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Finally, after about 6 months (I last talked about that on February 25th, when Virtual Center 2.5U4 was released) our troubles with our " custom" certificates seems to be resolved! As it turns out, it really was our fault and not VMware’s. When generating the pfx from the signed certificate and the key-file, you need to supply a password, otherwise the vCenter service is unable to utilize the private key of the pfx, since it’s unable to access the PFX with the default password ( testpassword is the default for Virtual Center as well as vSphere). ...

Today a error message reappeared I thought I wouldn’t see again. We use Wyse Thin Clients and 2X running on two terminal servers, to provide the thin clients with applications. Now, once a while one of the thin clients (not all at once, just a single one) refuse to connect to the terminal server jabbing about this: 1 The remote computer disconnected the session because of an error in the licensing protocol. The error message you get from the 2X client ain’t the slightest bit more helpful. ...

After the last reinstallation of Windows (both at home and at work), I decided that from this day forth, I’d be working as unprivileged user (ie not as local administrator). Now, working as unprivileged user is some kind of relief (since not every program is able to wreak havoc within your computer), but also somewhat of a burden. Up until now, I had serious troubles burning CDs and/or DVDs as unprivileged user. Basically InfraRecorder refused to work at all. Only way that I had left, was copying the ISO to my local disk and then use runas in conjunction with InfraRecorder, to execute as Administrator. ...

In the past I had toyed with the thought of setting up a VPN-Server at home, so that I could do stuff from elsewhere. Now, I finally got around doing so. First obstacle ? How exactly would I be doing that ? Get the DD-WRT VPN flavor of course! Configure the VPN server Now, the second part seems to be a bit harder. There is a wiki article on how to configure OpenVPN in the DD-WRT wiki, but not for v24 SP1. Lucky me, someone already made himself the work of writing somewhat of a guide down. But, guess according to Murphy’s law, things ain’t ever gonna be easy. As I’m running Ubuntu Karmic on my workbook, the commands ain’t matching the current openvpn package being delivered with Karmic. So here is, intended only as a guide, the list of steps one has to do in order to get the certs … ...

Well, after a day or so my lighttpd troubles reappeared. But this time, the lighttpd process would simply put out this: 1 2 3 4 (mod_fastcgi.c.2913) backend is overloaded; we'll disable it for 2 seconds and send the request to another backend instead: reconnects: 0 load: 131 (mod_fastcgi.c.2668) fcgi-server re-enabled: 0 /var/run/lighttpd/lighttpd-fastcgi-php-17242.socket (mod_fastcgi.c.2913) backend is overloaded; we'll disable it for 2 seconds and send the request to another backend instead: reconnects: 0 load: 131 (mod_fastcgi.c.2668) fcgi-server re-enabled: 0 /var/run/lighttpd/lighttpd-fastcgi-php-17242.socket And as the message says, PHP (or rather mod_fastcgi?) would simply stop to process requests. In the end, I tuned some of the lighttpd/mod_fastcgi parameters. ...

Well, out of boredom I stated on Friday that I’d gonna go look for a hammock, since the beach chair quite isn’t enough. I went through every DIY superstore in Stralsund, but none of them had anything like I wanted (basically I wanted a wooden hammock, which would be able to carry me). Thanks to the Internet though, I was quite fast at a point where I found something (Amazon rules!) ...

Well, if you’re gonna update a SLES10 (or even a SLES11) VM, you created with Virtual Infrastructure, you’re gonna run into a snag (like I do). Grub (or rather the kernel itself) is gonna barf. Now, I searched for a while and didn’t find anything specific on the net, so I’m gonna write it down. Up till 3.5U4 the maximal resolution you’d be able to enter within a virtual machine was vga=0x32d (at least for my 19" TFT’s at work). But now, after the upgrade to vSphere that isn’t working anymore. ...

Well, I had the pleasure of flying with Germanwings on Friday and Sunday. As it turns out, if you fly with Germanwings you should plan some more time. On Friday, we were scheduled for departure at 17:00 (that’s 5 P.M.). Around 6 P.M. the flight assistant(s) guarding the gate announced that the flight is being delayed for a unspecified amount of time due to maintenance. At 7 P.M. they announced that again. ...

I recently ordered a Intel X25-M Solid State Disk as a replacement for the oldish SATA 2,5" disk powering my Fujitsu Celisus M250 (called workbook). I figured it’d be a bit faster as compared to running from the old hard disk, but I didn’t figure it be that fast! Since it is blazing fast, my trainee figured he’d install bootchart and see how the disk/the whole notebook performed. bootchart map of the X25-M ...

After I had the initial stuff done, I spent some time yesterday (roughly one hour) figuring out, why Play/Pause/Stop aren’t working any longer (they worked at some point). After looking at the XBMC debug log for some time, I went back and looked at my Lircmap.xml. As it turns out, you can’t map one Lirckey to two functions (in my case, I mapped KEY_7 to as well as ). XBMC doesn’t like that, and in return quits functioning for those keys. ...