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

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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

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Just in case I move away from Mikrotik

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/07/02

Mikrotik has great hardware, great firmware (if you have the right builds), but notoriously bad documentation and a not so great software release and testing process.

So I might consider switching away, so here are some threats that might lead to alternatives:

–jeroen

Vincent Parret commented at https://plus.google.com/+JeroenPluimers/posts/UWZiufmkdK1

 

I use ubnt edgerouters, great bang for buck. My ER Pro-8 has been up for 8 months (no reboots) and hasn’t missed a beat, rock solid ipsec vpn. I looked at microtik, but found the edgerouters slightly easier to configure.

Posted in Internet, MikroTik, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Ubuntu: Fixing the myserious “Failed to stop apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/14

Ubuntu is the only Linux system I had that – after installing a text-mode console setup – gets itself in the below state with only running apt update and apt-get upgrade.

Preparing to unpack .../archives/apt_1.2.19_armhf.deb ...
Failed to stop apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out
See system logs and 'systemctl status apt-daily.timer' for details.
Failed to get load state of apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out
dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1

I could not find meaningful search results for the above thing, nor did systemctl status apt-daily.timer return anything better than

Failed to get properties: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

Heck, it doesn’t even reboot any more (no helpful search results either):

# reboot
Failed to start reboot.target: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out
See system logs and 'systemctl status reboot.target' for details.
Failed to open /dev/initctl: No such device or address
Failed to talk to init daemon.

Nor did systemctl status reboot.target return anything better than

Failed to get properties: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

From the ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img.xz base system, it only had these extra packages installed:

  • etckeeper
  • tmux
  • speedtest-cli
  • sendemail

Workaround found, but still unsure why this happened in the first place

Despite the workaround below, I still don’t know why I got into this situation and this leaves me with a very uncomfortable feeling.

Too bad some systems (like ODroid) only have Ubuntu based distributions as sorting out stuff like above took me way too much effort.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Development, etckeeper, Hardware Development, Internet, Linux, Odroid, Power User, SpeedTest, Ubuntu | 2 Comments »

Home – Outpan – GTIN to product attribute mapping

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/26

On my research list: Home – Outpan as it is a key-value store of EAN (actually GTIN, so including GS1 UPC, EAN which means barcodes like UPC-12, EAN-8, EAN-13 and ITF-14).

  • [WayBack] Global Trade Item Number – Wikipedia
  • [WayBack] API Documentation – Outpan Developers

    Legacy API

    Get Product Information

    GET https://api.outpan.com/v2/products/[GTIN]?apikey=[YOUR API KEY]

    Add Product Name

    POST https://api.outpan.com/v2/products/[GTIN]/name?apikey=[YOUR API KEY]

    Required POST parameters:

    name: The name you would like to add for this product.

    Add Product Attribute

    POST https://api.outpan.com/v2/products/[GTIN]/attribute?apikey=[YOUR API KEY]

    Required POST parameters:

    name: Name of the attribute you would like to add for this product.

    value: Value for the attribute you would like to add for this product.

    • [GTIN] is the barcode number (ISBN, EAN, UPC, …) of the product you’re looking up.
    • All API calls must be done via HTTPS. Plain HTTP calls will be rejected.

–jeroen

via [WayBack] [How To] Scan a barcode and add the product name to Wunderlist : tasker

[How To] Scan a barcode and add the product name to Wunderlist
byu/plepleus intasker

 

Posted in Barcode, Cloud, Cloud Apps, Cloud Development, Development, EAN, Infrastructure, Internet, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

A while ago, Windows 10 started to popup an Edge browser window after reboot without an internet connection

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/21

Does anyone know how to disable Edge popping up with a failed link www.msftconnecttest.com/redirect on machines blocked by a router?

This happens on the PC running Windows 10 Pro N (winver shows 1709 build 16299.371) that is not allowed to do any internet access.

Related: [WayBack] How to Find Out Which Build and Version of Windows 10 You Have | ilicomm

Later:

This seems to be intended as per these links:

TL;DR:

This can happen on Windows 8 and up when Windows thinks there is a partial network connection and a logon to a proxy or captive portal might solve the solution.

Allowing these in the proxy for port 80 solves the issue:

  •  *.msftncsi.com
  • *.msftconnecttest.com

--jeroen

Posted in Captive Portal, Internet, Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

From the #AllesIstKaput department: DNS 1.1.1.1 is unusable for many; 9.9.9.9 has government affiliation

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/04

Abstract from this morning’s Twitter feed:

  • 1.1.1.1 [Wayback] DNS is broken in many areas (because of for instance AT&T, Vodafone, Cisco screwing up and 1.1.1.1 historically being marked for research purposes)
  • 9.9.9.9 [Wayback] DNS has government affiliation (owned by Quad9, but the partner list below does not look nice)

So what’s left?

There are a more interesting IPv4 addresses untaken for DNS, but I’m not sure they are likable enough:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Cloud, Cloudflare, DNS, Infrastructure, Internet, LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

DNS traffic monitoring tools: tshark, tcpdump or dnstop

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/02

I resolved my issue with tshark, but that’s not available on all systems neither is dnstop. Most systems do have tcpdump though.

Anyway, some links:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, DNS, Internet, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux | Leave a Comment »

Urgent security advisory – MikroTik – upgrade to 6.41.3 if you can change your bridge implementation, ensure SMB and WWW are not WAN accessible

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/31

I both understand the [WayBack] Urgent security advisory – MikroTik and the users reluctant to upgrade: Mikrotik has a history of updates breaking existing behaviour and underdocumenting features and release notes.

The attack is over the www or www-ssl services which by default run on port 80 and 443. You can see on which networks they are bound using this example from the terminal:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Hardware, Internet, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, Power User, routers, Security, WinBox | Leave a Comment »

If I ever have to do bind named work again…

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/12

Boy, named can be cryptic.

So here are some links that might help me in the future

—jeroen

Posted in *nix, bind-named, DNS, Internet, Linux, Power User | Leave a Comment »

WayBack throwing “Wayback Exception An unknown exception has occurred. Unexpected Error” usually indicates a cookie problem

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/12/22

If saving a web-page on the WayBack machine throws you this error on any site:

Wayback Exception

 

An unknown exception has occurred. Unexpected Error

Then usually the cause is having too many cookies.

Clean your cookies for web.archive.org, then try again.

–jeroen

Posted in Internet, InternetArchive, Power User, WayBack machine | 2 Comments »

The day that the internet archive was down for a few hours – time to sponsor them.

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/12/17

In an era where we’ve become dependent on 24/7 communications and availability of the internet, but even more so on archives of information that appeared, became fake and then denied, the Internet Archive (including the WayBack machine) was down for a few hours because of a PGE power outage in San Francisco.

(Posted late because, well the WordPress.com “missed schedule” bug is back)

So this is a reminder to sponsor the Internet Acrhive. Because we can.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Internet, InternetArchive, Missed Schedule, Power User, SocialMedia, WayBack machine, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

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