My Galagzee! » Software

Marvell 88E8056 and ESXi 4.1

Ville Walveranta — Wed, 25 May 2011 05:43:23 +0000

So I have an older development/experimental server that runs couple of VMs on ESXi 4.1. The server’s motherboard (ASUS P5BV-C/4L) is from an old workstation, and it has integrated quad NICs which would be nice to be able to use.. except that the default build of ESXi 4.1 doesn’t see them (even though ESXi 4.1 technically supports Marvell 88E8056 NICs).

There are several pages that discuss the issue extensively, and have a lot of good information on them. Yet another page has a quick low down on how to get the driver properly installed.

However, having not worked on ESXi CLI for some time I had forgotten, for example, that busybox that ESXi uses wipes the root files on every reboot. After a while I recalled (from an old note) that to save changes to the /etc/vmware/simple.map I would need to execute /sbin/backup.sh 0 /bootbank/ after making the edits. But even that was unecessary.

One sentence on the brief recap page, would have saved me couple of hours tonight. So here it is: »Just upload the attached oem.tgz into /bootbank folder with scp, then reboot, and you’re done!» And when you do that, you are done – the pre-prepared oem.tgz works perfectly!

Yes, had I known, I would’ve known, but I didn’t. Hopefully this saves time for someone else!

Adding graphics, comments to PDFs

Ville Walveranta — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:40:50 +0000

I needed to fill out a PDF document today, date it, and sign it. It took me a good hour to accomplish the task as while the latest incarnation of Acrobat has custom stamp feature, annotated text doesn’t print by default (I also wanted to avoid having to print out the document only to scan it back in). In fact, I found no way to print text annotations. Whether “Documents and Stamps” was selected in the Print properties or not, the text annotations would remain missing from the printout. It should not be this difficult to add a text box to a PDF document and then flatten it to be part of the document, and not an annotation per se.

After some more Googling later I happened on this page that outlines a simple way to add “flatten” options to the Acrobat document menu. The associated script to be placed in “Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 9.0/Acrobat/Javascripts/” folder (the script works with older Acrobat versions, too, as the mentioned instructions are for Acrobat 7.0) is just two lines long:

app.addMenuItem({ cName: "Flatten page", cParent: "Document", cExec: "flattenPages(this.pageNum)",cEnable: 1, nPos: 16});
app.addMenuItem({ cName: "Flatten document", cParent: "Document", cExec: "flattenPages()",cEnable: 1, nPos: 17});

With the above script installed, the task was a snap: I added my signature from a transparent PNG as a custom stamp, added the text annotations, and then flattened the document. Done! Now the annotations print out as they should (whether or not “Documents and Stamps” is selected in the Print properties as now the annotations are part of the ‘base’ document). I can’t imagine why Adobe doesn’t include “flatten” as a default feature!

End of C·O·M·O·D·O Firewall (only)

Ville Walveranta — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:43:41 +0000

For few years now I’ve used the lightweight C·O·M·O·D·O firewall in conjunction with ESET nod32 AntiVirus. Both are lightweight and effective. Or were. ESET nod32 is still getting better with every consecutive release (the recently released 4.x, for instance, it lighter on system resources than its predecessor). But C·O·M·O·D·O just merged the “Personal Firewall” with their AntiVirus product hence effectively discontinuing the separate, lightweight and easy-to-configure firewall. Time to part ways — I’m not willing to use C·O·M·O·D·O’s A/V.

ZoneAlarm Pro may be the next good choice.

Dumping Schedule Wizard for VisualCron

Ville Walveranta — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:02:52 +0000

For several years I’ve used Schedule Wizard scheduler for Windows Server task scheduling. For a long time I haven’t been totally happy with its stability (or lack of). During any given year there has generally been a handful of incidents where I notice the tasks haven’t been running, and often the problem could be traced back to Schedule Wizard. For example, forgetting to close the tray icon and the clip-board manager (if running) before installing an upgrade will result in a broken installation. It won’t tell it to you – it just won’t run. And when a new version has been properly installed, there’re often issues about getting the service stable again (so that it’ll actually execute the tasks on schedule).

After the most recent upgrade I could not get the service running again so that the tasks would be run. The service starts ok, but then nothing happens. I reinstalled half a dozen times, tried to run the service as the Local System, admin, and as a special user with sufficient privileges, to no avail. Tasks run fine using the interactive scheduler, but on a server that won’t do.

So once again I started to review the other possible schedulers out there. I had done this several times before, always returning to Schedule Wizard as, for example, I found AutoMate 7 too heavy and too expensive (I’m always dubious of software packages that don’t tell their price on the web site upfront, but instead ask you to “request for a quote” — it usually means that the software is overpriced and the sales people want to be able to talk you in buying it). Automize, on the other hand, uses Java (not JavaScript) for task coding, and I don’t write Java well. Then there’s Robotask, which looks cool, but it doesn’t run natively as a service on Windows Servers (one could try to run it under FireDaemon or AlwaysUp, but I really think a scheduler should have a native service mode). There’s of course WinCron but while I use cron (or bcron) with Unix, for some reason it feels out of place in Windows.

But on different passes at finding the windows task schedulers out in the wild I had missed two products: VisualCron and Macro Scheduler Pro. Both are very clean, stable, moderately priced, and they just work! For most operations VisualCron is just perfect (running programs, external scripts, etc.) while Macro Scheduler Pro reminds a bit of AutoMate in that it’s “more than a scheduler” – the scheduling function is part of it, but overall it’s a workflow automation software.

FTP Client Update

Ville Walveranta — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:44:25 +0000

Last fall I wrote about various (S)FTP(ES) clients, and in that article mentioned that secure authentication with popular open source FTP server pureFTPd did not work with VanDyke Software’s SecureFX FTP client as it lacks the option to use unencrypted data channel – a requirement with pureFTPd. VanDyke Software is now working on a version 6.3 that will introduce that option; the new version should see daylight (in production) sometime toward the end of this year.

On a related note, I’ve been recently using for (S)FTP(ES) connections the winner of my FTP client comparison in the fall, Ipswitch WS_FTP Pro. Ipswitch just recently released the version 12 of the software. A quick run-down between the SecureFX and WS_FTP Pro quickly reveals that WS_FTP Pro gives more fine-grained control over many operations, and that the GUI of the product is more up-to-date than that of SecureFX (see screen shots below). While the SecureFX interface is rather utilitarian and is in need of an update, it has the benefit of being able to share the session list with VanDyke’s excellent terminal/SSH client SecureCRT. So perhaps you won’t need the extra features/options of WS_FTP Pro, and find the singular session list handy, then SecureFX is certainly worth a look. On the other hand, if you’re just looking for the best FTP client, I’d be inclined to recommend WS_FTP Pro at this time. The price tags of the products likely reflect the differences in features and looks: SecureFTP is priced at $59.95 compared to the $89.95 price-tag of WS_FTP Pro.

SecureFX

Ipswitch WS_FTP Pro

Powerful clip-board macros with AutoHotKey & TextPipe Pro

Ville Walveranta — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:55:52 +0000

I posted on the DataMystic forums (manufacturer of TextPipe Pro) a brief tutorial on how to create powerful clip-board macros with help of TextPipe Pro and the free hotkey utility, AutoHotKey – two utilities from my standard toolbox.

Clip-board macros with TextPipe and AutoHotKey