Samsung Blu-Ray C5500 and internet@tv problems

Hello, this entry is no related to computers or Unix, considering that a DVD or Bluray player is not, but today I'm very happy and I want to share this small but very impirant trick. Since some weeks the function internet@tv of my Samsung Bluray playe C5500 was not working. When I started the app the system downloaded the last firmware but failed reinstalled the default apps. I tried reverting to default the player but without success... until today: a new web search returned this post with a different trick to reset the player to the building default options. Just turn on the player and pressing&holding the stop button. Two minutes lTer i got the internet@tv function running again!

Restoring DAT tapes with IRIX tar

Today I started to recover a lot of old DAT tapes of an old video software. At first time I tried with IRIX Backup/Restore Manager but gave me a lot of errors due this tapes were stored with an old release of IRIX.

As you can see in this post in the Nekochan forums, the IRIX GUI system changed its own format with the different IRIX versions:

For 6.5, the format is cpio.
For 6.3 and 6.4, the format is tar.
For 5.3-6.2, the format is bru.

As my tapes were burn in 1996/1997 I tried with tar. And success:

# mkdir /datrest
# cd /datrest
# tar xvR

With the above commands all the files in a DAT drive will be restored on the /datrest folder. Just What I needed!

Still kicking!! O2 & Octane & DAT

Still alive!!!
A lot of time without post anything but I am a very busy guy.

First of all here you are my last toy:

A SGI O2 with RM5200 at 300 MHz and 256 MB of RAM. Not bad. I was searching one of this for some years. Running good except for temporary ethernet problems.

Hinv:
O2 2# hinv -mv
CPU: MIPS R5000 Processor Chip Revision: 10.1
FPU: MIPS R5000 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 10.0
1 300 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 256 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.18
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 1)
CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 1
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 2
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, Camera not connected.
Vice: TRE

In the other side, I upgraded the Octane 2 with new harddisk and a Sony DAT unit. Now I'm recovering some ols tapes of Video Software.

And related to my projects, I compiled a new ROM for my Cobalt servers but I still having problems loading large bz2 kernels. This new ROM uses one of the latest 2.4 kernels with SATA_VIA driver and detects a cheap SATA VIA PCI card in my RaQ 4. Unfortunately I don't have enough time and the development is going very slow. I expect to power on one RaQ next month to compile an smaller kernel for this ROM and try to load big kernels again.

Oracle/Sun Solaris 10 u10 8/11 published

This week arrived my latest toy, a Sun Blade 1500 Sparc workstation, but when I went to install Solaris on it (came with Debian Sparc linux) I wasn't able to find th DVD. I went to the Oracle web and found a new release from August.

You can download the DVD iso for Sparc and x86 systems from this page: Solaris 10 downloads.

And here you are the 'What's new' document as pdf.

More info about this workstation later.

P.D.: I bought this machine without power supply. This can be a big problem because the Sun Blade 1500/2500 workstation series need three plugs/connectors from the power supply: an standard ATX 20 & 4 pin plugs and an special 12 pin plug for supplemental power supply. I just installed an standard ATX power supply and the machine is booting and working correctly. I have to make extensive more checks to the hardware but nothing rare is happening without this connection.

Decompressing a tar.bz2 archive

Too many time without play with Linux machines!!!!! I forget how toi decompress a tar.bz2 archive. Posted to easy find it in a future:

# tar -jxvf myfile.tar.bz2

Speeding up ssh connections/logins

Very useful is to deactivate the DNS lookups in the ssh server. Another easy modification: add one line to the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

1. Type: # pico /etc/ssh/sshd_config
2. Add the line (green bold one): 

#PermitTunnel no

UseDNS no

# no default banner path

Cobalt RaQ 4: slow slow sloooooow ftp login

Hi guys,
this week I turned on on RaQ with the old Cobalt OS with all the Zeffie's updates (New updates appeared this year). I like the fast responese of the Cobalt servers with this old Operating System and I don't need the extra capabilities of the BlueQuartz or BlueOnyx systems.

But today I started to check if I can compile the latest 2.4 kernel but when I went to some upload files to the server I could not connect to ftp. Some search of the web to found the problem, the proftp server has some features enabled in the latest version that can be deactivated for us.

To do this just add this lines (green bold ones) to the /etc/proftpd.conf file just after the first configuration lines:

ServerName                      "ProFTPD"
ServerType                      inetd
DeferWelcome                    off
DefaultServer                   on
DefaultRoot                     / admin
DefaultRoot                     ~/../.. site-adm
DefaultRoot                     ~ !site-adm

UseIPv6                                off
UseReverseDNS                   off

And add one line to the GLOBAL subsection (green bold chars):

IdentLookups                    off
   AllowAll
# Report localtime, not GMT
TimesGMT                        off