Author Archives: phocean

How to stop Firefox from prompting for the client certificate

I am using a client certificate to authenticate against some Apache HTTPS website.

By default, Firefox 3 has a very annoying setting : it will prompt you with a box to select your certificate, every time the browser access to a file.

I quickly realized that there is not setting in the preference tab to change this behavior. That sucks, really !

Fortunately, it is possible to tweak it within the about:config page. Set the security.default_personal_cert entry with Select Automatically instead of Ask Every Time.

But what a dumb behavior !

It is like the alert page that Firefox displays every time a self-signed certificate is used. I am now wondering if the developers really understood well what a certificate is !

Setting Firefox properly for Client certificate

Setting Firefox properly for Client certificate

VMWare Workstation 6.5

I have just upgraded WMWare from version 6.04 to 6.5, and I have to say that it has very nice new features.

The first surprising thing was the file I downloaded. It is now not anymore a tar.gz archive but a .bundle file.

After downloading, as root, just make it executable or start it with sh :

% sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle

It now starts a graphic installer, that takes care of everything. All the compilation process is now hidden to the user.

I was expecting the compilation to fail and that I would have to look for a patch to run on my edge Linux kernel. Indeed, I just compiled 2.6.26 kernel (64 bits) a few days ago.

But nothing like that. the process went smoothly.

However, I was still prudent. Even after a compiling, previous versions almost always required some patch to get full networking to work.

So I gave a try and launch one of my virtual machines. Surprise : all worked out of the box !

For the first time, I even did not need any vmware-any-any patch or any network patched vmmon and vmnet modules to get wifi networking operational.

I also quickly noticed some very nice and fancy features :

  • 3D graphics support
  • more devices supported : fingerprint reader device, audio driver for Vista, …
  • a graphical virtual network settings editor : this utility had been for ages on the Windows version and finally will make your easier on Linux

At last, but not least, the Unity display mode.

Though I am not a Mac user, I believe this can be compared to VMWare Fusion. Anyway, it allows you to display the virtual machines programs within your X session.

Look at this screenshot :

VMWare Workstation 6.5 and Unity

The result is quite spectacular. On my Gnome desktop, I am now able to display some windows from Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Well, this is not yet perfectly smooth or artifact free, but this is already really usable and responsive enough to be used intensively.

Another limit is the operating system support. So far, among my virtual machines, I was able to do it with Windows systems but not Open Solaris for instance.

There must have been more improvements, more or less visible, that I am not aware of. I won’t go for a full review.

I just wanted to insist that if you are a VMWare user,  you really should consider to upgrade for the complete support of the latest kernel and the Unity feature.

It seems that VMWare has listened to the Linux users, or at least is taking it more seriously. Not that they are nice, but the competitors are close (Virtual box, KVM, Xen…) !

Tested the Lenovo support…

… and was quite impressed.

Wednesday evening, I called the support to report that I was not satified with my battery. I had lost 25% of its capacity over less than 8 months.

Thursday morning, I am recalled by someone from the technical service. They first say that the battery is no more under warranty – 1 year long. I guess they say so after checking when the battery was made or sold the retailer. That does not concern the end-consumer like me : the warranty only started when I purchased the laptop, and I still have 4 months of warranty ahead.

As they asked, I send them by fax the bill which proves that, thursday afternoon. Soon after, they recall me again, just to tell me that a new battery is going to be sent to me.

Friday morning, it arrived ! So far, so good !

Next time, I may test it again concerning this issue (not so terrible in fact, and I am reluctant to send back my laptop).

Note to myself

When you want to do such a thing as upgrading the BIOS of your Thinkpad, read the instructions that come with the bootable CD flash utility.

If you think you did, read it again –  and do not interpret them.

It would avoid loosing time with a boot error like :

CDR101: not ready reading drive C

That occurs when you choose the CD player as a temporary boot device (Thinkvantage button and then F3), although it is required to really change the boot order within the BIOS menu (F2) and save this setting.

By the way, I really recommend a BIOS update if you are a happy Thinkpad T61 user : not only it fixes numerous issues with the Intel chipset, but it optimizes power management. I noticed that the fan management has been improved. It is most of time slower than before, so the laptop is more silent.