Month: October 2016

Windows 10 VPN – “Connect” Missing from List of Network Connections

Okay, so I wasn’t sure how to title this article. However, I will endeavor to explain my frustration I am having with Windows 10’s VPN settings.

Whenever I click the network icon in Windows 10, it will bring up my local connection, WiFinetworks, and VPN connections. When I select my VPN connection instead of being able to connect directly from the first network setting list I get directed into the Settings app in Windows 10.

Connect is “Missing” underneath my VPN connection on Windows 10. From the Settings app in Windows 10, I can then select my VPN connection and click connect.

I know this may sound quite trivial but it is a frustration especially since it feels like we took a step back from Windows 7 and Windows 8.

I did some searching online to see if I was alone in my complaint. I certainly wasn’t. I found this thread on Microsoft’s forums with other people frustrated with the same limitation. On this forum I came across a work around to allow me to connect from the first list of network connections. Thanks Tobias.Csaki

Here are the steps to accomplish this.

1. Open Regedit ( How did you know this wasn’t coming ha! ) (WIN+R and type regedit.exe)

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Settings\Network

3. Take ownership of the “Network” key/folder (right click, Permissions)

4. Select “Advanced” in the Permissions window

5. In the Advanced window, select “Change” where the owner field is (at the top of the window)

6. Type in your username and save your changes.

7. Close the advanced window

8. Now select “Administrators” in the security tab

9. Make sure “Full control” is selected, then apply changes

10. Now that’s done, double click “ReplaceVan”

11. Change it’s value to 2

These changes should take place without having to reboot. Now when you click the network connections icon you will get a Windows 8 type network menu that allows you to connect to your VPN connections.

You can also set these values:
0 – to open the default Network flyout.
1 – to open Network settings in the Settings app.
2 – to open a Windows 8-like Network pane.

— EDIT 20170427: this seems to be problem when connecting to protected WiFi Network after update Windows 10 Anniversary, so i just revert it back to value 0, for efficiency I use batch file to connect VPN Easily, I’ll share next time

Source:
– http://techspeeder.com/2015/09/15/windows-10-vpn-connect-missing-from-first-list-of-network-connections/
– http://winaero.com/blog/change-network-icon-click-action-in-windows-10/

Fix Zoneminder Failed to Start Automatically on Boot

See log file to see the problem:

cat /var/log/syslog | tr -d '\0' | grep "Failed to start" -A 10 -B 10

If you see this line below, then we may have solution:

Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket

Ubuntu 16.04.01 LTS is using systemd
Use this command to see your ubuntu version:

lsb_release -a

Zoneminder service described in this file:

/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/zoneminder.service

By default it is remarked:

#Requires=mysql.service

Remove the remark so it waits mysql before starts:

Requires=mysql.service

For Ubuntu 14.04 add sleep command in /etc/init.d/zoneminder after start() line, so it looks like below:

start() {
sleep 15 #wait for mysql
echo -n "Starting $prog: "

Source:
– https://forums.zoneminder.com/viewtopic.php?t=23630
– https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Server_14.04_64-bit_with_Zoneminder_1.28.0_the_easy_way

Turning On/Off Monitor Raspberry Pi Scripts

You can use these scripts to turn on/off monitor of raspberry pi

screen_off.sh:
#!/bin/sh
tvservice --off > /dev/null

screen_on.sh:
#!/bin/sh
export DISPLAY=:0
tvservice -p
fbset -depth 8; fbset -depth 16; xrefresh

Another option (this is failed when tested because apt-get doesnt found cec-util package):

apt-get install cec-util

# Screen on, change to the active input of the Pi

echo "on 0" | cec-client -s > /dev/null
sleep 5
echo "as" | cec-client -s > /dev/null

#Screen off
echo "standby 0" | cec-client -s

Source:
– https://www.danpurdy.co.uk/web-development/raspberry-pi-kiosk-screen-tutorial/

Raspberry Pi Force Boot HDMI Mode and Resolution

This command to store current EDID data to file:

sudo /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -d /boot/edid.dat

And add this line below to /boot/config.txt to load the EDID data above on boot, ignore EDID data from monitor

hdmi_edid_file=1

so RPi will boot with mode and resolution correctly even when monitor is off (or slowly starting on), this is useful when power blackout, the monitor starting slowly and is not detected by RPi correctly and fallback to VGA resolution automatically

Source:
– https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=173430#p173430

Raspberry Pi Raspbian SWAP Configuration

Raspbian uses dphys-swapfile, which is a swap-file based solution instead of the “standard” swap-partition based solution. It is much easier to change the size of the swap.

The configuration file is:

/etc/dphys-swapfile

The content is very simple. By default my Raspbian has 100MB of swap:

CONF_SWAPSIZE=100

If you want to change the size, you need to modify the number and restart dphys-swapfile:

/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start

Edit: On Raspbian the default location is /var/swap, which is (of course) located on the SD card. I think it is a bad idea, so I would like to point out, that the /etc/dphys-swapfile can have the following option too:

CONF_SWAPFILE=/media/btsync/swapfile

I only problem with it, the usb storage is automounted, so a potential race here (automount vs. swapon)

Source:
– http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/70/how-to-set-up-swap-space

Mounting Windows 7 Share on Raspbian Raspberry Pi

Use this command to access windows shared folder with guest user:

sudo mount -t cifs -o guest "//SERVER/share" /mnt/mountfolder

Or use this command for password protected share:

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=user,password=password //SERVER/share /mnt/mountfolder

You can use this command to mount as a user

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=username,password=password,uid=userid,gid=group //SERVER/share /mnt/mountfolder

If mounting a Windows 7 (SMB) share on Linux gives us a “Remote I/O error” like below:

mount error(121): Remote I/O error
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

Solution #1:

This is Windows problem and following registry values need to be changed:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache
set it to 1
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size
set it to 3

Solution #2:

From the man page:
vers = SMB protocol version. Allowed values are:
· 1.0 – The classic CIFS/SMBv1 protocol. This is the default.
· 2.0 – The SMBv2.002 protocol. This was initially introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008. Note that the initial release version of Windows Vista spoke a slightly different dialect (2.000) that is not supported.
· 2.1 – The SMBv2.1 protocol that was introduced in Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2.
· 3.0 – The SMBv3.0 protocol that was introduced in Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

Here is the corrected command which now works for me:

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.x.x/share ~/share -o username=bob,vers=2.1

Source:
– http://wood1978.dyndns.org/~wood/wordpress/2014/12/17/solve-mount-cifs-remote-io-error-after-data-transfer/