What the.....?

Chris' Better Jam Cams

2012-01-30T18:52:00.000Z

No one likes to get stuck in a traffic jam. Much less one that could be avoided. Even more annoying is the 'jam out of the blue' on what is usually a clear piece of road...

Short of pulling an 'Italian Job 1969' (original and best!!) and driving through shopping arcades, up on roofs, across weirs etc what can you do to avoid such jams?

Luckily we can spot traffic issues for ourselves from the comfort of our own homes using the excellent UK Highways Agency / BBC Jam Cameras site.

That said however, there is just one slight annoyance with this site; namely you can only view one camera at a time.

This is where Chris' Jam Cams page comes in! OH YES!

An all in one dashboard showing all the Jam Cams you are interested in, plus a frame detailing traffic conditions in your area. Whats more, you too can follow what I've done here and create your very own Jam Cams page. Dead easy.

So how is it done? It is really quite easy. What follows looks a minefield but it isn't all that complex. I promise.

The golden rule here is SIMPLICITY: I want to be able to do all of this using just one html file. Whilst I am positive that there are cleverer ways of achieving the same results, I'm purely after something dead simple to write, understand and maintain as and when required (in other words, please don't laugh at my html code!!)

Grab Your Copy
First step, grab a copy of Chris' Jam Cams from Github:

Chris' Jam Cams - Original. Should work in any browser on any platform
Chris' Jam Cams Mobile - Includes a couple of layout tweaks to make it easier for mobile viewing

Cut and paste a copy into a text editor of your choice. (Notepad on Windows is just fine).

Traffic Images
First step is to define your images. Dead simple, just make sure each image has a unique id. For example, I've used the motorway and junction number. You need one img statement per traffic image.

img border="0" height="261" width="320" src="#" id="M20J7" alt="M20 J7"

Now for the picture handling. Load up the BBC Travel News page and select the area you are interested in.

Next, click on the "Traffic Jam Cameras" button, just above the map.

Lastly find a motorway junction camera that you are interested in right-click the link and choose "Copy Link Location" (firefox) or "Copy Shortcut" (IE). Open a text editor (eg notepad) and paste the text in.

You should have a piece of text that looks something like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/kent/trafficcameras/highwaysagency
/16588?epoch=1234567890&enabled=1&asset=16588.jpg

From this you are only interested in two pieces of information:

The region (kent in the example above)
The camera asset number (16588 in the example above)

Enter the region and camera asset number into the 'document.getElementById' statement towards the bottom of the Jam Cams html page (I suggest copying, pasting and editing the example given in the github file):

script type="text/javascript"
var d1 = new Date(); 
var eptime = parseInt(d1.getTime()/1000);

document.getElementById('M20J7').src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews
/kent/trafficcameras/highwaysagency/16588/image?epoch="+eptime+
"&enabled=1&cachebuster="+eptime;

document.write("Page Last Refreshed: "+d1);
/script

Lastly update the img id to match the id you chose earlier ('M20J7' in the example above).
Save your Jam Cams page and test.

Traffic News
The travel news is pulled from BBC mobile site using a simple iframe:

iframe height=750 width=600 align=right src="http://www.bbc.co.uk
/mobile/travelnews/search/process/page/1/filter/road/q/kent"

Replace 'Kent' in the src tag as required. (Suggest using the Traffic Images region found above)

Jam Cams Mobile
As mentioned above, this file is a slightly tweaked version of Chris Jam Cams.htm that hopefully renders slightly better on smaller screens. Update with your own Jam Cams in the same as the non-mobile version:

DO NOT USE THIS WHILST DRIVING!
(Goes without saying really)

Job done. I usually save the htm file on my desktop.

Jam Cam images copyright? OK:

Highways Agency Traffic Cameras Standard Terms and Conditions
Reproduction for Private Use
The traffic images are Crown Copyright protected and may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium as long as it is for non-commercial research, private study - subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context.

No problems there then.

As I say, The golden rule here is SIMPLICITY: all done using just one html file.

Enjoy.

- Chris

Access VM Consoles From Linux

2012-01-23T12:52:00.000Z

So you want to access the consoles of your VMware virtual machines, yet your chosen administration client is running Linux?

No problem.

Sure VMware provide the vSphere 5 Web Client, that can be used from a Linux client (or Mac or whatever) however to use this you have to install the vSphere 5 Web Client Server on your Virtual Center server in order to be able to use the client.

Not all vSphere implementations need or run a Virtual Center server - let alone a dedicated web client server.

Here is how is how to access your VMware VM consoles from a Linux client using the VMware Remote Console Plug-in application, and how to create a launcher so the application runs happily, even under Gnome 3.

In your home folder create a new folder called vmware and navigate to it:

mkdir ~/vmware
cd ~/vmware

Grab the VMware remote client from here: vmware-vmrc-linux-x86 (21.3Mb, from my dropbox account) [see below for alternatives] and download it into the vmware created above.
Extract the downloaded zip. Use the following command:

unzip vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.zip

Navigate to the plugins folder created by unziping the downloaded file:

cd plugins

Create and edit a new file called vmware-vmrc2. Use the following command:

gedit vmware-vmrc2

Paste the following into vmware-vmrc2 and change the $PATH_TO_VMRC variable (currently "/home/chris/vmware/plugins") so it points to the folder plugins you've extracted earlier:

#!/bin/bash

# Please define this variable with the path to the plugins folder
PATH_TO_VMRC="/home/chris/vmware/plugins"

export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes
cd $PATH_TO_VMRC
./vmware-vmrc > /dev/null 2>&1 &
cd - > /dev/null 2>&1

Change the text highlighted in blue to match the location of your vmware folder created in step 1.

Save and close the file and then change it to be executable:

sudo chmod +x vmware-vmrc2

Launch the VMware remote client using the following command:

./vmware-vmrc2

You should be presented with the following (after accepting any security prompts):

Enter the details of your VMware ESX / ESXi server and hit connect.

Job done!

I especially like the VM menu the client provides upon successful connection. Something like this:

Pick a VM and go for it:

Grab your own install
Alternatively if you do have access to a Virtual Center server, you can grab the file from "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\ui\plugin" Also available in this folder are 64bit Linux and Windows versions of the remote client.

The file linked to in the process above is a v3.0.0 build-418557 client with the extension renamed from .xpi to .zip to stop Firefox trying to install rather than download. As .xpi files are .zip files in disguise, the process above will remain the same.

If you don't have access to a Virtual Center server and you don't want to use the client linked to above, a third place to grab the client is here: https://github.com/vmware/rvc/downloads

Thanks should goto Joel Bastos for this workaround, originally posted here

- Chris

Disable IE Enhanced Security

2012-01-19T12:38:00.001Z

Another one to file in the "Yes, done that before, but I can't remember how" pile. Probably because it is so easy to do has some bearing on not being able to remember how... Anyway, here is how to disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (aka IE ESC) on Windows 2003 and 2008 Servers.

Yes I know, IE ESC is a security feature there to protect the user and it should never be disabled etc etc etc. However most of the time it is 'a right royal PITA'. So here goes then.

Windows 2003
Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components:

Disable or enable as you please.

Windows 2008 / Windows 2008R2
Run the following:

servermanager.msc

Check current status and / or make the required changes here:

On clicking Configure IE ESC:

Disable or enable as you please.

So there you have it. One less pain to deal with.

- Chris

Build it Again

2012-01-16T09:41:00.000Z

Lego.

Hate it when stepping barefoot on a stray piece left hanging around or love it for keeping the kids quiet for hours... and hours.

What other toy gives you the freedom to design and build absolutely anything your heart desires?

Car? No problem. Aeroplane? No problem. Rocket to the moon? No problem. Luna delta spaceship? Again, no problem.

Until a couple of years ago, a box of my childhood Lego resided in the attic, unplayed with but by no means forgotten. I prefer to think of it "on hiatus", to be played with again at some point in the future. That is until one day I retrieved it from the attic and introduced my youngest son to the world of Lego. Could he be trusted? Would it all disappear up the vacuum cleaner?

At the time I remember him almost saying, "hmm what is this pile of blocks for? Where do the batteries go? What you mean you have to build something?"

Of course after buying him some new sets and helping him build those he got the idea. The big box of Lego from the attic were suddenly additional cars / houses / spaceships / whatever just waiting to be built.

So here we are a couple of years later and he is well onto Lego Techninc, and we are both still having a great time our Lego building. For example, last weekend we spent just over 6 (yes SIX) hours* building this:

Here is it in full animated glory. Winch, motorised tilting / lowering flatbed and wheel lift:

During the build the question "Daddy do you still have the instructions for any of your Lego?" was asked. Unfortunately no I didn't... not any more. I used to have build instuctions for houses, cars, trucks and space Lego - lots of space Lego (very popular in the 1980's!)

I still have the parts, but the knowledge to rebuild has long since passed.

Of course, me being me; some days later being presented with a empty Google search box (other search engines are available) and having forgotten what I was originally going to look for, I punched in "Lego instructions". I was amazed when the results came back.

It turns out there are several simply excellent Lego instruction library sites out there, providing scanned instruction manuals for download. That was it. An hour spent in the quest to find all those long lost build instructions for as much of my Lego from the attic as I could.

By way of saying thank you to some of those library sites, here is a (by no means an exhaustive or ordered) list of the sites that have provided the Lego instructions from my childhood so that my sons may also enjoy building my Lego again:

Worldbricks.com - PDF downloadable instructions. Sometimes a bit slow, but well worth the wait.
Letsbuilditagain.com - Online instructions. Find your set and hit the blue arrow to view the instructions.
Brickfactory.info - Online instructions. More of a basic site, however still plenty there!
Brickset.com - No instructions, however good listing of newer sets, links to purchase sets on ebay and set barcodes (scan with Android barcode scanner to get best prices? ;))
Official Lego Site (direct link to instructions portal) - PDF downloadable instructions. Of course, no list would be complete without mentioning this site!
Official Lego Technic Site (direct link to instructions portal) - PDF downloadable instructions. As above, except for Lego Technic

If you don't own any Lego sets with perhaps some of the more specific pieces, then no need to worry. These sites are still a great source of inspiration. Look for the 1960 / 1970 / early 1980's instructions. Some, if not most, of the realy early sets are made up of the more standard square brick variety meaning that anyone should be able to build them using whatever parts they have.

That should keep your little ones quiet for a while. Perhaps you too. Welcome to the world of Lego.... again!

- Chris

*6 hours to build a flatbed truck? Have a look at the three instruction booklets for yourself!

Sky HD: Highlight HD Programmes

2012-01-11T00:05:00.001Z

So you have got a High Definition Television. You have also taken the plunge and gone for a Sky HD box (other HD solutions are available). You have even connected the two together using a propper HDMI cable and you have configured the two to use HD across the board.

So you sit down to watch some nice HD TV.

You spot your chosen TV channel's little 'HD' logo in the top corner, so you know that you are watching a HD channel.

Final question; how do you know that the TV programme you are watching on your nice HD setup was actually filmed in HD? Sure you could confirm by simply looking at the picture* but can you be 100% sure every time that the TV station isn't simply upscaling a standard definition programme?

If you are a Sky HD customer, then the fix is simple. Configure your HD box to highlight programmes originating in HD in the TV Guide, like this:

Here is how to configure your Sky HD box to do the same. All actions are done via the remote control.

1. Whilst watching Sky HD, press Services button:

2. Press Blue down navigation button, to highlight centre bar.

3. Press Blue right navigation button to scroll to the CUSTOMISE option:

4. Press Blue down navigation button, to select Highlight Programmes Originated in HD option.

5. Press Blue right navigation button to enable the option (set it to ON):

6. Press Green button to save changes.

7. Press Backup button to exit.

Job done. Now you know that you are watching HD!

*Re spotting a HD picture: Hmm OK, how do I put this politely?
Here goes: In my very limited experience, through a very small straw pole of asking friends etc, I have noticed that female of the human species rarely notices (or even cares?) that they are watching a TV show in HD.

Just stating what I have noticed, nothing more! Please don't shoot the messenger!

Perhaps this article from 2006 helps to redress the balance: Why Women Don't Care About HDTV?

- Chris

New and Improved What The Mark IV!

2012-01-09T09:21:00.001Z

Happy new year. No your eyes do no deceive you, it is all change on the only blog that counts (TM). Now it counts even more!!!

Hopefully you'll find the new site easier to navigate and find your favorite content.

As with all changes of this type, I'm sure are still some bugs to work out, so stay tuned and we will get this 'Cosworth powered Mini of a blog' up and running smoothly in no time.

Stay tuned and as always, have fun.

- Chris

Raspberry Pi - A £16 Linux PC!

2011-12-24T00:45:00.003Z

A credit card sized computer being developed by a UK based charitable foundation that is hoped will promote the education of computer science at school level and beyond.

The idea is simple - develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children.

That said, the computer can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC is, like spreadsheets, word-processing, games and high-definition video playback.

The name of this computer is the Raspberry PI:

OK, so what is the idea here? What are they trying to achieve? Games developer David Braben explains to BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones, holding an early alpha model, back in May 2011:

Here is a basic layout, detailing the features on board:

As can be seen from the above, the RasPi will be shipped in two variants:

Model A = 128MB RAM on board, no Ethernet = $25 / £16
Model B = 256MB RAM on board, 10/100 UTP Ethernet port = $35 / £22

So what do you get for your money? Well, quite a lot actually:

700MHz ARM11 Processor - The same processor as found in many mobile phones (including my ZTE Blade!)
1080p full HD video output - via HDMI connector
Composite connector - for direct connection to a TV
Dual USB2 ports - for keyboard, mouse, etc
SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot - for operating system etc etc

Talking of operating systems, it is envisaged that Debian Linux, Fedora Linux and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. Other Linux distributions maybe supported later.

So what does it run like? Have a watch for yourself:

Not to shabby at all!

As a father of an 11 year old son who is nuts on anything computer related (wonder where he gets that from? hehehe) I can certainly expect to see at least one of these winging their way to Kent!

What's even better is that there are already RasPi based coding tutorials on youtube, such as Liam Frasier's Raspberry Pi Tutorials channel.

So when is it going to be available? By the looks of it very soon. At the time of writing this (24 Dec 2011), the beta boards are currently undergoing testing and with all going well, the first first production run will be early in 2012.

Keep an eye on the Raspberry Pi Blog and on the official Raspberry PI Twitter feed for updates.

Excellent stuff!

- Chris

vSphere VM Clone Problems + Fixes

2011-12-19T13:31:00.000Z

Just recently a colleague of mine had some fun and games completing what should have been a simple clone of Windows 2008 R2 64bit VMware virtual machine.

We managed to get to the bottom of the issues and get the clones completed, so for future info and help of others here are the issues and resolutions to those issues encountered.

autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK and STOP: c000021a BSOD

Clone VM created successfully, however upon first boot of the VM, the following were seen:

According to VMware KB Article 2004505 this is caused by the entry:

disk.EnableUUID = "TRUE"

in the source VM's virtual machine configuration (vmx) file. Download, edit and upload the vmx with the following setting:

disk.EnableUUID = "FALSE"

See the VMware KB article for further details around editing virtual machine vmx files.

Windows could not finish configuring the system...

Again, clone VM created successfully, however upon first boot of the VM, the following was seen:

According to the Microsoft KB Article KB981542 this issue occurs if the original operating system contains a registry key that is larger than 8 kilobytes (KB).

The resolution being to install a patch on the source VM.

Unfortunately the patch is not available on the MS website, however it is available here:

32bit Windows 2008R2 / Windows 7 = Windows6.1-KB981542-x86.msu
64bit Windows 2008R2 / Windows 7 = Windows6.1-KB981542-x64.msu

After overcoming both those issues, the VM clones completed and booted successfully and what should have been a quick and easy job was done.

Thanks should go to Alan for highlighting the issues and persevering with the fixes.... both of them!

- Chris

Find HBA WWNs from ESXi Console

2011-12-15T10:35:00.000Z

A question this comes up quite a bit: How can I find the World Wide Names (WWNs) of the fibre channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) my ESXi server from the console?

Sure you can use the VMware VI client to gather the required info, but what happens if you do not or have network connectivity to your ESXi yet?

The WWN information is very often needed to for the zoning configuration on the fibre channel switches to ensure that the ESXi server can only access the Storage Array Network (SAN) disks it is supposed to access.

Here is how to find the HBA WWNs:

First log on to your ESXi console:

Now select Troubleshooting Options:

Then select Enable Local Tech Support:

Now press ALT F1 to enter local ESXi console:

At the # prompt enter: cd /proc/scsi and ls to list the SCSI adaptors fitted in your ESXi:

You are looking for qlaxxxx for QLogic HBAs or lpfc for Emulex HBAs. As you can see from the screenshots, my ESXi has QLogic adapters fitted (qla2xxx).

Next, cd qla2xxx (or cd lpfc for emulex) and then list (ls) adaptors:

As you can see I have adaptors fitted at 5 and 6. Your numbers may (and quite likely will) be different. The last step is to list each of the adaptors found, using the cat x |more ("x" being one of the numbers listed) command:

You are looking for the Host Device Name and the SCSI Device Information:

OK. To get the full WWN address, simply note down the node and port hex ID's from the SCSI Device Information, and separate each pair with colons ":" to make your full HBA WWN. In my case, from the screenshots above, my HBA WWN would be:

WWN of vmhba2 = 20:00:00:1b:32:8a:f3:42 21:00:00:1b:32:8a:f3:42

Repeat for the last command (cat x |more) for all the other HBA's in your ESXi (so in my case I would run the command cat 6 |more to find the SCSI device information for my other HBA.

When finished type exit to return to the ESXi tech support console login and ALT F2 to switch back to the standard ESXi console.

Don't forget to login, select Troubleshooting Options and Disable Local Tech Support when completely finished!

- Chris

Beta 1 What The Android Released

2011-11-08T22:53:00.000Z

Yes that's right the What The.....? Android application has just gone Beta!

To mark this momentous occasion (remember developing in Java is completely new to me!), I have given the app it's very own page on this here blog. The page has the reasons for development, links to the change log, source code and (more importantly) the apk file itself.

Use the What The Android link in the links bar above or click here to have a look at the What The Android page.

If you fancy being an early adopter / beta tester, then feel free. Please post any feedback in comments below.

- Chris

VMware vSphere Client Download URL

2011-10-21T17:27:00.003+01:00

Ever since VMware stopped bundling the vSphere client in with ESX / ESXi, try as hard as I can, I can never seem to quickly and easily find the URL to download the flipping thing.

VMware: If you are not going to bundle the client, then at least make it easy to find and download from your website! Alternatively, use a bit of SEO and get the direct download URL as result #1 when searching for "vsphere client download" in Google. Surely it's not that hard is it?!?!

Anyway, sure I can extract it from the the Virtual Centre ISO image (see below for location), but it is not always practicable get a 150MB+ file to someone over email etc.

Being the suspicious type, I'm not interested in sending links to 3rd party file sharing sites either. Who knows what could be included in the client installer? No, if I'm sending anyone a link for them to install vSphere client for themselves, (or installing it for myself) I want to refer DIRECTLY to VMware's website.

So here we go then, a rolling post containing vSphere client download links direct from VMware's website (hover your mouse over the URLs if you don't believe me!)

- VMware vSphere Client v4.1 Update 1 : VMware-viclient-all-4.1.0-345043.exe
- VMware vSphere Client v4.1 Update 2 : VMware-viclient-all-4.1.0-491557.exe
- VMware vSphere Client v5.0 : VMware-viclient-all-5.0.0-455964.exe

Location of vSphere client in vCenter 4.1 ISO:

Nice.

- Chris

Extended Disks Remain Wrong Size

2011-07-27T18:00:00.002+01:00

Whats wrong with this picture?

Spotted it yet?

Yes, that's right. The Data (D:) Properties dialogue does not tie up with the details shown in Disk Management. Disk Management shows the partition as 80GB where as the properties show it as only 10GB in capacity.

Ohh that's clever, how did you do that!? ...well actually it isn't, but luckily enough for us dear reader, it's easy to fix.

How did I got into this predicament? Simple:

Standard Windows 2008 VM, VMware ESXi, 4.1 Update 1

Didn't have enough datastore space during VM build, so built the VM with 10GB D:\ drive. No problems there.

Had some storage added, created new datastore and Storage vMotioned the VM to new datastore, again all pretty standard stuff

Inside the VM, at the Windows 2008 level, I expanded the D:\ drive partition into extended 80Gb disk using Windows Disk Management. Here is where we started having problems.

I received this oh so helpful error message during the partition expansion:

Thats how!

So, why? and - perhaps more importantly - what's this simple fix?

Why? After some extensive Microsoft knowledge base bashing, I found this article:

KB832316 - The partition size is extended, but the file system remains the original size
when you extend an NTFS volume

The stated cause being "This problem occurs because the NTFS driver exhausts its resources when it tries to extend the volume."

The KB also details how to fix. But I'll include the four step fix that worked for me here too:

Open an administrative Command Prompt (Right click "Command Prompt" and select "Run as Administrator") and Run Diskpart

At the DISKPART> prompt, enter list volume

select volume # (where # is the number of the incorrect volume)

extend filesystem

Now the file system size should match the extended partition size:

Job done.

- Chris

ESX Command Line Networking Configuration

2011-05-06T18:00:00.002+01:00

So you’ve built your VMware ESX server and your dead impressed with yourself that you got this far. You leave the datacentre head back to the office safe in the knowledge that the install went well. However once safely back at your desk, oh no! You find that you shiny new ESX install is uncontactable from the network.

We’ve all been there. So here is my guide to configuring ESX networking from the server console post install. No VI client or GUI tools required. Just good solid command-line stuff. Specifically we will be looking at:

Changing IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, Hostname and DNS Server Settings
Linking and Unlinking Physical Network Cards to Virtual Switches and Network Card Teaming
VLAN Tagging
NIC Teaming Policy and Load Balancing

Why? Because there doesn’t appear to be any single place (that I can find at least) where all of the this is detailed. So hold onto you hats, here we go.

Changing IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, DNS Server Settings and Hostname
Happens to us all. Perhaps you just ‘fat fingered’ the IP? Use

[root@server root]# ifconfig |more
[root@server root]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network

to confirm that IP config is indeed wrong

IP Address / Subnet Mask
Run this command to set the IP address:

[root@server root]# esxcfg-vswif -i [a.b.c.d] -n [w.x.y.z] vswif0

Where [a.b.c.d] is the IP address and [w.x.y.z] is the subnet mask and vswif0 is the Service Console adapter that is the interface to which you are applying the IP address change.

Open the /etc/hosts file with nano and modify it so that it reflects the correct IP address and hostname.

Default Gateway
To change the default gateway address and the hostname, edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file and change the GATEWAY and HOSTNAME parameters to the proper values. For the changes to take place, reboot the host or restart the network service with the command:

[root@server root]# service network restart

DNS Server Settings
To change the DNS server settings, update the nameserver IPs and search domain in the /etc/resolv.conf file.

Further reading on Changing IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, DNS Server Settings: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/4309499

Hostname
Change the hostname and domain name (if applicable) of the host in the following files:

/etc/hosts
/etc/sysconfig/network

Execute this command where [hostname] is the new hostname for the ESX host:

[root@server root]# esxcfg-advcfg -s [hostname] /Misc/HostName

Reboot the ESX host
Further reading on Changing ESX Hostname: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010821

Linking and Unlinking Physical Network Cards to Virtual Switches and Network Card Teaming
This is possibly my most used ESX console command. Often used when there has been a cabling mix up or the software installation has detected the physical network adaptors in a different order than anticipated prior to the install. Sure I could just swap cables around, but if physical changes are not possible (i.e.cabling is as documented or moving cables is not allowed) then these commands will help.

First lets look at how the vSwitch is configured post install. Screenshot from a VI Client:

If you were to view the same information at the service console command line we would use the following command to list the virtual switches configured:

[root@server root]# esxcfg-vswitch -l

To connect a physical adaptor to a virtual switch, you need to Link it, using the following command:

[root@server root]# esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1 vSwitch0

Where vmnic1 is the physical network card being connected to the virtual switch vSwitch0.

To disconnect a physical adaptor to a virtual switch, you need to Unlink it, using the following command:

[root@server root]# esxcfg-vswitch -U vmnic1 vSwitch0

Where vmnic1 is the physical network card being disconnected from the virtual switch vSwitch0.

Basic network card teaming is achieved by having two or more physical adaptors connected to the same virtual switch. From the VI Client:

Which in turn looks like this from the console:

Further reading on Linking and Unlinking Physical Network Cards to Virtual Switches: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1000258

VLAN Tagging
Use the following command to assign a VLAN to a console port / port group

[root@server root]# esxcfg-vswitch -v [VLAN] -p “Service Console” vSwitch0

Where [VLANID] is the VLAN number, "Service Console" is the console port / port group name and vSwitch0 is the virtual switch the console port / port group is connected to. A zero [VLANID] here specifies no VLAN.

Further reading on VLAN Tagging: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1000258

NIC Teaming Policy and Load Balancing
First lets look at how the vSwitch load balancing configured post install. Screenshot from a VI Client:

Which in turn looks like this from the console:

To specify the NIC teaming load balancing policy on a vSwitch, run the command:

[root@server root]# vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-policy [policy] vSwitch0"

Where [policy] is one of these NIC teaming policies:

loadbalance_srcid (Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID)
loadbalance_srcmac (Route based on source MAC hash)
loadbalance_ip (Route based on IP hash)
failover_explicit (Use explicit failover order)

For example, to set the NIC teaming policy to route based on IP hash, run the command:

[root@server root]# vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-policy loadbalance_ip vSwitch0"

To confirm the setting, run the command:

[root@server root]# vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_info vSwitch0" | grep policy

Further reading on NIC Teaming Policy and Load Balancing: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1019864

Overview
In this post we looked at how to configure the following, all from the ESX console, no VI client required!

Changing IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, Hostname and DNS Server Settings
Linking and Unlinking Physical Network Cards to Virtual Switches and Network Card Teaming
VLAN Tagging
NIC Teaming Policy and Load Balancing

Next time.... ESXi.

- Chris

Location via Wi-Fi MAC Address

2011-04-28T00:21:00.002+01:00

With all the iPhone tracking claims and counter claims, (see here for details) it appears that Google have been silently collecting and building a publicly accessible Wireless router location database via their Streetview camera cars and virtually all Android devices.

And now you too can interrogate that database to find any wireless router in the world! All you need is the MAC address of the wireless router in question.

Have a look at http://samy.pl/androidmap/

When the phone detects any wireless network, encrypted or otherwise, it sends the BSSID (MAC address) of the router along with signal strength, and most importantly, GPS coordinates up to the mothership. This page allows you to ping that database and find exactly where any wi-fi router in the world is located.

For furter reading on what a MAC address is have a look here

Finding your Wireless Router's MAC Address
Following assumes that you are wirelessly connected to the router you wish to find the MAC address of.

Windows (any current version)
Open a command prompt and enter the following command:

ipconfig

The return should look something like this:

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

Taking the default gateway IP address, plumb it into the following command (obviously you will have numbers rather than y's):

arp -g yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

The return should look something like this:

Internet Address Physical Address
yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy zz-zz-zz-zz-zz-zz

Copy and paste the physical address (again you should have alphanumerics rather than just z's) into http://samy.pl/androidmap/ and hit probe.

Linux
Open a terminal session and enter the following command:

route -n

The return should look something like this:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
0.0.0.0 yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0

Taking the default gateway IP address, plumb it into the following command (again, you will have numbers rather than y's):

arp -vn yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

The return should look something like this:

Address HWtype HWaddress
yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy ether zz:zz:zz:zz:zz:zz

Copy and paste the HWaddress (again you should have alphanumerics rather than just z's) into http://samy.pl/androidmap/ and hit probe.

====

Oh look Google know where you are... again.

Thanks goto @samykamkar for making android map available.

- Chris

Reminder: Win2008R2 SQL Clustering

2011-02-23T09:00:00.002Z

Yet another reminder / quick fire how to post. This time Windows 2008 R2 Clustering ready for a clustered SQL install.

In it's latest guise, Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 clustering is completely different beast from a Windows 2000 or 2003 cluster.

For full details of what's new in 2008 Clustering, have a look at this technet library article.

Pre-Requisites
So you need to build a cluster? OK. Here is what you need:

Some shared storage (SAN / NAS / ISCSI etc) to hold data that is to be hosted by cluster
Small shared storage for Quorum Disk (MS KB208345 states minimum 500Mb for Quorum)
A hostname and IP address for the Cluster
A hostname and IP address for each MSDTC instance
A hostname and IP address for each SQL instance

SQL Cluster will require individual per instance shared storage areas for:

SQL Data
SQL Transaction Logs
SQL Database Backups
MSDTC (Again a minimum of 500Mb should be fine)

How to Configure
A movie tells more than a thousand words. Here is how to create a Windows 2008 / 2008 R2 cluster and how to get around some of the more common problems:

Thanks to eniackb.blogspot.com for putting this together

Getting SQL and 2008 Failover Clustering to Play Together Nicely
The following is taken from this MSDN blog post:

While installing SQL Server 2008 the DBA will face following warning in the installation window:

Receive a warning about the network binding order on the Setup Support Rules page when install SQL Server 2008 in a failover cluster

This is because the domain / production network card is not the first bound network card. This will cause domain operations to run slowly and can cause timeouts that result in failures.

Use the command to enumerate network card GUID's:

wmic nicconfig get description, SettingID > C:\nicconfig.txt

Open C:\nicconfig.txt and regedit to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Linkage\Bind

Cut and paste GUID's so that production network card (or NIC team) is at the to of the list. Save key and confirm binding is correct via ipconfig/all.

Ready for SQL install!

- Chris

The Dot Slash Login Shortcut

2011-02-21T09:00:00.002Z

Consider the above login screen, as seen when you login to either a Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 machine that is joined to an Active Directory.

The question is a simple one: How do I login locally?

That is login using local machine credentials rather than those belonging to an active directory account.

Normally you would enter < Local Computer Name >\< Local Account Name > in the username field.

But isn't that is too much like hard work? What happens if I don't know the local machine name? For example, logging in via a RDP session connected to the computer's IP address, rather than the system's machine name.

Also what happens if you mistype or enter an incorrect computer name? As the "incorrect login" response is exactly the same as that for an incorrect password, you tend to believe that you've simply 'fat-fingered' the password...

OK, enough already, here is the fix. Simply login using the following:

.\< Local Account Name >

Hey presto, you've just saved your fingers from typing the computer name and you have removed all local computer name doubt in the process.

Loverly jubberly - oh yes!

- Chris

Making Good Use of Technology

2011-02-12T12:00:00.000Z

Think of some of the great technological advances of the 20 century, the industrial revolution, the advent of the internet, the desktop computer, the mobile phone and so on.

And here is one great modern use for almost all of that...

FartDroid - the mobile fart machine

Well you didn't think that those advances were going to be put to good use did you???

Screenshots:

Amazing Facts according to Neat-O-Fun, FartDriod's Developer:

FartDroid is the Number 1 Fart App on the Android Market!
FartDroid comes on STRONG with over 30 different Farts to keep your Android phone tootin!
FartDroid has TWO different Interfaces to make sure that you can effectively make your phone fart in a way that makes you comfortable.
Classic Mode is for the power user that NEEDS to have access to ANY and Every Fart at any given moment.
New Mode is for those of you that NEED to fart in style. Classic mode consists of a Big Green Fart Button to make sure you can hit the button with ease.

Oh yes!

I bet you wish you had an Android phone now don't you..... here are the links: FartDroid on AppBrain and FartDroid on Android Market

If you are not yet the cheerful owner of such a device, never fear! You too can enjoy in some flatulent fun, using the:

FartDroid Webapp

Have fun.... oh and grow up!

- Chris

What the....? Anywhere

2011-02-09T17:37:00.000Z

Thats right, What the.....? is now mobile! There's no excuse now for a bit of What the.....? even on the move! Everyone needs a bit of What the.....? in their lives now and again. Now you can What the.....? mobile.

oh yes.

- Chris

Vertigo? Don't Look Down!

2011-02-08T19:00:00.002Z

"Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Have you ever suffered from vertigo without leaving your seat? No? Try this.

Oh and if you are convinced you won't be affected, try watching the following in full screen...

Love the fact you can see the curvature of the earth without leaving the ground...

Watching the above put me in mind of a certain Mr Dibnah:

(No, you hearing isn't going, the sound is a bit duff on this clip)

Fred on reaching the top: "You could ride a bike around here!" Er no thanks Fred, I'll take your word for it!

- Chris

ESX Reminder 2: Patching & USB Errors

2011-02-02T17:16:00.000Z

Continuing my series of quick fire reminders for when (a) I *think* I've seen that issue before and (b) I dont remember what the fix is / was.

Previous post here and possibly here.

Simple Manual ESX or ESXi Patching / Driver updates:

Put host into Maintenance Mode
Install vSphere CLI from here (if not already done)
Open vSphere CLI

vihostupdate.pl --server X.X.X.X --install --bundle update-bundle.zip

Reboot Host (if required)

"URB timed out - USB device may not respond"

Seen on just one out of four identical HP DL580 G7 ESX4.1 builds:

Tried all sorts to fix, unplug KVM, update BIOS, reset default BIOS settings etc etc etc

Resolved via ILO3 update to firmware v1.16 (11 Jan 2011) Download here

- Chris

Remote Control via Web Browser

2011-02-01T22:31:00.002Z

Over the years, I've tried many, many remote administration tools.

For Windows, built in remote desktop is the best choice but you need an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client to connect. For Linux, VNC (RealVNC, UltraVNC, etc) you also need a client – either standalone or a java-based one built into a webpage.

Indeed even the excellent (if I do say so myself!) ChrisControl is makes use of a client; be that an RDP or a VNC client.

In fact, every remote desktop application I’ve tried requires some sort of client or browser plugin – until now.

Enter ThinVNC by SupportSmith / Cybele Software. ThinVNC takes remote administration to a another level.

The “VNC” part of its name a bit of a misnomer – the product does not use the VNC protocol at all. Instead, it operates using modern web standards, namely AJAX, JSON and HTML5.

ThinVNC is composed of a pure HTML5 based client connecting via HTTP or HTTPs to a server component. The web client connects to the listening port and displays the desktop using JSON and JPEG image encoding. The communication is authenticated and the connection can be made through HTTP or HTTPS.

The upshot being that the remote computer can be accessed from any OS platform through any HTML5 compliant browser like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.

ThinVNC is free for non-commercial use, and supports installation on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win 7/Windows Server 2008.

Installation on the system to be remotely controlled is a breeze:

Download the latest ThinVNC setup (not the remote access server - thats a slightly different product!) and run the installation on your PC to be remotely controlled.
Launch ThinVNC, change the password (default username and password are admin) set the authentication type and the listening ports for HTTP and HTTPs. Make a note of this computer's hostname or IP Address.

Launch a browser on another PC and connect to http://hostname-or-ip-address:port/ or https://hostname-or-ip-address:port/

Hey Preso! Controlling a Windows XP system via Ubuntu Firefox - no client or browser plugin required!:

Further details on the options within ThinVNC interface can be found in the excellent UserGuide Oh, and if no plugin or client is required, you can start going mobile:

Yes that's right! Remote Control via built in Android Browser. No app required!

Finally, in order to access your PC on anything other than the local network, you will need to “Port Forward” from your Internet router to your the PC to be remotely accessed. Make sure to log in and forward to port 8081 on your local machine (the default HTTPS port ThinVNC uses) or you won’t be able to access it from the outside. Do this only once you changed the default password.

All routers are different, but here is how you configure port forwarding on a Netgear router:

Login to your Router, and select Services in the left-hand menu and click Add Custom Service. Enter details as below and click Apply:

Select Firewall Rules in the left-hand menu and click Add under the inbound services dialogue:

Find the ThinVNC service in the drop down and enter the IP address of the PC to be remotely controlled. Optionally (although highly recommended) tie down access times and IP address or ranges of those on the Internet that can access the PC running ThinVNC.

Job done.

ThinVNC is an excellent program if you need simple desktop access remotely without a client or plugin. It is noticeable that the screen refresh rate isn’t as fast as other remote control products but, hey, it isn’t slow either. In my opinion, the benefit of a clientless cross-platform remote control solution more than outweighs this.

Let me know what you think.

- Chris

Disaster and Emergency AlertMap

2011-01-31T20:03:00.002Z

What's happening around the world now? No, right now: this minute?

Agreed dear readers, we have indeed looked at real-time trending before right here in this very blog, and perhaps you could say I'm a bit obsessed with real-time news and you are probably right.

Going one up on twitter trending and graphing, take a look at this:

It's the ROIS EDIS real-time Disaster and Emergency AlertMap. It's completely terrifying, yet fascinating at the same time.

The various icons (key) on the map illustrate natural disasters and accidents – everything including floods, earthquakes, forest fires, volcanoes, airplane accidents, terror attacks, etc. – that are happening in various parts of the world right now.

Hats off to The Hungarian National Association of Radio Distress-Signaling and Infocommunications (RSOE) for producing such a compelling realtime map.

- Chris

Video for Android or iPhone

2011-01-25T23:48:00.002Z

Long gone are the days when mobile phones were simply used for making telephone calls.

Nowadays these mini devices that we still call "mobile phones" more closely resemble mini-computers with many many applications from Internet browsing, email, social networking, navigation (GPS and compass based) to entertainment; both audio and visual.

Follows is my guide to converting video for natively supported playback on both Android and iPhones. That is after following this guide, you should be able to watch the converted videos using any type video player on either your Android or iPhone.

The Target Video Format: H.264
According to the specifications:

Android specifications here
iPhone specifications here

So both handsets support the H.264 video format out of the box.

OK, but what is this format? Well, if you really really want to know and have a spare 10 mins, have a look at H.264 on Wikipedia oh and yea I know, it does go on a bit!

Put simply and quickly, it's the format to use for mobile video applications ;o)

Tool to Convert Video to H.264 Format

So we know where we want to get (H.264) how do we get there?

Simple.
And here is where we get to use my favorite video conversion tool: FFMpeg

FFMpeg is free command-line software licensed under the LGPL or GPL that can be used to convert audio and video with minimal fuss. It has the advantage of being able to convert both video and audio at the same time (rather than splitting video and audio and converting them separately) which means that conversions are quick and perhaps more importantly easy. Sure it's command-line stuff but believe me; command-line is good!

It also has the advantage that under Windows it doesn't require installation. The whole tool runs from a single .exe file.

The final plus point is that FFMpeg can used to convert a plethora of different input audio and video formats. Here is a taster (as run on my Ubuntu laptop):

chris@lappy:~$ ffmpeg -formats
FFmpeg version SVN-r26068, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Dec 21 2010 14:01:48 with gcc 4.4.5
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab
libavutil     50.35. 0 / 50.35. 0
libavcore      0.16. 0 / 0.16. 0
libavcodec    52.100. 0 / 52.100. 0
libavformat   52.88. 0 / 52.88. 0
libavdevice   52. 2. 2 / 52. 2. 2
libavfilter    1.69. 0 / 1.69. 0
libswscale     0.12. 0 / 0.12. 0
libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
File formats:
D. = Demuxing supported
.E = Muxing supported
--
E 3g2             3GP2 format
E 3gp             3GP format
D 4xm             4X Technologies format
D IFF             IFF format
D ISS             Funcom ISS format
D MTV             MTV format
DE RoQ             raw id RoQ format
E a64             a64 - video for Commodore 64
D aac             raw ADTS AAC
DE ac3             raw AC-3
E adts            ADTS AAC
D aea             MD STUDIO audio
DE aiff            Audio IFF
DE alaw            PCM A-law format
DE alsa            ALSA audio output
DE amr             3GPP AMR file format
D anm             Deluxe Paint Animation
D apc             CRYO APC format
D ape             Monkey's Audio
D applehttp       Apple HTTP Live Streaming format
DE asf             ASF format
E asf_stream      ASF format
DE ass             Advanced SubStation Alpha subtitle format
DE au              SUN AU format
DE avi             AVI format
E avm2            Flash 9 (AVM2) format
D avs             AVS format
D bethsoftvid     Bethesda Softworks VID format
D bfi             Brute Force & Ignorance
D bink            Bink
D c93             Interplay C93
D caf             Apple Core Audio Format
DE cavsvideo       raw Chinese AVS video
D cdg             CD Graphics Format
E crc             CRC testing format
DE daud            D-Cinema audio format
DE dirac           raw Dirac
DE dnxhd           raw DNxHD (SMPTE VC-3)
D dsicin          Delphine Software International CIN format
DE dts             raw DTS
DE dv              DV video format
D dv1394          DV1394 A/V grab
E dvd             MPEG-2 PS format (DVD VOB)
D dxa             DXA
D ea              Electronic Arts Multimedia Format
D ea_cdata        Electronic Arts cdata
DE eac3            raw E-AC-3
DE f32be           PCM 32 bit floating-point big-endian format
DE f32le           PCM 32 bit floating-point little-endian format
DE f64be           PCM 64 bit floating-point big-endian format
DE f64le           PCM 64 bit floating-point little-endian format
DE ffm             FFM (FFserver live feed) format
D film_cpk        Sega FILM/CPK format
DE filmstrip       Adobe Filmstrip
DE flac            raw FLAC
D flic            FLI/FLC/FLX animation format
DE flv             FLV format
E framecrc        framecrc testing format
E framemd5        Per-frame MD5 testing format
DE g722            raw G.722
E gif             GIF Animation
D gsm             raw GSM
DE gxf             GXF format
DE h261            raw H.261
DE h263            raw H.263
DE h264            raw H.264 video format
D idcin           id Cinematic format
DE image2          image2 sequence
DE image2pipe      piped image2 sequence
D ingenient       raw Ingenient MJPEG
D ipmovie         Interplay MVE format
E ipod            iPod H.264 MP4 format
D iv8             A format generated by IndigoVision 8000 video server
D ivf             On2 IVF
D jack            JACK Audio Connection Kit
D lmlm4           lmlm4 raw format
D lxf             VR native stream format (LXF)
DE m4v             raw MPEG-4 video format
E matroska        Matroska file format
D matroska,webm   Matroska/WebM file format
E md5             MD5 testing format
DE mjpeg           raw MJPEG video
DE mlp             raw MLP
D mm              American Laser Games MM format
DE mmf             Yamaha SMAF
E mov             MOV format
D mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 QuickTime/MPEG-4/Motion JPEG 2000 format
E mp2             MPEG audio layer 2
DE mp3             MPEG audio layer 3
E mp4             MP4 format
D mpc             Musepack
D mpc8            Musepack SV8
DE mpeg            MPEG-1 System format
E mpeg1video      raw MPEG-1 video
E mpeg2video      raw MPEG-2 video
DE mpegts          MPEG-2 transport stream format
D mpegtsraw       MPEG-2 raw transport stream format
D mpegvideo       raw MPEG video
E mpjpeg          MIME multipart JPEG format
D msnwctcp        MSN TCP Webcam stream
DE mulaw           PCM mu-law format
D mvi             Motion Pixels MVI format
DE mxf             Material eXchange Format
E mxf_d10         Material eXchange Format, D-10 Mapping
D mxg             MxPEG clip file format
D nc              NC camera feed format
D nsv             Nullsoft Streaming Video
E null            raw null video format
DE nut             NUT format
D nuv             NuppelVideo format
DE ogg             Ogg
D oma             Sony OpenMG audio
DE oss             Open Sound System playback
E psp             PSP MP4 format
D psxstr          Sony Playstation STR format
D pva             TechnoTrend PVA file and stream format
D qcp             QCP format
D r3d             REDCODE R3D format
DE rawvideo        raw video format
E rcv             VC-1 test bitstream
D rl2             RL2 format
DE rm              RealMedia format
D rpl             RPL/ARMovie format
DE rso             Lego Mindstorms RSO format
DE rtp             RTP output format
DE rtsp            RTSP output format
DE s16be           PCM signed 16 bit big-endian format
DE s16le           PCM signed 16 bit little-endian format
DE s24be           PCM signed 24 bit big-endian format
DE s24le           PCM signed 24 bit little-endian format
DE s32be           PCM signed 32 bit big-endian format
DE s32le           PCM signed 32 bit little-endian format
DE s8              PCM signed 8 bit format
DE sap             SAP output format
D sdp             SDP
D shn             raw Shorten
D siff            Beam Software SIFF
D smk             Smacker video
D sol             Sierra SOL format
DE sox             SoX native format
DE spdif           IEC958 - S/PDIF (IEC-61937)
DE srt             SubRip subtitle format
E svcd            MPEG-2 PS format (VOB)
DE swf             Flash format
D thp             THP
D tiertexseq      Tiertex Limited SEQ format
D tmv             8088flex TMV
DE truehd          raw TrueHD
D tta             True Audio
D tty             Tele-typewriter
D txd             Renderware TeXture Dictionary
DE u16be           PCM unsigned 16 bit big-endian format
DE u16le           PCM unsigned 16 bit little-endian format
DE u24be           PCM unsigned 24 bit big-endian format
DE u24le           PCM unsigned 24 bit little-endian format
DE u32be           PCM unsigned 32 bit big-endian format
DE u32le           PCM unsigned 32 bit little-endian format
DE u8              PCM unsigned 8 bit format
D vc1             raw VC-1
D vc1test         VC-1 test bitstream format
E vcd             MPEG-1 System format (VCD)
D video4linux     Video4Linux device grab
D video4linux2    Video4Linux2 device grab
D vmd             Sierra VMD format
E vob             MPEG-2 PS format (VOB)
DE voc             Creative Voice file format
D vqf             Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) TwinVQ
D w64             Sony Wave64 format
DE wav             WAV format
D wc3movie        Wing Commander III movie format
E webm            WebM file format
D wsaud           Westwood Studios audio format
D wsvqa           Westwood Studios VQA format
D wv              WavPack
D x11grab         X11grab
D xa              Maxis XA File Format
D yop             Psygnosis YOP Format
DE yuv4mpegpipe    YUV4MPEG pipe format
chris@lappy:~$

Phew!

Downloading and Installing FFMpeg
I've uploaded the versions of FFMpeg I use to my dropbox:

Windows version is here (3.5Mb zip)
Compiled Ubuntu Linux version is here (30.6Mb zip)

Feel free to download and use them. They may not be the latest or greatest, but both versions work perfectly in this application for me.

Installation is simple:

Windows: Extract the zip to a folder on C:\ drive. For example C:\Conversion
Ubuntu Linux: Extract the zip and install the 2 deb files using sudo dpkg -i filename.deb

Converting Video to H.264 Format
So we know where we are going and what to use to get there. Lets begin!

Open a command prompt or a terminal session and navigate to the folder containing the file to be converted. For ease on windows, I copy the file to be converted to the folder that also contains ffmpeg.exe. As mentioned, I use C:\Conversion.

The following commands are the same for both Windows and Linux and for example I'm going to be converting an avi video called "movie.avi".

The Basic Command:
Here's what you need. This is the killer command!
As is, this command should produce nice quality output video with stereo sound.

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 900k -r 25 Movie.mp4

Agreed this looks like a scary hairy command-line, but it isn't really. OK, so what did all that mean? Here is the breakdown:

-i = input file [in our case Movie.avi]
-acodec = output audio codec to use for conversion [in our case libfaac]
-ac = output audio channels [in our case 2 - stereo!] [*]
-ab = output audio bitrate [in our case 128k] [*]
-vcodec = output video codec to use for conversion [in our case mpeg4]
-b = output video bitrate [in our case 900k] [*]
-r = output frames per second [in our case 25] [*]
Movie.mp4 = name of the output file

[*] - Tweak-able values. See 'Tweaking' section below.

Conversion off and running:

Testing
As a starter for ten, and as video conversion can take a while, I normally let the conversion run for 30 seconds or so, and then press "q" to quit encoding.

I then copy the resulting file to the phone just to double check that the phone will indeed play the converted file, an all looks good. The last thing you want to do is wait around for the encoding to finish and then find out that the video wont play on the target phone.

If all is good, just up arrow and hit return to kick off the conversion again, overwriting the previous output file.

Troubleshooting
On occasion I have found an issue where the output video won't play. As far as I can tell it is due to the video size being too big for the phone. In this case you need to look reduce the output frame size. Here is how:

Look at the output from original test conversion, specifically where FFMpeg tells you about the input video:

You are looking for the input video frame size. In the screenshot above it is 608 wide x 464 high.

If encoding for an iPhone, you are looking to drop these numbers to less than 640 wide x 480 high (Android varies depending on individual devices).

From there I usually breakout the calculator and equally divide numbers down. Remember whatever you divide one number by (one third, two thirds, half, etc) divide the other number by the same amount. Don't just take an arbitrary number off of the original width and height. Thats when you start getting strange stretched or compressed output videos!

The additional switch to specify output file width and height is -s. Rolling this into the original command:

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 900k -r 25 -s 200x400 Movie.mp4

Tweaking
Remember these:
-ac = output audio channels [*]
-ab = output audio bitrate [*]
-b = output video bitrate [*]
-r = output frames per second [*]

[*] - Tweak-able values.

Yes you guessed it, these values can be tweaked to your hearts desire! Be that to gain a better quality output file, or to reduce the H.264 output filesize down (at the expense of quality).

To save time, here are some examples.

Medium Quality Video, Stereo Sound:

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 500k -r 25 Movie.mp4

Low Quality Video, Mono Sound:

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 1 -ab 16k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 200k -r 13 Movie.mp4

Top Quality Video, Quality Stereo Sound*:

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 160k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1500k -r 30 Movie.mp4

These are the maximums for the iPhone 3GS (iPhone 4 is different). *Be careful with the -b value as FFMpeg treats this as minimum, so will typically look to encode video above this number. If output video doesn't play, tweak -b value down so that encoded output video bitrate doesn't go above 1500.

Acceptable Video, Stereo Sound (The standard command from above):

ffmpeg -i Movie.avi -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b 900k -r 25 Movie.mp4

Conclusion
So there you have it. You can now convert your videos for native playback on Android or iPhones.

Feel free to drop me a comment below if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help.

Happy portable viewing.

- Chris

Enjoy Vinyl - NOW!

2010-12-17T00:48:00.002Z

OK, time to go out on a limb here. It is a well known fact that reproduction from vinyl records and analogue audio equipment is superior to digital reproduction. Yeah, I know what you are going to say, "urban legend" or "stop talking rubbish!"

But wait a second. Lets think slightly outside the box here. Take a look at this YouTube video:

Sure there are pops, bangs and background fizz. But that adds to the sound. This is how the the music is supposed to sound.

What knocks me for six is the record sleeve and sleeve art. Yes, I remember this track the first time. I was eight at the time of it's original release. Yes, the song lives on and will continue to do so, but what about all the effort that went into producing what effectively is the vinyl disk packaging? Having only ever purchased the album in mp3 format, I didn't appreciate the album as a whole. I was missing out on the album art.

It was only through watching the above video that I realised this.

Who doesn't remember thumbing through their parents record collection and being taken in by all the imagery, colours and printing even if they also contain what can only be described as heinous crimes against fashion in the form of some of the band photos?

Case in point. Imagine being seven or eight and finding this in a pile of dusty records:

Finding this magical item at age eight, who isn't going to employ parental pester power to get that record played? Shame about the band though:

Another striking thing about the video is the spinning of the record itself. What's more magical and mesmerizing than a spinning record? Sure we all know how it works, but to think that all that sound is held in that little grove... Suddenly I'm eight again. I can't take my eyes off of the record spinning on the record player...

If you, like I, like listening to music the way it was intended, enjoy original album art and are mesmerised by spinning pieces of vinyl, but no longer have the necessary audio equipment, then I highly recommend you have a look at gilmour509's YouTube Channel to appreciate some fifty more vinyl classics. Keep up the good work gilmour509!

Oh and one last thing, don't get me started on drumming gorillas :o(

- Chris

Gawker Hacked. Am I affected?

2010-12-14T22:06:00.000Z

On the weekend of 11 and 12 of December 2010 it was discovered that the servers of Gawker Media (that includes the websites Gawker, Deadspin, Kotaku, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Lifehacker or Fleshbot*) had been hacked.

Nearly 1.25 million commenter user accounts, including more than 500,000 user e-mails and more than 185,000 decrypted passwords were posted to the Pirate Bay, available for anyone with the time or inclination to download.

Of corse, this security breach is potentially extremely serious for those who use common credentials across multiple on-line accounts.

Although the data retrieved from Gawker was encrypted, it is reported that the encryption is easily reversible.

As an example, twitter is reportedly already seeing a mass Acai Berry spaming campaign emanating from compromised accounts.

So the obvious question on everyone's mind who has ever commented on any of these sites: has my email address / password / username been leaked through the Gawker database hack?

Am I affected?
Option 1:

1. Visit this website type your email address in the Input box and click MD5. This will generate an MD5 hash of your email address. Copy the string to your clipboard.

Alternatively, if you don't fancy posting your email address into yet another website and are running Linux, then use this sequence of commands to obtain the MD5 hash of your email address:

md5sum <<EOF
emailname@emaildomain.com
EOF

2. Open This Google Fusion Table, click on “Show Options” and choose “MD5” from the drop-down. Paste the MD5 string generated above into the input box and click apply.

If you see a matching row, it’s time to change your Gawker password ASAP and change any other online accounts where you may be using that same ID / email address.

Option 2:
As linked to by Gawker themselves, use this online tool

For further information and an apology from Gawker, see this lifehacker post

Finally, here is a nice little way to construct secure individual website passwords from the security team at Mozilla:

Have fun and STAY SECURE!

- Chris

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*Fleshbot: Having never heard of Fleshbot, I googled it. Hmmm Mistake. Here is how Gawker themselves carefully and succinctly describe their fleshbot service: http://advertising.gawker.com/titles/fleshbot/