Behind the scenes: Reality of running a blog - Story of a failure
Monday, March 22. 2021
... or any (un)social media activity.
IMHO the mentioned "social" media isn't. There are statistics and research to establish the un-social aspect of it. Dopamin-loop in your brain keeps feeding regular doses to make person's behaviour addicted to an activity and keep the person leeching for more material. This very effectively disconnects people from the real world and makes the dive deeper into the rabbit hole of (un)social media.
What most of the dopamin-dosed viewer of any published material keep ignoring is the peak-of-an-iceberg -phenomenon. What I mean is a random visitor gets to see something amazingly cool. A video or picture depicting something that's very impressive and assume that person's life consists of a series of such events. Also humans tend to compare. What that random visitor does next is compares the amazing thing to his/hers own "dull" personal life, which does not consist of a such imaginary sequence of wonderful events. Imaginary, because reality is always harsh. As most of the time we don't know the real story, it is possible for 15 seconds of video footage to take months or preparation, numerous failures, reasonable amounts of money and a lot of effort to happen.
An example of harsh reality, the story of me trying to get a wonderful piece of tech-blogging published.
I started tinkering with a Raspberry Pi 4B. That's something I've planned for a while, ordered some parts and most probably will publish the actual story of the success later. Current status of the project is, well planned, underway, but nowhere near finished.
What happened was for the console output of the Linux to look like this:
That's "interesting" at best. Broken to say the least.
For debugging of this, I rebooted the Raspi into previous Linux kernel of 5.8 and ta-daa! Everything was working again. Most of you are running Raspian, which has Linux 5.4. As I have the energy to burn into hating all of those crappy debians and ubuntus, my obvious choice is a Fedora Linux Workstation AArch64-build.
To clarify the naming: ARM build of Fedora Linux is a community driven effort, it is not run by Red Hat, Inc. nor The Fedora Project.
Ok, enough name/org -talk, back to Raspi.
When in a Linux graphics go that wrong, I always disable the graphical boot in Plymouth splash-screen. Running plymouth-set-default-theme details --rebuild-initrd will do the trick of displaying all-text at the boot. However, it did not fix the problem on my display. Next I had a string of attempts doing all kinds of Kernel parameter tinkering, especially with deactivating Frame Buffer, learning all I could from KMS or Kernel Mode Setting, attempting to build Raspberry Pi's userland utilities to gain insight of EDID-information just to realize they'll never build on a 64-bit Linux, failing with nomodeset and vga=0 as Kernel Parameters to solve the problem. No matter what I told the kernel, display would fail. Every. Single. Time.
It hit me quite late in troubleshooting. While observing the sequence of boot-process, during early stages of boot everything worked and display was un-garbled. Then later when Feodra was starting system services everything fell. Obviously something funny happened with GPU-driver of Broadcom BCM2711 -chip of VideoCore 4, aka. vc4 in that particular Linux-build when the driver was loaded. Creating file /etc/modprobe.d/vc4-blacklist.conf with contents of blacklist vc4 to prevent VideoCore4 driver from ever loading did solve the issue! Yay! Finally found the problem.
All of this took several hours, I'd say 4-5 hours straight work. What happened next was surprising. Now that I had the problem isolated into GPU-driver, on IRC's #fedora-arm -channel, people said vc4 HDMI-output was a known problem and was already fixed in Linux 5.11. Dumbfounded by this answer, I insisted version 5.10 of being the latest and 5.11 lacking availability. They insisted back. Couple hours before me asking, 5.11 was deployed into mirrors sites for everybody to receive. This happened while I was investigating failing and investigating more.
dnf update, reboot and pooof. Problem was gone!
There is no real story here. In pursuit of getting the thing fixed, it fixed itself by time. All I had to do is wait (which obviously I did not do). Failure after failure, but no juicy story on how to fix the HDMI-output. On a typical scenario, this type of story would not get published. No sane person would shine any light on a failure and time wasted.
However, this is what most of us do with computers. Fail, retry and attempt to get results. No glory, just hard work.
... or any (un)social media activity.
IMHO the mentioned "social" media isn't. There are statistics and research to establish the un-social aspect of it. Dopamin-loop in your brain keeps feeding regular doses to make person's behaviour addicted to an activity and keep the person leeching for more material. This very effectively disconnects people from the real world and makes the dive deeper into the rabbit hole of (un)social media.
What most of the dopamin-dosed viewer of any published material keep ignoring is the peak-of-an-iceberg -phenomenon. What I mean is a random visitor gets to see something amazingly cool. A video or picture depicting something that's very impressive and assume that person's life consists of a series of such events. Also humans tend to compare. What that random visitor does next is compares the amazing thing to his/hers own "dull" personal life, which does not consist of a such imaginary sequence of wonderful events. Imaginary, because reality is always harsh. As most of the time we don't know the real story, it is possible for 15 seconds of video footage to take months or preparation, numerous failures, reasonable amounts of money and a lot of effort to happen.
An example of harsh reality, the story of me trying to get a wonderful piece of tech-blogging published.
I started tinkering with a Raspberry Pi 4B. That's something I've planned for a while, ordered some parts and most probably will publish the actual story of the success later. Current status of the project is, well planned, underway, but nowhere near finished.
What happened was for the console output of the Linux to look like this:
That's "interesting" at best. Broken to say the least.
For debugging of this, I rebooted the Raspi into previous Linux kernel of 5.8 and ta-daa! Everything was working again. Most of you are running Raspian, which has Linux 5.4. As I have the energy to burn into hating all of those crappy debians and ubuntus, my obvious choice is a Fedora Linux Workstation AArch64-build.
To clarify the naming: ARM build of Fedora Linux is a community driven effort, it is not run by Red Hat, Inc. nor The Fedora Project.
Ok, enough name/org -talk, back to Raspi.
When in a Linux graphics go that wrong, I always disable the graphical boot in Plymouth splash-screen. Running plymouth-set-default-theme details --rebuild-initrd will do the trick of displaying all-text at the boot. However, it did not fix the problem on my display. Next I had a string of attempts doing all kinds of Kernel parameter tinkering, especially with deactivating Frame Buffer, learning all I could from KMS or Kernel Mode Setting, attempting to build Raspberry Pi's userland utilities to gain insight of EDID-information just to realize they'll never build on a 64-bit Linux, failing with nomodeset and vga=0 as Kernel Parameters to solve the problem. No matter what I told the kernel, display would fail. Every. Single. Time.
It hit me quite late in troubleshooting. While observing the sequence of boot-process, during early stages of boot everything worked and display was un-garbled. Then later when Feodra was starting system services everything fell. Obviously something funny happened with GPU-driver of Broadcom BCM2711 -chip of VideoCore 4, aka. vc4 in that particular Linux-build when the driver was loaded. Creating file /etc/modprobe.d/vc4-blacklist.conf with contents of blacklist vc4 to prevent VideoCore4 driver from ever loading did solve the issue! Yay! Finally found the problem.
All of this took several hours, I'd say 4-5 hours straight work. What happened next was surprising. Now that I had the problem isolated into GPU-driver, on IRC's #fedora-arm -channel, people said vc4 HDMI-output was a known problem and was already fixed in Linux 5.11. Dumbfounded by this answer, I insisted version 5.10 of being the latest and 5.11 lacking availability. They insisted back. Couple hours before me asking, 5.11 was deployed into mirrors sites for everybody to receive. This happened while I was investigating failing and investigating more.
dnf update, reboot and pooof. Problem was gone!
There is no real story here. In pursuit of getting the thing fixed, it fixed itself by time. All I had to do is wait (which obviously I did not do). Failure after failure, but no juicy story on how to fix the HDMI-output. On a typical scenario, this type of story would not get published. No sane person would shine any light on a failure and time wasted.
However, this is what most of us do with computers. Fail, retry and attempt to get results. No glory, just hard work.
Windows 10 Aero: shaker minimize all windows - disable
Friday, February 26. 2021
podman - Running containers in Fedora 31+
Tuesday, November 10. 2020
Getting rid of Flash from Windows - For good
Wednesday, October 28. 2020
Today, Microsoft released KB4577586, Update for the removal of Adobe Flash Player. This is wonderful news! I've been waiting for this moment to happen for many many years. Many organizations will cease to support Adobe Flash end of this year and this release is an anticipated step on that path. Goodbye Flash!
Updates need to be manually downloaded from Microsoft Update Catalog, link: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=kb4577586. The reason for this is the earliness. If you're not as impatient as I, the update will go its natural flow and eventually be automatically offered by your Windows.
As you can see from the listing, you need to be super-careful when picking the correct file to download. Also, to make things worse, there are some discrepancies in the descriptions:
To get the exact version of your Windows, run winver. It will output something like this:
In that example, the package required is for Windows 10 release 1909. To download the correct package, you also need to know the processor architecture. Whether it's AMD-64, Intel-32 or ARM-64 cannot be determined from above information. If you have no idea, just go with x64 for processor architecture, that's a very likely match. Those not running x64 will know the answer without querying.
As a software engineer, I obviously wanted to extract all the required information programmatically. I automated the process of getting to know the exact version your particular Windows is running by writing and publishing a helper-script for PowerShell Core. If you are able to run PowerShell Core, the script is available at: https://gist.github.com/HQJaTu/640d0bb0b96215a9c5ce9807eccf3c19. Result will look something like this:
Result will differ on your machine, but that's the output on my Windows 10 Pro release 1909 (x64) build 18363. Couple of other examples are:
Windows 10 Pro release 2004 (x64) build 20241 on my Windows Insider preview
Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center (x64) build 9600 on my Windows 8.1
If you managed to pick out the correct .msu-file, on running it, output will query if you want to proceed with installation:
In case of a mismatch, error will say something about that particular update not being applicable to your computer:
After installation, go verify the results of Flash being removed. Running your regular Chrome (or Firefox) won't do the trick. They won't support Flash anyways. What you just did was removed Flash from Windows, aka. Internet Explorer. Go to https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/is-flash-installed and observe results:
On a Windows, where KB4577586 hasn't been successfully applied, message will indicate existence of Adobe Flash player:
That's it. Flash-b-gone!
Today, Microsoft released KB4577586, Update for the removal of Adobe Flash Player. This is wonderful news! I've been waiting for this moment to happen for many many years. Many organizations will cease to support Adobe Flash end of this year and this release is an anticipated step on that path. Goodbye Flash!
Updates need to be manually downloaded from Microsoft Update Catalog, link: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=kb4577586. The reason for this is the earliness. If you're not as impatient as I, the update will go its natural flow and eventually be automatically offered by your Windows.
As you can see from the listing, you need to be super-careful when picking the correct file to download. Also, to make things worse, there are some discrepancies in the descriptions:
To get the exact version of your Windows, run winver. It will output something like this:
In that example, the package required is for Windows 10 release 1909. To download the correct package, you also need to know the processor architecture. Whether it's AMD-64, Intel-32 or ARM-64 cannot be determined from above information. If you have no idea, just go with x64 for processor architecture, that's a very likely match. Those not running x64 will know the answer without querying.
As a software engineer, I obviously wanted to extract all the required information programmatically. I automated the process of getting to know the exact version your particular Windows is running by writing and publishing a helper-script for PowerShell Core. If you are able to run PowerShell Core, the script is available at: https://gist.github.com/HQJaTu/640d0bb0b96215a9c5ce9807eccf3c19. Result will look something like this:
Result will differ on your machine, but that's the output on my Windows 10 Pro release 1909 (x64) build 18363. Couple of other examples are:
Windows 10 Pro release 2004 (x64) build 20241 on my Windows Insider preview
Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center (x64) build 9600 on my Windows 8.1
If you managed to pick out the correct .msu-file, on running it, output will query if you want to proceed with installation:
In case of a mismatch, error will say something about that particular update not being applicable to your computer:
After installation, go verify the results of Flash being removed. Running your regular Chrome (or Firefox) won't do the trick. They won't support Flash anyways. What you just did was removed Flash from Windows, aka. Internet Explorer. Go to https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/is-flash-installed and observe results:
On a Windows, where KB4577586 hasn't been successfully applied, message will indicate existence of Adobe Flash player:
That's it. Flash-b-gone!
Custom X.509 certificate in Windows 10 Remote Desktop Service
Wednesday, October 21. 2020
On a non-AD environment, this is what your average Windows 10 Remote Desktop client will emit on a connection:
For those who are AD-domain admins, they may have seen this rarely. If an AD has Certification Authority installed, it is easy and typical to deploy certs from it to workstations and never see the above message. The Net is full of instructions like Replace RDP Default Self Sign Certificate.
Problem that needs to be solved
For anybody like me, not running an AD-domain, simply having couple of Windows 10 -boxes with occasional need to RDP into them, that popup becomes familiar.
Note: I'll NEVER EVER click on Don't ask me again -prompts. I need to know. I want to know. Suppressing such information is harmful. Getting to know and working on the problem is The WayⓇ.
Gathering information about solution
If this was easy, somebody had created simple instructions for updating RDP-certificates years ago. Decades even. But no. No proper and reasonable easy solution exists. Searching The Net far & wide results only in bits and pieces, but no real tangible turn-key(ish) solution.
While in quest for information, given existence of The Net, I find other people asking the same question. A good example is: How to provide a verified server certificate for Remote Desktop (RDP) connections to Windows 10.
As presented in the above StackExchange answer, the solution is a simple one (I think not!!). These five steps need to be done to complete the update:
- Purchase a genuine verified SSL-certificate
- Note: It's a TLS-certificate! The mentioned protocol has been deprecated for many years. Even TLS 1 and TLS 1.1 have been deprecated. So it's a X.509 TLS-certificate.
- Note 2: Ever heard of Let's Encrypt? ZeroSSL? Buypass? (and many others) They're giving away perfectly valid and trusted TLS-certificates for anybody who shows up and can prove they have control over a domain. No need to spend money on that.
- Wrap the precious certificate you obtained in step 1) into a PKCS#12-file. A
.pfx as Windows imports it.
- Note: Oh, that's easy! I think PKCS#12 is the favorite file format of every Regular Joe computer user.
Not!
- Install the PKCS#12 from step 2) into Windows computer account and make sure user NETWORK SERVICE has access to it.
- Note: Aow come on! Steps 1) and 2) were tedious and complex, but this is wayyyyyy too hard to even begin to comprehend! Actually doing it is beyond most users.
- Open a Registry Editor and add the SHA-1 fingerprint of the certificate into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\ into a binary value called SSLCertificateSHA1Hash.
- Note: Oh really! Nobody knows what's a SHA-1 fingerprint nor how to extract that from a certificate in a format suitable to a registry binary value!
- Reboot the Windows!
- Note: As all Windows-operations, this requires a reboot.
Mission accomplished! Now the annoying message is gone. Do you want to guess what'll happen after 90 days passes? That's the allotted lifespan of a Let's Encrypt -certificate. Yup. You'll be doing the all of the above again. Every. Single. Painstaking. Step.
Problems needing to be solved
Let's break this down. As the phrase goes, an elephant is a mighty big creature and eating one is a big task. It needs to be done one bit at a time.
0: Which cert is being used currently?
If you simply want to get the SHA-1 hash of the currently installed RDP-certificate, a simple (or maybe not?) command of:
wmic /namespace:"\\root\cimv2\TerminalServices" PATH "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" get "SSLCertificateSHA1Hash"
... will do the trick. No admin-permissions needed or anything fancy.
To state the obvious problem: you'll be presented a hex-string but you have zero idea to where it points to and what to do with this information.
Hint:
You can to browse Windows Certificate Mchine Store. System certificates are not stored in your personal Certificate Store, so carefully point to a correct container. By default certificates are listed by subject, not SHA-1 hash. Luckily the self-signed RDP-cert is located in a folder "Remote Desktop" narrowing down the set.
To state the second obvious problem: WMI is a tricky beast. Poking around it from CLI isn't easy.
1: The certificate
Ok. With that you're on your own. If you cannot figure how Let's Encrypt works, doing this may not be your thing.
2: PKCS#12 wrapping
In most scenarios, a certificate is typically delivered in a PEM-formatted file or set of two files (one for public and second for private keys). PEM-format is native in *nix environment and all of tooling there can handle the data with ease. Converting the PEM-data into an interim (Microsoft created) format for Microsoft-world can be done, but is bit tricky in a *nix. Usage for this PKCS#12-formatted data is ephemeral, the certificate will stay in the file for only short while before being imported to Windows and there is no need for it anymore. A cert can be re-packaged if needed as long as the original PEM-formatted files exist. Also, the certificate data can be exported from Windows back to a file, if needed.
As PEM-format is native in *nix for certs, it is completely unsupported in Windows. A simple operation of "here is the PEM-file, import it to Windows" is literally impossible to accomplish! There is a reason why instructions have a rather complex spell with openssl-command to get the job done.
2.1: What others have done
When talking about PowerShell-scripting and PEM-format, I'll definitely have to credit people of PKISolutions. They publish a very nice library of PSPKI (source code is at https://github.com/PKISolutions/PSPKI) with PEM-import capability. As Windows Certificate Store is a complex beast, that code doesn't directly work as I'd need it to be for importing into Machine Store. Given existence of source code, the logic they wrote can be lifted, modified and re-used to do what is needed for RDP-cert installation process.
Among PKISolutions' excellent work is blog post by Accessing and using certificate private keys in .NET Framework/.NET Core. There he explains in detail dark/bright/weird ages about how Microsoft's libraries have approached the subject of PKI and how thing have evolved from undefined to well-behaving to current situation where everything is... well... weird.
Why I mention this is imperative for practical approach. PSPKI-library works perfectly in PowerShell 5.x, which is built on Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. That particular framework version is bit old, and given its age, it falls into bright bracket of doing things.
However, not living in past, the relevant version of PowerShell is PowerShell Core. At the time of writing the LTS (or Long-Term-Support) version is 7.0. A version of 7.1 is in preview and version 6 is still actively used. Those versions run obviously on modern .Net Core, an open-source version of DotNet running in Windows, Linux and macOS. In transition of Microsoft .Net into open-source .Net Core, most operating system -dependant details have changed while bumping things from closed-source-Windows-only thingie. This most definitely include implementation and interface details of Public Key Infrastructure.
In short: PSPKI doesn't work anymore! It did in "bright ages" but not anymore in current "weird ages".
2.2: What I need to get done
Sticking with an obsoleted PowerShell-version is a no-go. I need to get stuff working with something I actually want to run.
In detail, this involves figuring out how .Net Core's System.Security.Cryptography.CngKey can import an existing key into Machine Store as an exportable one. That was bit tricky even in .Net Framework's System.Security.Cryptography.RSACryptoServiceProvider. Also note, that when I talk about PKI, I most definitely mean RSA and other practical algorithms like ECDSA, which is fully supported in Cryptography Next Generation (CNG). The biggest problem with CNG is, there is lack of usable documentation and practical examples.
Having elliptic curve support is important. RSA is absolutely not obsoleted and I don't see it being so in near future. It's the classic: having options. This is something I already addressed in a blog post this spring.
Most people are using only RSA and can get their job done using old libraries. I ran out of luck as I needed to do something complex. Using new libraries was the only way of getting forward. That meant lots of trial and error. Something R&D is about.
3: Import the PKCS#12-packaged certificate into a proper certificate store of a Windows-machine
When the very difficult part is done and a PKCS#12-file exists and contains a valid certificate and the private key of it, importing the information is surprisingly easy to accomplish with code.
On the other hand, this one is surprisingly complex to accomplish manually. Good thing I wasn't aiming for that.
4: Inform RDP-services which certificate to use
Getting a SHA-1 hash of a X.509 certificate is trivial. Stamping a well-known value into registry is easy. Having correct permissions set was nearly impossible, but ultimately it was doable.
5: Make sure RDP-services will use the certificate
For this, there are number of ways to do. Many of them will involve reboot or restarting the service with a PowerShell-spell of:
Restart-Service -DisplayName "Remote Desktop Services" -Force
Surprisingly, on a closer look there is a way to accomplish this steop without rebooting anything. It's just not well known nor well documented, but Windows Management Instrumentation (or wmic) can do that too! Assuming the SHA-1 thumbprint of the certificate was in variable $certThumbprint, running this single-line command will do the trick:
wmic /namespace:"\\root\cimv2\TerminalServices" PATH "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" Set "SSLCertificateSHA1Hash=$certThumbprint"
It will update registry to contain appropriate SHA-1 hash, confirm the access permissions and inform RDP-service about the change. All of which won't require a reboot nor an actual restart of the service. Imagine doing the cert update via RDP-session and restarting the service. Yup. You will get disconnected. Running this WMI-command won't kick you out. Nice!
Solution
Set of tools I wrote is published in GitHub: https://github.com/HQJaTu/RDP-cert-tools
As usual, this is something I'm using for my own systems, so I'll maintain the code and make sure it keeps working in this rapidly evolving world of ours.
Example run
On the target Windows 10 machine, this is how updating my cert would work (as an user with Administrator permissions):
PS C:\> .\update-RDP-cert.ps1 `
-certPath 'wildcard.example.com.cer' `
-keyPath 'wildcard.example.com.key'
Output will be:
Loaded certificate with thumbprint 1234567890833251DCCF992ACBD4E63929ABCDEF
Installing certificate 'CN=*.example.com' to Windows Certificate Store
All ok. RDP setup done.
That's it. You're done!
Example run with SSH
As I mentioned earlier, I'm using Let's Encrypt. There is a blog post about how I approach getting the certificates in my Linux wth Acme.sh. There is an obvious gap with getting certs from LE with a Linux and using the cert in Windows 10. Files in question need to be first transferred and then they can be used.
Realistic example command I'd run to first transfer the newly issued LE-cert from my Linux box to be used as RDP-cert would be:
PS C:\> .\get-RDP-cert.ps1 `
-serverHost server.example.com `
-serverUser joetheuser `
-serverAuthPrivateKeyPath id_ecdsa-sha2-nistp521 `
-remotePrivateKeyPath 'certs/*.example.com/*.example.com.key' `
-remoteCertificatePath 'certs/*.example.com/*.example.com.cer'
The obvious benefit is a simple single command to get and install an RDP-certificate from Linux to Windows. All of the complexity will be taken out. My script will even clean the temporary files to not leave any private key files floating around.
Finally
Enjoy!
Admins/users: If you enjoy this tool, let me know. Drop me a comment.
Developers: If you love my CNG-import code, feel free to use it in your application. The more people know how it works, the better.
On a non-AD environment, this is what your average Windows 10 Remote Desktop client will emit on a connection:
For those who are AD-domain admins, they may have seen this rarely. If an AD has Certification Authority installed, it is easy and typical to deploy certs from it to workstations and never see the above message. The Net is full of instructions like Replace RDP Default Self Sign Certificate.
Problem that needs to be solved
For anybody like me, not running an AD-domain, simply having couple of Windows 10 -boxes with occasional need to RDP into them, that popup becomes familiar.
Note: I'll NEVER EVER click on Don't ask me again -prompts. I need to know. I want to know. Suppressing such information is harmful. Getting to know and working on the problem is The WayⓇ.
Gathering information about solution
If this was easy, somebody had created simple instructions for updating RDP-certificates years ago. Decades even. But no. No proper and reasonable easy solution exists. Searching The Net far & wide results only in bits and pieces, but no real tangible turn-key(ish) solution.
While in quest for information, given existence of The Net, I find other people asking the same question. A good example is: How to provide a verified server certificate for Remote Desktop (RDP) connections to Windows 10.
As presented in the above StackExchange answer, the solution is a simple one (I think not!!). These five steps need to be done to complete the update:
- Purchase a genuine verified SSL-certificate
- Note: It's a TLS-certificate! The mentioned protocol has been deprecated for many years. Even TLS 1 and TLS 1.1 have been deprecated. So it's a X.509 TLS-certificate.
- Note 2: Ever heard of Let's Encrypt? ZeroSSL? Buypass? (and many others) They're giving away perfectly valid and trusted TLS-certificates for anybody who shows up and can prove they have control over a domain. No need to spend money on that.
- Wrap the precious certificate you obtained in step 1) into a PKCS#12-file. A
.pfxas Windows imports it.- Note: Oh, that's easy! I think PKCS#12 is the favorite file format of every Regular Joe computer user. Not!
- Note: Oh, that's easy! I think PKCS#12 is the favorite file format of every Regular Joe computer user.
- Install the PKCS#12 from step 2) into Windows computer account and make sure user NETWORK SERVICE has access to it.
- Note: Aow come on! Steps 1) and 2) were tedious and complex, but this is wayyyyyy too hard to even begin to comprehend! Actually doing it is beyond most users.
- Open a Registry Editor and add the SHA-1 fingerprint of the certificate into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\into a binary value calledSSLCertificateSHA1Hash.- Note: Oh really! Nobody knows what's a SHA-1 fingerprint nor how to extract that from a certificate in a format suitable to a registry binary value!
- Reboot the Windows!
- Note: As all Windows-operations, this requires a reboot.
- Note: As all Windows-operations, this requires a reboot.
Mission accomplished! Now the annoying message is gone. Do you want to guess what'll happen after 90 days passes? That's the allotted lifespan of a Let's Encrypt -certificate. Yup. You'll be doing the all of the above again. Every. Single. Painstaking. Step.
Problems needing to be solved
Let's break this down. As the phrase goes, an elephant is a mighty big creature and eating one is a big task. It needs to be done one bit at a time.
0: Which cert is being used currently?
If you simply want to get the SHA-1 hash of the currently installed RDP-certificate, a simple (or maybe not?) command of:
wmic /namespace:"\\root\cimv2\TerminalServices" PATH "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" get "SSLCertificateSHA1Hash"
... will do the trick. No admin-permissions needed or anything fancy.
To state the obvious problem: you'll be presented a hex-string but you have zero idea to where it points to and what to do with this information.
Hint:
You can to browse Windows Certificate Mchine Store. System certificates are not stored in your personal Certificate Store, so carefully point to a correct container. By default certificates are listed by subject, not SHA-1 hash. Luckily the self-signed RDP-cert is located in a folder "Remote Desktop" narrowing down the set.
To state the second obvious problem: WMI is a tricky beast. Poking around it from CLI isn't easy.
1: The certificate
Ok. With that you're on your own. If you cannot figure how Let's Encrypt works, doing this may not be your thing.
2: PKCS#12 wrapping
In most scenarios, a certificate is typically delivered in a PEM-formatted file or set of two files (one for public and second for private keys). PEM-format is native in *nix environment and all of tooling there can handle the data with ease. Converting the PEM-data into an interim (Microsoft created) format for Microsoft-world can be done, but is bit tricky in a *nix. Usage for this PKCS#12-formatted data is ephemeral, the certificate will stay in the file for only short while before being imported to Windows and there is no need for it anymore. A cert can be re-packaged if needed as long as the original PEM-formatted files exist. Also, the certificate data can be exported from Windows back to a file, if needed.
As PEM-format is native in *nix for certs, it is completely unsupported in Windows. A simple operation of "here is the PEM-file, import it to Windows" is literally impossible to accomplish! There is a reason why instructions have a rather complex spell with openssl-command to get the job done.
2.1: What others have done
When talking about PowerShell-scripting and PEM-format, I'll definitely have to credit people of PKISolutions. They publish a very nice library of PSPKI (source code is at https://github.com/PKISolutions/PSPKI) with PEM-import capability. As Windows Certificate Store is a complex beast, that code doesn't directly work as I'd need it to be for importing into Machine Store. Given existence of source code, the logic they wrote can be lifted, modified and re-used to do what is needed for RDP-cert installation process.
Among PKISolutions' excellent work is blog post by Accessing and using certificate private keys in .NET Framework/.NET Core. There he explains in detail dark/bright/weird ages about how Microsoft's libraries have approached the subject of PKI and how thing have evolved from undefined to well-behaving to current situation where everything is... well... weird.
Why I mention this is imperative for practical approach. PSPKI-library works perfectly in PowerShell 5.x, which is built on Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. That particular framework version is bit old, and given its age, it falls into bright bracket of doing things.
However, not living in past, the relevant version of PowerShell is PowerShell Core. At the time of writing the LTS (or Long-Term-Support) version is 7.0. A version of 7.1 is in preview and version 6 is still actively used. Those versions run obviously on modern .Net Core, an open-source version of DotNet running in Windows, Linux and macOS. In transition of Microsoft .Net into open-source .Net Core, most operating system -dependant details have changed while bumping things from closed-source-Windows-only thingie. This most definitely include implementation and interface details of Public Key Infrastructure.
In short: PSPKI doesn't work anymore! It did in "bright ages" but not anymore in current "weird ages".
2.2: What I need to get done
Sticking with an obsoleted PowerShell-version is a no-go. I need to get stuff working with something I actually want to run.
In detail, this involves figuring out how .Net Core's System.Security.Cryptography.CngKey can import an existing key into Machine Store as an exportable one. That was bit tricky even in .Net Framework's System.Security.Cryptography.RSACryptoServiceProvider. Also note, that when I talk about PKI, I most definitely mean RSA and other practical algorithms like ECDSA, which is fully supported in Cryptography Next Generation (CNG). The biggest problem with CNG is, there is lack of usable documentation and practical examples.
Having elliptic curve support is important. RSA is absolutely not obsoleted and I don't see it being so in near future. It's the classic: having options. This is something I already addressed in a blog post this spring.
Most people are using only RSA and can get their job done using old libraries. I ran out of luck as I needed to do something complex. Using new libraries was the only way of getting forward. That meant lots of trial and error. Something R&D is about.
3: Import the PKCS#12-packaged certificate into a proper certificate store of a Windows-machine
When the very difficult part is done and a PKCS#12-file exists and contains a valid certificate and the private key of it, importing the information is surprisingly easy to accomplish with code.
On the other hand, this one is surprisingly complex to accomplish manually. Good thing I wasn't aiming for that.
4: Inform RDP-services which certificate to use
Getting a SHA-1 hash of a X.509 certificate is trivial. Stamping a well-known value into registry is easy. Having correct permissions set was nearly impossible, but ultimately it was doable.
5: Make sure RDP-services will use the certificate
For this, there are number of ways to do. Many of them will involve reboot or restarting the service with a PowerShell-spell of:
Restart-Service -DisplayName "Remote Desktop Services" -Force
Surprisingly, on a closer look there is a way to accomplish this steop without rebooting anything. It's just not well known nor well documented, but Windows Management Instrumentation (or wmic) can do that too! Assuming the SHA-1 thumbprint of the certificate was in variable $certThumbprint, running this single-line command will do the trick:
wmic /namespace:"\\root\cimv2\TerminalServices" PATH "Win32_TSGeneralSetting" Set "SSLCertificateSHA1Hash=$certThumbprint"
It will update registry to contain appropriate SHA-1 hash, confirm the access permissions and inform RDP-service about the change. All of which won't require a reboot nor an actual restart of the service. Imagine doing the cert update via RDP-session and restarting the service. Yup. You will get disconnected. Running this WMI-command won't kick you out. Nice!
Solution
Set of tools I wrote is published in GitHub: https://github.com/HQJaTu/RDP-cert-tools
As usual, this is something I'm using for my own systems, so I'll maintain the code and make sure it keeps working in this rapidly evolving world of ours.
Example run
On the target Windows 10 machine, this is how updating my cert would work (as an user with Administrator permissions):
PS C:\> .\update-RDP-cert.ps1 `
-certPath 'wildcard.example.com.cer' `
-keyPath 'wildcard.example.com.key'
Output will be:
Loaded certificate with thumbprint 1234567890833251DCCF992ACBD4E63929ABCDEF
Installing certificate 'CN=*.example.com' to Windows Certificate Store
All ok. RDP setup done.
That's it. You're done!
Example run with SSH
As I mentioned earlier, I'm using Let's Encrypt. There is a blog post about how I approach getting the certificates in my Linux wth Acme.sh. There is an obvious gap with getting certs from LE with a Linux and using the cert in Windows 10. Files in question need to be first transferred and then they can be used.
Realistic example command I'd run to first transfer the newly issued LE-cert from my Linux box to be used as RDP-cert would be:
PS C:\> .\get-RDP-cert.ps1 `
-serverHost server.example.com `
-serverUser joetheuser `
-serverAuthPrivateKeyPath id_ecdsa-sha2-nistp521 `
-remotePrivateKeyPath 'certs/*.example.com/*.example.com.key' `
-remoteCertificatePath 'certs/*.example.com/*.example.com.cer'
The obvious benefit is a simple single command to get and install an RDP-certificate from Linux to Windows. All of the complexity will be taken out. My script will even clean the temporary files to not leave any private key files floating around.
Finally
Enjoy!
Admins/users: If you enjoy this tool, let me know. Drop me a comment.
Developers: If you love my CNG-import code, feel free to use it in your application. The more people know how it works, the better.
openSUSE Leap 15.2 in-place upgrade
Sunday, July 12. 2020
HyperDrive PRO 8-in-2 firmware upgrade
Tuesday, May 26. 2020
As mentioned in my USB-C article, I'm describing how I managed to upgrade my 8-in-2 firmware WITHOUT installing Boot Camp into my macOS.
Hyper has a support article Screen flickering with Pro? Please check this out. What they ultimately suggest, and what I instantly rejected is:
- Install Boot Camp
- Boot the Mac into Windows 10
- Run the app to do the Hyper 8-in-2 firmware upgrade
- Enjoy flicker-free life!
My mind was targeted to jump directly into step 3 and 4. I attempted a number of things and kept failing. So, I dug out my humility-hat and went to step 2. That one was a great success! For step 1 I would have never gone. That's for sure. I'm not going to taint this precious Mac with a dual-boot.
Constraints
This is the list of restrictions I painfully figured out:
- HyperDrive 8-in-2 has dual USB-C -connector, making it impossible to physically attach to anything else than a MacBook Pro.
- USB-C extension cords do exist. Purchase one (you don't need two) and lift the physical connectivity limitation.
- Provided application,
VmmUpdater.exe is a 32-bit Windows PE executable, more information can be found @ Hybrid Analysis
- Firmware upgrade won't work on a random PC having USB-C -port.
VmmUpdater.exe won't detect the Synaptics chip without Apple AMD-drivers.
- The driver won't install if your hardware doesn't have a suitable GPU.
- A Mac won't boot from an USB, unless allowed to do so
- A Mac will boot only to a 64-bit operating system, a 32-bit Windows 10 won't work
- A 64-bit Windows 10 installer doesn't have WoW64 in it to emulate a 32-bit Windows
- To actually upgrade the Synaptics chip's firmware, it needs to be in use
- Windows needs to understand the existence of the video-chip
- Windows needs to actually use the video-chip via HDMI to produce output. Any output will do. No picture --> no upgrade.
- Apple keyboard and touchpad will not work in a default Windows 10 installation
- Some of the Windows drivers used by a MBP can be downloaded from Internet automatically, IF you manage to get an internet connection into a Windows 10 running on a Mac.
- Some of the Windows drivers are not available
- macOS cannot write to a NTFS-partition, it can read the data ok
Requirements
- Hardware:
- A HyperDrive 8-in-2 (to state the obvious)
- A MacBook Pro (to state the nearly obvious), I used 2019 model
- A Windows 10 running in a PC (to state the not-so-obvious)
- USB-stick with at least 8 GiB of storage, capable of booting (I think all of them can)
- USB-keyboard, during tinkering your Mac's keyboard won't work at all times. Any USB-keyboard will do.
- HDMI-cable connected to an external monitor.
- Software:
- Synaptics tool and EEPROM-file provided by Hyper.
- Rufus
- Ability to:
- Download files from The Internet
- Execute Rufus on a platform of your choice to write into the USB-stick. I did this on a Windows 10 PC.
- Run Boot Camp Assistant on a macOS, I used macOS 10.15 Catalina.
- Write files into NTFS-formatted USB-stick. Any Windows 10 can do this.
Steps
1. Save a Windows 10 ISO-image into USB-stick as Windows to Go
Option: You can do this as a second thing.
Windows to Go, that's something not many have used nor ever heard. It's already obsoleted by Microsoft, but seems to work ok. The general idea is to create an USB-bootable Windows you can run at any computer.
That's definitely something I'd love to use for this kind of upgrade!
The easiest way of injecting a Windows 10 ISO-image into USB in a suitable format is Rufus. Go to https://rufus.ie/ and get it. It's free (as speech)!
GPT-partition table is a critical one make sure to choose it. These are the options I had:
Warning: The process is slow. Writing image with Rufus will take a long time. Much longer than simply copying the bytes to USB.
2. Download Boot Camp support files
Option: You can do this first.
Recent macOS have limited Boot Camp Assistant features. Older ones could do much more, but modern versions can only Download Windows Support Software (it's in the Action-menu). Wait for the 1+ GiB download to complete.
3. Transfer files to USB-stick
Warning: The stick is formatted as NTFS. A Mac won't write into it. You need to first transfer the files into a Windows, and use the Windows to write the files into the USB.
Transfer the WindowsSupport\ folder downloaded by Boot Camp Assistant to the USB-stick prepared earlier. Subdirectory or not doesn't make a difference, I simply copied the directory into root of the USB-drive.
Also transfer the files from Hyper support article https://hypershop.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038378871-Screen-flickering-with-Pro-Please-check-this-out-.
Note: Only the .exe and .eeprom are needed, I skipped the .docx as they're not needed during the upgrade.
After successful transfer, you won't need a Windows PC anymore. All the next steps are on a Mac.
4. Enable Mac USB-booting
Study Apple support article HT208198 About Startup Security Utility.
You need to shutdown your Mac. Then plant your fingers onto Command and r keys, put the power on and then wait. Apple logo will appear, then a white progress bar will appear. You can release the Command-r at that point. If you'll be using an encrypted hard drive like I, you'll need to know a valid user on that Mac and enter that user's password to be allowed into Startup Security Utility.
The choices you need to have are:
- Secure boot: No security
- External boot: Allow booting from external or removable media is enabled
This is how Parallels would depict the settings in their KB-article 124579 How to allow Mac to boot from external media:
(Thanks Parallels for the pic!)
Note:
After you're done upgrading Synaptics firmware, you can go back to recovery, Startup Security Utility and put the settings back to higher security. For the one-shot upgrade the settings need to be at max. insecure settings.
5. Boot Windows 10 from USB
When you reboot a Mac, plant your finger on Option (some keyboards state Alt) key and wait. Pretty soon a boot menu will appear.
If you had the USB-stick already inserted, it will be displayed. If you didn't, this is your que to insert your Hyper 8-in-2. The Windows 10 USB can be inserted into the HyperDrive, your Mac will boot from there ok.
Your choice is to go for EFI Boot and wait for Windows 10 logo to appear.
Congrats! Now you're heading towards a Windows that won't respond to your keyboard nor touchpad.
6. Establish Windows to Go functionality
Make sure you have an USB keyboard available. This entire process can be done without Mac's own keyboard, it's just your own preference how you want to approach this. Getting the keyboard to work requires a keyboard, success is measured only on results. Make smart choices there!
If you can get the Windows 10 to connect to internet, that will solve some problems with missing drivers as they can be downloaded from a Microsoft driver repository. For Internet access, I used an USB-dongle to establish a Wi-Fi connection. Doing that requires selecting the correct Access Point and entering its password. On a machine without keyboard or mouse that WILL be difficult! Ultimately both the Apple keyboard and touchpad should start working and external keyboard won't be needed.
Note: The drivers for both are in WindowsSupport downloaded by Boot Camp Assistant. If you can point Windows Device Manager to load driver upgrades from there.
Warning!
Your Windows to Go will create a massive hiberfil.sys to enable hibernation. This can be a problem as typically the hibernate-file will be sized 75% of your RAM. This particular Mac has lots of RAM and the USB-stick would never be able to store such a file. So, eventually you're likely to run out of storage space. That is harmful, but can be easily remediated.
To fix, run command:
powercfg /hibernate off
Now the massive file is gone. Next, establish proper video. Your Windows Device Manager will look something like this:
There are bunch of device drivers missing. The most critical one is for GPU. I tried running WindowsSupport\setup.exe, but it never progressed and I simply didn't do that at all. Instead, I executed WindowsSupport\BootCamp\Drivers\AMD\AMDGraphics\setup.exe which enabled proper video to be displayed.
7. Go upgrade Synaptics firmware
All the hard work only for this! Make sure your Hyper 8-in-2 has HDMI-cable connected and monitor will display Windows 10 in it. If you don't have that, when executing the VmmUpdater.exe an error will display:
VmmTool: Initialize GPU library failed.
Also different VmmTool error variants can occur. If your Windows will detect the monitor and display video, then you're set!
When VmmTool will display current firmware information, you're golden!
Initially my 8-in-2 had firmware version 3.12.105.
Select the .eeprom file and a progress bar will indicate:
Running the upgrade won't take long. Something like 30 seconds or so. When upgrade is done, it will be indicated:
At this point, yank the 8-in-2 out of Mac and make sure you don't have USB-C power connected to it. The general idea is to power-cycle the recently updated Synaptics chip. When done, put everything back and run VmmUpdater.exe again.
This time it will indicate the new firmware version:
The version 3.12.105 got bumped into 3.13.107. Nice! Hopefully it will do the trick.
8. Boot into macOS and test
This is it. Will it work?
In my case it did. When my Mac wakes up, a single blink will happen in the external display, but no flickering or other types of annoyances.
Done! Mission accomplished!
(phew. that was a lot of work for a simple upgrade)
As mentioned in my USB-C article, I'm describing how I managed to upgrade my 8-in-2 firmware WITHOUT installing Boot Camp into my macOS.
Hyper has a support article Screen flickering with Pro? Please check this out. What they ultimately suggest, and what I instantly rejected is:
- Install Boot Camp
- Boot the Mac into Windows 10
- Run the app to do the Hyper 8-in-2 firmware upgrade
- Enjoy flicker-free life!
My mind was targeted to jump directly into step 3 and 4. I attempted a number of things and kept failing. So, I dug out my humility-hat and went to step 2. That one was a great success! For step 1 I would have never gone. That's for sure. I'm not going to taint this precious Mac with a dual-boot.
Constraints
This is the list of restrictions I painfully figured out:
- HyperDrive 8-in-2 has dual USB-C -connector, making it impossible to physically attach to anything else than a MacBook Pro.
- USB-C extension cords do exist. Purchase one (you don't need two) and lift the physical connectivity limitation.
- Provided application,
VmmUpdater.exeis a 32-bit Windows PE executable, more information can be found @ Hybrid Analysis - Firmware upgrade won't work on a random PC having USB-C -port.
VmmUpdater.exewon't detect the Synaptics chip without Apple AMD-drivers.- The driver won't install if your hardware doesn't have a suitable GPU.
- A Mac won't boot from an USB, unless allowed to do so
- A Mac will boot only to a 64-bit operating system, a 32-bit Windows 10 won't work
- A 64-bit Windows 10 installer doesn't have WoW64 in it to emulate a 32-bit Windows
- To actually upgrade the Synaptics chip's firmware, it needs to be in use
- Windows needs to understand the existence of the video-chip
- Windows needs to actually use the video-chip via HDMI to produce output. Any output will do. No picture --> no upgrade.
- Apple keyboard and touchpad will not work in a default Windows 10 installation
- Some of the Windows drivers used by a MBP can be downloaded from Internet automatically, IF you manage to get an internet connection into a Windows 10 running on a Mac.
- Some of the Windows drivers are not available
- macOS cannot write to a NTFS-partition, it can read the data ok
Requirements
- Hardware:
- A HyperDrive 8-in-2 (to state the obvious)
- A MacBook Pro (to state the nearly obvious), I used 2019 model
- A Windows 10 running in a PC (to state the not-so-obvious)
- USB-stick with at least 8 GiB of storage, capable of booting (I think all of them can)
- USB-keyboard, during tinkering your Mac's keyboard won't work at all times. Any USB-keyboard will do.
- HDMI-cable connected to an external monitor.
- Software:
- Synaptics tool and EEPROM-file provided by Hyper.
- Rufus
- Ability to:
- Download files from The Internet
- Execute Rufus on a platform of your choice to write into the USB-stick. I did this on a Windows 10 PC.
- Run Boot Camp Assistant on a macOS, I used macOS 10.15 Catalina.
- Write files into NTFS-formatted USB-stick. Any Windows 10 can do this.
Steps
1. Save a Windows 10 ISO-image into USB-stick as Windows to Go
Option: You can do this as a second thing.
Windows to Go, that's something not many have used nor ever heard. It's already obsoleted by Microsoft, but seems to work ok. The general idea is to create an USB-bootable Windows you can run at any computer.
That's definitely something I'd love to use for this kind of upgrade!
The easiest way of injecting a Windows 10 ISO-image into USB in a suitable format is Rufus. Go to https://rufus.ie/ and get it. It's free (as speech)!
GPT-partition table is a critical one make sure to choose it. These are the options I had:
Warning: The process is slow. Writing image with Rufus will take a long time. Much longer than simply copying the bytes to USB.
2. Download Boot Camp support files
Option: You can do this first.
Recent macOS have limited Boot Camp Assistant features. Older ones could do much more, but modern versions can only Download Windows Support Software (it's in the Action-menu). Wait for the 1+ GiB download to complete.
3. Transfer files to USB-stick
Warning: The stick is formatted as NTFS. A Mac won't write into it. You need to first transfer the files into a Windows, and use the Windows to write the files into the USB.
Transfer the WindowsSupport\ folder downloaded by Boot Camp Assistant to the USB-stick prepared earlier. Subdirectory or not doesn't make a difference, I simply copied the directory into root of the USB-drive.
Also transfer the files from Hyper support article https://hypershop.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038378871-Screen-flickering-with-Pro-Please-check-this-out-.
Note: Only the .exe and .eeprom are needed, I skipped the .docx as they're not needed during the upgrade.
After successful transfer, you won't need a Windows PC anymore. All the next steps are on a Mac.
4. Enable Mac USB-booting
Study Apple support article HT208198 About Startup Security Utility.
You need to shutdown your Mac. Then plant your fingers onto Command and r keys, put the power on and then wait. Apple logo will appear, then a white progress bar will appear. You can release the Command-r at that point. If you'll be using an encrypted hard drive like I, you'll need to know a valid user on that Mac and enter that user's password to be allowed into Startup Security Utility.
The choices you need to have are:
- Secure boot: No security
- External boot: Allow booting from external or removable media is enabled
This is how Parallels would depict the settings in their KB-article 124579 How to allow Mac to boot from external media:
(Thanks Parallels for the pic!)
Note:
After you're done upgrading Synaptics firmware, you can go back to recovery, Startup Security Utility and put the settings back to higher security. For the one-shot upgrade the settings need to be at max. insecure settings.
5. Boot Windows 10 from USB
When you reboot a Mac, plant your finger on Option (some keyboards state Alt) key and wait. Pretty soon a boot menu will appear.
If you had the USB-stick already inserted, it will be displayed. If you didn't, this is your que to insert your Hyper 8-in-2. The Windows 10 USB can be inserted into the HyperDrive, your Mac will boot from there ok.
Your choice is to go for EFI Boot and wait for Windows 10 logo to appear.
Congrats! Now you're heading towards a Windows that won't respond to your keyboard nor touchpad.
6. Establish Windows to Go functionality
Make sure you have an USB keyboard available. This entire process can be done without Mac's own keyboard, it's just your own preference how you want to approach this. Getting the keyboard to work requires a keyboard, success is measured only on results. Make smart choices there!
If you can get the Windows 10 to connect to internet, that will solve some problems with missing drivers as they can be downloaded from a Microsoft driver repository. For Internet access, I used an USB-dongle to establish a Wi-Fi connection. Doing that requires selecting the correct Access Point and entering its password. On a machine without keyboard or mouse that WILL be difficult! Ultimately both the Apple keyboard and touchpad should start working and external keyboard won't be needed.
Note: The drivers for both are in WindowsSupport downloaded by Boot Camp Assistant. If you can point Windows Device Manager to load driver upgrades from there.
Warning!
Your Windows to Go will create a massive hiberfil.sys to enable hibernation. This can be a problem as typically the hibernate-file will be sized 75% of your RAM. This particular Mac has lots of RAM and the USB-stick would never be able to store such a file. So, eventually you're likely to run out of storage space. That is harmful, but can be easily remediated.
To fix, run command:
powercfg /hibernate off
Now the massive file is gone. Next, establish proper video. Your Windows Device Manager will look something like this:
There are bunch of device drivers missing. The most critical one is for GPU. I tried running WindowsSupport\setup.exe, but it never progressed and I simply didn't do that at all. Instead, I executed WindowsSupport\BootCamp\Drivers\AMD\AMDGraphics\setup.exe which enabled proper video to be displayed.
7. Go upgrade Synaptics firmware
All the hard work only for this! Make sure your Hyper 8-in-2 has HDMI-cable connected and monitor will display Windows 10 in it. If you don't have that, when executing the VmmUpdater.exe an error will display:
VmmTool: Initialize GPU library failed.
Also different VmmTool error variants can occur. If your Windows will detect the monitor and display video, then you're set!
When VmmTool will display current firmware information, you're golden!
Initially my 8-in-2 had firmware version 3.12.105.
Select the .eeprom file and a progress bar will indicate:
Running the upgrade won't take long. Something like 30 seconds or so. When upgrade is done, it will be indicated:
At this point, yank the 8-in-2 out of Mac and make sure you don't have USB-C power connected to it. The general idea is to power-cycle the recently updated Synaptics chip. When done, put everything back and run VmmUpdater.exe again.
This time it will indicate the new firmware version:
The version 3.12.105 got bumped into 3.13.107. Nice! Hopefully it will do the trick.
8. Boot into macOS and test
This is it. Will it work?
In my case it did. When my Mac wakes up, a single blink will happen in the external display, but no flickering or other types of annoyances.
Done! Mission accomplished!
(phew. that was a lot of work for a simple upgrade)
USB-C Video adapters for MacBook Pro
Monday, May 25. 2020
In professional life, I stopped being a Windows-guy and went back being a Mac-man. The tool-of-trade provided by me is a MacBook Pro 2019. Those new Macs are notorius for having not-so-many ports. My Mac has two (2). Both are USB-C. In my previous MBP (that was a 2014 model), there were ports all over the left side and a bonus USB on right side.
The problem remains: How to hook up my external monitor to increase my productivity by the macigal 30%? Actually, I believe any developer will benefit even more by having a lot of display real estate on his/hers desk.
So, new Mac, new toys needed for it. I had one USB-C to DVI -converter before, but for this Mac, I went on-line shopping to get the good stuff:
From left to right:
- HyperDrive PRO 8-in-2: A pricey alternative offering a lot of connectivity, disappointing initial quality.
- HyperDrive USB-C Pro Video: An already obsoleted product. Small and does the job. This is my recommendation!
- No-name StarTech.Com CDP2DVI: Cheap thing working perfectly on a Lenovo PC. Unusable with a Mac!
HyperDrives:
Obsoleted HyperDrive shop screenshot:
The pricey alternative looks like this (on top of a complimentary leather pouch):
Cheap no-name one won't even blink in a MBP. The simple HyperDrive works like a charm! Mac sees it and monitor auto-detects the signal. The expensive one blinks when connected to a Mac. It blinks a lot. All the other ports work perfectly, but HDMI and mini-DP not-so-much. Hyper has a support article about 8-in-2- flickering. Lots of discussion in StackExchange about Apple being picky about cables and converters, examples: Dual monitor flickering: the secondary monitor does the flicker and External monitor flicker / signal loss. With the HyperDrive fix, I'll write an another post about the suggested firmware upgrade, it's complicated enough to deserve an own topic.
For me, the expensive HyperDrive works as a tiny docking-station. I have the USB-C charger connected to it among monitor cable. When I want to roam free of cables, all I have to do is detach the dual-USB-C dongle and that's it! Done. Mobility solved.
Final words:
With a Mac, do a lot of research beforehand and choose carefully, or alternatively make sure you'll get a full refund for your doesn't-work-in-my-Mac adapter.
In professional life, I stopped being a Windows-guy and went back being a Mac-man. The tool-of-trade provided by me is a MacBook Pro 2019. Those new Macs are notorius for having not-so-many ports. My Mac has two (2). Both are USB-C. In my previous MBP (that was a 2014 model), there were ports all over the left side and a bonus USB on right side.
The problem remains: How to hook up my external monitor to increase my productivity by the macigal 30%? Actually, I believe any developer will benefit even more by having a lot of display real estate on his/hers desk.
So, new Mac, new toys needed for it. I had one USB-C to DVI -converter before, but for this Mac, I went on-line shopping to get the good stuff:
From left to right:
- HyperDrive PRO 8-in-2: A pricey alternative offering a lot of connectivity, disappointing initial quality.
- HyperDrive USB-C Pro Video: An already obsoleted product. Small and does the job. This is my recommendation!
- No-name StarTech.Com CDP2DVI: Cheap thing working perfectly on a Lenovo PC. Unusable with a Mac!
HyperDrives:
Obsoleted HyperDrive shop screenshot:
The pricey alternative looks like this (on top of a complimentary leather pouch):
Cheap no-name one won't even blink in a MBP. The simple HyperDrive works like a charm! Mac sees it and monitor auto-detects the signal. The expensive one blinks when connected to a Mac. It blinks a lot. All the other ports work perfectly, but HDMI and mini-DP not-so-much. Hyper has a support article about 8-in-2- flickering. Lots of discussion in StackExchange about Apple being picky about cables and converters, examples: Dual monitor flickering: the secondary monitor does the flicker and External monitor flicker / signal loss. With the HyperDrive fix, I'll write an another post about the suggested firmware upgrade, it's complicated enough to deserve an own topic.
For me, the expensive HyperDrive works as a tiny docking-station. I have the USB-C charger connected to it among monitor cable. When I want to roam free of cables, all I have to do is detach the dual-USB-C dongle and that's it! Done. Mobility solved.
Final words:
With a Mac, do a lot of research beforehand and choose carefully, or alternatively make sure you'll get a full refund for your doesn't-work-in-my-Mac adapter.
Adobe Flash - Really?
Tuesday, March 31. 2020
I was updating a Windows Server 2019
Adobe Flash!! In 2020!! Really?
Hey Microsoft: Get rid of flash player already. Make it optional. I won't be needing it anytime soon.
I was updating a Windows Server 2019
Adobe Flash!! In 2020!! Really?
Hey Microsoft: Get rid of flash player already. Make it optional. I won't be needing it anytime soon.
Blog server upgrade to CentOS 8
Saturday, December 7. 2019
Since the inception of this blog back in January 2013, my weapon-of-choice has been CentOS Linux. When looking at the release chart @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS#Latest_version_information it becomes obvious this is the 3rd major version of CentOS I'm running my blog on. In 2013 only version 6 was available, I must have upgraded into version 7 during 2014, and now 2019 I'm running on version 8. Given how RedHat and their organization(s) operate, the base Linux for my system is Fedora 28. See Fedora Project releases from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases.
The only motivation for me to upgrade is technology. RHEL/CentOS almost never upgrade their component versions. They do back-port any security patches even if authors of the original ones give up on their obsoleted stuff. RedHat does not. For people loving things how they are, that's a good thing. For people like me, its not that good.
Absolutely necessary things I had earlier, but lost and again have:
- HTTP/2
- For how and why this differs from HTTP/1.1 everybody else is still using, dive into Mr. Curl's book http2 explained. Its freely available @ https://http2-explained.haxx.se/content/en/
- TLS 1.3
- TLS versions 1 and 1.1 have been obsoleted. That leaves TLS 1.2 as the almost-only viable secure protocol.
- Obvious disclaimer for TLS 1.3: As of writing, it is still experimental. In reality not so much. Chrome and Firefox (among other platforms) support TLS 1.3 fully.
- Cloudflare's Head of Research Nick Sullivan is a known 1.3 enthusiast. Read his thoughts @ https://blog.cloudflare.com/rfc-8446-aka-tls-1-3/.
Other highlights:
- PHP 7.3
- My blog software runs on PHP. I upgraded 7.2, but am too scared to go for 7.4 yet.
- Native dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 networking. This is courtesy of my service provider.
- TLS 1.2 configured to not support any CBC-ciphers, for details see Why did TLS 1.3 drop AES-CBC? as an example
- Inspiration for this taken from Cipherli.st and Security/Server Side TLS on Mozilla wiki.
- Apologies for anybody using IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1, or Safari versions 6-8 on iOS 6-9/OS X 10.9 or 10.10. You won't see this text as your devices/operating systems won't support my reasonably secure settings.
- For everybody else: Congratulations on having a decently secure device to do your Internet browsing with.
- tmux
- Terminal multiplexer, https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
- Most of you just SSH into a server and be happy with it. I almost always run my sessions trough something that will keep my work safe if a disconnection occurs. To my surprise I keep bumping into sysadmins who don't either know about this or don't see this as a necessary approach.
- I've ran GNU Screen for over 25 years now. Not anymore. Uff!
- nftables (https://wiki.nftables.org/), courtesy of RHEL 8 / CentOS 8
- the new packet classification framework that replaces the existing {ip,ip6,arp,eb}_tables infrastructure
- I've ran IPchains / IPtables for 21 years now. Not anymore. Arf!
Qualsys report on my blog now:
Nice!
Next up: CentOS Stream.
A new attempt to allow change of software versions. This will effectively detach CentOS from RHEL and gear it towards Fedora. This enables CentOS to get newer software as a rolling release Linux-distro, but keep the changes not-so-aggressive.
I won't run this yet on my blog server. This is so new at this point, but I'll have it running on a devel-box.
Since the inception of this blog back in January 2013, my weapon-of-choice has been CentOS Linux. When looking at the release chart @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS#Latest_version_information it becomes obvious this is the 3rd major version of CentOS I'm running my blog on. In 2013 only version 6 was available, I must have upgraded into version 7 during 2014, and now 2019 I'm running on version 8. Given how RedHat and their organization(s) operate, the base Linux for my system is Fedora 28. See Fedora Project releases from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases.
The only motivation for me to upgrade is technology. RHEL/CentOS almost never upgrade their component versions. They do back-port any security patches even if authors of the original ones give up on their obsoleted stuff. RedHat does not. For people loving things how they are, that's a good thing. For people like me, its not that good.
Absolutely necessary things I had earlier, but lost and again have:
- HTTP/2
- For how and why this differs from HTTP/1.1 everybody else is still using, dive into Mr. Curl's book http2 explained. Its freely available @ https://http2-explained.haxx.se/content/en/
- TLS 1.3
- TLS versions 1 and 1.1 have been obsoleted. That leaves TLS 1.2 as the almost-only viable secure protocol.
- Obvious disclaimer for TLS 1.3: As of writing, it is still experimental. In reality not so much. Chrome and Firefox (among other platforms) support TLS 1.3 fully.
- Cloudflare's Head of Research Nick Sullivan is a known 1.3 enthusiast. Read his thoughts @ https://blog.cloudflare.com/rfc-8446-aka-tls-1-3/.
Other highlights:
- PHP 7.3
- My blog software runs on PHP. I upgraded 7.2, but am too scared to go for 7.4 yet.
- Native dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 networking. This is courtesy of my service provider.
- TLS 1.2 configured to not support any CBC-ciphers, for details see Why did TLS 1.3 drop AES-CBC? as an example
- Inspiration for this taken from Cipherli.st and Security/Server Side TLS on Mozilla wiki.
- Apologies for anybody using IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1, or Safari versions 6-8 on iOS 6-9/OS X 10.9 or 10.10. You won't see this text as your devices/operating systems won't support my reasonably secure settings.
- For everybody else: Congratulations on having a decently secure device to do your Internet browsing with.
- tmux
- Terminal multiplexer, https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
- Most of you just SSH into a server and be happy with it. I almost always run my sessions trough something that will keep my work safe if a disconnection occurs. To my surprise I keep bumping into sysadmins who don't either know about this or don't see this as a necessary approach.
- I've ran GNU Screen for over 25 years now. Not anymore. Uff!
- nftables (https://wiki.nftables.org/), courtesy of RHEL 8 / CentOS 8
- the new packet classification framework that replaces the existing {ip,ip6,arp,eb}_tables infrastructure
- I've ran IPchains / IPtables for 21 years now. Not anymore. Arf!
Qualsys report on my blog now:
Nice!
Next up: CentOS Stream.
A new attempt to allow change of software versions. This will effectively detach CentOS from RHEL and gear it towards Fedora. This enables CentOS to get newer software as a rolling release Linux-distro, but keep the changes not-so-aggressive.
I won't run this yet on my blog server. This is so new at this point, but I'll have it running on a devel-box.
New Weather Station - Davis Vantage Vue - Part 2 of 2: Linux installation
Tuesday, November 5. 2019
This is a part two out of two on my Davis Vantage Vue weather station installation story. Previous part was about hardware installation.
Datalogger expansion
The indoors console has a slot for expansion devices. I went for the RS-232 WeatherLink datalogger expansion:
RS232 Cabling
The datalogger has a very short cable and a RJ-11 connector on the other end. The obvious good thing is the common availability of telephone extension cords to get past the 5 cm cable lenght of the datalogger. A regular landline telephone typically has such RJ-11 connectors in it and what I did was to get an inexpensive extension cord with suitable lenght.
For computer connectivity, with datalogger box has a blue RJ-11 to RS232 converter. The four connected pins of the converter are as follows:
RS232 and Linux
Most computers today don't have a RS232-port in them. To overcome this, years ago I bought a quad-RS232-port USB-thingie:
If you look closely, Port 1 of the unit has a DIY RS232-connector attached into it. That's my Vantage Vue cable connected to the indoors console. Also, note the lack of the blue RJ-11 to RS232 converter unit. I reverse engineered the pins and soldered my cable directly to a D-9 connector to get the same result.
Now the hardware parts is done. All the connectors are connected and attached to a PC.
Software
Half of the work is done. Next some software is needed to access the data in the data logger.
For Windows and macOS
Those not running Linux, there is WeatherLink software freely available at https://www.davisinstruments.com/product/weatherlink-computer-software/. It goes without saying, the software is useless without appropriate hardware it gets the inputs from. I never even installed the software, as using a non-Linux was never an option for me. So, I have no idea if the software is good or not.
For Linux
As you might expect, when going to Linux, there are no commercial software options available. However, number of open-source ones are. My personal choice is WeeWX, its available at http://www.weewx.com/ and source code at https://github.com/weewx/weewx.
Install WeeWX:
- Download software:
git clone https://github.com/weewx/weewx.git
- In git-directory, create RPM-package:
make -f makefile rpm-package SIGN=0
- As root, install the newly created RPM-package:
rpm --install -h dist/weewx-3.9.2-1.rhel.noarch.rpm
- That's it!
Configure WeeWX:
- (dependency) Python 2 is a requirement. Given Python version 2 deprecation (see https://pythonclock.org/ for details), at the time of writing, there is less than two months left of Python 2 lifetime, this project really should get an upgrade to 3. No such joy yet.
- (dependency) pyserial-package:
pip install pyserial
- Run autoconfig:
wee_config --install --dist-config /etc/weewx/weewx.conf.dist --output /etc/weewx/weewx.conf
- In the array of questions, when being asked to choose a driver, go for
Vantage (weewx.drivers.vantage)
- Inspect the resulting
/etc/weewx/weewx.conf and edit if necessary:
- Section
[Station]
week_start = 0
- Section [StdReport]
HTML_ROOT = /var/www/html/weewx
- (optional for Weather Underground users), Section
[StdRESTful]
- Subsection
[[Wunderground]]
- Enter station name and password
enable = true
- Configuring done!
Now you're ready (as root) to start the thing with a systemctl start weewx.
On a working system, you should get LOOP-records out of weewxd instantly. After a little while of gathering data, you should start having set of HTML/CSS/PNG-files in /var/www/html/weewx. It's a good idea to set up a web server to publish those files for your own enjoyment. This is something you don't have to do, but I strongly advice to enable HTTP-endpoint to your results. I will immensly help determining if your system works or not.
One reason I love having a weather station around is to publish my data to The Net. I've been tagging along with Weather Underground for years. There has been good years and really bad years, when Wunderground's servers have been misbehaving a lot. Now that IBM owns the thing, there has been some improvements. The most important thing is there is somebody actually maintaining the system and making it run. Obviously, there has been some improvements in the service too.
Aggregation problem
When I got my system stable and running, I realized my wind data is flatline. In nature it is almost impossible for not to be windy for multiple days. I visually inspected the wind speed and direction gauges, they were working unobstructed. However, my console did not indicate any wind at all.
After multiple days of running, I was about to give up and RMA the thing back to Davis for replacement, the console started working! That was totally unexpected. Why: 1) the system did not work, 2) the system started working without any actions from me. That was the case for me. As the problem has not occurred since, it must have been some kind of newness.
What next
Now that everything is up, running and stays that way. There's always something to improve. What I'm planning is to do is pump the LOOP-records to Google BigQuery.
As a side note: when new information is available, it will be emitted by weewxd as LOOP: <the data here> into your system logs. However, that data isn't used. After a period of time, your Vantage Vue will aggregate all those records into a time-slot record. That will be used as your measurement. Since those LOOP-records are simply discarded I thought it might be a good idea to base some analytics on those. I happen to know Google BigQuery well from past projects, all that I need is to write a suitable subsystem into weewx to pump the data into a correct place. Then it would be possible to do some analytics of my own on those records.
This is a part two out of two on my Davis Vantage Vue weather station installation story. Previous part was about hardware installation.
Datalogger expansion
The indoors console has a slot for expansion devices. I went for the RS-232 WeatherLink datalogger expansion:
RS232 Cabling
The datalogger has a very short cable and a RJ-11 connector on the other end. The obvious good thing is the common availability of telephone extension cords to get past the 5 cm cable lenght of the datalogger. A regular landline telephone typically has such RJ-11 connectors in it and what I did was to get an inexpensive extension cord with suitable lenght.
For computer connectivity, with datalogger box has a blue RJ-11 to RS232 converter. The four connected pins of the converter are as follows:
RS232 and Linux
Most computers today don't have a RS232-port in them. To overcome this, years ago I bought a quad-RS232-port USB-thingie:
If you look closely, Port 1 of the unit has a DIY RS232-connector attached into it. That's my Vantage Vue cable connected to the indoors console. Also, note the lack of the blue RJ-11 to RS232 converter unit. I reverse engineered the pins and soldered my cable directly to a D-9 connector to get the same result.
Now the hardware parts is done. All the connectors are connected and attached to a PC.
Software
Half of the work is done. Next some software is needed to access the data in the data logger.
For Windows and macOS
Those not running Linux, there is WeatherLink software freely available at https://www.davisinstruments.com/product/weatherlink-computer-software/. It goes without saying, the software is useless without appropriate hardware it gets the inputs from. I never even installed the software, as using a non-Linux was never an option for me. So, I have no idea if the software is good or not.
For Linux
As you might expect, when going to Linux, there are no commercial software options available. However, number of open-source ones are. My personal choice is WeeWX, its available at http://www.weewx.com/ and source code at https://github.com/weewx/weewx.
Install WeeWX:
- Download software:
git clone https://github.com/weewx/weewx.git - In git-directory, create RPM-package:
make -f makefile rpm-package SIGN=0 - As root, install the newly created RPM-package:
rpm --install -h dist/weewx-3.9.2-1.rhel.noarch.rpm - That's it!
Configure WeeWX:
- (dependency) Python 2 is a requirement. Given Python version 2 deprecation (see https://pythonclock.org/ for details), at the time of writing, there is less than two months left of Python 2 lifetime, this project really should get an upgrade to 3. No such joy yet.
- (dependency) pyserial-package:
pip install pyserial - Run autoconfig:
wee_config --install --dist-config /etc/weewx/weewx.conf.dist --output /etc/weewx/weewx.conf- In the array of questions, when being asked to choose a driver, go for
Vantage (weewx.drivers.vantage)
- In the array of questions, when being asked to choose a driver, go for
- Inspect the resulting
/etc/weewx/weewx.confand edit if necessary:- Section
[Station]week_start = 0
- Section [StdReport]
HTML_ROOT = /var/www/html/weewx
- (optional for Weather Underground users), Section
[StdRESTful]- Subsection
[[Wunderground]] - Enter station name and password
enable = true
- Subsection
- Section
- Configuring done!
Now you're ready (as root) to start the thing with a systemctl start weewx.
On a working system, you should get LOOP-records out of weewxd instantly. After a little while of gathering data, you should start having set of HTML/CSS/PNG-files in /var/www/html/weewx. It's a good idea to set up a web server to publish those files for your own enjoyment. This is something you don't have to do, but I strongly advice to enable HTTP-endpoint to your results. I will immensly help determining if your system works or not.
One reason I love having a weather station around is to publish my data to The Net. I've been tagging along with Weather Underground for years. There has been good years and really bad years, when Wunderground's servers have been misbehaving a lot. Now that IBM owns the thing, there has been some improvements. The most important thing is there is somebody actually maintaining the system and making it run. Obviously, there has been some improvements in the service too.
Aggregation problem
When I got my system stable and running, I realized my wind data is flatline. In nature it is almost impossible for not to be windy for multiple days. I visually inspected the wind speed and direction gauges, they were working unobstructed. However, my console did not indicate any wind at all.
After multiple days of running, I was about to give up and RMA the thing back to Davis for replacement, the console started working! That was totally unexpected. Why: 1) the system did not work, 2) the system started working without any actions from me. That was the case for me. As the problem has not occurred since, it must have been some kind of newness.
What next
Now that everything is up, running and stays that way. There's always something to improve. What I'm planning is to do is pump the LOOP-records to Google BigQuery.
As a side note: when new information is available, it will be emitted by weewxd as LOOP: <the data here> into your system logs. However, that data isn't used. After a period of time, your Vantage Vue will aggregate all those records into a time-slot record. That will be used as your measurement. Since those LOOP-records are simply discarded I thought it might be a good idea to base some analytics on those. I happen to know Google BigQuery well from past projects, all that I need is to write a suitable subsystem into weewx to pump the data into a correct place. Then it would be possible to do some analytics of my own on those records.
macOS Catalina upgrade from USB-stick
Saturday, November 2. 2019
macOS 10.15 Catalina is a controversial one. It caused lot of commotion already before launch.
Changes in 10.15 from previous versions
64-bit Only
For those using legacy 32-bit apps Catalina brought bad news, no more 32-bit. Me, personally, didn't find any problems with that. I like my software fresh and updated. Some noisy persons in The Net found this problematic.
Breaking hardware
For some, the installation simply bricked their hardware, see Limited reports of Catalina installation bricking some Macs via EFI firmware for more details. This is bad. When UEFI upgrade does this kind of damage, that's obviously bad. The broken macs can be salvaged, but it's very tricky as they won't boot.
Installer size
For that past many years, I've had my OS X / macOS USB-stick. I own couple of macs, so you'll never know when OS installer will be needed. For catalina:
8 GiB wasn't enough! Whaaaaat? How big the installer has gone. So, I had to get a new one. Maybe it was about time. At the USB-stick shop I realized, that minimum size of a stick is 32 GiB. You can go to 128 or 256, but for example 8 isn't an option anymore.
Stupid alerts
The worst part in Catalina is the increased level of nagging:
Every single app is asking me permission to do something. As usual, the questions are obscure at best. This same phenomenon is happening in Windows and Android. You're presented a question as a response to your action and the question has almost no relevance to anything you're trying to do. Yet the people designing these operating systems think it will vastly improve security to present user a Yes/No question without proper basis.
An example: For the above Spotify-question I chose to respond No. I have no idea why or for what reson Spotify needs to access any of the files in my Downloads-folder. That's so weird. Playing music doesn't mean you get to access my stuff.
Get macOS Catalina installer
The process has not changed. Go to App Store of your mac and choose macOS Catalina. It will take a while to download all of 8 GiB of it.
When the installer has downloaded and automatically starts, you need to quit the installer.
If you'd continue, the installer would upgrade your mac and at the final phase of upgrade, it would delete the precious macOS files. You need to create the USB-stick before upgrading. This is how couple past macOS versions save your disc space.
Create your USB-stick from command line
For reason I don't fully understand, DiskMaker X version 9 failed to create the stick for me. It did process the files and seemed to do something, but ultimately my USB-stick was empty, so I chose to do this the old fashioned way. Maybe there is a bug in the DiskMaker X and a new version has thata one fixed. Check it yourself @ https://diskmakerx.com.
Insert the USB-stick into the mac and from a command prompt, see what the physical USB-drive is:
diskutil list
My mac has the USB-stick as:
/dev/disk3 (external, physical)
The other drives are flagged either 'internal, physical', 'synthesized' or 'disk image'. None of them are suitable targets for creating Catalina installer stick.
Note:
Most of the commands below need root-access. So, either su - to a root-shell or prefix the commands with sudo.
Format the USB-stick. The obvious word of caution is: This will erase any data on the stick. Formatting doesn't wipe the sectors, but given a completely empty filesystem, your bits are quite lost there alone. Command is:
# diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT jhfs+ "macOS Catalina" 0b
The output is as follows:
Started partitioning on disk3
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk3s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name macOS Catalina
Initialized /dev/rdisk3s2 as a 28 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk3
/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *30.8 GB disk3
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1
2: Apple_HFS macOS Catalina 30.4 GB disk3s2
Now your stick is ready, go transfer the macOS installer files to the stick. The newly formatted stick is already mounted (run command mount):
/dev/disk3s2 on /Volumes/macOS Catalina (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
Installer files are located at /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/:
cd /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/
./createinstallmedia \
--volume /Volumes/macOS\ Catalina/ \
--nointeraction
Output is as follows:
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS Catalina"
Now your bootable USB-media is ready!
Upgrade
Boot your mac, press and hold your option-key pressed to access the boot-menu:
A menu will appear, select Install macOS to upgrade:
Do a lot of agreeing:
Only after those yes, I agree -clicks your upgrade kicks in. This is the part you can go grab a large cup of coffee, no user interaction is required for 30 to 60 minutes:
During the upgrade, there will be couple of reboots. My thinking is, that first the upgrade will do any hardware upgrades, then the actual macOS upgrade.
When you see the login-screen, your upgrade is done:
That's it! You're done. Enjoy your upgraded mac operating system.
macOS 10.15 Catalina is a controversial one. It caused lot of commotion already before launch.
Changes in 10.15 from previous versions
64-bit Only
For those using legacy 32-bit apps Catalina brought bad news, no more 32-bit. Me, personally, didn't find any problems with that. I like my software fresh and updated. Some noisy persons in The Net found this problematic.
Breaking hardware
For some, the installation simply bricked their hardware, see Limited reports of Catalina installation bricking some Macs via EFI firmware for more details. This is bad. When UEFI upgrade does this kind of damage, that's obviously bad. The broken macs can be salvaged, but it's very tricky as they won't boot.
Installer size
For that past many years, I've had my OS X / macOS USB-stick. I own couple of macs, so you'll never know when OS installer will be needed. For catalina:
8 GiB wasn't enough! Whaaaaat? How big the installer has gone. So, I had to get a new one. Maybe it was about time. At the USB-stick shop I realized, that minimum size of a stick is 32 GiB. You can go to 128 or 256, but for example 8 isn't an option anymore.
Stupid alerts
The worst part in Catalina is the increased level of nagging:
Every single app is asking me permission to do something. As usual, the questions are obscure at best. This same phenomenon is happening in Windows and Android. You're presented a question as a response to your action and the question has almost no relevance to anything you're trying to do. Yet the people designing these operating systems think it will vastly improve security to present user a Yes/No question without proper basis.
An example: For the above Spotify-question I chose to respond No. I have no idea why or for what reson Spotify needs to access any of the files in my Downloads-folder. That's so weird. Playing music doesn't mean you get to access my stuff.
Get macOS Catalina installer
The process has not changed. Go to App Store of your mac and choose macOS Catalina. It will take a while to download all of 8 GiB of it.
When the installer has downloaded and automatically starts, you need to quit the installer.
If you'd continue, the installer would upgrade your mac and at the final phase of upgrade, it would delete the precious macOS files. You need to create the USB-stick before upgrading. This is how couple past macOS versions save your disc space.
Create your USB-stick from command line
For reason I don't fully understand, DiskMaker X version 9 failed to create the stick for me. It did process the files and seemed to do something, but ultimately my USB-stick was empty, so I chose to do this the old fashioned way. Maybe there is a bug in the DiskMaker X and a new version has thata one fixed. Check it yourself @ https://diskmakerx.com.
Insert the USB-stick into the mac and from a command prompt, see what the physical USB-drive is:
diskutil list
My mac has the USB-stick as:
/dev/disk3 (external, physical)
The other drives are flagged either 'internal, physical', 'synthesized' or 'disk image'. None of them are suitable targets for creating Catalina installer stick.
Note:
Most of the commands below need root-access. So, either su - to a root-shell or prefix the commands with sudo.
Format the USB-stick. The obvious word of caution is: This will erase any data on the stick. Formatting doesn't wipe the sectors, but given a completely empty filesystem, your bits are quite lost there alone. Command is:
# diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT jhfs+ "macOS Catalina" 0b
The output is as follows:
Started partitioning on disk3
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk3s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name macOS Catalina
Initialized /dev/rdisk3s2 as a 28 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk3
/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *30.8 GB disk3
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1
2: Apple_HFS macOS Catalina 30.4 GB disk3s2
Now your stick is ready, go transfer the macOS installer files to the stick. The newly formatted stick is already mounted (run command mount):
/dev/disk3s2 on /Volumes/macOS Catalina (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
Installer files are located at /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/:
cd /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/
./createinstallmedia \
--volume /Volumes/macOS\ Catalina/ \
--nointeraction
Output is as follows:
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS Catalina"
Now your bootable USB-media is ready!
Upgrade
Boot your mac, press and hold your option-key pressed to access the boot-menu:
A menu will appear, select Install macOS to upgrade:
Do a lot of agreeing:
Only after those yes, I agree -clicks your upgrade kicks in. This is the part you can go grab a large cup of coffee, no user interaction is required for 30 to 60 minutes:
During the upgrade, there will be couple of reboots. My thinking is, that first the upgrade will do any hardware upgrades, then the actual macOS upgrade.
When you see the login-screen, your upgrade is done:
That's it! You're done. Enjoy your upgraded mac operating system.
Windows 10 May 2019 update (1903) breaking sleep
Wednesday, October 2. 2019
This happens pretty much on every Windows 10 update. Last time I wrote about it was for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709). The blog post is here.
Yes, again this absolutely ridiculous waking up begun. None of my previous fixes/hacks/duct tape/bubble gum patches worked. For weeks I either shut down my PC or just suffered on random power-ups.
When your Windows pops up from sleep, there is one very simple command to figure out why it happened. This is something that has worked for years in multiple Windows-versions: powercfg.exe /waketimers
(btw. you need to run that with Administrator permissions, regular user won't cut it.)
The result in each case was something I didn't expect to see:
Timer set by [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume6\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\StartMenuExperienceHost.exe expires at on .
What the hell is StartMenuExperienceHost.exe and why would I need it for anything? I have no clue. Also, why would I need that unknown piece of crap so badly it can wake my computer up? Again, no clue. Honestly, I would delete the darned file if it wasn't part of Windows system. Given the protected status of system files I really cannot rip the junk off. Unfortunately.
This harrasment kept going on for weeks as I was researching for a solution. Most of the suggested fixes are about Troubleshooter, Power or disabling Wake Timers or Automatic Maintenance's option Allow the scheduled maintenance to wake up the device at the set time. Neither of those really help.
This works!
Finally I cracked it! While looking for things to try, I stumbled into Microsoft community discussion System keeps waking. ShellExperienceHost.exe. Build 17074. There one of the suggestions was to check the Local Group Policy. There is Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Updates > Enabling Windows Update Power Management to automatically wake up the system to install scheduled updates. Setting it to Disabled makes the difference!
I have to agree with a comment in Reddit:
Microsoft needs to provide a simple, global switch to NEVER EVER under any circumstances wake the PC up from sleep/hibernation as if the PC was shutdown and unplugged from the wall.
Its really puzzling to try and understand why such an option doesn't exist.
This happens pretty much on every Windows 10 update. Last time I wrote about it was for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709). The blog post is here.
Yes, again this absolutely ridiculous waking up begun. None of my previous fixes/hacks/duct tape/bubble gum patches worked. For weeks I either shut down my PC or just suffered on random power-ups.
When your Windows pops up from sleep, there is one very simple command to figure out why it happened. This is something that has worked for years in multiple Windows-versions: powercfg.exe /waketimers
(btw. you need to run that with Administrator permissions, regular user won't cut it.)
The result in each case was something I didn't expect to see:
Timer set by [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume6\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\StartMenuExperienceHost.exe expires at on .
What the hell is StartMenuExperienceHost.exe and why would I need it for anything? I have no clue. Also, why would I need that unknown piece of crap so badly it can wake my computer up? Again, no clue. Honestly, I would delete the darned file if it wasn't part of Windows system. Given the protected status of system files I really cannot rip the junk off. Unfortunately.
This harrasment kept going on for weeks as I was researching for a solution. Most of the suggested fixes are about Troubleshooter, Power or disabling Wake Timers or Automatic Maintenance's option Allow the scheduled maintenance to wake up the device at the set time. Neither of those really help.
This works!
Finally I cracked it! While looking for things to try, I stumbled into Microsoft community discussion System keeps waking. ShellExperienceHost.exe. Build 17074. There one of the suggestions was to check the Local Group Policy. There is Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Updates > Enabling Windows Update Power Management to automatically wake up the system to install scheduled updates. Setting it to Disabled makes the difference!
I have to agree with a comment in Reddit:
Microsoft needs to provide a simple, global switch to NEVER EVER under any circumstances wake the PC up from sleep/hibernation as if the PC was shutdown and unplugged from the wall.
Its really puzzling to try and understand why such an option doesn't exist.
Python script for creating Linux iptables port forwarding rules based on an YAML-file
Saturday, September 14. 2019
Notes on running openSUSE on a MacBook Pro
Sunday, August 18. 2019
This one is related to a previous post of mine Installing openSUSE Leap 15.1 into a MacBook Pro with encrypted root drive.
kworker CPU-hog
Symptoms:
CPU-load is high. Top consumer is kworker:
top - 11:16:47 up 6 min, 4 users, load average: 0.93, 0.70, 0.36
Tasks: 248 total, 2 running, 246 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
58 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 73.33 0.000 4:29.74 kworker/0:
What a kernel worker (or kworker) is, a sensible explanation can be found from Kworker, what is it and why is it hogging so much CPU?. In this case, high CPU on a kworker is a symptom, not the fault.
This same issue is faced by multiple users on different hardware, for example Kworker is at 100% - I think I've tried everything!. Also Fedora Linux users on MBP are suffering from the same Bug 1192856 - ACPI Interrupt storm causes high kworker CPU usage.
Checking some kernel performance counters (more about those, see perf: Linux profiling with performance counters), perf-report:
Children Self Command Shared Object Symbol
+ 50.51% 0.01% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] cpu_startup_entry
+ 41.67% 0.31% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] acpi_hw_read_port
+ 39.99% 39.99% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] acpi_os_read_port
+ 37.62% 0.00% kworker/0:2 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] ret_from_fork
Something really fishy is going on with acpi_os_read_port. To get the amount of interrupts generated, most people run a simple grep . /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/*, but not me. My solution is to do a simple(?) Perl one-liner wrapped here on multiple lines for readability:
perl -ne 'next if (!/^\s*(\d+)\s+/);
next if (!$1);
$intrs{$ARGV}=$1;
END {foreach (sort {$intrs{$b} <=> $intrs{$a}} keys(%intrs)) {
printf("%s: %d\n", $_, $intrs{$_});
};
}' /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/*
It will output interrupt counts. On my system, the counters are something like this:
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe_all: 4695534
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci: 4694806
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06: 4694582
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17: 940
If you're really interested in what's happening inside ACPI and how General Purpose Events (GPE) work, read the document ACPI in LinuxArchitecture, Advances, and Challenges.
Anyway, it looks like ACPI event 06 is firing a lot. Way too lot keeping kworker busy handling the interrupts. This interrupt-handling on the other hand, takes a lot of CPU-power making your system run hotter than expected.
Fix:
As root, a simple echo disable > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06 will do the trick. Resulting in CPU cooling down:
The effect is instantaneous and easy to notice. To persist this setting over reboots, things get bit more trickier. A lot of people suggest putting the above disable into crontab to be run on a @reboot. My opinion is clear: this is a system problem, system fix and needs to be addressed by system, not user. The @reboot-magic doesn't work in /etc/crontab, only on user's crontab-file.
A very good alternative is to go with acpi_mask_gpe-kernel parameter. It is documented in The kernel’s command-line parameters. And docs state "This facility can be used to prevent such uncontrolled GPE floodings". Nice! Exactly what I need. The tricky part is to edit /etc/default/grub and add acpi_mask_gpe=0x06 into GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX-setting.
That's not all. Simply having the setting in a file won't change a anything yet. To make the new setting stick, on most Linuxes you would run update-grub. Some smart brain chose not to implement that helper into openSUSE, so that's not an option. To achieve the same, go for a: grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Now you're all set. Reboot and confirm. Of course you didn't fix the actual problem with ACPI, you simply made kernel ignore the interrupt-flood. You may want to settle for that at this point. I did file a bug report about this (Bug 1146023), but it seems the problem is limited to a specific set of MBPs and Fedora kernel guys are having hard time reproducing the issue. So, I'm not expecting SuSE guys to fix this anytime soon either.
Touchpad scroll direction
In 2011 when OS X 10.7 Lion was released, Apple made a drastic change on how touchpad (or how Apple calls it: Trackpad) scrolling works. Personally I totally understand this new logic, they wanted the scrolling user experience to be exactly the same and you would do on your phone's touch screen. You place your finger on the screen and pull the finger to the direction you want the screen to scroll. Before macOS 10.7 (note: the name change from OS X to macOS happened on 10.12 sierra) touchpad scrolling was targeted for the scrollbar, not to the actual content like on your touchscreen effectively reversing the direction.
So, as a macOS / iPad user, I want my scrolling to happen correctly, not the Windows way. To change, navigate to Touchpad settings and reverse the vertical scrolling:
Reversing the reverse makes your head spin, but there is a logic there.
Touchpad gestures
On any typical use case, I would use a mouse. As in real external device, not the skin-on-my-fingertips damaging trackpad. For reasons unknown to me, it literally hurts to use those trackpads for too many hours. So, I normally steer away from them. It looks like I'm pretty alone with this one, but all I can do is to complain and use a mouse.
Typical this you may want to do:
- Right-click: On macOS, hold Ctrl and tap is a right click. This won't work on a Linux. You need to do the two-finger-tap for right-clicking.
- Scrolling: You can go with keyboard or keep dragging the scrollbars, that's ok. Doing a two-finger scroll with the touchpad, however, is much faster and less error prone.
- Zoom: Pinch won't work on a Linux, you need to use the actual zoom-control of whatever application you want to zoom
All the Apple's gestures are documented in HT204895 suppor article Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac, but as already mentioned, not all gestures are supported on a Linux.
Something else?
Nothing more pops into my mind. If you have anything to comment, please do so.
This one is related to a previous post of mine Installing openSUSE Leap 15.1 into a MacBook Pro with encrypted root drive.
kworker CPU-hog
Symptoms:
CPU-load is high. Top consumer is kworker:
top - 11:16:47 up 6 min, 4 users, load average: 0.93, 0.70, 0.36
Tasks: 248 total, 2 running, 246 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
58 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 73.33 0.000 4:29.74 kworker/0:
What a kernel worker (or kworker) is, a sensible explanation can be found from Kworker, what is it and why is it hogging so much CPU?. In this case, high CPU on a kworker is a symptom, not the fault.
This same issue is faced by multiple users on different hardware, for example Kworker is at 100% - I think I've tried everything!. Also Fedora Linux users on MBP are suffering from the same Bug 1192856 - ACPI Interrupt storm causes high kworker CPU usage.
Checking some kernel performance counters (more about those, see perf: Linux profiling with performance counters), perf-report:
Children Self Command Shared Object Symbol
+ 50.51% 0.01% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] cpu_startup_entry
+ 41.67% 0.31% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] acpi_hw_read_port
+ 39.99% 39.99% swapper [kernel.kallsyms] [k] acpi_os_read_port
+ 37.62% 0.00% kworker/0:2 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] ret_from_fork
Something really fishy is going on with acpi_os_read_port. To get the amount of interrupts generated, most people run a simple grep . /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/*, but not me. My solution is to do a simple(?) Perl one-liner wrapped here on multiple lines for readability:
perl -ne 'next if (!/^\s*(\d+)\s+/);
next if (!$1);
$intrs{$ARGV}=$1;
END {foreach (sort {$intrs{$b} <=> $intrs{$a}} keys(%intrs)) {
printf("%s: %d\n", $_, $intrs{$_});
};
}' /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/*
It will output interrupt counts. On my system, the counters are something like this:
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe_all: 4695534
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci: 4694806
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06: 4694582
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17: 940
If you're really interested in what's happening inside ACPI and how General Purpose Events (GPE) work, read the document ACPI in LinuxArchitecture, Advances, and Challenges.
Anyway, it looks like ACPI event 06 is firing a lot. Way too lot keeping kworker busy handling the interrupts. This interrupt-handling on the other hand, takes a lot of CPU-power making your system run hotter than expected.
Fix:
As root, a simple echo disable > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06 will do the trick. Resulting in CPU cooling down:
The effect is instantaneous and easy to notice. To persist this setting over reboots, things get bit more trickier. A lot of people suggest putting the above disable into crontab to be run on a @reboot. My opinion is clear: this is a system problem, system fix and needs to be addressed by system, not user. The @reboot-magic doesn't work in /etc/crontab, only on user's crontab-file.
A very good alternative is to go with acpi_mask_gpe-kernel parameter. It is documented in The kernel’s command-line parameters. And docs state "This facility can be used to prevent such uncontrolled GPE floodings". Nice! Exactly what I need. The tricky part is to edit /etc/default/grub and add acpi_mask_gpe=0x06 into GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX-setting.
That's not all. Simply having the setting in a file won't change a anything yet. To make the new setting stick, on most Linuxes you would run update-grub. Some smart brain chose not to implement that helper into openSUSE, so that's not an option. To achieve the same, go for a: grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Now you're all set. Reboot and confirm. Of course you didn't fix the actual problem with ACPI, you simply made kernel ignore the interrupt-flood. You may want to settle for that at this point. I did file a bug report about this (Bug 1146023), but it seems the problem is limited to a specific set of MBPs and Fedora kernel guys are having hard time reproducing the issue. So, I'm not expecting SuSE guys to fix this anytime soon either.
Touchpad scroll direction
In 2011 when OS X 10.7 Lion was released, Apple made a drastic change on how touchpad (or how Apple calls it: Trackpad) scrolling works. Personally I totally understand this new logic, they wanted the scrolling user experience to be exactly the same and you would do on your phone's touch screen. You place your finger on the screen and pull the finger to the direction you want the screen to scroll. Before macOS 10.7 (note: the name change from OS X to macOS happened on 10.12 sierra) touchpad scrolling was targeted for the scrollbar, not to the actual content like on your touchscreen effectively reversing the direction.
So, as a macOS / iPad user, I want my scrolling to happen correctly, not the Windows way. To change, navigate to Touchpad settings and reverse the vertical scrolling:
Reversing the reverse makes your head spin, but there is a logic there.
Touchpad gestures
On any typical use case, I would use a mouse. As in real external device, not the skin-on-my-fingertips damaging trackpad. For reasons unknown to me, it literally hurts to use those trackpads for too many hours. So, I normally steer away from them. It looks like I'm pretty alone with this one, but all I can do is to complain and use a mouse.
Typical this you may want to do:
- Right-click: On macOS, hold Ctrl and tap is a right click. This won't work on a Linux. You need to do the two-finger-tap for right-clicking.
- Scrolling: You can go with keyboard or keep dragging the scrollbars, that's ok. Doing a two-finger scroll with the touchpad, however, is much faster and less error prone.
- Zoom: Pinch won't work on a Linux, you need to use the actual zoom-control of whatever application you want to zoom
All the Apple's gestures are documented in HT204895 suppor article Use Multi-Touch gestures on your Mac, but as already mentioned, not all gestures are supported on a Linux.
Something else?
Nothing more pops into my mind. If you have anything to comment, please do so.
