The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2019

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Geek Prank 😈😂😜 Windows XP Desktop Prank

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/01

Prank your friends by secretly opening this website on their computer while they’re away. Wait for them to return and watch their reaction

[WayBack] Geek Prank 😈😂😜 Windows XP Desktop Prank

There are others too, for instance:

Via: [WayBack] geekprank.com Simulate Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and other annoyances in the browser (and switch it to full screen). – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

Edit 20250730: per comments below there is also [Wayback/Archive] Windows XP – Full Screen || Geek Pranks which has two other pranks as well:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Hacker Typer Online | GeekPrank
  2. [Wayback/Archive] Fake Broken Screen Prank || Geek Prank (these images are too low a resolution to be usable)

--jeroen

Posted in Apri1st, Fun, Prank | 3 Comments »

Sending SMS from your PC using a web browser through your Android Phone

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/29

I have been a long-time PushBullet user, but I bumped into an alternative if you just want to send SMS from a PC using a web browser through your Android Phone.

You will miss out all the other neat PushBullet features (like clipboard support), but it does work:

There is even a Mac warpper for it:

–jeroen

Posted in Android Devices, Power User | Leave a Comment »

ESXi 6.5: mount a datastore that does not automount; esxcfg-volume to the rescue

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/29

I had a 1.5 TB SATA disk with VMFS5 created on ESXi 5.1 that would not want to mount on ESXi 6.5 automatically, not even after a rescan, or fresh boot, so I did this:

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] esxcfg-volume --help
esxcfg-volume
-l|--list                                List all volumes which have been
                                         detected as snapshots/replicas.
-m|--mount              Mount a snapshot/replica volume, if 
                                         its original copy is not online.
-u|--umount             Umount a snapshot/replica volume.
-r|--resignature        Resignature a snapshot/replica volume.
-M|--persistent-mount   Mount a snapshot/replica volume
                                         persistently, if its original copy is
                                         not online.
-U|--upgrade            Upgrade a VMFS3 volume to VMFS5.
-h|--help                                Show this message.
[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] esxcfg-volume --list
Scanning for VMFS-3/VMFS-5 host activity (512 bytes/HB, 2048 HBs).
VMFS UUID/label: 59a5306c-a8793061-4a23-001f29022aed/ST1500LM0032D9YH148-backup
Can mount: Yes
Can resignature: Yes
Extent name: naa.5000c5002dba6642:1 range: 0 - 1430527 (MB)

Scanning for VMFS-3/VMFS-5 host activity (512 bytes/HB, 2048 HBs).
VMFS UUID/label: 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed/Raid6SATA
Can mount: Yes
Can resignature: Yes
Extent name: naa.600605b00aa054a0ff000021022683ae:1 range: 0 - 1830143 (MB)

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] esxcfg-volume -m 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed/Raid6SATA
No matching volume 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed/Raid6SATA found!
[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] esxcfg-volume --mount 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed
Mounting volume 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed

Based on: [WayBack] Mount VMFS Datastore – via GUI or via CLI [Guide] – ESX Virtualization

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi5.1, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ssh from Mac OS X to ESXi: “WARNING: terminal is not fully functional”

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/29

When connecting from my Mac to my ESXi rig, some commands (especially less) show this output:

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional

So I created this alias to connect from my Mac to the internal address of my ESXi rig:

alias ssh-esxi-X10SRH-CF-internal='TERM=xterm ssh -p 22 root@192.168.71.91'

The trick is the bold part: TERM=xterm (which you can also replace by export TERM=xterm; if you want future ssh sessions to use the same [wayback] TERM setting).

The reason is that the Mac defines the TERM variable as containing xterm-256 which is defined on the Mac itself, but ESXi has a hard time coping with it.

Some Mac OS and Xcode combinations had a problem with xterm-256 not being present ([WayBack] macos – Terminal strangeness after installing Xcode on Lion – Super User), but this isn’t the case on my system:

$ ls -alh `find /usr/share/terminfo | grep 'xterm-256color'`
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3.2K Jul 30 2016 /usr/share/terminfo/78/xterm-256color

On the Mac you really want to use xterm-256color as it looks way better than xterm-color or xterm: [WayBack] linux – What is the difference between xterm-color & xterm-256color? – Stack Overflow (thanks [WayBack] Chris Page!)

It seems I already did something similar on ESXi itself to get esxtop working: ESXi: when esxtop shows garbage. That was on the ESXi side and works as well for this problem too.

However, it is a bit harder to have a script run during ESXi boot time that sets this, so it is easier to fix this on the Mac side.

It works for all OS X and ESXi versions I’ve tested so far.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Apple, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, iMac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, MacMini, macOS 10.12 Sierra, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Not sure why, but sometimes the Delphi IDE does not allow you to toggle the Console Application; it looks off, but is in fact on: IsConsole returns true

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/28

On my research list: Not sure why, but sometimes the Delphi options display a regular application, but the IsConsole returns true because of AppType Console in the main PropertyGroup.

  1. console applications are turned off in the linker
  2. the debugger still shows it as a console application when stepping through the initialization section of the System unit

One of the problems is that unlike the {$APPTYPE directive (which has not changed much over time), the AppType element is undocumented (hardly anything in the .dproj file is documented).

The $APPTYPE lists two values: Console and GUI, defaulting to GUI:

Empirically, the AppType element can have these values:

  • Application
  • Console
  • Package

This is the topmost part of the .dproj file does not matter, without AppType element valued Console, or with it or even having it valued Application: either way a console application is being built.

There is no $APPTYPE in the .dpr or any of the .pas files.

The IsConsole variable is always false and a console window always appears when debugging.

That variable is not always conclusive, as there are situations where code is inside a BPL or DLL started by an EXE, so this works better: [WayBack] How to determine if I’m running as a console app? (Delphi on Win32) – Stack Overflow:

function IAmAConsoleApp: Boolean;
var
  Stdout: THandle;
begin
  Stdout := GetStdHandle(Std_Output_Handle);
  Win32Check(Stdout <> Invalid_Handle_Value);
  Result := Stdout <> 0;
end;

The .dproj files:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Windows Manifest Files and Delphi

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/28

An interesting read on Windows Manifest Files in Delphi [WayBack].

TL;DR:

Do not let Delphi manage your manifest. All versions are either limited, or buggy, or both.

Basically it’s the same as doing VersionInfo in Delphi: do not let the IDE do it, but do it yourself. In this case:

Write your own manifest in XML, then load it as a resource.

Via: [WayBack] Blogged : Windows Manifest Files – In this post I look at Windows Manifest Files, what they do, why we need them and how to use them in Delphi and Finalbuilder… – Vincent Parrett – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

*Recursive Parallel For Loops*…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/28

Interesting thread: [WayBack] Recursive Parallel For LoopsI have an algorithm which isn’t a sorting algorithm but conceptually works similar to the Quicksort algorithm… – Steve Maughan – Google+

TL;DR: when splitting recursive algorithms in parallel, ensure you have a way to hard limit the number of threads.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Multi-Threading / Concurrency, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

A while ago, Lars Fosdal was on a .NET and C# link spree. Some of his links are here

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/27

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Value types not having parameterless constructors…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/27

The list below is based on a G+ discussion in a single language, but has way broader aspects.

It’s on value types, mutability, parameterless constructors and expectations of compiled code.

I’ve bitten myself in the foot with mutable types in too many languages too often, so I started advocating this years ago at clients, and now in this blog-post.

TL;DR:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, C#, C++, Delphi, Development, Jon Skeet, Software Development | 2 Comments »

When I ever go and use the Spring4D activator, these are some URLs I need to re-read

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/27

When I ever go and use the Spring4D activator, these are some URLs I need to re-read:

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, Spring4D | Leave a Comment »

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