Few times in the past when I was doing some changes on Cisco devices remotely I was a victim of myself, when wrong order of commands just disconnected me from device without ability to connect back. After few experiences of this kind I discovered magic command “reload” which can help and save the day.

So, when doing changes which can impact remote terminal connection to device it’s a good idea to initiate reload before making changes. In case something goes wrong device will reboot itself and will come back with previous configuration.

lab-r01#
lab-r01#reload in 15
Reload scheduled in 15 minutes by admin on console
Reload reason: Reload Command
Proceed with reload? [confirm]
lab-r01#
*Mar  1 03:11:11.659: %SYS-5-SCHEDULED_RELOAD: Reload requested for 03:26:09 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002 at 03:11:09 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002 by admin on console. Reload Reason: Reload Command.
lab-r01#

Once everything is configured and connectivity to device was not lost we can cancel reload process.

lab-r01#
lab-r01#reload cancel
lab-r01#

***
*** --- SHUTDOWN ABORTED ---
***

*Mar  1 03:11:19.415: %SYS-5-SCHEDULED_RELOAD_CANCELLED: Scheduled reload cancelled at 03:11:19 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002
lab-r01#

It is very helpful and can save time and rescue from trouble.

Recently I needed to unzip file from PowerShell script. Here is result what I did use to achieve that:

$archiveDir = "C:\Downloads"
$fileZip = $archiveDir + "\file.zip"
$shell=new-object -com shell.application
$zip = $shell.NameSpace($fileZip)
foreach ($item in $zip.items())
{
 $shell.NameSpace($archiveDir).CopyHere($item)
}

When you need to connect to ShoreTel ShoreGear via console cable (MAINT port on devices) set PuTTY Serial Line setting as follows:

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So, I was wondering how to access my PlayBook using SSH. It would be really convinient to access it from laptop, browse files, etc. I did poke around on Internet and finally identified solution how to SSH to PlayBook 🙂 For now only as a normal user and working towards getting root access (I guess Dingleberry will be helpful at some stage) 🙂

For now let’s have a look into details of accessing PlayBook via SSH. for that I will use:

• BlackBerry Tablet SDK 2.0.0 – available for free on BlackBerry web page here. There might be newer version available by now.
• PuTTY – I guess most popular free terminal emulator for SSH, Telnet and Serial connections, available here. From that package PuTTY.exe and PuTTYgen.exe will be required.

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It is really cool to take a screenshot of the favorite game and have it as wallpaper. Unfortunately usually HUD spoils whole effect.

But… there is a solution 🙂 Turn off HUD.

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After I instaled PostgreSQL on Amazon Linux AMI, first thing after database server was up and running I start thinking how to create user with administrative privileges, so I can access it using some management applications.

So, here is how to create superuser and set password, which will allow to access PostgreSQL using admin tools.

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/etc/rancid/rancid.conf

In this article you can find description of parameters in rancid.conf. By changing parameters in this file you can impact the way RANCID will behave, collect and process collected information. You can also define type of version control repository and email notifications as well as many other option.

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Here is one from friend of mine, very skilled Senior IT Engineer, Tomasz Jagiello. Some bugs he identified while working with VMware ESX 6.

Symptoms

VM running Windows 10 (x64) as the Guest OS is automatically reset after some hours (roughly a day). Reoccurs daily.

The thread said it also applied to Windows Server 2016 VMs.

There is an unrecoverable error that cause the VMkernel to shut down / restart / crash the virtual machine.

VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0) NOT_REACHED bora/devices/ahci/ahci_user.c:1530

Check if you’re using a para-virtual SATA adapter in the settings of the VM.

Cause

There is a VMware bug where if the SATA adapter receives SMART communications on a non-SMART device the CPU bus locks up and ESX reboots the VM.

I was using SCSI for the VM disks and SATA for the VM CD-ROM.

Workaround

1. Edit VM Hardware settings
   • Remove CD/ROM
   • OK
2. Edit VM Hardware settings
   • Remove SATA Controller
   • OK
3. Edit VM Hardware settings
   • Add CD/ROM
   • Change to IDE
   • Remove SATA Controller
   • OK

VMware Wosktation allows to run ESXi as virtual machine (virtual environment as virtual machine – kind of funny). It can be very useful to evaluate, experiment and learn vSphere at home. This can be also very helpful if we want ot run virtual appliances which are compatible with ESX only. I will show how easy is to install ESXi 5 as virtual machine on VMware Workstation 9.

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Just released small app for Android platform. This app allows to decrypt type 7 password from Cisco devices as well as passwords from Cisco VPN profiles (PCF files).

Password which can be recovered using this app:

• wireless keys fro Cisco access points,
• RADIUS/TACACS shared secrets
• NTP authentication keys
• Enable passwords (NOT enable secrets, which are stored using MD5)
• enc_GroupPwd – VPN group password from PCF file
• enc_UserPassword – VPN user password from PCF file

You can find app in Google Play: