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Toshiba laptop green blinking LED light

August 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Hardware /by Stefan Helander

A Toshiba laptop I encountered recently was deemed “possibly dead”. It would not boot and screen was just black.

A blinking green LED was present, meaning the battery is discharged. Further investigation revealed that the power supply electric cord had fallen out of the socket.

Plugging it in again turned the blinking green LED to solid orange, meaning the laptop was charging and just pushing the power button made it boot up normally.

Sometimes the problems are too simple 🙂

Samsung SL-M3375FD scan to email and SMB stopped working

August 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Hardware /by Stefan Helander

Samsung multi function laser printer SL-M3375FD could suddenly not send email (scan to email) and SMB shares stopped working. Logging in to the printer web interface, using the test function for the SMTP settings just resulted in “failed” when it tried to authenticate to the email server.

Recently the email server’s SSL-certificate was updated because it was about to expire and about this time the scan to email stopped working.

The solution was simply to update the printer firmware. It was running a firmware from 2014 but updating to the latest one download here solved the problem both concerning email and SMB shares.

/etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new: Please run this cronjob as user amavis

August 8, 2019/0 Comments/in Linux/FreeBSD /by Stefan Helander

After a system update I started to receive cron messages saying “/etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new:
Please run this cronjob as user amavis”.

It turns out that this happens because the cron script is replaced by a new one located in /etc/cron.d and the one in /etc/cron.daily is left behind giving this error message.

Solution: After checking that the new script exists in /etc/cron.d, just delete /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new

More information about this here (bug report).

Windows 10 VPN-problem after update to 1903 [workaround]

July 29, 2019/0 Comments/in Windows /by Stefan Helander

After installing the 1903 Windows 10 update, also called may 2019 update, users experience problems when trying to connect a VPN connection.

The problem occurs when clicking Connect on the VPN-connection through the system tray. When the dialog box for user name and password should appear, nothing happens.

Until Microsoft solves this a temporary workaround is to connect through the control panel.

Click on the Windows start button (the Windows flag in the bottom left corner)
Click on the cogwheel for Settings
In the control panel search box, type “VPN” and select “VPN-settings“
Click on the connection you want to use to display the Connect button
Click the Connect button and now the dialog box for user name and password will display and you can connect as usual

MySQL 5.7 and mysql_secure_installation

July 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Linux/FreeBSD /by Erik Svensson

If you are using mysql:secure_installation witch you should, beware of that the script reset all passwords in the SQL server database mysql. To fix this problem use the following.
Root password:
ALTER USER ‘root’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘MyNewPass’;
Session password:
ALTER USER ‘mysql.session’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’ PASSWORD EXPIRE NEVER;

Exampel error messages:
ERROR 1820 (HY000): You must reset your password using ALTER USER statement before executing this statement.

WordPress Live Chat support plugin redirect vulnerability – how to fix

May 22, 2019/0 Comments/in WordPress /by Stefan Helander

A security problem in the WordPress Live Chat support plugin made it vulnerable for XSS making it possible for an attacker to add custom javascript to the configuration of the plugin. This can be done from the outside world without being logged in to the site.

The exploit has been used to infect WordPress sites with for example redirect scripts, causing the visitor to be redirected to other sites when clicking on internal links in the site. More information about the details of the exploit can be found here.

The vulnerablity in WP Live Chat support plugin has been fixed in version 8.0.29 of the plugin but just updating the plugin will not solve the problem if the site already has been infected with custom javascript code.

To solve the problem:

Make sure WP Live Chat support plugin is updated to version 8.0.29
In WP backend, go to Live Chat -> Settings -> Custom scripts and remove the unwanted code from the Custom JS box (see image)

How to run Zello on Mac OSX

May 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Amateur radio, Apple Mac OS X, Radio /by Stefan Helander

Unfortunately there is no version of Zello available for Mac OSX but it is possible to run the Windows version using Wine.

Download and install XQuartz version >= 2.7.7
Log out and log back in on your Mac
Download and install “Wine stable“
Download “Zello for PC“
Launch Finder, go to Programs and run “Wine stable”
In the wine terminal window do
cd Downloads wine ZelloSetup.exe
The Zello setup process will install Zello and launch it. The next time you want to run Zello, launch Finder, go to Programs and run “Wine stable” and enter
wine C:\\Program\ Files\ \(x86\)\\Zello\\Zello.exe

Netbeans 8.2, git clone over ssh “Incorrect credentials for repository at ssh://”

April 7, 2019/0 Comments/in Apple Mac OS X, Linux/FreeBSD /by Stefan Helander

Trying to git clone a repository over ssh in Netbeans 8.2 displaying an error message saying “Incorrect credentials for repository at ssh://” gave me a bit of a headache. I could successfully connect to the repository server using ssh from the terminal in my Mac running OSX.

After spending some time troubleshooting I tried to check for updates in Netbeans and that gave me an error message saying Netbeans could connect to the Internet in order to check for updates.

It turned out the problem was not incorrect credentials for SSH when trying to git clone, but in reality Netbeans could just not access the Internet. This was caused by the TripMode application I am using to control which applications can access the Internet when I am on mobile broadband where data rates applies.

So the error message “Incorrect credentials for repository at ssh://” in Netbeans can be misleading. It can be caused by the fact Netbeans just can’t connect at all to the repository server.

Fixing “Regular Labs Library plugin is outdated. Try to re-install Modals. Modals cannot function.”

February 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Joomla /by Stefan Helander

After an update I had the error message saying:

Error

Regular Labs Library plugin is outdated. Try to re-install Modals. Modals cannot function.
Regular Labs Library plugin is not enabled. Modals cannot function.
Regular Labs Library plugin is not enabled. Articles Anywhere cannot function.

In my case, the extension causing this was cause by Articles Anywhere.

Solution:

Go to https://www.regularlabs.com/extensions and download the latest version of Articles Anywhere (or the extension causing trouble in your case)
Go to Extensions -> Manage and search for “regular”
Select all the regular labs extensions and uninstall them (you made a backup of the site first, right?)
Go to Extensions -> Install and install the extension in your Joomla site again
In case of the above not solving the problem, use FTP or similar to delete the following folders and try the above again:
```
/plugins/system/regularlabs
/libraries/regularlabs
```

FreeNAS, VMware and iSCSI with MTU 9000

February 7, 2019/0 Comments/in Linux/FreeBSD, VMware /by Stefan Helander

In order to improve perfomance there are recommendations to set the MTU for the iSCSI interface to MTU 9000 instead of the default 1500.

To do this, it important that you set MTU to 9000 on all devices involved; FreeNAS network interface, VMware NICs and vSwitch and all switch ports on the switches connecting those.

Note: When changing these settings, it will cause loss of connectivity so it might be a good idea not to do it on systems in production.

At one point I had forgotten to set the MTU to 9000 for the VMware NIC (only for the vSwitch) causing connectivity problems and error messages in the FreeNAS logs looking like this:

WARNING: 172.16.1.200 (iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:host-585e8872): no ping reply (NOP-Out) after 5 seconds; dropping connection

FreeNAS settings

In Network interface setup, add “mtu 9000” to options.

VMware settings

Networking -> VMkernel NICs -> edit -> set MTU to 9000 -> Save
Networking -> Virtual switches -> edit -> set MTU to 9000 -> Save

Network switch ports

Make sure all network switch ports all the way between the FreeNAS and VMware host have MTU set to 9000

Testing

On the VMware host, enable SSH and login using SSH. Use the command:

vmkping -s 8972 172.16.1.100 -d

Replace 172.17.1.100 above with the IP-address of your FreeNAS. -s 8972 sets packet size to 8972 bytes allowing 28 bytes for headers and -d means fragmentation should not be allowed.

If everyting works you will get echo replies. If you get the error message “Message too long” it means somewhere on the way between your VMware host and the FreeNAS there is a limit not allowing MTU 9000.