January 27, 2012
Today I booted up a box and it’s DHCP assigend IP Address had moved so I had to find it again using this helpful Use nmap to scan for ssh servers blog post. After downloading the command line nmap for Windows from http://nmap.org/download.html. I ran: # locate ssh servers # for a range of hosts [...]
by admin at January 27, 2012 03:02 AM
Was working from memory today and found that proxycfg.exe doesn’t exist in Windows 7 and it’s been replaced by netsh. You can do it all from the netsh command line but it’s quite easy to first set it up under your Internet Options and then Import the settings as follows: Enter your proxy address and [...]
by admin at January 27, 2012 12:16 AM
iTWire: On the one hand, requesting help desk support should be a walk in the park. On the other hand, so many users are so bad at it yet wonder why they aren’t receiving support?
by david at January 26, 2012 07:05 AM
iTWire: You may be the technical guy but at the end of the day business is all about the bottom line.
by david at January 26, 2012 07:03 AM
I am using rsnapshot to make hourly, daily and weekly snapshots of my home workstation data. This is on Fedora 16. In /etc/rsnapshot.conf there are two commands that specify the root directory you want to create your backups in and whether or not to create it if it doesn’t exist already ########################### # SNAPSHOT ROOT [...]
by admin at January 26, 2012 01:26 AM
January 25, 2012
Keep getting asked “Where can I build a site on the internet” preferably for free or low cost OK so here are some links to templated DIY site building websites: Google Sites Wix Website Builder Squarespace So to get started on the Internets for eCommerce what do you need? Commitment to spend money to get [...]
by admin at January 25, 2012 06:15 AM
Please sign up the mailing list below if you're interested in becoming a member of the Newcastle hackerspace/makerspace.
University of Newcastle Makerspace
Location:
Building: EE
Room: EE102
Access is by request to the president of the makerspace, Luke Simmons. Once this is done you will be required to pass the EE general access quiz and the EE unsupervised access quiz, in Blackboard.
January 25, 2012 05:24 AM
This is really basic but well hey, spinning shiney things intrigue me. rdesktop -f -r printer:HP-Officejet-Pro-8500-a909n 192.168.22.5 Basically the above says connect to the remote desktop on 192.168.22.5 and go full screen, make the local “HP-Officejet-Pro-8500-a909n” printer available to the remote desktop session. I tried this and over a slow Wireless Broadband link, printing from [...]
by admin at January 25, 2012 12:21 AM
January 23, 2012
Here is a well laid out explanation of how to do it: http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/11/install-nx-server-neatx-on-ubuntu-11-10/ I am a bit disappointed with the result though. I don’t seem to be able to connect and disconnect cleanly. The neatx server leaves sessions behind and then tries to re-attach to them causing an error.
by admin at January 23, 2012 10:41 PM
Recently I have got caught out by leaving a terminal running while remotely connected to a Linux server and the connection has failed leaving the remote process unfinished & terminated. The Linux screen command allows you to run programs and disconnect. Rather than re-inventing the wheel I’m simply going to link to an article that [...]
by admin at January 23, 2012 04:05 AM
January 22, 2012
Welcome to LOGIN, the Linux Owners Group in Newcastle.
We are a LUG for people in the Newcastle and Hunter region of NSW Australia. The main focus of the group is Linux and FOSS.
Do you want to help promote our Linux club then please feel free to pass on the flyer or better still print a couple & place them on a noticeboard in your local area.
January 22, 2012 10:39 AM
January 19, 2012
Telstra provides a costly service. There isn’t enough competition to get the prices down especially in a regional area. They do have the best coverage on the mobile network though and it would be unfair not to mention our low population and enormous cabling distances to provide some sort of counter-point to the first sentence. [...]
by admin at January 19, 2012 06:43 AM
January 18, 2012
http://tfischernet.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/searchable-pdfs-with-linux/ PDF Copy of blog post in case they stop blogging and leave the internet
by admin at January 18, 2012 01:03 AM
January 17, 2012
I’m trying to open an xlsx document in Windows 7 Pro 32bit with Office 2003 SBE and the latest Office Compatibility Pack and it doesn’t recognize the xlsx file. I have found the problem/s: The immediate problem: The version of Office 2003 didn’t have Service Pack 3 installed. Once I installed it the xlsx opened [...]
by admin at January 17, 2012 10:20 PM
January 16, 2012
Just got this error when running vmware convertor on Windows 7 to transfer an XP image to ESXi 4. Looks like VMWare Convertor can’t find the files. Opening the Virtual PC’s settings and you find that it is referencing a `Parent Disk’. Copy the this file to the same directory: You should now be able [...]
by admin at January 16, 2012 11:47 PM
January 15, 2012
I want to schedule a defrag for every day at 5:30PM. This is on an old Windows XP Pro laptop. I can never remember what the abbreviations used to denote the names of the weekdays are for the `at’ command so here is an example: at 18:30 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su c:\windows\system32\defrag.exe c: -v
by admin at January 15, 2012 11:21 PM
At work I have a range of admin tools that I install on every new workstation that I get and after 10 and more years of clicking next and watching progress bars I think I would like to reduce the number of times I have to install stuff. It’s counter productive to spend 2 days [...]
by admin at January 15, 2012 11:00 PM
Saturday very early in the morning we had a electricity substation blow nearby. It caused a power outage not only at my home but 6kms away at work. The outage was for long enough that the UPS’s didn’t hold the servers up, and some of them didn’t come up again cleanly. So I went in [...]
by admin at January 15, 2012 09:22 AM
January 13, 2012
Meeting Ideas Page
If there is something you want to know more about, or any other ideas for meetings will go on this page.
Talks in Planning
You don't have to do a talk by yourself, joint talks are fine, 30 mins talks to supplement larger talks are good as well, please say if your talk is a main talk or a minor talk. (minor talks about 30 mins main talks 2 hours approx)
January 13, 2012 03:17 AM
January 08, 2012
Day 2 of robot lawnmower resulted in the second drive motor and wheel being added and “Better” electrical on/off system implemented.
This new electrical system allowed Forward/Off control of each motor.
The following video shows a test run without any extra weight.
Download Day2-UnloadedMP4
The following video shows a similar test run with a calibrated weight added to represent the extra load that will be imposed on the mower with cutting drive, battery, etc.
Download Day2-LoadedMP4
by craig at January 08, 2012 07:40 AM
Work began today on my Autonomous robotic lawnmower.
The intention is that this robot should be able to mow the lawn in my back yard without major human interaction.
The mechanical works began today with an old Rover mower having the back wheels removed and new rear drive wheel added. Driven by EK Ford Falcon windscreen wiper motors.

The Mower for Modification
The video below shows only one wheel added and being powered by a 12v sealed lead acid motorbike battery. As can be seen in the video the battery is connected directly to the motor terminals.
Download Video – Day1-Bump Test
by craig at January 08, 2012 07:30 AM
January 03, 2012
If you are after an easy to use 2D CAD program for Windows / Linux. Try QCAD from http://www.ribbonsoft.com. Currently at version 2.2.x but a newer version QCAD 3 is in release candidate phase. At under 100$ AUD for a license it’s good value. And with modest CAD skills you can do useful stuff with [...]
by admin at January 03, 2012 10:33 AM
After the last updates on Fedora 16 (x64) I have been suffering from really bad screen flicker. My PC has these specs. Specifically a “ASUS GeForce GTS 450 Direct CU Overclocked 1GB” Graphics card driving a BenQ T2200HD. The symptoms are that when I alt+tabbed between windows the screen corrupted(Black artifacts) and flickered. I think [...]
by admin at January 03, 2012 09:13 AM
December 30, 2011
Currently doing fence posts and some small concrete pads around the house so I need to self mix the concrete I keep searching for this type of thing on the internet: Here is a good example of what is required from Boral’s Site From my learnings: 1 Cement 2 Sand 3 Aggregate (gravel) is too [...]
by admin at December 30, 2011 04:29 AM
December 29, 2011
The openconnect package summarizes itself as the “Open client for Cisco AnyConnect VPN”. Here is a youtube video showing an openconnect session being started from the command line: I tried creating a connection via the NetworkManager software but it exited without giving me good feedback. When running openconnect (as root) via the command line I [...]
by admin at December 29, 2011 08:54 PM
December 27, 2011
I want to output custom XML without any HTML or DTD tags using CGI.pm Here is my hack to get what I’m after: #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use CGI qw(:standard -any); # use the -any option to turn on custom tags # e.g. I can use $r->item("Item Content") to create # <item>Item Content</item> # or [...]
by admin at December 27, 2011 11:40 PM
December 22, 2011
This is a script I use to start up a headless instance of virtualbox Run as root but it fires the vm up as the user you use virtualbox as. #!/bin/sh # Output of "vboxmanage list vms" # #"Windows XP Pro" {5998c1ff-f354-4d7d-b36d-987090351cb6} #"JMITS LSMB" {ac08587f-b1d4-4767-a736-51adcb6f3f08} #"Maps Dev - Debian 6.0.2.1" {9bb244ea-486b-471f-ad14-9df47c8c0157} VM=9bb244ea-486b-471f-ad14-9df47c8c0157 [...]
by admin at December 22, 2011 10:37 AM
I have a Windows XP Pro SP3 Virtualbox VM that I have been using to test connectivity to a Cisco ASA 5510 SSL VPN. Problem: Using Internet Explorer 8 and trying to launch an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) session. It created a memory error and then Internet Explorer told me that DEP had stomped on [...]
by admin at December 22, 2011 10:32 AM
At home I run Linux pretty much exclusively so anything I do at work tends to run the cross platform compatible path. When configuring a ‘clientless’ VPN on the ASA you install Cisco provided java plugins for Remote Desktop, ICA (Citrix), VNC and SSH/Telnet access which allows a browser connecting to the ASA to access [...]
by admin at December 22, 2011 02:24 AM
December 13, 2011
Been trying to find a free (as in beer) development environment that is easy to use and configure with sensible defaults. Just downloaded Aptana 3 and after 2 days use. We have a winner. Things I like: Downloaded both Windows and Linux clients – Install was easy on both There is a menu item Source [...]
by admin at December 13, 2011 10:48 AM
Just tried to use [nodeName=namespace:node_name] syntax in Firefox and Chrome to get a result message from a soap responseXML and failed while using jquery-1.6.2.min.js and jquery-1.7.1.min.js: This is the contents from my jQuery.ajax “success:” blocks code success : function(resp) { var res = $(resp).find('[nodeName=ns1:result]').text(); $('#response').text(res); } Apparently this no longer works http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/10377 and they aren’t [...]
by admin at December 13, 2011 05:16 AM
December 08, 2011
Yep it’s a bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=752733 But there is a work-a-round: http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2011/11/24/gnome-menu-editing-fix/
by admin at December 08, 2011 02:41 AM
November 28, 2011
Kendo UI – http://www.kendoui.com/ Sencha – http://www.sencha.com/ Cappuccino – http://cappuccino.org/learn/ JQuery UI – http://jqueryui.com
by admin at November 28, 2011 10:58 PM
November 27, 2011
I just used my HP Officejet Pro 8500A to scan a 2 page document to tiff format. It drops it into a samba share on my Fedora 16 box. Trying to open the tiff format scan on Linux and i could only see the first page. With the default viewer – which in my case [...]
by admin at November 27, 2011 04:38 AM
November 23, 2011
for (@ARGV) { if (/^6\d{4}$/) { $item_code = $_; $action = 'load'; } elsif (/^stop$/) { $action = 'stop' ; } elsif (/^start$/) { $action = 'start'; } else { print "Default\n"; } } print "Item : " . $item_code . "\n"; print "Action : " . $action . "\n";
by admin at November 23, 2011 08:43 PM
A company named HSAjet has a CU (Control Unit) that drives some expensive print heads for carton labelling. In the documentation that is supplied with the Control Unit it specifies that you can communicate with it via RS232 and Ethernet. The Ethernet part is what I’m interested in. The command reference published in the Manual [...]
by admin at November 23, 2011 07:38 AM