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Cisco ASA Upgradefail

Mon 21-Dec-2009 in english, sysadmin | 1 comment

Grrrr. Sometimes you should just go by your hunch. I was in the process of updating a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall from software version 7.x to 8.0 according to the instructions from Cisco, using the ASA management (“ASDM”) software that came on the firewall.

Versioning?

To confuse the novice firewall administrator, the ASA has one series of version numbers which has absolutely nothing in common with the ASDM version numbers.

Anyway, my ASA was at 7.2.4 going to 8.0.5 and my ASDM was on 5.2.4 and was eventually going to be upgraded to 6.2.3.

I was really wondering if the old ASA management software (“ASDM”) would be able to manage the newer ASA software, but the instructions were in the order of first upgrading the ASA software, then reboot, then upgrade the ASDM. So i follow the instructions, upgrade, select the proper boot image, reload, fire up the (old) ASDM and…

Boom. I’m stranded.

Now i can either make a careful guess on how to get to the right boot image using the command line or try and upgrade the ASDM image using TFTP. I really don’t fancy either option….

Anyway, here’s my humble suggestion if you want to upgrade your ASA: start with the ASDM. It Just Might Work™.

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How to render a HP server useless (and back again)

Wed 16-Dec-2009 in english, sysadmin | Please leave a comment!

I had a very tense few hours with a customer’s server yesterday. The fact that it’s a Small Business Server and thus, the “Everything Server”, didn’t make things much better. I did two things, and both turned out to be bad. I also didn’t reboot between the two things, which also turned bad to be even worse.

One. I installed the new service pack, which is a Good Thing (generally), except when the computer hangs at “setting up, stage 3 of 3, 0% ready” and spins the little circle thingy for half an hour. At that stage the “please do not turn off your computer” becomes stressful to ignore. So i leaned on the power button, chose to restart in Safe mode and everything seemed okay. For a while.

Two. I changed the network adapter to traffic at 1 Gb/s full duplex. This turned out to be catastrophic. And i fully blame HP for this. After a reboot into normal mode, i had no network. At all. And i was not able to open the HP network interface control panel thingy, since the “management database” was locked. Not even netsh would help me this time.

After much stressful head scratching and beard tearing, i hypothesized that HP NIC management is grumpy because it was in fact plugged into a switch that only goes to 100 Mb/s. Yeah, i can appreciate that it can’t traffic with the wrong line speeds but that i can’t turn that setting off is criminal. If that indeed was the case. So i plugged the server’s NIC into a backline giga-Ether switch (yeah, you shouldn’t do that either) and rebooted. And hey presto, the “management database” was no longer locked.

Back to 100/full, plug the server where it belonged, and normality is restored. Just in time to go and fetch the kids. Sysadmin feat in true Hollywood style.

I just wonder what those HP engineers were thinking about.

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Revo InstallFail

Sat 28-Nov-2009 in english, geek | Please leave a comment!

I have it! I have it! I have my rhombic computer! :) (yes, it looks as a skewed box and i don’t know why)

After much searching, the customs did find my little Asus. I went to the customs office, checked out the computer (no tax but 22% VAT) and happily drove home.

Plugging in was easy as pie. The power brick is of the laptop kind, which means it has a detachable power cord with a “mickey mouse” connector, so changing it from a US cord to an EU one was no problem. I would have hated having an ugly adapter around. Kudos to Asus for that.

Two seconds after powering up, i was greeted with a Splashtop-powered minimal interface with a web browser, chat and Skype. The setup also included a media player but since it didn’t play media resources on the network, didn’t give it much more thought. Also, it seemed like i wasn’t seeing full HD resolution on the telly. Quite a shame really. A near-instantly starting media centre would be… nice!

The next step was going to the system installation feature. And even though i’d bought a Linux computer, the installer only offered me one choice: Windows Vista. With no license key. So counting Splashtop as Linux, i indeed got a computer with Linux.

Next i’m going to test booting from an XBMC Live distribution on USB.

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Wallpaper fail

Thu 27-Aug-2009 in english, geek | Please leave a comment!

I know Windows [0] has problems handle multiple monitors well. I’ve lamented the fact before that when i have two monitors that have different pixel density [1], there is no way that i can adjust Windows so that items look as big on both monitors.

I keep my laptop to the left or my external display, but the external display is my “main viewer” or primary monitor. Windows doesn’t like this. Much.

My latest discovery is that when i put a dual screen wallpaper onto Windows and set the wallpaper to “Tiled”, the left half of the picture would go on the right monitor and the right half onto the left monitor. Centering the image will show the middle half of the picture on both monitors. Stretching it (“fit to screen”) will squeeze the dual screen width image onto one screen, and show that on both displays.

Wallpaper fail.

[0] Vista, and everything that came before. I still have high hopes for Windows 7.

[1] While they have the same number of pixels, 1680 x 1050, my laptop monitor is smaller than my external display. My old laptop had a higher resolution display than my external display, so it had an even higher pixel density. I intently avoided using the word “resolution” here, since it can mean either pixel density or amount of pixels.

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Hi-tech in slo-mo

Wed 8-Jul-2009 in english | Please leave a comment!

Huzzah! Hallelujah! The 8 GB CompactFlash memory card i bought as backup for my camera has finally shipped! And i only ordered it in late april! And with only one kind reminder email that i never even got answered! Thank you DealExtreme!

Even bigger thanks go to JT-net who delivered the same card (albeit at a nominally higher cost) in two days. Well, at least i’ll soon have two 8 gig “backup” cards.

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Pärlor på skylt

Fri 7-May-2004 in irrelevant, suomeksi, svenska | Anna palautetta!

Tillåt mej presentera några pärlor i masskommunikationens art. I K-butiken i botten av köpcentret Kaisa i centrala Helsingfors hade de holländska tomater från … Holland! I Borgå (heja, heja!) kan man köpa blatta. Spännande.

Saanko esitellä teille kyltitystaiteen muutaman todellisen helmen. Tai, no, toinen niistä nyt ei vissiin ole suomeksi niin ihmoinen, mutta se että Kaisan K-kaupassa myydään hollantilaisia tomaatteja Hollannista on kyllä jotenkin aika hienoa.

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