Category Archives: software

Upgrading to 14.04.1 LTS or If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it

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I should have left my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS well alone. Yes, it is over 2 years old, but it worked rock solid and I’ve been good about installing updates on it.

I don’t know what devil rode me last Friday, but when the system informed me that an upgrade to 14.04.1 LTS was available, I went ahead and gave it a try. I should have known better.

When the upgrade finished many hours later, POP access to the dovecot server was no longer working and rsync using modules was broken (rsync daemon not running). I had accepted all the defaults to keep existing configuration files during the upgrade. It turned out that dovecot needed some changes for namespace inbox:

namespace inbox {
...
inbox=yes
}

The rsync daemon needed to be manually enabled again via

sudo vi /etc/default/rsync

RSYNC_ENABLE=true

Hopefully I won’t stumble across more problems that will need fixing, but the experience was a reminder not to needlessly mess with a working system.

Google Maps Engine brings back custom routes

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Last year I stopped updating Google Maps on my Android phone because Google had dropped important functionality with Google Maps 7.x. Google Maps 6.x for Android was a great tool for following mapped routes on long bicycle rides, especially randonnes of 200 km and more. After an update I had to revert to Google Maps 6.x to get it back. This also meant I could no longer allow Android to install all available updates in one go. I always had to manually confirm all updates except Maps to not lose 6.x again.

Finally Google has brought this functionality back. There are still missing bits, but at least the product seems usable again for my purposes.

On Android there is an app called Google Maps Engine, which supports loading custom maps. Select “Open a map” in the menu. You’ll get a list of maps created by you or shared with you.

This menu can be populated from a desktop machine. There you can import existing maps created for Maps 6.x. Go to https://mapsengine.google.com/map/ and select “Open a map” (you need to be logged in to your Google account). Select “Classic My Maps”. You’ll be able to select one of your existing maps and import it in to Maps Engine. After that it will become available to the Google Maps Engine app on your Android and you can use it for navigation. The route will show as a blue line and special locations, such as my brevet PCs (“points de controle”, route check points) will show marked with a pin.

One drawback of Maps Engine on the Android compared to the old Google Maps 6.x is that it doesn’t seem to support displaying a ruler on a map yet. Thus when you zoom in or out you won’t be able to tell how far you are from any point you see on the map, whether one cm on the screen corresponds to 100 m or 10 km on the map. This is the same problem that Google Maps 7.x had when it was launched last year. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. Still, it is disconcerting that Google misses out such basic functionality when launching products. Are all their eyes on monetization these days?

Adding sudo on Debian Linux

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For a long time I had been using the sudo command on Ubuntu and other Linux versions, but my main server did not have it installed. I always had to use ‘su’ with the root password to do be able to do administrative jobs. It turns out it was really easy to fix. Simply follow these steps as root (using your actual user name in place of jsmith):

apt-get install sudo
adduser jsmith sudo

This installs the sudo package, creates a sudo user group and the /etc/sudoers configuration file. It then adds your user to the user group sudo, which per the default /etc/sudoers file is permitted to run sudo.

Note that these changes do not take effect for any ssh sessions already open. If you have a running session logged in as the user you just added to the sudoers list and you attempt to use sudo from there, it will ask for your password and then fail with this error message:

jsmith is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

The fix is simple: log out and log back in again. On the new login, the new configuration will be picked up and you will be able to use sudo as intended.

If you would like to do multiple commands from sudo like you could from su, it’s very easy. Simply use sudo to launch a copy of bash and exit after you’re done:

sudo bash

Google does an “Apple Maps” to its own Maps

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Last night Google proved to me that you don’t have to be Apple to shoot yourself in the foot with a major Maps application release.

Naturally, online maps are a big feature on mobile devices, which is why it’s important to get them right.

Not too long ago Apple ended up with egg on their faces when they introduced their own Maps application to replace Google Maps. Google has just done the same. They rolled out a completely new Maps app starting from the middle of July and yesterday it landed on my Android phone. I was just preparing for a 280 km bicycle trip and had mapped out the route to follow, which I usually use Google Maps for. Imagine my surprise when I found that following an externally mapped route file was no longer supported on the latest Google Maps app: It doesn’t support the “My Maps” feature any more. With “My Maps” you can map a route using a number of third party products and highlight key locations, such as restaurants or shops on the map and assign a name to this. Google Maps then marks these points of interest with asterisks and highlights the route with a coloured line that you can follow easily. Simple but powerful. Well, that’s how it used to be before the “upgrade”.

This is what they say on their official blog:

Finally, My Maps functionality is not supported in this release but will return to future versions of the app.

Sounds to me like they were keen to release a new version of the product, even thought it wasn’t ready yet — just like Apple. Interestingly enough, the iOS version of Google Maps didn’t have the “My Maps” feature either. So what Google has done is to dumb down its flagship product to the level of the inferior version it ships on its competitor’s operating system!

Another annoying omission was the ability to display a scale bar (ruler) illustrating distances on the map, at whatever zoom level. This option has gone. It was quite useful to be able to estimate distances on the map. Without it, I simply don’t have a clue about distances unless I’m totally familiar with the area, in which case I presumably wouldn’t be using Google Maps in the first place.

My temporary fix was to uninstall Google Maps, reverting back to the factory installed version of Google Maps. This gets Google Maps working again, but it’s not sticky. After uninstalling it, the “upgrade” (i.e. downgrade) was back again the following day. Therefore it is important to disable automatic updates in the Google Play settings. Once you do that you will have to manually confirm all updates for apps other than Maps (and you need to avoid confirming Maps updates, which will still be offered).

Other problems that caused user complaints:

  • No more offline maps – the new version only supports map viewing with a mobile data or WiFi connection
  • Removal of +/- (zoom buttons) – zooming in and out now takes two fingers
  • Fewer and less relevant local search results
  • No more green/red/yellow lines along roads to indicate congestion levels
  • Removal of Google Latitude (which I never used)

UPDATE (2013-08-16): Version 7.1.0 appears to have brought back the scale bar. However, I won’t be installing it until My Maps also comes back.

Acer One D260 system restore

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The hard disk in my wife’s Acer One D260 netbook got damaged. A new hard disk is about a quarter the price of a new netbook, so I wanted to install a new drive. Like with most PCs these days there aren’t any Windows install DVDs included.

The netbook came with Windows 7 Starter, which we needed to somehow install on the new hard disk. Fortunately, the damaged hard disk was still limping along enough to use the Acer eRecovery system to create two Recovery DVDs. These should allow restoring the initial system state to a hard disk in the machine, wiping all the data on the drive.

To replace the hard disk, I had to undo seven clips around the edge of the keyboard, lift off the keyboard and disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable to the motherboard connector. Then I needed to undo 4 screws underneath and push through, to pop out the cover on the bottom of the machine. This opened access to the single memory slot and drive cage.

The 1 GB memory module on the motherboard can be replaced with a 2 GB PC3-8500 1066MHZ DDR3 module available for about $20. This is a wortwhile investment and I already have the module on order.

I replaced the damaged 250 GB WD Scorpio Blue drive with a spare 500 GB drive (available new for about $60-$80). Then I closed the cover and reinstalled the screws and then the keyboard.

With the new drive it was possible to boot off the first Recovery DVD using a USB DVD drive. The eRecovery software copied data from both DVDs to the hard disks and then rebooted. However, that reboot failed because the new drive did not yet have a Windows Master Boot record (MBR) on it. You can install an MBR from within Windows, but not from the bootable eRecovery DVD. So I had a chicken and egg problem.

I overcame this hurdle by booting off a Ubuntu Live DVD (32 bit), installing the ‘lilo’ package and telling it to install the Linux equivalent of Microsoft’s MBR code:

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

At the next attempt to boot off the hard disk, Windows started installing its components and drivers and launched into its initial configuration, just like the first time we had unboxed the machine more than two years ago. So we are back to a working Winmdows 7 machine!

Thank you, Linux — you saved my day again! 🙂

Too late to revive Flickr?

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Yahoo has just given its Flickr photo sharing service a much needed facelift. I have a Flickr account and used to love the service, but switched to Google’s Picasaweb more than 2 years ago. I loved the Flickr user interface, in fact I much preferred it to Picasaweb, yet I moved on.

Admittedly, Flickr’s 100 MB/month traffic limit was inconvenient, but what really killed it for me was that they limited free accounts to a maximum of 200 uploaded pictures. Not per week or per month, but in total. Facebook has no picture limit at all and Picasaweb has none provided you use the default setting in which it resizes uploads such that the width and height does not exceed 2048 pixels, which is more than enough for anyone with a 1920×1280 or smaller monitor. The greatest user interface was worthless without the ability to upload more pictures. Over the past 12 months alone I uploaded 7.3 GB in 107 sets consisting of 3385 pictures and videos to Picasaweb.

It’s great that Flickr will now offer up to 1 TB of storage for full size images. But how many former users will be prepared to give them another try, now that they have become familiar with Facebook and Google’s competing services? On a positive note though, the new Flickr will force Google to be more careful where it moves with Picasaweb / Google Photo. The Flickr facelift may not make it a winner yet, but any misstep by Google could.

Western Digital 4 KB sector drive alignment for Windows XP and 2003 server

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If your existing Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server machine needs a new C: drive, there are ways of upgrading to one of the latest drives without a complete software reinstall, but you may encounter some stumbling blocks due to the new Advanced Format technology, which uses 4 KB sectors.

When one of my PCs developed hard disk problems and I had to upgrade one of its drives, I also checked out my other machines. I found the C: drive of a Windows 2003 Server machine was about to fail. Windows 2003 is basically the server version of Windows XP, with which it shares most components. I opted for a 1 TB WD Red drive (WD10EFRX) by Western Digital, since these drives are designed for 24/7 operation, primarily for use in Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances (desktop drives are only designed for an 8 hours on, 16 hours off use pattern).

I did not want to reinstall everything from scratch on that machine, so I used a Linux boot DVD and the GNU dd utility to mirror the failing drive onto the new WD Red drive (“sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb”). As a result, all the partitions were in the same place and the same size as on the old drive, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 320 GB. The partitions on the old drive had not been aligned on 4 KB boundaries as is recommended to get decent performance on modern Advanced Format drives, so I needed to run an align tool to move the partition to the proper place. Western Digital offers one free to its customers, so that should be easy then, right?

No quite. I encountered all the troubles described by others in this thread: Basically, the download link for the WD Align tool (AcronisAlignTool_s_e_2_0_111.exe) takes you back to the same page, over and over, without error message. It turns out that you need to be registered and logged in to the WD site for the download link to do anything. You need to register both your contact details (name, e-mail address, postal address, phone number) and your hard disk’s serial number. For the latter I had to shut down the machine again and take out the drive once more to take a look, because the number is not printed on the cardboard box, only on the drive itself.

Once I registered my new drive, a download link did appear next to the registered product, but from it I found I could only download Acronis True Image and not the Acronis Align Tool (Advanced Format Software, WD Align). The WD Red series drives are all Advanced Format Drives, as is pretty much every drive made since 2011, but WD say it is designed for NAS use and hence don’t see the need for a fix for what they see as a Windows XP problem.

Various people online recommended a download site in Ukraine that apparently offers a copy of that program, but if you’re downloading from sites like that you risk installing malware on your computer. Beware!

There is a safer solution. I had to register another Western Digital drive, an old WD10EARS to get a usable download link for Advanced Format Software. If you don’t happen to have one lying around, a Google image search for WD10EARS will show you many photographs of disk drives with clearly readable serial numbers on the label. And apparently, these serial numbers will do the trick! 😉

After I downloaded the software, I ran it to make a bootable CD (it also seems to be Linux-based), booted and ran it and 1 hour and 30 minutes later my C: partition was showing up as properly aligned.

I can understand that Western Digital wants to restrict the use of licensed Acronis software to its own customers, denying other brands a free ride. However, the hoops it is making people jump through to be able to use one of their new drives as an upgrade to an existing Windows XP machine is just ridiculous. If a login is required to do the download, it should clearly say so. And if a drive uses 4 KB sectors (Advanced Format), its serial number should qualify you for the download. There are millions of existing XP users out there still and many will need new hard disks before they need a new computer.

Upgrading to a Western Digital WD20EFRX hard disk

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All hard disks will die, sooner or later. They only way to avoid that is to retire a drive early enough. Often I upgrade drives because I run out of disk space, and migrate the data to a bigger drive. However, this times it looks like one of my drives is about to die.

Over the last couple of months, one of my PCs that is processing data 24/7 has been seizing up periodically, so I was starting to get suspicious about its hard drives (it has two of them). This week the Windows 7 event viewer reported that NTFS had encountered write errors on the secondary drive. It’s a Samsung SpinPoint F2 EG (Samsung HD154UI, 1.5 TB) which basically has been busy non stop for over three years.

I installed smartmontools for Windows and it showed errors:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 099 065 051 Pre-fail Always - 5230
(...)
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0x000e 099 065 000 Old_age Always - 5223
(...)
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 12379
(...)
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 24

“Reported_Uncorrect” are fatal errors and “Current_Pending_Sector” are bad sectors the drive wants to replace with spare sectors as soon as it can. Neither is a good sign. So I have ordered a new drive, started a backup to another machine and will replace the drive with a new disk that I have ordered from Amazon.

The new drive is a 2 TB Western Digital WD20EFRX, which is part of WD’s “Red” series. These drives are specifically designed for 24/7 operation (as opposed for 8/5 office computers). The drive is 0.5 GB bigger, which is just as well as the old drive was getting close to filling up. Gradually I will be moving my processing to an Ubuntu server, which I already use as my main archive machine with a RAID6 drive array.

Garcinia Cambogia weight loss spam from hacked Yahoo accounts

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I’m seeing another round of weight loss spam that abuses third party Yahoo accounts for sending. It is similar to the earlier “Raspberry Ultra Drops” weight loss spam that also used compromised Yahoo accounts.

Here is one of the advertised domains, which is hosted on many different servers:

biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 91.207.7.134
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 94.75.193.33
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 94.75.193.38
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 142.0.79.134
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 142.0.79.140
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 176.53.119.24
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 176.53.119.27
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 176.53.119.68
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 176.53.119.69
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 198.144.156.42
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 199.116.117.166
biggsetfatburningsecret.com. 1439 IN A 199.127.98.117

The domain is registered through Ukrainian registrar ukrnames.com using forged WHOIS contact details.

The buy link on that site redirects to authenticgreencoffee.com, a domain registered last July, with the owner hidden behind a WHOIS proxy.

Other domains hosted on the same servers, some of which are part of the “Work from home mom” scam series:

bestfoodsforburningfat1.com
biggsetfatburningsecret.com
biggsetweightlosssecret.com
bigjim-foods.com
blogprogramflatstomach.com
blogquickprogramdiet.com
burnfatinfewdays.com
dietsforburningfat.com
eatingplansforweightloss.com
getflatstomachtoday.com
getweightlossandburnfat.com
icbs-news.com
icm-news.com
ircnn-news.com
losingweightrapidly.com
mnc-news.com
myscecretweightlosssolution.com
neverseeweightlossagain.com
plantipsflatstomach.com
plantodayflatstomach.com
rapidweightloss-blog.com
realmenshealthblog.com
revolutionarydiet2013.com
revolutionarydietformula.com
revolutionarydietloss2013.com
revolutionarydietsolution2013.com
revolutionarydietsolutions.com
revolutionarydietweightloss.com
revolutionarydietweightloss2013.com
revolutionarydietweightlosssolution.com
revolutionarydietweightlosssolution2013.com
revolutionaryfatburning.com
revolutionaryfatburningformula.com
revolutionaryfatburningmethod.com
revolutionaryflatstomachsystem.com
revolutionarynaturaldiet.com
revolutionarynaturalweightlosssystem.com
revolutionaryweightloss1.com
revolutionaryweightloss2013.com
revolutionaryweightlossdietplan.com
revolutionaryweightlossdietsolution.com
revolutionaryweightlossdietsolutions.com
revolutionaryweightlossplan.com
revolutionaryweightlosssolution.com
secretultrafastdiet.com
solutionflatstomachsecretsnow.com
solutionflatstomachtoday.com
solutionwithweightonline.com
thebigjim.com
tipsflatstomachquick.com
tipsflatstomachsystem.com
tipsprogramflatstomach.com
todayblogflatstomach.com
todayflatstomachblog.com
todayflatstomachquick.com
todayquickflatstomach.com
ultrafastsecretsdiet.com
weightlossgreatnews.com
weightlossthatworkisnotmagicpill.com

The “work at home mom” scam series also used hacked Yahoo accounts for advertising websites that are made to look like network TV news sites, so these scams are probably related.

The spam senders are often abusing mail interfaces meant for mobile phones. The Yahoo message IDs of the spams contain some of these strings:

.androidMobile@web
.BPMail_high_noncarrier@web
.BPMail_high_carrier@web
.BPMail_low_noncarrier@web
.BPMail_low_carrier@web

Probably “.androidMobile” is for use by the Yahoo Mail for Android app, though the spam is not necessarily sent from Android phones. More likely it is just using the servers provided for Android, but accessing from a PC.

The “BPMail” IDs are an interesting one. I suspect the “_noncarrier” variants involve IP addresses not connected to one of the phone carriers that bundle Yahoo mail with their service, while the “_carrier” variants mean the IP address is part of the provider’s address pool, though it could be used by a PC accessing via a wireless broadband modem.

“High” and “low” could be an internally assigned spam rating, though that is mere speculation. However, “.BPMail_high_noncarrier” is the most common Google hit of these 4 that comes up when searching for information about this type of spam. When investigating a pool of spam samples, this was the order of declining frequency: “.BPMail_high_noncarrier” was by far the most frequent, followed by “.BPMail_high_carrier” and finally relatively small numbers of “.BPMail_low_noncarrier” and “.BPMail_low_carrier”.

The spam recipients (common numbers: 1, 3, 9 or 10) tend to include the last addresses the legitimate owner of the Yahoo account has emailed. So perhaps the spammers are harvesting email addresses from the “Sent” folder of the Yahoo account after gaining access to it.

I find it amazing that Yahoo has yet to find a away to close the vulnerability that allows this spam and fraud to continue, despite the months and years since it was first observed.

Garmin Edge 500 with Heart Rate and Cadence

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I’ve had my first week with my new Garmin Edge 500 with cadence sensor and premium heart rate monitor strap, so it’s time for a review. I bought it on Wiggle for about JPY 24,500 ($274).

Around the time I bought the Garmin Edge 500, the new Edge 510 came out. It adds a touch screen, wireless connectivity to a smartphone and various nifty new features, but is also more expensive, so I went for the existing 500.

I switched to the Garmin after more than a year and over 8,000 km of GPS logging using Android phones, mostly my Google Nexus S. Here are my first impressions (the cadence sensor in the bundled set is installed on my son’s bike for use with his 500, so it’s not part of this review):

  1. I really love being able to use a heart rate strap and it’s nice to be able to see the HR figure without having to push a button (daylight permitting). I can ride at a consistent effort level, avoiding both effort too light to build stamina and extreme effort that would lead to premature exhaustion. If money were no object, a power meter would work best (which the Garmin supports). A heart rate monitor is an inexpensive alternative that works for most cyclists wanting to improve their performance.
  2. Because of its barometric altimeter the elevation totals are much more meaningful on the Garmin than on the GPS-only phone, where they may be exaggerated by a factor of 2 to 3. Current altitude data on the Android is OK, but small variations add up too much and grades on climbs and descents may be overestimated.
  3. I love the 90 degree turn quick attach / quick release of the Garmin. It feels both secure and convenient. It is more confidence inspiring than the Minoura iH-100-S phone holder for my Android, which is generally reliable, but not 100% bulletproof. Even after using a bumper for the phone, which has improved the grip of the holder, I’ve had a few instances where on bumpy roads only the USB cable attached to the phone saved my day. I would never entrust my $300 phone to the Minoura without some kind of backup method of attachment, while I feel safe about the Garmin’s mode of attachment.
  4. Importing the rides into Strava or Garmin Connect after the ride is really easy. I just connect the Garmin to the USB cable of the PC and click “upload” on the website in the browser and the browser plugin finds the fresh tracks and uploads them. Assigning a name is marginally easier with a real keyboard than a soft keyboard on the Android Strava app. With the smartphone I could also upload rides while I’m on the road, but why do that if I’ll still add more kilometres until I get back home? That would only be a benefit on a multi day tour without laptop.
  5. One drawback of the Garmin is lack of direct Linux support. My son runs Ubuntu on his laptop, while Garmin only officially supports Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, so he asked me to upload his activities on one of my PCs. There’s a workable solution though. When you connect the Garmin to a USB port on an Ubuntu machine, it gets mounted as a removable volume named “GARMIN”. In there is a folder called Garmin, with another folder Activities inside which contains all logged rides as .fit files. Copy those to your hard disk and then upload them manually from a browser (Strava supports .gpx, .tcx, .json, and .fit files).
  6. When leaving the house, both the Garmin and the Android take a short while to lock onto the satellites and the Android seems to have something of an edge (excuse the pun) over the Garmin, which does seem to take its time. Maybe that’s because the Android pull pull satellite position data off the web, while the Garmin can only use whatever data it captured before. In one unscientific test, I took my Android and my Garmin outside in the morning. The Android had a satellite lock in 15 seconds while the Garmin took a more leisurely 44 seconds. This is a minor issue to me compared to the next one, GPS precision.
  7. While I have seen better GPS results on some rides from the Garmin than the Android, switching from the latter to the former has not been a dramatic improvement. I think their results are still in the same class, i.e. far from perfect, especially in built-up areas. Neither is like my car GPS, which is pretty solid. Both my son and I have been riding on Strava segments in Tokyo, expecting to be ranked but found the segment didn’t show up because the plotted route was slightly off to the side, so the segment start or end didn’t match up.
  8. Having temperature data on the Garmin is nice, but not really important to me. Unlike heart rate and cadence it’s not feedback that you can use instantly in how you cycle. Your body is a temperature sensor anyway and how you dress is at least as important as the absolute temperature.
  9. The Garmin 500 battery is supposed to last “up to 18 hours”, which would cover me on everything but 300 km and longer brevets, but on any significant rides I tend to take my Android phone, which I use for Google Maps, e-mail, SMS and yes, even the occasional phone call. Using an external 8,000 mAh battery for the Android, battery life has not really been an issue. The same battery will charge either device (one at a time), provided I take both a mini and micro USB cable with me.

Summary

If my Android had an ANT+ chip or supported BTLE (BT 4.0) for using a heart rate monitor as well as a barometric altimeter, then it would still be my first choice for logging bike rides. Given the limitations of my phone and the reasonable price of the Garmin Edge 500 I am very happy with my purchase.