Month: October 2016

  • Add AC3 support within MX Player on Samsung Galaxy S7 

    By default, MX player doesn’t support ac3 audio due to licensing issue. Using a custom codec solves this.

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    Don’t download  and install the «NEON Codec 1.8.9 for Android 6+» usually suggested for MX player in order to support AC3 (available on Google play as «MX Player Codec for ARMv7 NEON CPUs»).

    Instead, download the custom codec for arm v7 neon 1.8.6 (available here). Unzip that file, open MX Player, click on the menu …, go to  settings > decoder. Scroll down to the very bottom and select Custom Codec.  There, pick the file libffmpeg.mx.so.neon.1.8.6 you have just unzipped.

    MX Player will next restart. You can now try a video with ac3 codec. Ex.: download a sample from here.

    Et voilà.

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  • Local DNS not working anymore due to AVAST

    Since a few week, I have issues when trying to access devices or services in my LAN via domain names defined within my local DNS Server. The problem was due to AVAST’s “Secure DNS” feature (recently enabled unmindfully).

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    I have defined a Master Zone for BeatificaBytes.be in my DNS Server (hosted on my Synology). It’s pointing on my NAS itself. Doing so, I can access my blog from my LAN just as from Internet. Without that Master Zone, a ping on BeatificaBytes.be would return the internet IP of my modem. And I can’t use that IP to access my NAS (hosting my blog) from within my LAN.

    In that Master Zone, I have defined a A record for www, to forward www.BeatificaBytes.be onto the local IP of my blog.

    I have also a few other Master Zones defined to access various devices…

    Since a few weeks, I was not able to ping any devices anymore and my blog was only accessible on BeatificaBytes.be but not anymore on www.BeatificaBytes.be.

    I spent hours to reconfigure my DNS Server, testing all the various settings, without success. I have never executed so many ipconfig /flushdns, ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew, ipconfig /all, ping www.BeatificaBytes.be and nslookup www.BeatificaBytes.be 😀

    I have finally figured out that the problem was with AVAST. It has a feature named “Secure DNS” which protects yourself against “DNS hijacking”. DNS hijacking redirects you from the site you want to visit, to one that looks just like it. Secure DNS ensures the site you’re visiting is real.

    So, Avast was preventing me to access my blog on an IP which was not the one of my real “domain name” registered on Internet. But as I only defined the fully qualified “www.BeatificaBytes.be” within my Internet Provider’s DNS Settings, I was still able to access my blog locally on “BeatificaBytes.be” (This has been a lot disturbing my investigation).

    It’s really the first time since 1996 that I curse Avast !

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  • WordPress really slow when accessed on LAN via its Domain Name

    Since a few weeks, WordPress is really slow when I access it from my LAN with it’s domain name http://beatificabytes.be

    The problem was with the name resolution on my PC.

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    My blog is hosted on my NAS, that I usually accessed via its netbios name or via its local IP address. But to make it easier for me, I also defined a domain ‘beatificabytes.be’ on my NAS’ DNS Server, with a A Records for www, pointing on the IP of the NAS.

    So, I can access my blog locally with either the domain name ‘beatificabytes.be’ (if I am lazy) or with the fully qualified name ‘www.beatificabytes.be’.

    The problem is that the actual URL of my blog, defined in WordPress’ settings, is ‘www.beatificabytes.be’. So, many pages of the blog are referencing scripts and images hosted on on that address ‘www.beatificabytes.be’.

    And, a few weeks ago, for some unclear reason, my PC started to fail to access my NAS via the url ‘www.beatificabytes.be’. I was only able to access it with its netbios name, its IP or the domain name ‘beatificabytes.be’ (without www).

    The reason was an issue with the name resolution on my PC (I thought it was an issue with the “DNS” Server but it was actually due to Avast’s feature ‘Secure DNS’).

    Therefore, each page trying to load resources from www.beatificabytes.be was getting timeouts, making the rendering very slow (without any visual notification!)…

    I did fix the name resolution issue and I can now access again my blog ‘full speed’.

    Conclusion, open the Debug window of your browser to look at possible network or script errors 😉

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