Colovic Vladan

We are in posession of couple of great network cameras from Vivotek: SD6112 TPZ and Vivotek FD6112. I am a great fan of them, because almost everything in them is almost perfect.But, as always, there are a problems. So, lets mention the smaller one:

It is impossible to update firmware remotely. Not a big dial, but the reason is really stupid. On their site, they say it’s possible to do it via FTP. I downloaded the firmware, set up an FTP connection, and after successful connect I realized that I need a .BIN firmware, not the .PKG that I downloaded. Considering that PKG is the only one available, and there is no”Update” button Web interface – no solution – dead end.

Can’t see a camera video stream in any version of Firefox. No solution here (besides IE Tab add-in for Firefox which executes IE inside Firefox). The reason is in that these cameras use VATDecoder Codec. I noticed that some D-Link Cameras are using the same codec, too (just google for VatDec.cab). This ActiveX is on camera itself, and is installed when you request a video from camera. So, there is no way to install it in Firefox – dead end.

Can’t see anything in Internet Explorer 7. Well, this problem is because of a poor web HTML programming, and can be easily solved. Simplest – manual way is just to press F5 (Refresh) twice, and then right click on left part of screen and then Refresh, and on right part of screen and then Refresh. Basically, we are refreshing the whole, then left and right part of a screen. And, more elegant solution is to change just remove Microsoft Silverlight from your system.

I tried everything instead of removing Silverlight, but nothing helped. I edited html pages (hexedit-ed Vivotek’s some strange .VSPX files instead of html – Vivotek server script executable), i tried commands like iexplore -extoff, i tried disabling silverlight, i tried a lot of wierd stuff. And nothing helped – Silverlight must be removed.

I found a lot of articles on the internet telling me that I should do a Tools / Deactivate. But, because I changed a system and I changed a serial number, I could not do that. Deactivate option was not available because all the time CS3 asked me to re-activate. And, I just wanted to start activation from beginning, with Activation Type: normal, not: Activation Type: Repair.

I did not found the solution right away, and that is the reason I am writing this post. So, just delete two files, and when you start some CS3 application, it will ask you for a serial number in the same way it asked you the first time. The two files that should be deleted are:

c:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache\cache.db
c:\ProgramData\FLEXnet\adobe_00080000_tsf.data

This is for Microsoft Windows Vista, but I am sure that you will manage to find these files on Windows XP.

First of all, the site Hacking WD MyBook World it the best place to start. Follow the manual for first steps, and be aware that in order to successfully complete the most important 1.st step (Enabling SSH with Method 1) – your router must have internet access (not only your computer from which you are accessing the router).

Again, finish the second step – install Optware Package Management (package manager, similar to Yum).

And, now, for Midnight Commander  type:

/opt/bin/ipkg install mc

ldconfig(must execute this)

/opt/bin/mc

And, it’s working!

And, at the end, disable Mionet. You could install nano with: /opt/bin/ipkg install nano, and alternative Web interface on port 8080 as explained here.

And, because I want to change Port on which ssh deamon is listening, I had to change nano /etc/services (not /etc/sshd_config), because sshd is started throe inetd.

Now I find it obvious, but at first, it was not.

I am using a OpenLDAP for Linux user authentication, and I am using Web based tool for editing LDAP entries called phpLDAPadmin. I needed to add a user to a group in phpLDAPadmin, but it was not obvious to me.

Click on the group on the left part of a screen (in a tree structure) . Then, in right half, click on a Add new attribute, then select memberUid and enter some username. After you press Add or Save Changes couple of times, you will notice a new link under memberUid called (modify group members), which allows you to edit members in a more user friendly way.

I need a tool for backing up a directories on a server. The problem in Linux it that you have too much solutions for that specific task, and you need a time to research and figure out which one is the best.
I will backup my data on the same server, only on a different disk. CPU utilization is not a problem, and primary goals are small footprint (to be able to have the longest history), and to have reasonable easy way of retrieving data from backup archive.
So, first, let me list all the solutions.

Based on rsync:

• rsnapshot : Written in Perl, using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available
• rsback : Written in Perl, I am not sure what are the differences from rsnapshot
• ccollect : Written in simple sh-script.
• fwbackups : Installable with yum (yum install fwbackups).
• flyback : Python based.
• Dirvish : I believe it is not maintained anymore.
• rsync-backup : Perl script.
• RIBS (Rsync Incremental Backup Script) : Written in PHP.
• rsnap : Python.

Based on rdiff:

• rdiff-backup : Python & C written. Best documentation at this wiki. Can be installed with yum.
• SafeKeep : Python / based on rdiff-backup. Installable on Fedora 9 via yum (–enablerepo=rawhide list safekeep*)
• Backupninja : centralized way to configure and schedule many different backup utilities.
• pybackpack : Python, based on rdiff-backup. Basic usage at howtoforge.com. Can be installed with yum (yum install pybackpack). But, it has a big problem in not possible to start it from the commandline or cron.
• rBackup : Written mainly in PHP. Not in repository.

None of the above:

• Areca : Written in Java, supports everything I need. Not available in any Fedora repository. Good tutorial and manuals, but still the problem that it is not diff-based (the whole file is written). Good solution is because it has a compression.
• RESTORE-EE (Enterprise Edition) : Complicated and nice, but not impressed. Tutorial at howtoforge.
• Duplicity : Very good, only with no GUI or other tool for restoring data. Probably the only viable solution if you backup data is on a public server, because supports encryption right from the start.
• Backerupper : To me, it looks that is not maintained anymore. Written in Lazarus-Freepascal (Delphi for Linux)
• Bacula : Really heavy.
• Amanda : Heavy too.
• Mondo Rescue : Really a recovery solution, but just to mention it.
• afbackup : Written in C. Very odl and mature, but none of the documentation.
• BackupPC : Configuration seemed very strange to me.

BackupPC

BackupPC

	cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/BackupPC.conf</pre><br />htpasswd -c /etc/BackupPC/apache.users backuppc<br /><pre><br /> nano /etc/BackupPC/hostsThat worked http://localhost/BackupPC (note the letter case)<br /><br />chkconfig --list backuppc<br /><br /></pre><br /><br /><h2>rdiffWeb</h2><br /><br />Web interface for retrieving a rdiff-backup data. Two are available (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.rdiffweb.org/">rdiffWeb</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://rdiffbackupweb.sourceforge.net/">rdiff-backup-web</a>) - with same function. The first one is nicer to me, and installation was the following:<br /><pre><br />yum install python-cherrypy<br />wget http://www.rdiffweb.org/releases/rdiffWeb-0.6.3-1.noarch.rpm<br />yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rdiffWeb-0.6.3-1.noarch.rpm<br />rdiff-web-config<br />service rdiff-web start<br />

And in browser: http://localhost:8080/. Beautifull. To add it permanently, just: chkconfig –add rdiff-web.

Some notes: Somehow, my instict told me that I will be needin a compression file system, and best I found was FuseCompress (the older, perfectly stable version is found here). Btw. it is available in Fedora 9 with yum (–enablerepo=rawhide list fusecompress). The other solution – patched kernel for ext2 called e2compr, was not acceptable because I do not want to patch kernel after every kernel update.