Install ownCloud on your NAS

As I have mentioned in Use TurnKey to Simplify ownCloud Installation, it is easier to use TurnKey ownCloud than setup on your computer. If you want to install it on your NAS, I have collected related resource here to save your time.

Synology Security Issue and How-to Harden your NAS

It’s quit busy in Synology forum about a coin miner started on 2014/2/8 by Joakim Lotsengard on Synology Page in Facebook. Someone use CVE-2013-6955 and CVE-2013-6987 to insert a coin miner program running in the background. It takes all CPU resource and slow down your access to NAS.

You may see the the press from Synology if you want to learn more about this issue. Please follow the instruction to remove the unwanted program by reinstall DSM and update manually.

UPDATE @ 2014/8/6 – SynoLocker use the same vulnerability to encrypt files and ask for money. Y-Combinator has a threaded discussion. You need to upgrade your DSM manually. It is not found by auto-update. Please refer to Downgrade Synology DSM for detail instructions.

I am going to show you how to check yourself and harden your NAS covering Asustor ADM, QNAP QTS, Synology DSM and ThecusOS 6.

UPDATE @ 2015/4/1 – Add security on ThecusOS 6.

Performance Comparison on Backup Linux Files to QNAP TS-212P

I invest a new QNAP TS-212P which has RAID 1 support, a faster Marvell 88F6282 at 1.6GHz, and more RAM (512MB) compare to my QNAP TS-112 with Marvell 88F6281 at 1.2GHz and 256MB RAM. I bought two Seagate SV-35 2TB for it.

But things doesn’t goes as I expect, it fails to backup some of my files. I never have the same problem on Buffalo HD-LX2TU3 with ext4.

Reset your Lenovo Computer with Windows 8

If you have try Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue after Resizing Partitions and may boot to OneKey Recovery, you shall be able to boot to OneKey Recovery to reinstall to factory default.

But as Steve mentioned in Super User: Lenovo One-Key Recovery Feature broken after resizing partition, you may also follow the [Remove everything and reinstall Windows] in How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC. It’s not free, you need to have a Windows RE Flash Drive and have access to PBR_DRV partition.

Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue Restore Feature after Cloning with CloneZilla

Because I am very satisfied with the performance of Seagate Desktop SSHD on my Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 72z, I decide to upgrade Lenovo C440, too. After cloning with Clonezilla,  you need to manually modify the partition type ID to make it work.

Connect NAS to your Computer Directly

My Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 72z comes with USB 2.0. Its maximum throughput is 480Mbit/s but the effective is about 35 MB/s or 280 Mbit/s. I want to improve file transfer speed between my computer with external hard disk by replacing USB 2.0 with Gigabit Ethernet which provides higher bandwidth.

If I connect my QNAP TS-112 which has a gigabit ethernet to TL-WR842ND which supports wireless 802.11n with maximum 300MBit/s and wired fast ethernet with maximum 100Mbit/s, the bottleneck will limit the transfer speed to 100Mbit/s. There are two solutions to improve: get a faster wireless router or connect TS-112 to ThinkCentre Edge 72z directly.

Because my ThinkCentre Edge 72z connect to TL-WR842ND via wireless 802.11n, I have an empty gigabit ethernet. Therefore, I choose to connect TS-112 with gigabit ethernet directly. TS-112 may access internet through the wireless connection on ThinkCentre Edge 72z when it is working.But nobody may see it, even we share the same wireless router.

Buffer and Cache in Hard Drive and Operating System explains the SSD Cache Size of your SSHD

There are complaining about the small SSD in SSHD. But what is the right size for the SSD cache? It’s actually up to your physical RAM and operating system.

Let’s start from the basic: what is buffer and cache

Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue after Resizing Partitions

If you have use EaseUs Partition Master to resize your Windows 8 partitions, you might have problem to create Windows recover drive, fail to backup or recover to factory with pre-installed recovery tool.

I just bought a Lenovo C440. It comes with Windows 8 and OneKey Recovery. My experience is based on the combination.

Because the default partition size is too small for my C drive, I use EaseUs Partition Master to re-size. Then I cannot launch to OneKey Recovery for backup or recovery. I also fail to create a USB recovery drive using [Recovery] in [Control Panel].

It took me several days to figure out what’s going wrong. In short, it’s all related to the partition type which EaseUs Partition Master cannot handle properly. I will show you how to solve these problems.

DD-WRT for my TP-Link TL-WR842ND

My TP-Link TL-WR842ND freeze once or twice a day. It’s not the WAN because I may go online with other ports on FDDI modem. I cannot even login to my TL-WR842ND. Upgrade to the latest firmware doesn’t help, either. After 7 months, I give up and get a new AP.

Until last week, when I try to do more research to see if there is any solution, a YouTube names “TP-link TL-WR740N freezing, no connection until restart” catch my eye. It’s exactly what happen to me. And there are comments TL-WR842ND has the same problem, too. Aidin shadnezhad solve his problem by flash it with DD-WRT firmware.

Here comes the solution!

Parse XML with namespace by SimpleXML in PHP

The XML send by outbound message from Salesforce comes with namespace which I cannot parse as most XML tags by SimpleXML.

When google for related solution, it seems children might be the solution, but I cannot find an example that match my case. There are other potential solution like xpath, SoapServer, XML Parser, XMLReader, and even Force.com Toolkit for PHP. But I preferred to keep it simple, and focus on SimpleXML.

After test different combination several times, I finally make it work for my case. Here is how: