Disable Fritzbox Provider Services

This weekend went my Internet (VDLS) down. The DSL part was still up, but the IPv4 connectivity (over PPPoE) was down. When I checked the Fritzbox (7340) I saw that the DLS had 'trained' on ~100Mbps down and ~30Mbps up. Connection speeds I could only dream of......

Trying to re-establish the IPv4 connection I restarted the DSL modem. Upon reboot, it trained on about 70Mbps download and 30Mbps upload, and the PPPoE tunnel for IPv4 established nicely..... for about 5 minutes.

It turned out that the DSL connection tried to get a better connection, and got it. So starting off at 70Mbps, it could establish a 74Mbps a couple of seconds later, and 75Mbps a bit later after that, and so on, and so on. During this time the PPPoE connection worked like a charm. Until the DSL reached the magical 100Mbps rate. That's when the PPPoE (and the actual IPv4 connection to the Internet) failed.

Upgrading Splunk on Ubuntu Linux

Just a small post with the instructions on upgrading Splunk on Ubuntu Linux.

First download the Splunk update. The Splunk website also gives you the wget command, which you can use directly on the Linux commandline.

Upgrading to OSX Snow Leopard

I tried to upgrade to OSX Snow Leopard today. 'Tried' is the keyword here. It seems though that the current installment of OSX (Leopard) is installed on a file system supposedly UNSUPPORTED by Apple OSX Snow Leopard.

NOTE: I have no way of knowing if the release I have is the final 'Gold Master'. So it could be that my findings are irrelevant for the actual (official) Snow Leopard OS.
I will however verify my findings when I have the actual 'Gold Master' in my possession.

When you run the installer from the OS (or by booting from the DVD) I get a error message saying that I need a GUID Partitione Table disk to install the new OS on. Somehow I use a different (and unsupported) partition scheme. And I thought that I selected all the best options during the clean install a while back......

There's no way of converting (using Disk Utility and/or Terminal commands) this to the appropriate settings without formatting your hard drive. So a normal upgrade is out of the question for me (or so it seems). And for many others I guess, since I won't be the only one with the 'wrong' partition table setup.

Wordpress Upgrade 'Fail'

Wordpress 2.8.2 fixes a XSS vulnerability introduced in v2.8.1. Since I don't want to be vulnerable, I did the automatic upgrade from within the admin panel.

The proces, which worked so far since v2.7, hung after approximately 30 seconds. After that the only responds I got was:

"Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute."

It took about 10 minutes to start feeling a bit uncomfortably. The upgrade failed somewhere along the line. At least so it seemed. Searching Google I found this link. It seems that removing the .maintenance file in the Wordpress blog root removes the message and should (re)start the upgrade automatically.

Guess what? It did. So kudos to the developpers for creating failsaves in the upgrade engine.

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Personal, Website, WordPress and tagged WordPress fail upgrade.

PGP Desktop Updates

I've been a PGP user for quite a while now. A couple of years ago I bought the software (before that I used the free PGP versions). My original license was for version 8.x. Every once in a while that would be a message indicating that there was a new version available.

The last couple of months there were no new messages, and when I checked for updates from the application the default message was "you're running the latest version".

But according to the PGP website there were newer versions (9.8, 9.9). So I 'registered' for an evaluation version and installed that over my existing 9.7 version.
After the reboot everything worked. My (old existing) license is still valid. So why is PGP not telling that there's an upgrade available?

I guess the fun will end with the release of version 10.
B.t.w. I still find it frustrating that they removed the SIGN and ENCRYPT buttons/functionality from within Apple Mail.app. I don't want to sign all my outgoing mail (which happens when you configure the mail proxy settings). I want to be in total control :)

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Willem and filed under Security, Software and tagged License PGP upgrade.

Upgrading is Getting Easier

Normally I would be planning a Wordpress update/upgrade, because I have made several changes to some core files. Just to make life a little easier (mostly mail related).
But this time, I had about ten minutes to spare, and 'what the heck.., why not upgrade this minute?'.

Well 3 minutes later everything was up and running again (I even upgraded PHP to a more recent version in the same timeframe). Either I'm getting better at this, or upgrading has been made much easier :)

UPDATE: there's also 'some' improvement on catching commentspam. Before the upgrade I had about 20-30 comment/trackback spams in my Aksimet queue. But since the update the queue remains empty :-)

Posted on July 19, 2008 by Willem and filed under Personal, Website, WordPress and tagged WordPress easy php upgrade.

Wordpress v2.5 Upgrade

Today, I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. The upgrade proces was easy as usual. Before the upgrade I checked all the plugins used, and upgraded those first. The new features / layout of the adminpages are great. Also the new editor works like a charm (even on Safari). Somehow it feels a bit more intuitive.

Only downside is that the Wordpress Stats on the dashboard won't work in FireFox. It works fine in Safari. Instead of showing the graph in FireFox it shows the actual dasboard page from wordpress.com.

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Willem and filed under Website, WordPress and tagged Website WordPress upgrade.

Nokia E61i Firmware Update - update

It's been a couple of days since my firmware update, so it's time for a small update on the subject.

The biggest advantage is that the mail client is very stable. I use (secure) IMAP and I have 3 mailboxes configured on the device. The mail client hasn't crashed yet.

The biggest downside (in my opinion) is that the 3G connection drops automatically, so you need to re-establish the connection every time. Sure, it saves bandwidth (and costs), but it's annoying that you actively have to monitor your e-mail.

Thankfully, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, so I'm still happy with the Nokia E61i.

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Willem and filed under Personal, Symbian and tagged Nokia E61 e61i firmware nokia upgrade.