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Linux Wifi: Belkin F5D7050 Wireless G USB Adapter

I was testing my Belkin USB WiFi dongle today and Debian wouldn’t use it and I was getting errors/issues to do with a faulty firmware.

Even after following a few guides online and installing different packages etc, I still couldn’t get it to work but I finally managed using the following method:

Add Contrib & Non-Free Repo’s:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://YOUR.CHOSEN.MIRROR squeeze main non-free contrib
deb-src http://YOUR.CHOSEN.MIRROR squeeze main non-free contrib
apt-get update

Install Latest Working Firmware (and tools):

apt-get install firmware-ralink wireless-tools

– OR –
Download manually: Wireless-Tools and ralink-Firmware

dpkg -i package.deb

Plug the WiFi Dongle in and test:

ifconfig wlan0 up

iwlist scan

All your local AP’s should wizz past on screen now.

Some useful WMI Filters

WMI Filters are filters used via Group Policy Managment in Active Directory to control what GPO’s are applied to what machine. They are rather simple to understand as they are structured like SQL all you need to know is the data stored in WMI.

Here’s a couple of filters I have found useful.

Detect OS Version:

Windows 7

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.1%" AND ProductType = "1"

Widows 2008 R2

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.1%" AND ProductType = "2"

Windows Vista

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.0%" AND ProductType = "1"

Windows 2008

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.0%" AND ProductType = "2"

Windows XP

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "5.1%"

Windows 2003

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "5.2%"

Windows 2000

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "5.0%"

Detect Arcitecture:

Windows x64 (64bit)

SELECT * FROM Win32_Processor WHERE AddressWidth="64"

Windows x86 (32bit)

SELECT * FROM Win32_Processor WHERE AddressWidth="32"

Detect Service Pack:

Service Pack 3 or above

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE ServicePackMajorVersion>=3

Pre-Service Pack 3

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE ServicePackMajorVersion<3

The filters can be included together to create more precise detection such as Windows XP SP2 or Windows 7 x64 SP1.

Hope these help others as much as myself.

Olympics – London 2012 Torch Relay

Today, I got a very rare and privaliged chance to get close up to part of the convoy for the 2012 Olympics torch relay.

Here’s some pictures.

I also got to hold one of the torches which was alot lighter than I had thought but I supose those 8000 holes weigh nothing!

I’ve got a job!

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve got a job; I am now a full time website developer!

After being in the job a month, I have learnt so much more about developing websites and web based systems; enough in fact that I am currently redeveloping gg-sim to be mobile friendly and display some prettiness!

I have an aim to redevelop ldir to be more useful depending on how people wish to implement it. This will mean that the function will have some major changes but I will also develop a wrapper for it so it can function like before if people have utilised it but with to update.

PHP SNMP Functions

As part of a project, I have utilised PHPs SNMP functions and after some testing, I have found that SNMPWalk is considerably slower than multiple SNMPGet.

I was aiming to retrieve 6 Objects from a MIB; the device being polled was attached via a 100mbps network link.
I decided to run SNMPGet within a loop to retrieve each Object from the specified OID’s.
As these OID’s were within the same tree, I then thought about using walk as this would consolidate the data into a single request. I then walked the tree to get the same result.

I subsequently tested the time it took to retrieve this information via microtime().
As a result, you can retrieve 1 walk containing 6 OID’s within the same time as requesting 18 OIDs via get.

I hope this helps someone whom is looking to speed up their SNMP requests.