Category: Tips

  • Proximus BBOX: Open port 80, 443 and 23

    I recently installed a new BBOX 3 to access Internet via Proximus and wanted to open the port 80. Once configured via “My Proximus” (via your Services), don’t forget to reboot your modem!

    Click to Read More

    1. Connect your modem and wait until all the Leds turn blue and stop blinking (see the installation guide)
    2. Open the webpage ww.proximus.be and log in
      Proximus Login
      Proximus Login
    3. Go to the My Products > Internet … >  Services >Teclnica Profile
    4. Select Basic (to open the ports 80, 443 and 23), tick the option to agree with the disclaimer and confirm
      Proximus Profile
      Proximus Profile
    5. REBOOT next your modem otherwise the changes done via Proximus’ website won’t apply !!!

    Et voilà.

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  • Cannot access port 80 on my NAS from Internet

    From time to time, I can’t access any web page anymore on my NAS’ port 80 from the web. The solution is to reboot the my modem (BBOX2) or reset its internal firewall. It’s never an issue with my NAS (Synology DS1815+)

    Click to Read More

    When this issue occurs, I can still access web pages on specific port like Plex  (e.g.: on port 32000) or my NAS’ admin console on his own port (e.g.: on port 8080). Also the “Cloud Sync” service of my NAS is still  able to sync files with Google, DropBox and Hubic. Finally, JDownloader which is installed also installed on my NAS, is still able to download.

    To reboot my modem takes time but solve the problem. Another option is to reset the firewall:

    • open a telnet sessin on the modem,
    • log as ‘admin’ with your password (I did change mine. The default is possibly BGCVDSL2 or your MAC Address)
    • execute: fw_restart
    fw_restart BBOX2
    fw_restart BBOX2

    The problem comes from a NAT table full, most probably due to JDownloader or Cloud Sync. But I don’t know how to check which one is the culprit.

    Info about B-BOX-2 of Belgacom/Proximus: http://setuprouter.com/router/belgacom/b-box-2/

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  • Awful Bluetooth Audio Quality on Galaxy S7

    Since I have my Galaxy S7, I only connected it twice with my Philips Bluetooth headphones CB8100. Once to play with an Oculus Game and once to listen music. Twice, I was surprised how bad was the reception. Sound was crackly and skipping continuously. It was due to the WiFi !!

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    When I used my headphones to play an Oculus gamen I thought that the mobile was not powerful enough to stream the sound via Bluetooth while playing the video. Weird, but ok… it was also not powerful enough to mirror the video on my Samsung TV, so….

    But when it failed also to stream fluently music, either from YouTube or from by DS Audio Stations (Synology), I thought there should be a reason behind this.

    As it’s known that Bluetooth and WiFi are both using the frequency 2.4GHz, I tried to disable the WiFi… and it solved immediately the problem.

    I never never had such a problem with my previous mobiles 🙁 Also, I am quite sure I would not have that issue if I could connect on a WiFi 5Ghz.

    Support page for GS7 in Belgium is: http://www.samsung.com/be_fr/support/model/SM-G935FZDALUX

    Awful support from Samsung!

    Click to Read More

    I did post a request for support to Samsung on the 2nd May and only got an answer on 20th May. I said that the noise was awful when the Wifi was on and great if it was off. I also said that I had not such issue when streaming from my 300€ OnePlus One mobile (the S7 was 799€) or from my Sony Laptop or from my Lenovo Tablets.

    They answered that “Samsung does not guarantee the proper functioning of Samsung products. with other branded”

    WTF Samsung! Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are standard wireless protocols. My headset works perfect with 3 other brands.

    Numéro de dossier client : 2812699319

    Merci pour votre courriel concernant votre Galaxy S7. Vous indiquez que vous avez un fonctionnement anormal avec votre casque Philips tout en ayant le Wifi activé.

    Nous vous informons que Samsung n’assure pas le bon fonctionnement des produits de marque différente que Samsung avec des produits Samsung.

    Si vous avez des questions vous pouvez toujours contacter notre centre de contact. Cela peut se faire par téléphone, par courriel, Facebook ou Twitter.

    Cordialement,

    EL HARIM Med

    Customer Care Representative

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  • Expand Galaxy S7’s Internal Storage with a SD card

    Samsung does not support officially the “Adoptable Storage” feature available with Android 6.0. But there are many posts on the web explaining how to do it via “ADB” (Android Debug Bridge).

    Click to Read More

    Android Marshmallow has the ability to take a SD card and partition it as semi-permanent device storage. But it’s not accessible on the Samsung Galaxy S7.

    I applied this recipes with success: http://www.modaco.com/news/android/heres-how-to-configure-adoptable-storage-on-your-s7-s7-edge-r1632/

    • Download and Install “Samsung Usb Drivers” from http://adbdriver.com/downloads/
    • Download and copy in a folder the “ADB kits” from http://adbshell.com/downloads
    • Enable the “Developer Options” menu via Settings > About Device > Software Info > Type 5 times the “Build number”.
    • Enable “USB debugging” via Settings > Developer Options.
    • Plug your mobile into your PC via an USB cable.
    • Open a command prompt as administrator and type adb shell
    • Type next sm list-disks to see the Disk ID. It looked like this on my phone “disk:179,0”
    • To use 100% of the SD card as internal storage, type sm partition <Disk ID> private
      • Ex.: sm partition disk:179,0 private
    • After formatting the microSD card
      • Reboot
      • Go next into Settings > Storage. Select the “SD card” and hit the menu “More” to “Migrate data”. This moves everything to the SD card. Everything in the future should install to the SD card until it is full and then moves to internal.

    Before this, due to Oculus VR stuff, my internal storage was full although I already moved manually most Apps to the SD card. Now, after the “Migration of the Data” only 18GB are still used out of the 32GB (~13GB have been moved to the SD Card).

    NB.: Since I did this, I notice that moving Apps to the SD often results in an error message : “Not enough storage space”. I usually just retry and then the move succeeds.

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  • Amazon or eBay: Contact Customer Services

    Sometimes, I eventually need to contact “someone” (= a Human) from eBay or Amazon if I have an unusual issue. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find the right contact page for that. Here are the ones for eBay and Amazon. Good luck (you will need it).

    Click to Read More

    Amazon

    The best support is IMO provided by Amazon. I always got a response from a human within 24 hours. They even called me back once to tell me they got the “suggestion” I sent (not an issue) and were happy to take it into account.

    In English:

    In French:

    Notice: not being logged in, you could be missing the option to chat with someone.

    Contact Amazon [En]
    Contact Amazon [En]
    Contact Amazon [Fr]
    Contact Amazon [Fr]

    eBay

    It has always been much less obvious for me to contact eBay. They are much more pushing the customers towards automatic answers, making impossible for us to report an issue not foreseen in advance (like recurrent delivery issue with their shipping carrier not able to take not correctly of “long” addresses). However, in French, it’s still assumed to be possible to contact an employee via this form:

    French: http://ocsnext.ebay.fr/ocs/cuhome (Select a topic and you will have the opportunity to write a message to an employee or give him a phone call. Authentication required). Ex. or direct link for an undelivered item: http://ocsnext.ebay.fr/ocs/cusr?query=1479

    ONCE submitted, you will get an automatic answer with standard tips to solve your problem. REPLY on this email if you really want a human to read and react on your question!

    Contact Ebay [Fr]
    Contact Ebay [Fr]
    Send a Message Ebay [Fr]
    Send a Message Ebay [Fr]
    Notice their system tells it can take up to 76h to get an answer…

    In English, you will only be able to give a phone call or you will be suggested to contact the eBay community.

    English: http://ocsnext.ebay.com/ocs/cuhome (much much less straightforward, you have to do the right choices and won’t always be able to write a message to an employee. It sucks !)

    Contact Ebay [En]
    Contact Ebay [En]

    How Amazing is Amazon’s support.

    Click to Read More

    Amazon provided me the very best level of support when I submitted an issue I got with an undelivered item bought on.. eBay (I buy so much on Amazon.de and Amazon.fr that I didn’t pay attention when I sent them my complain, instead of contacting eBay). As I immediately noticed my mistake, I resubmitted the problem to eBay. But an employee of Amazon answered within 24h, being sorry about that issue and trying to find among my orders the item mentioned in my complain (asking if I bought this item via a subcontractor, or…)…. On eBay side, I have been waiting for an answer during a whole week and they were unable to help!!! I had to figure out myself that my address being too long for the system of their carrier (the carrier available “out of the box” for sellers of ebay.uk). My address had been truncated! I told eBay that I this was the issue but they didn’t handle the problem. I was unable to contact the carrier as this one refused any contact with end-users. I only got my order after about 2 months 🙁

    Yet another example:

    Click to Read More

    Again excellent and quick support from an Amazon’s employee: DHL regularly fails to deliver my orders because they use deprecated GPS and don’t find my address (I am in a new residential area built in 2011). DHL neither tries to call me nor try to check my address on Google Map (One kind employee did it once. I saw he had a google map printed next to him). They simply set “Unknown Address” on the delivery and contact the expediter. As I am a customer, they don’t allow me to provide them a new address (or explanations) by phone. And as my address is correct, the expediter can’t give them any additional information. I hate DHL!

    I did submit this issue to Amazon.de as I recently missed 4 of their deliveries. I got an answer 2 hours later (on Friday 23:23!). Amazing Amazon !

    Hello!

    I didn’t get my lasts orders yet… The carrier, DHL, pretends that my addess is unknown. I am very dissatisfied by DHL. I have very regular issues with their deliveries (not only with those sent by Amazon!). They use deprecated GPS and always pretend that they don’t find my address (it exists since 5 years now). The worst is that they don’t even try to call me to check. And next, they don’t want me to provide details to deliver as I am a “customer” and only the “expediter” may provide new delivery information.

    My address as known by Amazon is 200% correct. Can you do something to help me?

    Dear Customer,

    We are sorry to hear that your order has not yet reached you. Please accept our apologies for any disappointment caused.

    I understand very well that this is very annoying for you now when you wait for the order so long and still have not received!

    I will be sure to pass your message on to the appropriate department  in our company for consideration. We always want to know how our customers react to all aspects of shopping at Amazon.de as this helps us to continue to improve the selection and service we provide.

    Of course Shipping within Germany usually does not take such a long time. We understand your impatience.

    In order to provide you a satisfactory solution, I have called DHL and asked to deliver the item as soon as possible.

    You will receive the item soon.

    If your package has not arrived within next few days , please contact us using the link below and confirm the shipping address we have on file for this order:”

    At the opposite the Amazon’s support, Samsung is really not taking care of the customers. It’s IMO not a good strategy. I really buy more and more stuff only if I know there will be a good support behind.

    Click to Read More

    See here.

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  • Use the GoPro App on a Oneplus One

    Looking for a really mini camera, I recently bought a GoPro Hero4 Session.

    GoPro Hero 4 Session
    GoPro Hero 4 Session

    What a disappointment when I discovered that the GoPro App was not compatible with my Android mobile Oneplus One. Fortunately, it’s possible to google for the APK and install it manually!

    Click to Read More

    As I didn’t find it in the Play Store with my Mobile, I looked for it within a browser on https://play.google.com/store/apps/

    GoPro App Not Compatible OnePlusOne
    GoPro App Not Compatible OnePlusOne

    It was clearly indicated as non-compatible. So, I googled for: GoPro APK Download.

    I found various sites offering the APK :

    1. http://www.apk4fun.com/apk/8058/
    2. https://www.torrapk.com/en/apps/19-photography/4029-GoPro-App

    I did download and install manually the version 2.11.1716 and it works very fine :p

    I was able to use that version of the App among others to:

    • Update the GoPro’s firmware to HX1.01.01.50
    • Configure the GoPro (video, picture and burst mode)
    • Do previews
    • View and Edit both Videos and Pictures taken with the GoPro

    Et voilà.

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  • Fix Crash with Video Converter Ultimate using NVidia drivers

    When converting a video with Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate on my PC, I was always getting a crash report. The video under processing was well converted but Video Converter didn’t proceed with the next one in the queue. The problem was due to NVidia drivers more recent than 337.88 not supporting a required encoding feature anymore. To fix this, I am using an older version of nvcuvid.dll and nvcuvenc.dll

    Click to Read More

    I discovered that it was related to nvcuvid.dll by analysing the dump via http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=Analyze

    FAULTING_IP:
    nvcuvid+dcba9
    1062cba9 8b01 mov eax,dword ptr [ecx]

    MODULE_NAME: nvcuvid

    IMAGE_NAME: nvcuvid.dll

    NB.: The dump is available in C:\Users\<Your Account>\AppData\Local\Temp\ while the crash report is displayed (in order to be submitted). It’s deleted once you close the report.

    This is a know issue and people post explanations on the web as well as older versions of the dll to be used to fix the problem:

    • Nvidia removed the cuda encoding feature from their more recent drivers.
    • Open this post (click on the title) to find and download dll’s to be unzipped and copied (with admin rights) in C:\Windows.

    NB.: I am running a Windows 10 x64, reason why you can see a SysWOW64 folder in the zip.

    NB.: Don’t forget to reboot your PC after copying the dll to be sure those are used (or renamed the old dll before copying the new ones and kill all hidden instances of your converter with the Task Manager).

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  • JDownloader and Filebot on Synology

    I never spent time trying to run JDownloader and Filebot on my Synology. It’s however a must-have for those who download e.g. series, so I decided to give it a try. And it rocks !

    Click to Read More

    First, you need Java installed on your NAS. Currently Jave SE 7 for JDownloader and Java SE 8 for Filebot.  [EDIT 2017] Both JDownloader and Filebot are now using Java SE 8.

    Java 7

    1. Install the Package “Java Manager” from Oracle available via “Package Center” > “Utilities”
    2. Run that “Java Manager” and click on the button “Install Java”
    3. Follow the instructions:
      1. Download the .jar.gz file for Java SE 7 (Ex.: version 1.7.0_79 for my DS713+ is jdk-7u79-linux-i586.tar.gz) and
      2. Browser to pick that jar within the Java Manager and click OK

    Java 8

    1. Open the “Settings” of the “Package Center” and go to the tab “Package Sources”.
    2. Add a new entry named “Filebot” with the following url: https://get.filebot.net/syno/
    3. Go next to the section “Community” and install the Package “Unofficial Java Installer” (If you don’t see it, click the Refresh button in “Package Center” or close and reopen it)
      1. Do not use the official Package “Java8 (Development Toos)” located in the “All Packages” section or the “Java SE Embedded 8 (Oracle)” located in the “Community” section. Filebot can’t find them…

    Filebot

    It comes with several packages, such as those for its web interface, Filebot node and node.js, and Filebot itself. Install and configure them as explained here. Do not forget to Trust “Any Publisher” in the Package Center > Settings > General Tab.

    My.JDownloader.Org

    You need a free account on my.jdownloader.org to be configured in jdownloader (see here after).

    JDownloader 2.0

    The idea is basically very simple:

    1. Install JDownloader on your computer, configure it to run “unattended”
      1. Press Ctrl-P or Go to the menu Settings > Settings
      2. Click the icon “User Interface” and under the “Window Management” section, check “silent mode”,
      3. Click the icon “Bubble Notify” and set Show “Bubbles if…” = “Never”,
      4. Disable the icon “Tray Icon”.
    2. Add your accounts if any
      1. Click the icon “Account Manager”, etc…
    3. Configure your MyJDownloader Account created previously
      1. Press Ctrl-M or Go to the menu Settings > MyJDownloader, fill the MyAccount under “Setup & Login”
      2. Define also a Device Name (Ex.: the Nickname of your NAS 😉 )
    4. Exit JDownloader.
    5. Copy next the installation folder (C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\JDownloader 2.0) on your NAS as described here.
      1. jdownloader will be in  /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader
    6. Once installed, go to my.jdownloader.org to configure it.

    Very useful detailed information (in Italian) are also available here: http://www.synologyitalia.com/guide-tips/installare-jdownloader-2-0-beta-su-nas-synology-t5796.html)

    Trick:

    • Copy only the folders: Captchas, cfg, extensions, java, jd, libs, licences, logs, themes, tmp, tools, translations, update
    • Copy only the following files from the root: build.json, Core.jar, JDownloader.jar, license.txt
    • You will need to create a file S99jdownloader.sh. Do it with the command “touch” in a telnet/ssh session (or via the web console) and not with notepad on your PC, as it would not have the right encoding to be used on Linux.
    • Set the security on those folders and files (chmod 777 /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader).
    • The settings related to the access via my.jdownloader.org are located in /cfg/org.jdownloader.api.myjdownloader.MyJDownloaderSettings.json
      • among others, you may change in there the name of the device (i.e.: set the name of your NAS instead of the PC from which you copied the files)
    • If jdownloader  is not started, in a telnet/ssh session
      • try first: sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/S99jdownloader.sh start
      • and try next, in the /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader folder: java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar JDownloader.jar
    • Pay attention: the download path may not be like \\YourNas\OneShare (or \\\\YourNas\\OneShare).
      • It would result in storing downloaded files in /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader/\\YourNas\OneShare/
      • It must be like /volume1/OneShare
      • You may configure this in the “Settings” of my.jdownloader.org

    I did change a bit the file S99jdownloader.sh to get more info:

    [shell]
    
    #!/bin/sh
    #
    # Startup script for jdownloader2
    #
    # Stop myself if running
    PIDFILE=/volume1/<some log share>/S99jdownloader.pid
    #
    start() {
    sleep 1
    if [ -f ${PIDFILE} ];
    then
    echo "JDownloader is already running"
    exit 1
    else
    nohup java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader/JDownloader.jar > /dev/null &
    # write pidfile
    echo $! > $PIDFILE
    echo "JDownloader started within process" `cat ${PIDFILE}`
    fi
    }
    #
    stop() {
    if [ -f ${PIDFILE} ];
    then
    kill `cat ${PIDFILE}`
    echo "JDownloader running within process" `cat ${PIDFILE}` "has been stopped"
    # remove pidfile
    rm -f $PIDFILE
    else
    echo "JDownloader is not running"
    exit 1
    fi
    }
    #
    case "$1" in
    start)
    start
    ;;
    stop)
    stop
    ;;
    restart)
    stop
    sleep 1
    start
    ;;
    *)
    echo "Usage: $0 (start|stop|restart)"
    exit 1
    ;;
    esac
    # End
    
    [/shell]

    To troubleshot filebot, look at the “log” file in “/usr/local/filebot-node/data”

    Think about configuring your OpenSubtitles account by executing as root (in a Putty console with sudo -i): filebot -script fn:configure

    [Updated on 25/09/2017]

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  • Audio track not available in Netflix on Chromecast

     

    Although a French audio track was available for my movie, in Netflix, on my mobile (Android), it was not anymore once I started to cast that movie on my chromecast.

    Click to Read More

    NB: French audio track are available here in Belgium as in France.

    The really weird thing is that this issue wasn’t occuring for all the movies and series. I noticed it for the serie “Merlin”, season 5. At the same time it was running fine for the serie “The 4400” for example (French audio track was well available in Netflix both on my mobile and on Chromecast for those).

    To fix it, I started the App Chromecast and went into the tab Devices. In the Settings of my Chromecast, I set French as language.

    If the problem comes back, using the same App Chromecast, reboot the device. It’s a command available in the menu of the device’s Settings. Next, start the movie with the right audio track on your mobile and then cast it to your Chromecast.

    Et voilà.

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