Cisco IOS Tidbit

When testing a SNMP configuration for Cisco switches, I wanted to use a named access list to give SNMP v2c access a bit security. I started with an extended IP ACL.

When I configured an SNMP community string:

snmp-server community blahblah ro acl-snmp-read-only

The switch accepted that command.

But when I then do a "show running-config", my configuration is not there.

It seems that Cisco IOS doesn't really allow extended access list. But it doesn't tell you either. The "snmp-server community" command is simply silently dropped. This seems to be the case with code version from 12.2(55)SE4 on a C3750 to 03.01.01.SG on a Catalyst 4500 L3 switch.

Fun with Comcast begins -- Cable TV is Dead!

Fun with Comcast begins.

Over the holiday season just passed, I finally changed my ISP from ATT Uverse to Comcast. When paying my first bill online, I noticed a $39.99 charge that was labeled "miscellaneous charge". So I called Comcast's customer service. Twenty some minutes later, I got a rep on the phone and was told that was a charge for a "Technician visit".

I told him I never ordered a "technician visit", nor did a technician visit my house.

He told me to hold the phone. Two minutes later, he returned and told me that the charge had been removed.

That was pretty quick. But the fun part was yet to come.

When we finished the business about my first bill, I mentioned to the rep that I received a TV set top box that I was not going to use, so I would like to know if I could just drop it at a local Comcast office.

I was really surprised then, when I was told that I could not "not use" the TV set-top box, that I had to activate it, or the service bundle would be revoked and I would have to pay more.

I asked, so even if I paid for the bundled services and I decided to not use part of it, I could not do that?

"No", the service rep replied. "We would not be able to prove that we provided the bundled services to you. So you would have to pay the unbundled price."

Hmm, I didn't buy that, but I didn't want to make that into an argument. So I just said "Interesting!" and let it go.

The Comcast device is still in its cardboard box. I do not intend to use it. I have no interest in cable TV programs.

CABLE TV IS DEAD! I guess Comcast don't want to accept that. We'll see.

Good-Bye, at&t!

I strongly disagrees with at&t on the "Weev" case based on this Wired report (AT&T Hacker 'Weev' Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Prison). If the report is not proven wrong, I am going to say good-bye to at&t.

Maybe for good this time.

At&t 2Wire Gateway

I have to delete a previous post as the rant was off the target: I thought that at&t might be blocking ports entering my home. But the real problem turns out to be in the 2Wire gateway device -- more specifically, in its firewall settings. I forgot to check if my previous setting was changed. But anyway, resetting its firewall to expose the next router as a DMZ device -- which is where my port forwardings are configured -- has solved the problem.

At&t may still be to blame, as the firewall configuration change could not have happened by itself, but could have been the result of firmware upgrade in the gateway, or something like that.

Password? What password?

This morning I mindlessly did an iOS upgrade -- I came into work, plugged my iPhone to charge it; iTunes popped up and prompted me to do some upgrade. I haven't had my morning coffee yet, so I just clicked OK. When I realized it was upgrading my phone, the process was already well under way. So I decided to let it go ahead -- I am now regretting that (non-)decision.

I was working on my PC doing whatever I was supposed to do. Then this screen popped up:

I thought, hmmm.... What does that mean? Was the upgrade completed? Or did it fail?

At that point, it didn't seem that there was anything else I could do. So, I went along. Then I got this:

That made me a bit nervous. If this warning came earlier, I might have stopped the upgrade even not being fully awake. But at this point, what could I do? So I hit Restore and Update.

Now that's strange! I didn't see it doing the backup. So I definitely did not set a password on the backup. I tried my Apple account password, my Windows password, etc. It just kept giving me the same password ... was incorrect message.

So I googled iPhone upgrade backup password. This one came up on top of the result:

To put it mildly, I have never liked Apple products. Now this is pushing my dislike to a level of hatred.

Planview

As a grumpy old software engineer, I complain about other people's software a lot, as shown in this blog. But I must say, Planview has to be on top of the pile for being arrogant, stupid and time-wasting. I am no management expert -- I am not even a manager, but this message is a bit too much -- I don't know what you think.

The problem is caused by me closing the lid on my laptop before I finished what I was doing. When I came back to it, the session apparently timed out. I clicked on something and was shown this message implying that I might be treated as a criminal -- One would expect that a leader in an industry could at least be able to tell a simple timed out session from a criminal attack.

As for what I was doing, well -- I don't even want to go there. Here is my take on Planview: If your company is planning to implement this software and you have any say in that decision process at all, fight against it with all you have got. You will thank yourself down the road if you still work for the same organization.

They are Branded as Windows

They are branded as Windows -- in fact, they have been for years. But this is how you know, it's just holes in the wall.

Pain with Windows Continues

I admit that I seriously lack in-depth knowledge of Microsoft Windows, but this one still looks ridiculous never-the-less.

I am trying to hook up a ViewSonic gTablet to a Windows XP machine to load a ROM. Upon plug in the USB cable, Windows recognized the new device and popped up the Found New Hardware Wizard. All seems smooth sailing, until the wizard seems to stuck at copying a file.

Of course, when I check the destination folder, the file is there. The copying is already done but the Wizard just sits there twiddling its thumb, forever and ever. I can't even cancel it as the buttons are all greyed out. It only goes away and declares that it has finished installing the software for the device when I unplug the USB cable or power off the device.

Yet, when I plug the device back in, it is not functioning properly as an APX device. The properties dialog box in the Windows Device Manager says that "No drivers are installed for this device."

So the next thing I try is to remove the device from the Device Manager. Windows stuck again:

I guess I am going to try Linux.

[Edit 2012-11-25] -- I thought if Linux was to help, I would write another post titled "Linux to the Rescue" or something. But Linux made it so easy which made me question myself as why I started with Windows in the first place -- Possibly because most of the how-to type articles mention Windows. Well, anyway, I found this article on SlateDroid.com and followed its instructions to nvflash the tablet, which is basically, plug in the device using a mini USB cable, download nvflash, download the device image you want to install on the device and run the nvflash script -- not worth writing another post.

Windows Registry is Evil

I have heard from colleagues who worked in end user support, that Windows registry was a source for many problems. But this one that just bit me int he rear is evil.

I have an old Asus EeePC running Windows XP. It was setup initially as a box to automatically logon. I wanted to give it to my kid to carry around. So I needed to turn off the auto logon. Googling "Windows XP auto logon", I found this Microsoft article titled "How to turn on automatic logon in Windows XP". So I went ahead and found the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon". I then removed the DefaultUserName entry, assuming that would be enough to disable auto logon.

Upon reboot, however, Windows popped up an error message which is quickly covered with the Windows startup screen. It seemed to just hang there. The mouse cursor moved, but Ctrl-Alt-Del did not do anything. I rebooted it a couple of times by pressing on the power button. I got distracted for a while and come back to find Windows actually timed out from whatever it was doing.

One wouldn't have thought Windows would behave like that with removing one single value from the registry. But I guess this just shows that I have not messed around in the Windows registry enough.

I ended up downloading the Microsoft Fixit program in the How to page linked above. That did work to turn off auto logon for me. Otherwise, I guess I would have to break out my Windows XP CD, go into recovery console mode, find a registry backup and restore it. That would have been the last straw to break it for me to replace this Windows installation with Linux.

Sharing the Pain from IE

I just complained to a colleague, after he spent some time helping me with an issue in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, that Microsoft wanted to conquer the world. They did it, but with whole truck loads of manure, piled up high in everybody's backyard. Now we are left to clean up all that smelly stuff.

The issue is that, the hospital has some legacy applications that run only on IE. We finally got to IE8 not too long ago after a relatively brief encounter with IE7, which was after a long tiring adventure with IE6. But some applications still require IE7. So the standard issue browser on everyone's desktop is IE8 running in IE7 compatibility mode. Web based applications that I have worked on usually are used by technical people so I usually could care less if something works in IE or not.

The latest project involves a dashboard for the non-techies, including executives, which means we are not allowed to bring a tool not sanctioned by the enterprise, such as Firefox. Fortunately, we have another colleague who has dealt with IE quite extensively. He provided information that was priceless to us, with a caveat: The tricks he gave us may or may not work. At least he had not been able to get them all to work.

The one trick is to force IE8 to render HTML as IE8, rather than in IE7 compatibility mode. There are three ways to do that:

1. Change Compatibility View Settings in IE8: That function is listed in Tools menu. One just needs to check off the Display Intranet sites in Compatibility View.
2. Add a meta tag in the HTML document head part:
   <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>
3. Add an item in the HTTP response header: x-ua-compatible: IE=Edge

#1 is a non-starter because it requires manually configuring the browser.

#2 worked for my colleague right away in one of his applications. So he gave me the information to try out in my code.

It didn't work!

After a number of frustrating trials, every single time clearing IE8 cache, closing the browser, open the browser again and checking the rendering mode, etc., with no luck whatsoever, we decided to try #3.

That worked.

At this point, I am too lazy to bother with the changes in previous trials. So I still don't know if #3 alone or the a combination of #2 and #3 made it work. I am just glad that it works.