OK… so, ever since Chappelle went away, Comedy Central has been trying
to find something to fill the 11:30 PM slot after The Daily Show. The
latest, which has been bumped to midnight by the /previous/ Daily
Show, is Too Late with Adam Carolla. Today, he had Steve O, famous for
Jackass and Wild Boys. Well, they had him get really, really drunk, and
he just destroyed the show. Apparently, Adam had to call in security to
get him restrained during the commercial break. Oops.

What was telling was the lack of laughter from the live studio
audience… total train wreck.

You know, The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla was great. But
both solo shows suck. Maybe they can put them back
together again and get them to having fun versus stretching out on
things that is not quite working.

OK, end random gripe.

A HD decided to die on my server. Fortunately, all the important data is backed up (and I’ll describe how I do that one of these days), but the disk is still acting flaky (not sure if it was disk corruption or an impending disk error… all the self-tests check out, but I dunno….).

The old system was a Debian woody + unstable updates (3.0 + random updates)… I decided to re-install with Debian Sarge (3.1). Now, Debian, while not flashy on the UI, has always been extremely stable and relatively bug-free.

I downloaded the netinst and went with that, let the thing run overnight, and got things installed pretty easily. Then came time to start making the server like it was.

Already, I’ve found two glaring show-stopper Debian bugs… come on guys, what are you thinking?

There’s Bug #310887, Does not mount non-root partitions. Essentially, some lunkhead decided to fsck all partitions before loading any drivers, like SCSI or USB. So if you have a SCSI disk, which my previous server image was on, you’re out of luck. (note: the previous server image was on a ~10 year old 4G SCSI running RedHat 7.2 that has shown some signs of failure… but at least it’s still kicking as the impromptu backup). Haven’t figured out a work-around for this yet, but man is it a pain.

Then there’s Bug #271363 - kdm frozen at first boot. Debian uses gdm by default for gnome, which is fine. I prefer KDE and use kdm. So, I installed kdm, no problem, and switched it. But this dies a horrid death. Running things manually, I find errors about the ELF version of libkdeui.so.4… haven’t tracked down the culprit here yet either.

These are basic… sigh. But I guess people tend not to have SCSI anymore, or don’t use KDE. Um…. sure.

I’m re-installing my picture archive from backup, and will then update the new image to SID (Debian unstable… as Debian testing was the same as sarge). Or maybe I should just go back to Fedora… they seem to have gotten better about solving the rpm hell problem, so might be worth giving them a try again.

Oh, and for those paying attention — yes, these are all Linux servers, and yes, I do work at Microsoft. Why am I not considering Windows? Lots of reasons. Frankly, I don’t feel that Windows is up to the task of providing the roles I use the server for. In particular, DNS, mail serving, and file serving. Second, my main data is held on two 75G IBM Deskstar disks (still functioning after 5 years… go figure!) in RAID configuration. I’m not in the mood to consider how to migrate this over to Windows. Finally, Linux does great at headless operation, and mostly that’s what the servers are. I can ssh in, and check things out, from whereever I am. The Windows solution is this hokey Remote Terminal, where you suck a lot of bandwidth to get a remote GUI. Sometimes, I don’t have a lot of bandwidth, and all I need to do is get a command prompt and go. So, yeah, I still run some Linux boxes.

I’ve updated my free AudioVox unlock post & and new unlock page (with clearer instructions!) with some details on the charities I’m funding:

the rolling duffel project

While the Red Cross is getting tons, my wife and I decided to split our money to the Humane Society for the various pets stuck in the aftermath, as well as with Habitat for Humanity, which will help with rebuilding homes. Also, as I mentioned in the below post, the Rolling Duffel Project, which is busy actually providing support to refugees in Dallas.

I’d also like to put in a plug for the following: Katrina Housing Northwest. It’s a grassroots group like Rolling Duffel that is looking for homeowners, esp. those that may have a secondary home (like a summer home or an empty rental) to house families from New Orleans. So, if you are in the area and can help out, please do. If you’re not, do some searches and see what’s in the area. We’ve got about 100,000 people to put around the country, and since FEMA clearly isn’t doing anything, time for the people to get it done.

Oh…. and while I’m sure this will get into my permanent record somewhere, if you happen to someday meet this woman, would you please just ask her how many people she’s taken in to her house? What a piece of work…

Ok… I’ve been a bit too stunned about Katrina, and completely frustrated. I’m in Seattle. So, I can’t quite drive on down and help out directly. I can give money, and I can rant about a completely ineffective government. Hurricanes happen, and sometimes people die when they cause buildings to fall down on them. But the elderly and infants dying of dehydration in a stadium is inexcusable.

And yet there still isn’t much I can do about it.

But there is this: The Rolling Duffel Project. Some folks in Dallas are driving over to Reunion Arena and adopting families. Literally. They find out what they need, hit WalMart (I know), but a rolling duffel survival kit, and deliver it to these needy families. These people have nothing, and a rolling duffel isn’t much, but it will at least get them through a week or two.

So, link to it, and give to it. And, if you’re within an hour or so of some of the larger shelters (such as Reunion Arena in Dallas, or Baton Rouge, etc.) then take it upon yourself to get down there, find out what people need, and get it to them. The Red Cross and other agencies have very few people and appear to be doing things in bulk… but what’s needed are for lots of people who have something to take in a lot of people that don’t.

If you’re down there, please, do what you can to help out. My cash will help, but sharing a room with a working bathroom probably goes much, much further for these people.

Update: I don’t have a tip jar, as I support myself in what I say. That being said, the below would normally cost you $30 - $60 elsewhere. Therefore, if you were going to spend some cash, and this saved it, please use that money to donate for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. I’d like to recommend the three I support (both images will direct you to the appropriate donation page):

the rolling duffel project

The following instructions were taken from an earlier post I made, but to make it more to the point and to avoid eventual blog rot, I’ve included it as a first-class page on the blog. I’ve also made some updates to make the instructions a bit more clear.

Note: actually doing the following probably voids your warranty (I don’t know as I never read it), and botching it could well render your phone unusable. But it worked for me, even with a few missteps I didn’t include here.

You need the following three files:

1. aeconfig.zip
2. resetSecurity.zip
3. SPV Services

Or to save you some time (and in case the above are down), you can just get them all in one big zip: UnlockAudioVox5600Apps.zip

What you’ll need:

• A SIM card on the network your AudioVox is locked to. For example, if you’re locked to AT&T (Cingular Blue network) then you’ll need an AT&T SIM card. For people who bought their phone off e-bay or something, find a friend, as you need one of these to proceed!
• A SIM card on some other network to make sure things worked. Any network will do. Again, find a buddy.

Here’s what you do:

1. Plug your AudioVox into your computer via the USB cable that came with it. Open an explorer window via ActiveSync and browse the top level directory of the SmartPhone… you should see directories like Temp and Storage.
2. Extract aeconfig.zip, say to C:\unlock5600. DO NOT SIMPLY OPEN THE .ZIP AND TRY TO COPY FILES TO YOUR SMARTPHONE, IT DOES NOT WORK! You’ll get a folder named “unlock-all” which contains two directories, StartMenu and Temp, along with a manual. The manual is almost correct for the 5600. What you want to do is:
   1. Put the “Disable Security” file in StartMenu under \Storage\Windows\Start Menu\ in your 5600.
   2. Put “AEConfig.exe” and “DisableSecurity.xml” in Temp in \Temp in your 5600. Do not reboot your 5600, as it will erase these files in \Temp!
   3. Go to Start on your 5600, then select Disable Security and run it. Phase 1 done.
3. Open resetSecurity.zip and extract the files on your computer somewhere. I’ll say C:\unlock5600, but feel free to replace that with anything you like.
4. On your computer, go to Start -> Run and type “cmd” for a DOS prompt. Change directories to the directory you put the files of resetSecurity (e.g. cd c:\unlock5600 using our example).
5. Run RapiConfig as follows from the cmd prompt:
   % RapiConfig.exe /p ResetSecurity.xml
   This will unlock your phone to install new apps (needed for the next step).
6. Confirm it works by putting “CheckLock.exe” in the \Temp dir of your 5600 and running it by going to Start -> File Manager on your AudioVox and selecting CheckLock.exe under \Temp. It should say “Your phone is not locked.”
   Phase 2 End.
7. Open up SPV-Services.zip and copy the files somewhere (say c:\unlock5600).
8. Copy the Cert.cab into \Temp of your smartphone
9. From your smartphone Start -> File Manager, browser to \Temp and run Cert.cab. Install the program.
10. From your computer, run SPVServices.exe. Click on the SIMLock Toggle button and type AGREE. Don’t worry about the “Doesn’t work on AudioVox” as this did for this purpose.
11. Unlock your AudioVox by clicking on the button. End Phase 3.
12. Test out your new unlocked AudioVox with a friend’s SIM card on another network (I used T-Mobile). You will need to power down the phone, take out the card, put the new one in, and power up. If you see “Network locked, enter unlock code” then something didn’t work. If you see the normal home page with the carrier’s name, you’re golden.

So, that’s a decent number of steps… but it’s in painful detail, for someone who might not be a 5600 hacker and knows where to find and use all these files. Search isn’t a magic bullet; it won’t find The Answer if The Answer doesn’t exist in a single page. Sometimes it doesn’t even find the single page. But it will provide you the path to get there… and thus I’m psyched that the tool I help build was able to teach me, and now potentially teach you, how to unlock an AudioVox SMT 5600.

Update: I don’t have a tip jar, as I support myself in what I say. That being said, the below would normally cost you $30 - $60 elsewhere. Therefore, if you were going to spend some cash, and this saved it, please use that money to donate for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. I’d like to recommend the three I support (both images will direct you to the appropriate donation page):

the rolling duffel project