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December 8th, 2010
August 25th, 2010
04:49 am - hate you to death
demigod will be regarded as the biggest disappointment in my personal gaming history. and Chris Taylor is such an egomaniacal blowhard that i want to punch him in the face
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August 8th, 2010
12:30 pm
last night i wanted to add a couple channels to my mumble server (murmur) but i just have a simple no-administration private server. without any client verification of any kind (just connect) i cannot preform any sort of administration tasks from the client. not a prob because the server is local and i'll just SSH into it with putty. unfortunately murmur is so lean and mean that the only way to administer the server is via dbus or ice. this lays a very solid ground work for cool forum-chat synergies (i.e. one login) but it creates a steep learning curve. i changed the config to use ice rather then dbus and found a python script that would establish a simple localhost connection. using ipython i was able to create a python object that was the server. sweet. but what are the functions? there isn't any documentation but the murmur.ice file is the ice interface file that defines all the remote administration functions and commands. i found the command to add channels and went about my business.
now jump to windows 7, my preferred client environment. i'm trying to keep files and folders managed between local drives, external, network, etc. It would be nice if windows explorer would just tint the folder background according to some simple rules (c: blue, d: green, z: red). apparently this was a simple task in windows 98 or something. i'm stuck on stupid trying to figure out why this desktop.ini file isn't being parsed. sure there is a utility that does it (windows folder background changer) but it doesn't work on my desktop or laptop. It worked ONCE on desktop2 but I don't know what the fuck it did. oh and it crashes too. why do i have this suspicion that if i were in gnome or kde this would be a trivial task?
windows is collapsing under it's own weight. sooner, rather then later, the total cost of proprietary solutions will make them obsolete.
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July 21st, 2010
02:33 pm
in direct response to http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118853
let me start by saying that sure, gaming has changed and it sure ain't what it used to be. PC games were once made to LAN. I had a notebook that I would keep track of clues/mysteries from Chrono Trigger (later i filled in the answers). Solving Silent Hill puzzles during a sleep over in the wee hours of the morning. Playing marvel vs capcom one and two in the mall arcade. i look back on these times fondly. indeed i am frustrated with certain modern fads. but i have faith that they will die and we'll be onto the next stupid thing. i'm just as nostalgic as the next guy for mega man or any other NES classic. but i'm not obsessed with the past and never would i want to regress gaming to go back.
youtube videos have helped me in the past (goldeneye speed runs). Speed runs are, imho, lots of fun to watch. i love the display of skill in these videos. I have quite a collection of Quake 3 trick jumping. These videos have made me a better player in most games. actually sitting down and making them may be half the fun. writing a guide (a complete one) makes you go over the game much more finely. it makes you notice things you may not have before.
sure the internet is filled with mostly crap but it's not ALL crap. i believe in freedom and choice. i really hope no one is holding a gun to your head to watch dumb videos on youtube. that would be a terrible crime. you don't have to be on the internet. you don't have to participate. you aren't the first person to be upset about the internet.
if you don't like the status quo you need to take responsibility and do something about it. i'm learning to code. eventually i'd like to develop my own NES games. perhaps game developers need to be aware of youtube walktroughs and gamefaqs. perhaps they should find creative ways to take advantage of their existence. if you want it done right, you got to do it yourself.
</rant>
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May 25th, 2010
March 28th, 2010
10:51 pm - pxelinux & winpe
You don't really net boot directly into Windows PE. What you do is net boot the Windows Boot Manager. From there the Windows Boot Manager can load windows images, *.wim, into ramdisks. This very effectively mimics what a Windows 7 install DVD would do anyway except the install files aren't included. Once Win PE is loaded into RAM, you can map a Windows File Share that contains the contents of the Windows 7 DVD and simply execute setup.exe. I did this to install Windows 7 on Executor (my laptop). I wasn't actively timing it but it seems faster then doing so from DVD. But that's like saying it's faster then a turtle, not much is slower. Ubuntu and Parted Magic still net boot a lot faster. Sorry, Microsoft bloat still shows even in vertical stripes.
I don't need Windows PE for any kind of system recovery. Everything I need to do, partitioning, file recovery, system repair, troubleshooting, etc, I can do from Linux. Except install Windows. Linux cannot launch the setup.exe required to install Windows.
Install
I used the KB3AIK_EN.iso from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a811-39c26d3b3b34, The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7
I mounted the CD using Virtual CloneDrive and installed the tools.
Create
The included documentation goes over how to make and remaster an ISO to have a bootable disc. This alone is rather handy and I'm sure it would translate to a USB drive as well. I could host an ISO file on my TFTP server and load it with MEMDISK but that seemed heavy handed. I find elegance in efficiency.
With the tools installed I used the following script, written by myself because I was unsatisfied with everything coming up in we searches. I put this file right on C: so I could launch it really quick. I did use the Deployment Tools Command Prompt that was in my start menu. This most likely (temporarily) adds some extra lines to the PATH variable. Since I wasn't making custom *.wim images, I could have made this script completely independent with explicit commands but I have no need to.
This will make one Windows Boot Manager with two WinPE 3.0 images (32-bit and 64-bit) which after netbooting the Windows Boot Manager, you can select which image to boot. I was able to install 64-bit Win7 from 32-bit WinPE so I'm not sure how necessary the 64-bit flavor is. I imagine that if I required a storage driver for the installer to even see the local drives, I would need a 32-bit driver for 32-bit WinPE... initially. After 64-bit Windows takes over, it'll most likely error unless I ensure that the 64-bit driver is available for after the install. I also imagine that "driver juggling" an issue if you boot the 64-bit WinPE to install a 64-bit Windows even if the installer is only 32-bit. I have yet to test these theories.
makepe.bat
:: xls' winpe 3.0 pxelinux script
:: to be run from Deployment Tools Command Prompt
:: just for reference
:: "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\copype.cmd"
:: "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe"
:: variables
set TFTP_PATH=c:\tftp\Boot
:: copype does just that, copies the images include with AIK
:: since i don't modify the images this is really unnesisary
:: but good practice as it allows you to configure the images
call copype x86 c:\winpe32
call copype amd64 c:\winpe64
md %TFTP_PATH%
:: boot.sdi is the same for both 32 and 64
move c:\winpe32\ISO\boot\boot.sdi %TFTP_PATH%\
move c:\winpe32\ISO\boot\fonts %TFTP_PATH%\Fonts
:: we will only use one bootmanager
:: both 32 and 64 use the same windows boot manager and pxeboot
imagex /mount c:\winpe32\winpe.wim 1 c:\winpe32\mount\
copy C:\winpe32\mount\Windows\Boot\PXE\bootmgr.exe %TFTP_PATH%\
copy C:\winpe32\mount\Windows\Boot\PXE\pxeboot.n12 %TFTP_PATH%\startrom.0
:: there seems to be two different versions of bcdedit (presumably 32-bit and 64-bit)
:: since this utility is only used to create and configure the windows boot manager
:: i use the one from 32-bit version
:: you can still boot into 64-bit
copy C:\winpe32\mount\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe %TFTP_PATH%\
imagex /unmount c:\winpe32\mount
move c:\winpe32\winpe.wim %TFTP_PATH%\winpe32.wim
move c:\winpe64\winpe.wim %TFTP_PATH%\winpe64.wim
:: create and configure window boot manager
set BCDEDIT_PATH=%TFTP_PATH%\bcdedit.exe
set BCD_FILE=%TFTP_PATH%\BCD
%BCDEDIT_PATH% /createstore %BCD_FILE%
set BCD_OPERATION=%BCDEDIT_PATH% /store %BCD_FILE%
%BCD_OPERATION% /create {ramdiskoptions}
:: if you put a description on ramdiskoptions is will over-ride the descriptions below
%BCD_OPERATION% /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice boot
%BCD_OPERATION% /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \Boot\boot.sdi
for /f "tokens=3" %%i in ('%BCD_OPERATION% /create /d "WinPE 3.0 32-bit" /application osloader') do set guid1=%%i
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid1% systemroot \Windows
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid1% detecthal Yes
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid1% winpe Yes
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid1% osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\winpe32.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid1% device ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\winpe32.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
for /f "tokens=3" %%i in ('%BCD_OPERATION% /create /d "WinPE 3.0 64-bit" /application osloader') do set guid2=%%i
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid2% systemroot \Windows
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid2% detecthal Yes
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid2% winpe Yes
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid2% osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\winpe64.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
%BCD_OPERATION% /set %guid2% device ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\winpe64.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
%BCD_OPERATION% /create {bootmgr} /d "Windows Boot Manager"
%BCD_OPERATION% /set {bootmgr} timeout 30
%BCD_OPERATION% /set {bootmgr} displayorder %guid2% %guid1%
:: show your hard work
%BCD_OPERATION% /enum all
:: clean up
del %TFTP_PATH%\BCD.* /AH
del %TFTP_PATH%\bcdedit.exe
The c:\winpe32 and c:\winpe64 can be safely deleted. Only what you need (and not much else) is bundled up really nice in the Boot folder. With this boot folder, I scp it into the /var/lib/tftpboot/ folder on my file server.
pxelinux
With all the heavy lifting done for you above, it's pretty trivial to add it to an already functioning TFPTD server. I did run into a few snags.
I had already configured tftpd-hpa and pxelinux on my file server. I'm aware that pxeboot.n12 and bootmgr.exe are hard coded for certain paths and you can hex-edit them out if you desire but I found that unnecessary. You must make sure tftpd-hpatranslates all requests with backslashes to forward-slashes. I also added a line so that it would find bootmgr.exe.
/var/lib/tftpboot/tftpd.remap
re ^bootmgr\.exe Boot/bootmgr.exe
rg \\ /
you need to make sure tftpd will use this remap file. I also added the verbosity flags to help trouble shoot problems.
/etc/default/tftpd-hpa
#Defaults for tftpd-hpa
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
OPTIONS="-l -m /var/lib/tftpboot/tftpd.remap -s /var/lib/tftpboot -vvv"
I had an extra terminal open for tail -f /var/log/syslogand I could watch all the requests going into tftpd-hpa.
Now I didn't see anything because inetdwas running tftpd-hpaand wouldn't allow another instance to run. This drove me nuts until I figured out what was going on.
/etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd stop
nano /etc/inetd.conf
comment out the tftpd line with a #and save the file. now you can start tftpd-hpa with it's own init.d script.
/etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa start
it'll load up your remap file and provide details about every request sent to the server. once you have it working, you can go and remove the verbosity flags to keep your log files trim.
Install Windows
mount the windows file share that contains the dvd
net use y: \\myserver\myshare\win7_dvd
y:
setup.exe
this will work with Vista and 7. Earlier Windows are a bit trickier and would require extra effort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Automated_Installation_Kit
http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/winpe
http://doomclaw.de/index.php/2009/08/18/installing-windows-7-with-a-pxe-boot-server/
http://www.savelono.com/linux/how-to-install-windows-7-over-a-network-using-linux-pxe-dnsmasq-and-samba.html
http://flimflan.com/blog/InstallingVistaOnYourToshibaM200.aspx
http://www.deployvista.com/Default.aspx?tabid=70&EntryID=27
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March 18th, 2010
03:12 pm - fake
http://juliasegal.tumblr.com/post/452824857
as someone who did crap like this in elementary school, i believe the above is fake.
it would never have been crumpled up... it would never have been thrown away... and NO ONE would ever find it. something this personal would be in the best of the best of hiding places.
despite that, i've forged similar things for a laugh. and this does make me laugh. it reminds me of when i burned my cool handle list after it served it's purpose.
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March 8th, 2010
04:33 am - LAN Support
Modern Warfare 2 - Nope
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Nope
Supreme Commander 2 - Nope? (please correct me if i'm wrong)
Starcraft II - Nope
Sins of a Solar Empire - Yes
Can you guess which of the above I proudly own? I'm fully aware that as one-who-games-on-a-computer, I am in a minority. The above trend is a power-play by the industry to test the limits of what the market will bear. There have been many efforts to "fight the establishment" and, to my knowledge, all attempts have failed to generate a net result greater than zero.
Frankly, I don't care. If I cannot run my own server on my own terms, your game doesn't exist.
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February 6th, 2010
01:36 pm - Retro
Playing Torchlight made me very nostalgic for Diablo II. So I cranked it up on my desktop. However, the enhanced graphical/desktop features of Windows Vista and Windows 7 seem to cause very strange behavior.
You start to see small ASCII characters cycling (a, b, c, d, ... etc) in the upper left most corner of your desktop. After a long pause (long enough to think you didn't double click fast enough on the shortcut), Diablo 2 starts up.
The quick fix is to start up Diablo in a windowed mode with the command-line argument "-w". It starts right up no problems.
While windowed mode may be good for some, I prefer to play full screen (despite the 800x600 resolution). To remove the absurdly long delay at start-up, you will need to activate the compatibility option to Disable desktop composition.
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February 1st, 2010
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