FOG (Free Opensource Ghost) Multicast problem

I managed to get FOG up and running on everything bar multicast - I thought it might be something to do with VirtualBox until I dicovered a configuration gotcha.

If you set a MYSQL password, the installation instructions tell you to change the password in /var/www/fog/commons/config.php.

What I got was the following error message in /opt/fog/log/multicast.log:

Failed to connect to database, will try again in next iteration.

After trying mysql -u root -p to debug the password and altering the connection_timeout to 5000 as suggested elsewhere, I finally found the fix here:

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/373

Turns out I had to edit the file here as well:

/opt/fog/service/etc/config.php

Having done this, I was able to run a multicast session great!

Ubuntu boot error in VirtualBox - piix4_smbus 0000.00.07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade bios or use force_addr=0xaddr

Been having an annoyance with Ubuntu and other Linux distro's running in VirtualBox for while. It didn't seem to have an impact on functionality, but it possibly had an impact on speed of boot.

I managed to find the answer here:
http://finster.co.uk/2010/11/16/virtualbox-piix4_smbus-error/

Essentially, you do the following:

• Start a terminal 
• sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
• Add the line blacklist i2c_piix4 to the end of the file and save 
• sudo update-initramfs -u -k all 

You might want to optionally remove unneeded kernal images before updating the initramfs to cut down on how long that part takes.

Unable to add search provider to IE8

This has been bothering me for a while on my server, and only just had some time to do something about it.

 I found the answer here:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=4d9cc69c2ac5abd3&hl=en

The contents of the registry entry:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ TypeLib \ {EAB22AC0-30C1-11CF-A7EB-0000C05BAE0B} \ 1.1 \ 0 \ win32

Was set to:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll

Instead of:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll

Windows Live Messenger 2011 - 0x80048820 Logon Failure

I don't use Windows Live Messenger much, but after the install of the recent IE9 RC, I noticed that the darn thing wouldn't sign in properly.

I did the usual Google-Fu and tried stuff ranging from deleting cached contacts folders, repairing the install, removing and reinstalling, checking IE proxy settings to re-registering various DLL's all without luck.

I then tried logging (under Options > Connection > Logging) and got the following:

1aec            Messenger:              Zone_Voice (voicevideoplatformlogon.cpp:66): ERROR: [OnLogonResult called with an failure hrLogon] "" failed with 0x80048820 in .
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CUIManager::OnLogonResult hr=[0x80048820] m_dwUILogonFlags=[2]
1aec            Messenger:                 Zone_UI CUIManager::OnLogonResult@0270CEC8: enter
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CSignInUIController::OnLogonError> hrError=[0x80048820]
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CLogonErrorHandler::DisplayLogonErrorDialog> hrError=[0x80048820] s_fDisplayingLogonError=[0]

I did a bit of network tracing, and found that messenger was trying to use my work proxy. Strange for several reasons:

• I wasn't connected to my work VPN
• I didn't have any proxy settings in IE9
• Work blocks messenger, so it could never have worked like that

After a little more head scratching, I remembered using the "netsh winhttp" commands to set a proxy to try and fix some VPN proxy issues we had, and when I checked, I could still see the winhttp proxy settings set.

Entering the following command cleared the proxy, and allowed messenger to run:

• netsh winhttp reset proxy