Ich höre seit einiger Zeit mehr oder weniger regelmässig Tim Privtloves CRE Podcasts. Er schafft es immer wieder sowohl interessante Themen wie auch Gesprächspartner zu finden und es macht einfach Spass zu zu hören und einen kurzen Einblick in diverse Themen und Projekte zu bekommen die man bisher nicht umbedingt so auf dem Zettel hatte. Der aktuelle Podcast mit Harald Welte befasst sich mit dem OpenBSC Project – wir bauen uns ein GSM Netzwerk – hörenswert!
How to use Time Machine with a network share
There are quite a lot of useful information out there how to use a network share as destination for time machine. However I would like to add my own howto which also includes encryption oft the image.
I use this setup for a while now at home and at work. At work we use a x86 solaris box with samba and ZFS (at home i use linux and samba on ext3). If a user connects to a share a snapshot is automatically taken – if something goes wrong with a backup we can rollback. This works absolute flawless. So we have a network based backup for time machine with encryption.
Enter the following on the command-line (start Terminal):
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
- Now mount the image share via finder
- Next open a terminal and enter the directory you mounted the share (e.g. /Volumes/image
- Now open Time Machine Preferences and select the network share
- issue a ls -la until you see a file with the endening sparsebundle and copy the name.
- open time machine Preferences and under change disk select none.
- ensure that in the mount directory no sparebundel exists any more and delete the file .<your mac address> – you need to execute a chmod +w in order to delete that file
- now open disk utility from the Utility folder under Applications
- select New image now paste the sparsebundle filename – remove .tmp inside the filename
- set the properties to this values:
New iPhone 3G Clock Radio
Today I received my christmas present replacement – an iHome iP99 Radio Clock. On Christmas Eve I got a Logitech Pure-Fi Anytime. I managed to crash it while trying it out without reading the manual. After removing the backup battery the device was working again. It was very easy to configure and sound quality was ok. I spend some minutes playing around with it, programmed my favorite radio stations, set the alarm and was quite happy. A little later I decided to place it on my bed stand and remove my ancient radio clock. As it was much quieter in the sleeping room I realized that the power supply was buzzing in an absolute annoying way. I move it to the room right next to the sleeping room but I was still able to hear the buzzing. Looks like you wont need the alarm function as you may not even fall asleep with this device close to your bed. I tried to replace it but all other devices in the electronics store had the same issue – buzzing power supplies. I decided to just return it and get the cash back. Finding an alternative wasn’t to easy. Finally I found the iHome iP99 and decided to give it a try. This device is a little bit more expensive but worth the difference. Sound is OK, you can dim the LCD and buttons and it has quite intuitive ipod like controls. It also has a nice sleep mode – the music slowly fades out. Last but not least its power supply does not buzz!
nice keyboard
While surfing on ebay a few days ago I found a nice keyboard for final cut / final cut express editing and I got it for a cheap price – Yesterday I finally received it. It really looks very professional and i found out that it’s actually a modified Cherry Keyboard. Looks like my workspace is getting more and more complete 
FrOScon 2008
Waiting for the guys in the traffic jam and looking forward to hear what Tannebaum has to say
Samsung CLX-2160N Network Scan on OSX
Since my HP Lasejet 4MP is a little bit outdated and Toner is almost empty I considered buying a new Laser printer. I came up with the follwing wish list:
- Laser Printer
- Color
- Scanner
- Standalone Copier
- Network Interface (printing and scanning)
- OSX support
Comparing prices I decided to buy a Samsung CLX-2160N.
The device works well as standalone Color-Copier and network printer on OSX after I installed the driver from Samsungs website. I can’t compare the drivers with the windows version but I read that there are some differences and the windows drivers are more flexible in terms of print setting.
Nevertheless I still think that the level of print support under OSX is sufficient for my use case. One thing that is not provided by Samsung is support for Scan to Network. This feature is only available on windows. You can however scan to USB Stick – which works well. Searching various Mac forums I was not able to find a way to get network scan to work with OSX – until yesterday.
I found this interesting website. They provide a small perl script for scan to network supporting various MFP printers and they support the CLX-2160N. You just run the perl script including some parameters form a terminal window. Afterwards you can select your workstation in the printer menu and select the resolution. I only managed to get JPGs out, the TIFF and PDF settings have no effect. Although you don’t have the full resolution and flexibility the TWAIN driver using the USB port offers, for me it is sufficient for most use cases.
/Users/nd/downloads/dell1600n-net-scan.pl --clx2160n --format jpeg --listen 192.168.2.11
You simply start the script using the above command where 192.168.2.11 is the IP of my printer.
280North brings Keynote to the web
280 sildes is an amazing webapp which enables you to create keynote like presentations in your browser. Looks like it is even more slick under the hood as those guys introduced a new “language” Objective J. Read more here.
Nvidia’s Tegra platform
I just found some details and videos on Nvidias Tegra platform for upcoming smartphones and MID devices. It really looks very promising. They claim to display 720p and even 1080p HD video using a build in HDMI output and in addition they run Quake 3 with 45 fps. Despite the fact it runs currently on windows mobile the UI also looks amazing. Let’s hope that devices keep what the marketing figures (130 hours music/ 30 hours HD playback) try to tell us and that devices will hit the market soon.
SMS posting to Social Networks – Update
By today many services like twitter offer simple posting via SMS. Unfortunately this can be misused easily by using tools like smstools Update: sendpage or yaps which allow to send sms via modem or ISDN. The problem with this tools is that the sender can be set to anything – including the victim’s mobile number. So anyone with the software and a modem who knows your MSISDN can post to your twitter account or blog and pretend to be you. This of cause is also valid for peer to peer SMS. I don’t understand why not even a simple 4 digit pin mechanism is implemented in this services to validate the user…
SMTP TLS trouble with cisco 851w
Since weeks I experienced a very strange problem with smtp and tls. My postfix mail server allows TLS encrypted connections – unfortunately this does not seem to work as soon as I’m at home – at work everything is fine. Today I found some time to investigate. I tested the TLS smtp connection using openssl from various systems I have access to by issuing:
openssl s_client -starttls smtp -host my.mail.server -port 25
Only from my home LAN I got the following error:
root@linkstation:/home/nd# openssl s_client -starttls smtp -host my.mail.server -port
25CONNECTED(00000003)
2933:error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO: unknown protocol:s23_clnt.c:567:
Now I began to suspect my cisco 851w Router and I was right! The router logged:
179041: Jan 13 14:51:15.969 CET: %FW-3-SMTP_INVALID_COMMAND: Invalid SMTP command
(STARTTLSrn)(total 10 chars) from initiator (192.168.1.100:47797)
After searching the net I found out that this also is a known problem on Cisco PIX firewalls. I disabled smtp inspection using:
c851w-nd(config)#no ip inspect name DEFAULT100 smtp
Now the ssl handshake is successful. Looks like the deep inspection inside Cisco IOS is not knowing about TLS. BTW: my Cisco runs IOS version 12.3(8r)YI2.