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

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Happy 25th birthday Internet Archive! Thanks Brewster for setting it in motion.

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/29

View the short video about the first crawl back in 1996:

https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1438606052291842062 Then head to anniversary.archive.org and enjoy more bits of its history. One of the first articles: [Wayback] Archive.is: Brewster Kahle . In Scientific American (no original on-line at archive.org any more [Wayback/Archive.is]) –jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Rebrickable (@Rebrickable) | lets you easily find official or custom sets you can build using your existing LEGO sets and provides all building instructions

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/29

Via [WayBack] Thread by @Foone: “stupid project I’ve thought about making for years: You go through and index your lego box and enter in which bricks you have, and it calcul […]”

stupid project I’ve thought about making for years:
You go through and index your lego box and enter in which bricks you have, and it calculates which sets you probably had.
it’s basically a big nostalgia tool for all us nerds in our 30s who have those few distinctive parts but can’t remember which set they got them in because they were only 5 at the time.
Thanks to @ProfBrickkeeper I now know that this pretty much already exists:
twitter.com/Rebrickable
you tell it what pieces you have and it finds official or unofficial sets you can build with them.

Neat!

I don’t know if it can do near-matches (like “you have 98% of the pieces you need for this set”) because you may have lost some parts, but it’s definitely a big step towards what I was wanting

[WayBack] Rebrickable (@Rebrickable) | lets you easily find official or custom sets you can build using your existing LEGO sets and provides all building instructions:

  • [WayBack] Rebrickable | Rebrickable – Build with LEGO

    Combine your old LEGO® to build new creations

    What can you build?

  • [WayBack] About Rebrickable | Rebrickable – Build with LEGO

    What is Rebrickable?

    Rebrickable will show you which LEGO sets you can build from the sets and parts you already own. You can choose from official LEGO sets or thousands of MOCs (My Own Creations) submitted by hundreds of designers. All MOCs include building instructions and full parts lists.

    I HAVE THIS

    +

    AND A BUNCH OF THESE

    =

    I CAN BUILD THIS, YAY!

    Unless you have a LOT of sets, you will usually be missing a few pieces. In these cases Rebrickable will show you exactly what you are missing and even provide suggested sets that you could buy which will get you those pieces – effectively showing you how to buy two sets for the price of one!

 

–jeroen

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Posted in Fun, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

DELL fans use a different pin-layout than normal fans, so watch out before connecting them!

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/28

Some links on IBM X-series and DELL versus standard fan pin lay-outs (one day I will try to merge them into a better overview story):

  • [Wayback] 3 pin and 4 pin Fan Wire Diagrams | Cooler Master FAQ

    3 pin Fan Connections
    *cable coloring varies from fan to fan

    User-added image

    Pin Name Color Color Color Color
    1 Ground Black Black Gray Black
    2 +12v Red Black Gray Yellow
    3 Tach/Signal/Sense Yellow Black Gray Green

    4 pin Fan Connections
    *cable coloring varies from fan to fan

    User-added image

    Pin Name Color Color Color Color
    1 Ground Black Black Gray Black
    2 +12v Red Black Gray Yellow
    3 Tach/Signal/Sense Yellow Black Gray Green
    4 Control/PWM Blue Black Gray Blue
  • [Wayback] IBM X-series system fan connectors: sysxfanconn.png

  • [Archive.is] Solved: 780, CPU fan pin out – Dell Community
    Dell sometimes swaps the wires around so that you will fry a dell fan on standard and the other way round.
    It has 5 pins but only 4 wires are used.
    Dell does not publish this. And some dells use standard wiring.
    I believe this is correct.
    YMMV
    4PINS.png4pin PWM on 3 pin
    Dell MB
    Pin Number
    Function
    Dell wire color
    Std Fan
    Pin Number
    Std Fan wire color
    Description
    1
    Sens (TACH)
    White/Yellow
    3
    Green
    Sens (TACH)
    2
    +12v
    Red
    2
    Yellow
    +12v
    3
    Gnd
    Black
    1
    Black
    Gnd
    4
    PWM
    Blue
    4
    Blue
    PWM
    5
    Key
    unused
     
    DELLFANWIRES.pngDELL FAN WIRES AND COLORS

    [Archive.is] Solved: Fan pin out order – Dell Community

    The order is what is required for your specific model.
    I have seen no difference in the colors only the order of the pins.
    Note the Difference in this adapter.
    DELLFAN5.JPG
    So if your fan is NON standard you may need to remove the pins and re order them to be correct.  The fans are not any different only the wire order.
    Dell started making all the wires black so you cannot tell.  its not documented and its not the same on all dells all models all years.
    dell fans.jpgDELL VS INTEL FAN COLORSFANDAPTER.jpgDELL To Standard 4 pin adapterdellfanny2.jpgNote The KEYWAYdellfanny.jpgAnother ay to look at it
  • [Archive.is] Proprietary fan header issues – Dell Community
    Dell uses standard fans and the wires are swapped around in such a way that if you plug a standard fan onto the dell header you will fry the fan and the motherboard.
    None of this is documented.
    SOME models use standard wiring.
    Some Models use all black wires so you cannot tell.
    Dell Fan Wire  Black Red White or Yellow
    Dell 3 wire fan
    Dell 4 wire fan
    Dell 5 wire fan
    If you use adapter or re wire the standard fan to the way Dell does it there wont be any issues.
    Dell sometimes swaps the wires around so that you will fry a dell fan on standard and the other way round.
    It has 5 pins but only 4 wires are used.
    Dell does not publish this. And some dells now use standard wiring.
    I believe this is correct.
    YMMV
    4PINS.png4pin PWM on 3 pin
    Dell MB
    Pin Number
    Function
    Dell wire color
    Std Fan
    Pin Number
    Std Fan wire color
    Description
    1
    Sens (TACH)
    White/Yellow
    3
    Green
    Sens (TACH)
    2
    +12v
    Red
    2
    Yellow
    +12v
    3
    Gnd
    Black
    1
    Black
    Gnd
    4
    PWM
    Blue
    4
    Blue
    PWM
    5
    Key
    unused
     
    DELLFANWIRES.pngDELL FAN WIRES AND COLORS
    Dell does not use standard wiring or Pinouts on their fan headers.
    Dell fan wires are deliberately swapped round.
    PWM and Tach and 12v and Ground.
    For 3 wire they reverse 12v and tach. 
    Black Red White not
    Black White Red
    DELL3PIN.JPGDELL 3 PIN
    This can lead to self destruction for a dell fan on standard motherboard or the other way round.
    STANDARD.jpg
    This is the CPU FAN for Example.
    Dell MB
    Pin Number
    Function
    Dell wire color

    Pin #
    INTEL Fan wire color
    Description
    1
    Sens (TACH)
    White/Yellow
    3
    Green
    Sens (TACH)
    2
    +12v
    Red
    2
    Yellow
    +12v
    3
    Gnd
    Black
    1
    Black
    Gnd
    4
    PWM
    Blue
    4
    Blue
    PWM
    5
    Key
    unused
     
     
      
    DELLFANS.pngDELL FAN WIRING

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, Power User | Leave a Comment »

On my list of things to try: Python with ESXi

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/28

After doing a lot of – historically grown – dash scripting for ESXi, I found out there is Python available on ESXi:

  • Python 3.5.10 on VMware ESXi 6.7.0 build-17700523 (VMware ESXi 6.7.0 Update 3)
  • Python 3.5.6 on VMware ESXi 6.5.0 build-13932383 (VMware ESXi 6.5.0 Update 3)
  • VMware 7: to be determined.

Yes I know that Python 3.5 is end-of-life (and 3.5.10 was the latest version), but it is a lot better than shell scripts.

So now some links for my list of things to try in order to use Python for scripting ESXi operations:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Development, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

One of the coolest Twitter bots commands: @AltTextCrew OCR please

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/28

Twitter account [Archive.is] @AltTextCrew is cool: it can OCR text from images, which is great for visually impaired people.

Just answer a tweet containing such an image and it replies with a series of tweets with the texts of that image.

@AltTextCrew OCR please

You can also have it check and analyse the links from a tweet, just reply this to that tweet:

@AltTextCrew analyze links

[Archive.is] @hbeckpdx is the driving force behind both @AltTextCrew and [Archive.is] @AltTxtReminder:

Edit 20220510: AltTxtReminder got open sourced!

Below are two examples of @AltTextCrew usage:

OCR

  • image: [Archive.is] databass 🏳️‍⚧️⚢ on Twitter: “@AltTextCrew OCR please… “

  • text: [Wayback] Thread by @AltTextCrew on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

    Text 1/5:
    CVE-2021-20022 Arbitrary file upload through post- authenticated “branding” feature Like many enterprise products with a web- based user interface, SonicWall Email Security includes a feature known as
    Text 2/5:
    “branding” which gives administrators the ability to customize and add certain assets to the interface, such as company logos. These branding assets are managed via packages, and new packages can be
    Text 3/5:
    created by uploading ZIP archives containing custom text, image files, and layout settings. A lack of file validation can enable an adversary to upload arbitrary files, including executable code, such
    Text 4/5:
    as web shells. Once uploaded, these branding package ZIP archives are normally expanded and saved to the <SonicWall ES install path>\data\branding directory. However, an adversary could place
    Text 5/5:
    malicious files in arbitrary locations, such as a web accessible Apache Tomcat directory, by crafting a ZIP

Link analysis

Explanation

I really want to know what programming languages, frameworks, libraries and APIs they use for this bot.

Edit 20211028:

It uses the Google Vision API, as Tesseract was too slow and inaccurate:

Edit 20211211:

Note that usually the text will be published in the alt tag of the images:

[Archive] Hannah Kolbeck 🏳️‍⚧️ on Twitter: “@jpluimers @AltTextCrew No, it always prefers to tweet images with alt text. Right now if the ocr result from the targeted tweet is too long to fit in 4 images worth it will fall back to posting a thread.” / Twitter

–jeroen

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Posted in OCR, Power User, SocialMedia, Twitter, TwitterBot | Leave a Comment »

M.2 SSD PCIe 3.0×4 vs 2.0×4 | Tom’s Hardware Forum

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/27

I wanted to know the influence of PCIe versions to NVMe support, and found [Archive.is] M.2 SSD PCIE 3.0×4 vs 2.0×4 | Tom’s Hardware Forum answering:

You already know that the Z97 motherboard has one M.2 port. The problem is there are several M.2 variations. Here are the current possibilities:

M.2 3.0 x4 – State of the art M.2 SSD that uses 4 PCIe 3.0 channels for proper operation. The M.2 port on the motherboard is sometimes referred to as an Ultra M.2 port. It is the appropriate port for the Samsung 950 Pro SSD.

There are other M.2 SSDs that either use PCIe 2.0 or use fewer PCIe channels:

  • M.2 2.0 x4
  • M.2 2.0 x2
  • M.2 SATA 3

You will need to check your motherboard manual or the company web site to determine if the M.2 port can support an M.2 3.0 x4 SSD like the 950 Pro. A lot of the Z87 and Z97 motherboards had M.2 ports for M.2 2.0 x2 SSDs that would not fully support an M.2 3.0 x4 SSD. With the exception of ASRock, the other motherboard manufacturers did not do a very good job of fully identifying the M.2 ports. You will have to find a little more information about the M.2 port on your motherboard. Hopefully the information is in the owner’s manual or the manufacturer’s web site.

The addition of M.2 ports on the the motherboard required the use of additional PCIe channels. Unfortunately Intel resisted adding chipset support for additional PCIe channels until recently. The lack of a sufficient number of PCIe channels resulted in some awkward solutions:

  • Some motherboards reduced the number of channels available to graphic cards. The cards might be reduced from PCIe 3.0 x16 down to PCIe 3.0 x8. Graphic card performance is reduced by about 5%. That is not a terrible hit in performance.
  • Some motherboards reduce the number of SATA 3 ports that are available. For example,the MSI Z107 Titanium motherboard has two M.2 3.0 x4 ports. If I install a 950 Pro in each port, then all of the standard SATA ports are disabled except for two ports. The M.2 ports do not reduce the performance of graphic cards
  • Some high end motherboards add an expensive PLX chip to handle M.2 SSDs. An example would be the ASRock Z97 Extreme9 motherboard. The PLX provides direct data transmission between the M.2 SSDs and the cpu. It is actually possible to run two graphic cards in SLI at PCIe 3.0 x16 each and still be able to run two M.2 SSDs.

The Samsung 950 Pro uses the new NVMe protocol instead of AHCI. A motherboard would have to have a UEFI BIOS, an Intel chipset, and a Microsoft Windows operating system that support the NVMe protocol. You would have to do the following:

  • Check for any BIOS updates. Sometimes the updates include new and improved support for the NVMe protocol.
  • Check for any Intel chipset updates. Sometimes the updates include new and improved support for the NVMe protocol.
  • Windows 7, 8, and 10 can support the NVMe protocol. Again you will have to check for updates or fixes that can improve NVMe support. NVMe is new so things could get a little complicated.
  • Finally Samsung has issued their own NVMe driver for the 950 Pro. Reviews and articles indicate the Samsung NVMe driver is better than the Windows NVme drivers.

Some modern motherboards still provide a PCIe 2.0 slot. That does not mean you should purchase a PCIE 2.0 SSD or an M.2 SSD with an adapter card. M.2 3.0 x4 SSDs are backwards compatible.

It might be confusing but for all practical purposes it is just a matter of checking requirements and specifications.

Note I have bulleted some entries for readability and bolded some text relevant to some motherboards I still have running and fixed some typos.

On connectors and B/M keying:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Hardware, NVMe, Power User, SSD | Leave a Comment »

Some bash parameter propagation links that hopefully will work with ash/dash too

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/27

For my link archive; I started with [Wayback] dash get all parameters quoted – Google Search:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, bash, bash, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Shodan (via SCADA systems accessible through the internet)

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/27

Just 2 years ago I bumped into shodan.io through [Wayback] Onderzoekers: zestig slecht beveiligde Nederlandse scada-systemen op internet – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers and saved the entry [Wayback] Shodan (website) – Wikipedia:

Shodan is a search engine that lets the user find specific types of computers (webcams, routers, servers, etc.) connected to the internet using a variety of filters. Some have also described it as a search engine of service banners, which are metadata that the server sends back to the client.[1] This can be information about the server software, what options the service supports, a welcome message or anything else that the client can find out before interacting with the server.

Shodan collects data mostly on web servers (HTTP/HTTPS – ports 80, 8080, 443, 8443), as well as FTP (port 21), SSH (port 22), Telnet (port 23), SNMP (port 161), IMAP (ports 143, or (encrypted) 993), SMTP (port 25), SIP (port 5060),[2] and Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, port 554). The latter can be used to access webcams and their video stream.[3]

It was launched in 2009 by computer programmer John Matherly, who, in 2003,[4] conceived the idea of searching devices linked to the Internet.

It looked promising, but I was really pressed for time (having impromptu arrange all care for my mom, and became even more so when I got diagnosed with rectum cancer later that year), so did not pay much attention apart from registering.

Last year in the midst of my chemos I noted [Archive.is] Nate Warfield on Twitter: “https://t.co/16969jRfuL The latest Citrix vulnerability looks bad but there might be time to fix them before PoC comes out. The @shodanhq query above might help. (support.citrix.com/article/CTX269106 has more details)… “ (I think via @jilles_com) , so put it on my list of things to look into a bit further.

Since then, I found out a lot of people dislike Shodan and want to blacklist it because they see it as a threat. It feels like people think the internet is like the [Wayback] Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal | Hitchhikers | Fandom

The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a vicious wild animal from the planet of [Wayback] Traal, known for its never-ending hunger and its mind-boggling stupidity. One of the main features of the Beast is that if you can’t see it, it assumes it can’t see you.

(This by the way is one of the reasons for Towel Day – Wikipedia)

Anyway: a few lists of Shodan IPv4 addresses and hostnames, and means to maintain them for the ones interested:

Reality is that the internet is much smarter, so if you block Shodan from seeing you, others from the internet still will and if you have vulnerable services, one day they will be abused. For instance, this personal anecdote:

I forgot I had a port redirection on my router for RDP access a non longer existing Windows system any more. I forgot that this Windows machine had no fixed DHCP-lease while in use (it kept it’s lease as it was always on).

When that machine was long gone, another temporary Windows machine obtained the same internal machine (the router had been rebooted and after reboot hands out previously handed out IP address), and boom: the new Windows machine was bombarded with RDP logon requests.

In the end, the new Windows machine was not compromised, so I was lucky as it could have been.

Back when registering, shodan.io sent SMTP mail via sky.census.shodan.io, so you might want to not blacklist it if you blacklist at all (incidentally, when writing the IP address  servicing that hostname was hosted in The Netherlands: [Wayback] 80.82.77.33 – sky.census.shodan.io – Netherlands – IP Volume inc – IP address geolocation).

It is good to think of you use Shodan, as not all usage might be legal where you live or where you travel to.

Some discussion in Dutch on the risks of using Shodan are in the above Tweakers.net link. It boils down to:

  • Searching should be OK
  • Accessing the devices found can be totally illegal

That’s basically with anything you find on the internet, for instance by Googling, so nothing new here.

I mainly use Shodan to see if I have any known vulnerabilities exposed. There are not that many ports open, but given the anecdote above, I might screw up again and not be so lucky.

This article has a balanced explanation of Shodan, how you use it, and how to stay safe: [Wayback] How to remove your device from the Shodan IoT search engine.

––jeroen

 

Posted in Development, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Security, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

ESXi: listing virtual machines with their IP addresses

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/26

This is sort of a follow-up on VMware ESXi console: viewing all VMs, suspending and waking them up: part 4 which already gave part of the configuration details of all the configured VMs.

Back then, we ended with this:

List the vmid values, power status and name of all VMs

Back to the listing script vim-cmd-list-all-VMs.sh:

#!/bin/sh
# https://wiert.me/2021/04/29/vmware-esxi-console-viewing-all-vms-suspending-and-waking-them-up-part-4/
vmids=`vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | sed -n -E -e "s/^([[:digit:]]+)\s+((\S.+\S)?)\s+(\[\S+\])\s+(.+\.vmx)\s+(\S+)\s+(vmx-[[:digit:]]+)\s*?((\S.+)?)$/\1/p"`
for vmid in ${vmids} ; do
    powerState=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate ${vmid} | sed '1d'`
    name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} | sed -n -E -e '/\(vim.vm.ConfigInfo\) \{/,/files = \(vim.vm.FileInfo\) \{/ s/^ +name = "(.*)",.*?/\1/p'`
    vmPathName=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} | sed -n -E -e '/files = \(vim.vm.FileInfo\) \{/,/tools = \(vim.vm.ToolsConfigInfo\) \{/ s/^ +vmPathName = "(.*)",.*?/\1/p'`
    echo "VM with id ${vmid} has power state ${powerState} (name = ${name}; vmPathName = ${vmPathName})."
done

It uses vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms, vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate and vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config with some sed and a for loop from dash to generate a nice list of information.

A long time ago, I already figured out that vim-cmd vmsvc/get.guest # gives all guest information including network information for a running VM that has either VMware Tools or open-vm-tools running (see VMware ESXi console: viewing all VMs, suspending and waking them up: part 3 for the difference between these two tools).

A full output of a sample VM is below the signature.

There are a few places that have the LAN ipAddress. For now, I choose to use only the IPv4 main address from ipAddress, which is in between (vim.vm.GuestInfo) { and net = (vim.vm.GuestInfo.NicInfo) [.

I modified the above script to become this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, find, Power User, Scripting, sed, sed script, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi shell: appending the parent directory of a script to the path and starting a new shell, even if the script is symlinked

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/26

I needed a way to append the directory of a script to the path as all my tool scripts are in there, and I did not want to modify any profile scripts as these might be modified during ESXi upgrade.

First you need the full script filename through readlink then toe parent directory name through dirname:

Note there might be dragons with more symlinks or different shells:

I created the script below. It is not perfect, but for my situation it gets the job done.

If you do not start a new shell, then the export is lost as a new dash shell process is started for each script that runs from the terminal or console.

# cat /opt/bin/append-script-directory-to-path-and-start-new-shell.sh
#!/bin/sh
# Absolute path to this script, e.g. /home/user/bin/foo.sh
# echo "'$0'"
SCRIPT=$(readlink -f "$0")
# Absolute path this script is in, thus /home/user/bin
SCRIPTPATH=$(dirname "$SCRIPT")
# echo Appending to $PATH: $SCRIPTPATH
export PATH=$PATH:$SCRIPTPATH
sh

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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