Stefan Helander

Calibrate Vivotek PT7137 from URL

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The Vivotek PT7137 is a pan-tilt network camera from Vivotek.

After panning and tilting for some time, especially after hitting the boundaries a couple of times, the camera is in need of calibration. You can see this if you have some predefined postition and selecting it doesn’t bring the camera centered to the selected position.

Calibrating the camera can easily be performed by logging in as the administrative account (root) and selecting the Maintenance in the menu. The Calibrate button will immediately calibrate the camera.

However, in some cases you would like to calibrate the camera directly by entering a URL or by using a script.

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Stefan Helander

Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera vulnerability

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The Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera is vulnerable for unauthorized users to gain access through telnet and ftp by logging in as the user root. The user can log in without any password. When logged in, it is possible to view the cameras configuration file where the administrator password is stored in clear text.

The vulnerability is verified to exist in firmware version 1.27 but might be present in other versions too. At present time there are no updates available from Siemens later than version 1.27.

It is therefore a recommendation to maintain the Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera only on a private network or behind a firewall and to use an administrator password that is not used anywhere else.

See also the Siemens web page for Gigaset WLAN camera.

Stefan Helander

How to install both Windows XP and Easy Peasy (Ubuntu) on ASUS EEE Pc 900

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Windows XP on ASUS EeePC

What you need

  • Two USB memory sticks. 2-4 GB is good for Windows and 2 GB for Easy Peasy. Sticks above 8 GB have been problematic for me.
  • A Windows XP installation CD with SP2. If you don’t have at least SP2 included, the install will blue screen. To update your Windows XP with SP2, follow this guide. If you upgrade your Windows XP installation with SP2 in a directory on the hard disk according to the Read more
Stefan Helander

Rebuild the journal in a ext3 journaled filesystem

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The symptom of a broken ext3 journal is that the system will boot normaly but after a while the filesystem will be remounted read only and according to the log there are problems reading a block in the journal.

Boot on a rescue cd or boot but make sure the filesystem is in read only mode.

In this example i use /dev/md0 (the software raid device), becuase when I had this problem it was an ext3 journaled filesystem residing on a software raid that was causing trouble.

Issue the following commands

# fsck /dev/md0
# tune2fs -O ^have_journaled /dev/md0
# mount -n -o remount,rw /dev/md0
# tune2fs -j /dev/md0
# mount -n -o remount,ro /dev/md0
# fsck /dev/md0
# reboot

The first tune2fs removes the current journal on the filesystem (-O ^have_journaled). The second tune2fs (-j) recreates it. In between the filesystem must be mounted read only in order for the new journal to be written.

Stefan Helander

How to make a Windows XP install CD with SP2 or SP3

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If you have a Windows XP installation CD that do not have Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Service Pack 3 (SP3) on it, you will sometimes get in trouble when trying to install it on a computer with newer hardware. If you get a blue screen of death during the installation, it might be a sign that you need to include the SP2 or SP3. Newer Windows XP installations CDs comes with a SP already included. To check if that is the case with your Windows XP installation CD, insert

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Stefan Helander

Trillian can’t connect with ICQ, unknown code 27

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Sometime in mid July 2009 Trillian users started to experience problems in conneting to their ICQ accounts. Their ICQ account was in working order as they could use ICQ2Go to login. The error message displayed in Trillian is: Error logging into ICQ: Unknown code 27.

The problem is caused by ICQ removing an older ICQ protocol. Trillian have fixed this in their version 3.1.13.0. To upgrade to this version, follow these steps.

  1. Start Trillian.
  2. Pull down the Help menu and select Check for updates.
  3. Select Trillian and click Next.
  4. Follow the instructions to proceed with the update.
Stefan Helander

PeToUSB can’t find USB stick in Vista

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When running PeToUSB under Microsoft Vista it might not be able to detect your USB memory stick. It displays “No USB Disks Found!”.

The solution is to right click PeToUSB.exe and select “Run as administrator”. If that don’t help, try rebooting your system making sure the USB memory stick is inserted while Microsoft Vista boots up.

Stefan Helander

Windows Vista cannot obtain IP-address from my Internet Service Provider

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Under certain conditions a PC running Windows Vista is unable to obtain an IP-address via DHCP from the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The problem occurs if the ISP is running a non-Microsoft DHCP server. Among ISPs it is common to work with, for example, ISC DHCP-server which is the most common DHCP-server in the world.

The problem and a possible solution is described in the following Microsoft article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B928233&x=13&y=10

If you don’t want to edit your registry another simple solution is to buy a simple broadband router (internet sharing device) that does Network Address Translation (NAT). By doing this, the broadband router is obtaining the IP-address from the ISP, not the Windows Vista PC. In addition, you will be able to connect more than one PC to your Internet connection and those PCs will be protected by the firewall that most broadband routers have builtin.

Stefan Helander

How to change timezone and synchronize time in Debian Linux

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To ensure that things are being logged with correct time stamps in your system logs, it is important that your system is configured for your particular timezone and that your system clock is being synchronized to a correct time source. Normally when you set up your Debian Linux system the correct time zone will be choosen. If the time zone is set wrong for some reason it needs to be adjusted.

To check your current time zone issue the command:

# date
Wed Jul 15 11:05:15 UTC 2009

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Stefan Helander

Horde Groupware Webmail alarms.php memory problem

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To enable alarms in Horde Groupware Webmail you must add the following to your crontab:

# Horde Alarms
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/horde/scripts/alarms.php

Depending on your system, the paths above might be different.

You may experience the following error message when the script is run by cron:

Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 147 bytes)

To resolve this, edit the file /etc/php4/cli/php.ini. Depending on your system it might be located somewere else on your particular system. Change the memory limit to 128 MB by changing the memory_limit parameter:

memory_limit = 128M

The above problem has occured with Horde Groupware Webmail version 1.2.3 but might occur in other versions as well.