• How to install Windows or other OS and then bring to another computer by using a physical drive and Virtual Machine with QEMU


    This has been a tried and true method for Windows because it is finicky with hardware changes without a reinstall (eg BSOD on boot is what happens 9/10 times unless you move to the same hardwar). Surprisingly, if you use a QEMU VM and do a standard install, it has worked in every system I've thrown the drive in afterwards. So the play is this, use a USB SSD, physical SATA drive plugged internally or for convenience, you could use a SATA to USB adapter on another computer to perf........
  • Linux How to Check Which NIC is Onboard eth0 or eth1 Ubuntu Centos Debian Mint


    So say you happen to have 2 NICs of the exact same chipset, they will generally show up as the same name, with possibly a different revision in lspci. Normally this is not an issue if you have a server with 4 NICs, generally the eth0 to eth3 appears from left to the right (or right to left on some vendors) so it doesn't take much figuring out. Generally if you have different chipsets for different NICs, it should be easy to know which one is eth0 or the first NIC in the OS.........
  • Dell PowerEdge Server iDRAC Remote KVM/IP Default Username, Password Reset and Login Information Solution


    Are you new to the company, datacenter or a third party who is responsible for deploying a fleet of servers from scratch. The first step is to normally login to the KVM so you can perhaps manually reinstall, PXE boot the Cloud Image or reimage/reinstall an OS but you need access to the KVM/IP or what Dell calls iDRAC. It's common that you may have forgotten this information or that another employee or colleague has changed the info and did not tell you, that they have left the........
  • pulseaudio issue on QEMU/KVM guest VM when microphone is replugged/unplugged pulseaudio: pa_threaded_mainloop_lock failed pulseaudio: Reason: Invalid argument


    Here is the scenario, you are using QEMU/KVM and are using something like the AC97 sound driver to pass the host audio to the guest via pulseaudio. This is useful because you can transparently pass your mic input from the host which means you can mute your microphone from the host, which prevents the guest from receiving any mic input even if unmuted. Mute / Unmute Fix This issue also seems to happen even if you press the mute button on the microphone and then unmute,........
  • Virtualbox VBOX Howto Port Forward To Guests


    NAT Network, the VMs can communicate but your host cannot access them by default. NAT VMs have internet but cannot communicate with each other. Bridged is simple and allows full LAN access as if you had a physical machine plugged in but is often bad for testing, work or corporate environments and is not very portable when it comes to moving your VMs to other locations and networks. Here is how you can use NAT Ne........
  • Juniper JunOS Command Overview and Howtos Switch, Router, Firewall Tutorial Guide


    Enable "cli" mode equivalent in JunOS cli Configure Mode configure So rather than going to the console on a Cisco switch and typing "enable" and then "conf t", the equivalent in JunOS is "cli" and "configure". How Do You Apply Changes You've Made? You can make all kinds of changes to the switch, but remember they are not........
  • Linux Ubuntu Wifi Disabled Only Works When Laptop Plugged Into Wall AC Power


    This is very frustrating but the fix is usually easy once you read this blog. It's very frustrating when you find that your Linux / Ubuntu laptop's wifi will NEVER work unless it is plugged into the power. The wifi menu may say "Wifi disabled by hardware switch". You may find that your laptop has no switch or has a function wifi button on the keyboard but this does not work or have any effect. The cause is usual a "wmi" kernel module and simply doing an........
  • ADATA USB Thumb Drive Issues


    This is the reason that I don't like the new ADATA USB drives such as the UV128/64GB or 128GB drives and other ones that look to be the same style (the green sliding USB connector). They just don't work well from new and never work properly at any point. [ 788.242463] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 16 using ehci-pci [ 788.339816] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=125f, idProduct=db8a [ 7........
  • how to use ifplugd in Linux to execute a command or script when a NIC cable is unplugged or plugged in


    It is fairly simple to use once you know how to use it. However, the tricky thing is that by default it doesn't seem to be active or listen on any interface on manually specified. How To Install ifplugd First we install ifplugd sudo apt install ifplugd Let's enable it on our desired device(s) vi /etc/default/ifplugd set this line as so:........
  • Linux Mint Mate Customize the Lock screen messages and hide username and real name


    This is a security hole in my opinion and should be plugged by editing the lock screen ui layout: vi /usr/share/mate-screensaver/lock-dialog-default.ui #find these objects and set the visible property to false object class="GtkLabel" id="note-tab-label" object class="GtkLabel" id="auth-username-label> object class="GtkLabel" id="auth-realname-label"........
  • Cisco Router Setup Guide and Tutorial Howto With Commands and Examples


    In most of the Cisco router IOS I find the ports like ge0/0 ge0/1 and ge0/2 or whatever your ports are down. They will not even give you a link light. So one of the first tasks should be getting the port you are working with up. In my case the first goal is often connectivity with the LAN and WAN. LAN = your local area network (eg. in the office/home ) WAN= your ISP/public internet (eg. fiber/cable/dsl/ethernet).........
  • USB 3.0 PCI x1 Card Review VIA VL805 on Linux Review and Experience


    This is a VIA made VL805 USB 3.0 Chipset with 4-ports and MOLEX powered. First of all this unit was cheap at about only 9 USD with fast shipping. My biggest concern was if this was a quality unit and would it really give you full USB 3.0 speeds (some people reported with similar cards that for some weird r........
  • Linux shows my drive as being dead is it really? Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0 sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00


    Normally the below would indicate a failing or failed drive. In this case the SATA port was unplugged and sometimes the Linux kernel/motherboard even with AHCIjust don't play nice and can't handle it. What happened is Iplugged in a new drive after removing another one. However the log shows that after the old drive was plugged in the Linux kernel kept complaining thinking the drive was there but not responding properly. This continued even with reseating........
  • What happens when you unplug 1 or more devices from an mdadm RAID array to simulate a failure in Linux Ubuntu/Centos/Debian?


    In short the two drives in the array were /dev/sdd and /dev/sde. The kernel sees they were unplugged and have gone down as you can see below. mdadm caught the first one being unplugged /dev/sde and disabled the missing drive. However when the final drive that was part of the array is unplugged it didn't notice at all. Instead it complains about an IO error later for drives that the kernel knows do not exist anymore. [45817.162728] ata4: exception........
  • mdadm frozen and doesn't realize array is dead/missing failed due to unplugged drives


    This was a surprising bug but I unplugged all drives for an array md127. At first it was just 1 drive and mdadm seemed to notice this. I unplugged the second drive taking the array offline but mdadm did not realize it was offline and still showed a non-existent disk as being part of it. This created problems trying to unmount it or even to stop this array with mdadm freezing. As for how to fix it I can only think of making sure you are not in a mounted path of........
  • fdisk wq causes hung process


    I created a new partition table on a newly plugged in device and it caused fdisk to hang (even force kill does not work). It also may be a bad drive or some other issue because fdisk -l hangs after the first 2 HDDs (totaly of 8 HDDs on this system): [1232879.903596] INFO: task fdisk:27176 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [1232879.903607] Tainted: P&nbs........
  • forcedeth MCP55 Nforce3600 Nvidia Network NIC Card Not working in Linux at 1gigabit speeds


    Now many people report this card simply not working in various Linux distros and kernels. My issue is different, it always works at 100mbit (eg. plugged into a 100mbit switch) but no matter what 1000M/gigabit switch I would try, it would never work. The link would be up (the lights were on) and the OS detected the link as being up as well but it wouldn't work at all and could not pass data in or out (not even a ack/ping). There is one simple solution and command........
  • Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian Dual NICs networks problem when enabling and disabling one device


    The Scenario You have dual NICs and you disable NIC1 which uses 192.168.1.1 as its gateway. With NIC2 you enable it/connect it to another network which also has the gateway 192.168.1.1 Everything will work fine at this point. When switching back to NIC1 even with NIC2 disabled and even unplugged, the OS basically can't pick up the new/updated ARP entry of the old device for 192.168.1.1 and perhaps thinks it is a security risk or spoof of some sorts and blocks i........
  • Dell FS12-NV7 2U Server Information and Guide


    I've got one of these for testing projects from work at home and got more than I bargained for with the time I've spent on it due to the storage handing/Perc 6/i cards. My particular model came with the following: 2U Rack Mount Server with Rails 2xOpteron 2373 EE (Quad Core, there is a 6-core version that can be found at times) 16GB RAM 2 x 250GB Seagate SATA 2 x Dell Perc 6/i (horrible and a nightmare to work........
  • mdadm enable bitmap to speed up rebuilds


    Have you ever unplugged the wrong drive and then had to rebuild the entire array? It may not be a big deal in some ways but it does make your system vulnerable until the rebuild is done. Many distros often enable the "bitmap" feature and this basically keeps track of what parts need to be resynced in the case of a temporary removal of a drive from the array, this way it only needs to sync what has changed. To enable bitmap to speed up rebuilds and sync........
  • Samsung Galaxy Note I717M Canadian Version, Root and Unlock


    I chose this because I heard a lot of stories about scams and that many providers I contacted said they can't unlock the Canadian I717s (one said "my Bell server" is down). This method worked perfectly on my Bell I717M and should work for all I717 in Canada, I was able to insert a foreign SIMcard. This will work abroad too but remember entering CWM mode is different for I717's in other countries (at least theUS). Step 1 - Root + CWM........
  • Samsung Galaxy Note Upgrade to ICS 4.0 microSDHC card not detected/dataloss after upgrading - possible solutions


    I backed up everything in the /mnt/sd_card directory thinking that some dataloss could occur for some reason but purposely left my microSDHC unbacked up thinking that "it won't touch that since it's external" and Samsung's and other manufacturers website even say this (that it won't be affected and not to worry etc). Apparently I was wrong, my microSD was "undetected" and asked to be formatted after the upgrade (there goes 3-months worth of family photos). No........
  • The Importance of a High Quality Power Supply/Power Supplies To Prevent Overheating/System Crash/Hardware Damage


    For years I've always built cheap systems believing that there is little difference in more expensive components when it comes to reliability and quality, I generally believe this still except for Power Supplies. I've always bought cheap cases with nice sounding 350-550W stock/cheap/crap power supplies and haven't had any issues for the most part until recently. One such case is an NGEAR case with a 550W Optimax power supply, I always read that these supplies don't produce the........
  • Hitachi 2TB HDS5C3020ALA632 drive DOA


    I had one of these shipped and it was not recognized when plugged in, here's what a dead drive looks like (I assume it's teh circuit board which is dead): ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset failed (device not ready) ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) ata1: link online but device misclassified, retrying ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset f........
  • XBOX 360 No Sound over HDMI Solution/Fix


    My XBOX's dashboard/firmware was from sometime in 2008 when I first bought the system. I mainly played using composite cables but at my brother in law's house we used HDMI. The very first time it worked, but then I bought some games that did some update and after that HDMI never worked. The symptoms besides having on sound is that your XBOX will show PC monitor resolutions but won't have any option to say you have a 720P or 1080P display, this means the XBOX firmware is fa........
  • Is your NIC really down and really dying? r8169: eth0: link up r8169: eth0: link down NetworkManager: (eth0): carrier now OFF (device state 1)


    Apr 30 17:07:07 localhost kernel: [12265558.582378] r8169: eth0: link up Apr 30 17:07:07 localhost NetworkManager: (eth0): carrier now ON (device state 1) Apr 30 17:07:08 localhost kernel: [12265559.237961] r8169: eth0: link down Apr 30 17:07:08 localhost NetworkManager: (eth0): carrier now OFF (device state 1) Apr 30 17:07:11 localhost NetworkManager: (eth0): carrier now ON (device state 1) Apr........
  • Latest Articles

  • Cloned VM/Server/Computer in Linux won't boot and goes to initramfs busybox Solution
  • How To Add Windows 7 8 10 11 to GRUB Boot List Dual Booting
  • How to configure OpenDKIM on Linux with Postfix and setup bind zonefile
  • Debian Ubuntu 10/11/12 Linux how to get tftpd-hpa server setup tutorial
  • efibootmgr: option requires an argument -- 'd' efibootmgr version 15 grub-install.real: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: Operation not permitted.
  • Apache Error Won't start SSL Cert Issue Solution Unable to configure verify locations for client authentication SSL Library Error: 151441510 error:0906D066:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:bad end line SSL Library Error: 185090057 error:0B084009:x509 certif
  • Linux Debian Mint Ubuntu Bridge br0 gets random IP
  • redis requirements
  • How to kill a docker swarm
  • docker swarm silly issues
  • isc-dhcp-server dhcpd how to get longer lease
  • nvidia cannot resume from sleep Comm: nvidia-sleep.sh Tainted: Linux Ubuntu Mint Debian
  • zfs and LUKS how to recover in Linux
  • [error] (28)No space left on device: Cannot create SSLMutex Apache Solution Linux CentOS Ubuntu Debian Mint
  • Save money on bandwidth by disabling reflective rpc queries in Linux CentOS RHEL Ubuntu Debian
  • How to access a disk with bad superblock Linux Ubuntu Debian Redhat CentOS ext3 ext4
  • ImageMagick error convert solution - convert-im6.q16: cache resources exhausted
  • PTY allocation request failed on channel 0 solution
  • docker error not supported as upperdir failed to start daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported
  • Migrated Linux Ubuntu Mint not starting services due to broken /var/run and dbus - Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory solution