By default CentOS 6 will not configure network interfaces on a new installation which means the host will have no network connectivity, we can correct this inconvenience with little effort. Of course this means the user(you) is left with the decision to configure the network interface(s) with either a static or dynamically assigned IP addresses.

First of all we need to see the contents of the ifcfg-eth0 file.

cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=”eth0”
HWADDR=”MAC Address”
NM_CONTROLLED=”yes”
ONBOT=”no”

The output above indicates eth0 is disabled, this is when you either opt to set a static IP or dynamically assigned IP.

With the text editor of your choice open the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and edit as indicated below.

vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DHCP Configuration

DEVICE="eth0"
HWADDR=MAC Address*System MAC*
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="dhcp"

• DEVICE=”eth0″ – Name of Network Interface.
• HWADDR=MAC Address*System MAC* – MAC address of Network Interface.
• NM_CONTROLLED=”no” – Network Manager should disable since it’s unnecessary in this configuration.
• ONBOOT=”yes” – – Means the NIC will be started during boot.
• BOOTPROTO=”dhcp” – Instructions the OS to find a DHCP server from which to obtain an IP address. The DHCP server will assign all necessary network information including IP address, Netmask, Gateway and DNS server.

Restart the network service.

/etc/init.d/network restart

or

service network restart

Static Configuration

DEVICE="eth0"
HWADDR=MAC Address*System MAC*
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="static"
IPADDR=192.168.x.x.
NETMASK=255.255.255.0.

• DEVICE=”eth0″ – Name of Network Interface.
• HWADDR=MAC Address*System MAC* – MAC address of Network Interface.
• NM_CONTROLLED=”no” – Network Manager shoudl be disable since it’s unnecessary in this configuration.
• ONBOOT=”yes” – Means the NIC will be started during boot.
• BOOTPROTO=”static” – IP configuration will be static.
• IPADDR=192.168.x.x – System IP address.
• NETMASK=255.255.255.0 – Network Mask.

Gateway Configuration

*DHCP Users should ignore this step.

In order to add a Gateway to our system we need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network.

In order to add the network gateway edit /etc/sysconfig/network and add GATEWAY=192.168.x.x.

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
GATEWAY=192.168.111.1

DNS Configuration

*DHCP Users should ignore this step.

Now we add the DNS server(s) for our host. Edit /etc/resolv.conf and add nameserver 192.168.x.x.

nameserver 192.168.111.1

Restart the network service. This will make sure the changes take effect.

/etc/init.d/network restart

or

service network restart

This post assumes 7-Zip is already installed.

Benefits:

• Did I say no cost, 7-Zip is free.
• File sharing sites that impose limits on the size of the files users can upload.
• Areas where poor Internet connectivity are common.
• For example, a 1GB file is split into 4 x 250MB files. In the event of an interruption it would takes less time to restart a failed 250MB download than it would be for 1GB download.
• Better chance of downloading files without the risk of corruption.
• Compression or no compression can be specified.

Downside:

• Some people might not understand the 7-Zip File Manager interface at first.

Some files are not worth compressing since they are already compress like in the case of media files, text files on the other hand should definetely be compressed.

When manually entering the the size of the resulting split place the “M” after the number.

File Splitting

7-Zip File Manager can be easily accessed from the Context Menu by right clicking on the file you wish to work with. Click on Add to archive….

For testing purposes I make use of 10GB file, I could go with the default split options but I rather specify my own size. In the Split to volume, bytes: box I entered 500M which means the 10GB file with be split in to 21 x 500MB. And click on OK.

Depending on the type of compression selected(or none) the process may take a considerable amount of time.

The result is one 10GB file split in to 21 Files.

File Restore

Restoring the split files in to its original format is straight forward. Select all files and click on 7-Zip > Extract files…

You can either change the path where the resulting file will extracted to or go with the defaults, when done click on OK.

Depending on the size of the file be prepared to wait for the file to be decompressed and put back together.

Hopefully, this tutorial will proved useful. Leave a comment if necessary just understand that it may take some time before I can answer.

Save your self the regret and buy the right tools for the job. If you are planning to pry open an enclosure then I recommend you spend the extra money and buy your self a Spudger. Don’t be cheap and try to use a flat-head screw driver otherwise you might damage the plastic.

Just in case any one wonders why would I buy a spudger for, my little sister asked me to see what was wrong with her Sony PSP(games would not load). Turns out the UMD drive is to blame, in certain situations the UMD Drive can become damaged when dropped.

Now, I am just waiting the replacement UMD drive I bought from China to arrive. Despite being in hands of an 8 year old and after three years of service the PSP has no cosmetic damage and until this moment this is the only major problem. BTW: I bought the Spudger from Amazon.

Added some pictures for you enjoyment.

• Via C3
• Windows Server 2003
• 512MB of RAM
• 2TB Storage / 1TB Usable

It’s not the hardware that I find to be the problem, but the lack of expansion that’s holding me back. If you look at the picture below you can see the board currently in my NAS. For starters I am limited to a single 10/100 onboard NIC, there is no option to upgrade to SATA only IDE, while there is one PCI slot available its currently occupied by a PCI SATA controller meaning its not possible to upgrade to gigabit speeds.

CPU:

While the onboard VIA C3 CPU is no monster its certainly capable of handling most tasks: File server, web server. But there is one service I don’t even want to try and run with the current limitations, SCSI Target. Since I would not be making of a TOE NIC for the iSCSI traffic, all calculations would have to be performed in CPU which would take a toll on performance and nothing good would come out of it. Although I thought about running software RAID I opted not to because of the possible added load on the CPU.

STORAGE:

Another serious limitation is storage capacity, because of its age the board lacks SATA ports leaving me with IDE as the default option, good luck trying to find a 1TB IDE hard drive. The only possible expansion came from the PCI slot in which I installed a PCI SATA controller and connected two 1TB SATA drives, only 1TB is usable because the second drive contains a copy of the first.

RAM:

Currently running with 512MB, but can be upgraded to 1GB. I don’t see the point of upgrading.

Networking:

The board comes with a 10/100 NIC, the only expansion port is being used by the PCI SATA controller. Its either a 10/100/1000 NIC or a PCI SATA controller.

I thought of using an external USB drives or an eSATA enclosure but that would have been a temporary measure. Instead I’ve started to look for a replacement solution something that is capable, with the possibility for future expansion and with enough resources to run iSCSI, SMB, RAID, SSH for tunneling, and expansion slots.

• Either an Intel or AMD CPU
• At least 1GB of RAM
• At least 4 drives
• Gigabit NIC
• PCI-E would be nice

At the moment there are two front runners one is a semi-complete solution: QNAP TS-410 ($450.00) and the HP Micro Server ($350.00) which would require me to once again provide the OS among other things.

I like the convenience of QNAP and the favorable reviews on what appears to be a solid product that comes with many useful features like iSCSI, HTTP server, SMB. But the nerd in me calls out for the HP Micro Server.

MBR = Master Boot Record

This tutorial uses a Live CD which includes the utility know as dd with can be used to copy entire drives or just sections of it.

First of all you should boot in to your Linux environment and mount a second drive where we can store the MBR backup.

Do not save the backup file in the same drive from which you are making the backup.

Create a directory.

mkdir mountusb

Use the ls command to identify the second drive. In my case I have a SATA drive and a USB drive, the SATA drive is always assigned the first letter of the alphabet in this case it’s named sda and the USB drive was assigned the name sdb.

root@PartedMagic:~# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sdb  /dev/sdb1

You can’t mount the drive itself, instead you have to mount partitions. In this case I will be mounting a USB drive which is where I will be storing the MBR backup, remember to mount the partition not the drive.

mount /dev/sdb1 mountusb

And now we back up the MBR aka the first 512 bytes.

dd if=/dev/sda count=1 bs=512 > mountusb/sda.mbr

• mountusb - Is the previously created directory
• sda.mbr - Represents the actual backup

Restoring the MBR follows similar steps, you first need to mount the drive where the MBR was backup to and use the dd command to restore the backup to the desired drive.

dd if=mountusb/sda.mbr of=/dev/sda

Now that you know how to backup the MBR go ahead and start playing with multiple operating system, if at a latter time you decided to remove them you can always revert to the original MBR with a single command. Thanks for reading.

Recommended hardware is similar to what you should already using with either Vista or Windows 7:

1. 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
2. 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
3. 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
4. DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
5. Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch

Use the following links to download the version you find adequate:

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64) 4.8GB
SHA-1 Hash: 6FE9352FB59F6D0789AF35D1001BD4E4E81E42AF
Download

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64) 3.6GB
Sha 1 hash – 6FE9352FB59F6D0789AF35D1001BD4E4E81E42AF
Download

Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit (x86) 2.8GB
SHA-1 Hash: 4E0698BBABE01ED27582C9FC16AD21C4422913CC
Download

Don’t forget to watch the Microsoft preview of Windows Server 8 @ 9am Pacific time, Sept. 14.

In this post I will describe the necessary steps to replace the default text editor WinSCP uses whenever a file is opened, instead of executing the default text editor the replacement editor will be executed. Although this tutorial uses Intype as the third party text editor of choice you can substitute for the text editor of your choice.

Start WinSCP and make sure the Advanced options check box is checked.

Click on Preferences.

Once again click on the Preferences… box.

Click on Editors.

Click on the Add … box.

Select External editor: and Browse… to the path where the replecement text editor resides in the case of Intype the path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Intype\intype.exe.

WinSCP will format the path for you!. Click on OK to save the changes.

In my case the text editor was recognized as Intype, click on it to highlight it. Click on the Up button till the new text editor is at the top making it the default choice.

Click on the OK button to save.

From now on whenever you edit a file WinSCP will execute the replacement text editor instead of the bundled one.

Feel free to leave comments below.

While is not the end of the world, the changes do make it annoying if you have to download multiple files from a network share. This is what I have to put up with every time I have to download a file:

The Solution

Fortunately, the fix is an easy one, and it only requires adding the IP address of the network share as a trusted one.

Start by going to the Control Panel.

And click on Internet Options.

In the Internet Properties window select Local intranet.

Click on Sites.

And in the Advanced button.

Enter the IP address of your NAS or network server and click on Add.

Click on OK.

One last time click on OK.

From now on the network share will not be treated as an untrusted source and you will not be presented with the warning any more. However, if you add another network share with a different IP address you will need to follow the same steps all over again.

Links:

The chart below should help explain the new vRAM increases to the licensing model:

My Take

It’s always great to see a company take action when customers express disapproval of their actions. Users of the free VMware free Hypervisor will be specially happy after the new changes.

Now we can get back to running the Matrix on ESXi.

For more information visit the link below:

Changes to the vRAM licensing model introduced on July 12, 2011

shutdown /s /t 3600

Brief explanation of the command above:

/s – Shutdown the computer.
/t – Set the time-out before shutdown to xxx seconds.

60 seconds X 60 minutes = 3600

After the command is entered you should see an alert similar to the one below.

To cancel the shutdown all you have to do is enter the /a parameter after the shutdown command.

Now know your way around the Shutdown command, then let me tell you about the GUI. Although the Shutdown command is easy to follow you can make use of its optional graphical user interface by using the /i parameter.

shutdown /i

If you want to learn more about other options that can be used in conjunction with the Shutdown command type.

shutdown ?

To display a complete list.

Keep this command in mind I’ve come to appreciate its usefulness.

Links:

More info about the shutdown command