For any of you out there that work with Linux and ISO images, here is a nifty trick for mounting your ISO images directly without having to burn them to CD’s first. Basically, pick your mount point (/mnt/iso in this example) and your ISO image (/tmp/myimage.iso in this example) and go. Check out this command:
mount /tmp/myimage.iso /mnt/iso/ -t iso9660 -o loop=/dev/loop0
And there you have it, the ISO file is now accessible at /mnt/iso, it’s just that easy!
I wanted to share something that I observed recently on my own PC. I am running Vista Home Premium, it came on my Alienware box. I had some directories shared so I could hit them from some of my other PC’s, and the share names had underscores (_) in them. Well, I recently installed Vista’s SP1 and afterwards, I noticed that my network shares were not working. Hmm, that’s strange. Skip ahead and what I found out was that after the SP1 install, my share names were renamed to the same thing, only without the underscore. Well now, how about that? So I had something like share_name, and then it became sharename without me changing it. Not that big of a deal, but I thought I would share just in case anyone else was having the same troubles.
It appears that if you are running Windows XP Service Pack 3 and using ZoneAlarm firewall software, when you install patch KB951748 (MS08-037) that came out yesterday’s “patch Tuesday” bunch, it breaks ZoneAlarm. You cannot access the Internet until you either uninstall the patch or turn off ZoneAlarm. This patch is related to the DNS poisoning exploit that came out recently, so it should be applied. What to do? Well, one suggested workaround (other than the two mentioned above) was to lower the security settings to medium in ZoneAlarm. At least then you don’t have to disable it entirely. Another suggested fix has been to leave ZoneAlarm at High and set the Internet Security Zone to Custom and add the following rule “Allow outgoing TCP Ports:80,443”. I cannot verify that these fixes work, I don’t use ZoneAlarm myself, but others hit by this problem have had success with them.
Here is the Microsoft link with information about the patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/ … /ms08-037.mspx
Here is the official link from ZoneAlarm about the problem:
http://download.zonealarm.com/ … /LossOfInternetAccessIssue.html
I have been using Nero (Ahead Nero) Burning ROM for years as my preferred software for burning CD’s on Windows. The old versions of Adaptec CD Creator were pretty good, but when they spun it off to Roxio it went down hill so fast even my stomach dropped. Back to the point, I have been using and buying Nero for years and it’s always been a great product. As much for the CD burning tools and the other goodies they toss in. One thing that I especially liked was a tool called ImageDrive. For anyone that doesn’t know what that is, it’s a nifty tool like DaemonTools that lets you take an ISO file (or NRG) and mount it as a virtual CD drive. So Windows thinks it’s just another drive and you can use it as such. Great, huh?
Well, now comes the driver for this post. Recently I got a new Alienware computer that came with Vista. Funny how it would have cost me money to down grade to XP, but I digress. My Nero version 6 was not compatible with Vista, and Nero had no plans to make it so. Well, I thought, it had been a couple years so I payed up and got the latest and greatest version 8 so I would have full Vista goodness. Now, this was my fault initially because I made an assumption, and we all know how that goes. I just assumed that ImageDrive would work as it always had, but it didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even see it.
OK, I go do some digging on line and find that Nero 8 didn’t support ImageDrive on Vista. Well, it was new (Nero 8 and Vista too I guess), and it read like it was coming soon so I figured it was some kind of Windows thing and would be along shortly. Advance a few months and nothing, no word on it at all. Finally I email support and ask them about it, I really was missing this tool, and here is the reply that I got back.
Thank you for your e-mail and your interest in our software.
Unfortunately, Nero has dropped the imagedrive application from our software. Nero will no longer support this application.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Hmm. Gee, that’s nice. At this point I kinda felt cheated. Yeah, I know, I should have read up on it more before I bought it. However, I thought I had some trust built up with these guys. I have been buying their software for years now, several versions in fact. It wasn’t clearly stated that ImageDrive was gone for good, it was rather ambiguous. The point is that the version I had worked fine, they just made a decision that if you wanted to use it on Vista, you had to uprage. Then they didn’t tell me I was loosing functionality. So I had to pay more, and get less. I wrote back and told them that too, but I doubt I’ll hear anything back from them.
So, the end result of this post is that if you are a consumer, don’t by Nero if you want ImageDrive. If you don’t care about that, it’s still a great CD/DVD tool. If you are a business, take good care of your customers because we are a fickle bunch and once scorned we don’t come back easy.
By the way, before the flame comments start, I know I can just use DaemonTools or some such similar program. That though, wasn’t the point.
Let me start this post by saying that I am a game addict, and not just video games either. Yep, years ago I was a pen and paper RPG nerd, and still am although I don’t really play much anymore. I love the books though, I love the stories, and therefore I have gravitated to computer games. What does this have to do with this site? Well, when I find something really cool, especially if it has to do with computers and/or related technology, I want to share it.
I played both Diablo and Diablo 2, including the expansions, and I don’t think anyone can argue that the Diablo series set the bar for many other games. How often have you seen games out there that were pretty much blatant Diablo rip-offs? From the GUI to the gameplay, they were trying to ride that same wave and catch some of the masters glory. Never seemed to work, did it? Just like World Of Warcraft is setting the bar for MMO’s with plenty of copy cats to follow, Diablo did the same thing years ago.
Well, now it’s doing it again. I got a chance to watch the HD gameplay trailer for Diablo 3 today and I was blown away. It looks like Blizzard is redefining this type of game all over again. The trailer was graphically awesome to be sure, but the gameplay and new features were insane. I wanted to play this game so bad I could taste it. Trust me, it will be a very long wait for this title to come out. Let me say too, I don’t see this is hype or vapor, this trailer is simply the game, and someone playing it narrating what is going on. Very cool.
Here, I have a link to the trailer that you can download in chunks. The whole trailer is almost 600MB and you can get it at FilePlanet [Link], but for those that don’t want to bite off all that at once, you can get it here in 12MB pieces. There are lots of places on the net to get bits and pieces of the trailer, but I can tell you that the entire HD trailer is an awesome thing, I highly recommend grabbing it. Then you can sit back, fire it up and just get lost in this magnificent game. Grab the smaller chunks here.
I created a nice little reference document for Vi and Vim. It gives some background and history, and then goes on to explain a few things as well as provide a list of a lot of useful commands for use within Vi and/or Vim. Vi and Vim are very powerful text editors found on any NIX platform. Take a look at these commands and shortcuts and turn your Vi time into a powerhouse of productivity!