blog.mbentley.net

somewhat recently, adobe has pulled all support for 64 bit flash player on linux. debian has also remove the support from it’s non-free archives so the ‘flashplugin-nonfree’ package no longer works properly. i find that gnash and swfdec are pretty lacking and are not compatible with all websites which is a major problem for me. after searching online, i found a 64 bit copy of libflashplayer.so and wanted to install it the debian way using ‘update-alternatives’. here are the steps to install it properly:

• first we want to remove the official ‘flashplugin-nonfree’ package:

  aptitude remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree

• download libflashplayer.so from here.
• extract the file to a temporary location using:

  tar zxvf libflashplayer-10.0.45.2.linux-x86_64.so_.tar.gz

  you should now see ‘libflashplayer.so’

• from the same temporary location, execute the following commands to make a common location for the file to be stored and then to copy the file there:

  sudo mkdir /usr/lib/adobe-flash
  sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/adobe-flash/

• next, you will need to create an update-alternatives entry using the following command (copy and paste both lines and insert it on the command line as a single command:

  update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so \
  flash-mozilla.so /usr/lib/adobe-flash/libflashplayer.so 20

  ‘–install’ indicates that we are adding an entry, ‘/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so’ indicates the symlink we want to add an option to, ‘flash-mozilla.so’ indicates the update-alternatives name, ‘/usr/lib/adobe-flash/libflashplayer.so’ indicates the file which you are adding, ’20′ indicates the priority.

• now we just need to set the new flash player to be the default:

  update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so

  make sure to choose the option for the newly created ‘/usr/lib/adobe-flash/libflashplayer.so’:

  There are 2 alternatives which provide `flash-mozilla.so'.
  
    Selection    Alternative
  -----------------------------------------------
            1    /usr/lib/gnash/libgnashplugin.so
  *+        2    /usr/lib/adobe-flash/libflashplayer.so
  
  Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 2
  Using '/usr/lib/adobe-flash/libflashplayer.so' to provide 'flash-mozilla.so'.

• now open up iceweasel (firefox) and navigate to ‘http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/155/tn_15507.html‘ and it should show the version of flash as ‘LNX 10,0,45,2′.

and that should be it! if you want to navigate to any flash based site or adobe’s flash test page you should see the plugin working. this has currently been tested on debian lenny (stable) and debian squeeze (testing).

so you already have some songs in your itunes library and you want to make custom ringtones from them but don’t want to pay for them from the itunes store or the ringtone doesn’t have the part of the song you want. if you are looking to do just that, then you’re in luck and all you need to create your own ringtones is itunes itself. the steps are fairly simple. they may work similarly on osx, but i have only tested this on windows.

1. open itunes and find song you want to make a ringtone
2. each ringtone should be 30 seconds long. play the song and look at what point in the song you want it to start and remember the minutes and seconds to start. add 30 seconds for the end time and remember that as well
3. right click on the song, choose ‘get info’ then go to the ‘options’ tab (see figure 1)
4. change start time to beginning time and change the stop time to the ending time (remember: should be 30 seconds after start time). choose OK. (see figure 2)
5. right click on the song again, choose ‘create aac version’. it should only take a few seconds to process
6. a new song will appear in your itunes library (it will be a 30 second song); right click on the new 30 second version and choose ‘show in windows explorer’ (see figure 3)
7. this should take you to the location of the new file. change file extension from ‘.m4a’ to ‘.m4r’
8. i would suggest moving the file to a common location for ringtones only. you will also want to make sure to remove old 30 second clip from itunes as it now points to an invalid file location
9. to import the new ringtone, go to the ‘file’ menu then ‘add file to library’. navigate to the new ringtone and add it to the library. it should now appear in the ‘ringtones’ section on the left (see figure 4)
10. make sure to undo your changes to the start/stop time of the original song (right click the original song, choose ‘get info’, goto the ‘options’ tab, clear start/stop time checkboxes
11. sync your iphone and now the ringtone is available on your phone!

figure 1 – get info, options tab	figure 2 – set start/stop time
figure 3 – new 30 second song	figure 4 – new ringtone in itunes

post a comment if you have any issues.

so i decided to upgrade to the new iOS 4 on my iphone 3gs to see what it is all about. everything went smoothly. i installed itunes 9.2, downloaded the new firmware, asked my phone to do a restore using the new firmware and then had it restore my latest backup of info. everything seemed perfect after syncing with itunes but then i went into my camera roll and noticed i had no pictures! in itunes, it showed over 1 GB worth of pictures so why were they not showing up? i searched online for a little while i didn’t really come up with much at first. many different solutions: do a backup, sync, reboot, etc but nothing worked. then i came across this discussion on the apple forums. i have slightly modified the steps. if you use windows or osx, you can download iphone explorer and follow these steps:

1.) connect your iphone using the usb cable
2.) launch iphone explorer
3.) backup and then delete the following files:
     /DCIM/.MISC/Info.plist
     /PhotoData/Photos.sqlite
     /PhotoData/PhotosAux.sqlite
4.) reboot your iphone

a recent update to iphone explorer may have changed the folder paths. if you don’t see the folders mentioned, try the following:

1.) connect your iphone using the usb cable
2.) launch iphone explorer
3.) backup and then delete the following files:
     /Media/PhotoData/MISC/Info.plist
     /Media/PhotoData/Photos.sqlite (or /PhotoData/Photos.sqlite)
     /Media/PhotoData/PhotosAux.sqlite (or /PhotoData/PhotosAux.sqlite)
4.) reboot your iphone

if you have linux, you shouldn’t need anything as long as you can mount your iphone as a device and delete the files listed above. i used debian (squeeze) to access the files as it automatically mounts my iphone when i plug it in. i just enabled ‘view hidden files’ and i could access the files to delete.

once you have done that, just open your camera roll and it should re-index all of your photos!

*edit: as Phil has pointed out in the comments, if the file ‘/DCIM/.MISC/Info.plist’ does not exist or if you can’t find the folder ‘/DCIM/.MISC’, just skip past that file and follow the rest of the directions and it should still restore your photos in the camera roll.

so what happens when your ipod dies? what if you get a new one and simply have no use for your old one? if you don’t have a use for your ipod or it is broken and you have determined that it’s a model with a hard drive and it is still in working condition, you can simply turn it into an external hard drive. i had a 5th gen video ipod that had a circuit board go bad and it already had a battery that wouldn’t hold a charge. instead of buying parts to repair it, it just went ahead and bought a new one.

that left my old one for parts and pretty much the only thing of any value to me was the hard drive. mine has a zif/lif connector which i hadn’t ran into before but after doing a little looking around, i found that you could find fairly inexpensive enclosures on ebay (search for ’1.8 ZIF LIF external usb’). from what i understand, some ipod hard drives are zif and others are ide. just make sure you know which one you own before ordering. the person i bought mine from on ebay had both types available.

1.8″ ide drive	1.8″ zif drive

the case that i bought is a hitachi mobile disk case. there really isn’t anything special about it as it is simply a plastic case with a circuit board which converts the connector to mini usb. i purchased it solely based on the plain look and small size. it is only about the size of a credit card (just slightly bigger) which is about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of a standard 2.5″ laptop hard drive in an external enclosure. the plastic seems to be much more sturdy than that of my 2.5″ laptop enclosure which needs replacing badly. that is how the whole idea of looking for an 1.8″ enclosure came to mind. if you can help it, i would try to keep the screwing and unscrew of the case to a minimum to prevent stripping out the plastic threads in the hole as they tend to easily break on enclosures. also do not over tighten them as that will definitely cause damage to the holes.

the case doesn’t come with instructions but installation was a easy and took about 2 minutes. if you have the ability to disassemble an ipod, you will easily be able to figure out how a zif connector works. if you don’t know how to disassemble your dead ipod, just do a quick google search and you’ll find plenty of assistance. the only reason the installation took 2 minutes was because the screws were so small, they were difficult to handle. once it was all buttoned up, i just plugged it in, reformatted the drive and it worked like a charm.

i’ve seen tons of posts around the internet regarding backing up itunes. most of them seem to focus on backing up your itunes library. while this is great, it doesn’t cover everything you probably want to back up when doing something like a complete reinstall of windows. if you only back up your library, you will lose your settings as well as your playlists. if you are like me, you have your music stored on a central server somewhere so backing up your music on your local computer is pointless anyway.

with that being said, there are a couple folders that you should back up if you want to keep your itunes settings intact when doing a full reinstall or migration to a new computer. before you do a backup, i would suggest deauthorizing your computer from the itunes store. this will prevent you from running out of the max of 5 authorizations and having to call apple support to have to clear one for you. once you have deauthorized, make sure you close itunes. next, you will need to find three folders:

Windows XP:

"%HOMEPATH%\My Documents\My Music\iTunes"
"%HOMEPATH%\Application Data\Apple Computer"
"%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer"

Windows Vista/7:

"%HOMEPATH%\Music\iTunes"
"%HOMEPATH%\Application Data\Apple Computer"
"%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer"

note: %HOMEPATH% is equivilant to ‘c:\Documents and Settings\<username>’ (WinXP) or ‘c:\Users\<username>’ (Vista/7)

first folder (winxp)	second folder (winxp)
third folder (winxp)

simply store those folders somewhere safe such as an external hard drive or usb thumb drive. when you install itunes, make sure to start it up for a first time then close it. this will create the directories which you will want to restore the files to. simply copy the folders back to their proper locations, overwriting the existing contents that were created when you started itunes for the first time. next, open itunes and it should appear just as it was before. reauthorize your computer and you are ready to go.

this really isn’t much of a howto or anything, but it really amazes me what sorts of stuff i will find when cleaning out my computer closet. i decided to reorganize things so it didn’t look like a total jumbled mess since i have a few extra computer cases and boxes of random parts. while moving the cases around, i found nearly two whole computers. they aren’t anything to get excited about (amd duron 1600 and an intel celeron d 2.66) but i totally forgot that i had them! usually i pull all extra parts before tossing things in the closet but it would appear that these were forgotten at some point. i have no clue what i might do with them as i need a bit of ddr to make them actually useful and i don’t really have much of a need for more computers. i guess it is time to think of a new project to make use of an old computer besides a firewall or nas…

when i am at work, i use a ssh tunnel when i need to bypass the proxy server. this works great except for when i visit certain sites with a large number of big images. one site would be boston.com – the big picture. it has a large number of high quality images and the ssh tunnel just doesn’t seem to be able to handle the traffic. when the number of http requests overloads the ssh tunnel and then i get the message ‘network error: software caused connection abort’ as seen to the right.

in order to prevent this from happening, i found a setting in firefox that can control the number of http connections being made at once. actually, there are two settings that i have tweaked in order to find a limit which seems to work well. in firefox, navigate to ‘about:config’. from there, just type in ‘max-connections’. you will now see two entries. they are ‘network.http.max-connections’ and ‘network.http.max-connections-per-server’. in my case, i changed them to 10 and 4 respectively, after doing some testing. see below for examples. while this probably slows web browsing, it keeps the number of http connections low enough for the ssh tunnel to keep up with the requests. i’d much rather have a slightly slower connection than to have to reconnect my ssh tunnel constantly.

feel free to comment if you have any questions or problems.

with this post, i am going to be keeping things pretty simple. i was recently asked why i didn’t have a favicon setup for my blog and website, i figured now is just as good of a time as any to create one. i just wanted something extremely simple. figured just my initials would work for the time being. now that i figured what i actually wanted, i then had to create it. so i loaded up photoshop and made my 16×16 favicon and went to save it and realized that photoshop (at least the version i have, 7.0) does not have .ico file support. a quick google search led me to the web site of Telegraphics. on the site, they have a plugin that works with photoshop to add .ico support. installation was more than simple (just check out the included readme if you really can’t figure it out). all i had to do was use the ‘save as’ function to save it as an .ico file. then i just uploaded my new ‘favicon.ico’ to the root directory of my blog and voila, i now have a favicon.

i have owned an acer travelmate 2420 for about 5-6 years or so and i have noticed, especially more recently, that my cpu temperatures were pretty high. the cpu would idle around 60-65°C. a couple years ago, i started taking the laptop apart to see if there was access to the processor to reapply the thermal paste. turned out that it wasn’t so easy to get to so i simply gave up since i couldn’t find a service manual for it anywhere online. since the temps seemed to keep getting worse, i decided to try to look again.

this time i was able to find the manual (Aspire 3620/TravelMate 2420 Series Service Guide). it took quite a while, but i was able to disassemble the laptop using the service manual as it has pretty decent step by step instructions including screw locations. in order to gain access to the processor, almost the entire laptop must be disassembled and the motherboard removed. from there, i was able to remove the heatpipe from the processor and northbridge, clean them and then apply some new arctic silver 5 thermal paste. another thing i noticed was that there was quite a gathering of dust on the heat sink of the heat pipe which certainly can’t help the temps. cleaning that out with an old toothbrush did the trick.

reassembly of the laptop went much quicker than the disassembly phase. it certainly helped that i used a piece of paper and made note of which screws went to what location. acer is one of those manufacturers that uses multiple screw sizes for anything and everything unlike many dells i have come across where there are typically 2-3 types of screws or so for most things. now that i have gotten the laptop back together, i am seeing temps around 50°C with it on my laptop. this seems to be about a 10-15°C drop in temps and the thermal paste hasn’t had any time to cure.

reapplying thermal paste on an older laptop can definitely help out if you are having overheating issues. i would just make sure you know what you are getting yourself into before trying it yourself as some laptops are much more difficult to take apart than others. most manufacturers publish service manuals that can be found online. you just might have to do a bit of digging to find them.

as many people are aware, many ISPs block traffic on port 25 in order to attempt to prevent spammers from using bot infected hosts on their networks. this can be a problem for people who want to run a mail server from their home connection. yes, i realize that running an email server violates the TOS of most providers but that is a discussion for another day. i personally use my email server as a learning experience but i also use it for my primary personal email.

users of comcast have recently reported that they are no longer able to relay their mail using ‘smtp.comcast.net’ over port 25. comcast had previously allowed port 25 traffic to be relayed inside their network when going to ‘smtp.comcast.net’. unfortunately they are no longer allowing this which is a major problem for me any anyone who is using comcast’s smtp server as a smtp connector in exchange.

the easiest way to get around this problem is by changing the port in which your exchange server sends and receives email. in my case, i decided to change mine to port 587 which is what comcast is using as the chances of them blocking that port is a bit slimmer than before. in order to change this, i had to modify the port setting in two places (for each smtp server i had running). start by opening Exchange System Manager. from there, go to Administrative Groups > First Administrative Group > Servers > [servername] > Protocols > SMTP > then right click on Default SMTP Virtual Server and choose Properties.

then go to Advanced > Edit > then change the TCP port to the new port (in this case, 587). click OK twice and then click on the Delivery tab > Outbound connections. change TCP port from 25 to the new value. then choose OK twice which will return you to the Exchange System Manager. if you have another exchange server in your organization, you will need to perform the same steps for the other servers. once you have done this, you will need to restart the Default SMTP Virtual Server(s) for the changes to take effect (or a restart would work as well).

i use port forwarding on my router which i have setup to route incoming port 25 traffic to port 587. even though port 25 is blocked, it enables me to connect using the default server port of 25 from inside my network. i also use a no-ip service for incoming smtp redirection which will redirects all of my mail traffic to a high port so it will not be blocked by my ISP. i had to configure the port forwarding on my router to point to port 587 internally instead of port 25 while still listening on the high port number as before. this allows my email to continue to send and receive properly despite having port 25 blocked by my ISP.