Sunday, May 17, 2009, 10:33 AM - Linux, Networking
I set up autofs to automount a Windows share, but it wouldn't work after a reboot because autofs was not running on startup! I couldn't understand why because I saw it linked to by a file in rc2.d/. I even tried calling it from /etc/rc.local but rc.local wasn't getting run on startup either!
Finally, I discovered that my Eee PC runs something called fastinit on startup, not regular init (how do you think it boots so fast?). Fastinit doesn't pay attention to what's in the rc?.d dirs. To get autofs to run on startup the solution is to add autofs to the /ets/fastservices file. I wish I had understood that sooner.
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( 3 / 36 )Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 10:53 PM - Linux
I had trouble getting Debian to install with Linux software raid (mdadm). I was trying to RAID1 the boot partition, and RAID5 the root partition. I was also going to RAID0 for swap but later decided to just have separate swaps but turn them all on and with the same priority.
The main problem was Debian kept adding an extra /dev/md0 to the mdadm.conf. The extra entry had the wrong UUID. During the install process I had fixed mdadm.conf, but had not realized that the initrd also contained an mdadm.conf (with the extra entry). This caused no end of grief because after each reboot it would show only 1 out of 4 components working [U___] and e2fsck would fail. It was trying to add a whole disk (sdd) instead of the partitions (sda3,sdb3,sdc3,sdd4).
Running update-initramfs fixed the problem nicely. I wish I had known about that sooner.
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( 1.9 / 17 )Friday, May 9, 2008, 05:03 PM - Networking
I'm big on security, but not at the expense of usability and privacy. When it comes to VPN connections, I prefer split tunneling. Split tunneling means instead of forcing all traffic through the VPN, only traffic destined for the remote subnet goes through the VPN.
Here are my arguments:
1. Forcing all traffic through the VPN doesn't provide a lot more security because:
a. Traffic is encrypted from the user to the other end of the VPN, but not from there to the final destination.
b. Traffic destined for external networks probably do not need to be secured anyways.
c. The VPN client can usually be turned on and off at any time.
d. When "local lan" is enabled, the computer connected to the vpn is still susceptible to attack from the public non-secured network by tunneling through another computer on the LAN first.
2. Forcing all traffic through the VPN causes all of the following problems:
a. Traffic between a user and external computers can be slowed down considerably.
b. Traffic for others inside the secured network is slowed down by a VPN user needlessly.
c. Certain protocols may be broken.
d. Network applications get disconnected during VPN connection and must re-connect.
e. Privacy. Personal traffic like emailing your spouse should not be forced to travel through your work network.
Disabling split tunneling may be ok for road-warriors, but for employees who work from home and need to constantly access both work resources and the Internet, it can be very annoying.
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( 3 / 270 )Friday, March 7, 2008, 10:24 AM - Programming
The combination of these four conditions was causing VS.Net 2003 to give me that unexplicable linker error.
1. Class has virtual DTOR.
2. Class is inside another class.
3. Class is built into a static library.
4. PCH is on.
Removing any one of those conditions would solve the problem. I chose #2, by moving my class to namespace level.
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( 2.6 / 288 )Friday, July 27, 2007, 03:24 PM
This page helped me figure out how to debug a problem I was having trying to run a windows service: blogs.msdn.com
In short, you can create a service that will launch cmd.exe as the local system user, by running this:
sc.exe create testsvc binpath= "cmd /K start" type= own type= interact[ add comment ] | permalink |
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