The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Hardware MAC address formats (which I need for Wake-on-LAN.ps1)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/06

Early june, I blogged about Wake-on-LAN from a Windows machine.

My plan was to adopt [Wayback/Archive.is] Wake.ps1 into Wake-on-LAN.ps1 (as naming is important).

One of the goals was to support multiple hardware MAC address formats, especially as Wake.ps1 had the below comment, but did support the AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF, though not the AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF hardware MAC address format:

<#
...
.NOTES
Make sure the MAC addresses supplied don't contain "-" or ".".
#>

A colon separated hardware MAC address would result in this error inside the call to the [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.Parse Method (System.Net.NetworkInformation) | Microsoft Docs:

Send-Packet : Exception calling "Parse" with "1" argument(s): "An invalid physical address was specified."

So I did some digging, starting inside the above mentioned blog post, and adding more:

  1. Wake.ps1 uses the [Wayback/Archive.is] Parse method in the [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.cs source code in C# .NET,  which contains code like this:
                //has dashes? 
            if (address.IndexOf('-') >= 0 ){ 
                hasDashes = true;
                buffer = new byte[(address.Length+1)/3]; 
            }
  2. The Perl script at [Wayback/Archive.is] wakeonlan/wakeonlan at master · jpoliv/wakeonlan that started my first blog post in this series which mentions:
    • xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (canonical)
    • xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx (Windows)
    • xxxxxx-xxxxxx (Hewlett-Packard switches)
    • xxxxxxxxxxxx (Intel Landesk)

    I should rename the first one IEEE 802, as per this:

  3. The MAC address: Notational conventions – Wikipedia

    The standard (IEEE 802) format for printing EUI-48 addresses in human-friendly form is six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens (-) in transmission order (e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-AB). This form is also commonly used for EUI-64 (e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-AB-CD-EF).[2] Other conventions include six groups of two hexadecimal digits separated by colons (:) (e.g. 01:23:45:67:89:AB), and three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dots (.) (e.g. 0123.4567.89AB); again in transmission order.[30]

    The latter is used by Cisco (see for instance [Wayback/Archive.is] Cisco DCNM Security Configuration Guide, Release 4.0 – Configuring MAC ACLs [Support] – Cisco and [Wayback/Archive.is] Cisco IOS LAN Switching Command Reference – mac address-group through revision [Support] – Cisco), so another format to add:

    • xxxx.xxxx.xxxx (Cisco)
  4. [Wayback/Archive.is] PhysicalAddress.Parse Method (System.Net.NetworkInformation) | Microsoft Docs remarks:

    The address parameter must contain a string that can only consist of numbers and letters as hexadecimal digits. Some examples of string formats that are acceptable are as follows:

    • 001122334455
    • 00-11-22-33-44-55
    • 0011.2233.4455
    • 00:11:22:33:44:55
    • F0-E1-D2-C3-B4-A5
    • f0-e1-d2-c3-b4-a5

    Use the GetAddressBytes method to retrieve the address from an existing PhysicalAddress instance.

  5. After a bit more digging via [Wayback/Archive.is] “three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dots” – Google Search , I found that even more hardware MAC address formats are in use as per [Wayback/Archive.is] What are the various standard and industry practice ways to express a 48-bit MAC address? – Network Engineering Stack Exchange.

    I really do not have all the sources for the various representations for 48-bit MAC addresses, but I have seen them variously used:

    AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF
AA.BB.CC.DD.EE.FF
AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
AAA-BBB-CCC-DDD
AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD
AAA:BBB:CCC:DDD
AAAA-BBBB-CCCC
AAAA.BBBB.CCCC
AAAA:BBBB:CCCC
AAAAAA-BBBBBB
AAAAAA.BBBBBB
AAAAAA:BBBBBB

From the last list, which is far more complete than the others, I recognise quite a few from tools I used in the past, but too forgot the actual sources, so I took the full list from there and tried to name them in parenthesis after the links I found above and what I remembered:

  • AABBCCDDEEFF (Bare / Landesk)
  • AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF (IEEE 802 / Windows)
  • AA.BB.CC.DD.EE.FF (???)
  • AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF (Linux / BSD / MacOS)
  • AAA-BBB-CCC-DDD (???)
  • AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD (Cisco?)
  • AAA:BBB:CCC:DDD (???)
  • AAAA-BBBB-CCCC (???)
  • AAAA.BBBB.CCCC (Cisco / Brocade)
  • AAAA:BBBB:CCCC (???)
  • AAAAAA-BBBBBB (Hewlett-Packard networking)
  • AAAAAA.BBBBBB (???)
  • AAAAAA:BBBBBB (???)

Some additional links in addition to the ones above:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, HEX encoding, Network-and-equipment, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Bestel je op de @KVK_NL, zorg dan dat je *niet* in het handelsregister bent ingelogd: ben je dat wel, dan werkt de automatische incasso niet, lijkt het alsof je betaald hebt, maar krijg je geen product te zien of gemaild

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/06

Het staat helaas nog nergens op de site van de Kamer van Koophandel, noch hun Social Media accounts (ondanks herhaalde verzoeken per telefoon en Social Media):

De enige optie om op dit moment dingen op de site van de Kamer van Koophandel te bestellen en betalen is door middel van iDEAL.

De makkelijkste manier om dat te forceren is uitloggen van het handelsregister voor je iets bestelt: dan gaat de betaling automatisch naar “handmatig”, en kun je kiezen tussen iDEAL of creditcard.

Eventuele kortingsregelingen gelden dan niet.

Als je toch bent ingelogd, dan gebeurt er in Chrome dit nadat je je betaling bevestigd:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Powershell code formatting and coding style and style guides: some links and elaboration

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/05

I started doing occasional PowerShell “work” long before Visual Studio Code came along with its [Wayback] PowerShell Extension.

Back then, my tool of choice was PowerGUI: Settling on PowerGUI for PowerShell development. Before that it was PowerShell ISE.

Since then, I fiddled around a bit with Visual Studio Code, but not much. Then I got treated for rectum cancer, and when writing this, I’m back to Visual Studio code with the PowerShell Extension and already figured out a lot has improved.

One of the things is code formatting. Back some 7 years ago, this was all not set in stone. Now it is, so it is important to adhere to.

I already posted Code Layout and Formatting: Indentation · PowerShell Practice and Style last year, so now it is good repeat the link in it and add some more.

For my link archive:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Technical Debt | Leave a Comment »

Nationale testdag: Test vandaag ook je rookmelders nu dat de sirenes gegaan zijn (via Jessica Reintjens op Twitter)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/04

[Wayback/Archive] Jessica Reintjens on Twitter: “De maandelijkse sirenes zijn straks om 12.00u weer te horen, omdat het de 1e maandag vd maand is, Dat is een mooi moment om u rookmelders vandaag ook weer eens te testen! #rookmelder #rookmeldersreddenlevens #rookmelders #veiligheid #testjerookmelder”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

The only practical way of running x86 VMs on Apple M1 seems to be QEMU based UTM

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/07/01

Few articles exist on running x86 VMs on Apple M1 architecture.

This is the best I found, and clearly states that QEMU based UTM is the way to go, but notably lacks 3D support: [Wayback/Archive.is] Apple Silicon M1: How to run x86 and ARM Virtual Machines on it? | by Dmitry Yarygin | Mar, 2021 | Medium

Without VMs, but running Windows x86_64 code is already possible using Windows 10 for ARM via Parallels: [Wayback] Windows 10 on M1 Macs: What you can do (virtualization, sorta) and can’t (Boot Camp) | Macworld.

VMware Fusion is not going to support x86_64 virtualisation anytime soon as per [Wayback/Archive.is] Fusion on Apple Silicon: Progress Update – VMware Fusion Blog – VMware Blogs

…

What about x86 emulation?

We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs. It makes total sense… If Apple can emulate x86 with Rosetta 2, surely VMware can do something too, right?

Well, the short answer is that there isn’t exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required, at least for the time being. For now, we’re laser focused on making Arm Linux VMs on Apple silicon a delight to use.

So, to be a bit blunt, running x86 operating systems on Apple silicon is not something we are planning to deliver with this project. Installing Windows or Linux from an x86 ISO, for example, will not work.

…

More on UTM, which is open source:

Now hopefully someone posts a Wiki of running x86_64 Windows on Apple M1 (:

This is a small start that it can be done [Wayback/Archive.is] Has anyone tried running Delphi on Windows ARM? – Delphi IDE and APIs – Delphi-PRAXiS [en]

It works well. I’ve managed to build and run my VCL and FMX projects on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac without any problems.
Note that both Windows ARM and the way it runs Delphi are still in preview so tread carefully!
On 4/18/2021 at 8:01 PM, Der schöne Günther said:
Can you confirm it cannot only build projects but also debug them?
I can debug Windows and Android no problem. I’m having issues debugging iOS as it’s stopping in the IDE but showing the CPU rather than code views. I believe this might be a badly built component I need to re-install rather than an issue with the environment but can’t confirm either way at the moment.

…

An update on the debugging issues on iOS – it’s all working now. My VM just needed a restart and I can debug without problems now.

--jeroen

Posted in Apple, M1 Mac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Qemu, UTM, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Unicode symbols in a batch file – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/30

Even with a batch file saved as UTF-8 (with or without BOM), by default it does not show most non-ASCII Unicode characters.

The reason is that the default codepage usually is an ANSI one like codepage 437.

Thanks [Wayback] niutech for answering [Wayback/Archive.is] Unicode symbols in a batch file – Stack Overflow:

You can manually set the codepage to UTF-8 by typing chcp 65001 at the top of your batch file.

Codepage 65001 is Windows speak for the UTF-8 code page. I have some more blog entries mentioning codepage 65001.

An example where I needed this was to show how to address the localghost from a batch file (see The spookback localghost address to resolve 👻). This was the resulting UTF-8 saved batch file:

chcp 65001
ping 👻
ping xn--9q8h

For single-byte non-ASCII characters, you can usually get away with setting the encoding of your batch file to your default code page as mentioned in [Wayback/Archive.is] cmd – Using box-drawing Unicode characters in batch files – Stack Overflow.

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Encoding, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

The end of an era: after more than 25 years, XS4ALL/AS3265 is leaving AMS-IX

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/30

Via [Wayback/Archive] Nick Bouwhuis on Twitter: “😢 “ (with OCR text below) via [Wayback/Archive] Kirsten Verdel on Twitter: “:(“:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Internet, ISP, KPN, Power User, xs4all | Leave a Comment »

chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/29

On my list of things to play around with: [Wayback/Archive.is] chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

It sort of is a standalone version of the [Wayback] Chocolatey Software Docs | Package Verifier Moderation Service that you can use to check Chocolatey package that you develop/modify.

From the github repository README:

Requirements

You need a computer with:

  • a 64-bit processor and OS
  • Intel VT-x enabled (usually not an issue if your computer is newer than 2011). This is necessary because we are using 64bit VMs.
  • Hyper-V may need to be disabled for Virtualbox to work properly if your computer is a Windows box. NOTE: This may actually not be required.
  • At least 10GB of free space.

Setup

To get started, ensure you have the following installed:

  • Vagrant 1.8.1+ – linked clones is the huge reason here. You can technically use any version of Vagrant 1.3.5+. But you will get the best performance with 1.8.x+. It appears you can go up to Vagrant 2.1.5, but may have some issues with 2.2.2 and Windows guests (newer versions may be fine).
  • Virtualbox 4.3.28+ – 6.1.6 (this flows in the selection of Vagrant – 5.2.22 seems to have some issues but newer versions may work fine)
  • vagrant sahara plugin (vagrant plugin install sahara)

NOTE: If you decide to run with version 1.8.1 of Vagrant, you are going to need to set the VAGRANT_SERVER_URL environment variable as described in this forum post, otherwise, you will get an HTTP 404 error when attempting to download the base vagrant box used here.

Related: people wanting to do a similar thing for Linux: [Archive.is] chocolatey/choco: Has anyone ever tried to set up virtual box with linux (e.g. ubuntu) for choco testing ? – Gitter

Yes, it should work for choco new, choco pack, and choco push, running on mono.
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/runs/3660684196?check_suite_focus=true

…

There is also a dockerfile available here:
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/tree/develop/docker

However, as @AdmiringWorm said, there are not any official builds or official support at this time.

…

In my own private fork of choco however I’m using such interfaces as RestartManager

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmstartsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    static extern int RmStartSession(out uint pSessionHandle,
                                     int dwSessionFlags,
                                     string strSessionKey);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmendsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmEndSession(uint pSessionHandle);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmgetlist
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmGetList(uint dwSessionHandle,
                                out uint pnProcInfoNeeded,
                                ref uint pnProcInfo,
                                [In, Out] ProcessInfo[] rgAffectedApps,
                                ref uint lpdwRebootReasons);

those will be windows specific indeed, but I’ll reach them later on.

Tarmo Pikaro

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Getting meta data from an image URL – JSFiddle – Code Playground (not sure why it fails on the Chrome console)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/28

It works as a [Wayback/Archive.is] Edit fiddle – JSFiddle – Code Playground.

And it fails on the Google Chrome console:

GET https://anniversary.archive.org/files/2021/07/October-2001-Google-Drive-7-19-2021-3-24-49-PM-768x276.png net::ERR_FAILED

The code is from [Wayback/Archive.is] javascript – Get width height of remote image from url – Stack Overflow (which has many more sync and async code examples that all fail in the same way, not sure why).

Glad the JSFiddle one works.

Via: [Wayback] get image dimensions from url – Google Search

–jeroen

Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, JSFiddle, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Some links on a ketogenic diet and cancer: does it help prevent for cancer?

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/27

Disclaimer: only change your diet after consulting with your doctor!

Various cancer patients I know have switched to a ketogenic diet for quite a few years already.

So I did a bit of digging to see if it helps, or more importantly: if it doesn’t make it worse.

My start was the first hits on [Wayback/Archive.is] ketogenic cancer – Google Scholar:

Some more specific links are at [Wayback] ketogenic colorectal cancer – Google Scholar.

For now, I’m with these conclusions on the Wikipedia articles on Ketosis and Ketogenic diet:

  • Cancer: Preclinical studies have indicated ketosis may have anti-tumor effects, although clinical trials have been limited by small sample sizes and have not shown conclusive benefit.[21]
  • Because some cancer cells are inefficient in processing ketone bodies for energy, the ketogenic diet has also been suggested as a treatment for cancer.[61][62] A 2018 review looked at the evidence from preclinical and clinical studies of ketogenic diets in cancer therapy. The clinical studies in humans are typically very small, with some providing weak evidence for an anti-tumour effect, particularly for glioblastoma, but in other cancers and studies, no anti-tumour effect was seen. Taken together, results from preclinical studies, albeit sometimes contradictory, tend to support an anti-tumor effect rather than a pro-tumor effect of the KD for most solid cancers.[63]

–jeroen

Posted in About, Cancer, Personal, Rectum cancer | Leave a Comment »

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