X11 Forwarding to Vista

I'm just getting around to turning on X11 forwarding to my Vista laptop. As a result of certain work related issues, I thought I was going to use Putty as the SSH client. I've done with with other clients, and had used Cygwin as the X11 emulator on XP. Of course I couldn't get Putty and Cygwin to play, but then I found another option.

1. Download Cygwin setup. Launch same.
2. When prompted for packages select Net/openssh and X11.
3. Once installed, launch Cygwin. This will open a text window, AKA: CLI.
4. Type startx. This will open an xterm window. (Oddly, it failed several times before working. I'll have to work on that.)
5. Access the remote system:

ssh -X user@server

6. After login, type xclock as a test.

WinSCP

I just found out that the WinSCP guy has a portable version of his Windows based SCP client that is a single executable which can be run from a flash drive, without being installed on the system. Check out:

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Vmware Server 2 Beta

Ran into an interesting problem attemptting to install Vmware Server 2 Beta. I've been working almost exclusively with ESX for the last few months and decided to replace my Xen system with the free Vmare product. My motivation was to experiment with the user interface.

The RPM imploded during the first install. I guessed the download was corrupted. I downloaded the file a second time, but it refused to try a second install. Since it was not in the RPM database, I knew it had to be some file system droppings.

First, I cleared some files from /usr/bin:

rm -rf /usr/bin/vm*

That didn't work, so the next step was to nuke the application directory:

rm -rf /etc/vmware/*

That got it. The RPM is installed. Now we have to figure out how to use it.

The GigE Saga Continues

I connected a second system to my GigE switch, and as usual, it was a bigger job than it should have been. Again, it was my fault: Any good system administrator will tell you that you should only make one change at a time. I made two. I swapped cases and enabled the interface.

The second system is a home-grown rack mount virtualization server with a Foxconn motherboard running an AMD X2-64 at about 2.1 Ghz. The 100meg NIC (e100) is on the .69 network and the 1Gig NIC (r8169) is on the .169 network. The meat of the matter, however are the transfer benchmarks.

The first test I did was with SCP.

$ date; scp test.iso doug@192.168.69.13:/home/doug; date
Sun Jul 20 22:58:31 EDT 2008
test.iso 100% 489MB 2.8MB/s 02:56
Sun Jul 20 23:01:31 EDT 2008

Almost three minutes.

$ date; scp test.iso doug@192.168.169.13:/home/doug; date
Sun Jul 20 23:02:27 EDT 2008
test.iso 100% 489MB 2.9MB/s 02:47
Sun Jul 20 23:05:18 EDT 2008

The time and through put are virtually identical, but then I honestly did not expect to see any difference in performance. At issue is the fact that SCP is speed limited.

Next NFS-- which I'm hoping will scream.

$ date; cp test.iso /net/192.168.69.13/home/vypress/; date
Sun Jul 20 23:21:05 EDT 2008
Sun Jul 20 23:23:06 EDT 2008

About two minutes. A little better than SCP.

$ date; cp test.iso /net/192.168.169.13/home/vypress/; date
Sun Jul 20 23:29:38 EDT 2008
Sun Jul 20 23:30:58 EDT 2008

Oh.

That's a let down: 2:01 -vs- 1:20 I shouldn't be complaining about a 67% increase in transfer, but the line is ten times faster. I'm not even getting double the transfer rate. What's up with that?

Palm Centro: HotSync

I spent nearly an hour trying to resolve this silly glitch...

While trying to HotSync, I kept getting the message:

Unable to initiate HotSync operation because the port is in use by another application.

No matter what I did, it wouldn't connect to my laptop. Turns out, Bluetooth was disabled on the Centro. I enabled Bluetooth, and the HotSync worked.

What made this so painful was the fact that on the Tungstun, if you tried an operation that required Bluetooth, it would tell you that Bluetooth was off, and ask to turn it on. Minor change, big headache.

Linux GigE Card

Finally got a few minutes to start switching over to GigE. I've been disappointed with the lack of information on supported GigE cards available on the net. On a roadtrip to Phoenix, I stopped in at a Fry's and found a US Robotics card for $16 that claimed to support Linux.

I snagged the card and a D-Link DGS-2208 GigE Switch (on sale: $39.99!!!) and headed back to DC. Installed the card in an FC-4 machine, and after a fair amount of playing around, got it running. (The problem was my anal and uncalled for desire to have the card be eth2, rather than eth1.) I left the 100 Meg card in as eth0.

The card is a US Robotics 7902A and it loaded the r8169 driver. At the moment, all seems right:

[root@scully ~]# ethtool eth2
Settings for eth2:
    Supported ports: [ TP ]
    Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
            1000baseT/Full
    Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
    Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
            1000baseT/Full
    Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
    Speed: 1000Mb/s
    Duplex: Full
    Port: Twisted Pair
    PHYAD: 0
    Transceiver: internal
    Auto-negotiation: on
    Supports Wake-on: pumbg
    Wake-on: g
    Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
    Link detected: yes

The big test come when I get the second system on the switch in the morning.

IPv6: Ping

Linux -vs- Windows

Given a LAN with Windows and Linux systems running IPv6, it may be necessary to Ping a Link Local interface. Consider the output of a Linux ifconfig command:
Only one address is displayed on the FE80 subnet. In this case we would issue:

  ping6 -I eth0 FE80::250:56ff:fea7:54a7

Notice the -I eth0 option: this tells the system which interface to use.

On the Windows side, things are slightly different:
This time we have three FE80 addresses. To ping we issue:

ping fe80::250:56ff:fea7:d33%6

Notice the %6 on the end. This allows Windows to know which interface (or tunnel) to use.

Palm Centro: Airplane Mode

On the front of the unit, there is a green answer button and a red power button. The power button has several functions:

1. When the unit drops to power save mode, it (or the four function buttons) will wake the unit up.
2. When awake, if the button is held for three seconds, it will boot the phone into the Airplane Mode. (The antenna icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen will disappear.)
3. When in the Airplane Mode, if the button is held three seconds, it will boot the phone into the On Air Mode.
4. In any active mode, tap the red button to black the screen. You can't turn the device off. Not possible. You have to pull the battery.

Palm Centro: Set Username

Finally moved on from my Palm Tungston to the Palm Centro. Whoa! Way cool. Now we get to figure this puppy out.

First hurdle: Change the username on the device to sync with the existing Palm desktop. This will load the Tungston's data on the Centro. Not an easy task.

1. Enter Memopad:
    Press the Home key
    Select Main catagory
    Click icon
2. Select New.
3. As the only line on the new memo, enter:
    Type "Shortcut . 5"
    *** For Shortcut, press and hold Alt, select character
    *** Don't type the spaces
4. Hotsync.

Potty Instructions

Here's a picture I had in my Drafts folder.

Instructions found in a toilet stall in a men's room at the Missouri Supreme Court Building in Jefferson City, Missouri. Basically, "Hold handle 10 seconds. Manually return handle to original position." Effectively, "We're not smart enough to fix the toilet, and too cheap to replace it."

PS: Blogger changed the way pictures are posted. Now, they all go to Drafts and its up to the operator to post them online. Inconveinent. Oh well.