Flash image using Balena Etcher

 What a pain! PITA!

Got there in the end. This was me trying to flash a Raspberry Pi Lite image to a Samsung Pro Plus Micro SD card via an Orico USB to SD card adaptor. Brand new card and brand new adaptor as my old one was reading incorrect sizes on old SD cards.

Step 1. Disable Protected folder access in Windows Security settings. It was not enough for me to add a program-specific exception to the list. (Remember to turn this back on when finished!)

    

Step 2. If you have a half-baked failed etch written to your SD card, open up disk manager (start\run "diskmgmt.msc" and delete any partitions that are there - 

    
This might have been the crucial step?

Step 3. Reboot your machine. Not sure if this helped or not but my machine locked up completely and after I powered it down and back on again (and followed the previous 2 steps) I got a working etch so who knows!?

Step 4. Change your USB port to a decent one. I was using one on the top of my case. Not sure if that one was 1,2 or 3 but I didnt trust it so I used a blue USB 2.0 port on the back of the case, directly attached to the Motherboard, and this might have also helped. (this was actually what caused my PC to lock up and need a reboot in step 3 above... Worried I might have some dicky hardware now!?!)

Step 5. Turn Windows Protected Folder access back to "on". You need this! I need this. Everyone needs this!

Certutil - Built-in Windows utility to calculate file hashes

Run command C:\> certUtil -hashfile <PATH_TO_FILE> <HASH_ALGORITHM>

e.g.

 C:\Users\[user]>certutil -hashfile "c:\Users\[user]\Desktop\2024-03-15-raspios-bookworm-armhf-lite.img.xz" sha256

SHA256 hash of c:\Users\[user]\Desktop\2024-03-15-raspios-bookworm-armhf-lite.img.xz:

4fa99737265ac338a9ed0643f502246b97b928e5dfffa92939242e26e290638d

How to remove Hyper V boot "Files" from the Boot order (under "Firmware" menu in Settings)

(Courtesy of https://sandyzeng.com/hyper-v-remove-firmware-file-bootmgfw-efi/) 

Here is the simple way delete all the bootmgfw.efi file at once. Use powershell.

$VMName = "Your virtual machine name"
Get-VMFirmware -VMName $VMName |ForEach-Object {Set-VMFirmware -BootOrder ($_.Bootorder | Where-Object {$_.BootType -ne 'File'}) $_ }

Simple way to get ASA 8.4(2) Working in GNS3

Copied almost verbatim from Leo Li (thanks):

1. Download the required files from the below address:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ssadit26tl3llms

2. Configure GNS3 preferrences -> QEMU -> ASA with below settings

RAM: 1024 MiB
Number of NICs: 6
Qemu options: -m 1024 -icount auto -hdachs 980,16,32

Initrd: C:\ASA\asa842-initrd.gz
Kernel: C:\ASA\asa842-vmlinuz
Kernel cmd line: -append ide_generic.probe_mask=0x01 ide_core.chs=0.0:980,16,32 auto nousb console=ttyS0,9600 bigphysarea=65536

3. Activate the license using the below code:

activation-key 0x4a3ec071 0x0d86fbf6 0x7cb1bc48 0x8b48b8b0 0xf317c0b5

Screen Tearing / Vsync Problems on Desktop - Windows 8

Not posted in a while since starting out under my own steam as a freelancer. Hard work!!

Anyway,

I've noticed some screen tearing on my new rig - a Dell XPS 8700 with Geforce 650 Ti. This screen tearing is occurring simply on the desktop under normal use, normally when something is moving across the screen at an average pace. This is not occuring in Games, presumably as Vsync is doing it's job. But on the desk top... Pain in the ass!

So googled this for a while and came up a with a lot of people having the same problem but they were all on Windows 7 and had decided for one reason or another, to disable Windows Aero. Windows 8 doesn't have Aero so this was not my problem.

I played with the force V-sync settings in Nvidia Control panel. - no go.

Then I thought about my weird dual monitor setup and how most settings were unavailable for the secondary monitor (even though it's the Primary). I had windows set up to "duplicate displays" under the Screen Resolution control panel (Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display\Screen Resolution or simply right click on the desktop -> Screen Resolution)

I set it back to "extend" instead of "duplicate" and the problem appears to have gone away!

Yay.

Showing SNMP Strings in a Cisco ASA

Hi Everyone. So... not a single post since October last year! Must try harder...

Trying to figure out what you have configured for an SNMP String on a Cisco ASA can be pain in the arse on ASA version 8 and up. (It looks like they are shown in plain text in versions 7 and earlier). You look at the running configuration


ASA# sh run | inc snmp

 snmp-server host INTERFACE 10.1.1.1 poll community ***** version 2c

 no snmp-server location
 no snmp-server contact
 snmp-server community *****
 snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart

You think to yourself (or I do anyway) maybe its not shown in the running config but it is shown in the startup configuration;

ASA# sh start | inc snmp
 snmp-server host INTERFACE 10.1.1.1 poll community ***** version 2c
 no snmp-server location
 no snmp-server contact
 snmp-server community *****
 snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart

Nope!

The trick is to simply access the running configuration at a file level to revel it's dirty SNMP secrets;

ASA# more system:running-config | inc snmp
 snmp-server host INTERFACE 10.1.1.1 poll community C0munit7Str1ng version 2c
 no snmp-server location
 no snmp-server contact
 snmp-server community C0munit7Str1ng 
 snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart
ASA#

Kick Ass!

Cisco Wireless - Can't delete/remove Bridge-group 1 from top level interfaces

So, Time for another post.

I found this particularly annoying issue with some new Cisco 1141N Wireless Access Points.

The problem is that you want to use "Bridge-Group 1" for your management of the WAP and you want to assign Bridge-Group 1 to a sub-interface.

The default config looks something like this

interface Dot11Radio0
 no ip route-cache
 bridge-group 1
 bridge-group 1 subscriber-loop-control
 bridge-group 1 block-unknown-source
 no bridge-group 1 source-learning
 no bridge-group 1 unicast-flooding
 bridge-group 1 spanning-disabled

interface GigabitEthernet0
 no ip route-cache
 bridge-group 1
 no bridge-group 1 source-learning
 bridge-group 1 spanning-disabled

No matter what you do, you can not take "bridge-group 1" off of either of these interfaces using the standard "no bridge-group 1 command" as you would expect. I was configuring one Wireless access point and somehow managed to get it off but had made so many changes by the time I'd realised I had resolved it, that I couldn't figure out what I had done to get it off the blasted thing! Always track your changes and observe the results!

Eventually I figured it out and found another guy with the same problem.

So my Posts from http://packetlife.net/blog/2012/feb/20/aironet-aps-bridge-groups-and-bvi/ :



Cameron (guest) commented on Monday, July 16, 2012 at 8:52 p.m. UTC

I'm curious as to what hardware this was configured on. I'm trying replicate these steps on my Aironet 1141n but cannot setup the bridge groups the same way. The Dot11Radio0 is in bridge-group 1 by default and cannot be removed. This means when I go to configure Dot11Radio0.10, I cannot add the bridge group 1 like you did in the example. Should I just move to the next bridge group?







PACETREE (guest) commented on Monday, October 29, 2012 at 2:05 p.m. UTC

I ran into the same problem trying to remove bridge group 1 from my 1141N. You need to add the physical interfaces to another bridge group (i.e. overwrite the bridge group on the physical interfaces) and then you are free to use bridge-group 1 on a subinterface which you will need to do if one of your sub-interfaces is going to be your management interface (and int BVI1 having a IP address in this network)

"Next we need to remove initially configured “bridge-group 1” on physical interfaces FastEthernet0 dot11Radio0 and dot11Radio1 because we will use their subinterfaces. We cannot remove “bridge-group 1” directly. It does not allow us to do this. It likes “bridge-group 1” probably because it is necessary to existence of BVI1-interface. But we can assign “bridge-group 2” to interface and then remove it yet. Just look at that:
ap-1131.sokol.msk#configure terminal
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config)#interface FastEthernet0
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#no bridge-group 1
%command not allowed, cannot remove bridge-group 1
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#bridge-group 2
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#no bridge-group 2
Feb 13 19:14:29: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface BVI1, changed state to down
Feb 13 19:14:30: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface BVI1, changed state to down
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#do show running-config interface FastEthernet 0
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 90 bytes
!
interface FastEthernet0
no ip address
no ip route-cache
duplex auto
speed auto
end

ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#interface dot11Radio0
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#bridge-group 2
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#no bridge-group 2
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#interface dot11Radio1
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#bridge-group 2
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#no bridge-group 2
ap-1131.sokol.msk(config-if)#end