hardware » Jack Truong

CS456 Networking Lab

hardware, school, uwaterloo No Responses »

Feb 132012

When Control became Caps Lock, backspace became `

The network lab process was pretty bad. We were given 6 computers to use, all of them had Fedora 16 installed. I’m glad it wasn’t some weird OpenSolaris setup given the keyboard.

We were greeted with a terminal. I did the logins and set up all the network devices to the proper IP addresses. Then I had to run Wireshark. Wireshark needs a GUI, unless they wanted us to run Tshark. No prior instructions were given to us to launch X to get into Wireshark.

Just typing X hung the terminal at a X with no inputs or window manager. From experience, Fedora came with Gnome so I typed gdm and I was given a login manager. Unfortunately, gdm prevents root logins by default — and rightfully so. I had to manually add a dummy user so I can log into Gnome and launch Wireshark.

Tests were done and outputs were saved. Then I had to bring the data home for the lab report (the instructions were to copy them onto a floppy disk — I’m glad we were implicitly told to ignore it).

Problem: there was no Internet connection on any of the computers. Luckily, we had USB keys with us and were thinking of just copying files to the USB key. The first computer (these aren’t exactly desktop towers, they were 1U rack servers) had the metal cage unlocked so we put the USB key in and copied it without problem.

[Fido] Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro 4.0.2.A.0.58 Update

hardware No Responses »

Jan 052012

As some of you may know, I own a Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro phone. The phone is fully unlocked and rooted, including bootloader privileges. I received a notification this morning about an update to the Android build to 4.0.2.A.0.58.

The update required Windows for the Sony Ericsson PC Companion software to push the update. Update took about 10 minutes and went smoothly. However, after updating, the phone was un-rooted and required me to run the zergRush script from DooMLoRD to root the phone again. The update also pushed back a ton of applications that I had previously removed. Apps such as the Facebook sync, Chinese/Japanese keyboards, etc. The update also pushed back the bootanimation.zip that shows the Fido boot screen when the phone starts up. This required me to go through them and re-delete them all but it wasn’t an issue.

I haven’t had time to see what’s new with the update but one thing that I really like is USB device support. I used to have to load modules with busybox insmod but it looks like the phone has those modules now and I won’t have to load them. With a simple USB-OTG (USB On-The-Go) adapter, I can plug in keyboards and mice to my phone. It’s actually pretty neat to see a cursor on the Android desktop. Keyboard is extremely useful as most of my passwords are partially formed through my Yubikeys. It doesn’t look like USB keys work by default. It also doesn’t seem to like things that draw too much power.

EDIT:

There’s a screenshot button (power off menu)!