phaq

Years ago I wrote a small script to restore local default route after connecting the RAS VPN on Windows.

Now, I made up a similar script to do the same on OS X.
Read more…

It’s only days since I wrote about a custom script action upon inserting a DVD in OS X, allowing me have either run the DVD Player or MakeMKV to rip the DVDs.

Now I was digging around if I could do some automation on the GUI part, which indeed turned out to work … at least to a certain degree.
Read more…

In diesem Beitrag geht es darum, Cacti Interface-Statistiken auf einem Pirelli Router über den Umweg via SSH zu erzeugen. Dies wird auf bestimmten, kastrierten Pirelli-Geräten, wie sie von bestimmten Providern ihren Kunden zur Verfügung gestellt werden, auch dringend benötigt, da die Geräte den nötigen SNMP-Support schmerzlich vermissen lassen. Das fehlende SNMP Support lässt sich auf diesen Geräten auch mit Hilfe eines Hacks, der bereits seit mehreren Jahren in einschlägigen Foren kursiert, nicht nachrüsten.

Read more…

Wie die Zeit doch vergeht! Es ist schon deutlich mehr ein Monat her, seit ich über relimi.com, der neuen Schweizer Tausbörse für DVDs, CDs und Bücher, berichtet hatte.

Aus zeitlichen Gründen kam ich leider nicht eher dazu, ein Follow-Up zu verfassen, doch nun ist es endlich soweit…
Read more…

I’m currently ripping my complete DVD collection off to MKV (Matroska) format, so I can stream them across my home network.

So I sought a way to have my OS X give me the choice to either start DVD Player or MakeMKV upon inserting a DVD.
Read more…

Are you using an external hard drive for TimeMachine backup?
Are you using it to store other data as well?
Didn’t you divide your hard drive it into a data and TimeMachine partition? (Hell No …!)
Now you’re running out of free disk space and need more room? (Hell Yes …!)

Solution #1: Buy another (bigger) hard drive.

Solution #2: Remove some old TimeMachine backups to recover some space.
Read more…

Why for God’s sake would anyone even think about shutting speakers while the screen saver runs?
Don’t these thingies provide an internal mute switch to stay quiet?

Well, yes, most of the time, they do. Though in my case, I run that nice and decent System47 LCARS-style screen saver. And while it provides indeed a mute switch, it yet refuses to honor that flag and will always revert to non-muted operations. This drives me crazy, at least during the night time.

So here’s my solution to shut it quiet — really handy when I’m not along and forgot to turn volume down …
Read more…

Being used to other languages sometime leads to false assumptions, like having the same commands every now and then.
While doing some TCL scripting on a Cisco I just had the need for a ‘sleep’ command or equivalent.

Since no ‘sleep’ exists, the ‘after’ command will do. Just supply it with the timeout in milliseconds, like this for a 10-second timeout:

after 10000

Or, with a bit more overhead, but some may think it’s more readable:

after [expr {int(10 * 1000)}]

Here’s a short script which I use to extract Cisco device-types from SNMP.
Bad enough, most of these devices return their device type ID differently, e.g. sometimes prefixed with an uppercase ‘C’, sometimes without any prefix, then again sometimes we find a suffix.

So here’s a snippet, that makes them look neat, so I can work with simple and unified looking device IDs.
Read more…

Personally I stopped working with pure file-based DNS servers long time ago.
Earlier this year I committed an article about BIND-DLZ to german freeX magazine on how to make DNS servers really dynamic.
While I’m not permitted to publish my original article (or parts of it) online, I’m just following it up in some way, as I have another interesting story to tell.
Today I’m looing into DNS zone split-view on top of BIND-DLZ — or in other words: How can my BIND server be authoritative on the public network interface, while be recursive only (thus, ignore any local authoritative zones) on the local network interface?
Read more…