Mac OS X: Disk Image mount point changes in a non-obvious way
I use owncloud to keep greater control over where my 'cloud' data resides. Everything has been working extremely well, so it came as a surprise this morning to find that the owncloud client was giving me this error:
CSync failed to load the state db
Upgrading From Windows 8 to Windows 8.1: Bypass Microsoft Account Creation
I just got around to installing the Windows 8.1 update on my Windows 8 Laptop. It was incredibly annoying to get most of the way through the process only to have Microsoft seem to require me to enter my MS account information. Fortunately I found a way around this seemingly required installation option.
I'll stick to my local account, thank-you-very-much.
namecheap dynamic dns
Our new house isn't in an area with a decent internet service provider, so I can't get a static IP address for my home server. To maintain access with my home datastore I turned to Dynamic DNS. Fortunately for me my domain name was registered with namecheap which provides free dynamic dns service to their customers.
I went the 'non-standard' approach and setup a dynamic dns updater on my home linux server.
IBM P5 Series Server: Recovery boot from serial console
We have some old IBM P5 series servers that run AIX 5.3 which we use for testing. They get powered down rarely, so we don't often have to go through a cold boot cycle. Last week one of the machines was power cycled and would not respond to pings. The guy who normally handles this type of thing was unavailable, so I got to try my hand at restoring the old server to an operational state.
Fortunately for me I was able to succeed. :)
VMWare Fusion PC Migration: A secure connection to the server could not be established
I was given a MacBook to replace my Desktop PC at work. Seeing as I do most of my work in Windows and Visual Studio, I used the Migration Assistant that comes with VMWare Fusion 5 to bring my Windows 7 desktop over to the MacBook as a VM.
Unfortunately this didn't go as well as planned. In the end I was able to get the migration process working, but it took some time.
How to fix: mysql_secure_installation: line 85: .my.cnf.12819: No such file or directory
I installed a LAMP server recently and encountered some strange behavior when I ran the mysql_secure_installation command. Normally I burn through that wizard like nobody's business, but when I get weird messages like these I start wondering what is wrong:
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation: line 85: .my.cnf.12819: No such file or directory
Virtualized pfSense 2.0.3 and ESXi 5
After running pfSense 1.2.3 for over 1000 days, I decided to move to the latest release. Rather than update the version that is installed on dedicated hardware it seemed like a better idea to run it as a VM on my home ESXi server. This way I can make better utilization of the ESX box (which consistently runs below 30% utilization) and free up the other box to be a dedicated backup server.
Getting things setup took a few hours. I guess my skills get a bit rusty when I wait 3 years to make any major changes to my pfSense configuration.
Base64 Encoding Overhead
While Base64 is a popular way to encode raw byte data and send it over a connection that can only handle text, i wonder about its efficiency. Just how much overhead is involved when I convert by bytes to a Base64 encoded string?
In this article I run some tests to see what kind of overhead I can expect when using the Base64 encoder provided in the .NET framework
C# ownCloud Connector
I recently setup my own ownCloud instance one of my servers as I have trust issues with cloud services like dropbox and box.net. Wherever possible I like to run my own services. After getting ownCloud configured I wanted to see if I could interact with it via API. Specfically I wanted to see if I could retrieve and play music files
Enter OwnCloudMusicClient. This is a C# project which contains a class that can be used to interact with ownCloud instances(OcClient). If I have more time and interest I might extend the API to do more than just download music files
A Download containing the class and a bare-bones console application which shows how to use it is available at the bottom of the page.
Note: Nextcloud has taken the place of OwnCloud in my environment. I have not tested this against newer OwnCloud or NextCloud installations
RestSharp and JSON.NET: how to get Content-Type: application/json and properly formatted JSON Body
When I'm in C# land I like to use the RestSharp library to make interacting with REST interfaces more straightforward. It is a pretty good library which has worked reliably in the half dozen or so projects I've used it in over the last couple of years.
One thing that I keep forgetting (and the purpose behind this article) is how to get RestSharp to send a Content-Type header of application/json and format the JSON in the bctly. Hopefully I'll be able to remember a bit better after doing some documentation here.