Category: News

By Darwin Mach on Information Security, News, Tech Tips tagged , , , , , with 1 Comment

VMWare ESXi 5 Auto Start/Shutdown

VMWare recently, (and quietly) published a patch I have confirmed will resolve a guest virtual machine startup and shutdown issue that was introduced in March 2012 when they released Update 1.

The issue was that it broke the automatic startup and shutdown of the guest virtual machines when the host machine boots or shuts down. This did not affect enterprise customers who use a cluster, but vastly impacted many of us running individual nodes. Not surprisingly, this only affected the free version of the hypervisor and took 4 months before they decided to fix it due to 1.) community outrage and 2.) the issue extending to some paying enterprise customers.

The patch is ESXi500-201207001 and can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal. Just search for ESXi 5.0.0. Please note that if you aren’t running the latest patch before this one, you will need to update them sequentially before applying this patch.

As a note to the folks at VMWare: You guys barely averted losing your edge as a virtualization market leader due to angry users. This is not the first time either.

By Darwin Mach on Android, News, Tech Tips tagged , , , , , , , , , , with 5 Comments

HTC Sensation (4G) 1.45.401.2 OTA Update

This week, the HTC Sensation (Pyramid) is being blessed with an OTA update that brings Android Gingerbread 2.3.4 and has been reported to fix the HTC Sense lag issues and generally boost the interactive performance of the device. It’s also suspected that this update prepares the bootloader to be unlockable, because updating to this OTA release prints a “***LOCKED***” text at the top of the bootloader screen.

For those of us that are running a custom ROM, or just have your device rooted, you may have already be running 2.3.4, but may be wondering if you could update your bootloader without losing S-Off or root access. The answer is YES!

I’ve attached to this post the extracted “firmware.zip” from the OTA update, which contains the updated bootloader (HBOOT 1.18.0000), radio (10.56.9035.00U_10.14.9035.01_M), and a bunch of other firmwares (pg2fs_spcustom, rcdata, rpm, sbl2, tz). THIS PACKAGE IS MEANT FOR CUSTOM ROM USERS ONLY – I’ve removed the stock HTC kernel and recovery images, assuming that you have installed your own (2.3.4 compatible kernel of your choice, Clockworkmod Recovery). Rename the ZIP file to PG58IMG.zip, place it into the root of your SD card, and reboot into the bootloader to update:

Because this firmware update includes a new radio, I’ve also attached the corresponding radio interface library (RIL) for the radio included in this update. This one must be flashed via recovery, with the /system partition mounted:

Standard disclaimer: I’m not responsible for anything that happens to your device. You’ve been warned. Enjoy!

By Darwin Mach on Android, News, Personal - Leave a comment

Updates!!! March 23, 2011

Long time no see?

Just wanted to write this post to keep you guys updated on a few behind the scenes things…

1.) New domain :: dmach.net. Everything that was available from darwin-mach.net is now on dmach.net, which should be regarded as the primary domain for all transactions. It’s shorter and much cleaner to use. In other words, please update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc.

2.) Mach Technologies :: The entire MTI website has been redesigned, including the client area. Give it a spin: http://www.machtechcorp.net.

3.) “Bye Maemo, Hello Android!” :: I recently got an Android phone. Feel free to ask me Android questions – as a matter of fact, the next post is an Android tip.

I’ve also heard requests for video tutorials on some tech stuff? Let me know in the comments below…

By Darwin Mach on News tagged , , , , , , , with 2 Comments

New Look!

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a chance to post any new discoveries, tips, etc. I finally got the chance to revamp the site a bit and through a random conversation with a few friends of mine, have a new name for the blog.

New name: “Structurally Sound” comes from an inside joke where we took engineering terms to the extremes, describing food packaging and transport.

New look: Based off of the “EOS” theme by SRS Solutions (link at the bottom), with a few CSS changes and a different background. I picked this theme to offer a much better layout and hopefully have better visibility of the content.

I’m also starting a new thing, and that is I’ll take tech questions and try and answer them for you. Just leave a comment and I’ll pick a topic to write about in the next post.

Happy 2011!

UPDATE: Reverting back to the old name because just one other person out there has another blog with an identical name. Back to the drawing board…

By Darwin Mach on News, Tech Tips, Tutorials tagged , , , , , , , , , , with 32 Comments

Upgrade Your Linksys Router, Literally!

Cisco-Linksys decided to release new routers for their home routers: the “Valet” series and the “E” series. After doing some research, they’re actually just a re-branding of the older models. The only difference is that the “E” series now have double the amount of NVRAM available. In this article, we’ll be looking at the new E2000 and E3000 routers.

The E2000 is actually the WRT320N with a working reset button and E3000 is the new WRT610N v2. But that doesn’t that mean you have to ditch your current router if you own one of these already, especially just to get the extra 32k of NVRAM. You can actually update the CFE of the older model and transform your WRT320N or WRT610N v2 into the E2000 or E3000 respectively. The CFE is basically the BIOS of the router.

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