Jay’s dumpspace

FYI, the largest LUN you can do anything with in VMWare is 2TB. Even if you use raw LUN mapping. LVM is your friend.

FYI, the driver INF list you get if you hit F6 when installing XP might be longer the 4 devices you can see.. Try scrolling UP to see other devices to install…

I was reading that some people complain about a stiff ride in their rig right after replacing springs and/or shackles.  Some of the problem has to do with a break-in period for springs and shocks.  One solution, however, is to stop short of factory torque specs on the shackle and spring eye bolts.  The FSM says something like 95 and 105 pound-feet for the shackle and spring eye, respectively.  A trend among Jeep owners that have Internet access is a 45/65 pound-feet spec along with some strong threadlocker.  I opted for 50/70 and red Loctite.  After only having done the back shackles I could already notice a difference in the springiness of my ride.  I’ll drive it tomorrow after the threadlocker has time to cure.  While I’m out I’ll be able to put about 18 gallons into my gas tank as per yesterday’s 20 gallon hack.  =)

I performed the Jeep “hack” described here.  It took me about 1.5 beers (just over 30 minutes) without dropping the tank.  I have yet to fill up, but I can’t wait for the first time I can put $80 of gas into my Jeep!  Yay…

My Jeep has been on jack stands for about 2 weeks now as I strip down the front end in preparation for a 2.5″ Rubicon Express lift.  I was working on my steering components when I noticed that my front passenger axleshaft u-joint was binding a LOT.  Turns out one of the needle bearings was nearly fused to the u-joint body.  Since it was likely the OE u-joint and has been riding in the rust belt for about 14 years, I couldn’t just use a big vise to pop the caps out while the axle was still attached.  So I had to pull the hub and the axle shaft out…  Since the hub has been riding in the rust belt for 14 years…you get the point.  About 3 hours later I had cut the old u-joint out (my BFH wasn’t big enough to pound both caps out at once, so I cut the middle of the u-joint out) and swapped it with a new greasable unit.  The bad u-joint was likely the cause of my steering mystery from an earlier post.

I also put Prothane polyurethane dust covers (boots) on my tie rod ends since one of the OE boots had a small rip in it.  I had the tie rod off so I could beat out my old steering stabilizer (BFH).  I think I replaced a drag link end while I was at it, but I can’t quite remember why (probably torn boot).  The red boots look nice and will match up with the Prothane polyU shackle and track arm bushings that are waiting to be installed.  I also found time to install my new Skyjacker Hydro 7000 steering stabilizer.

So right now my Jeep is kinda’ drivable.  There are no front shocks and the sway bar ends are on my workbench.  It would be fun to drive for about 10 minutes and totally dangerous over 20mph.

If the rest of my parts don’t come in tonight I’ll be driving to Albion to pick up 4 bald Super Swamper TSLs courtesy Adam Lake.  The tires are too big for my ride, but the rims are free.  =)  He’s also giving me some tan trim that he is replacing with black:  nerf bars (windsheild to roll cage) and a pair of visors.

I’m also looking forward to trying out this bad boy, which is way cheaper than the same thing from Quadratec.

Right now I’m thinking 31×10.5 SS TSL bias ply tires…  They would look sexy.

Pics of the teardown.

Rutter shared this jewel with me:

cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms [FQDN of your KMS]

I just activated Vista Enterprise from home over VPN!

From an email that I just sent to a colleague:

First, copy the install DVD(s) to a network share. A few files you’ll need to make/touch:

application.xml.override

This file needs to go in all of the payload folders (okay, not _all_ of them, but it is just easier that way, trust me). It should look like this for a silent install:

###

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Configuration>
<Payload>
<Data key="Serial" protected="0">yourserialnumberwithouthyphens</Data>
<Data key="Registration">Suppress</Data>
<Data key="EULA">Suppress</Data>
<Data key="Updates">Suppress</Data>
</Payload>
</Configuration>

###

Next, look in the deployment folder for deployment.xml or something that indicates installing in your country and language. It should look like this (at least for DP (Design Premium), other bundles or individual apps are really similar):

###

<Deployment>
<Properties>
<Property name="installLanguage">en_US</Property>
<Property name="serialNumber">yourserialnumberwithouthyphens</Property>
</Properties>
<Payloads>
<!--Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (At install, older versions get upgraded)-->
<Payload adobeCode="{AC76BA86-1033-0000-7760-000000000003}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe Dreamweaver CS3-->
<Payload adobeCode="{00E5C764-9525-44C3-8404-712AD06AE12A}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe Flash CS3-->
<Payload adobeCode="{3BC8460B-085E-47F3-9C62-8FFCBAF11D78}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe Flash Video Encoder-->
<Payload adobeCode="{7BB7F66A-D798-45A3-A383-0727FB1EBF8E}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe Illustrator CS3-->
<Payload adobeCode="{C4519961-AC64-4565-B3AF-9050296B5D5A}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe InDesign CS3-->
<Payload adobeCode="{24D77A7C-E10B-4057-9974-FAB8BFDAC853}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
<!--Adobe Photoshop CS3-->
<Payload adobeCode="{30C4B843-28DA-466F-AFCA-CB0ED153C826}">
<Action>install</Action>
</Payload>
</Payloads>
</Deployment>

###

In the above example I took out Version Cue so it won’t get installed. The line with ‘<Property name=”serialNumber”>’ isn’t necessary for Design Standard/Premium (or Web Standard/Premium, I don’t think), but some apps require it for passing along the serial number to install third party content (Audition, Encore, Premiere Pro all need this).

After you make/edit those files all you need to do is call the setup.exe with some parameters. I run a script like this from Deployment Solution:

###

call "\\server\software\adobe\cs3\win\Adobe CS3\setup.exe” –mode=silent –deploymentFile=”\\server\software\adobe\cs3\win\Adobe CS3\deployment\deployment.xml”
copy /y \\server\keyed\cs3\acrobat.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\acrobat.exe”
copy /y \\server\\keyed\cs3\dreamweaver.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver\CS3\dreamweaver.exe”
copy /y \\server\keyed\cs3\flash.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Adobe Flash CS3\flash.exe”
copy /y \\server\keyed\cs3\illustrator.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Support Files\Contents\Windows\illustrator.exe”
copy /y \\server\keyed\cs3\indesign.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Adobe InDesign CS3\indesign.exe”
copy /y \\server\keyed\cs3\photoshop.exe “C:\program files\adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\photoshop.exe”
del /f /q “C:\documents and settings\all users\desktop\adobe acrobat 8 professional.lnk”

###

In this case I have already created zero-footprint keyed *.exe files for our Sassafras Keyserver. I also don’t like icons on the desktop. If the exit code is anything except 0 you need to do some troubleshooting. Check for logs in “C:\program files\Common Files\Adobe\Installers”. The installer log will likely be a GZIPPED UNIX FORMATTED TEXT FILE (OMG, why would you do this Adobe? We are obviously on Windows!)!

A few notes:

You can’t install _just_ Acrobat from any of the bundled packages (Design Premium, Web Standard, etc.) because you need to launch another of the BIG applications in order to start the licensing; i.e. you need to launch Photoshop before you can use Acrobat. Photoshop is a popular application, so I never really worried about this in my labs. If you only install Acrobat you won’t have any of the BIG applications to activate the licensing on that computer. Stoopid, right? Tough. There is no way around it.

It takes a fast (single-hard drive) computer about 30 minutes on gigabit Ethernet to install CS3 DP. I don’t like installing while users are logged in because sometimes the installer will fail if it needs to touch browser plugins (DW and Flash) or Outlook (Acrobat stuff).

If you have less than 1GB of memory and less than 1024×768 resolution, the installer will fail. No way around it that I know of. The video/production applications check for other hardware (microphone/non-integrated video, etc.).

I tried putting all of CS3 DP into an Altiris SVS layer. Since the licensing daemon needs to run at startup, I never got it working right. Mind you, I didn’t really try that hard since I had some reservations over pushing out a several gigabyte VSA…

There is a deployment PDF on the DVD that has most of this information. Also check out www.appdeploy.com for some really good hints and for application-specific ‘gotcha’’s.

I’m still working on slipstreaming updates into the payloads. I haven’t tried too hard yet. Right now I’m just downloading the updaters and repackaging them.

In the spirit of the “third stall”, Firefox 3 Beta 4 rocks my socks.  Scrolling speeds, general zippiness, and forward/back performance are all pretty nice.  I like having more memory available for other hungry apps (Parallels, Adobe crap, etc.), too.  Can’t wait for it to go final.

I remember not too long ago that there were Firefox v1.0 parties across the world.  Why the speed up?  Wasn’t Firefox asymptotic to v1.0 for several years?

CIAS Note:  We have some really cool computing facilities in our college, but I don’t feel like they are marketed properly or effectively.  Do other schools offer (seemingly) unlimited storage for web and class projects (or pretty much whatever you want)?  How about art schools?  What about our photo facilities?  ISL?  Do other schools offer several different renderfarm solutions in addition to the ability to use a world-wide supercomputing grid?  I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but we have some really cool shit.  Then again, I’ve had three glasses of my favorite Pinot Noir.  =)

Final thought:  In the midst of our governor getting sacked for violating the moral conciousness of our state, something he said long before he took an oath in Albany caught my attention.  Paraphrased, “if you are playing defense, you are losing”.  More thoughts on that later, I suppose; brain needs to digest.

I changed smbclient’s default timeout from 20 seconds to 200 seconds. The shorter timeout was causing problems with our backuppc server, especially with large files on Windows computers with virus protection.

Check out line 6246 in libsmb/libsmbclient.c, at least that’s where it is in 3.0.28.

context->timeout = 200000; /* 200 seconds */

Specify the samba config path when you run configure:

./configure --with-configdir=/etc/samba && make

I copied out the new smbclient and all seems good so far…

UPDATE:  The timeout isn’t in the smbclient binary, but rather the libsmbclient.so library, in my case in /usr/lib/samba.

*crosses fingers*

I was looking for ways to trim down memory usage to gain system performance (I’ve been swapping a bit lately) on my Core(not 2)Duo Macbook when I made a little discovery.  I just recently upgraded from MS Office 2004 to 2008.  The main reason I upgraded was to gain full Intel universal binary support because rosetta is slow.  However, I think the updater missed something rather critical:  the old Microsoft Autoupdate Daemon was still running in PPC-land.  It wasn’t much surprise that stopping that from starting saved me around 300MB of memory that was formerly going to the system for keeping on-the-fly-PPC-code-conversions going.  The same thing did NOT happen on my iMac when upgrading from 2004 to 2008, so maybe it was just a fluke.  But still, I can now afford to give Parallels just a little more memory without dipping into swap.  Sweet!