Computers - What have you tweaked today?

Resurrected an old DELL Precision M90 C2D laptop, installed XP on it then installed a SCSI card in the dock & can now scan my old slides & negatives with a Minolta Scan Dual scanner. It's busy churning its way through 1200+ APS negatives that belong to my wife. Then I have around 1000 35mm negatives & 2000 35mm slides to do. I just hope the scanner keeps on working :)

The scanning was a job I kept putting off until retirement, now I am retired I have run out of excuses.........
 
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Nice spec for what you paid, especially with all that ECC RAM.
 
afasoas said:
That's a bit of a beast.
I figure that's video editing?
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Photo and 4k Video, it also runs automated editing and submissions in VMs so tends to chug along on its own all day
 
Never heard of Cinebench, ran it on mine out of curiosity, looks like the 980 helps fps...:banana:need more cores for the CPU though o_O - Geekbench 2580



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Rather than lusting over that Z800 (which is more powerful than my R710 that's used as an ESXi host) I've been upgrading glibc on various linux servers in recent days.
 
Seahorse said:
Never heard of Cinebench, ran it on mine out of curiosity, looks like the 980 helps fps...:banana:need more cores for the CPU though o_O - Geekbench 2580



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Yes the GTX980 is nice.. I was tossing up between the 970 and 980 but decided to get the 970 for now (As it was a ZERO Cost upgrade as I sold the QuadroFX5800 for exactly what the GTX970 cost me) I still have a spare 16 lane slot and power so can always SLI another 970 later if needed

The 5960x holds its own well, I did look at building a system around one, but the CPU alone was more than my entire Z800 Rig cost!!.
 
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True, you have achieve a stunning bang for buck result, mine was quite expensive.

I built this to replace it's 5 year old forbear which essentially was being outperformed by my year old laptop which defeated the object of having a big screen workstation for editing/rendering.
 
Web server* (Intel Atom-based NUC) KO'd by dodgy power supply.
Hard disk and memory removed from patient A and transplanted into patient B, a second-hand celeron-based Brix.
A couple of BIOS tweaks later and I have web sites again.



*It's not used for any real hosting. Just development.
 
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I got an old cheapo Android 4.1, 7" Tablet back from my daughter that hadn't been used for ages. It still worked, but some apps were not cooperating. Foolishly I googled how to do a reset. And many Youtube videos showed me which button press and boot combinations would start the reset. But none of them worked. I should have simply looked under Settings and there is a factory reset and wipe option that did the job well. It is now fully usable again. And the battery still keeps its charge well. It hasn't got a brilliant screen. But its handy for the coffee table.
 
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Trying to revive my in PC storage SSD... No go... Luckily i only replaced it two weeks ago and had the old drive around. I have lost the last two weeks of Lightroom settings though (and hadn't exported tiffs as I usually do). None of the photos or anything else on it was at risk because they are all stored on a NAS with daily backups to portable HDDs. Bit annoying about the Lightroom catalogue though! I've now fixed the dodgy backup system that should have done daily backups to the NAS however so that if it happens again the catalogue should also be backed up.

Moral of the story, back up your Lightroom catalogue more frequently!
 
Trying to setup a demo virtual machine of MS Project Server....Forgot how much I hate the complicated setup of SharePoint and everything layered up. Ensuring that the prerequisite installer just works seems to be unheard off...Grrr
 
Theres a powershell script to fulfill most prereqs available on Technet, must've shaved at least an hour of boredom off of the install lol
 
Yes I've found those, shouldn't have to use them though. I mean come on why not have something as novel as a installer that actually works on both Windows Server 2008 and 2012 :) And then when you install Project Server on top, everything breaks again....OpenPPM is starting to look very good...
 
It was worse when the scripts didn't exist lol, Exchange 2007 was all pre-reqs and hotfixs, around a day of install time prior to the scripts being generated :(
 
I got to tell you, if they make Linux server seem easy to administrate and configure then it is saying something ;)
 
I've been trying to set-up a VPN like this:

etjWOA0.jpg


Basically create an IPSEC VPN connection as a mobile user from a machine where I work to my home network. On my home network I have an ethernet router provided by my ISP which is connected to the WAN port of my pfSense firewall.

I can create the tunnel and everything seems almost hunky dory:

7i0wjy0.png


Even the security associations and policies get created:
WfF2XvS.png

DHLfUWx.png


But all is not well. I cannot interact with anything on either side of the VPN tunnel. I have created an IPSEC firewall rule allowing any to any. I have forced NAT-T wherever possible. I have automatic outbound NAT rules enabled. I suspect there is a NAT issue. But before I look at that, something else strikes me as odd:

Look again at the tunnel end points in those last two screen shots. They are using the WAN IP address of the firewall itself, not my external IP. Could this be the problem?
Or are the automatically generated outbound NAT rules over-writing some BINAT-iness?

I know a couple of you use pfSense, so I figured it was worth a mention here. I have asked elsewhere too.
I have recently upgraded to pfSense version 2.2, so my issues could be upgrade related.

If you have any idea whether I should be able to even do what I'm trying to do, it'd be good to know I'm not losing the plot.
I've been battling away for far too long in getting this far and I'm now royally confused
Afasoas
 
afasoas said:
I have created an IPSEC firewall rule allowing any to any.
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Have you made a firewall rule that allows the traffic between your LAN and the IPSEC tunnel? I use OpenVPN connections, but you have to allow the LAN to talk to the tunnel and not just let the tunnel talk to stuff... I'd want a rule on the LAN that allowed traffic to 192.168.160.0/29 (if I understand how IPSEC works)...
 
Actually, looking at it again, I think you need to allow the traffic on IPSEC AND the WORK connection (there should be a tab for each in the Firewall: Rules section). Can't remember how vital it is to have rules in your LAN section to pass stuff (just been playing with it here and it seems not vital at all, but it is a while ago since I set my tunnels up and I don't know what routes have persisted). I remember it being painful getting stuff setup first time.

I'm on manual NAT generation here and on pfSense 2.2 (so 2.2 definitely works) and my pfSense firewall manages the ISP connection (I have a modem, not a router between pfSense and the outside world).

I've found packet capture (Diagnostics->Packet Capture) to be a useful tool to see where things are getting dropped.
 
At the minute I have an allow to any rule on both LAN and IPSEC interfaces, which is identical to the set-up at work for our site-to-site VPNs.
I can do some captures tonight possibly and have a look at them.

Cheers
Daniel
 
All fixed and dandy. I had to tweak the phase two entry. I also removed some of the auto generated NAT rules. Thanks fo the tip off Andy.
 
Good news :) Having tried both IPSEC and OpenVPN, I much prefer OpenVPN....
 
Not so good news, it appears to be broken this morning. Looks like a phase 2 issue.
We've used both IPSec and OpenVPN for multiple site-to-site connections and I'm darned if I can really tell any difference!
 
OpenVPN seems less heavy to setup (although you still have to have all the routing right). No phase 1/2 to get right - there seem to be an inordinate ways to set IPSEC up - and it seems more user friendly.

I've had problems where tunnels have seemingly come up and survived a few tens of seconds. Tracked that one down to a Cisco firewall at work not allowing traffic out of the port I was trying to communicate on.

The logging in pfSense can often give you a clue as to where to look too (Status->System Logs->IPSEC for your setup).
 
On Saturday I put a WD BLACK 2tb external in. The intel software caused me a right nightmare. But when it finished creating a volume I just formatted it though disk drive management. Now I can store all my images, videos and music on an internal rather than an external via USB 2. Happy days.
 
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Thank's Andy. I've pushed a few buttons and tweaked a few dials. It seems fine now. No real reason for sticking with IPSec - it's theoretically faster than OpenVPN but in the real world, the consensus seems to be the opposite.

The Shrewsoft IPSec client I was using is a different kettle of fish. It doesn't play nice on my Work PC with it's medley of virtual adapters and Wireshark/WinPCAP. I'll probably use a Linux distro in a VM instead. I'm really only interested in using it for secure access to my password database at the minute.

On an alternative note, since I bridge pfSense to the broadband modem/router, the WAN interface's IP doesn't change when the ISP changes our external IP and a process that update states has been raising exceptions. I've used two USB Ethernet Adapters to supplement the two on-board NICs as I'm running four interfaces and I think this the nub of that problem.

The good news is that I've now got a managed/smart switch so I think I can ditch the USB NICs and use vLAN tagging instead.
</boring mode>

Thanks again for your help!
 
There's a plugin on pfSense to export the OpenVPN client. Use that and you get an installer which also installs the OpenVPN client on your PC.

Not sure what the problem is you are describing on the WAN IP not changing.... but looks like you are going to avoid it anyway
 
Took a risk and installed the very very latest Windows 10 build on my work machine. This is quite a few builds ahead of even what internal MS are dogfooding...All OK so far!
 
Installed a network tap and performed some deep inspection on my home network. Fun stuff, even my wife got interested when she brought me in a cup of tea. And now wants a feed to the lounge ;)
 
Not really what I have done, more of what I'm about to do....

My wife has started a new job where she has found out that she will be using a MAC, I now need to get the old Power Mac G5 up and running so she can practice with the MAC OS, can't even remember which OS is installed on it but I'm expecting there to be a few 'issues' by the weekend :(
 
Yesterday I bought a Linx 8 tablet for £91 from Sainsburys of all places (store price £99.99 but we had a £9 off voucher). Quad core, 32gb storage & Win 8.1 on an 8" tablet. It has a micro SD card slot which will take a 64gb card too. I have been avoiding Win 8 ever since it came out, this is a cheap & cheerful way of getting to grips with it & I shall be taking it on holiday with PDF copies of all our travel documents, instruction manuals for cameras etc. If I can find a USB OTG cable & SD card reader we will be able to view our photos too. The Linx 8 came with a years Office 365 subscription too.
 
Although I wish Microsoft well, with their tablet and smartphone OS, for some reason, I really don't want to have one myself. It just doesn't seem right.
 
ianp5a said:
Although I wish Microsoft well, with their tablet and smartphone OS, for some reason, I really don't want to have one myself. It just doesn't seem right.
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If you want a tablet that just works, buy an iPad.

If you want a tablet that works just, buy an Android.

For me, this Win8 tablet is just a toy, something to play with. I find Apple IOS & Android too restrictive; I dislike all the bloat with apps you are forced to have & cannot easily remove without jailbreaking. You can get under the 'covers' of a Win 8 tablet. I used to manage an 800+ PC network before I retired but we stayed away from Win8. This lets me tinker without messing with my other PCs. I did wonder about running Win8 in a VM, but I would have had to buy a Win8 licence, this way I get a touch screen PC with Win 8.1 installed.
 
New graphics card for me.

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Faster than my old 2x 670s in SLI, and less than half the power. Win.
 
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