Martin's Random Notes

I recently added a new sign-in account to our Chromebooks for the kids. They had been using "Browse As Guest", but I've disabl...

In case it helps anyone else... Here's how I fixed two weird faults that had appeared at the same time on my wife's 2013 Ford Focus ...

CentOS seems to lack easy commands for automatically patching a server and then rebooting it if anything needs restarting. Basically I wan...

So you'd like to run Centos 8 on Digital Ocean... But the Cloud version of Centos 8 has not been released yet, so therefore Digital Oce...

At the weekend I decided it was time to decalcify my coffee machine - a Saeco Intuita bean to cup machine that's served us well for 5 ye...

My new network requires my Windows 10 PC to sit behind an HTTP Proxy.  Normally this is no problem - the proxy settings configured in the br...

Like many Mac users, after taking an automatic update to 10.14.4 in early April 2019, my dad found that Apple Mail could no longer send or r...

So...  We type: ssh user@host.example.com and it hangs for ages before it lets you log in. On older distros, you got a delay of ...

The syntax you're looking for is: scp user@myfirewall.myfqdn.com:system:running-config myfirewall.txt Or indeed: scp user@myfirewa...

I dislike this automatic 127.0.0.53 DNS server you see by default in /etc/resolv.conf.  Whilst it works most of the time, it makes it hard t...

After making a copy of my CD collection converted from FLAC to MP3, I found it failed to play in a 5-year-old car stereo on a USB stick... M...

Found this somewhere on the net but have lost the source - apologies if you are the author! Nice clean script to convert FLAC to MP3. Nic...

Needed to activate iptables on an Ubuntu server on DigitalOcean.  Found some excellent write-ups on the DO site, to solve an initial problem...

For the second time in recent months, I did a clean install of Win7 x64 Enterprise and got a solid hang in Windows Update.

The current release of VMware Tools fails to compile its Shared Folders (HGFS) module on Ubuntu 14.04 guest VMs. It seems that VMware has ...

Our new servers are all running Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS.  This was chosen because it's free, it's fairly mainstream, and it's su...

Had this problem today. Fixed after some head scratching ....

Contrary to press reports, there seem to be no plans to stop printing the Ordnance Survey core paper map products.   https://www.ordnancesur...

Apple appears to have changed the way the Airport Utility admin application finds Airport and Time Capsule devices.  This may also apply to ...

For Ubuntu 14.04, the correct syntax is: openssl s_client -CApath /etc/ssl/certs -connect www.example.com:443

Pasted at the bottom of this article is a Bash script I ran last night to tag my audio collection.  I was hoping this would enable Google Pl...

In the hope that it helps others, here is a working config from a dual-SIM Cisco 819 router.  Not clever, just a basic working config to get...

Older Apple Time Capsule NAS devices don't support NTLMv2: only NTLM.  So when mounting an SMB share from such a device, you need to man...

Found a simple fix for this error in my Ubuntu Server 14.04 cron logs arising from one of the logrotate scripts:-

I use pfSense as both my router and my firewall.  If the ADSL line drops, normally it will come back up a minute later with no problem. But ...

Migrated to 10.9.3 today. Fired up Mail. 100% CPU, loud fan, hot laptop, slow system... Happens every time.  Happily there's a quick and...

Saw this error today when running the Apple Software Update process on an old MacBook running 10.6.5.   The text of the message indicated th...

Finally got this working on my Dell Precision M4600 laptop with its ATI video chipset...

Today I wanted to backup my Aperture photo library.  Easy, but not entirely obvious how best to do it quickly...

Recently my Cisco AnyConnect VPN client stopped connecting on my Ubuntu 12.04 box.  It would authenticate successfully (or reject an incorre...

Sometimes when installing packages on Ubuntu Linux, you'll get a warning like this: sudo apt-get install foo bar     ...     WARNING: ...

On a Linux host, VMware Workstation 9.0.1 has TCP ports 443 and 902 open by default, listening on all interfaces.  This creates a small but ...

Just wanted to counter the myth that the old-style Apple Airport Express is limited to 10 users.  I'm sure I've had more than that i...

Apple has updated their entry-level wireless access point, the Airport Express.  The new version is a nice little square white box, supporti...

http://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed  - looks good

Generally very impressive.  Good clear fonts, quick response on my old Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Just a few tweaks to make. I'll add ...

After upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion on two machines, the Time Machine backup application announced that it couldn't find the Time...

On Mac Mountain Lion, Firefox 14.0 runs in 64-bit mode by default.  This breaks the latest Adobe PDF reader.  The fix is simple: make Firefo...

My technical work ("geeking" as SWMBO calls it) may have to wait a while, as my first child Elena has just arrived.  Mother and ba...

I spent ages trying to create a bootable USB stick with UNETBOOTIN for BackTrack.  Turns out that the trick is to format the USB stick corre...

The otherwise brilliant Humax FreeSat HD recorder - the FoxSat-HDR - sometimes starts displaying subtitles that can't be turned off with...

It seems that object-group definitions are ridiculously buggy in router ACL's on IOS 12.4(24)T2.  Here's a simple example from my C...

If you want to write a big (> 4 GB) file to DVD, you must use a burning program that allows you to choose UDF as the format...  Otherwi...

Airport Utility v6.0 looks very shiny, but has lost lots of features since the old version.  It no longer supports IPV6, syslog, connection ...

Here's a fix for this problem, which I saw after upgrading a VMware Fusion 4.1.1 machine from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10.

Here is my crib sheet on setting up a new Ubuntu server, including notes on enabling Virtualisation.  These notes include discussion of Kims...

This notes summarise how to run multiple No-NAT LAN and WAN connections using version 2.0.1 of pfSense (an excellent open-source routing/fir...

My Dell M4400 laptop runs Ubuntu Linux 10.04.  When writing reports, I kept making mistakes due to hitting the trackpad during typing.  To s...

Lion has a new feature designed to take safety copies of files you are editing.   But this isn't a good idea if you edit confidential do...

How to keep your address book synchronized across an iMac, MacBook, iPhone and iPad...

I've got this working now, but it's more complicated than it ought to be...

Today I needed to restore a netbook PC from a backup image taken with Acronis True Image Home 9.0 (which is excellent). The backup image wa...

Got this working today.   Nice guide here covers most of it.  Another good guide is here .

Should you have a need for 3G Data SIMs with "real" fixed public IP addresses (rather than the usual dynamic NATted private IPs), ...

GMail's spam filtering is usually excellent, but sometimes it can get over-zealous.  The first thing to know is that mail from people i...

From a security perspective, perhaps today's desktop operating systems are missing the point. With the increase in carefully-targeted sp...

Just a quick note of the commands needed to mount a VM disk image from the QEMU host server...

When VMware Workstation is hosted under Linux, by default it doesn't allow VM Guests to access the network in Promiscuous mode.  There&#...

Just updated some Ubuntu 10.04.2 servers using 'apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade', then rebooted to find stale information displ...

Sandboxie looks very interesting....  Yet to try it, but have heard good things about it.  Without the cost of firing up different VMs, it ...

Recent versions of Ubuntu have changed the way that system services start up.  Presumably this reflects a policy change in Linux systems. T...

http://www.ComeCyclingLedbury.com - finally got it finished.  :-)

Herewith, just some bookmarks to websites covering network security topics. 

If you're trying to install a clean copy of Windows XP or Windows 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, these notes might help...

Just a quick note about setting up 'push' email delivery on Gmail accounts.  This feature gives you instant notification of incoming...

Just now I'm messing about with a Cisco 1841 router with two ADSL cards in it (as outlined in an earlier post to this blog). I'll wr...

I've got a second ADSL line now, so I've just started playing with bonding my two AAISP.net.uk lines together using a Cisco 1841 ro...

Just a quick heads-up if you're updating a FreeBSD server with a serial console.

Tried out clean installs of Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on two Dell Latitude D620 systems yesterday.

I finally got an iPad a few days ago.  Generally, it's a very impressive device - as it should be for the price.  Just some initial obse...

After yesterday's false start with Citrix XenServer, today I'm switching to Ubuntu Server as my VM hosting platform.

I'm about to start work on a new non-profit website using a content management system so that other people can help to edit the content....

In case anyone else is wondering why /etc/network/interfaces fails to configure a static IPV6 address on Ubuntu 8.04, here's the soluti...

Got this combination working today after a bit of a struggle...

This article discusses Wake-on-Demand versus "classic" Wake-on-LAN on Mac Snow Leopard.

Recently I've kept finding random bits of text pasted in at random places in the documents I've been editing under Ubuntu Linux.  To...

Took some photos at the weekend, on a short walk around Marcle Ridge in Herefordshire.  I don't know why this part of the country is so ...

Just a quick note in praise of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - more specifically their excellent Netbook edition - with a HOWTO ...

Finally got my iPhone 4 (unlocked from Apple). Having sold my iPhone 3G to my sister (who is now using it on T-Mobile), I'd been reduce...

I've been testing this release ("Lucid Lynx") on a Dell Precision M4400 laptop. Initial impressions very favourable. It boot...

I now have one of these cards in a Soekris net5501, in a nice case supplied by Wim at kd85.com  ...

I'm running a free Asterisk appliance image on a Soekris NET5501 low-power embedded computer .  So far so good: it's simplicity its...

Here's how to do a network-based installation of Ubuntu Linux, for machines without CDROM drives.  It is very simple.

The Soekris NETxxxx boards can't boot from CDROM or USB, so installing an operating system requires PXE booting from the network, unless...

Just a heads up for anyone tearing their hair out over this one.

As a security specialist, my own systems need to be secure, so it's my policy that most of my systems should employ full-disk encryption...

Found one minor oddity with my new Apple Time Capsule.  If you have an ARP monitoring program running (such as arpwatch, or any FreeBSD serv...

If ping works but dig & nslookup are broken, there's a simple fix.

On the Mac, printing a document to a PDF sometimes results in a very big file, for example when the original document has lots and lots of p...

Most home broadband connections use an ADSL router with a built-in NAT firewall. For more complex networks, the next step is to place a ded...

The world is running out of IPV4 addresses, so the transition from IPV4 to IPV6 is getting closer. Here's how to kick the tyres, if you...

When you try to send SYSLOG messages for storage on a FreeBSD 7 server, the odds are that your messages won't appear in your log file on...

Today it appeared that Google Mail had updated the SSL certificate they use to secure access to the SMTPS service on smtp.gmail.com:587.   T...

I've now had the opportunity to leave the GPS logging on a long car journey. Very impressive...

Just got one of these handheld GPS units for hiking and cycling. First impressions excellent...

DJB's EZMLM mailing list software keeps a log showing subscriber additions and deletions, but the date and time are in a non-human-reada...

My old MacBook's built-in Wi-Fi was rock-solid until recently, but just lately it had problems. Disabling RealPlayer Downloader Agent se...

I saw this error on an unlocked & jailbroken iPhone 2G running the iPhone 3.0 software. Setting the date and time correctly fixed it. S...

Ubuntu Linux just gets better and better, and the new Jaunty release is no exception. Very easy to use, and to add and remove software pack...