Pale Musings

A buddy of mine sent me a link to The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb recently.  It was an interesting list so I thought I’d share it with you all.

As I read Microsoft researchers make me cry « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger this morning I got chills.  Robert Scoble talks a lot about new tech, some of which is great, some not so much.   He is always passionate about it.

This post about an upcoming unveiling from Microsoft makes me think that there’s something big coming to the way we live.  When Robert talks about past technology moments saying “It’s even rarer that I see software that I know will change the world my sons live in” referring to “The first time I saw an Apple II,” “Netscape running the WWW” and others as a preface for this current secret, I get excited.

“While watching the demo I realized the way I look at the world was about to change. While listening to Wong I noticed a tear running down my face.”

According to Robert, the cover comes off around February 27th.  I will be waiting anxiously!

First off, I’d like to get the joke out of the way that BITS is a bit of an oxymoron sort of like Army Intelligence….ba dah ba!

OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I have to say that this has been one heck of a problem to solve, and that the search-ability of this topic is fairly low.

My problem arose a while back when my Windows Automatic Updater stopped updating automatically. At first it was not a big deal, I would simply use my browser to go to the Microsoft Update site on a regular basis. While this is a fine solution for me, I realize that for a large majority it is not.

I recently decided to install the Google Pack since I wanted some of the Google Software it contained and did not feel like tracking down the stand alone installers. After installing the “Google Updater” the software would tell me that the “Background Intelligent Transfer Service failed to start”. Looking in the Event Viewer I was presented with this information from the System log.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7023
Date: 2/13/2008
Time: 7:21:39 AM
User: N/A
Computer: JOEL2
Description:
The Background Intelligent Transfer Service service terminated with the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

Not very informative and, unfortunately, searching for that event ID and other bits of information was not very fruitful.

I finally came across the post How To Fix Windows Update (BITS/AU) after quite a bit of searching. Reading through this fine article by Mike I quickly realized just how many things can go wrong with BITS.

I began going through the list of things to try, of course verifying first if I needed to do a particular step. In step 2 there is a registry file to down and merge to try to fix the problem. I opened the file and looked through each setting to see if I needed to do it. It turned out that there was 1 setting I was missing. Parameters key was missing completely. Here is the part of the registry file that I ended up merging which fixed my BITS problem.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\BITS\Parameters]
“ServiceDll”=hex(2):43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,49,00,4e,00,44,00,4f,00,57,00,53,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,71,00,6d,00,\
67,00,72,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00

The ServiceDll value, converted to ASCII, is C:\WINDOWS\system32\qmgr.dll

After merging this my service started up and Google Updater worked great.  Thanks for the article, Mike!

I recently had to put up a blog running the WordPress system. There are a lot of things I like about WordPress and in general the difficulty in getting the site up and running was low.

The problem came about when an image was needed on the site. The software gave me the infamous “Is its parent directory writable by the server” message. After confirming the permissions where correct I began to dig deeper. It turned out that SELinux was causing an access denied message.

After much research on the matter, I learned a few things. First, most people simply turn off (example, example, example) SELinux. That was not an option for me. I want the extra contextual security provided. Second, it was not a WordPress problem, or even an SELinux problem. In reality, it’s simply a configuration setting put in place to make unauthorized uploads less likely.

It turns out that the security policy will only allow the httpd service to upload to the /tmp directory. Examination of that directory shows that the context includes tmp_t. That is the ticket that got things working for me. Here’s my solution to this issue:

1. Change directory to the wp-content directory of the WordPress software.
2. Made the uploads folder manually.
   mkdir uploads
3. Changed the owner of uploads to the appropriate user that apache runs as (as root).
   chown httpuser:httpuser uploads
4. Changed permissions to allow the apache user to write to the directory (as root).
   chmod 755 uploads
5. Changed the SE context of the directory to allow httpd to upload file (as root).
   chcon -t tmp_t uploads

That did it. Not terribly difficult, but there is not a lot of concise documentation to be found when looking for this problem. It is very possible that there is a better way to accomplish these results, and if you know that it is please let me know! I can say that my configuration is working today and, at least so far, everything seems to be working fine and as secure as it can be.

The final output of ls -Z for the uploads directory should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x httpd httpd root:object_r:tmp_t uploads

Cheers.

If you hung around the gaming crowd in the mid 80’s - 90’s, you’ve probably heard of, seen or played Blood Bowl.  The concept from Games Workshop is a game based on American football crossed with the Warhammer universe, in other words, a brutal contest on the gird iron between Orcs, Elves, Skaven, Humans and more.  Rules, well, who needs them!  Injuries and fatalities are common.

Now a French publisher, Focus Home Interactive, is bringing the game from Cyanide Studios to the XBox 360.  One description from one of the game developers was “One team kicks the ball, then all hell breaks loose.”  Man it sounds like fun!

It sounds like there will be online play including league play.  It will have the traditional turn-based mechanic, but they will include a real-time mode for those that really want it.  The game is being slated for Q4 2008 so there is  awhile to wait, but I must admit this one sounds like a lot of fun!.

To check out some early screen shots and read a bit more, check out the GameSpot page. You can also listen to an interview with Cyanide Studios in the middle of Episode #129 of Gamertag Radio.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1720 running Windows Vista Home Premium. About a month ago I started having issues with InfraRecorder running on the laptop failing to recognize my TSSTCorp DVD+RW TS-632D ATA drive made by Samsung. The burning software would not show any burners installed until I rebooted after which it would work fine.

Last weekend even rebooting stopped working. Nothing I could do would fix the issue. Reinstalling the Roxio software that came with the Dell worked fine, but InfraRecorder would not. I started troubleshooting the issue and eventually opened a service ticket with Dell Support. The first support ticket suggested that I uninstall all burning software, shut down the computer and re-seat the drive. I did all of that, then reinstalled. The problem was still there, no burner detected in InfraRecorder.

After a frustrating weekend trying to figure it out, I contacted Dell a second time. After over 2 hours of a support technician controlling my PC, uninstalling and reinstalling rivers, software, updating, etc.. the problem was still there. The only advice she could give me was to contact the vendor. Not a very satisfactory answer.

I spent a few more hours perusing forums that were less and less like my situation and environment. I finally ran across a post with similar symptoms but a different environment. The fix for the user in the post was not an option for me, there are no updated drivers; however, a response below that suggested the following:

SOLUTION:
I looked around and found an article that mentioned a particular bios setting change so I gave it a go and it fixed it.

The setting is on the screen. The setting is and I set it to ‘RAID/IDE’. (Sets the SATA channel to RAID mode and IDE channel to IDE mode), when it booted, it detected some new devices, installed them automatically and away she went.

This was not a setting I changed, the default mode is IDE which is what I had and seems more logical to me.

Based on this I started looking in my BIOS settings. I found my SATA controller was set to the default value of AHCI. Optionally I could change it to ATA. Since my drives description read TSSTCorp DVD+RW TS-632D ATA I decided to try the ATA setting. Doing so required me to first disable the Flash Cache feature, which if I understand it correctly I have never used. I also had to answer “yes” to an ugly, scary message that my machine might not boot and I may have to reinstall the OS after making the change.

Fortunately, I did not have to reinstall. Windows did recognize a new controller and required another reboot, but after that, my problem was solved!

I do not know if anyone else will get any use from this or not, but considering the time spent on figuring this out (roughly 8 hours) I thought it would at least be prudent to write it down.

Today I had the need to download something from our MSDN subscription and I decided to do it from the server I needed the file on rather than downloading it locally then transferring it to the co-located facility. The problem came up when my terminal server (RDP) session timed out and logged me off!

Oops!

Logging back in after such an event does not restart the Microsoft download manager and, unfortunately, there is no shortcut that I could find to run it.

It took some research to find the solution, or at least part of it. Where is the download manager located! It turns out to be at %windir%\Downloaded Program Files\TransferMgr.exe. I found that on this post for reference.

What the post did not mention is that the folder is one of those special Windows folders. Opening it up in Windows Explorer only revealed garbled object names. Not much use there so I opened a console (cmd.exe) window and did a quick CD C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files\ followed up with DIR. It revealed my target, TransferMgr.exe. I typed in the file and it ran just fine.

Next I decided to create my own shortcut in the event that my session could be ended before completion. Uh oh, another problem! I cannot even manually enter the path into the wizard! No biggie, I simply created a shortcut to something valid, then opened the shortcut properties and manually typed the path to the download manger. From there things worked fine. I figured I should write this down so that I do not forget it at a later date.

Most emails that I receive concerning some new scam turn out to be little more than a hoax.  It’s the sad state of our society that many find easy methods to waste time of those they do not know.

Today I received an email from a source I trust which sounded like an example of the above; however, I did my due diligence to make the determination for myself due to the regard I have for the person who sent it.  To my surprise it turned out to be the one in a thousand (or more) that is true.

If you have loved ones that may not be savvy to official sounding phone calls, who are perhaps not as skeptical as you are when someone asks for information, please, I implore you to make them aware of this and impart the seriousness. This is identity theft via social engineering at its worst.

According to snopes.com, the scam first surfaced in 2001.  It has cropped back up several times in different states up to at least 2005 which probably means it is destined to show up again.

First the corroborating links, then the story:

• FBI’s official story on the Jury Duty Scam.
• Snope.com information regarding the scam.Jury Duty Scam

Jury Duty Scam

From the Tinley Park Police Department,
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).
Please pass this on to everyone in your e-mail address book. It is
spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take
those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on
their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never
received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social
Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information
and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and
bingo; your identity was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma ,
Illinois , and Colorado . This (swindle) is particularly insidious
because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into
giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI
and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web
sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

We’ve been using F-Secure as our virus/malware protection in our company for a little over a year now. I have been and continue to be impressed with the product and the company support.

Recently I purchased my new laptop with Windows Vista installed. More recently I purchased a new HTC P4300 smartphone with Windows Mobile 5. It’s been working great, and I love the phone. The only weird issue has been syncing with the USB cable. In order to make it work I had to temporarily turn off the firewall inside of F-Secure Client Security. Syncing via Bluetooth was working fine so I tended to lean on that.

Today I decided it was time to fix the issue. I gave a call to the business support line at F-Secure, explained the problem quickly to the technician. She told me right off the bat that this was an issue she had no experience with, so she asked if I minded giving her a little time to investigate. Of course I said that was fine.

Within 30 minutes I had an email from her outlining the solution. My total phone time was about 5 minutes and then another 5 to put the fix into place. Thank you!

The problem is simply that the Sync Center in Vista uses some ports over the USB connection that are new enough not to be included as a standard. After adding the ports and making sure that one of the applications was allowed, everything worked great. Since I do not believe they have a technical article yet, I thought I would outline the solution here in case anyone else needs it.

Please note that these steps only work if your security policy allows you to edit a few things. If you are running in a corporate environment you may need to give these instructions to your network administrator to include in the corporate policies for your virus protection.

Step 1

The first thing to do is to get into the Client Security configuration screen where we’ll be doing most of the work. Right click on the F-Secure icon in your system tray and choose Open F-Secure Client Security. This will bring up the main window. You will want to choose the Internet Shield menu option on the left, then click on the Change link next to Application Control.

Step 2

Next you need to add the application that does the communication to the allowed list in Application Control. wmdHost.exe is the component that performs the actual communication requests. It is possible that this application may already be there, but if it is not, simply click Add it to include it in the list. If it is not in the list it should be found in C:\Windows\WindowsMobile\ If you do have to add the file, I’ve noticed that my Client Security software will default to the access level of prompt for a new application. The other bit that is odd is that it will not let me change it when I’m adding the file. I complete the addition to the list, then go back in to the details to modify it. At this point it will let me change the behavior to Allow.

Step 3

Finally you need to create a new service and add the necessary ports. There are 5 inbound and 1 outbound port necessary.

Start by switching to the Firewall configuration screen, then to the Services tab and add a new one. I simply called it Windows Mobile Sync Center. Make sure to choose the TCP protocol.

On the screen where you add, there are two areas for ports. They are termed Initiator ports and Responder ports. These map to inbound and outbound. Here are the correct settings:

Initiator (inbound) ports:

• 990
• 999
• 5678
• 5721
• 26675

Responder (outbound) ports:

• 5 679

Once you’ve made all of those configuration changes you are ready to give it a shot.  Grab your Windows Mobile device and your USB cable and hook them up.  You should get the Connected check box and see it synchronize as expected.

I hope that helps you out!

Thanks to Greg’s Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day I learned about IntelliAdmin.com.  Reading through some of their old posts I found the tool to Update Vista Support Information.  Now we do not white box computers or anything, but being the geek that I am I decided to customize my system a bit.  Thanks to Mike for getting me a quick logo.