Guylhem's most recent funny hacks & thoughts

Weird OSX Lion bug :mini DVI prevents boot/reboot

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:54:52 -0400

Today I just could not connect to my MacMini which was displaying a screensaver when I turned the screen off this morning. Usually it works fine when I come back home and turn it back on, but this time it only showed up a black screen, meaning the screen was connected and it was resuming from sleep.

So let’s investigate this

Before trying anything else, back to the basis : it replies to ping - good, so OSX hasn’t crashed.

ssh and Screen Sharing (VNC) also work - so I click on Apple/Retart, all the windows clause but nothing else happens. The VNC connection is not closed.

Weird. I try the same by ssh : sudo then reboot - but reboot also fails with :

/ is busy updating; waiting for lock

Weird. Let’s check /var/log/system.log:

May 23 18:30:57 macmini com.apple.kextcache[41843]: Lock acquired; proceeding.

May 23 18:30:57 macmini com.apple.kextcache[41843]: /: helper partitions appear up to date.

May 23 18:30:59 macmini AppleFileServer[41769]: _Assert: /SourceCache/afpserver/afpserver-585.2/afpserver/../afpserver/SharePointSyncTask.cpp, 215 (4294967253)

May 23 18:31:25: —- last message repeated 1 time —-

May 23 18:31:25 macmini com.apple.backupd[41859]: Starting standard backup

May 23 18:31:25 macmini com.apple.backupd[41859]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target

May 23 18:31:35 macmini com.apple.backupd[41859]: Backup failed with error: 19

Weird. After some googling, I see hackintosh users have the same problem with a wrong ACPI VGA kext, but maybe backupd is causing the problem? A killall -9 backupd later :

May 23 18:31:52 macmini com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[41859]): Exited: Killed: 9

Let’s try again to reboot

May 23 18:32:06 macmini reboot[41874]: rebooted by guylhem

May 23 18:32:06 macmini reboot[41874]: BOOT_TIME: 1337812326 786930

Yey, it works ! Maybe it is completely unrelated to ACPI/VGA kext. But then I get nothing but the same black screen at reboot. WTF? Now I can’t even ssh!!

Time for some deep thinking - so I remember about anything I may have done this morning - but I only did one unusual thing : I cleaned my desk. How could it be related??

Some deep thinking later - what if it was due to a loose cable? After unplugging/replugging the Mini DVI cable, everything works again !!!

Morale of the story: in OSX there can be weird bugs too. A misconnected mini DVI cable *can* apparently cause backupd to fail, while still powering the display to wake it up from suspend, but causing reboot problems and preventing a normal boot due to the kext - just like on a hackintosh.

Hardware bug of software bug, whatever it may be, that’s still strange. Hopefully someone with the same weird problem will find this solution thanks to google.

Big kudos to the hackintosh forum - they can be very helpful, even for vanilla macs runnning the vanilla latest stable version of OSX.

N900 widgets vanish bug

Sun, 20 May 2012 12:27:19 -0400

I have a strange bug with my N900 : sometimes when I add a desktop-cmd-excec widget, all my widgets vanish. A reboot does not help. Then when the calendar alarms occur, it takes between 30s to 1 minute after clicking on them to make them go away. Restoring the widgets from the gconf values + the ~/ filesystem helps, until I try to add them back- then they disappear again.

So today I took some time to investigate the issue : apparently, this is due to a bug : when a 3rd party widgets has a memory leak or stops while waiting for some data (ex: lack of connectivity), it results in high CPU usage (unresponsiveness) then takes hildon-home along with it - which then removes all widgets to prevent a reboot loop. The bug is a WONTFIX since it requires a major feedservice change.

See http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=56340 and https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8723

Apparently, banning python widgets is the standard solution - since they tend to be leaky (so now I know why I hate python :-)

apt-get remove —purge hildon-desktop-python-loader

But on my device, it looks like a desktop-cmd-exec bug, since it happens when I add a custom script!

The only workaround so far is to run as the standard user:

dsmetool -k /usr/bin/hildon-home

dsmetool -t /usr/bin/hildon-home

Here are some scripts I use to save my widgets status before restarting the widget framework, to avoid adding them manually:

~ $ cat widgets-store.sh

set now=`/usr/local/bin/date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`

gconftool-2 —dump /schemas/apps/osso/hildon-desktop/applets > widgets.xml

tar zcvf .widgets-$now.tgz widgets.xml .config/hildon-desktop/home.plugins

rm widgets.xml

~ $ cat widgets-restore.sh

gconftool-2 —dump /schemas/apps/osso/hildon-desktop/applets > /tmp/w.cur

gconftool-2 —unload /tmp/w.cur

tar zxvf widgets.tgz widgets.xml .config/hildon-desktop/home.plugins

gconftool-2 —load widgets.xml

rm widgets.xml /tmp/w.cur

I will also add timeout to my custom scripts which depend on network connectivity, which obviously could trigger this bug.

Yey to IPV6

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:32:57 -0400

While playing with an experimental distribution for the Fritzbox 7390 I may soon release, I added some DHCP/IPv6 integration. Just 5 minutes ago I was very pleased to notice that this integration was already working well, even if I had not fully tested it.

On my git repo, root@crosscompile.localdomain is usually the author - because I test stuff on a VM I use for crosscompilation, and couldn’t care less about where I git push from.

But now that the DHCP/IPv6 integration is working, all the machines on my lan ask for an IPV6, get it *AND* the Fritzbox (which is also my DNS server and has authority on the IPv6 subnet) then adds a AAAA and a PTR linking the IPv6 address to the dhcp name at my domain name.

So my crosscompilation VM became debian.guylhem.org, which is quite cool since it’s also routable - at least while the VM is active. I could even host my files right there - but the IPv4 only folks would cry, so I’ll keep using git instead ;-)

Adding OTP to telnetd

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:23:00 -0400

Playing with busybox and openssh, I have had times when I almost got myself locked out of my machine while working remotely. Why? Because telnetd is not listening on port 23. Why? Because I fear for the safety of my machine should I lazily use telnet for a quick reboot (also compromising my password at the same time) and forgot to change this damn password.

But why? Telnet was once very popular. You’ll say that now SSH plays the same role with the bonus of encryption, but this will turn into a circular argument.

Yes, SSH encrypts the commands you type and the answers they give you, but your password is usually more important than that! I couldn’t care less if someone knows I have typed “reboot” as long as I know that they won’t be able to login with my password.

IMHO, telnet got replaced by SSH because of a main weakness : the password is transmitted in clear text, and thus vulnerable to sniffing and replay (basically anything between you and your server is dangerous - from a tcpdump/wireshark sniff to a hardware or software keylogger at a cybercafe).

Yet RFC 2289 proposed something nice : a One Time Password, or OTP for short.

Basically, an OTP is a password that can be used only once, which means it is useless for anyone who gets it. It can not be reused. That is also useful if you try to SSH from an unknown machine- you don’t want to expose your password.

How does it work?

An MOTP is generated from the MD5 of the concatenation of :

the epoch (unix time) divided by 10,
a randomly generated pin made of digits
a known shared secret

The pin is presented to the client, which must reply with the valid OTP. If the client fails, another pin is generated - and so on. Ideally, the pin should be sent by a different communication channel.

If you have configured google or facebook 2-way auth, and if you type the numbers you receive by SMS instead of your password to login, you are already using MOTP!

If you entrust your facebook account to MOTP, why not use MOTP for other things, such as telnet or the quite interesting shellinabox, which gives you a way in with just a browser- but like telnet also exposes your password?

That’s where things got complicated. On my VPS, like on my DSL modem, I use busybox to save RAM. OPIE on PAM is only an option for a full-fledged /bin/login.

So on friday night, instead of watching smackdown I took vi and coded a replacement for busybox correct_password.c

Get the goodie on my git repository, code.google.com/p/guylhem/ : simply put the replacement correct_password in libbb/, recompile and you’re good to go.

On the same repository, you will also find a very crude implementation I made as a prototype, motp-standalone.c (ugly), along with a motp-gen.c (worse), a command line MOTP generator that I didn’t even try to compile yet but that might work. Meanwhile, you should rather use one of the various MOTP apps for android or ios, or otp for the n900.

Both use BSD MD5 (apt-get install libbsd-dev if you are using GNU/Linux) which behaves a little bit differently than busybox MD5.

I had some fun creating a nice function to generate a random PIN of non repeating numbers (Floyd algorithm followed by Knuth shuffle) but that’s not where I spent most of the time when I wrote the final correct_password. In fact, most of it was lost to MD5 : basically BSD MD5End reinitializes the md5_ctx, while Busybox md5_end does not. I am ashamed I spent nearly an hour of my life wondering why the md5 didn’t match, thinking first about endianness issues and other weird stuff :-)

Now what will I do with my saturday night instead of watching SNL ? :-)

guylhem.org : php vulnerabilities scan

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:12:52 -0400

In my error log I see many people I trying to access my home website - mostly spambots I guess, because the value of 0wning a MIPS box seems quite low to me

What’s quite interesting is the URL they are trying to access - here’s a short list. Most of there are php URL, I guess to try to log is with a default admin password.

My conclusion: if you are running phpmyadmin, mysql or anything else that’s standard, steer clear of the “traditional” paths.

/MyAdmin/scripts/setup.php

/admin.php

/admin/index.php

/admin/phpmyadmin/index.php

/admin/pma/index.php

/appConf.htm

/db/index.php

/dbadmin/index.php

/images/TrophyComposite2small.jpg

/index.php

/manager/html

/manager/status

/muieblackcat

/myadmin/index.php

/myadmin/scripts/setup.php

/mysql/index.php

/mysqladmin/index.php

/openldap

/php-my-admin/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.5-pl1/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.5-rc1/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.5-rc2/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.5/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6-rc1/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6-rc2/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.7-pl1/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2.5.7/index.php

/phpMyAdmin-2/index.php

/phpMyAdmin/index.php

/phpMyAdmin/scripts/setup.php

/phpadmin/index.php

/phpmyadmin/index.php

/phpmyadmin/scripts/setup.php

/phpmyadmin1/index.php

/phpmyadmin2/index.php

/pma/index.php

/pma/scripts/setup.php

/recordings/index.php

/remote.php

/resources/trail_building/images/downhill_1.jpg

/typo3/phpmyadmin/index.php

/user/soapCaller.bs

/vicidial/project_auth_entries.txt

/vtigercrm/modules/com_vtiger_workflow/sortfieldsjson.php

/w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec:)

/web/index.php

/web/phpMyAdmin/index.php

/websql/index.php

/xampp/phpmyadmin/index.php

Fritzbox 7390 kernel modules

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:55:00 -0400

Now that kernel 2.6.28.10 is being used on the Fritzbox 7390 with the latest 84.05.21 firmware (ftp://ftp.avm.de/fritz.box/fritzbox.fon_wlan_7390/firmware/english/FRITZ.Box_Fon_WLAN_7390.en-de-es-it-fr.84.05.21.image), your custom modules should be recompiled.

You can either fetch the source from http://gpl.back2roots.org/source/fritzbox/7390_5.20/GPL-release_kernel.tar.gz and run this modified compile scripts (adds a make modules and make modules_install to /tmp/lib/modules of your crosscompile box) or grab the binaries from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/kernel/2.6.28.10.tgz

I used a very simple .config, only adding support for USB audio and video, Bluetooth and netfilter (ipv4+ipv6). The .config is available on http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/kernel/config.txt and a backup of the AVM sources on http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/kernel/GPL-release_kernel.tar.gz

With that, you can for example run a webcam on your fritzbox!

If you don’t want all the modules, simply get http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/kernel/videorec.tgz, modprobe uvcvideo then run http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/v4l2grab from Tobias Müller to get a result like that (v4l2grab on the fritzbox requires approx 2 minutes to compress the picture into a jpg)

(live demo hosted on a true Fritzbox 7390 - MIPS 24Kc, 128M Ram)

Modified compile script:

#!/bin/bash

# Adopt this to your cross-compiler-path

CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/bin/mips-linux-

# The following exports are required for avm_init_scripts

export FRITZ_BOX_BUILD_DIR=`pwd`

export KERNEL_BUILD=linux-2.6.28

KERNEL_BUILD_DIR=${FRITZ_BOX_BUILD_DIR}/${KERNEL_BUILD}

export INSTALL_MOD_PATH=${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/filesystem

KERNEL_CONFIG=${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/.config

TMP_DIR=${FRITZ_BOX_BUILD_DIR}/tmp

################################################################################

####

# This function runs avm_init_scripts

####

function run_avm_init_scripts () {

init_scripts=’./drivers/dsl/init_dsl ./drivers/char/avm_new/init_avm ./drivers/char/avm_net_trace/init_net_trace \

./drivers/char/ubik2/init_ubik2 ./drivers/char/avm_power/init_power \

./drivers/char/flash_update/init_flash_update ./drivers/char/Piglet_noemif/init_Piglet \

./drivers/char/Piglet_noemif/init_Piglet_noemif ./drivers/char/dect_io/init_dect_io \

./drivers/char/audio/init_audio ./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon2 \

./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn ./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon4 \

./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon6 ./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon3 \

./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon ./drivers/isdn/isdn_fon5/init_isdn_fon5 \

./drivers/isdn/capi_codec/init_capi_codec ./drivers/isdn/avm_dect/init_avm_dect \

./drivers/isdn/capi_oslib/init_capi_oslib ./drivers/usb/musb/init_usb_host20 \

./drivers/usb/misc/usbauth/init_stick_and_surf’

echo Running avm_init_scripts:

for i in ${init_scripts} ; do

if test -e ${i} ; then

if ! test -x ${i} ; then

chmod +x ${i}

fi

echo ———— Running ${i} ———-

script=`realpath ${i}`

( cd `dirname ${i}` && ${script} 26 )

fi

done

}

####

# Compile the kernel

####

function compile_kernel() {

make TARGET_CPU=ikanos CROSS_COMPILE=${CROSS_COMPILE} ARCH=mips menuconfig

make TARGET_CPU=ikanos CROSS_COMPILE=${CROSS_COMPILE} ARCH=mips -j 16

make TARGET_CPU=ikanos CROSS_COMPILE=${CROSS_COMPILE} ARCH=mips -j 16 modules

make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/tmp TARGET_CPU=ikanos CROSS_COMPILE=${CROSS_COMPILE} ARCH=mips -j 16 modules_install

}

####

# Link cpmac files

####

function setup_cpmac() {

echo setup cpmac

CPMAC_DIR=${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/drivers/net/avm_cpmac

cp ${CPMAC_DIR}/linux_avm_cpmac.h ${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/include/linux/avm_cpmac.h

cp ${CPMAC_DIR}/linux_adm_reg.h ${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/include/linux/adm_reg.h

cp ${CPMAC_DIR}/linux_ar_reg.h ${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}/include/linux/ar_reg.h

cp ${CPMAC_DIR}/Makefile.26 ${CPMAC_DIR}/Makefile

}

####

# Main

####

cd ${KERNEL_BUILD_DIR}

run_avm_init_scripts

setup_cpmac

compile_kernel

Mechanical turk experiment with extreme narcissism

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:39:00 -0500

A few weeks ago, I discovered Amazon Mechanical Turk and decided to try to play with it, to see what it could used for.

Digging for stupid ideas, I found my inspiration after reading a post on narcissism: basically, I uploaded a HIT asking workers to write a compliment on my official facebook page in exchange for money. How vain is that?

The HIT description was :

YOU MUST HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT AND BE LOGGED IN TO DO THIS !

1) Click on the facebook page link

2) Click on the “Like” button

3) Write a compliment of at least one phrase of good english, ex: “He is very helpful and good looking”.

4) Do you see anything already close to what you want to post ? Then edit your compliment to avoid duplicate data !

5) Press enter

6) Copy/paste the compliment you wrote in the following box

In order to avoid turning this lame experiment into an abuse of facebook, the scope was limited to 20 request. Also, to be fair with the workers who were not told in any way that this was an experiment, I offered $0.10 for each task since it required multiple actions, creativity and a final copy/paste of their results in a form for subsequent analysis.

The results are very interesting : every single worker *did* what was requested and wrote a compliment. The compliments are also at the bottom of this message. Since it was work for hire, I guess I’m clear with the copyrights!

I laughed my ass out after reading the comments - some were just so funny, and at least one was very cleverly worded and genuine enough to pass for what would be an actual client feedback (other applications: if you feel down, for less than $3 bucks you can have a good laugh!)

Of all these comments, only 4 i.e. less than 20% were caught by facebook antispam filter - the grammar was not perfect in these 4 comments, but what seemed the most important factor was that the worker had not uploaded a picture.

Also, every single worker did like the facebook page as requested in step 2, which is more shocking. Not a single one did unlike it after the experiment.

The implications are very simple : when playing a “popularity contest”, as some companies do, all it takes is $10 for every 100 votes, with 0% loss on the likes, and 20% loss if you care about having compliments published on a facebook without any action on your part.

I didn’t want to be a cheapskate, hence my “generous” offer by Mechanical Turk standards. However, due to the very short time it took - 1 day before being completed, the price could obviously be reduced - even more if the task was simplified into just pushing “like”.

Let’s take a conservative hypothesis and estimate that Amazon default price of $0.05 will do. To get a million like would require around $250k. Try to reduce the default price by half, say by only asking for the press of “like” and you could reach $100k per million like.

How many companies have more than a million likes on facebook? Do you think a mere $100k in advertising budget would give you that? Can criminals operating spambots match the price?

Besides the fact that many people will find such an offer good enough or need the money bad enough, I’m appalled by the conclusions for any fair player of the social game.

I wonder how prevalent is such an abuse in the social media world, following the rumors of widespread pay-for-like abuse on Apple iTunes, where the popularity of an applications can make the difference between success and failure.

The compliments were:

He is looking smart and very clever.

It should be helped for the future.

Really nice information is given in english on the website. Thanks.

I found this page very useful. it provides me lot of good information.

he is friendly and looking attractive.

This guy is looking smart and has a lot of positive energy. Looks very confident

Very handsome and working in a good company

If you are facing any problem starting from medical field to embedded programming - your one stop solution is Guylhem, a helpful person by all means!

he is good and concerning indeed…

He has good personality and interesting.

He is very innovative about himself.

He is intelligent, charming and really good looking besides having a likeable personality.

He is very handsome and also educated well

NICE GUY WITH GOOD LOOKING

this would be very helpful

He seems smart and very talented

He looks beautiful in sky blue shirt.

Hai Guylhem Your very hansom

He is a very kind hearted and honest person.

He is handsome and good looking person

I’m a fan of yours Guylhem :) Thanks for all that you do! :)

Take note on how one took some time to do a google search, found out I was in health-IT and wrote the comment around that.

This was disclosed to facebook, along with the following suggestions in an email exchange where they pointed out proxies:

Of course they could ask user to set up proxies, but this would create
another step and add a risk of failure. More steps raise the price per
HIT, which would require a much bigger budget and reduce the potential
number of abusers.

In this case, either they would ask the user to set up a given proxy
or a machine they control, or setup a full range of IP with proxies -
you could then catch the abuser by IP match or IP range.

Alternatively, they could ask users to set up a random proxy from a
public list, but most of these proxies are busy and finding a good one
usually requires trying 5 to 10 candidates - also increasing the
number of actions and thus reducing user compliance for a given price,
or raising the price.

The silver bullet would be monitoring Mechanical turk HIT jobs for
keywords like facebook, or match facebook URL to trigger or weight the
spam filter.

There is no perfect solution unless you can strike a deal with Amazon
to serve a cookie to HIT workers. You can only increase the price of
the abuse, try to detect it by IP match or monitor the HIT jobs to
feed the spam filter.

I don’t know your internal structure so I can’t advise you on the most
cost-effective way. By default, I would go to HIT jobs monitoring.

Guylhem

Getting rid of the old ovi.com stuff on the N900

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:59:35 -0500

As mentionned in many places, ovi.com services are being removed, little by little.

Only the ovi store is still barely usefull in 2012 on a N900.

So it’s time for a spring cleaning! My suggestion for the CSSU : let’s get rid of ovi.com crap, if only so that it doesn’t disturb people who wonder what it is.

Simply type as root (sudo gainroot)

apt-get remove —purge sharing-service-ovi ovi-promotion-widget rtcom-accounts-plugin-nokiachat

rm /usr/share/osso-rtcomm/voip-support/nokiachat.profile

Now if only we could remove the “Ovi store” advertisement in “Preferences/Sharing accounts” the N900 would be fully ovi-free!

Since it’s hardcoded in libsharing.so, I guess it might be a little more complicated, but nothing a good hexedit can’t do

My new sounds: Special track of Mardi Gras 2012 - get the Creole...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:22:11 -0500

My new sounds: Special track of Mardi Gras 2012 - get the Creole vibe with a full hour of TANBOU BÔ KANNAL

Fritzbox incoming caller-id by Growl

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:28:00 -0500

I hate having to get up in order to look for the %$# dect phone only to decide from the caller-id that the call is not important and not worth answering

There is a not-so-simple solution on wehavemorefun depending on php+an outdated growl-network protocol, but thanks to gntp-send we can do the same much more easily with a modern (1.3+) Growl supporting gntp.

Simply telnet on your fritzbox and create the following /var/calllog (which must be chmod +x), where I’m supposing your Mac is on 192.168.178.11 and Growl is configured to accept network notifications with password “yourpasswd”

#!/bin/sh

/var/media/ftp/gntp-send -a Fritzbox -s 192.168.178.11 -p yourpasswd “Call from” “$1”

To get the binary :

cd /var/media/ftp/ && wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/984275/fritzbox/gntp-send && cd ..

That’s all - no reboot required of course! Ain’t that much simpler ?

Facebook page

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:09:55 -0500

To keep in touch by facebook, I have prepared “Guylhem” facebook page, which is linked with the twitter account. There is very little content at the moment, however it should come little by little :-)

Happy new year 2012!

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

My dearest friends,

Year 2012 started well - if only by not resulting in the Mayan predicted end of the world.

Yet I was told as a joke that this “event” was just postponed to december 21, 2012 - to which I replied “Well, that is good news - almost 12 free month gained!”

In jokes, as in life, we sometimes only see the bad points. We tend to forget about the good parts.

Yet as a doctor, when I think about “12 months”, I am reminded that this is above the average life expectancy for patients with treated small cell lung cancer in extensive stage. These patients are people like you and I - only with a little less luck. As I said before, we tend to forget that, maybe because we do not understand how blessed we are. How lucky of us to fear a rumor while most of these patients will face a much more certain fate!

Likewise, the economic situation we are all facing is just a reminder of how spoiled we were, and how ungrateful we have been.

Just for one or two tiny issues, we forget to bless the lord for all the goods things that were and still are given to us on a daily basis. We have come to expect them and give nothing in return. We take for granted. We think we deserve everything. Those who don’t have faith just think they are entitled to everything society produces.

Year 2011 has been very good for me, and year 2012 also started very well - and I guess that if you are able to read this message, it is going well for you too.

Of course, like everyone, I had my ups and downs. I am for example fighting cybersquatters, and I’m sure you have your own challenges as well. Sometimes they may feel overpowering. Yet just a glance at people with a little less luck makes me thank the lord - every morning as I wake up, for every meal he provides me, and for every challenge he presents me.

New year wishes are a good moment to think about friends, changes and the future. I usually wait until the very end of january to send my wishes, because they are, let’s say “not so conventional”, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the moment.

This month, I am sure you have been wished the best by everyone you know, just like I was.

Yet we should all remember the ‘Chinese curse’ - three curses of increasing severity, the first being “May you live in interesting times”, the second being “May you come to the attention of those in authority”, and the third and worst being “May you find what you are looking for and may your wishes be granted”.

So I will not wish you an interesting year, fame, or finding what you are looking for. That is what I had in year 2011, which back in january I would have preferred to be quite different, yet something I understood in december to be quite foolish. I wanted more, but now I thank the lord for such presents, because many people were far less lucky. In 2012, I will try not to forget that whenever I feel like complaining.

Therefore, just as I wish for myself, my family and my closet friends I have the luck to see offline, I will only wish for you in 2012 to find happiness in the lords way.

Jesus said “the Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). May we all follow Jesus in this new year- not by just our words, and not even by our actions, but by our understanding of his infinite wisdom - the first understanding being how lucky we all are to hear his message of salvation.

Happy new year 2012 from the French West Indies!

Best regards

Dr Guylhem Aznar, MD PhD

PS: @jesus on twitter shows poor taste. Don’t fall for cheap imitations - follow our true lord and saviour in your heart, not on the internet :-)

—

vCard: http://guylhem.tel

My new sounds: Creole Night in Fort-de-France, Martinique

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:30:39 -0500

My new sounds: Creole Night in Fort-de-France, Martinique

Remove ~/Desktop with Gnome

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:00:05 -0500

Just 2 steps away:

1) Start gconf-editor and click:

apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktopapps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_homedir

apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop

2) Then rmdir ~/Desktop - done!

Item review : SYBA SY-PEX40035 SATA3+IDE Ports PCI-Express

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:39:00 -0500

Recently I purchased such a card on ebay. I don’t think I will ever again!

Basically, the PATA connector is put right on top of the SMD resistors near the card end :

This results in a progressively growing empty space being left behind the connector, from the right to the left, also causing an incomplete cable connection.

Longevity problems could also be an issue.

Anyway, with so many unpopulated areas for additional SATA connectors, it looks like a general purpose board cheaply refitted for additional uses. I strongly recommand against buying this version.

Amazon.es : happy ending before christmas

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:00:59 -0500

Finally, this story takes an happy ending before chirstmas!

Everything began to get properly managed when I started placing phonecalls, using the +34 number listed on amazon.es. A sales representative more conscientious than the others finally transferred my call to his manager who made some big promises.

But they were not just promises, because he managed to keep them!

Basically, not only did he admit Amazon being responsible for the problems that happened (and apologized for them), but he did some serious action: he got the refund process fixed and also said I would get my motherboard before christmas day. And I did!

He managed to have Gigabyte send me the 1.3 version, on time, as promised!

As one can see in the label, it is a proper Z68MX-UD2H-B3 rev 1.3 motherboard -what I ordered and paid for, when it was described as such when Amazon was selling it under ASIN B0050GNQAK.

In the box, the user manual even contains a flyier stating this version properly supports PCI Express 3.0 - which is the biggest difference between rev 1.3 and the bogus rev 1.0.

Therefore, I called my bank to stop the credit card complain process. Maybe that’s what got Amazon.es to pull its act together??

Or maybe it was just badly managed by software routines updating the order and the websites, as I was told on the phone, until an actual human being finally analyzed the situation and figured out how wrong it was and did what needed to be done.

I don’t know what to think there, but following Occam razor I’d go for the 2nd reason - computer mistake spiraling out of control.

Moral of the story- if something happens, even with an e-commerce like Amazon, get on the phone and repetitively complain until you get someone who understands the issues. You will then get results.

Anyway, I am very grateful to Mr Ruiz from Amazon.es and Ms Wang from gigabyte.fr ; even if I ended up calling my “PREMIUM” delivery option, my trust in Amazon is fully restored.

[BTW the reason I cancelled my Premium delivery: having this option only valid on one Amazon shop (ex: amazon.fr) is not worth the 50 Eur/$75 per year because you might place your order wherever the item you are looking for is being sold. For example, try to get some Noiseblocker brand fans on amazon.fr and compare the short list you get to amazon.de choices.

If this option worked for one amazon account on every shop (amazon.com .fr .es etc.), or if every shop had the same items available, I might change my mind]

MacOSX : Stuck in a grey screen with circling cursor after some remote changes

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:46:00 -0500

Never happened before, so this this warranted further investigations!

First I went into single user mode, where I saw notices of mDNSresponder that could not be spawned.

Figured out I tried to change some perms on the user interface, to increase security on my mother computer, and thus created a strange bug. A google search on mDNSresponder pointed me to: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/184944-os-hangs-blue-screen-just-before-login.html#post1055281 :

“it was caused by sharing the boot volume via Server Admin and then removing read access for ‘everyone’ (within Server Admin). In my opinion this is a serious bug - Server Admin settings should never be able to inhibit booting - preferably file sharing controlled by Server Admin should be totally independent of any local conventional OS X file sharing, or is this too much to expect?”

Solution : single user boot or CD rescue booth, then as explained in the post :

ls -ld /

(followed by the return key) ; Correct permissions are: drwxrwxr-t and the eighth character is critical. If it is not an r you can correct it as follows, so type:

/sbin/mount -uw /

(followed by the return key) ; then type:

chmod 1775 /

(followed by the return key) ; then type:

exit ; reboot

Thanks google, you save my day here !

Amazon.es in fraud + lying

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:02:00 -0500

These last days I thought Amazon.fr might have changed the product description between the date of my order and the date of my refund claim. It seemed far fetched, but it was the only real explaination I saw for the difference between what I ordered and what I got.

Now I have proof that amazon.es is doing exactly that, and even more by falsificating client orders. IMHO it is called fraud.

See this screenshot of the item description for ASIN B0050GNQAK, as posted here on december 10, 2011 : it is clearly a revision 1.3 (follow the big red arrow!!)

And if you do not believe a screenshot is binding, I am sure I did not made any mistake in my order since amazon itself confirmed by email I would get a revision 1.3:

from: auto-confirm@amazon.es sender-time: Sent at 23:25 (UTC)date: Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 23:25subject: Tu pedido de Amazon.es

(…)

Pedido nº:

171-9404429-3853925

(…)

Importe total:

EUR 145,47

Fecha de envío estimada para estos productos: 7 dic 20111“Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3, 32 GB, dual, 1066, 1200, 1300, 1333, 1600, 1800, 1866, 2133 MHz, DDR3, 1.5 V, Intel (rev. 1.3)”
Accesorio; EUR 126,25
En stock
Vendido por: Amazon EU S.a.r.L.

Now guess what ?

Today on december 12, 2011, at the very same URL, the very same item is listed as revision 1.0 - and with the same item number (ASIN). Ain’t that strange ?

Check for yourself on http://www.amazon.es/Gigabyte-Z68MX-UD2H-B3-dual-1066-Intel/dp/B0050GNQAK/ :

That could be an honest website update, but that would be a wrong guess because you need to hear the end of this story.

The very worst is that they ex-post-facto “updated” (some would say “falsificate”) my purchase to list the motherboard I purchased as a revision 1.0 - in contradiction with their own email!!

The only question is why? IMHO, it is to deny customers who got scammed the possibility to return a product different form the one they ordered, so that they can not ask for a refund.

Here they can only ask to return it for an exchange of the same product. The same product is a revision 1.0, which will be officially be attributed to the customer this time, who will thus give away all its hopes to ever get a 1.3

I was more than patient, but that is just too much. Today I got 2 calls from people form Amazon.fr who offered they apologies, and explained that yes, they did a mistake, that it was they fault, and that they would issue a full refund:

Suite à notre conversation téléphonique, je suis désolé d’apprendre que vous ayez reçu votre carte mère avec la révision 1.0 au lieu de 1.3.

Veuillez trouver ci-dessous un lien vers l’étiquette de retour personnalisée. Il s’agit d’une étiquette prépayée, vous n’avez donc pas à affranchir votre colis.

But still, they didn’t think my thousands K of purchased goods on amazon were worth a single dollar coupon. Lamers.

Anyway, I consider the matter with amazon.fr settled.

But Amazon.es is not doing anything like that. They are now even trying to falsificate my order, by claiming I ordered a 1.0 while I have multiple proofs I ordered a 1.3 - even they own sending slip and their own bill !!!

At this time, I can only see of one good solution : I am going to call my bank and ask to revert the charge, then sue amazon.es for fraud. What they did is just not acceptable. I have all the proofs that they posted a product description, then altered it, then also falsificated the order so that they can pretend that the ordered was right and refuse any refund.

I wonder how long such business practices would fly in the US?

Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 warning : possible false advertisement on Amazon (or is it by Gigabyte??)

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:44:00 -0500

For a very special Xmas present, I placed order #171-9404429-3853925 for item ASIN: B0050GNQAK on Amazon.fr on dec 4 - that is a Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 revision 1.3. With ultra fast shipping, 2 days later, I got a revision 1.0 - just check the label right below Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 where it says Intel Z68 / rev 1.0

That’s not what I paid for!!

Hey, mistakes happen, and I figured out the french website may have had an inventory problem, so I placed another order #171-9404429-3853925 on Amazon.es where I got the case I wanted. Even if I pay around 50 Eur/year for premium status to get next day shipping on Amazon.fr, I paid 15% of the item price in shipping costs to amazon.es in order to get the fastest delivery money could buy (since a computer without a motherboard is kinda useless). Same product reference, ASIN: B0050GNQAK, and again clearly indicated as:

Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3, 32 GB, dual, 1066, 1200, 1300, 1333, 1600, 1800, 1866, 2133 MHz, DDR3, 1.5 V, Intel (rev. 1.3)

But 2 days later I got yet another 1.0 - check the label label right below Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 where it says Intel Z68 / rev 1.0, only with a different serial number.

The best thing is that both bills reference the very same item, ex on amazon.fr bill:

And on amazon.es bill:

So they both agree ASIN: B0050GNQAK is revision 1.3, but they believe I’m only worth of version 1.0

Which of Gibabyte or Amazon is trying to unload the remaining stocks and screw the consumer, trying to sell an old revision which won’t be able to support pci-express 3.0 that the brand new and expansive revision 1.3 will???

I spent almost an hour with Amazon customer service on the phone. They just couldn’t give a hand and at a time, after putting me on hold, almost insinuated that it was my mistake.

That’s adding insult to the injury! They even suggested I get in touch with Gigabyte instead. Yeah right, you screw up and it’s up to the customer to try and get the right item sent to him - especially at this time of the year. And on top of that, I was asked to pay for return shipping cost for what Amazon.es second mistake!

Sorry, but there is no way that’s going to happen. At this point, I have to put the story online and strongly advise customers trying to get a Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 from Amazon to get in a written statement that they will be sold revision 1.3 - or every better, forget Amazon and Gigabyte and take they business elsewhere - say Newegg and Asus.

PS : Something fishy is going on there. The french website now has no mention of revision 1.3 (!!) Only the confirmation email I have kept mentions a “Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3 C” (the 3rd letter of the alphabet - is it supposed to mean a C?) so I got a screenshot of the amazon.es website while it is still showing that ASIN: B0050GNQAK is indeed rev 1.3 :

Guys, please take additional screenshot. I really feel like I’m getting screwed here.

It’s not just a matter of almost 300 Eur now (ie circa $400). That’s just plain wrong to try to screw up people at Xmas time.

OSX : stuck on a blue screen

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:54:55 -0400

At the moment, stuck on the blue screen before the login windows, I am trying various solutions found online.

Maybe it will work for you, in single user mode :

/sbin/mount -uw /

cd /Library/Preferences

rm com.apple.loginwindow.plist

rm com.apple.windowserver.plist

cd /Library/Caches

rm -r *

cd /System/Library/SystemConfiguration

rm -r ApplicationEnhancer.bundle

cd /System/Library/Caches

rm -r *

reboot