ÿÆ [ÿÄ Gã#.Ä Gè!&ÅÃÆQÿÆ¡ÿÄ¡]ÿéÀÅ[ÿä%3ÀÅ[ÿÿÇ"",generic,AA,stringÀ))[ÿ"Ç+setã*q"c%s
,msg5 ÿ¡âÿÈ"",generic,AA))[ÿ"È+getã/¦"c%s
,msg5 ÿ¡âÿÉ"`"This license is already installed6This license is not valid for any units in this stack.This device does not support this license key.This device does not support this license key.)[ÿÈ Q¡Q¡GÈ Q¡Q¢LMã4"c%s

If you find any more non-obvious neat features, please let me know.

I have a VDO Dayton MS 2010. It’s a decent Portable Navigation device with the whole of Europe on one SD, which is a nice feature. It did hang every now and then so I went to look for an update which was released on 12 January at VDODayton.com.

While updating I noticed they had added two games in Navi/Games:

Blockbuster.exe Fonts Images LGPL2.1.txt SDL.dll SDL_image.dll SDL_ttf.dll Sudoku.exe gpl.txt

So, I wondered if I could put something in there that was actually any fun. The answer is: yes! And what’s more fun than ScummVM?

Attach MS2010 to your Windows-based PC via USB and browse to /ResidentFlash/Games on the unit.
Put the ScummVM.exe of the WinCE release at ScummVM in the directory and voilá, you can play any game supported by ScummVM that is playable with just the mousecursor and a left-click. The executable is automatically added to the list of games.
It will require you to map a key to right-click the first time you want to start a game, which is not possible because you have no keys on the MS2010.
So to fix this you must run ScummVM once on the MS2010. This will create a scummvm.ini n the same directory. Download the scummvm.ini from the unit and replace all 0000 in action_mapping= with ffff and upload it again. Enjoy!

Isn’t this much more fun than looking at a boring map?