HDMI 2.0 is finally here, but may not be what you were expecting

Consumer Electronic Devices / HDMIOne Comment

Back in September 4th 2013, HDMI Forum released the new version of HDMI, which was upgraded to version 2.0. This new version brought some very necessary upgrades in terms of supported bandwidth and the much needed new 4K resolutions. Also, as an added bonus, existing 1.4 category 2 cables would be compatible with the new standard and resolutions. On the other hand, people learned to put some salt on some technological breakthroughs and product launches, with some call vapourware or paperware. Anyways, HDMI 2.0 would have no reason to diverge from the rest of the industry best practices, and as such it brings some much needed …

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Installing Owncloud 6 on QNAP hardware – Additional Steps for version 6

OwnCloud / sysadmin2 Comments

EDIT: Please note since QNAP QTS 4.1.x and ownCloud 7.0.2 the following steps aren’t working anymore. A new post will follow. This post comes as a following to the original Installing and using ownCloud on QNAP hardware post, and serves to users in the process of doing both clean installs and upgrades.  First of all, I need to explain the need for this post: Live was peachy, until someones decided to upgrade ownCloud to version 6.x on any QNAP hardware, both ARM or x86 based. When this upgrade is performed, the user is presented with a white screen, caused by the server …

Activating Apache logs on QNAP hardware (EDIT: fix for QTS 4.1 onwards)

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This is a quick guide for those needing to debug web apps, such as ownCloud, on QNAP hardware. QNAP systems only come with an Apache error log by default, which only logs apache service errors, not page errors, which make impossible to debug problems on sites. The only way to get more detailed logs is to add a few new config files to Apache, as follows: Login to the QNAP device through SSH Enable .htaccess usage on Apache. To do this you need to create a new Apache configuration file: vi /etc/config/apache/extra/apache-myconfig.conf And add the following commands: CustomLog logs/main_log combined …

When Cisco’s IGMP Snooping stops working for a few seconds

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Editor’s note: this post related to when traffic is forwarded for a few seconds even if IGMP Snooping is working. Not for instances where you loose all multicast traffic when activating IGMP snooping. For those cases, please remind to activate at least one IGMP querier somewhere on the network, and the corresponding IP address (no IP address, no querier….). Introduction IGMP snooping is a feature derived from the regular IGMP standard since version 1, however it works on a mostly independent manner, as it only works at the local switch level. Multicast traffic, without IGMP snooping enabled, works as a simple …

Semantic MediaWiki By Example – A Datacenter IP Network Manager

Decision Support Systems / SMW / sysadminOne Comment

One of the most common tasks on one datacenter, is the management of the IP Network: assigning IP addresses, creating networks (and subnetworks), creating hosts and setting hostnames. On smaller scale, having a spreadsheet may do the trick, but as datacenters grow (both physical and virtual), both in number as in complexity it quickly underperforms. Even, with all virtualization, this task won’t get any simpler, it will actually get more and mode complicated, because at least, it needs to be performed twice: at the physical hardware level, and at guest level. So, there is the need to create a tool …

SMW’s Semantic Result Formats – Jqplotchart/Jqplotseries format – A guide

Decision Support Systems / SMWLeave a comment

One of the most interesting aspects of Semantic Mediawiki is the data to chart integration, done though the Semantic Result Formats extension, and using the Jqplotchart and Jqplotseries formats, which in itself are based on jqPlot. However, it’s documentation and code examples are not as thorough as one can expect. Requirements To start with, just make sure you have all the proper extensions installed, namelly: Mediawiki version prior to 1.21(*) (1.20.6 is OK) Semantic Mediawiki 1.8 – Both SWM and SRF are undergoing some changes, so it’s better to keep a specific version. Semantic Results Formats 1.8 (*) There are some reports …

Bugzilla access control – Allowing one group to create and access all bugs and another only to access it’s own bugs

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Now, something completely different: Bugzilla. Bugzilla is one of the most used bug tracking systems worldwide. It’s stable, somewhat customizable, and suits most possible uses, where software development is concerned, and sometimes, also outside the software world. Now, one of the aspects where is falters the most is on user access control. It isn’t because it doesn’t work, but because it is awkward and counter intuitive, until you get used to it… Let’s look at 3 scenarios: All users can create and edit bugs. Please make sure there is at least some kind of access control at network level. To …

LDAP and Apache Basic Auth – how it works and how it doesn’t work

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Let’s imagine you work on an organization which uses Active Directory (just kidding, is there anyone who doesn’t …?) and on which people are forced to comply with draconian security policies, such as changing you strong password every N days (replace N for any number less than 30… why don’t people understand that it is harder for people to memorize a new strong password, than machines to brake them). Anyways, having a central location for all authentication purposes is, from any point of view, a good idea, even if coming from Microsoft :). If your organization already has in place …

MediaWiki as a Document Driven decision support system: a Memex Project

Decision Support Systems / SMWLeave a comment

This is the first article from the Semantic Web series. Not all of them are already available, but on the works: MediaWiki as a Document Driven decision support system: a Memex Project (this one) Building an enterprise wiki (Pending) A small business knowledge manager – The advanced Mediawiki (Pending) Companies are literally spending billions each year with huge and complex decision support systems, which chew tens of gigs worth of data. However, on most of them you cannot publish a link to a web service, without putting it on a Microsoft Word file. This is as companies’ fault at it …

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