Switching Huawei E3131 Hilink to modem mode

Latest Huawei 3G/4G modems come with firmware that implements a feature Huawei calls “HiLink“, transforming the classical PPP dial-up connection to an always-on wireless broadband. This feature is highly useful on Windows operating systems, but will add an extra level of complexity to using the modem on Linux or in …

Samsung Galaxy S III I9300 digitizer/screen replacement

Did you drop your Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300 and crack, smash or shatter your front glass, touch screen and/or LCD? No worries. With the proper tools, the spare parts and a bucket load of patience you will have your phone looking “like new” in no time.

Automatically restart Webmin/Virtualmin in case of failure

Running out of memory sometimes happens on swap-less VPSes, and it seems Webmin (together with its twin, Virtualmin) are among the first processes to die in out-of-memory cases.

Setting up a little script to check for and restart Webmin if it is no longer running is a pretty simple (workaround) solution – but should never replace the proper procedure of adjusting the settings or upgrading the VPS to avoid running out of memory in the future.

Directory listing failed in FileZilla with ProFTPd on Virtualmin

Everything appears normal in the FTP server’s log:
fr01-srv proftpd[5591]: 192.168.0.1 – USER testuser: Login successful.

However, in Filezilla things are different:
Error: Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity Error: Failed to retrieve directory listing

Obtaining administrator access on Huawei HG8247H

My ISP upgraded my connection from VDSL to fiber and gave me new hardware to go with it – the Huawei HG8247H GPON. However, as I am already using a fully configured DDWRT-ed router for all my networking tasks, I needed to turn the Huawei into a media converter and pass the static IP to my second router – not the easiest task as it appears.

The Huawei my ISP uses comes with manufacturer firmware and blank configuration so the default logins of still work, but as soon as its WAN gets connected it grabs the configuration from the ISP and the administrator login changes.

Adding static DNS records on DD-WRT

Ever needed to manually control host/domain IPs using the hosts file? Well, good thing most computers have a hosts file, but what do you do with other devices that do not support such a feature.

If you’re running a DD-WRT router, by using DNSMasq the DNS change will work for all devices that connect to your router, including mobile devices.

How to exclude subfolder from password protection with .htaccess

You sometimes need to password protect a folder or an entire account/website from direct access. That’s easily done with the appropriate .htaccess file in the protected folder plus the mandatory .htpasswd file with the correct user and password combination(s).

But what do you do when you want to enable direct access to a subfolder of the protected folder?

Fixing Abduction! to work with Firefox 36+

Abduction is a great little Firefox extensions that lets you take image captures of websites. Unfortunately, changes added in Firefox 36 made the extension stop working and it now throws out an exception instead: “Not enough arguments [nsIWebBrowserPersist.saveURI]” nsresult: “0x80570001 (NS_ERROR_XPC_NOT_ENOUGH_ARGS)”

The good news is that there is a dirty fix for this problem by editing the extension itself.