Root Access

@JourneymanGeek hehe

well I'm SCPing over my .tar.lzos to OVH; should be able to cancel Hetzner today.

@Bob a lot of my compression is using the greatest compression utility of all: rm

Journeyman Geek

eh that reminds me, I need to check on the backup backup off my dad's backup drive/

@allquixotic: compress once, decompress never?

rm has a 0% compression ratio :D

I'm gonna re-set up CrashPlan on my OVH box once I get these .tar.lzos transferred over OH GOD DAMNIT I'M RUNNING SOLARIS

.................wait

Crashplan runs on Solaris?!?!?!?!??!!?!?!?! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Q: What is taking up so much space on my disk, beside the filesystem?

@allquixotic beware Crashplan, it brought me lots of headache once

8

I have only one disk in my computer, a 80 GB SSD. It is formatted as a single ext4 partition (no swap), and all the usual folders are installed on it (I keep lots of data on external media, but /home and all the rest is on the SSD). Today I booted it and I got a message that the drive is full. ...

disk-usage

12:08 PM

@rumtscho haven't had that issue

@allquixotic I guess it depends on what media you have and how they are mounted. And who knows, maybe it has been fixed in newer versions.

@rumtscho could be related to sparse files -- pretty sure crashplan doesn't handle them well

@allquixotic I don'т even know what a sparse file is

@rumtscho т?

Something instantly looked weird about that ;P

@OliverSalzburg Sorry, I have 3 keyboard layouts. Sometimes I hit too few backspaces after I notice I've switched to the wrong one.

12:17 PM

@OliverSalzburg ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴇᴀɴ?

Ah. My first thought was that you pick out random Unicode characters to put into your messages to confuse people ;D

@OliverSalzburg ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ sᴇᴇᴍ ᴠᴇʀʏ ʀᴀɴᴅᴏᴍ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ

I just had an awesome idea for a userscript. brb…

rofl

No, the mystery is simpler: I was typing in English, and needed an apostrophe:
> I don'

But it appeared like this instead

> I donät

This is when I realized that I'm on the German layout, and instead of looking for the apostrophe, switched layouts once

And then the message looked like

> I don'т евен кн

This is when I realized that I've switched to Cyrillic :)

12:55 PM

Aaaargh. I just spent half a day preparing for a bug report, and within 5 min of filing it, the dev said it must be on my side, and closed it.

To be fair, I have no idea on whose side it is, and it is also a strange bug which only appears some of the time, for some users. But he didn't even look into it. And the admin on my side has no idea what could be done either.

And this bug could seriously derail an experiment central to my PhD :(

@rumtscho What software?

@OliverSalzburg Lime Survey

I created a questionnaire, and 60 people were nice enough to fill it just because I said "pretty please"

and it turns out that for 40 of them, the server delivers pages 1 and 2, and then loads "forever" without showing page 3 at all.

Anything in the logs that would indicate a problem?

@OliverSalzburg Not at all. This is what I did with most of the time, looking at the logs.

There are 21 GET requests for an image which appears on the third page.

I assume you can't replicate the issue yourself?

1:09 PM

But 46 answers contain the information which gets submitted when finishing the second page. So they must have clicked "submit". These are not people who decided to jump ship in the middle, there was a technical problem.

@OliverSalzburg No, sadly not. I tried it from different networks, with different browsers, etc.

On the same server, there is another survey, which never showed any problem.

So I don't think that it is a "misconfigured proxy" which was the guess of the developer who closed the ticket.

The survey was created on another (local) installation of LimeSurvey, exported and re-imported. I suspect that the import mechanism may be broken somehow, because I've seen problems with it before.

Now I think I will risk using Lime Survey again. With their official cloud hosting. But recreating the survey by hand, not importing.

I only hope that the people who didn't get to the end will be willing to do it again. I'm not sure they will.

1:35 PM

@allquixotic Yea, I actually need these backups :P

Might be able to trim them a bit later.

Journeyman Geek

2:32 PM

=

o0

?

Sidney

3:04 PM

So what's the opinion on related questions and duplicates? If I have question A, which is related to question B (Which has already been asked), should I open a new question, or add a comment to the old one?

3:39 PM

@Sidney depends on what you mean by "related to"

if it's something that anyone who has Question A would logically want to ask, within reason, you could add a comment, but don't expect your comment to get answered necessarily unless the question has current activity ongoing

if it is on the same subject matter as Question A but covers a different aspect, then ask a new question

the duplicate close reason is only supposed to be used for EXACT duplicates -- meaning, they don't have to be worded 100% the same, but if the answers are precisely the same and one question, re-written in the words of the other question, would be an equivalent question, then it's a duplicate

3:54 PM

hm

would anyone mind if I created a dummy question on meta SU and spammed answers on it to test a userscript?

I suppose I could use the sandbox question on meta SE but that one's already a tad crowded

@Bob go for it -- think of a neat tag to put there so we know not to baleet it

you can self-delete once you're done ofc, but just keep in mind that it'll be in the DB forever

their DB is only a few GB so try not to add too many more GBs ;-p

@allquixotic I might not need it

@allquixotic eh, just wanted to test against that damn live-loading thing

seems like every userscript i write nowadays needs to cope with some live-updating of the DOM

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *clamps hands to face like Macaulay Culkin* I just canceled my Hetzner box!!!!

:O

In somewhat-related news:

This is going to take a while...

@allquixotic was this suffering, or relief?

4:10 PM

@rumtscho relief

relief of a $110/month expense

@Bob I wonder if it would be faster with lrzip (though, you're on Windows -_-)

so many files that there isn't space in the label :D

lol

it's a server backup that contains data going back to the 90s

holy shit

some of it isn't even readable except for the programs on floppies (that are probably unusable by now)

Yes, this is quite high for a recurring expense. Interesting that it's in dollars, I didn't know Hetzner are intercontinental.

bah I hate European DD/MM/YYYY

4:12 PM

@allquixotic bah I hate US MM/DD/YYYY

when the month is less than 12, it's ambiguous (yes, so is MM/DD/YYYY, but at least if everyone follows the same convention it's fine)

and of course everyone must follow the US convention because we have more weapons of mass destruction

and Emperor Obama of the World says so

@allquixotic But the problem is, nobody follows the MM/DD/YYYY convention. At least nobody I know. It catches me unaware all the time when I consume foreign media.

he even raised his hands up over his head shouting "FIRST... GLOBAL... EMPAAAH!!!!" to thunderous applause from the Senate

@rumtscho fortunately, 17/10/2014 is not ambiguous

that's the date on which my server will be canceled :D today

just had a scary thought

what if someone reads the raw blocks after the server gets reprovisioned? do they shred it first?

I better boot into the recovery and shred it.

just --iterations=1

I even started writing 17. Oct. 2014, just to be sure that I won't confuse anybody. And it earned me more than one reproachful stare from paper-based bureaucrats, and one insistance that I re-fill a form.

I wonder if any country uses YYYY/DD/MM

4:16 PM

!!xkcd date

ChatBot John Cavil

Well, the kid's definitely getting the biology geek phenotype.

wrong

!!xkcd 1179

ChatBot John Cavil

ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.

the cat one makes me laugh every time

@allquixotic Do you think anybody has the time to spend on reading your raw blocks? Or did you rent it under the name "Super secret service machine, Western agent name Allquixotic, KGB agent name Vsekihotovich".

@Bob I think Japan does.

4:19 PM

wow.

@rumtscho I'm not one of those electron microscope guys (especially because I don't believe that Hetzner themselves will try to read the data physically), but I certainly think that it would be possible or even likely that a future user of the server might try to access the raw blocks after they get it provisioned (they could request no operating system, even, to keep it from being corrupted)

a simple randomization or even writing /dev/zero onto the disk will eliminate almost all possible issues

shred will be too slow; I'm just running nohup dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda from the rescue environment.

it may not get through ALL the data, but it should at least blank out the partition table and most of the superblocks to make it super, super hard to recover anything useful

depends on when exactly they pull the plug

OK, I finally found where I read this about the Japanese date format. Sadly, it's in a book, and not in a column still-accessible-online.

books.google.de/…

oh, and if they separate the drives that were striped, the data will be permanently unrecoverable

But the author is still publishing columns, and if you don't know her, I highly recommend her. Pure English humour, IT edition. theregister.co.uk/software/stob.

@Bob the new Mac mini has Iris Pro graphics -_- and I think the new Macbook Air has it too

why can't PC have nice things?!

this is Haswell's impl of Iris Pro, I should mention

4:33 PM

fingers crossed for a Broadwell/Iris Pro SP4?

@Bob if that comes out, the likelihood of me getting SP4 would jump to about 98.8%

I'm already targeting SP4 as a potential replacement of my SP1, but Iris Pro would seal the deal

I've determined that SP3 just isn't enough of an upgrade to be worth, but SP4 probably will be.

@allquixotic could you post an answer here with an image?

my tech purchases fall into one of two categories: either low price and amazing value for meh hardware, or high price and meh value for amazing hardware :P

@Bob K.

nope, it doesn't want to work :\

@allquixotic Please delete? :P

there it goes

thanks!

might have to do this again later :\

@Bob do what?

4:40 PM

trying to figure out MutationObserver

pain in the arse

@allquixotic oh, trying to auto-linkify images

@Bob ah, so you don't get a faceful of NSFW at work? :P

@allquixotic nah, someone in the SF chatroom suggested making images clickable

4:55 PM

@Bob The iPad Air 2 looks tempting. Should I buy it? ............................
Wait.
Who is typing these words? ME?
ME?????
Someone commit me to an insane asylum

@allquixotic $500?

@Bob mostly it's because it's a much better multimedia device than Android has come up with so far: lower display latency, lower audio latency, better apps for A/V processing and audio production, Hearthstone, and oh by the way did I mention it can play Hearthstone?!?!? Why yes, I did. But I'll mention it again. It. Can. Play. Hearthstone.

@allquixotic ...can't a Venue 11 play Heathstone?

@Bob probably, but that's 11 inches too big to comfortably hold in my hand

and it'd probably lag because of the bad graphics chip -_-

@allquixotic That's quite literally 1" bigger than the iPad Air 2

4:58 PM

@Bob An inch too far, my furry woodland friend!

I just want omginstant latency on a touchscreen for once, I guess

I have no idea how they do it

neither does Google or Samsung, apparently

@allquixotic it's under 1cm wider

@allquixotic meh, I never really cared much about display latency

and I play twitch games

1 min ago, by allquixotic

I just want omginstant latency on a touchscreen for once, I guess

and screw Metro

@allquixotic and screw iOS even more

@Bob Point. Ish. except for mandatory built-in FDE, awesome latency, awesome battery life, and a bunch of apps I want that I can't get on Android.

I'd never consider an iPhone because I use my phone for way more diverse use cases than I'd use a tablet.

the sideloading ability (and self-developed apps or small-time apps, etc) is a huge feature for me with a phone -- it's a whole life device, not just a fun device

but a tablet is literally just for when I want to play games, watch movies or type in RA at 2:30 AM

Canadian Luke

Ummm... What? @allquixotic, have you been drinking? I believe I just read you wanted an Apple product?

5:07 PM

Gmail, Verizon's custom SMS app, ChatSEy, Tapatalk, Visual Voicemail, Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, Yubico Authenticator, SWTOR Authenticator, ~~McAfee~~ Intel Security, LastPass, Lumiya, Spotify, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Youtube, Audible, VLC, Shazam, Music Speed Changer, Firefox, JuiceSSH, Dolphin, WiFi File Transfer Pro, Wikipedia, Google Docs, Softcard, AudioGuru, GPS Status, Torch, ES File Explorer, Eldhelm, Angry Birds, A2DP Volume, Authy, CPU-Z, Google Earth,

Amazon Instant Video, my bank's app, Pandora, PayPal, SwiftKey, Shazam.

the list of apps on my phone (other than built-in ones)

so many of those would never be allowed on the Apple App Store

or the devs have no desire to put them there

@CanadianLuke But HEARTHSTONE!!!!!!!!!!!! D:

and dropout-free bluetooth! D:

and... Tim Cook! D:

wait. Tim Cook? that doesn't belong there! go away!

Canadian Luke

Tim Chef shouldn't be the CEO...

someone is controlling my mind!

my fingers are typing in my phone number and credit card number on an order form for a dedicated Mac Mini server for $299/mo, but I don't want it! I'm being forced to live the life of a happy Apple customer! DEAR GOD!!!

this is what it must be like when someone gets mind controlled on the battlefield and is forced to shoot his own comrades

I just signed up for an iTunes account!!! D:

@allquixotic ...your RA card is revoked.

suddenly the name "Tim Cook" has a very enticing sound to it, like I want to... obey... NO!

@Bob I guess if I want to obey a master, the only master I'm allowed to obey in RA is @Sathya Nadella

obeying the Church of Microsoft is OK, but obeying the Church of Apple is not ;-)

Canadian Luke

@Bob I can arrange that for him ;)

5:18 PM

Ben Richards was always a Church of Microsoft kind of guy

I'm a Church of Nothing kind of guy, though I lean towards FOSS, unless shiny things entice me

!! s/entice/blind/

ChatBot John Cavil

@allquixotic I'm a Church of Nothing kind of guy, though I lean towards FOSS, unless shiny things blind me (source)

fsf.org/news/ibad_launch

I must CHOOSE!!!! *watches Tim Cook, cornered and wilting, electrocuting Richard Stallman's purple lightsaber*

@allquixotic could you add another answer with image?

Stallman: You are under arrest my lord!
Cook: Allquixotic! I told you it would come to this. The FSF ARE TAKING OVER!
Stallman: THE OPPRESSION OF DRM WILL NEVER RETURN! YOU HAVE LOST!
Cook: NO! NO YOU WILL DIE! *electrocutes* HE'S A TRAITOR!
Stallman: NO, HE IS THE TRAITOR AH!
Cook: I HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE THE ONE YOU LOVE! YOU MUST CHOOSE ALLQUIXOTIC!
Stallman: DONT LISTEN TO HIM ALLQ!
Cook: I CAN'T HOLD OUT ANY LONGER!
Stallman: I AM GOING TO END THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Cook: Weak... getting... weak...!

@allquixotic maybe use that ipad image :P

5:28 PM

@Bob the question was deleted?

@allquixotic I undeleted it meta.superuser.com/questions/8665/test-question-please-ignore

oh. link?

!!itsworking

@allquixotic could you delete the answers now? :P

(I can't delete the Q when numUndeletedAnswers > 1)

5:30 PM

@Bob appropriate YT vid, given the recent discussion :P

thanks!

Q: Is there any file-based db with concurrent per-file user access similar to MS Access but Open Source?

6:02 PM

2

Most time I build simple applications that share data through an MS Access DB through a network drive. However, MS Access in damn slow, does not support common features of SQL, is a pain to automate and makes uses to "explore" my application's data directly. I would like to migrate to an differ...

java sql database ms-access open-source

I have the same problem, minus the "hand it over to IT when we're done" part (it will never be handed over to them)

0

Q: View full image sizes

Inspired by a meta question, here's a script that makes every image in a post also open itself at full size in a new window/tab when clicked. It will ignore any images already manually linked. Please suggest any improvements, or better yet submit a pull request on GitHub. The current version c...

script images posts

@allquixotic ^ that's what I was doing :P

8:24 PM

I've got my router bridged to my modem configured in bridge mode... router is dying and I have a new one on the way... Can't find my ISP password anywhere. Is there a tool or something I can use to extract that or do I have to put up with customer support and call my ISP?

Sathya

@allquixotic we have some sweet stuff coming your way in few days. Hold tight ;)

@Sathya "we" as in Microsoft? O_O

Sathya

whistles nonchalantly

alright, gotta go. last weekend in Helsinki

@SpartanDonut I have a car. It doesn't run. I want to fix it. Is there a tool or something that can fix it?

Your question and mine would both be answered starting with something like "It depends on exactly what ____".

Sorry my methods are unorthodox for you

8:30 PM

Clearly, the tools and techniques to fix a 1931 Ford Model T and a 2015 Tesla Model S are completely different.

I thought I'd see if such a thing is generally feasible before getting into if its feasible for my specific model of router, etc.

@SpartanDonut You just need to be specific. "Modem" doesn't tell me enough.

Unless you are making a completely different point

There is no "generally feasible". It depends entirely on what modem.

Pick any two random router/modem devices out there and you may as well flip a coin to determine whether you can extract the ISP password or not.

Well this is just silly semantics but my personal opinion based on what you said is that yes it is feasible

That said I can certainly provide specifics

8:32 PM

@SpartanDonut Those things are hackable to very different degrees, though. Some are nearly impenetrable short of advanced hardware hacking like removing a NAND chip from the hardware (physically) and re-attaching it to a more cooperative system. Some can be broken into with a USB port.

I have no idea what percentage of the devices are more conveniently hackable vs those that are not.

Netgear WNDR3700v3 firmware V1.0.0.22_1.0.17 router; Westell a90-7500

Okay. Just to be clear, you have no intention of doing anything... "interesting" with that WNDR because you'll be getting rid of it soon, right? That's just a temporary thingy that's in the way?

Westell is in bridge mode so I don't have direct remote access over wireless but I could run down and wire up a laptop to it if need be

Presumably your ISP password wouldn't be stored on the Netgear.

I had to enter it when I set up the netgear was the only reason I thought as much.

8:36 PM

Wait. The Netgear wouldn't let you in until you entered your ISP password? Are you sure it's the same one?

Like, the one you login to your ISP's website with?

Ok... stepping back a minute

Oh, I re-read your sentence; I understand now.

You had to enter it in the modem, when you set up your Netgear. Got it.

lol uhhh

oh man

So the modem is one of those silly modem / router combo thigns

Or no?

Yeah. I recognize the name brand. I used to have one ages ago.

I had the netgear hooked up just directly without bridging it and that caused problems

when I set the modem to bridge mode I couldn't get internet until I configured the internet settings on the router

I'll grab a screen quick

8:39 PM

I'm following you so far.

So on this screen I entered my ISP settings long long ago

So the login and password here are for the internet access

I got much stabler connections when I set up bridge mode and the internet here over just using a direct connection to the modem

@SpartanDonut You really should not need to enter your ISP login details into the Netgear. Like, really really. That info should be stored in the Westell. The Westell makes the PPPoE connection, then shares it over a NAT, say, 192.168.1.0/24. Then you stick the Netgear in bridged mode, and your client devices connected to the Netgear get IPs in that same range.

Maybe I did something backwards then

Because I turned bridge mode on the Westell

It seems like you turned the NAT/DHCP/etc. off on the Westell, which is not correct. The Westell should be providing a local area network subnet and allocating addresses over DHCP. Your end-user computers (laptops, tablets, desktops, etc) will then get IPs on the private subnet of the Westell, even if they connect via the Netgear -- assuming everything's configured correctly.

The Netgear should be in bridged mode.

Effectively your Westell would be the Layer 3 router, the gateway and the modem, while the Netgear would just be a WLAN and Ethernet switch (Layer 2).

Well that's fascinating

8:45 PM

I've done configurations like that before.

With very similar hardware, in fact, except yours is probably several years newer.

Putting the PPPoE on the Netgear just seems wrong in my humble opinion. I mean, it looks like it's possible? But it certainly strikes me as potentially problematic. What if the PPPoE protocols used by the Netgear aren't the optimal ones that the ISP wants you to use? The Westell should have that all configured out of the box.

Right

The interesting thing is how much more stable things became after this - mainly I don't have to powercycle my modem on a regular basis anymore

But yeah ok.

Westell modems still make you power cycle them frequently, do they? :)

I had to do that back on Verizon in the old days.

Here's a random thought: Have you checked with your ISP to see if they are offering any newer modems?

I've not

I mean if you already have a new one, that's fine -- but if there's a newer model available, it could possibly work better.

Yeah the modem has been fine since I did this backwards bridge thing

8:49 PM

Verizon would roll out a new model to its new customers about once every 2 years. If yours is older than 2 years, there's probably a newer one.

Router has started overheating in the last month or so now

@SpartanDonut I find that "backwards bridge" to be rather fascinating. I've never seen a configuration quite like that. Offloading the PPPoE from the modem is either a brilliant hack to fix the stability of those damn Westells, or a gross misconfiguration. One or the other. I can't decide. =D

Lol. Maybe a little of both

But cool. Incredible insight. I'll see what I can do to get a proper bridge set up when the router arrives tomorrow since the modem should still have all the internet information it needs

In the screenshot you showed me, the ISP password is blank. I'm not optimistic about the prospects of recovering it out of the Netgear.

It's masked. I cleared the username and decided it looked weird to have a blank username and a masked password

8:51 PM

However, you could probably recover it out of the Westell modem if you were able to somehow gain telnet or ssh access to it, though I'm not entirely sure how possible that is.

Ohh. Masked. Well, I happen to know that the default firmware on those WNDRs has a telnet daemon. =D

I had to do some stuff in there to install OpenWRT on one, once.

Gee, this may really be possible!

You mean I might be able to keep my backwards bridge without calling customer service? :O

There's a nonzero chance...?

So the story behind all of this is, it's the mother in laws account and we don't really know what the passwords are... and I hate customer support

Mwahahahaaaha.

myopenrouter.com/download/10602/NETGEAR-Telnet-Enable-Utility

Trying to do this without needing intervention from both of the other parties

8:53 PM

I think, if you execute that Telnet Enable Utility, you'll be able to login to telnet to your Netgear.

From there, I'm still not 100% sure what you'd need to do to sniff the ISP password, but as long as it isn't encrypted using some kind of a salt, we should be able to get it.

Fascinating... reading the doc

On the WNDR3700, looks like it gives you root and logs you in with no username or password.

If you get slapped with an authentication prompt, try the same credentials that you used to login to the admin page of the WNDR3700.

Oh. Here's a bunch of docs: wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console

> Open a command line (windows console) window (Press [windows key]+[R] and enter cmd)
Get the MAC address of your Netgear router. You can use either 'arp -a' and use the 'physical address' or look it up on the web interface of your router (Maintenance → Router status → LAN port → MAC Address)
Take the MAC address, remove any minus signs (-) or colons (:) and replace all characters by their upper case representation (a → A, d→ D etc.)
Copy the result of your editing to the clipboard
type telnetenable.exe, then the IP address of your router (e.g. "192.168.1.1"), add another space, paste…

gotta enable telnet client on Windows 8.1 xD

Looks like the app worked / didn't fail though

@SpartanDonut Either that, or use putty. I think putty does telnet. It should.

oh ya good call

I've got that

So I'm not telnet smart... but I'm not seeing what I expect

9:01 PM

what do you see?

I'm used to seeing something that looks more like an actual command prompt

as in the prompt is missing here

and I get no feedback

it looks like the modem is not responding to your telnet commands.

err, router

so the IP of the web interface for the netgear is 192.168.1.1?

yep

modem is 10.0.0.1 if I remember correctly... as I said can't hit that remotely

Try telnetEnable.exe again.

oh hey that looks better

9:09 PM

Do you know your way around a basic Linux shell?

Clumsily

The PPPoE settings may be in /etc/config/network, which is a text file. You can try viewing it with cat or less or vi, depending on what's available.

cat /etc/config/network should at least produce something, unless this is a completely non-WRT firmware...

no such file or directory

Damn.

Poke around /etc a bit with ls and see if you can find anything interesting.

Do you have root? Is the prompt #?

yessir

9:13 PM

Great.

Then it should be technically feasible to retrieve the password.

The config command appears to be useful. config --help or config -h should (maybe) provide some info on how to use it.

config get isp_passwd or config list or something, maybe? I'm feeling around in the dark here.

config not found =/

How about nvram?

yes

OK. How about nvram list?

nvram show got me a huge list of things

9:17 PM

Ah, good!

nvram show | grep pass

Got it

you rock

it was in there? in plain text? :D

Hahahaha. Great.

lots of passwords I recognize yep

This has been fun

Thank you very much

Thank Google. This isn't coming out of my brain.

*closes about 20 tabs*

haha

Yeah I wasn't really sure what to start with

knowing that there was a telnet route into the router definitely would have been a start

9:19 PM

Well, the whole bit about Netgear routers having a telnet backdoor DID come out of my brain.

But figuring out what to do once you're in, that was total luck that I stumbled upon it.

Probably could have continued from there but I appreciate the ongoing support

We're also fortunate that Netgear hasn't locked down the Telnet in "v3" of the router.

Some posts online said that the Netgear's latest kit locks it down so you can't get the passwords that way.

You'd have to factory reset it if you lost the password.

Which then loses the password... lol

Yup

I'm not very surprised that it was this easy. Netgear isn't known for their stellar record on security. Enjoy it while it lasts; this kind of fun hackery won't last forever, I'm afraid. Won't be long til the industry standard is to crypto everything out the wazzoo, with NO backdoors.

I dunno... seems to me that this is a back door than can be locked down by one implementing the network. Netgear would win in my book if they kept it and just made some of it more readily available to sys admins

More apparent that the backdoor exists and requiring them to set up their own credentials, etc. I mean

9:22 PM

Perhaps somewhat ironically, the fact that you had configured your bridging "backwards" has not only helped offload the PPPoE from your Westell -- that which was causing the Westell to choke every once in a while -- AND it has allowed you to recover your ISP password.

Hahaha

Well now I can't decide if I should try the same setup when the new router arrives tomorrow or not

That said the password is now in LastPass

So I can do whatever I want

LastPass rocks.

Honestly? If you can get the new router to do PPPoE, I would. It's either that, or order a new modem from CenturyLink.

Your current Westell can't be trusted with the PPPoE overhead.

Its chip is probably too weak. Or its RAM.

That was the route I was leaning towards trying first. Good reassurance

I really wish they would move off of those anemic little builds for the Westell gateway modems. If they made them well, you wouldn't even need a second box!

They could stick a commodity smartphone dual-core ARM SoC in there and get way better perf.

Even (gasp) a gig of RAM!

Yeah it's a real piece of work

9:25 PM

If you look at the actual specs of those devices, you'll be very disappointed.

It's some kind of MIPS chip with like, 16 MB of RAM.

90s-era stuff, man, I tell you.

Some people get so fed up with these modems and routers that have all the build quality of an incandescent light bulb, that they build a desktop PC or at least a Mini-ITX box (like a NUC, or a Mac Mini form factor), and stick a DSL card in it, and install Debian or Red Hat on it, and configure the whole soup to nuts manually.

I don't blame them. You can get much higher throughput and stability with several gigs of RAM and a modern Core i3 than with an anemic little MIPS.

I used to use Verizon ADSL, but when they didn't bring FiOS to my neighborhood, and brought unlimited data plans and LTE instead, I've been on an aggressive upgrade cadence with my smartphone, and using it as my primary internet connection ever since. It's truly unlimited data, and way faster than ADSL.

Also supports native IPv6, all the way out to the public Internet. =D

Yeah I'm in rural Wisconsin paying for the fastest I can: 5 down / 1 up on a good day

Ouch

And the good cell towers don't reach my house

No Verizon LTE? I would kind of expect you to have it even in rural Wisconsin. It's almost everywhere.

Oh...

very very rural :P

9:30 PM

Yeah. I'm in the "exurbs" I guess (suburbs but a little more sparsely populated; so, not enough people per square mile for Verizon to want to bring FiOS)

Poor guy :P

This deserves a pin for a few days. ^^

Bob'll love it.

I approve