The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

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Thoughts on ix500; should I get an ix1500?

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/30

Some of my thoughts on [WayBack] AW: Netzwerkfähiger Dokumentenscanner?:

I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner for this plus a Windows VM that automatically logs on.

It is out of production now, but I think most of the below holds as the successor ix1500 is very similar (ix500 announcement https://www.fujitsu.com/sg/about/res…-20181002.html)

Before the ix500, I used a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 which had similar capabilities as the ix500 but was a lot slower.

Cool things:

  • included software can do OCR and scan to a path the Windows user has access to
  • the scanner is fast, and does a stack of A4 full duplex automatically at a few seconds per page scanning on the scanner and 5-10 seconds per page OCR on a 1.2 Ghz dual core VM
  • no fiddling from within the scanner to get network stuff working, or to keep it up-to-date on protocol changes

Drawbacks:

  • the software pops up a dialog after each scan, so I wrote this: https://bitbucket.org/jeroenp/wiert….onsoleProject/
  • you need a Windows PC that is logged on (so the software does work), which means I configured a VM to auto-logon
  • WiFi 2.4 Ghz only (no ethernet interface, no 5 Ghz WiFi)
  • you need USB on the same VM connected to the scanner once to configure WiFI
  • like any hardware/software combination, sometimes the scanner or Windows VM need a reboot, for instance when it looses network or USB connection

The ix1500 has a touch screen instead of 2 buttons, so it might be that it has more standalone functionalities than the ix500.

Since I need a second scanner in a second place, I might get an ix1500 after the summer.

–jeroen

–jeroen

Posted in Fujitsu ScanSnap, Hardware, ix500, LifeHacker, Power User, Scanners | Leave a Comment »

Unifi Cloud Key: “We have detected that your SD card is missing. Please insert it and reboot your Cloud Key or disable automatic backup.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/23

Got this a while ago with 5.10.17:

“Missing SD card”

“We have detected that your SD card is missing. Please insert it and reboot your Cloud Key or disable automatic backup.”

This might be a hardware issue with [Archive.is] Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Key, UC-CK: AmazonSmile: Computer & Zubehör

Reading the 1-star reviews, SD-card problems seem paramount: [Archive.is] Amazon.de:Kundenrezensionen: Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Key, UC-CK.

For me, most of the times this solved the problem:

  1. Power down the Cloud Key
  2. Remove the SD card
  3. Insert the SD card
  4. Power up the Cloud Key

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Cloud Key, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Unifi-Ubiquiti | Leave a Comment »

A USB-C magnetic charge contact that when tripping does not make your computer hit the ground (via Hadi Hariri on Twitter)

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/19

Want: [WayBack] Hadi Hariri on Twitter: “You know @Apple I actually liked that feature of not pulling the computer off the desk when tripping over the cable. You removed it, I’m getting an add-on. And thanks @bashorov for the recommendation.… https://t.co/Ju036sqRW4”

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, Power User, USB, USB-C | Leave a Comment »

Stop FortiClient from auto-starting (as it uses a truckload of Windows resources, often including 2 gigabyte of memory for their logger)

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/16

I see lot’s of negative reactions on FortiClient, as it is very closed source, many intermittent issues, and is a product that tries to be a jack of all trades (over a couple of versions, in addition of being a proprietary VPN client, they started doing vulnerability scanning, interfering with anti-virus products, they blocked saving of passwords and allowing password managers to paste them, and I could go on).

Sometimes you have to use it in order to access a FortiGate based VPN server, so the best is to defer starting it until as late as possible.

Here are some links to get that configured correctly:

–jeroen

Posted in FortiGate/FortiClient, Network-and-equipment, Power User, VPN | Leave a Comment »

How to remember password in FortiClient VPN? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/12

In [WayBack] How to remember password in FortiClient VPN? – Stack Overflow, the consensus seems to be “it varies, and usually is unreliable”.

Time to write a tool that snifs the Windows GUI and auto-enters the credentials.

That would be much like the Linux expect solution: [WayBack] Continuous run Forticlient VPN using expect. Automatically restart VPN if get disconnected or session closed. · GitHub

Via: [WayBack] Forticlient 5.6 – Save Credentials | Fortinet Technical Discussion Forums

–jeroen

Posted in FortiGate/FortiClient, Network-and-equipment, Power User, VPN | Leave a Comment »

Need to do some reading on local domains on the internal network

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/09

A long time I wondered why I saw ESXi systems on my local network have two entries in their /etc/hosts file:

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.71.91   ESXi-X10SRH-CF ESXi-X10SRH-CF

Then I bumped into someone who had a different setup:

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.23    esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi

So now I knew that the first entry can have a domain resolving it (it still makes be wonder why ziggo is using a top-level domain to resolve local stuff; but searching for  dynamic.ziggo.nl did not get me further on that).

So I installed a quick ESXi machine on that local network, and got the same.

When back home the machine still thought it was esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl, though clearly I was outside a Ziggo network

I wanted to get rid of it, but that was hard.

Since I forgot to take screenshots beforehand, I can only provide the ones without a search domain bellow.

Reminder to self: visit someone within the Ziggo network, then retry.

Normally you can edit things like these in the default TCP/IP stack. There are two places to change this:

Neither of these allowed me to change it to a situation like this, but luckily the console did.

In the below files, I had to remove the bold parts, then restart the management network (I did keep a text dump, lucky me):

[root@esxi:/etc] grep -inr ziggo .
./vmware/esx.conf:116:/adv/Misc/HostName = "esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl"
./resolv.conf:2:search dynamic.ziggo.nl 
./hosts:5:192.168.71.194    esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi
[root@esxi:/etc] cat /etc/resolv.conf 
nameserver 192.168.71.3
search dynamic.ziggo.nl 
[root@esxi:/etc] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.71.194  esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi

Future steps

  1. Read more on local domains, search domains and related topics
  2. Configure a local domain on my local network, so DHCP hands it out, and DHCP handed out host names are put in the local DNS
  3. Test if all services on all machines still work properly

Reading list

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in DNS, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, Internet, Mainboards, Network-and-equipment, Power User, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, X10SRH-CF, X9SRi-3F | Leave a Comment »

Supermicro Single CPU Board for ESXi Home lab – Upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F | ESX Virtualization

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/09

This LSI 3008 HBA update to TI firmware is still on my wish list, but I could not find it when I bought the board in 2018.

[WayBack] Supermicro Single CPU Board for ESXi Home lab – Upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F | ESX Virtualization:

As you know my lab got an addition this year with Supermicro’s Single CPU board, the X10SRH-CLN4F. In this post we will be upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F.

…

I have learned a new way to patch via UEFI. In fact, it’s same (or easier) than through DOS-based bootable USB. The IT firmware can be reverted back to IR firmware as in the ZIP package there are both versions there. So in case you need a server with hardware RAID, you can use the IR version. I was actually wondering what it means the IT and IR and here is what I have found at LSI (Avago) website:

“IT” firmware maximizes the connectivity and performance aspects of the HBA. “IR” firmware offers RAID functionality via RAID 0, 1, and 10 capabilities.

Via:

SR-IOV?

The step afterwards is to enable SR-IOV for this LSI 3008 HBA.

These links should help with that:

 

 

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, Mainboards, Power User, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, X10SRH-CF | Leave a Comment »

CP1500EPFCLCD – Backup UPS Systems | CyberPower

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/05

Reminder to self to write a bit more on the usage of a UPS my brother has got for a while now: CyberPower CP1500EPFCLCD which is Line-Interactive with Pure Sine Wave output.

Before buying the ESXi support seemed incredible.

Some links to start with:

 

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CP1500EPFCLCD, CyberPower, Hardware, Power User, UPS | 2 Comments »

The tale of [SSH into ESXi 6.7 box resulting in “debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEXDH_REPLY”, delay and after entering password “Permission denied, please try again.”]

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/02

A similar ESXi 6.5 box worked well to ssh into, but on ESXi 6.7 it failed:

SSH into ESXi 6.7 box resulting in “debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEXDH_REPLY“, delay and after entering password “Permission denied, please try again.“

I had a hard time figuring out why: Login with the same user+password on the web user interface, DCUI and console shell work fine (see [WayBack] Enable SSH on VMware ESXi 6.x – VirtuBytes).

Searches that led me to EBCAK:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, IPMI, Mainboards, Power User, PowerCLI, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Build your own Infrared reader head for electriciti smart meters for around USD 6: haus-automatisierung.com [4K] – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/24

In German, but very interesting IR-Lesekopf für SmartMeter selber bauen | haus-automatisierung.com [4K] – YouTube:

I could not find the promised follow-up video at haus-automatisierung.com – YouTube, but the manual steps and the site below have enough information for me.

Too bad the site is way to big to fully archive in the WayBack machine. I only saved the top pages:

Related: [WayBack] MQTT-Grundlagen-Kurs – haus-automatisierung.com

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, IoT Internet of Things, Raspberry Pi, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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