Troubleshooting ATT DSL

There's been a lot of news lately about hacks of home/SOHO routers like Linksys and D-Link. Even though my router-and-firmware combo is on the 'ok' list (D-Link DIR-628 v2.22) I decided to upgrade it to the latest v2.24 firmware. Unfortunately this set off a series of mishaps that took me hours to resolve.

The instructions from D-Link warned that the upgrade would erase the configuration but that you could make a backup beforehand, then restore it afterwards. The upgrade itself went fine as did the restore of the configuration. But then my Internet connection would freeze after only a couple of minutes. I tried power-cycling both the router and the AT&T modem (a Westell modem/router) but the problem only got worse. Finally, I could no longer get the router to login anymore and so I called AT&T Tech Support.

They wanted to 'upsell' me to their 'Advanced Support Plus' department, i.e., paid support! I resisted this since I assumed the problem was on their end. The regular technician was very polite and tried resetting my password for me, but to no avail. Finally I acquiesced to paying for the advanced support, but then it was too late -- they'd closed for the night. At this point, the technician asked, "Did you say that the 'Internet' LED on your modem was lit?" Yes, it was. That was the turning point! I'd been assuming it was an 'activity' indicator when in fact it was a logged-in indicator, i.e., the modem was doing the PPPoE login instead of my router.

When I first received the service I had assumed that the built-in router was a NAT device. So I'd disabled the auto-login and switched the modem to 'Bridge' mode -- just act as a pure modem-to-ethernet device. At some point in the evening's testing the modem had done a full reset? Probably, AT&T had triggered this when they saw the link trying/failing to connect. Once we realized what had happened we were easily able to switch the modem back to bridge mode and I was back online.
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The next day, unfortunately, the connection had failed again. I decided there must be some change in the way my D-Link router was performing the PPPoE login that was incompatible with AT&T's DSLAM. Or, maybe the modem just really really wanted to be the router :-)

At this point I decided to test my other assumption, that the built-in router was performing NAT. It wasn't! I switched the Westell device back to it's original router/PPPoE configuration and programmed it with my new/updated login. I also had to reconfigure my router to use a different IP range. But then I was successfully able to open a Bittorrent app and get full two-way communication, so it was clear I wasn't double-NAT'd.

In the long run this goes to show the value of relying on a vendor's default configuration as much as possible. I should have tried to use my router with AT&T's default modem configuration instead of assuming I had to work around it. If I had I never would have had any of these problems.
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UPDATE 8/15/10 - I take it back: I am double-NAT'd and I am not able to get 2-way Bittorrent connections...
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Suggested printers for Linux (and Ubuntu)

Another quick post re Ubuntu. My love/hate relationship continues with Ubuntu! Even though I've continued to use my Canon MP620 printer (because the printer itself seems really solid) I also continue to be dissatisfied with Canon's linux drivers, or lack thereof.

So what's an Ubuntu-phile supposed to do? HP is clearly the best supported as HP has excellent drivers available, but I've really turned against HP after just ONE TOO MANY poorly designed units. (I think the last straw was a mid-level inkjet printer which started to refuse to print because it's 'user convenience' paper-upside-down detector failed and the failure-mode was to deny any further printing!)

There is an online database of printers with Linux support but it's maintained by user contributions so it's less than authoritative,
www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

But I eventually learned (and from a single offhand comment in a single post in a long discussion of printers on the Ubuntu forums, whew!) that Brother has Linux drivers available! And, in fact, the 3rd-party Linux Printing database confirms that there is a huge list of Brother printers that have been reported to work perfectly out-of-the-box.

So, my next printer will probably be a Brother.
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Where can I recycle non-rechargeable batteries?

I've been wanting to blog about this for months but I haven't come up with any good solution. Now, I'm just tired of thinking about it so I'd post something.

For several glorious years I was able to take my generic alkaline batteries to IKEA for recycling. But apparently they ran afoul of some federal regulation re transportation of dangerous chemicals like those in batteries.
www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/regs/rulemaking/final

So IKEA stopped rather than spend more on their recycling program.
www.ikea.com/us/en/store/costa_mesa/environment

I've since learned that Europe mandates that all battery resellers must offer recycling, as well. In the US we have something similar but it only covers rechargeable batteries. I suppose this was meant to encourage people to buy the more expensive rechargeable models, but I also suspect it had more than a little to do with keeping resellers' costs down (and profits up).
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2/14/11 UPDATE: The announcement on IKEA's web-site is no longer there. Instead -- and just to prove I didn't make the whole thing up! :-) -- here's another blog that mentioned the same incident, Sincerely Sustainable.

Also, I have since learned that the local Waste Management Corp will recycle non-rechargeable batteries! Their web-page re Household Hazardous Materials does not include batteries but their Recycling Center accepts them, i.e., they're not really considered 'hazardous'? Also, this service is only supposed to be available for residents of East County?
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OFFICIAL SAN DIEGO 'PLAN'

Also, and I don't think I blogged about this earlier, there is an official City of San Diego plan for recycling batteries but it's preposterous. Basically, it's illegal to throw away batteries but your only (free) legal alternative is to make an appointment at the city's Hazardous Waste Dropoff. This is the building outside the Miramar dump. Sounds good, right? Well, they're only open from 9am to 3pm on Saturday and you need to make an appointment first?!

Now, let's try to do some math here: There are 3M people living in San Diego and assuming there are 6 people per household (which I think is too high but the math is easier) then there are half-million households needing to drop off their waste/batteries. The drop-off is only open for 6 hours per week, times "50" weeks per year, equals 300 total hours for 500,000 groups to do their drop-off. Even if just ONE PERCENT of the households try to comply with this rule that leaves them each less than 4 minutes to do their drop-off. And that's if everything is perfectly choreographed. If ten percent of households tried to recycle properly then they'd each have 30 seconds to make their dropoff. Hmm....
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Update on Canon MP620 and Ubuntu 9.10

To be perfectly honest, I'm seriously considering dumping Ubuntu. Much as I love it, I just KEEP HAVING stupid problems -- USB devices working/then not working, and now my printer failed again.

Fortunately, after JUST a couple hours of "having fun" with my Canon linux drivers I've managed to get everything working again. I've previously (Dec 2008) blogged on this and this is now an update,
http://technicaltony.blogspot.com/2008/12/installing-canon-mp620-on-ubuntu.html
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Ever since my 9.04 > 9.10 upgrade I'd lost the ability to print from the rear-tray (as have many others apparently). What a ridiculous problem to be having.

Here was the solution:

1. download and install the latest Printer Definition file (PPD)
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=210977
Download and extract 'ppdMP620-630en-1.5.tar.gz'

2. Follow the included README instructions and copy the PPD file to the system's PPD folder,
> sudo cp canonmp620-630en.ppd /usr/share/ppd/

3. Copy the CONF file to the system's Canon library,
> sudo cp cifmp610.conf /usr/lib/bjlib/

4. download and install the latest "IJ Common" DEB,
http://support-sg.canon-asia.com/contents/SG/EN/0100159004.html
> sudo dpkg -i cnijfilter-common_3.00-1_i386.deb

*** Don't forget there are other DEBs required as explained in my original post ...

5. Delete the existing printer object from System > Administration > Printing

6. Reboot! Not sure if that's totally necessary but it works. This ensures that the new drivers are loaded, and the printer should be auto-detected at login.

If you now check the Properties of the recreated printer it should say:
Make and Model: Canon MP620-MP630

WARNING! INCOMPATIBLE MEDIA TYPES!

Again, this is probably something that would never happen under Windows...

The final step -- for printing photos, at least -- is to select Media Type: Glossy Photo Paper. If you try the other options, e.g. "Photo Paper Pro", the computer will say it's processing and the printer will momentarily say it's receiving and then.... Nothing. The print job will be unceremoniously canceled without any warning or error.
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Obama's next State Of The Union

I just had a quick thought:
President Obama's next State Of The Union speech is going to be crazy popular!

At least, it will be VERY widely watched, probably the most in history. I'm thinking of the domestic audience but this will probably be true internationally, too.

Think of all the drama surrounding him now:
- The country has been teetering on the verge of a new Great Depression
- He's on the verge of 'reform' of the byzantine American health insurance system
- The Right Wing absolutely viscerally hates him
- And he's widely acknowledged, even by his detractors, as a great speaker.

I'll have to get out the popcorn, and my score card! Now, when is this all scheduled? His first State Of The Union speech was in February 2009, just after he'd taken office, so he hadn't had a chance to really dig in yet.
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Using AHCI to install XP on new computers

I have a retail copy of Windows XP Home (Service Pack 2) which I use to run my home-made Home Theatre PC (HTPC). With my latest build I ran into a new problem -- it wouldn't install! Instead I kept getting a BSOD. Eventually I realized that the new motherboard probably wasn't recognized by the old (circa 2005?) OS. Fortunately, there was a solution, though it took me a while to make it work.

I knew that my new motherboard AND my new SATA drives were configured for the newer 'AHCI' drive-mode. The existing SATA drivers on my XP-SP2 disc didn't support AHCI. So my first thought was to use the F6 boot-option to include the new drivers. But despite attempts to load various versions of the 'Intel Storage Matrix Manager' drivers it continued to either hang or BSOD.

Ultimately the solution was to slipstream the drivers into the CD image. While I was at it, I also added the SP3 update. (Actually, the first thing I tried was slipstreaming SP3 in the hopes that it included the AHCI support; it didn't.) I already knew how to slipstream SP3 but had no idea how to added the Intel drivers. Fortunately, this web page explained how to use a nifty utility called 'nLite" which automated it.
www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/resolving-setup-did-not-find-any-hard-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

So, in summary, what did not work:
- using WinXP Service Pack 3
- using F6 with Intel drivers on a floppy

What did work:
- using nLite to slipstream both SP3 and the Intel drivers onto a new CD
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Bad news is 'good' for prenatal DS test?

Last June 2008 I mentioned a new prenatal test for Down Syndrome that could potentially eliminate new DS births. Now, the newspaper says that the company, Sequenom, probably faked the research tests.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/30/sense-anxiety-sends-sequenom-stock-down-39

The CEO, CFO, and two VPs of Research have all been fired, and the company stock has dropped by nearly half. They still insist the test works but admit that they need to start from scratch in proving it. So that's at least another few years before it ever comes to market (if at all).

I'm not sure how to feel about this, still. Yes, I think it's a good idea to have such a test. But I also know that over 90% of expectant parents choose to abort if/when they learn that their unborn child has DS. Hopefully, continuing research will find a way to significantly offset the negative effects of DS and then there won't be so much concern about it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if DS could simply be considered a treatable condition, like diabetes?
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