Guides and Tutorials Archives

Tiplet: no SNMP replies? Fix broken SNMP responses in Windows Server 2008, Windows 8

I encountered a weird problem on a Windows Server 2008 R2 install which had dual NICs on the same physical network (different subnets, DNS and gateways) - you could interrogate its SNMP agent and you wouldn't get a response even though the right community was set and you might initially see it working properly! This borkage would happen indefinitely after beginning, though punctuated with momentary spurts of correct operation (depending on which way the wind was blowing, how you looked at the box, whether you spoke softly to it...) but then arbitrarily breaking again. Intensely frustrating.

From my own analysis, as SNMP traffic is (usually) UDP, the responses were being routed through the wrong interface (Windows' SNMP agent binds automatically to all interfaces on 0.0.0.0:161 and doesn't care about interface order or metrics, even if you define custom metrics -- though you can force it by setting metrics on your connections' default gateways). The incorrectly-identified replies to SNMP requests were also being caught by the firewall (for whatever reason), even though it has the appropriate SNMP rules to allow ingress/egress traffic on UDP 161 and 162 (trap traffic).

But guess what, for once MS has actually issued a fix for this! It's on the Microsoft site via the snappily-named article "Incorrect source IP address is returned in the SNMP response in Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008". I've applied this to the servers I'm setting up monitoring for, and it works beautifully.

Big kudos to "mobilenow" who linked to this hotfix on the Solarwinds Thwack forum and explained the hotfix was produced after they opened a bug case after similarly trawling the net during production of their ServerSilo monitoring product. Probably worth checking them out. 🙂

Hopefully this avoids you wasting as much time as I spent trying to fix this...

My keyboard had a hairball...

IMG_4087-25pc Once upon a time, I received the gift of my first very own PC from doting parents. Whilst this was long after getting my first computer (the first was an amazing Acorn A3000, fondly called "The Beast") I still remember the PC's specs well: a Pentium III 450 (on a riser card!), Voodoo Banshee, 128 MB of blazing SDRAM and a 10 GB hard drive. ("I'll never fill all this disk space...")

However, the best thing about that computer: the humble keyboard. After using one ages before getting my own, I knew immediately it was an awesome peripheral. The Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite (model A11-00337, M/N E06402COMB) is just about everything a hardcore computer-er-y person would ever want: incredibly ergonomic; devoid of a zillion pointless 'hotkey' and Function buttons; a lovely muted yet definitive keypress response, a wrist rest angled 'just right'... and even made in Mexico. Â¡OlÃ©!

This little keyboard is a resilient little bugger and it's still trucking. Just some of its previous adventures:

Half a dozen LAN parties
Half a dozen housemoves
Years of frustrated / angry / drunk / careless / overzealous users... (Well, user)
An entire pint of orange juice (poured into it by yours truly, by accident)
Countless knocks, drops and bumps, some from considerable height
Several kilos of toast
Evidently, several pounds of hair, or two tribbles (we'll get to that)

Add to that the fact that it's both PS/2 (USB with included adapter) AND off-white plastic (mine's beige from age!), all being told it should have died a long time ago. HOWEVER, it just refuses to go! It's amazing and I think I may actually have real feelings of love and concern for this keyboard. Or I might be drunk again. Who can tell.

The only thing it's missing are its little rubber feet from the underside of the front, easily solved with a little bit of (vintage) bluetack. I think you can even reorder those parts from Microsoft.

ANYWAY! I began to wonder, 'what's inside my favourite keyboard of all time? Perhaps it would work like a boxfresh unit if I took it apart and hosed out the rubbish?' (because when you can hear crumbs rattling round inside, it's time to get the desk-vac). Soon, nothing else was to be done except take it apart. And take it apart I did...

Buying from the States, attempt 2: self declaring duty & VAT

I've placed an(other) order from the rather excellent site SplitReason. And, in an attempt to avoid a repeat of August's ridiculous episode (tentatively titled "Royal Mail Handling Fees, or, exorbitance and stupidity in equal measure") I've decided to give our besieged postal service a rest and handle the admin work myself.

This involves one critical thing - getting SplitReason to mark my parcel as "to be customs cleared by importer". I've put the request in and I'll be updating this post as developments occur. I'm determined to import a single purchase and pay any applicable customs charges directly myself (as is perfectly feasible according to UK tax legislation), I don't need Royal Mail's help.

Stay tuned for updates fellow international shoppers!

[liveblog]

Tiplet: better foobar2000 playback title formatting

Foobar2000 is such awesomesauce, I use it all day every day. However, I do prefer slightly better titling (particularly as I listen to a mix of Shoutcast & Icecast streams and local files).

Excellent stations like Radio Paradise now have metadata-enabled Ogg Vorbis streams but the way the metadata's encoded into the stream (everything in the title) doesn't work perfectly with fb2k's default playback title display. Here's a concoction I devised which shows it a little more neatly (all hail foobar's epic tagging and display engine!):

Window title
$iflonger(%album artist%,1,[%album artist% - ][%album%[ CD%discnumber% ][, Track %tracknumber%:] ]%title%[ '('%track artist%')'],%title%)

Notification area icon tooltip
$iflonger(%album artist%,1,[%artist% - ]%title%,%title%)

Listen to the rather excellent Radio Paradise Vorbis stream using the rather excellent Foobar2000 player, I highly recommend it.