Oliver Hansen

Oliver & Juliah Hansen — Wedding Photos

Oliver — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:26:32 +0000

We were married on the 23rd of January, 2010 in my hometown of Coupeville. I am not going to try to put captions on all the photos since I just want to get them up for people to look at right now. Please feel welcome to leave comments!

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Install pfSense on Symantec 5420 Security Gateway

Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:32:31 +0000

I need to give credit to this post in the pfSense forums which showed that this was possible. This box is pretty nice in that the processor is a Celeron 2.0GHz and it has 6 onboard Intel 10/100 NICs which are preferred by far over the usual Realtek NICs found in embedded devices. It was just by chance that I saw the post the other day even though it had been posted a while back. My company had two of these donated a while back but we weren’t using them because we had no real need to muck with the licensing when the hardware was discontinued. Have a look at what you can find these Symantec 5420 Security Gateway for these days. The author of the post gave a few tips but no real instructions so after I got it working I thought I would put together a step-by-step guide.

First, what you will need:

A knowledge of how to install pfSense – This guide assumes you have installed pfSense before. If you have not, look at the detailed instructions on the pfSense wiki.
1 Symantec 5420 Security Gateway – these can be found secondhand since they are discontinued
1 IDE HDD (Hard Drive)
1 computer that can boot from CD – you will not need this after the install is finished
1 computer with a serial port and a serial cable – this can be the same computer that you boot with but must have an OS

Burn a copy of the latest stable version of pfSense – I chose 1.2.3-RC3 which I have used and is quite stable.
Open the case of the Symantec 5420 and remove the HDD and the CF-to-IDE adapter. Put them both aside in case you want to revert to the Symantec system at some point.
Take a HDD that can be erased and put it in your PC – remove all other HDDs from the computer so you don’t overwrite the wrong one and set this one to Master.
Boot the pfSense CD and choose “Easy Install” which will give you the kernel option we need at the end.
After the files are copied to the hard disk, choose “Embedded Kernel” from the custom kernel choices – this will give us output to the serial port since the Symantec 5420 does not have a monitor output or keyboard inputs.
When the install finishes, choose reboot and wait for the computer to shut down. Before it boots again, turn the computer off and remove the HDD.
Install the HDD into the Symantec 5420 and ensure the jumper is set to Master.
Plug in your serial cable from your running PC and the Symantec 5420 serial port and begin a serial connection with PuTTY or another client program and connect using 9600 8-N-1 settings.
Turn on the Symantec 5420 and see the boot screen come up on your terminal window after about 15 seconds. Important: Make sure to choose boot option 2: ACPI Disabled. If it does not boot, go back and check your steps. Ensure you chose the Embedded kernel during install.
When the system boots, it should recognize all the hardware and then prompt you to set up the interfaces just like a normal pfSense installation.
This step seems to only happen if the drive was not Master in the computer it was installed in. If it doesn’t boot the first time and you get a “mountroot>” prompt it is because the name of the drive was different in the machine you installed pfSense on. As the prompt will tell you, type “?” to see a list of the possible valid partitions. You want to replace the first part (drive name) with what you see in the currently installed and possible drive partitions. If you got the message “Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad2s1a” but your valid drives all start with ad0, then type “ufs: ad0s1a“. Once the computer has booted you will need to take one more step to avoid this in future boots. You will need to edit the file /etc/fstab and change the drive reference (ad0 in the example) to be correct. You can edit this file through the web interface in pfSense or using vi or ee from the shell command prompt. Note: this tip was taken straight from the official pfSense book which I recommend buying if you are using pfSense frequently.
Next, to make sure it boots with ACPI disabled by default you will need to make another edit. /boot/device.hints is the file. Add a line at the bottom that says hint.acpi.0.disabled=”1″. Now when the system is booted, boot with ACPI disabled will be default.

Currently I do not know of a way to get the LCD screen functioning. There is an LCDproc package for pfSense but the driver is unknown. Hopefully this will change soon. Thanks as well to Gnuler (page in spanish – link to english) who seems to be the first record of someone trying out Linux on this box.

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Have Copyright Holder’s Fears Proved Correct Over The Years?

Oliver — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:46:11 +0000

The author of the article on arstechnica.com shows that a few of the industry leaders who felt threatened by technology have been correct on some points. I was surprized by this, but not surprized by the fact that most of the warnings of entire industries being destroyed have proved false. Unreasonable copyrights are holding back new ideas and new methods for sharing information. I hope some people in decision-making capacities will read this and not believe all the current hype by the RIAA and MPAA.

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Canadian Hobbema Cadets Travel To Jamaica

Oliver — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:33:45 +0000

Saw this on TV the other night and started watching because it was about Jamaica. It turned out to be really interesting. The kids from Hobbema don’t have an easy life but when they travel to Jamaica and spend some time in Spanish Town they see there are some with less than they have. There is a Jamaican cadet group as well and they get to work together and share a bit about their cultures. If you have a few minutes, give it a look.

Full page: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2009/05/051009_4.html

Video Only: http://www.cbc.ca/news/video/embed_static_live_hi.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/sunday/051009_4.wmv

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How to Restore a Deleted Computer Account in Active Directory

Oliver — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 03:24:51 +0000

I read this a while back and it is quite helpful to know beforehand. We had an instance of this at work a while ago where an OU of computers was accidentally deleted. You can recover the computer accounts easily enough but when they don’t recover with their machine password it still doesn’t help. This walk-through shows you how to set it up so the machine password is saved when the account is tomb-stoned and then restoring is a breeze. If there is a next time, we’ll be ready!

http://edmckinzie.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!687C72A5909E4230!232.entry

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Vacation In Jamaica 2009

Oliver — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:44:40 +0000

My trip this time was basically separated into a few sections. I’ll describe each briefly and then let the photos do most of the work. If you have any questions, ask in the comments or when you see me!

Clarendon At Racene’s Grandma’s House
The drive was really not far from Kingston in distance as it only took us a little over an hour to reach Racene’s grandmother’s house but it is a very different lifestyle in the country. The experience was interesting to me because there donkeys being used to haul water and equipment around and up hills and no indoor plumbing. I never had to use it but there was an outhouse around the back and for bathing one would just use a bucket of water and soap up in a private area outside. I was supposed to help feed the pigs but in reality I just watched Uncle Bill clean the pens and feed them. I also didn’t assist grandma with butchering and cleaning the chickens but just watched. I think it’s a much better method to hang the chicken on a string before beheading it rather than just chopping the neck on a block of wood as I am accustomed to. Racene’s younger cousins were also very cute hanging around the place. Another interesting thing is the water catchment tank that Grandma and Uncle Bill (grandpa) maintain for the community. I’d never seen a large one like this up close. It seems rather simple but is massive in size.

Negril Reunion
I expected more people to show up but there were only 4 of us. This was 5 years since Peace Corps Jamaica Group 75 came to the island to start our service. Amazing to think it has been that long but it has. We enjoyed ourselves by mostly sticking to the beach and Red Stripes. This is where I started the work on my tan for the trip.

Portland Trip
I went on a trip to Negril with my friend Nadia the last time I was in Jamaica. This time we opted for a little quieter place that was away from the main tourist attractions. We ended up staying at the Jamaica Palace Hotel which is on a very nice property. The only downside was the need to eat at the hotel every evening because there was really nothing else within walking distance. The food was okay but nothing really special and the prices were quite high. All staff were very pleasant it was cozy with a pool in the shape of Jamaica as well as artwork adorning almost every wall. In the lobby there were some very nice sculptures and paintings. There are more photos on Nadia’s camera which I hope to get access to soon. On this trip we also went rafting down the Rio Grande river and climbed Reach Falls which is a nice alternative to Dunns River Falls in Ocho Rios.

Friends
I got to see many other friends for much shorter periods of time. A few of those photos are in there. I wish I had more time for everyone but alas that was not the case. I still didn’t make it to see some people I wanted to see even with the three week time period.

Gaynstead
I worked at Gaynstead High School helping out in computer class and with the computer club. They were able to get new computers and a second computer lab installed at the school since I was there. It’s a nice setup and the students will hopefully be grateful. In some places that were not wired for computers like the staff room, the school is using the network cables that the students from the computer club made while I was there. It’s nice to see some things still getting use. Clifton is the one who showed me around the school this time. I also saw Racene there again as she was one of the students in the computer club. Unfortunately I did not get to see any of the others from the club that day.

Dunns River Falls
Mark is an IT teacher I worked with at Drews Avenue and he took me Cody and Jordan up to Dunns River Falls. I have been there a few times but it is still nice and challenging to climb the falls. Oh yea, this was also the first time I’ve opened my eyes in salt water. It was down at the ocean where the river empties.

Around The Howell’s House
I stayed with the principal of the first school I worked with in Jamaica (Drews Avenue Primary & Infant School) although he is at a different school now. Mr. Howell and his wife are always very hospitable when I come down and as more evidence of that I always meet new family members staying at the house. This time it was Steve, Cody, Cody’s son mother and brother, and Ace who were there for most of my stay. Others popped in and out. I enjoyed getting to know all of them and hope to see them again when I am back. I’m sure the young ones will be much bigger the next time I see them.

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Fruit Bowl and Vase From ColorMeMine

Oliver — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:04:53 +0000

A few weeks ago my mom and I were going to Seattle to see a play in the evening. We decided to try to come up with something else to do during the day prior to dinner and the play. When the day came, we finally settled on visiting our local Color Me Mine shop in Mill Creek. My mom had been to another shop like this previously but it was my first experience. Now, I’m not too artistic but I decided to just go for it and try something. I needed a fruit bowl for the kitchen so that’s what I decided to paint. My mother chose a vase and it turned out very nice. I’m pretty happy with my fruit bowl, but it definitely shows signs of a beginner. I guess you could say that’s part of the charm.

So, on to the photos:

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Adobe Acrobat Crashes on OS X With Network Account

Oliver — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:30:41 +0000

I had another network account issue with our Apple at work. Got that one solved and then we finally got the software from Adobe for CS4 after a couple hours on the phone convincing them that they had already said we would get it before they changed their mind. Well, that’s a whole other story I don’t have time for.

This problem lies in the fact that Acrobat for some reason has a problem reading or writing to a file on a network share. Since the user’s home drive is connected to the network share, Acrobat will crash every time they try to open a file. Log in with a local user account and everything works great. After figuring out where the problem lay, I found a posting on the Adobe Forums about this exact issue.

What I found there was the following:

1. Log in as a Network User
2. Go to /Users/Shared/
3. If you are on an Intel based Mac create a folder in /Users/Shared/ named 9.0_x86 if you are on a Mac that is a G5/G4 create a folder named 9.0_ppc

At this point you should have created either
/Users/Shared/9.0_x86/
/Users/Shared/9.0_ppc/

4. Go to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/ and trash the 9.0_x86 or 9.0_ppc folder contained within
5. Go to Applications/Utilities/ and open Terminal
6. Enter one of the following into the Terminal
If you are on an Intel based Mac enter
ln -s /Users/Shared/9.0_x86 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86
If you are on a G5/G4 Mac enter
ln -s /Users/Shared/9.0_ppc ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_ppc
7. Open up Acrobat 9 and it should work!

*bold is my edit*

I found for the link command (ln) I had to actually specify the 9.0 folder. You are basically telling the computer to go to a local directory when it tries to find the user’s files in the home directory which is on the network. I also had to chmod the /Users/Shared/9.0_ppc to 777 because I created the folder with an admin user and the normal user didn’t have rights to make changes. After doing this, it all worked!

As of this posting, it appears the problem still exists and has not been fixed by Adobe even though it has been a known issue for 7 months now.

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Apple – AD Login Error: The home folder for the user account is located on AFP or SMB server

Oliver — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:13:14 +0000

I’ve been trying to get our web and print design specialist at work set up with an Apple that was donated to us. It’s not a bad machine but one of the older ones running the Power PC hardware. It’s also running OS X version 10.4.11. Apples are completely new to me so it’s been a challenge. I figured out how to get it to be part of our Active Directory domain a while ago so I thought all would be fine but there have been quite a few problems getting it to work smoothly.

One of the issues is logging on to the computer when home drives are assigned through the Active Directory profile. As a Domain Admin, when I would sign in I would get the message

The home folder for the user account is located on an AFP or SMB server

and it would not log me in. Upon trying again immediately, it would log me in and my home drive would be mapped just fine! I thought it was annoying but we could deal with it at first but when I had the user try to log in with an account that was not an admin they repeatedly got the error and were not able to log on at all.

A bit of searching led me to an Apple Discussion Forum where I saw that an edit of one file /etc/hostconfig would help. The change is

AUTOMOUNT=-NO-

changing from the YES that is currently in the file. I’m not clear on the exact cause of this but it is definitely a bug. Well, now it works so that part is down. More issues later.

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Routing and Remote Access Changes From Automatic to Disabled

Oliver — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:39:24 +0000

I’ve been working on setting up an ISA Server 2006 to be a VPN connection for employees. I had it working and then the next day it wouldn’t work. I looked and saw that the Routing and Remote Access service had been not only stopped but disabled. I would turn it back on and then a few hours later it would be disabled. It was really frustrating me. We had used the server for another purpose previously and not reinstalled the OS so I even did that. No luck. The problem kept coming back.

The link below led me to think of Group Policy and I did an rsop.msc on the server to find it was the workstation policy affecting the server. Created a new OU outside the range of the policy which should have been done a long time ago anyways and the problem has been resolved. No more services getting disabled.

My Hint: http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Windows/microsoft.public.windows.server.general/2007-05/msg00216.html