Turning my “iPod Touch” back into an iPhone
Short version: Vonage Mobile + iPhone = WIN!
Tolstoy version:
A few weeks back I received an iPhone 2G as a gift. My wife and I had originally bought it for my father-in-law when the iPhone first came out. He lives in Toronto and had the phone jailbroken so he could use it on Rogers' cell network up in Canada. Somehow or another the phone's firmware got updated which killed the jailbreak on the phone and he could no longer use it on the Rogers network. Well, not being a very technical guy, he thought he broke the phone. He went out and got himself a brand new iPhone 3G S and gave the 2G to me.
He knew that I would figure out a way to get it working again and he was right. After I figured out what happened to the phone to begin with, I simply upgraded to the 3.0 firmware and jailbroke the phone. Well, I don't have AT&T. In fact, I'm a Sprint customer, so I can't use it as my cell phone. Once I hacktivated the phone, I went ahead and started using it as another iPod Touch. My 2nd Gen iPod Touch is only 8GB and this one is 16, so I loaded it up with music and put it in the car (my car's radio has an iPod cable). Well, I really like the iPhone and was trying to figure out a way that I can use this thing to make calls. There's tons of VoIP apps out there, but none of them gave me the clarity I was looking for. I even tried using the Skype app and while I sounded great to the person I was calling, they sounded like crap to me. Enter Vonage Mobile.
I've been seeing commercials for Vonage Mobile for a few weeks now. It talks about how low it's international rates are and I got to wondering how it would work for domestic calls. The info in the app store said nothing of domestic calls, so I downloaded it anyway to give it a shot.
Setup was simple. When asked for my iPhone's phone number, I entered my Google Voice number. It called that number to verify and it simply went to my Treo Pro. Once everything was up and running, I made some test calls to my wife and best friend. The sound quality was amazing on both ends and best of all, domestic calls are FREE! Granted, I can't use this thing as a "real" cell phone because Vonage only works over WiFi, but when I want to call someone that I don't want to have my cell number I can use the iPhone so they get my Google Voice number. It'll also come in handy when I'm charging my Treo Pro or something. I'll figure out a way to use it pretty often.
One thing that is cool about this is if you have the cheapest plan that AT&T offers for your iPhone, you can use Vonage to make your phone calls while you're at home or around a hotspot and NOT eat up your minutes! I don't think that Vonage is advertising that you can make free domestic calls from their app, so I just thought I'd pass the info along!
Also, if setting up QoS after you do this, the ports are 5060-5062.
Western Digital MyBook World Edition Hacks
I know that I've been moving further and further away from the main purpose of this blog, and that's Cisco networking and security. I'm putting this here so I can remember how to do this stuff later and have a place to look! The MyBook World Edition is a great device that you can do tons of stuff with. It runs Linux, so just about anything you can do with Linux, you can do with this device.
First off, you need to enable SSH on your NAS. There's a few different ways of doing it. Martin Hinner was the original hack. I've used this method before and it works just fine. There's also a slightly cleaner way of doing it found here. I have both scripts on my server should something happen to either one of those.
Martin Hinner Original Hack
http:///auth/firmware_upgrade.pl?fwserver=gregledet.net/mybook/firmware.php
Slightly Cleaner Hack from Mybook-Linux
http:///auth/firmware_upgrade.pl?fwserver=gregledet.net/mybook/enablessh.php
For both of those, simply plug the link into your browser, add the IP of your MyBook, and it will tell you that there's new firmware available. Click the button that tells you Download and Install. It's not going to take the 30 minutes that it'll say on your screen, it should take around 5 or 10. With the Hinner hack, you may get an error message saying that the firmware update failed. This happens with firmware 2.00.15 and higher. Don't fret, the script did run. You'll be fine. Continue on with the instructions.
- *NOTE* If you have an SSH client, great. If now, download PuTTY. I use it and it works perfectly fine. Login with the username "root" and the password "root".
- *NOTE* If you don't know how to use vi, or if you are uncomfortable using it, you can get a program like WinSCP that will allow you to secure FTP into the device. Then you can download the files to your computer and use the editor of your choice to edit the file (notepad works fine) and upload the new file back to the device.
If you use the Martin Hinner hack, after you install the "firmware", you need to make SSH permanent by editing the /etc/inittab and adding the following under the "# Startup the system" part of the file.
::sysinit:/usr/sbin/sshd
The other way should turn it on permanently by itself. After you add that line for the Hinner hack, or once the "firmware" is installed and you can SSH into the device, you need to reboot.
[root@MyBookWorld ~]# reboot
Now you have SSH permanently installed on your MyBook World Edition!
One error that I ran into was not being able to get mplayer CE to connect via samba to the network share on the MyBook. To fix this I had to enable Microsoft Directory Service on the device. First, you need to add the following lines to the /etc/services file.
microsoft-ds 445/tcp #Microsoft Directory Service microsoft-ds 445/udp
Add this after "snpp 444/udp # Simple Network Paging Protocol" and before "saft 487/tcp # Simple Asynchronous File Transfer". Do your best to make it fit in the file. By that, I mean use the tab key.
After this, you need to edit the /etc/inet.d file and add:
microsoft-ds stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd smbd -s/etc/smb.conf -l/var/log -d0
I would just add it on the second line or at the bottom. I don't think it matters.
One more file to edit. This time you need to add the following to the /etc/smb.conf file under "[global]" after "max log size = 1"
smb ports = 445
A quick reboot and you're done! This will have you connected to your Wii to stream movies with no problem.
There are tons of sites out there that have great information on hacking your MyBook World Edition. With the following 2 sites, you should be able to do whatever you want with it.
Martin Hinner's site on Hacking the MyBook World Edition
MyBook World Hacking at wikidot.com
Those sites should answer any questions you have about anything having to do with Hacking the MyBook World Edition!
DD-WRT and the WRT310N: A how-to
A few months back I was playing around with my WRT54G2 and ended up bricking it. Don't worry, if you follow the instructions in my post on upgrading the WRT54G2 to DD-WRT, you'll be fine. I was trying to put firmware on there that didn't fit and I screwed up. Well, after I bricked it, I decided to pick up a WRT310N from Best Buy. I think I paid around $100 for the router, and after bricking the last one, I decided to not upgrade it to DD-WRT. Well, that lasted until about an hour ago.
I missed the fun stuff that DD-WRT gives me. After doing some research on putting DD-WRT on the WRT310N, I decided that it wasn't very likely that I would brick the thing, so I got to work on it. First thing you are going to need is the firmware files. You can download everything you need here. In that zip file you're going to find multiple version of the firmware. I'll get to those in a second. Now, let's do this step by step.
1.) DO A HARD RESET BEFORE YOU FLASH FIRMWARE. This does not mean hitting the reset button and saying you are done. This means doing the 30-30-30 reset. To do a 30-30-30 reset you must push the reset button with your router powered on. Hold it for 30 seconds with the router powered on. STILL holding it, pull the power cord for 30 seconds. Still holding it, plug the router back in and continue to hold the reset button for 30 more seconds. You will have held the button for a full 90 seconds without releasing it. You will not get a password renewal page as you have stock Linksys firmware on the router still.
2.) Plug a cable into the lan port of the router and your computer, and disable any wireless to the computer. You may have to set a static IP on your computer (I did). Set the IP on your computer to 192.168.1.2, subnet of 255.255.255.0, and the default gateway of 192.168.1.1.
3.) Go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser. The stock Linksys username is "admin" and the stock password is "admin".
4.) Go to the "Administration" tab and click on "Firmware Upgrade".
5.) Browse to the dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt310n.bin file that is part of the .zip file I linked to at the top of this post. YOU NEED TO INSTALL THE MINI FIRST! You CANNOT install the standard yet.
6.) Click on the upgrade button and WAIT for the upgrade successful message. Give it some time and don't be so impatient. I have received too many emails and comments from people that get impatient and start messing with stuff before the flash is complete.
7.) Power cycle your router. (very important) WAIT until you can relogin at 192.168.1.1. This should take around 20 seconds. If it takes longer, it takes longer. Once again, don't get impatient.
8.) Once the Web GUI for DD-WRT comes up, you will be asked to change your username and password. Do this immediately.
You can now upgrade to any generic dd-wrt build except Mega and Micro, or you can just leave the mini on there. The Wiki says that you need to do a hard reset before and after flashing to new firmware, but I didn't have any problems without doing a hard reset between the mini and the standard. NEVER re-use a configuration file from a previous build or another router. Reconfigure from scratch.
Now, about the files in the .zip file. I have included a multitude of firmware packages that will run on this router. I have the standard, usb, VoIP, and VPN. All of these have different functions. I originally put the standard version on and ran into some issues because the Port Forwarding has a bug in it. You can't add ports to forward! Once I put the VPN version on, it solved the Port Forwarding issue. So, if you have to do a lot of Port Forwarding on your router, I suggest using the VPN version that is included in that .zip file.
I hope this guide helps you out. I haven't had any problems with it yet, and if I do run into issues, I'll be sure to post them here. Let me know how your upgrade went in the comments below!
-Greg
***EDIT***
I have run into 1 issue so far. I started messing around with the router trying to set up different things on it. When I really started banging on it and resetting it, I was having trouble getting an IP address over the WAN link. Granted, all this took was rebooting the router and the cable modem, but I felt like I should let you guys know.
ASA WebVPN Base Config
I have to do this pretty regularly, so I thought I'd share it here with you guys. It's pretty straight forward for you CLI junkies. Now, this is just a BASE config, so don't think this is the end-all, be-all of WebVPN configs. Of course, change the VPNPool to your own subnet.
ip local pool WebVPNPool 10.10.7.100-10.10.7.200 mask 255.255.255.0
webvpn
enable outside
svc image disk0:/anyconnect-win-2.3.0254-k9.pkg 1
svc image disk0:/anyconnect-macosx-i386-2.3.0254-k9.pkg 2
svc enable
tunnel-group-list enablegroup-policy WebVPNPolicy internal
group-policy WebVPNPolicy attributes
dns-server value YOUR.DNS.IP.HERE
vpn-tunnel-protocol svc
group-lock value WebVPNAccessProfile
split-tunnel-policy tunnelspecified
split-tunnel-network-list value Split_Tunnel_List
default-domain value yourdomain.local
address-pools value WebVPNPool
webvpn
svc ask none default svc
hidden-shares none
file-entry disable
file-browsing disable
url-entry disabletunnel-group WebVPNAccessProfile type remote-access
tunnel-group WebVPNAccessProfile general-attributes
default-group-policy WebVPNPolicy
tunnel-group WebVPNAccessProfile webvpn-attributes
group-alias WebVPN enable
Pretty simple, huh. Have fun with it!
-Greg