Sysadmin Ramblings » Geek

no more adsense

uphill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:44:53 +0000

I don’t really see the benefit of using adsense anymore. Everyone knows they’re ads, no one clicks. It doesn’t pay my isp bills anymore, so I’m dropping it. They were only annoying anyway.

recovering deleted files vfat linux – picasa deleted my pictures

uphill — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:49:21 +0000

Ok, I accept a little bit of the blame for this one. I started to import my photos using picasa. The first three pictures that were imported were poor, so I decided to delete them. At that point they were the only pictures in the folder, so Picasa decided to delete the folder, even though an import was going on to that folder. All the rest of the pictures went into the abyss. Pretty lame IMHO. Picasa should probably check that it’s copying the files to a good location before deleting them from the card.

Luckily someone was nice enough to write an easy undelete, testdisk has a nice utility called photorec. I started up photorec with the device of my media card and it found all the deleted photos (486 vacation pics). [root@imanidiot ~]# photorec /d Recovered /dev/sdb Photorec has a nice curses menu that was easy to understand and it recovered my files fast. They have versions for linux, windows and dos and that other annoying thing with an X in it.

Thanks a lot CGSecurity.

using a mimo um-710 on linux (displaylink) with udlfb driver

uphill — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:06:39 +0000

We’ve had this dream for some time of having a display that we can control from our desktops but mounted in the hallway. The idea would be to use the sign in place of post-it notes or some other sort of messageboard arrangement. We’ve tried the Kodak EX811 in the past with limited success, we used mediatomb to control the kodak, but wheneverthe wireless network had problems or the kodak got confused, it would just go to a blank screen, hardly useful.

In walks the mimo, it’s a usb connected display, we found drivers for it here. You can extend your X desktop onto the screen using the supplied drivers, but we only wanted to display one image at a time on the screen. We opted to use a combination of tools to just cat data directly to the framebuffer device, and yes this incredibly silly arrangement actually works. Here is the script we are using, we hope to replace this with something compiled later. #!/bin/sh SIZE='800x480!' RESIZED=`mktemp -u /tmp/XXXXXXXX`.png CONVERTED=`mktemp /tmp/XXXXXXXX` if [ xxx${FRAMEBUFFER}xxx == 'xxxxxx' ]; then FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb0 fi CURRENT=/var/www/lighttpd/assets/current.jpg while [ 1 ] do convert -resize $SIZE $CURRENT $RESIZED mkdfiff -f RGB16 $RESIZED > $CONVERTED dd if=$CONVERTED of=$FRAMEBUFFER bs=1 skip=24 sleep 30 done Hopefully useful to someone else out there….

Here is our (Ben Rose and I) first attempt at a C version of the above… framebugger.tar.bz2

/* read color value from pixel (left->right, up-> down) then convert * from RGB32 to RGB16 using code from directfb */ for (j = 0; j < gdImageSY(gdPtr); j++) { for (i = 0; i < gdImageSX(gdPtr); i++) { c = RGB32_TO_RGB16(gdImageGetPixel(gdPtr, i, j)); fwrite(&c,2,1,fbout); } }

Dismantling the Gamecube (Taking apart the Gamecube)

uphill — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:46:07 +0000

I was thinking of making a component cable for myself, but this turned out to be too big a project. Here is the dismantling of the gamecube instead. There are 4 proprietary screws holding the bottom of the case to the top. They look like an E6 to me, external Torx #6. I tried an E6 socket with no success, the hole in which the screw resides is very deep.

First thing you’ll need is the screwdriver. I got mine from ebay. Two types are available, the screwdriver and the bit. I think the bit is probably more useful, you can put it on a powered screwdriver that way.

There are 4 screws holding the base to the top, after removing those screws the top just slides off.

Next you remove all the screws holding the cd player to the motherboard. It’s worth noting that the nintendo design is very technician friendly. All the major components use sockets and are easily removed.

With the CD removed you can unclip the front and back panels. The front panel holds the controller ports and memory slots. Once those are removed, you remove the 6 screws holding the motherboard to the bottom board. There is some circuitry below the motherboard that I didn’t bother dismantling.

Once you have removed the motherboard and turned it over, you can clearly see the pins for the digital and analog ports.

Gamecube progressive scan cable (taking apart the gamecube)

uphill — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:59:42 +0000

The original Gamecube had two ports on the back, DIGITAL AV OUT and ANALOG AV OUT. It is possible to get Composite and S-Video out of the Analog port. The Digital Port is actually digital, the component cable from Nintendo has a digital to analog converter chip embedded in the plug.

I’ve read people say that the digital port on the gamecube is a standard in Japan, I can find no evidence of this though. AFAIK the plug is nintendo specific and the HD connector in Japan is a D-Terminal. Also, the D-Terminal is an analog connection, so again AFAIK there is no direct way to connect anything to the digital port and display video.

The signal coming out of the gamecube is reported to be YCbCr. The signal needed by component is YPbPr.

The chip in the cable has the following printed on it:

MX	B012355
	CMPV-DOL
	T21642K1

As far as I know there isn’t a lot of information on the chip.

Here is my page on dismantling the Gamecube.

To take the cable apart, you just need to bend the thumbs that are holding the top to the bottom, there are 6 holes in the bottom of the cable, if you insert a small screwdriver in there, you can feel the thumb and bend it back to pry the top and botom apart.

Once you have the top off, you can remove the metal shell and expose the board

With the cover off you can clearly see the red green and blue colored cables for the component video coming off the board.

I found one page posting a pinout for the digital connector, I don’t know if this is accurate though. In case it goes away here it is: There are 22 pins

1	DetectCable (pull high)	2	54MHz Clock
3	ClkSelect(C10)	4	Ground
5	+12V	6	27MHz Clock
7	Data0 (C09)	8	Ground
9	Data1 (C08)	10	Data2 (C07)
11	Ground	12	Data3 (C06)
13	Data4 (C04)	14	Ground
15	Data5 (C03)	16	Data6 (C02)
17	3.3V	18	Data7 (C01)
19	LRCK (Audio)	20	Ground
21	Data (Audio)	22	BCK (Audio)

Your best bet for making something work is to find the MX chip and solder something up on the motherboard, the connectors are going to be just as hard to find as the component cables. I was experimenting with a LMH1251 since it does all the same work as the MX chip, but without knowing the particulars of the MX chip it didn’t go far. Maybe if I find a gamecube for 10$ I’ll try soldering something up.

Rifftrax for the Matrix using sharecrow matrix.crow

uphill — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:29:16 +0000

A couple of friends and I decided to try out rifftrax. We decided on the Matrix as our first film. Rifftrax.com is a great idea, finally the MST3k style can be applied to movies too popular or expensive to otherwise make fun of. We eventually enjoyed the riff, but syncing wasn’t as simple as we had hoped. We initally just opened up two vlc windows and manually synced that way. One great line was in the dojo, Morpheus: “You think that’s air you’re breathing?” Riff: “Little baby thinks he’s breathing air little baby air breather” I enclose my crow file, I hope it works for someone. To follow the instructions at www.sharecrow.com/Rifftrax.htm we had to use Title 13 on our DVD, Title 1 would not work. Also, our DVD Start time was 0:00:01.499, the sync timecode from rifftrax was 2.27, so we had to take this into account when doing the initial sync.

matrix.crow

It’s a shame the crows are provided, without them it’s a big pain to keep the dvd in sync. Still, it’s a great idea, I hope to see Xanadu and Lord of the Rings up there soon.

Howto watch progressive scan dvd’s or gamecube on a VGA only LCD projector

uphill — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 03:40:25 +0000

I purchased a Proxima DPP6850 off ebay. Because the projector is a few years old, it doesn’t have any component video capability. It has composite, s-video and two rgbvh (VGA) inputs.

The composite video display is not very good at the size of my screen (100”), I tried S-Video but the improvement was not enough. I started researching adapters, the one I eventually I got this adapter. The adapter only does progressive scan, it does not work on non-progressive component output. You’ll have to setup your DVD for progressive output, in my case I did this using the composite input so I could see what I was doing, then switched to the adapter on the RGB input. The difference is really very noticable and the noise is almost completely removed. The inability to see non progressive output is somewhat of a nuisance, but you can always resort to the composite in a pinch.

The adapter I have is pretty good, I also tried this adapter and the image was actually poorer than composite. Also this adapter does not display progressive scan. I’m still looking for a good component to RGB adapter, but so far, the progressive only one is the best I’ve tried.

Sample Output

ICMP Parameters and my iptables table

uphill — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:57:18 +0000

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) has many messages that are identified by a “type” field. I use the types to specify what actions to take in my custom iptables config. My iptables configuration has a separate table for icmp traffic. This way icmp traffic is handled on it’s own. I create the table in /etc/sysconfig/iptables:



:icmp-in - [0:0] 

:icmp-out - [0:0]

Then I create some allow rules so that all icmp traffic is allowed within my own network, adding the first rule for lo (loopback) is really important if you are going to start blocking icmp. The last two rules here allow icmp traffic outbound and any subsequent inbound traffic (established, related).



-A INPUT -i lo -p icmp -j icmp-in

-A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -i eth0 -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -p icmp -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

-A OUTPUT -p icmp -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

Next I go down the table of codes (see the end of this post) and decide if I want to accept, reject or return the packets based on type.



-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 0 -j ACCEPT

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 3 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 4 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 8 -j ACCEPT

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 11 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 12 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 14 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 16 -j RETURN

-A icmp-in -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 18 -j RETURN

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 0 -j ACCEPT

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 4 -j RETURN

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 8 -j ACCEPT

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 12 -j RETURN

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 13 -j RETURN

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 15 -j RETURN

-A icmp-out -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 17 -j RETURN

Many ICMP types have a “code” field. Here is a list of the types with their assigned code fields. Information Reply
Codes:
0 No Code

Type	Name
0	Echo Reply Codes: 0 No Code
1	Unassigned
2	Unassigned
3	Destination Unreachable Codes: 0 Net Unreachable 1 Host Unreachable 2 Protocol Unreachable 3 Port Unreachable 4 Fragmentation Needed and Don’t Fragment was Set 5 Source Route Failed 6 Destination Network Unknown 7 Destination Host Unknown 8 Source Host Isolated 9 Communication with Destination Network is Administratively Prohibited 10 Communication with Destination Host is Administratively Prohibited 11 Destination Network Unreachable for Type of Service 12 Destination Host Unreachable for Type of Service 13 Communication Administratively Prohibited 14 Host Precedence Violation 15 Precedence cutoff in effect
4	Source Quench Codes: 0 No Code
5	Redirect Codes: 0 Redirect Datagram for the Network (or subnet) 1 Redirect Datagram for the Host 2 Redirect Datagram for the Type of Service and Network 3 Redirect Datagram for the Type of Service and Host
6	Alternate Host Address Codes: 0 Alternate Address for Host
7	Unassigned
8	Echo Codes: 0 No Code
9	Router Advertisement Codes: 0 Normal router advertisement 16 Does not route common traffic
10	Router Selection Codes” 0 No Code
11	Time Exceeded Codes: 0 Time to Live exceeded in Transit 1 Fragment Reassembly Time Exceeded
12	Parameter Problem Codes: 0 Pointer indicates the error 1 Missing a Required Option 2 Bad Length
13	Timestamp Codes: 0 No Code
14	Timestamp Reply Codes: 0 No Code
15	Information Request Codes: 0 No Code
16
17	Address Mask Request Codes: 0 No Code
18	Address Mask Reply Codes: 0 No Code
19	Reserved (for Security)
20-29	Reserved (for Robustness Experiment)
30	Traceroute
31	Datagram Conversion Error
32	Mobile Host Redirect
33	IPv6 Where-Are-You
34	IPv6 I-Am-Here
35	Mobile Registration Request
36	Mobile Registration Reply
39	SKIP
40	Photuris Codes: 0 = Bad SPI 1 = Authentication Failed 2 = Decompression Failed 3 = Decryption Failed 4 = Need Authentication 5 = Need Authorization
41-255	Reserved

Howto get progressive scan on Nintendo Gamecube

uphill — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 04:37:51 +0000

Digital AV Out

To watch Gamecube games in progressive scan, you need to have a gamecube with digital out. Since 2004, Nintendo took the digital port off the gamecube. You can get your gamecube replaced with a model with the port directly from Nintendo.

Component Cable

Next you need the component cable. The cable is no longer available from Nintendo. You can get the cable directly from Nintendo, but they do tend to sell out quickly. There is a lot of people selling this cable on ebay for amazing profit, the retail from Nintendo is $29.95.

For all you out there who are thinking of making a cable yourself now that Nintendo has stopped, please read this. My page on the component cable and another on dismantling the gamecube.

Turn on Progressive Scan

Now with all the cables connected (note, that the component cable is only for video, you still need the analog cable for audio), turn on your gamecube and hold down the ‘B’ button while booting to turn on progressive scan mode. . You will see a confirmation dialog (note that the composite video continues to work until you confirm that you wish to use progressive scan). . Click the ‘A’ button to confirm that you wish to use progressive scan mode. Not all games support progressive scan (why? why not, what possibly extra work could it be? It’s probably just a compile time option, what’s the point in not including it). The flagship games all seem to have it. Sonic 3d has it, and Metroid. My Progressive Scan Gamelist

Comparison of composite to progressive scan

Here is the difference in output from my projector (note, it’s pretty difficult to take good pics, it’s much better live than these pics can show :-( ).

Composite	Progressive Scan/Component
Composite	Progressive Scan/Component

So yes, a gamecube can do progressive scan, and yes the picture is much much much better. And no, the composite are not out of focus, that’s just what composite looks like on a 100” screen. Although, working out the holding down ‘B’ part could drive you nuts and make you do insane things.

Radio Codes

uphill — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:58:04 +0000

10-1   Signal weak                   10-8   In service

10-2   Signal good                   10-9   Repeat

10-3   Stop transmitting             10-10  Negative

10-4   Affirmative                   10-12  Stand by

10-6   Busy                          10-19  Return to station

10-7   Out of service                10-23  Arrived at scene