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CATEGORY: Troubleshooting

How to fix VMWare Fusion Pro 10 “Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to”

10th April, 2018

I recently got a new mac and was migrating a VMWare Windows Virtual Machine from my other computer. When starting the virtual machine, I received a random message from VMWare Fusion saying “Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to.”

The fix was rather simple as it was just Apple blocking VMWare from running. To fix it, follow these steps:

Open System Preferences by searching in Spotlight or clicking the gear icon in the dock.
On the top row there is an icon for Security and Privacy – Click that icon
Near the bottom of the screen that appears the following statement
“System software from developer “VMWare, Inc.” was blocked from loading”
Click Allow

Windows 7 & 10 How to Bulk Unblock Blocked Files

Greg

2nd April, 2018

Administration

While setting up a new computer, Windows was throwing up warnings that files transferred from a backup drive might be unsafe. The files were text and images, so the warnings were safe to ignore but the directory had over one thousand files. Rather than unblocking each file manually, Windows PowerShell makes it easy to unblock files in bulk.

Load up Windows Powershell:

Press Win + R on the keyboard to open the Run dialog.
In the Run box, type powershell

For one folder without subdirectories, this snippet will do the trick.“$env:userprofile\Downloads“ tells PowerShell to use the Download folder for the logged in user and unblocks all files in it. Change this to the folder path you need if it’s not the Downloads folder.

get-childitem “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ | unblock-file

1	get-childitem “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ \| unblock-file

If you have sub-directories and need to unblock everything, use the -Recurse flag:

dir “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ -Recurse | Unblock-File

1	dir “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ -Recurse \| Unblock-File

Want to see a report of files to be unblocked before running it? The -WhatIf flag will show you without executing.

dir “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ -Recurse | Unblock-File -WhatIf

1	dir “$env:userprofile\Downloads“ -Recurse \| Unblock-File -WhatIf

How to automatically install gulp dependencies

Greg

2nd November, 2017

Development

I created a website where I’m using gulp to create a minified version and had to switch to another computer. For whatever reason, gulp install wouldn’t install the dependencies automatically, even when using the “npm-install-missing” plugin.

Add this script to the beginning of your gulpfile.js before the requirements, and when you run gulp, it will install the dependencies automatically. Be aware you’ll need to rerun your gulp command after the script completes.

(function(){
    var r=require;
    require=function (n){
        try{
            return r(n)
        }
        catch(e){
            r('child_process').exec('npm i ' + n,function (err,body){
                try{
                    console.log('Module "' +n + '"" not found, installing.\n' + body )
                    return r(n);
                }
                catch(e){
                }
            })
        }
    }
    console.log('""Please re-run gulp.\n' + body ) 
})()

(function(){

var r=require;

require=function (n){

try{

return r(n)

}

catch(e){

r('child_process').exec('npm i ' + n,function (err,body){

try{

console.log('Module "' +n + '"" not found, installing.\n' + body )

return r(n);

}

catch(e){

}

})

}

console.log('""Please re-run gulp.\n' + body )

})()

How to Fix ‘Converter Failed to Save File’ with Excel 2016

Greg

2nd November, 2016

Administration

I recently upgraded to Office 2016 on my Windows 10 desktop and was getting the error “Converter failed to save file” when double clicking on the file along with an “There was a problem sending the command to the program error” every time. I finally had enough with the annoyance to troubleshoot it and figured out a solve.

If you have the same issue, here’s how to fix it:

Open your Default Programs configuration from the Control Panel. On Windows 10, you can hit start, type Default Programs, and it’ll open the app.
Scroll down the list until you get to the Excel formats (XLS):
If you see anything other than Excel as the default, you’ll need to change the default to Excel. For me, the issue was the Open XML Converter not being installed anymore after upgrading to 2016. To change the default, select the format, click the “Change Program” button and select Excel 2016 from the list of apps that pops up and click OK to set the association:
You’ll need to do this for each format in the list to correct it. The most common formats you’ll use are XLS, XLSX, & XLT.

ReportCrash High CPU & How to Disable reportcrash in Mac OSX

Greg

28th September, 2016

Administration

For a while now, all of my MacBooks have run extremely hot and the fans have gone nuts. While troubleshooting the issue, Activity Monitor showed that an app named reportcrash has run very high on the CPU and has killed my battery life. Force quitting the app didn’t help as it would start right back up in a few seconds and climb back to 80-100% usage of the CPU.

What is CrashReporter?

CrashReporter runs in any time an application crashes and it’s designed to saves the application state to aid developers in working out why the app crashed. Basically a process is launching, crashing (and invoking CrashReporter) and then re-launching, repeating this cycle never ending.

How to Identify What’s Crashing

To show which process is triggering this cycle and stop it, CrashReporter is pretty verbose in its logging which makes finding the problem app somewhat easier. Open up the console.app (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app) and look towards the end of your system.log to see what app is crashing.

Unfortunately for me, the problem is a driver by some company called EFI and getting the latest drivers didn’t resolve the issue. The next obvious solution was to disable reportcrash.

How to Disable ReportCrash

Fire up terminal and run the following commands to disable reportcrash:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist

1 2	launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist

How to Enable ReportCrash

If you need to reenable crash report, run the following commands in terminal:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist

1 2	launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist

How to repair permissions on Linux Apache /var/www/html folder

Greg

29th May, 2016

Administration

I recently ran into an issue where I could no longer FTP files to my Linux droplet when multiple users were uploading to the server. The server kept the user as the owner despite me adding them to the www-data group. This fix comes from my ex-boss, James Tomasino who was kind enough to provide some help since I was stumped. I’m sharing in case anyone else runs into the same issue and finds it useful.

You’ll need to fire up terminal, ssh to the server, and then execute these commands:

cd /var/www
sudo chmod 775 html
sudo chgrp www-data html
sudo chmod g+s html

cd /var/www

sudo chmod 775 html

sudo chgrp www-data html

sudo chmod g+s html

+s makes permissions sticky so that all files will inherit from the parent directory. This was the setting I was missing.

Open up /etc/ssh/sshd_config. I use nano so:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

1	sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Hit CTRL+W and look for “subsystem” which is typically located near the bottom of the file. Change

subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

1	subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server -u 0002

1	subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server -u 0002

If you already have files in the HTML folder, you’ll want to run these commands to reset the permissions:

cd /var/www/
sudo chgrp -R www-data html
find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;

cd /var/www/

sudo chgrp -R www-data html

find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;

(98)Address already in use: AH00072: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80 – error

Greg

20th May, 2016

Administration

I recently got handed a new Ubuntu droplet at work to setup and work on. I was going through the typical configuration to lock down the server and go to installing Apache when I suddenly ran into the error

(98)Address already in use: AH00072: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80 – error

I was a little surprised considering I had only run 4 commands total on a brand new installation. If you’re getting this error like me, you’ll need to find out what’s being bound to port 80 and then stop it. Use this command to get a list of anything that’s running on port 80.

sudo lsof -i:80

1	sudo lsof -i:80

For me, it turned out nginx was running and bound to port 80. If you have the same problem, run this command to stop it:

sudo service nginx stop

1	sudo service nginx stop

Now you should be able to start apache.

How to Copy and Paste into the Digital Ocean VNC Console

Greg

18th January, 2016

Administration

I recently signed up for Digital Ocean to test droplets for my development and linux management testing. I was securing the server and setup fail2ban, disabled the root login, and created a user account but forgot to change the user name from root to the user name I selected in my SSH client profile. I ended up locking myself out of the server and had to resort to logging into the admin panel on Digital Ocean’s website and use their browser embedded VNC client to restore my access. I quickly discovered that one of the downsides of using this panel is that you can’t copy and paste commands. Luckily there’s a workaround and you can use the browser console to do sendkeys through Javascript.

Bring up the console in the browser developer tools. Here’s a cheat sheet for keyboard shortcuts:

Browser	Description	Windows	Mac
Chrome	Open Developer Tools and bring focus to the console	Ctrl + Shift + J	Cmd + Opt + J
Firefox	Open Console	Ctrl + Shift + K	Cmd + Opt + K
Internet Explorer	After hitting F12, you have to click the console tab. There’s no direct shortcut to the console tab.	F12	N/A

Paste this snippet into the textbox in the console window:

<del datetime="2016-09-21T17:09:17+00:00">!function(){function t(){window.rfb.sendKey(e.shift().charCodeAt()),e.length>0&&setTimeout(t,10)}var e=prompt("Enter text to be sent to console").split("");t()}();</del>

1	<del datetime="2016-09-21T17:09:17+00:00">!function(){function t(){window.rfb.sendKey(e.shift().charCodeAt()),e.length>0&&setTimeout(t,10)}var e=prompt("Enter text to be sent to console").split("");t()}();</del>

Update 9-21-16

Ruden and Sebastiaan’s pointed out there was a bug in the code above. This updated snippet has support for characters when using shift characters like !@#$%^&*()_+

!function(){function t(){function n(t,e){s=s.concat(RFB.messages.keyEvent(t,e))}var o=e.shift(),s=[],i=o.charCodeAt(),c=-1!=='!@#$%^&*()_+{}:"<>?~|'.indexOf(o),r=XK_Shift_L;c&&n(r,1),n(i,1),n(i,0),c&&n(r,0),rfb._sock.send(s),e.length>0&&setTimeout(t,10)}var e=prompt("Enter text to be sent to console").split("");t()}();

You’ll receive a dialog prompt to enter the copy to paste in. Please note that you need to click on the VNC console and hit enter to execute the command.

Javascript Prompt

If you need to enter more than one command, just hit the up arrow on your keyboard in the console to get the script again for easy reuse.

Sitecore 8 Install Error: “The name you entered is not unique.”

Greg

14th October, 2015

Administration

I was working on my business partner’s computer to help him fix errors with his Sitecore instance for his certification class. He experienced multiple issues with the Sitecore 8 installer on Windows 8 and we went the manual route of deleting Sitecore to install clean and start from scratch. In the process, we:

Deleted the IIS website instance in the IIS Manager
Deleted the databases used by the instance
Deleted the root folder in the filesystem

After launching the installer again, it kept returning the error “The name you entered is not unique.” when naming the Sitecore instance to one previously used. After checking the IIS metabase and a few other typical locations, couldn’t figure out where the Sitecore installer was finding the name since we deleted everything manually. It turns out that the Sitecore executable installer creates a registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sitecore CMS which is used to display information in Windows Programs and Features. This registry key is also checked during the installation process and if a child key with the same name as the one being installed is found, the above error message is shown.

To fix this:

Start -> Run (or Windows Key + R)
Type regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sitecore CMS.
Delete the registry keys containing the information about the previously installed instance.

NOTE: You’ll need to relaunch the installer as it apparently caches the key information.

How to fix “hacked by Moroccanwolf” WordPress site

Greg

9th September, 2015

Administration

A client of mine had their wordpress hacked and when you would load the site, it would simply display a message that said “hacked by Moroccanwolf”. I did some digging and luckily it wasn’t a major hack and they didn’t mess with the posts or other settings as a lot of the hacks do.

Quick Fix

To fix it, you’ll need to connect to your database using an editor of some sort, such as PHPmyadmin.
Once logged in, expand your database on the left.
Click on ‘wp_options’.
On the top right, click the ‘Browse’ tab.
Look for ‘widget_text’ in the option_name field. (For my client, it was at row 90). You should see something similar to this:

<script>document.documentElement.innerHTML = unescape(''%48%61%63%6b%65%64%20%62%79%20%4d%6f%72%6f%63%63%61%6e%77%6f%6c%66%20%26%26%20%61%62%64%65%6c%6c%61%68%20%45%6c%6d%61%67%68%72%69%62%69'');</script>

1	<script>document.documentElement.innerHTML = unescape(''%48%61%63%6b%65%64%20%62%79%20%4d%6f%72%6f%63%63%61%6e%77%6f%6c%66%20%26%26%20%61%62%64%65%6c%6c%61%68%20%45%6c%6d%61%67%68%72%69%62%69'');</script>

Delete the entire tag and this should restore your website. Now remember to change your logins and update wordpress.

How I Figured it Out

Most of the hacks I’ve seen are done through injecting javascript into the database somewhere which either force a redirect or something along those lines. Here’s the steps I followed to find it:

To fix it, you’ll need to connect to your database using an editor of some sort, such as PHPmyadmin.
Once logged in, click on your database on the left. Ensure you’re on the database and not a table.
Click Export.
Leave it to quick and click go.
You should now see a textbox with a mess of SQL commands.
Copy and paste into your favorite editor,
Search for <script> and you should find something that doesn’t belong. In this instance, that was the only thing I found of note.
You’ll want to scan the rest of the database for things that don’t belong. Additionally, you’ll want to replace all the wordpress files and confirm no .htaccess files were created that give hackers write access.

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