Dell Server Workstation iDRAC Dead after Firmware Update Solution R720, R320, R730

This is certainly a poor design, as you can read many seasoned admins who have updated their iDRAC only to have it killed. One possible cause is not by doing all the incremental updates, doing updates from an old iDRAC to one many revisions newer is a sure way to kill things, but even then there is no guarantee based on the amount of failures. List of threads of people's dead iDRAC's:........

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

[Wed Nov 01 18:47:08 2023] [error] Unable to configure verify locations for client authentication [Wed Nov 01 18:47:08 2023] [error] SSL Library Error: 151441510 error:0906D066:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:bad end line [Wed Nov 01 18:47:08 2023] [error] SSL Library Error: 185090057 error:0B084009:x509 certificate routines:X509_load_cert_crl_file:PEM lib It actually gives us a good clue that at last one component of our cert is invalid/improperl........

Save money on bandwidth by disabling reflective rpc queries in Linux CentOS RHEL Ubuntu Debian

Even today we see a lot of servers that have different services and ports open for rpc and this creates not only potential inward vulnerabilities but perhaps more common, the abuse of your network resources in reflective rpc queries. To stop this problem, you should disable and remove all services relating to rpc or at least block all relevant ports for the service. Surprisingly, there are still some providers and OS installs in Linux that install these services and leave them........

When is it time to leave your VPS/VDS Cloud Hosting Provider?

When Is It Time to Leave Your VPS, VDS, and Dedicated Server Provider? Choosing the right hosting solution—be it Virtu........

2024 Buyer's Guide: How to Choose and Buy the Best VPS/VDS for Your Needs - Tips and Strategies

In today’s digital landscape, finding a reliable and secure Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) goes beyond just comparing specs and prices. With increasing concerns over data privacy, security breaches, and government surveillance, the wisdom of choosing your VPS/VDS provider based on juri........

configure.ac:75: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow. See the Autoconf documentation. solution

configure.ac:75: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow. See the Autoconf documentation. autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1 make: *** [/software/pixman/configure] Error 1 make: *** Deleting file `/software/pixman/configure' yum install libtool........

How To Upgrade Debian 8,9,10 to Debian 12 Bookworm

Step 1.) Upgrade to Debian 11 first The process to go to Debian 12 is not as smooth as 11, when trying to upgrade from Debian 10. In fact, it doesn't work directly, so you'll first need to follow this guide to update to Debian 11, reboot and come back here if successful. Step 2.) Update sources.list Update your /etc/apt/sources.list like this: deb http://........

apache2 httpd apache server will not start [pid 22449:tid 139972160445760] AH00052: child pid 23248 exit signal Aborted (6) solution Mint Debian Ubuntu Redhat

If you get this error, it is often because you have configured Apache with modules that weren't actually installed. Eg. you try to load the PHPmodule but didn't actually install the apache2 php module, so the server can't start. In general, this error can often be caused by issues with problematic modules and/or Apache being configured for modules that have not actually be installed (eg. libapache2-mod-php) is missing. The above results in this less than obv........

How to use the FTDI USB serial cable to RJ45 adapter to connect to the console on Cisco/Juniper Switch Router Firewall in Linux Ubuntu Debian Redhat

This should work for most console ports of other manufacturers too. It is a quick and simple method for emegencies or deploying a few appliances/devices in a non-standard environment or small environment. However, if this is a route thing, or the equipment is not physically close to you, it would be best to use some sort of "Terminal" server which is an IP connected switch with several serial ports built-in for this purpose. Normally they accessible by web/........

How to upgrade to the latest Python version on Linux Ubuntu Debian Mint 3.11

A lot of developers want to go to 3.11 because of the speed improvements, but most distros never have the latest Python version. Using the deadsnakes third party repo is the easiest way aside from compiling it yourself (which is safer and recommended): Step 1 - Add the repo apt-add-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa If you get an error about requests then install it:........

talib/_ta_lib.c:747:10: fatal error: ta-lib/ta_defs.h: No such file or directory

If you are installing ta-lib for Python and get this error then you can normally solve it by manually getting the ta-lib source files and compiling. tar -zxvf ta-lib-0.4.0-src.tar.gz cd ta-lib;./configure;make;make install Collecting ta-lib Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/39/6f/6acaee2eac6afb2cc6a2adcb294080577f9983fbd2726395b9047c4e13ec/TA-Lib-0.4.26.tar.gz (272kB) &nbs........

debootstrap how to install Ubuntu, Mint, Debian install

In this example we install debian 10 with --variant=minbase which gives us a minimal/tiny install. Don't use variant if you want the full size install. mkdir /tmp/deb10files debootstrap --variant=minbase buster /tmp/deb10files/ Did you get an error? debootstrap --variant=minbase buster /home/theuser/VMs/deb10files/ You'll get this error if you make a directory in your home........

Thunderbird Attachment Download Error Corrupt Wrong filesize of 29 or 27 bytes Solution

This is an ongoing issue even with the latest Thunderbird 102.x where attachments downloaded via IMAP just won't save or will be corrupt which is a huge interruption to workflow or if you come back later to find out the file you thought you saved is invalid/corrupt and you have perhaps deleted the e-mail. How to solve the Thunderbird filesize attachment issue? 1. Click on "Settings". then go to "General". 2. Scroll to the bottom to find "Conf........

i915 nouveau Nvidia GPU not starting lightdm Xorg failing solution for Could not determine valid watermarks for inherited state

It may appear to be an Xorg or lightdm/gdm/mdm error but in reality for many users with this issue, it's a driver conflict and issue. I had a system that had two GPUs, an Intel and Nvidia GPU. The only thing that got it working was to remove the nouveau driver and blacklist it so it never came back, then the Intel GPU works fine without these issues. Solution sudo rmmod nouveau add nouveau/other driver to blacklist edit th........

ssh Too many authentication failures not prompting for password

If you get this error when trying to SSHto a device or machine and you never even got a password prompt: Too many authentication failures This means that either the remote side is configured for key auth only, OR your client side may be attempting to auth using mulitple keys, and that exceeds the amount of attempted authorizations on the remote ssh server. If the issue is trying to auth too many times which ssh defaults to sending the keys to, you ca........

MP3s Won't Play / ID3 Version 2.4 Issues in Cars and Other MP3 Players/CDs/DVDs Solution

ID3 2.4 can cause various MP3 players, especially on vehicles or even computers, not to play or at least not to display the ID3 tags. In many cases though, since ID3 2.4 is much different than version 2.3, it will cause some players, especially in cars like Lexus not to play. Even on the computer, you may notice if you check the properties of the MP3 that it won't open or show any details (eg. frequency, bitrate and ID3 tags). One symptom of this in a vehicle (eg. Leuxs,........

GlusterFS HowTo Tutorial For Distributed Storage in Docker, Kubernetes, LXC, KVM, Proxmox

This can be used on almost anything, since Gluster is a userspace tool, based on FUSE. This means that all Gluster appears as to any application is just a directory. Applications don't need specific support for Gluster, so long as you can tell the application to use a certain directory for storage. One application can be for redundant and scaled storage, including for within Docker and Kubernetes, LXC, Proxmox, OpenStack, etc or just your image/web/video files or even da........

Docker Tutorial HowTo Install Docker, Use and Create Docker Container Images Clustering Swarm Mode Monitoring Service Hosting Provider

The Best Docker Tutorial for Beginners We quickly explain the basic Docker concepts and show you how to do the most common tasks from starting your first container, to making custom images, a Docker Swarm Cluster Tutorial, docker compose and Docker buildfiles.........

Wazuh / OSSEC Install and Configuration Howto Tutorial Guide for Monitoring Agents SIEM

How To Install Wazuh Server / Quickest Installation Wazuh (forked from the well known OSSEC project) is a full SIEM (Security Information Event Management) that works extremely well with the platforms it natively supports as an "Agent", which allows you to do scans of everything such as all processes running, CVE vulnerability check, incident reporting etc... Prerequisites: A lot of issues with Wazuh seem to be caused by i........

QEMU/KVM How to Hot-add A Virtual Disk .raw/.qcow2 via QEMU Monitor Commands

For a lot of reasons, it may be convenient to detach or attach live disks to a running VM without having to reboot it. Sure, you can use some network based storage, but when performance counts, attaching a new virtual disk will usually give you better throughput and lower latency in a quick testing situation. This doesn't work, why not? drive_add 0 if=virtio,file=/tmp/vm.qcow2,if=virtio,format=qcow2,id=rtt Can't hot-ad........

Windows Cannot Format USB drive Device Media is Write Protected Error Solution

First of all make sure that you don't have the write-lock or write-protect switch enabled on the SDCard or USB drive. If the above is not the case, then follow these instructions: Solution - Clear Read Only Attribute Hit "Windows Key+R" and enter "cmd" to enter the command prompt: Now type the following :........

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........

apcupsd how to setup and monitor APC UPS units

It really seems limited in that it can mainly give you the things you would see on the physical unit such as load etc.. wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/apcupsd/apcupsd%20-%20Stable/3.14.14/apcupsd-3.14.14.tar.gz?r=https%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fapcupsd%2Ffiles%2Flatest%2Fdownload&ts=1598115866 tar -zxvf apcupsd-3.14.14.tar.gz cd apcupsd-3.14.14 [root@somebox apcupsd-3.14.14]# ./conf........

How To Get Started on Ubuntu with gpt-2 OpenAI Text Prediction

apt install software-properties-common add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa apt update apt install python3-pip apt install python3.7 curl gnupg python3.7-dev git ln -s /usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/python3 pip3 install numpy keras_preprocessing curl https://bazel.build/bazel-release.pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add - echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-apt stable jdk1.8" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel........

Asterisk Does Not Retry When Authentication Fails

When authentication times out that is one thing, but when it just fails like below Asterisk by default will not re-register until you the admin reload the sip or asterisk server: voipserver*CLI> sip show registry Host dnsmgr Username Refresh State&........

Debian and Netplan

Create your netplan file vi /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml network: version: 2 renderer: networkd ethernets: ens3: dhcp4: no ........

CentOS 8 how to convert to a bootable mdadm RAID software array

The cool thing here is that we only need 1 drive to make a RAID 10 or RAID 1 array, we just tell the Linux mdadm utility that the other drive is "missing" and we can then add our original drive to the array after booting into our new RAID array. Step#1 Install tools we need yum -y install mdadm rsync Step #2 Create your partitions on the drive that will be our RAID array Here I assume it is /dev........

mpv / mplayer with Radeon / AMD GPU Video Card Driver enable VDPAU GPU Accelerated Video Decoding

The easiest way to know if your videos are playing with GPU acceleration are to watch the process of xplayer, mpv or whatever you are playing. The CPU usage should be no more than 10% for that process/program if it is using acceleration. Let's manually play with vdpau to make sure it works before we make it permanent: First make sure you have libvdpau installed: sudo apt install vdpau-driver-all If yo........

Debian Ubuntu Mint rc-local service startup error solution rc-local.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning /etc/rc.local: Exec format error

Oct 18 11:06:46 server systemd[529]: rc-local.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning /etc/rc.local: Exec format error Oct 18 11:06:46 server systemd[1]: rc-local.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=203 Oct 18 11:06:46 server systemd[1]: Failed to start /etc/rc.local Compatibility. Oct 18 11:06:46 server systemd[1]: rc-local.service: Unit entered failed state. Oct 18 11:06:46 server systemd[1]: rc-local.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.........

python import docx error

sudo pip3 install python-docx [sudo] password for : Downloading/unpacking python-docx Downloading python-docx-0.8.10.tar.gz (5.5MB): 5.5MB downloaded Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip_build_root/python-docx/setup.py) egg_info for package python-docx no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/.build' warning: no previously-included files matching '.DS_Store' foun........

ImageMagick Converted PDF to JPEG some files have a black background solution

Use these flags: convert -alpha flatten -alpha remove "output.pdf" ljll.jpg And even the pesky black backgrounds should be gone after converting to jpg........

ssh how to verify your host key / avoid MIM attacks

SSH helps keep us secure in many ways, one of those is the host-key fingerprint which is unique. If you have been connecting to an SSH server that you've made no changes to and suddenly ssh warns that the key doesn't match then you have a problem. But how about connecting to an existing server for the first time on a new machine or client? A lot of new clients calculate it using an SHA256 hash but it is not as easy on your host machine to produce the sam........

Windows 7,8,10 and Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019 Read Only Attribute Won't Go Away

I have seen this in a few rare cases after a reboot, where all folders and files will have the Read Only Attribute. If you uncheck it, it will just come back. It is more of a filesystem issue in Windows than a configuration issue and it looks like when Windows detects a badly corrupted filesystem that it will make things read-only, sort of like Linux would. If you are Administrator or the owner of the folder and this is happening it is probably due to the reasoning mention........

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 12 Install Errors on Proxmox/KVM

The strange thing is that usually the first install or two will work on any new machine but then it suddenly won't. I had this experience on QEMU 2.13 on a different machine. There is something finicky or buggy about the CUCM installer even when choosing the same virtual hardware specs. qemu-kvm command: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -version QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.1 (qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.506.el6_10.1), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard ........

Debian / Mint / Ubuntu net-tools packages provides netstat, ifconfig, route, arp and other classic network admin tools

The net-tools command brings back all of the oldschool tools that we're used to: /bin/netstat /sbin/ifconfig /sbin/ipmaddr /sbin/iptunnel /sbin/mii-tool /sbin/nameif /sbin/plipconfig /sbin/rarp........

Centos 7 Reallocate logical volume space to another

Do you hate how Centos 7 defaults to allocating most of your valuable space to /home even though it is a production server? Here is a quick guide on how to take back that space live, while online (of course make sure you have backups just in case something goes wrong!): First we will reduce our home dir by 100G: lvreduce -L -100G /dev/mapper/centos-home WARNING: Reducing active and open logical volume to ........

Linux use growisofs to burn a larger file on a BD-R / Bluray Disc

growisofs -Z /dev/sr0 critical.tar.gz.gpg Executing 'genisoimage critical.tar.gz.gpg | builtin_dd of=/dev/sr0 obs=32k seek=0' I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings) File critical.tar.gz.gpg is larger than 4GiB-1. -allow-limited-size was not specified. There is no way do represent this file size. Aborting. :-( write failed: Input/output error #remember to us........

Why SMART is not smart at all and doesn't properly predict disk errors that cause a kernel panic or crash

Before getting into the output here is my typical experience with SMART, there is what I call a "bad disk" with pending and uncorrectable sectors that cannot be reallocated. It has caused a kernel panic and system crash repeatedly as we can see from the logs. But SMART says it has "PASSED" its self assessment. SMART is still useful to me but it is more about looking at Current_Pending_Sector. Any time I have had anything but 0 for that attribute it........

VirtualBox How To Add iSCSI Storage using VBoxManage

#to show all VBoxManage list vms #show ONLY running vms VBoxManage list runningvms VBoxManage storageattach test --storagectl "SATA" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium iscsi --server 192.168.1.91 --target "iqn.2018-12.local.abcrandom.target:sdb" --initiator "iqn.1982-01.ca.bla.tld:abc123" --t........

How Does Cisco CUCM (Cisco Unified Communication Manager) Work?

Cisco's CUCM (Cisco Unified Communication Manager) is a system that combines voice, video, data and mobile products into a single unified management suite. At its core, the CUCMis like a "Super PBX" that controls the flow of all communications through an organization even single or multiple site deployments. Cisco's CUCMmakes communication more effective and simple through centralized management and unification of communications resources.........

PHP Displaying Blank Page on Apache

Almost always the reason will be that the php.so file is missing but also that php.conf is misconfigured. In the problem machine it is actually PHP7 installed so if you reference PHP5 of course things wil be broken! Take for example here: cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf # # PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language which attempts to make it # easy for developers to write dynamica........

prosody xmpp server "Failed in all attempts to connect to proxy.eu.jabber.org"

Aug 13 13:46:33 s2sout2d45040 info Failed in all attempts to connect to proxy.eu.jabber.org Aug 13 13:46:33 s2sout2d45040 info Sending error replies for 1 queued stanzas because of failed outgoing connection to proxy.eu.jabber.org No clue why it tries to use a proxy not explicitly specified. This could be because the proxy specified for the domain fails when someone is trying to se........

Linux Mint 18 Screen Goes Dark or Black After Screensaver or even when using the Desktop Solution

You can search for this bug and it seems like it may be related to ecryptfs and is many years old. The symptoms are that you return to the computer and the screensaver was active or the screen was asleep/black and it doesn't seem to come back. But you check by SSH the computer is running fine and are frustrated you'll lose your running programs and have to reboot. There is a simple solution: Ctrl + Alt + F1 Ctrl +Alt + F8 Ba........

Mozilla Firefox Address Bar History Not Working places.sqlite corruption solution database repair

Here is the only solution Ifound that works in Firefox: *Note you could basically just copy all of the commands in bold (the rest just shows the output) Install sqlite3 sqlite3 places.sqlite sqlite> .clone places.sqlite-fixed moz_places... done moz_historyvisits... done moz_inputhistory..........

SMF Forums / Simple Machines Forums Not Displaying Images Theme or Styles Properly using 127.0.0.1

This is one thing that has me wondering about SMF. It is apparently a known issue but in the latest version and new install nothing looked right because it was using http://127.0.0.1 to find everything! How on earth would it ever do this or think it is normal? Excerpt of crazy html code it produces that causes the issue: ........

Linux How To Clone One System Harddrive to another remote system

The easiest way is to use SSHand DD or a combination of netcat. SSHwill be a little slower due to encryption but is the most secure way (on two older systems the average clone speed is about 40-50MB/s). This is also OS independent as it doesn't matter what the source OS is because you are literallly cloning the drive so you retain the partition table and settings. Clone HDD using SSH and DD........

PHP geoip.so fatal error Solution

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib64/php/modules/geoip.so' - /usr/lib64/php/modules/geoip.so: undefined symbol: GeoIP_country_code_by_name_v6 in Unknown on line 0 Remove the GEOIP from PHP: php71w-pecl-geoip-1.1.1-1.w6.x86_64 PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_shm_create: shmget(0, 67108864, 914) failed: Invalid argument. It is possible that the........

How to change reserved blocks in Linux partition

user@box:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md99 [sudo] password for user: tune2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014) Filesystem volume name: Last mounted on: /mnt/md50 Filesystem UUID: 976a8655-2619-4587-878c-dab07f7b7652 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic) Fi........

Centos 7 Cudaminer Nvidia setup guide

I am using a GTX 1060 but replace the download for the driver with the correct/current version for your particular card by visiting: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us yum install automake curl openssl-devel libcurl-devel gcc gcc-c++ yum -y install kernel-devel-`uname -r` yum -y install unzip #the........

Avocent DSR8020 KVM/IP - Network Connect Error - Solution

This error is commonly due to Java security or TLS settings but there is a second issue with forwarded ports that also causes it. 1. Java Security/TLS Settings issue: This article has the solution to change them all in Linux automatically 2. Port Forwarding Issue if your Avocent DSR is behind NAT/private IP........

How to verify SSL SHA-1 Certificate Fingerprnit Signature of your mail/web server to avoid hijacking/man-in-the-middle attacks

This is especially helpful if you run your own servers. If you are presented with an error message or warning that the signature has changed or does not match the IP/domain you are connecting to you always want to verify manually. So your e-mail/web client will show you an SHA-1 fingerprint like this: "Could not verify this certificate because the issuer is unkown" or other reasons such as a mismatch in IP/domain. It will also show you........

Linux how to reformat html file code solution

The solution is simply "tidy"/Tidy-HTML. It will take your poorly formatted HTML code (and I mean files that span just a few lines that are unreadable) and fix it up. Note the command below does everything in place. *Make sure you take a backup of all .html files* It also seems to break html5 code/templates so beware. tidy -im yourfile.html An automated way in bash:........

mdadm and lvm how to completely disable and remove vg/pv/lv

In short the solution is just to use vgremove for the actual /dev/mapper device: vgremove /dev/mapper/backups-backuplv box mnt # mdadm --manage /dev/md8 --stop mdadm: Cannot get exclusive access to /dev/md8:Perhaps a running process, mounted filesystem or active volume group? box mnt # lv lvchange lvconvert lvcreate l........

How to Properly Secure SSL/TLS Apache Settings against Heartbleed Poodle (TLS) Poodle (SSLv3) FREAK BEAST CRIME

Many users still are not aware but simply patching OpenSSL does not secure you against many known and easy to exploit attacks that will render your encryption useless by an attacker. Use the following setings in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf SSLCipherSuite "EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384 EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+SHA384 EECDH+aRSA+SHA256 EECDH EDH+aRSA !CAMELLIA !SEED !3DES !RC4 !aNULL !eNULL !LOW !MD5 !EXP !PSK !........

ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server during query

The solution is simple but strange, if you copy your /var/lib/mysql directory to another server and think it will work, be sure to check if you have /var/log/mysql and binary log files. If you do, the server will not work and will give you errors like below and crash without the proper log files. UPDATE user SET password=password("newpass") WHERE user='root'; flush privileges; ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server durin........

apc_shm_attach: shmat failed: in Unknown on line 0 & apc_shm_create: shmget(0, 67108864, 914) failed PHP Solution

PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_shm_create: shmget(0, 67108864, 914) failed: Invalid argument. It is possible that the chosen SHM segment size is higher than the operation system allows. Linux has usually a default limit of 32MB per segment. in Unknown on line 0 PHP Fatal error: PHP Startup: apc_shm_attach: shmat failed: in Unknown on line 0 This error is not at all fun because it actually prevents Apache/httpd from starting or working at all. It will........

blocked for more than 120 seconds issues with iowait and timeout on Live Linux distribution while writing to physical disk

This happened while an mdadm array was syncing, all access from writing a new blank file to opening a small .txt file was very slow: [222117.312078] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds [222117.685060] EXT3-fs (md0): using internal journal [222117.685096] EXT3-fs (md0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode [222122.376847] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds [222122.602825] EXT3-fs (md2): using internal jour........

Uploading Error HTTP error. Wordpress Upload Error Solution

When you start uploading larger images in Wordpress you have to make sure your maximum attachment size is large enough and that the execution time is not too short: Uploading Error HTTP error. [Thu May 12 16:32:25 2016] [error] [client 10.10.5.2] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /httpdocs/blog/wp-includes/class-wp-image-editor-gd.php on line 182 Solution Edit p........

Centos/obfsproxy errors

I never did get it working, it is too bad as obfsproxy should really be an option and integrated into the OpenVPN client and server or something similar: yum -y install python-pip python-devel No package python-pip available. #install the EPEL repo python-pip install obfsproxy python-pip install obfsproxy -bash: python-pip: command not found pip install obfsproxy &........

HP XW9400 Motherboard In Desktop Issues

Fortunately the format is EATX so an EATX case will work and the screw layout is standard. You will need to remove the HEX/TORX screws that are connecting the stock HP standoffs (meant to slide into an HP case). XW9400 Motherboard Issues Size: 12" x 13" Proprietary Power Connector Proprietary CPU Power Connector Proprietary Memory Power Connector Fan connectors are 4 pin so you will need some kind of adapter.........

Vbox/Virtualbox devices grayed out for non-root user solution

It is a permissions issue that is hard to fix. All but one USB device is greyed out. I am already a member of "vboxusers" I have already enabled and disabled USB support for the guest. I have already reinstalled the latest VBOx guest editions If running as root it all works fine Changing........

libguestfs tools howto guide for mounting partitions and managing virtual machine images

libguestfs tools howto guide for managing virtual machine images. libguestfs-tools aka guestfs tools has a lot of tools that make this very easy for you. You can easily mount partitons from an image with some of the commands below. To mount a partition #mount the kvmuser102821.img image and the /dev/sda1 partition from it to the local directory "mount" guestmount -a kvmuser102821.img -m /dev/sda1 mount ........

How to root and unlock S4 in Canada Bell/Rogers/Telus/Fido I337 4.4.2

i337 Canada on Bell is hard to root or even install TWRP Installed TWRP from Odin and my computer gave me the bluescreen at the end but it seemed to be successful (after ODIN said reset). TWRP mode does not seem to enter, instead you get the Android recovery mode with Volume up + Home http://galaxys4root.com/galaxy-s4-root/how-to-root-att-or-verizon-galaxy-s4-on-android-4-4-2/ 1.)........

Samsung Galaxy Note Upgrade/Update Experience from 4.0.4 with aftermarket ROMs

It really seems that 4.4.4 is not ready or stable for the i717 yet and this makes sense since it takes a lot of work/development and testing to get the factory stock ROMs working well. In the end I used the 4.1.2 based Blackstra BlackJelly because it was fast, stable and just works and feels great. The aftermarket support is great but many devs are focussed on adding features and customization that most of us don't want or need rather than getting things smooth and stable.........

PayPal subscriptions automatically cancelling after creation of profile

There is a weird quirk with how this works, but there is a variable called "src" that defaults to 0 or disabled if not specified as 1. The default 0 means not to recur billing on a subscription. It's too bad it's not more obvious anywhere nor is there an explanation or warning during payment or after to both the seller and buyer. Here's a proper subscription code example that does recur and does not cancel........

drbd 8.3 hard drive failure recovery example

drbd 8.3 hard drive failure recovery drbdadm attach r0 DRBD module version: 8.3.10 userland version: 8.3.8 you should upgrade your drbd tools! 0: Failure: (119) No valid meta-data signature found. ==> Use 'drbdadm create-md res' to initialize meta-data area. ........

Asterisk iptables block bruteforce attacks howto with fail2ban

yum -y install fail2ban vi /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf [asterisk-tcp] enabled = true filter = asterisk action = iptables-multiport[name=asterisk-tcp, port="5060,5061", protocol=tcp] sendmail-whois[name=Asterisk, dest=you@example.com, sender=fail2ban@example.com] logpath = /var/log/asterisk/messages maxret........

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........

Dell Perc 6/i SATA benchmarks without battery

The results are not bad, the Hitachi performs the same as it does in a SATA2 motherboard. However, the 2TB is much different, on a similar 2TB Toshiba I get about 198MB/s on a different motherboard vs the 2TB Hitachi which should produce similar results. This Dell Perc 6/i is on a PCI x8 riser card and is connected to a 12-port backplane. Adapter #0 Enclosure Device ID: 32 Slot Number: 0 Enclosure position: N/A De........

LSI MegaRAID Adventures, Guide and HowTo

LSi Megaraid At first it was configured as a RAID 0, then I deleted the Virtual Disk Group. I thought both drives would be shown and detected in Linux as sda and sdb but it actually shows nothing. To make them work you have to hit Ctrl+R before the system boots (when prompted) and create a Virtual Disk Group. In my case I created each one as RAID 0 (with a single drive only) as I just wanted JBOD but there is no such option or default in these Dell Pe........

bash script howto use heredocand assign to a variable and write to a file

zonetemplate=$(cat ........

yum update error

yum update error Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ? yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True) File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 229, in user_main errcode = main(args) File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 145, in main (result, resultmsgs) = base.buildTransaction() &nbs........

How to use the Linux mail command to attach a file

The key here is to use the "uuencode" command but note that we specify the file name twice (this must be done at least on Centos or it won\'t work). The first file.zip is the actual file we want to send. The second file.zip i........

MySQL Show Print List of Field Names only without other data or attributes

SELECT column_name FROM information_schema.columns W........

WD 20EARX Dead Again

Another new drive bad from the start: Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386779] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x280900 action 0x6 frozen Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386782] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386784] ata2: SError: { UnrecovData HostInt 10B8B BadCRC } Jun 2 15:14:18 one-desktop kernel: [15895.386788] ata2.00: cmd 60/0........

Asterisk DOS attack - failed for '173.242.117.192' - Peer is not supposed to register [May 23 15:46:07] ERROR[32748]: chan_sip.c:13158 register_verify: Peer '153' is trying to register, but not configured as host=dynamic

This happened to a customer Asterisk server and it somehow found the ID of the registration account to the upstream SIP server and was railing connection attempts (it filled up the console and there were literally thousands per second). Basically this caused all incoming and outgoing calls to fail. It was a temporary fix but the solution was to block that specific IP, it's hard to stop it 100% because the customer needs the default SIP port.........

WD 20EARX 2TB Bad within days

This is just trying to read 5GB off the drive with dd and the drive initially tested ok but shortly after I wondered why I was seeing 2MB/s read speeds. Notice the "current_pending_sector", anytime I've seen it at anything above 0 even with no other bad fields/attributes, it means the drive is bad. ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x3 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED ata1.00: cmd 60/00:00:........

eth0 changed to eth1 or eth2 and the solution to fix it

If you move your hard drive(s) around to other computers/servers, you'll find that your eth0 keeps getting higher, the first time it will become eth1 and then eth2 etc and even higher if your server has dual or quad NICs. The reason is that udevd basically assigns eth0 tot he first NIC it finds and remembers it, if it encounters a NIC with a differentMAC, it assigns it one higher (eg. eth1). See the example below, I have eth2 now so how doI fix it?........

Bad Hard Drive Slows Down Computer

Here's a proven example of what a bad hard drive can do, it was technically functioning OKin a RAID array but the system became extremely low and the load become high and IOWAIT was even higher and I always thought it was a bad application. The truth is that this failing 1TBHitachi has slowly gotten worse and caused huge slowdowns, (eg. 100% load on Thunderbird waiting for e-mails to load etc..). After swapping it out, tabs change instantly, emails are not lagged, and........

OpenOffice Writer Replacing/Reformatting Dates in Tables - Howto Disable

Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice Writer -> Table Uncheck "Number Recognition" This will permanently disable it but won't undo the damage it has already done. I spent a long-time fighting with this horrible feature which should be disabled by default.........

KVM/QEMU Base/Template Images and the power they provide

qemu-img create -b centos.5-8.x86.20120308.qcow2 -f qcow2 ../kvmguests/25000-centos5.8x86.qcow2 Formatting '../kvmguests/25000-centos5.8x86.qcow2', fmt=qcow2, backing_file=centos.5-8.x86.20120308.qcow2, size=10485760 kB -b the source/base image -f format is qcow2 and the location of the destination image What is so special about this? It's even quicker than creating a template with OpenVZ but this is an actual OS. It saves time a........

Linux/Centos how to block SSH bruteforce/dictionary attacks automatically with denyhosts

A lot of people become nervous (and understandably so) when checking their auth or security logs, in Centos /var/log/secure and see dozens, hundreds of even thousands of attempted logins to various services, especially SSH. Of course you could manually block these people/IPs but no one has time to read the logs like that, what if some program or script could do it for you? This is what denyhosts does for you, it checks the logs and based on a certain number of failed SSH attem........

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........

MySQL how to copy/duplicate a table

CREATE TABLE articles_backup LIKE articles The code above creates a new table called "articles_backup" which has the exact same structure and attributes as the original articles table. CREATE TABLE articles_backup SELECT * FROM articles; The above code does the same thing as the first example, BUT it also copies all of the data.........

bash script remove non-printable special characters/white space

In bash you test like this for problems that can be caused by non-printable characters since if you don't know how to identify it because it basically breaks your script. echo "url=$url" should print something like this normally if you have properly formatted input/text: url=::http://someaddress.com:: But if you have some weird hidden characters (not visible in a text editor of any sort you'll get something like this ::l=::http://s........

failed to IDENTIFY (INIT_DEV_PARAMS failed, err_mask=0x80)

[ 12.460014] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 17.626677] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 22.480011] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16) [ 27.646681] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [ 38.106817] ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (INIT_DEV_PARAMS failed, err_mask=0x80) [ 48.266676] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)........

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........

What's Needed To Fix Linux

I really am a Linux fan but my comments here may not show it. Although I'm quite familiar with Linux CLI to administer servers, I find Linux GUI OS's like Ubuntu at times very clunky. This is partially because there's no such thing as a "self-made" Linux from scratch where the UIwas designed by a single team. Linux is made up of several different projects that are generally completely separate and this lack of integratiion is a key issue that makes things f........

How To Test If Your Hard Drive Is Good/Signs of dying hard drive

I like dd, although it only reads it, usually a read test of the entire disk will uncover if your hard drive is bad in some parts. This is a good thing to do at least once a month, a lot of times bizarre program behavior, laginess and crashing/unnmounting problems etc.. are due to a failing disc and SMART won't know it or indicate a problem: We must also remember there's never a guarantee, I've found that ever since we moved to larger and more platters per drive with 1TB drives........

smart is not smart, it thinks a dead drive is still good

I had a dying drive that smart thought until it totally disappeared was a good drive, and actually all parameters did look fine but this system was causing my system to lockup and other bad behavior: === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 Serial Number: WD-WMAZ20139 Firmware Version: 50.0AB50 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes Device........

GRUB Solution to error "Error 6: Mismatched or corrupt version of stage1/stage2"

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory) [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename.] grub> root (hd1,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd grub> setup........

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........

How to recover from dead DRBD partition/hard drive in two simple commands

This assumes that you've at least created the correct partition for your DRBD already. Notice that I am "diskless", that's because either your DRBD partition doesn't exist/has been renamed (eg. sdb becomes sda when sdb dies and you reboot) or because that drive is really actually dead/gone. *If you need to permanently change the partition/device for your resource be sure to edit /etc/drbd.conf on both hosts and reload the config. (replace r0 with........

PayPal Solution - Error Detected Error Message We were unable to decrypt the certificate id. We were unable to decrypt the certificate id.

Error Detected........

Linux High IOWAIT updatedb can't be killed and crash with mdadm

high IO wait 424 root 39 19 1900 848 552 D 0.0 0.0 0:00.91 updatedb root 424 0.0 0.0 1900 848 ? DN Mar11 0:00 /usr/bin/updatedb -f sysfs?rootfs?bdev?proc?cpuset?binfmt_misc?debugfs?sockfs?usbfs?pipefs?anon_inodefs?futexfs?tmpfs?inotifyfs?eventp........

Enable SPAMASSASSIN on Postfix in 5 minutes

Centos 5 Postfix and SPAMASSASSIN Tutorial yum install spamassassin chkconfig spamassassin on vi /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf ############## #required_hits 5 #report_safe 0 #rewrite_header Subject [SPAM] #5 is the least restrictive (means only the most obvious SPAM is caught. 0 is obviously the most restrictive/sensitive and would have lots of false positives require........

rsync preserve attributes, permissions/ownership and times without being root non-root user

One of the purposes of rsync is to backup whole filesystems and archive them but how can you do that properly and restore things to normal if all permissions and ownerships are not preserved from your root filesystem? It's not desirable to have everything running as root, especially not just for an rsync. The Easy rsync preserve permission solution for non-root users sudo is the answer and all you have to do is edit /etc/sudoers At the end o........

yum error with some versions of Centos Refusing to automatically import keys when running unattended. Use "-y" to override.

Refusing to automatically import keys when running unattended. Use "-y" to override. When using echo y|yum install gcc Fix with rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY*........

WD (Western Digital) Advanced Format Drive Lagged/Slow Speed/Performance/Design Flaw EAD/EARS problem WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1

Let the numbers speak for themselves, from what I read the Load_Cycle_Count which is very high (more than 500,000/half a million times) is the number of head parks. What a stupid"Green" design and design flaw which will probably mean an early life for the drive. This is almost as silly as Seagate's new reputation for BSY/poor quality disks since the 7200.11 series. To make it worse this is also when Western Digital introduced "Advanced Format" o........

PHP Email Attachment Corrupt Solution

I couldn't figure out why this wouldn't work, a test script in the root of my htdocs folder worked fine. Within some subdirectories the same code would produce different base64 results but I didn't know hwy. Archive: /tmp/archive.zip Zip file size: 6888 bytes, number of entries: 92 error [/tmp/archive.zip]: missing 242827681 bytes in zipfile (attempting to process anyway) error [/tmp/archive.zip]: attempt........

DRBD WFConnection Problem/Solution

This has stumped me a few times because I keep forgetting that Centos 5.5 comes with a default iptables configuration that ends up blocking DRBD traffic,I tried all the normal things and couldn't understand why I couldn't make my normal DRBD config work. So if you have WFConnection problems and have tried the normal "mailing list" fixes, check your firewall status first! Both Nodes Say the Following: version: 8.3.8 (api:88/prot........

Check How Many Watts Your CPU,HDD,GPU, Fans Use - Power Consumption Tool

www.antec.outervision.com/index.jsp I found that wattage/power consumption tool to be very useful, especially when you're worried that you're hitting the Power Supply's limit. You'll see very quickly that different CPU's, Graphics, Cards, HDDS use a wide range of energy. That tool can help you choose a build that won't stress or go over the maximum limits of your Power Supply.........

Debian 5.04 RAID 1 mdadm boot problem GRUB error

I successfully created a single RAID 1 partition which includes /boot inside it and my root directory through the Debian installer. It said GRUB installed successfully but when I try booting the OS it seems GRUB can't read anything. When trying to boot from GRUB GRUB Loading stage 1.5. GRUB loading, please wait... Error 2 I get "Error 2" when trying to boot Debian. I also notice from a LiveCD that........

get_printer_attrs: resource name '/printers/printers' no good! - cups error

This is what the /var/log/cups/error.log says after my Samsung CLP-310N decided to stop printing. This is a new printer that replaced my CLP-300 and it has been working for a day so far. What happened is that I lifted the top part (not realizing there were rollers on it) and it stopped printing. The network activity light was flashing ,hitting the stop button didn't do anything. Even powering the printer on and off did not help. I have restarted CUPS and SMB on the........

Seagate Drive 500GB Drive Dying

This drive is clearly on the way out, the Kernel knows it but I'm surprised that SMART is not concerned. I didn't blame Seagate for their past issues until now. This hard drive has hardly been used and has not even been powered on for a year according to SMART. Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Device........

Seagate 7200.11 firmware defect in 500GB, 1000GB (1TB) and 1500GB (1.5TB) Hard Drives

Seagate Inventory/Firmware Check I heard about this issue a long time ago but never looked into it. I figured I wasn't affected since my 500GB drives were running for so long. I've been using Seagate's since 2002 and to this day all of the drives I have are alive from Seagate. *Update the bad news is that I realize one of my 500GB's is about to die, it's not even a year old, but is also not affected by the recall according to Seagate! Seagate Inventory/Firm........

Convert HDD/Hard Drive Partition(s) into non-RAID into RAID 1 using existing data without data loss and without reformatting.

Before we start I take no responsibility for this, you should have a backup and if you make a mistake during this process you could wipe out all of your data. So backup somewhere else before starting this as a precaution, or make sure it's data you could afford to lose. The RAID 1 Setup (Hardware Wise) I've already setup my 2 x 1TB (Seagate) drives with identical partitions, make sure your new hard drive (the empty one) is setup like your curr........

email2fax and Asterisk to do eFaxing

It's basically free bash shell script available from: http://wpkg.org/email2fax/index.php/Main_Page Make sure you have the required tools: libtiff ghostscript mpack/munpack Where you can e-mail your Asterisk box and it will fax it to the phone number in the subject line. The good news ends there, it is fairly undocumented and buggy. Take for example how the documentation mentions you can invoke from the com........

Picking an FTPD (vsftpd) Server in Linux Centos/Debian

I decided on using yum to help me decide even though I normaly use proftpd I decided to see what else I could find. yum search ftp Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * rpmforge: ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de * base: mirrors.netdna.com * updates: updates.interworx.info * addons: yum.singlehop.com * extras: mirrors.netdna.com rpmforge........

PHP cannot access /usr/bin/openssl

PHP cannot access /usr/bin/opensslI have verified the username that runs the process is able to access /usr/bin/openssl and it does exist but the PHP script is saying it doesn't exist: [code:1:1fd0f3abbe] if (!file_exists($OPENSSL)) { //echo "ERROR: OPENSSL $OPENSSL not foundn"; }[/code:1:1fd0f3abbe] I don't get itI can clearly see the contents of /usr/bin by using the PHP system fu........

Telus + 2Wire 2700 Router Horrible

Telus + 2Wire 2700 Router HorribleWell first of all let me say this is the only router/switch that sometimes seems to crash/disconnect computers on the local network. This device also thought it would be smart to block VOIP packets coming from my Sipura ATA VOIP adapters so I disabled the [quote:cb89ba7bff]"Invalid TCP Flag Attacks (NULL/XMAS/Other)"[/quote:cb89ba7bff] option Then all of a sudden I couldn't get onto any web pages, the wireless........

Intruder detection device uses behavioural analysis

Intruder detection device uses behavioural analysisIntruder detection device uses behavioural analysis by Antony Savvas Monday 13 June 2005 Symantec is introducing a new intrusion detection product that uses behavioural analysis to block potential attacks on enterprise networks. The new Critical System Protection 4.5 system uses technology that Symantec acquired through last year�s purchase of Platform Logic. It is designed to protect deskt........

Create/Enable SSL Certificates for Apache on Linux/Unix Systems eg. Redhat,Centos,Debian

Shortcut/Easiest Way To Create A Self-Signed Key: openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -days 1530 -out server.crt -keyout server.key Using the above, you instantly create a self-signed certificate valid for 1530 days and you can simply skip to step #5.) below. If You Need a Real SSLCertificate (eg. Equifax/Openssl) then you need to create a CSR request (you'll need to follow Steps 1.) and 2.) in order to create the CSR. You then upload the CSR Certi........

Unixbench Score with Glusterfs/Openvz & Quad Core Xeon - Updated with GlusterFS 2.0.8 & Optimized Client Config

The results are still not flattering and are nothing close to native performance. Unless GlusterFS has a "DRBD-like" option to delay writes over the network and to only read from the client side, I don't see how performance can ever improve much more. After doing some client optimizations Iadded more to the score: Start Benchmark Run: Sun Nov 29 00:37:44 PST 2009 00:37:44 up 3 min, 1 user, load average: 0.01........

Tyan S2735-8M Maximum Hard Drive Limit/Not Working/Doesn't work with 1TB 1000GB hard drives

Inever saved any of the logs, but basically no matter what OS (Linux)I used, I could not get my 1000GB hard drive to work (Seagate SATA). The BIOS recognizes the drive and fdisk -l shows the hard drive as it should. The tricky thing is that different OS's will give you different results, but don't be fooled. You can't use these larger drives for long. Iwas getting all kinds of seek/IOerrors and also messages that the port could not be read.........

Bash Script/Linux/Unix HTML/XML Parser

There is a tool called "xml2" which will parse both HTML and XML scripts, this is very useful to do a mass extraction or conversion of data based on say an HTML table etc.. It becomes even more powerful using bash if certain tags are identified with a certain class="" attribute or something else unique to only the tags you want. Happy parsing.........

Using a Mac OSX DMG Image in Windows and Converting to Standard ISO Format use dmg2iso

The dmg format is silly and annoying to work with, why couldn't Apple stick with the .iso standard? Anyway, there's an excellent Linux and Windows based tool to convert it back to a normal .iso Image called dmg2iso I'll only cover theLinux version although the Windows pre-built binary works the same way. Download dmg2iso here for free (from the author's website) It's just silly and doesn't make sense that Ubuntu doe........

Nokia N97 review, feedback and complaints

I've had an old Blackberry for a few years and I was ready to spend some serious cash on a nice Nokia. I love the idea of the Linux based Symbian S60 OS, so I was looking at phones like the E63, E71 (both are basically the same, at least CPU/screensize although E71 is thinner, has a 3MP camera, has GPS, and has dedicated buttons to adjust the volume). Then Iheard about the N97 and what a revolution it was supposed to be and it was even compared to iPhone. To........