Windows 7 Home Premium and QEMU in SMP mode

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I recently played around with a Linux Kernel as host operating system and having Windows 7 Home Premium as guest. My intention was to implement an easy-to-use sandbox system for someone in my family (a good starting point may be here). The hardware should be a Core 2 Duo processor. As he will most likely end up using only the sandbox and never really touch the host system, the maximum amount of resources (including memory and CPU power) should be handed over to the guest operating system. However, thinking that this should be quite easy turned out to be non-trivial in the end. Continue reading ‘Windows 7 Home Premium and QEMU in SMP mode’ »

Logon with SSH takes long until the password prompt is being displayed

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Since some time I experienced the problem that it took me ages to logon via SSH to some of my maintained servers on the web until the password prompt is being shown on the command line. After googling a bit I found a post describing my problem which I would like to recommend to the public. Root cause seems to be a missing configuration of the GSSAPI module. Instead of configuring it you may also simply disable this authentification method in /etc/ssh/sshd_config by specifying

# GSSAPI options
GSSAPIAuthentication no
#GSSAPIAuthentication yes
GSSAPICleanupCredentials no
#GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes

That solved my problem immediately.
However, against what’s written in the wordpress post, I had another error behaviour:

debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password
debug1: Next authentication method: gssapi-with-mic
debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_0' not found

debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_0' not found

debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information

And also please note that the IP address of the calling machine has a valid DNS reverse address. So, there still seems to be something else out there…

SAT-Anschlußdosen und ihre Tücken bei DVB-C Betrieb (Kanäle S02 und S03)

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Hier wieder mal ein Post aus der Kategorie “Technik, die (nicht) beigeistert”, diesmal im Bereich Fernsehtechnik. So steht der geneigte Kunde im Baumarkt und sucht nach einer für sich geeigneten Fernsehdose. Hintergrund ist, daß das aktuell verlegte Fernsehkabel (Kabelanschluß bei einem großen regionalen Kabelnetzbetreiber) mit Hilfe eines Zweifachverteilers in einem Kabelschacht getrennt werden soll und zwei Stränge angefahren werden sollen. Nach einhelligem technischen Verständnis muss also an dieser zweiten, neuen Fernsehdose eine Terminierung (75 Ohm Widerstand) angeschlossen werden. Der Blick ins Regal verrät dann einem, daß es genau zwei Sorten gibt: Continue reading ‘SAT-Anschlußdosen und ihre Tücken bei DVB-C Betrieb (Kanäle S02 und S03)’ »

Impressionen aus Malta

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Während unseres Malta-Aufenthalts im September/Oktober 2010 haben wir so einiges erlebt. Die Kategorie Malta 2010 gibt bereits jetzt schon einige Eindrücke insbesondere in Bezug auf den manchmal chaotischen Verkehr auf der kleinen Insel mitten im Mittelmeer wider. Der Verkehr ist allerdings natürlich nicht das einzige, was bemerkenswert an diesem Eiland wäre. Continue reading ‘Impressionen aus Malta’ »

Das Kartenabenteuer “Von Birzebbuga nach Marsaxlokk”

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Nicht nur der Verkehr sorgt in Malta für Überraschungen, sondern auch die Künste die dazugehörigen Karten zu erstellen. So möchte der geneigte Tourist zum Beispiel von Birzebbuga (sprich: Birsebudscha) im Südosten der Hautpinsel nach Marsaxlokk (sprich: “Marsaschlock”) fahren. Continue reading ‘Das Kartenabenteuer “Von Birzebbuga nach Marsaxlokk”’ »

Der maltesische Verkehr durch die Augen eines Deutschen

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Widersprüchliches Verkehrsschild in Malta

Der maltesische Verkehr ist schon etwas ganz besonderes. Eine inzwischen mehr als 30 Jahre alte Antwort eines britischen Weltenbummlers auf die Frage, wie man denn als deutscher Tourist mit den Verkehrsverhältnissen auf der Mittelmeerinsel am besten zurecht kommen soll, beschreibt es wohl am besten: “Oh, that might not be a trouble: they drive anywhere!” (zu deutsch: “Oh, das ist gar kein Problem: die fahren (einfach) überall”). Dahingegen behauptet ein Reiseführer, daß die Malteser weniger nach den allgemeinen Regeln und Gesetzen des Verkehrs sich fortbewegen, sondern vielmehr nur dort fahren “wo gerade Schatten ist”.

Die Realtität zwischen Mellieha und Valletta liegt dabei wohl irgendwo dazwischen: Continue reading ‘Der maltesische Verkehr durch die Augen eines Deutschen’ »

Fedora Core und die AVM Fritz Card ISDN Adapter

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Ausnahmsweise schreibe ich diesen Blogeintrag mal in deutscher Sprache, denn er wird sich um die Besonderheiten, die sich mit der Verwendung der allseits (besonders im deutschen Sprachraum) beliebten AVM-Fritzcard Adapter unter Fedora Linux, befassen. Dabei werde ich allerdings nicht nur auf die Installationsschwierigkeiten des CAPI-Treibers eingehen, sondern auch beschreiben, wie die “alten” isdn4kutils zum Laufen gebracht werden können.
Continue reading ‘Fedora Core und die AVM Fritz Card ISDN Adapter’ »

Smava: Community References

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In the last few days I am having a deeper look into the network around the German loan marketplace Smava. The concept -often also refer to as “peer to peer lending” (the German version is slightly better) – is quite interesting, because it allows anyone to invest into personal loans – an investment area that was restricted to banks before only. Around this provider a community has evolved. Here are some links to those sites which tramendously will help you when searching for good investments. Please note that most of these sites are in German as Smava is a German marketplace and is primarly targeting also to the German market:

VirtualPC: German Keyboard Layout and the Backslash

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Ever wondered how to create a back slash in VirtualPC whilst the Escape key for leaving the Virtual PC mode is AltGR? If you press the AltGR in Virtual PC, which is necessary to create a backslash, then the focus of the local machine gets lost.
Tip: The trick here is to use a similar key combination which has the same effect. Old DOS freaks might know that any ASCII code may be entered with (CTRL+)ALT and then a three digit number sequence of the ASCII code entered via the numerical key pad. In the case of the backslash this would be 092. Still this does not work in Virtual PC either. There is even a much simpler trick: You may hold down CTRL+ALT (on German keyboard layouts it is labeled “STRG” for Steuerung and “ALT”) and then press the ß-symbol (“Es-Zett”). This will give you the backslash you wanted to have.
Side remark: Please note that STRG+ALT is NOT entirely the same as the AltGR key as this comment might suggest it. However, in many situations the two “false friends” behave quite the same.

Unknown Monitor (locked to 800×600) – Nouveau Driver vs. NVidia Driver

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After being forced to reinstall my Fedora server at home which was running a very oldish Fedora Core 6 I experienced a non-happy surprise: I was not able to set some reasonable display resolution (such as 1024×768), because the display driver (“nouveau”) currently available with the package only supports up to 800×600. A very common sign for the problem is that when running System->Administration->Display the Monitor Type is reported as “Unknown Monitor” when looking at the hardware’s tab. After searching endlessly in the web having seen that many other’s of you seem to experience the same problem like in the following posts

I finally stumbled over a thread in the fedora forum which helped me a lot: It not just explains the root cause of the problem, but also provides a step-by-step description how to work around the problem. The post solved my problem with my card which is reported via lspci as follows:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GT] (rev a1)

One final remark: As the solution provided in the thread above deeply affects the kernel by loading propritary drivers, it may also be an option to you to check for another hardware which is supported better by Fedora.