Cisco VPN - Reason 442: Failed to enable Virtual Adapter

You are running CISCO VPN client on your Windows machine and suddenly while connecting one the listed VPN servers, you are presented with this error.

Reason 442: Failed to enable Virtual Adapter

You tried very hard and still unable to connect even after rebooting your machine. This has happened to me two times. First time this error got resolved however, I didn’t note down steps that were required to resolve this issue. Yesterday, while connecting VPN I faced with same error again and decided to jot down steps to get around this error ‘Reason 442: Failed to enable virtual adaptor’

Below are the steps that works perfectly on my machine with Windows XP operating system. Please don’t curse me for not using latest Windows OS :)

+ Enable CISCO Network adaptor from network connections 

+ Right click on it ->Navigate to properties –> Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) from General tab –> and again Click Properties

+ Now set it to receive IP address automatically by selecting “Obtain IP address Automatically”

+ Press OK and again ‘Repair’ this connection by right clicking same Network adaptor.

+ Once this whole process completes, disable the same network adaptor

And voila! I could connect to my VPN successfully using CISCO VPN client. If there is any other solution to solve this issue then do let everyone know in comments below.

FTP file upload using shell script on LINUX/UNIX

FTP file upload is not a big task. It is easy to upload file from command line as well as using free X window based FTP clients such gFTP. However, it is often required to automate FTP file upload task using some kind of scripts such as bash. Below is the subroutine in bash that I often use to upload log files to FTP server.

---------------------------------Start----------------------------------->

###Accepts following arguments
### 1. FILE TO UPLOAD
### 2. HOSTNAME TO FTP
### 3. USER NAME
### 4. USER PASSWORD
###
uploadLogs(){ 
     
    FILETOUPLOAD=$1
    HOSTNAME="$2"
    USERNAME="$3"
    PASSWORD="$4"
    ftp -dvin $HOSTNAME <<EOF
      quote USER $USERNAME
      quote PASS $PASSWORD
      mkdir $PLATFORM
      cd $PLATFORM
      binary
      hash
      put $FILETOUPLOAD
      quit
    EOF 
    
}

<--------------------------------End------------------------------------

Bash subroutine above is almost self explanatory. Do you use any other mechanism to automate FTP session or FTP file upload task? If yes then let everyone know in comments below.

Use Vs Require in PERL

This is the next one for differences in Use Vs Require that adds to my series of posts such as  Differences IPv4 Vs IPv6, Differences Routing Vs Routed protocol, SMTP Vs ESMTP, Load Testing Vs Stress Testing and IMAP Vs POP3.

Use	Require
Loads module at compile time	Loads module/libraries at runtime
Imports symbols/semantics from module only one time	Avoids redundant loading of ‘require’d files/symbols multiple times
Errors can be handled inside module itself.	Terminates program if there are errors in ‘require’d file or if file is not found.
Use Module; equivalent to, BEGIN {   require Module;    import Module ; }	require ‘Module.pm’
Does not require file extension to use file	Requires file extension (.pm) to ‘require’ file.

If you are aware of any improvements to above differences or want to add to the above list then please post your comments below.

IMAP Vs POP3

Below is another one for differences in IMAP Vs POP3 that adds to my series posts such as  Differences IPv4 Vs IPv6, Differences Routing Vs Routed protocol and Load Testing Vs Stress Testing.

IMAP (4)	POP3
Stands for ‘Internet Message Access Protocol’	Stands for ‘Post Office Protocol 3’
Uses port TCP:143	Uses port TCP:110
RFC 1730	RFC 1939
Allows email client to access/ manipulate messages on a server	Allows email client to download emails locally
Saves bandwidth as only email headers are displayed in client.	Consumes bandwidth as entire email message gets downloaded
Since messages are stored in server, email messages are accessible from anywhere	Email message can be viewed from the machine where email was downloaded.

If you are aware of any improvements to above differences or want to add to the above list then please post your comments below.

SMTP Vs ESMTP

Following trends of my previous posts Differences IPv4 Vs IPv6, Differences Routing Vs Routed protocol and Load Testing Vs Stress Testing, below is another one for differences SMTP Vs ESMTP.

SMTP	ESMTP
Stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol	Stands for Extended Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
First command in SMTP session: HELO techsutram.com	First command in ESMTP session: EHLO techsutram.com
RFC 821	RFC 1869
SMTP ‘MAIL FROM’ and “RCPT TO’ allows size only of 512 characters including <CRLF>.	ESMTP ‘MAIL FROM’ and “RCPT TO’ allows size greater than 512 characters.
SMTP alone cannot be extended with new commands.	ESMTP is framework that enhances capability to extend existing SMTP commands

If you are aware of any improvements to above differences or want to add to the above list then please post your comments below.

What is software quality?

There are two parameters that define software quality or quality in general.

+ Quality of design – product developed according to well defined specifications and requirements that meets customer demands

+ Quality of conformance – product conforming to the design specification and requirements.

Quality of any product differs the way it is used ,i.e. it is more about perception than measurement if we consider popular definition of quality. However, if we want to improve product quality then it has to be measured and subsequently improved.

Online C++ open courseware

Found an online open courseware for C++ from university of Southern Queensland. Posting it for my own reference.

Go to Object-Oriented Programming in C++ courseware.

SimDK: a virtualization simulator and emulator

Those who deal with virtualization development and testing should find simdk very useful.  Check out following simdk video at YouTube.

It works not only as simulator but emulates well known other hypervisors such as Hyper-V or Citrix Xen.

Original blog entry at akutz’s blog. Below is video presentation for simdk.

It can be downloaded from http://simdk.sourceforge.net/. I haven’t tried it yet personally but its true piece of excellence.

Load Testing Vs Stress Testing

Similar to my previous posts, Differences IPv4 Vs IPv6 and Differences Routing Vs Routed protocol, below is difference between Load Testing and Stress Testing.

Load Testing	Stress Testing
Finds out application behavior under normal or predefined workload conditions	Finds out application behavior under extreme workload conditions
Does not aim to break application under test	Aims to find out breaking point for application under test
Finds out bugs such as memory leaks, buffer overflows	Finds out unpredictable issues that application might encounter
Ensures performance baseline established during performance testing.	Helps find out fault tolerance and recoverability for your application when it fails or breaks.
…	…

Its very basic but useful. I will be adding points to same post as and when necessary if required.

Whitepaper on “hacking oracle from the web”

Last month 7safe blog has posted whitepaper about hacking oracle from the web. Document describes different techniques that can be used to attack Oracle from web.

It can be downloaded from this URL. 
Direct link to this whitepaper on “hacking oracle from the web”.