The reason the gTablet build of CM7 doesn’t allow mounting CIFS/SMB shares is because the cfis.ko kernel module was left out of the ROM. Fortunately, this is a fairly easy fix. On the official CM 7.0.3 gTablet build, the running kernel is Linux 2.6.32.39, and the correct module can be found on DroidBasement in the following lib package:

http://droidbasement.com/gtab/kernels/2632/37/lib-2632.39_gb.tar.gz

If you are running a different version of CM7 (or perhaps another ROM that is likewise lacking cfis support), you will want to run “uname -a” from a terminal emulator or adb to determine the correct kernel lib package to get from DroidBasement, and make sure you get the correct package for your device.

$ uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.32.39-cyanogenmod #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Apr 24 22:06:49 EDT 2011 armv7l GNU/Linux

Anyway, there’s only one file in that archive that you should be concerned with at the moment:

lib-2632.39_gb.tar\lib\modules\2.6.32.39-cyanogenmod\kernel\fs\cifs\cifs.ko

Once you have located this file, extract it and copy it to the internal storage of your ViewSonic gTablet using a micro-USB cable or the microSD card. Once you have it loaded onto your tablet, open the Market on your device and install CifsManager. Load the CifsManager app, click Add New Share…, enter the server IP and share name as instructed, enter the mount point, username and password (if applicable), then click on Save Share. Be sure your mount point exists in a location that is writable so that CifsManager can create it.

Before you mount the share, you have to tell CifsManager how to load the cifs.ko kernel module. Click on Menu, Settings, then check Load cifs module, and Load via insmod. Finally, enter the full path to the location of cifs.ko, then hit back and attempt to mount the share. If all goes well, you will see a message that reads, “The share has been mounted successfully.”

Unfortunately the version of CifsManager I had installed failed to set the permissions correctly when it created my mount point. Particularly, it left out the execute bit for everyone except the owner. In order to fix this, open up your terminal emulator, ssh client or adb, and type:

$ su
# chmod a+rwx /mnt/cifs/mountpoint

Replace /mnt/cifs/mountpoint with the actual name of the mountpoint you are using for your share.

And that’s it! You can now access files on your smb share directly from your gTablet within any Android app. I use it to access my music library as well as pictures and video files.

Enter virtual machines. We first tried VirtualBox, but it turns out that there’s not any easy way to install an operating system directly to a physical hard drive attached to the host OS. We decided to try VMWare Workstation.

Trying to install was a little disconcerting – we could get it booted and going, and the Windows 98 SE installer saw our 4GB IDE hard drive attached to my computer over USB, but as soon as the installer tried to format the hard drive or write files to it, it choked and VMWare gave us a “could not write to the disk” error.

It turns out that, unsurprisingly, UAC in newer versions of Windows prevents software like VMWare from directly accessing a hard drive and writing to it – even though VMWare presented a UAC prompt requesting elevated privileges to access the physical disk. After a little swearing and a bit more Googling, it turns out that you need to manually unmount the hard drive and set it as writable. This isn’t all that hard, but it does require a few minutes of command line work.

Open up a command prompt, type diskpart, and hit enter. Once diskpart launches, type list disk and hit enter to view a list of attached physical drives. You’ll now need to identify which of the drives listed is yours. Once you’re certain you’ve got the right disk, type select disk $n (where $n is the number of your disk). To take the disk offline (unmount), just type offline disk. Once you’re sure the disk is unmounted (you can double-check by looking in Explorer), type attribute disk clear readonly to make the disk writeable. Type rescan to wrap up, and you can now exit diskpart.

Open up VMWare, start your virtual machine, and now you can format your disk normally.

VMWare is a great way to get an operating system on to a disk when you’re unable to do so from the real host computer. VirtualBox is a good free alternative, although it’s a little rough around the edges in a few places. If you have problems or need a more advanced configuration, you can find an in-depth article on this issue on VMWare’s website here.

Happy geeking!

I had the client console installed, but it never worked, mostly because my user account wasn’t in the right domain group, so I didn’t have access rights to connect to the MSC server. Then it turned out that I had a typo in my server hostname, which was causing the SCCM application to crash every single time I loaded it.

Since I couldn’t get the application to stay open long enough to rename the server it was connecting to by default, I figured I’d just uninstall it, which would (theoretically) wipe out any settings that had been created for the application.

Not so.

I mean, really, Microsoft, really? It’s just good manners to take any registry edits and config files with you when your application’s uninstaller is used.

It turns out that I had to search through the registry for the bad server name, rename it, and presto! My client console works perfectly. If you’re having a similar issue, the server string is located in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\ConfigMgr\Admin UI\MRU\DefaultSite. Change ServerName to whatever the correct name is, and you should be back in business.

Maybe the System Center 2012 client uninstaller will actually, you know, uninstall everything.

It’s probably not that easy, but it makes for a nice opening statement. See, I was employed at a retail Apple Store in Arlington, Virginia for ten months. I worked as a Genius, which is Apple’s fruity name for Tier II tech support. We saw customers, handled software and hardware issues, and repaired machines. I loved my job.

Let me clarify that – I really, really, really loved my job. I looked forward to going to work every day. I adored working with customers, and getting to spend half my shift neck-deep in computer hardware was a dream come true.

Unfortunately, I worked on an all-male team that didn’t take too kindly to a girl joining their secret club. In fact, they hated it, and my teammates went out of their way to antagonize and harass me on a daily basis in order to make me look bad to management. The slightest mistake on my part was immediately reported, behind my back, to the manager on duty. My coworkers would deliberately ask me questions or set me up for situations that would allow them to go to management with more dirt on me.

And, stunningly, the lead manager of my former store fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Only three and a half months after I started working there, at the beginning of July 2010, I was put on a month-long “documented coaching” period, which basically meant  that I was given a list of goals to achieve or else I’d lose my job.

I successfully completed that month, and it put me on probation for a year. The others on the Genius team at my former store started being nicer to me once they realized I wasn’t going to lose my job. Unfortunately, that didn’t last very long, and before I knew it, they were once again looking for the tiniest slip-up so that management would realize how much I deserved to be fired.

A Genius from a store in Maryland transferred to the Clarendon location. He was funny, sarcastic, and had a loud personality – just like me. But as a male, the team adapted to his presence much more easily than myself.

Then I made a fatal mistake – I inadvertently violated an undocumented policy regarding alcohol. I brought a bottle of gin into the store to give as a gift to a Genius who had previously caused a lot of problems for me. Someone told management, and it was added to the list of reasons why I deserved to be fired, even though Apple had absolutely no documented policy on alcohol – which isn’t surprising, considering that Cupertino holds company-sponsored “beer bashes” on a regular basis, where free alcohol is provided to employees. In fact, Apple’s retail employee handbook specifically directs employees to the corporate policy on alcohol, which essentially says “no underage drinking at company-sponsored events” and “you’re responsible for your behavior while drinking”.

I told my store manager that I was facing a hostile work environment. He told me it was “just teasing” and “boys being boys”. When I reiterated this exchange with the HR representative who would later tell me I did indeed deserve to be fired, her response was “Well, I wasn’t there for that specific incident, so I can’t say anything about it”.

Oddly, though, while she wasn’t present for the six months of silence from fellow Genius Sho, who literally ignored me in front of customers rather than look in my direction or speak to me when spoken to, she managed to twist that into something that was my doing. This particular individual is the same person who said to me, verbatim (during a meeting with two managers), “I hate everything about you.” I was causing all the problems for a team that was victimized by being forced to work with a girl.

I sat at my dining room table tonight, listening to this HR representative, in her fifth year at Apple, explaining to me that all protocols and precedence had been followed and, with that in mind, she had no choice but to uphold the decision to terminate my employment with Apple. The fact that I was harassed and antagonized by my coworkers didn’t matter – it was my responsibility to put up with it and tolerate it without reacting to it, even though management continually did nothing to put an end to it. The fact that I flat-out told my manager that the environment in the genius room was hostile to my presence didn’t matter, and the fact that he discounted my concerns really didn’t matter – she wasn’t there, so she couldn’t possibly comment on it. The concept of a hostile work environment was completely absent from the conversation I had with this woman.

Then the real blow came. I found out that within a week of HR deciding to uphold my termination, a full-blown investigation was launched at my former store against senior management because of evidence that they were playing favorites, deliberately launching crusades to fire specific employees, and generally were making incredibly poor management decisions.

A senior manager with five years’ tenure at Apple was fired at the end of the investigation. His supervisor, the very same store manager who fired me, managed to lie and weasel his way into keeping his job. The fact that this investigation happened had no influence on the decision to uphold my termination. The fact that the leadership at my store was formally called into question for poor managerial behavior had absolutely no bearing on HR’s decision.

In the end, I was fired from a supposedly liberal, pro-employee, open-minded corporation because an all-male team couldn’t deal with an intelligent, outspoken woman working with them. I was fired by a supervisor who was going out of his way to find reason to fire me, and who was investigated by HR for that very behavior. I was fired for being unwilling and unable to continue to tolerate hostile, antagonistic behavior from my coworkers.

Is Apple really the kind of company you want to work for? Until tonight, I was convinced that Apple would make the right decision, and I would get my job back – or at least clear my name. Now it’s impossible for me to have any faith in a company I lauded as “a great company to work for”. Even post-termination, I told people that Apple was still a great company and that I wanted to go back.

I could file a discrimination suit purely on principle, but in the end, I can’t support working for a company that has no interest in doing right by its employees.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect everyone to like me or want to be my friend. I know that I have my own personality flaws, just like everyone else. But at the end of the day, each employee in any work environment must absolutely be held responsible for their own behavior and actions, particularly when it is negative or damaging behavior directed at coworkers, customers, or subordinates. This, to be frank, did not happen. I was clearly blamed in full for the behaviors of my coworkers who, when it came down to it, were not ever chastised for their actions and held to the same behavioral standard.

Sorry, Steve Jobs. I gave you a fighting chance, and you failed me in the worst way possible. It’s a shame, because I sure loved that job.

Combined with a good codec pack, Windows Media Center can handle pretty much anything you throw at it – I have no problems playing many different video formats, from the popular XviD and DivX to the slightly-less-common MKV format (which is frequently found as uncompressed 1080P video). However, as I started using WMC more and more with my little Acer L310 HTPC, I discovered I wanted a little more out of my MCE remote.

I’d had the good fortune to come across a used Microsoft MCE Remote v2, which undeniably offers the best support for MCE, seeing as it’s a Microsoft device made specifically for Microsoft hardware. Shortly after acquiring this remote and its accompanying USB receiver, I ended up getting a refurbished Logitech Harmony 550 universal remote for even more awesome control of my home theatre system.

I was disappointed to find out that the Harmony remote and its software can’t easily accept keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+C) as remote commands. This makes sense, I suppose, since the remote uses standard IR commands for the many devices it supports. I was stuck with only the buttons that my MCE remote had, and I wanted more. There are handy keyboard shortcuts to access the media sections of WMC – pictures, videos, and music (the DVD menu button will take you to the movies section if a DVD isn’t currently playing). I wanted to program these shortcuts to the multi-function buttons around the LCD on my Harmony remote.

I first tried an older solution with an application called HIP, which theoretically could have let me reprogram the buttons on my MCE remote. Unfortunately, HIP relies on a modified driver for the USB IR receiver…which isn’t 64-bit compatible. I knew that Microsoft used to market an MCE keyboard that used IR, so if I could get my hands on one of those, I could teach my Harmony remote all the IR commands I was looking for. However, this particular keyboard is no longer sold, so I’d be stuck searching for one on eBay and elsewhere – not to mention that I really don’t need yet another keyboard floating around my apartment.

Finally, I happened upon a post on Logitech’s customer forums that mentioned the Microsoft MCE IR keyboard is in the Harmony software’s hardware database – you just have to know how to get to it! Instead of adding your HTPC as its own device, use the keyboard itself – it’s under Computer > Computer > Microsoft. Enter MCE Keyboard as the device, and presto! You have access to all 104 keys of a standard keyboard, plus some extra shortcut keys and MCE controls present on the original Microsoft hardware! With the Harmony software’s ability to enter key sequences in the “additional buttons” section, you can make your remote do anything you want – you can even further extend its ability with something like AutoHotKey, and assign a simple two-key shortcut to whatever scripting needs you might have.

With this discovery, I have exactly what I need to get the most out of my Harmony remote and my Windows Media Center experience. Keep in mind, however, that this solution will only work with Microsoft MCE-specific eHome IR receivers. Third-party MCE remotes use different receivers and IR commands; the keyboard’s IR codes will only work with an original Microsoft receiver.

Download here.

I finally upgraded my main desktop to Windows 7 Ultimate tonight and discovered that my server was no longer showing up under the “Network” view in Windows Explorer. It turns out that in Windows 7, that view (which used to be called Network Neighborhood in the Windows NT/98 days and My Network Places in Windows XP) depends on a service called Network Discovery to find machines attached to your network. For the multiple machines on my LAN running Windows 7, they display in my Homegroup and Network views perfectly fine. Server 2008, however, has Network Discovery disabled by default, likely as a security precaution.

Of course, when I remoted into my server and tried to enable Network Discovery, imagine my surprise when it kept re-disabling itself! A little googling revealed in this forum post that Network Discovery relies on several Windows Services to function properly. Getting everything set up is surprisingly easy.

The following services should be set to Automatic (some may be set to Manual; others may be entirely Disabled):

• Function Discovery Resource Publication
• SSDP Discovery
• UPnP Device Host

Once you’ve set up these services to start automatically (and made sure they’re started!), you can enable Network Discovery in the Network and Sharing Center’s advanced sharing settings view. Once you save your changes, your Server 2008 machine should show up in the Network view of your Windows 7 computers.

Making bash shell scripts in OS X is easy – open up TextEdit to get started. Either go up to the Format menu and select Make Plain Text or use the Command+Shift+T keyboard shortcut to convert your new file into plain text.

Then, all you need are the commands, one on each line, that are used to replace the BSOD icon with the generic OS X computer icon (which looks like an Apple Cinema Display):

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/
sudo mv public.generic-pc.icns public.generic-pc_lame.icns
sudo cp com.apple.mac.icns public.generic-pc.icns
echo "script complete."
exit

This script copies the original BSOD icon to a backup file, and makes a copy of the generic Mac icon and gives it the appropriate file name. Save this file as something like BSODfix.command.

In order to make it executable, you need to set the correct file permissions. Open up Terminal and navigate to the directory where you saved your script (I keep my shell scripts in Users/Claire/Scripts), and run chmod 755 BSODfix.command to set global execute permissions on the file. Now you can double-click the file in Finder to run it. Terminal will open up and prompt you for the password for your current user account (assuming you are currently logged in as an administrator), execute the script, and exit.

Quit terminal, restart your computer (for some reason, killing and restarting the Finder doesn’t always make the change take effect), and map to an SMB share to see the change.

If you don’t want to write the script yourself, you can download it below:

BSODfix.command

Let me tell you, this has been one huge educational experience that never seems to end. My server is now running my LAN’s internal DHCP and DNS. It’s also a game application server, an internal samba file server, and an internal and external web server.

One of the things apps like WordPress, PunBB, and other content systems use is email. I’ve already discussed in the past how to make sendmail in Linux play nicely with Apache and PHP, but I realized that things were changing as I started migrating our websites and projects to an entirely different environment – Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and IIS 7.0. There are some growing pains, but at least it gives me a lot to write about!

Anyhow, I realized shortly after the migration of Dan’s game servers (and related websites) that the server wasn’t sending mail. Since, you know, I hadn’t set up an SMTP service in Windows. “So what?” I thought to myself, “I’ll just install it and everything will be hunky-dory, right?”

Wrong.

It turns out that in 2009, every large mail service provider on the Internet really hates relaying email that comes from suspicious locations, including IP addresses that are part of residential ISPs. Even though we have a static IP address through Verizon Business, it’s still part of Verizon’s greater IP pool – which includes all their dynamic IPs for residential FiOS and DSL services.

Google blacklisted me the second I tried to send a message to an @gmail.com address. It was just downhill from there. I found out from some people on IRC that I needed a reverse DNS entry if I wanted anyone to relay my email, so I called up Verizon and got that taken care of. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL started relaying my mail, but Google kept delaying delivery, claiming that an “unusual amount of unsolicited email” was coming from my IP address.

After many hours on IRC and doing additional research on Google, I decided it probably wasn’t worth it to keep wrestling to make the big mail servers of cyberspace deem my rinky-dink little server worthy of their approval. It was time to look for other solutions.

I decided right from the start that I did not want to deal with hosting mail. I have no interest in trying to mitigate mass quantities of spam. My friend Julie over The Gadgeteer got on the Gmail Apps boat and moved her own email over to Google. It seemed appealing enough, so I decided to give it a shot. Google Apps offers a free version to cheapskates like me who can’t or don’t want to pay yet another monthly fee. The free version includes Google mail, calendar, sites, chat, and docs. Works for me!

Google was brilliant about the whole thing. I signed up, and when I clicked in the web-based control panel to set up email, it automagically discovered that my domain (polatrite.com, in this case) was registered with 1and1.com, so it directed me to a 1and1-specific how-to on setting up the MX records for my domain. About 18 hours later, 1and1 and Google had both updated their servers and records, and I was in business. Now it was time to figure out how to make my web server send email through Google’s SMTP servers.

Which is why we’re here today. If you’re still paying attention, that is. As always, this is a little screenshot-heavy, so hit the jump to carry onward.

First off, if you haven’t already, you need to install the SMTP service in Windows. Start by opening up your Server Manager. Click on Features in the lefthand pane, and then “Add Features”:

Make sure that both SMTP Server and SMTP Server Tools are checked. Windows, being the wizard-happy operating system that it is, will walk you through the steps to install SMTP, including installing any dependent services you may need. Once that’s done, we can continue to actually making your mail route through Google’s servers.

The SMTP standard allows for something called smart hosting. Essentially, an SMTP service set up with a smart host actually sends its mail to another SMTP server, which then relays the mail from there into the scary unknowns of cyberspace. This is exactly what I needed – by relaying my mail through Google’s servers, the outside world would see my mail as Google-sent, and nobody in their right mind is going to block Google mail (theoretically).

Before we can set up our server, we need enable IMAP in Gmail. Login to the Gmail web interface, and click Settings in the top right corner of your browser window. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings tab, and make sure Enable IMAP is selected. If it’s not, select it and save your changes.

Now that we have permission to access our mail outside of Google’s web interface, we can set up the server.

The SMTP service available in Windows Server 2008 is actually managed through IIS 6.0, not 7.0. Fire up the IIS 6.0 manager by going to Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager. Under your server, you’ll see a little hideous 16-color envelope icon. This is your SMTP virtual server, which IIS uses to send mail. Right-click on it and select Properties.

Click the Delivery tab, and then the Outbound Security… button. We want Basic Authentication. Enter your Google account credentials, and make sure TLS Encryption is enabled, since Google’s SMTP servers require SSL.

Click OK, then the Advanced… button on the same tab. Here’s where we set up our smart host that our own SMTP service will use to relay email. Enter the domain of your site under Fully-qualified domain name, and use smtp.gmail.com as the smart host.

Click OK. Now we’re going to enable logging, which will be critically important to ensure that your email is being accepted by receiving SMTP servers. Click the General tab. Make sure the Enable logging box is selected, and choose your log format. I’m not all that well-versed on what the different formats are. “Microsoft IIS Log File Format” has been working fine for me. Click Properties… next the log format drop-down to choose where your logs are going to reside. Click OK.

Double-check everything, and click OK to apply your new settings. I went ahead and restarted the SMTP service, just to make sure that everything was working correctly.

Now you can test your server and see if everything is working. I made a simple ColdFusion page that sent a test message to Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and MSN (just to double-check!). It worked perfectly.

But…wait! Even though I had set the “from” parameter of the cfmail tag to come from my Gmail address, Google overrode this and used my polatrite.com email address as the “from” address in the message header. I don’t want all my websites sending mail from this one address! A Better Geek and Polatrite Gaming are two completely different entities, so I needed to remedy this right away.

Never fear, Google is here to save the day! Gmail has this neat feature, available in normal Gmail accounts and Google Apps accounts, that allows you to send mail from other mail accounts right from inside the Gmail web interface. It’s easy to set up, and it works well.

Log back in to your Gmail web interface, and go back to your settings. Navigate to the Accounts settings page. Select Add another email address you own in the Send mail as section, which will pop up a new window. Enter the name and email address you want to display on mail sent from this account.

On the next page, select to send the mail through the secondary address’s SMTP servers. It’s important to keep in mind that this will only work for email accounts that have given you permission to send mail externally (e.g. not through the webmail interface) – Yahoo and MSN/Live do not provide this functionality for free email accounts. However, all Gmail accounts and Google Apps accounts allow for external SMTP access. Enter smtp.gmail.com as the SMTP server, select port 465 or 587, and make sure Always use a secure connection (SSL) is enabled. Enter the username and password for this secondary email account, and click Add Account.

After you’ve added your account, Google will email that address with a confirmation message. Click the link in that email to validate that you are authorized to use it, and Google will enable that account in Gmail. Once your second account is activated, you can send mail from your websites with this second email address as the “from” address, and Google will send it accordingly.

Google does have some limitations on what is allowed with the free version of Google Apps, and it’s important to keep this in mind for your websites. A single message can have a maximum of 100 recipients. Additionally, you can send mail to a total of 500 recipients per day. If you have a very active server, you’re probably going to be better off running your own mail server or paying for a larger-scale male service (Google Apps Premier allows up to 2000 recipients daily), but for small-time stuff like I’m managing, this is going to work just fine. I’ll still try to get my server off Google’s mail blacklist so that I can eventually use my own SMTP server, but in the meantime, this is a fast and easy way to get Windows ready to go for sending mail through web applications.

Life is busy, work is extra busy, things are moving at a fast pace…so ABetterGeek has gone by the wayside a bit. Don’t worry; I’ll post soon.

Before the end of 2009, at least.