• Synology upgrade to DSM 6.0

    A few notes about the upgrade from DSM 5 to 6

    Click to Read More

    • First, stop Plex (as it prevents DSM 6.0 to install)
    • Upgrade to DSM 6.0
    • Upgrade all the required Packages
    • Start Plex
    • Not working anymore:
      • Login in a telnet session as ‘root’
      • ‘homes’ link in /var/services is pointing at /volume1/@fake_home_link
        • open a ssh session as root,
        • do: rm homes
        • and: ln -s /volume1/homes homes
      • Access right to shared folders
        • admin has no access anymore to various shared folders. Ex.: /volume1/homes/admin
        • Go to DSM > Control Panel > User
        • Edit the ‘admin’ account and got the the ‘permissions’ tab
        • Reapply the access rights
      • Web Console.

        • Doesn’t open anymore… It must now be accessed under the web path /webman/3rdparty, via its url: http://hades:5050/webman/3rdparty/webconsole/wc.cgi.
        • I did a new package to start it automatically. See attachments at the bottom of this post. Once installed, open Web Console and change your password (default is “admin”) using the command:  #users modify admin
      • JDownloader (does not start anymore)
        • Java Manager not installed anymore. It is replaced by the new Java package for a more convenient installation procedure.
        • Edit the file S99jdownloader.sh to replace “/volume1/@appstore/JavaManager/Java/bin/java” by “/usr/local/bin/java”
        • In that file also change the path to create the pid file into a folder where admin is granted write access !
        • Login into a ssh session and enter the root mode (sudo -i)
        • Execute “rm /var/run/S99jdownloader.pid”
        • Check that all files in /volume1/@appstore/jdownloader belong to ‘admin’
        • Exit the root mode
        • Execute “sh S99downloader.sh start”
        • Check the output in the nohup.out file
      • Filebot does not run anymore
        • Reinstall the “Unofficial Java Installer”
      • FileBot Node does not start anymore
        • Uninstall filebot and filebot-node
        • Uninstall node.js and java 8
        • Delete all the old scheduled tasks related to filebot
        • Delete the input and the output folders (where media files to be renamed are located)
        • Recreate empty input and output folders (as admin – via the File Station, not as root)
        • CTRL-F5 in the browser to fully refresh DSM
        • Install the unofficial java installer of RedNoah + node.js v4
        • Install filebot (version from Package Center) and filebot-node (the version filebot-node-0.2.0-B1-noarch of RedNoah)
        • If it does still not run, test it via a SSH
          • login as admin
          • DO NOT RUN ANYTHING AS ROOT. So, don’t execute: sudo -i
          • cd /var/packages/filebot-node/target/
          • ./start
          • Check the errors returned by this command if any
          • Check also the logs: cat /var/log/messages
        • filebot-node is installed in /volume1/@appstore/filebot-node with
          • a sytmbolic link from /var/packages/filebot-node/target/ and
          • a symbolic link from /usr/local/filebot-node
          • filebot-node schedule a task to run its command /usr/local/filebot-node/task xxx where xxx is the id of a task defined into /volume1/@appstore/filebot-node/data/task/xxx.argsp
      • AcpiOnLan (DSM SSO login not working anymore)
        • the port to access DSM in admin mode (required to do a login via the page /webman/login.cgi) is not anymore stored in /etc/synoinfo.conf with the key secure_admin_port or admin_port respectively for http and https. AcpiOnLan was fetching the port in that file. Instead, AcpiOnLan must now fetches external_port_dsm_https or external_port_dsm_http
      • WordPress
        • After the update of WordPress, as usually, I had to save (although not changed) the current option selected in the “Settings” > “Permalink Settings” otherwise no page was accessible anymore via permalinks (as returned by google search).
        • The automated WordPress update failed to complete. I should have enabled ftp first. I did a manual upgrade.. But the problem was most probably with the owner of the files… (See next)
        • Upgrading plugins didn’t work either… But this problem was solved by executing, as root: chown -R http:http /volume1/web/wordpress

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  • Expand storage by migrating disks from Synology DS713+ to DS1815+

    The 2x3TB disks of my DS713+ were full. Being lazy, I decided to expand the storage by migrating the disk to a new DS1815+ with more bays (instead of doing a full backup and restore on larger disks). It was a piece of cake!

    Click to Read More

    1. Do first a backup of the configuration of your current Synology via Control Panel > Update & Restore menu > Configuration Backup tab > Back up configuration button
    2. Move the disks to the new Synology, keeping the very same order (disk in bay n must go into the bay n of the new Synology).
    3. Add a few other disks in the new Synology and create new Volumes
    4. Boot the new Synology and wait for the beep.
    5. Start the Synology Assistant, find your new Synology and click “Connect” on it.
    6. Use the Migration mode, keeping all your files. NB.: you should download the latest DSM for your new Synology and use that local copy during the installation process instead of letting the installation process download that file itself.
    7. Restore the Configuration backup on the new Synology
    8. If you were using the web station and php, enable it. This settings was lost in my case: Control Panel > Web Services menu > Web Services tab > Enable Web Station option
    9. Repair the packages one by one. Wait for each repair to be successful before repairing the next package otherwise you could be in troubles. Pay attention also that the behaviour of the UI can be weird when auto-refreshing after a repair. If clicking repair on a package, you see that the package repaired is not the one you clicked on (but one that was already repaired), close and reopen the Package Center. All my packages where successfully repaired (sometimes I had to skip one and retry later, IMO due to the dependencies…). Here are the packages I had to repair
      1. Audio Station. everything kept as-is, including the user-defined radio
        1. if music does not appear, go to Control Panel > Media Indexing and re-index the media files.
      2. Download Station: didn’t lose anything from its download queue
      3. Plex Media Server. I simply had to reenter my credentials which were expired
      4. DNS Server: all settings/zones still defined. Access to all services from intranet and internet working fine
      5. Maria DB: nothing lost. In particular my Worpress blog.
      6. Media Server: ok
      7. Video Station: all video and metadata accessible
      8. Photo Station: all albums still there and ok
      9. Python 3: I had to retry the repair but works fine
      10. Java Manager: ok (used to install Java 7)
      11. Surveillance Station: Licenses, settings, camera, recordings are all kept
      12. Time Backup: I had to retry the repair but backup tasks are ok, as wel as the timeline itself.
      13. Node.js
    10. Other Packages:
      1. My Custom packages were still there: iPKGui, AcpiOnLan, Mods (My Own Dsm Shorcuts), Unofficial Java Installer (Java 8)
      2. Custom Package Sources are still defined too
      3. Jdownloader was still installed and configured and I only had to restart it.
      4. Settings were lost for FileBot Node. After reconfiguring FileBot Node, it was not working (unable to access its onw port) I had to uninstall it and reinstall (including FileBot). Reconfigured settings were however not lost…
      5. WordPress was stopped. My blog was however well still accessible as I did reenable the Web Station
    11. Synology’s DDNS Service
      1. DDNS Service being linked to the old Synology, I had to go to https://account.synology.com/fr-fr/overview and unlink my DDNS name
      2. Next, I went to  Control Panel > External Access and did Edit my provider (Synology) to re-enabled the DDNS and re-introduced my login/password.
      3. It took a few minutes before being again connected.
    12. I finally moved a few Shared Folders to the new volumes by editing them via Control Panel > Shared Folder menu > Edit. I simply changed the location, picking the new Volume as a target. Attention, during the move, the Control Panel is not accessible anymore. If you need to access it, simply open a new browser 😉 (The only thing that cannot be done, is moving two Shared Folders simultaneously). Notice that the move can take ages as the new volume is probably still under validation (depends if you checked that option when you created the volume).

    Et voilà.

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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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  • Play YouTube’s Video in background and stream the audio part to AirPlay Devices with Android

    Since I found a piece of software to stream audio from my PC to multiple Airplay Devices synchronously, I wanted to find something equivalent for my Android mobile. Unfortunately, with most Apps and for YouTube’s video, either the audio stops when the application is minimized or the audio cannot be stream to multiple Airplay devices simultaneously. An easy solution exists but requires a rooted Android device and two Apps: AirAudio and AudioPocket.

    Click to Read More

    AirAudio is a really powerful audio streamer for Android than can steam all audio from any App to every receiver. Just like TuneBlade for PC, it redirect the sound to be played by the local speaker to a remote receiver… AirPlay, AllPlay, DLNA, Fite TV, GoogleCast, Roku and Sonos are all supported !!!

    AirAudio Receivers
    AirAudio Receivers

    Once started, one can chose multiple target remote players:

    AirAudio Players
    AirAudio Players

    And as soon as you start to play sound on the mobile, you have an icon appearing in the menu bar to start casting.

    AirAudio Cast
    AirAudio Cast

    Selecting that icon, you can to start to preconfigured set of devices. As you can see bellow, I am streaming simultaneously to two AirPlay Devices.

    AirAudio Menu
    AirAudio Menu

    You will easily discover the other features 😉

    Now, especially for YouTube’s video, you may want to hide the App playing the video/music. Unfortunately, especially for video, like the YouTube player, the App usually pauses if the it goes in the background. To solve that, you need an App able to play in the background. The best and easiest one I found is AudioPocket.

    You can run AudioPocket and paste into it any valid url to star playing your YouTube video. But the easiest is to start YouTube, search for video and use the “Share…” menu to play the video with AudioPocket.

    YouTube Share Menu
    YouTube Share Menu

    Notice: so far, it does not work with YouTube’s playlists (to be investigated as playlists are claimed to be supported)… It’s easy to know that you have selected a playlist as the “Share…” menu appears alone (no “Add to xxx” menu next to it):

    YouTube Share PlayList
    YouTube Share PlayList

    That being said, each video shared with AudioPocket is queued.

    Once shared with AudioPocket, the video is played quite immediately and you can pause/stop it with AudioPocket’s menu appearing in the App bar:

    AudioPocket Menu
    AudioPocket Menu

    Et voilà!

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  • A 3G/4G mobile Wi-Fi hotspot

    As I am often travelling to foreign countries where data connections for foreigners are exhibitive, I am looking for a solution able to share a network connection based on a local 3G/4G connection.

    TP Link 4G Mobile Wifi Hotspot
    TP Link 4G Mobile Wifi Hotspot

    Click to Read More

    The first obvious solution would be a “Mifi” device (Mobile WiFi).

    Another one would be a cheap android mobile with tethering.

    To be investigated :p

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  • A Noise Cancelling Headphone

    Since I tried the Bose QuietComfort headphone with noise cancelling, I am very interested in such a technology :p

    Bose Quiet Comfort
    Bose Quiet Comfort

    Click to Read More

    I would look for an over-the-ear (circumaural) design with, if available, both wired and wireless support.

    So far, I like the Sennheiser PXC 450… expect for it’s price! Indeed, it still plays sounds without batteries while the Bose does not play anything anymore when it’s out of juice. But the Bose QuietComfort 25, which is ~60€ cheaper (looking for best prices for both: 239€ vs 299€), has a better noise filtering technology… The choice will be very difficult…

    EDIT 15/07/2016  I got one : a Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Around Ear Wireless Headset, Ivory.

    Sennheiser Momentum 2.0
    Sennheiser Momentum 2.0

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  • Open WordPress’ Media in a floating popup instead of the current window

    When one clicked on a picture in my WordPress blog, inserted as a Media with the standard “Add Media” button, it was opened in the current window. To open it into a floating popup windows without modifying anything (code or theme), I simply used the plugin “Easy FancyBox“.

    Click to Read More

    All supported media are automatically handled by the plugin and opened in a smooth overlay.

    With the plugin installed (using its default settings):

    Sample Open In Popup
    Sample Open In Popup

    Without the plugin (the plugin can be disabled by adding this in the <a href> tag: class=”nofancybox”):

    Sample Open In Window
    Sample Open In Window

     

    All the details on https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-fancybox

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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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  • Stream Audio from Windows PC to AirPlay Devices

    Sometimes, I want to play audio with my PC instead of my AudioStation (Synology) via my AirPlay Devices (Yamaha HTR-4067 and Philips Fidelio AD7000). I found TuneBlade to be the best cheap solution.

    TuneBlade
    TuneBlade

    Click to Read More

    A lot of details and info can be found here : http://tuneblade.com/blog/

    I like it because:

    • It’s very simply to use
      • No need to change the current playback device of Windows.Simply press play on the AirPlay Devices detected by TuneBlade
    • It’s cheap (less than 9€)
    • It’s able to send the music synchronously on various distinct devices (Just like Synology’s AudioStation)

    Website: http://tuneblade.com/

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Tags


Acer iDea 510 AirPlay Android Backup DD-WRT DNS DS209+ DS713+ DS1815+ FlexRaid Galaxy Galaxy S2 Galaxy S7 Google Assistant Google Home HTPC Kies MCE MySQL Nabi 2 Nvidia TV Shield One Plus One OpenHab Outlook Philips Hue Plex RAID Raspberry PI Remote Desktop Root Access Samsung Scripts Synology Team Build Visual Studio VMWare Wi-Fi Windows Windows 8 Windows 8.1 Windows 10 Windows Server 2012 XBMC Xpenology ZigBee

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