Author Archives: nils

Synology Cloudstation Pauses and Does Not Sync

Posted on by nils
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The Problem:

My Cloudstation app stopped working and would not synchronize files anymore. This happened both on Windows, and on Mac.

Symptoms:

It seemed like the app was either permanently in a “connecting” state, or pausing itself.

The solution:

It turns out that my Quick Connect became disabled at some point. I am not sure how or why; it had no account associated. I re-added that and enabled Quick Connect on my DiskStation, and Cloudstation started working again. This was especially odd because in the Cloudstation settings on my Diskstation, the status “Healthy” was displayed.

How To Change Primary Display in Windows

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A colleague had her Windows task bar on the wrong screen, and wanted to move the task bar to the other monitor. Seems this is a little confusing in Windows. You find the option if you right click on the desktop, then click on screen resolution. You will get this dialog:

First, you must click on the screen you want your windows start bar to appear on (blue arrow). Only then can you select the option “Make this my main display” (red arrow). If you have the wrong screen selected, the line “This is currently your main display” will appear.

Obviously, this is only applicable if you extend your desktop over multiple screens.

Keyboard Shotcut for changing Keyboard Layout in Windows

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Because this happened to me several times now: In Windows, it is possible to switch between international keyboard layouts by pressing ALT+SHIFT or CTRL+SHIFT together. Since windows remembers this on a per-application basis, this can be quite confusing.

Simply pressing those shortcuts again cycles through the layouts.

FRAPS Video Too Dark

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I recently attempted to capture some in-game footage – only to find that the recording was simply way too dark. Way darker than what it had been on my screen. It was fixable in my video editor, but the root cause was not immediately apparent – clearly it could not have been a monitor setting as it would have affected video and game equally.

It turns out that I was running the game – Skyrim – in Fullscreen Windowed mode, so it seems to be using the desktop gamma/brightness settings. Fraps on the other hand uses the ingame brightness settings.

When I changed in my ingame brightness, the picture on my screen remained exactly as it was before, but the brightness of the FRAPS video changed. Very counter-intuitive, but there you go.

Skyrim Mod Organizer: [D] failed to determine binary type: 193

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Alright, this is more of a hobby IT problem, but it was still frustrating. I had a crash of Mod Organizer, a tool to organize and maintain Skyrim mods. After the crash, it wouldn’t start any Java programs anymore – all I got was the error message:

failed to determine binary type: 193

I first suspected a problem with Java, but it was something with Mod Organizer itself. I ended up simply re-installing it, overwriting all files in the existing location. That fixed the error, and it even kept my config, modules and load order intact. If you try the same, create a backup first.

Even though I did not look into the root cause after I got it to work, I hope this helps anybody else.

Disable SSLv3 in Postfix, Dovecot

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Postfix:

Disabling certain versions of SSL works like this in Postfix:

In your /etc/postfix/main.cf add or modify the following config parameter like so:

smtpd_tls_protocols=!SSLv2,!SSLv3

If you are using mandatory TLS you’ll want to set this instead:

smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols=!SSLv2,!SSLv3

These should be fairly self-explanatory, but for further detail read the Postfix configuration parameters documentation.

Do not forget to restart Postfix!

Dovecot:

In dovecot, add the following to your configuration:

ssl_protocols = !SSLv2 !SSLv3

…and restart Dovecot. If you use a version of Dovecot older than 2.1, upgrade and then do the above.

Mac OS X: Time Machine Backup Slow / Stuck

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I just noticed that my time machine backup (to a Synology NAS) was slow. As in… single-digit kilobytes per second, and then it got stuck completely. At first I thought this may be an issue with the Synology drive, but this turned out not to be true. In the log file of the Mac, I found a large number of these lines:

Sep 20 20:27:01 Ascalon.local mdworker[20883]: (Warning) Import: Bad path:

(Ascalon is the name of my Macbook Air.)

This seemed to be indicative of a filesystem error, but this was not the case.

It turned out that in my case the offending drive was an old Kindle I had connected to my Macbook to charge – it does mount as a USB drive, similar to a flash memory stick. Anyway, once unplugged the Time Machine backup ran as fast as always.

I should probably note that the Kindle itself is not defective – disk scans give it a clean bill of health. So I have to assume that something in its folder structure is not compatible with Time Machine. Unfortunately I never connected the Kindle to my Macbook Air before, so I can’t say if this is a general issue or a new bug of some sort.

Anyway, solution in this case: Unplug all USB drives one after the other, restart the Time Machine backup after each one to see which one offends, and then deal with that. You can use the disk check utility on your Mac, but please make sure you know what you are doing and do not accidentally erase it. (The Apple Knowledge Base is probably a good place to start.)

Can I safely send a Certificate Request (CSR) by Email?

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Yes. The CSR is your public key, which will be verified and signed by the certificate authority (CA) and returned to you afterward. It is this signed version you will then use in your application. It is useless without the private key, so even if someone makes a copy of it, they won’t be able to attack you.

However, this does mean that you must not send your private key out! If your private key gets stolen, the SSL certificate is compromised and must be revoked.