iFixit

Thanks to the iFixit Nexus S teardown I managed to replace the screen in my Samsung Nexus S.I managed to drop and smash the screen after my phone fell from my top pocket onto the kitchen floor while I was feeding the cat. I always think that the insurance is overpriced (though I have subsequently subscribed to protect your bubble for my phone and Ipad). It took my about 2 hours to do the repair and I made one small mistake which has meant the the home key doesn't always light up. However given it cost £90 for a replacement screen I think I made the best of a bad job and have a working smart phone again.

Problem with Cisco Connect

I had difficult connecting to a site using Windows VPN on a machine which also had  the Cisco VPN Client. They wouldn't play ball together at all. I had been connecting by going into Windows Service manager and stopping the "Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service" this enabled me to connect to my Windows site. I finally stumbled upon the answer! Right click on the Cisco client in the windows task bar and disable the option "Stateful Firewall Always on". After doing so I can be connected to both either VPN (or even both at the same time).

How to FIX IIS

I recently had an issue where IIS would not start giving a spurious error "Unexpected Error 0x8ffe2740". I did a google and found this site which showed the problem was Skype grabbing port 80, genius!

Boxbackup

For a long while I have pondered and tried to find an elegant way to backup my co-located server. I tried and failed with Amanda and several home-brew scripts. I finally stumbled across boxbackup.
Boxbackup is a multi platform network backup device. One system acts a a server to which clients (windows mac linux bsd) can connect to and backup files.
Boxbackup uses libsync (think rsync) to only synchronise files that have changed. Also because there is both a server and client agent its should be more efficient than rsync alone.
Security is assured through the use of Tsig certificates. Certificates are used to encrypt the data transmission and secure files as they are transferred.

Server Setup

There are Debian packages available here Download
wget http://www.backports.org/debian/pool/main/b/boxbackup/boxbackup-server_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
then install
dpkg -i boxbackup-server_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
The debian installer didnt work out very well for me so I manually ran. Replace server1.example.tld with the name of your server.
bbstored-config /etc/boxbackup server1.example.tld bbstored
Change directory
cd /etc/boxbackup/bbstored
Create a certificate authority
bbstored-certs ca init
Sign the server key
bbstored-certs ca sign-server server1.example.tld-csr.pem
copy the certificates into the bbstored directory
cp ca/servers/server1.example.tld-cert.pem .
copy the server cert
ca/roots/clientCA.pem .
My server is behind a NAT firewall so I had to open port 2100 and edit /etc/boxbackup/bbstored.conf from
ListenAddresses = inet:server1.example.tld
to
ListenAddresses = inet:10.0.0.254
Create a client account, each client is identified with a unique hex code 75AB59D
bbstoreaccounts create 75AB59D 0 20480M 20480M
The numbers with M following are the soft and hard limits for the amount of space on the server to allow for backups.
Start the server
/etc/init.d/boxbackup-server start

Client Setup

Log into the client computer, download boxbackup-client
wget http://www.backports.org/debian/pool/main/b/boxbackup/boxbackup-client_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb

and install
dpkg -i boxbackup-client_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
You will be prompted to let Debian guide you, it didn't work for me. Change to the boxconfig directory
cd /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd
and run the config generator
bbackupd-config /etc/boxbackup/ lazy 75AB59D server1.example.tld /var/bbackupd /home /var/www

The final entries are the directories to backup.
Copy 75AB59D-csr.pem to the main server /etc/boxbackup/bbstored/ and sign with your server certificate.
bbstored-certs ca sign 75AB59D-csr.pem
This will create 2 files ca/roots/serverCA.pem and ca/ clients/75AB59D-cert.pem. Copy these to the client in /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd/
Start the client
/etc/init.d/boxbackup-client start
Check its running
grep bb /var/log/syslog
You should see something like

Jan 14 22:53:54 client bbackupd[3540]: Starting daemon (config: /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd.conf) (version 0.10)
Jan 14 22:53:55 client bbackupd[3540]: Beginning scan of local files
Jan 14 22:53:55 beta bbackupd[3540]: Opening connection to server server1.example.tld...
Jan 14 22:53:56 beta bbackupd[3540]: Connection made, login successful

Good Luck!

Fish Care

Since one of my fish died I have been taking measure to try and improve things for the remaining two.
I cleaned the water but it didn't seem to help much. So I got out my chemistry kit and did some analysis. I found that the nitrate level was too high over 80ppm. I changed the water 4 changes worth for two days and expected it to have a noticeable impact on the levels. My dad came up with a method of working out the number of water changes needed to reduce the levels, it turned out to be a LOT more than I thought. I have made a little a on-line calculator.

You can only change 10% of the water in a fish tank in a day, and you have to ensure the water going in has the chlorine removed, either by using an additive or leaving it to stand for a few hours.

Continuing the web design theme this evening I worked on something trying to get media streaming work for an upcoming job. It was pretty tedious but we eventually got to the bottom of it. Only one more piece of the puzzle and a bit of site design to go. I think its should be a pretty slick operation once we are done.

ispCP secondary dns

I wrote this little guide on how I got secondary dns working on my isPCP box.

How to rotate videos

Whilst I was away a took a number of videos on my camera side on, resulting in side on footage. I didn't realise it but with quick time pro you can actually flip the video really easily.

On an Apple Mac open the film in quick time (this only works in quicktime pro), then choose window, then show film properties (shortcut apple + j). Select the video track then visual settings. There you will find the options for rotating, resizing or flipping the film.

Also I found this really useful page on how to make screenshots in Apple OSX.