Technology Insights

2001 Honda Civic: Air Conditioning & Power Locks Stopped Working And Emergency Brake Light On

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I primarily write about computer hardware and software on this site however the intention has always been to write articles that assist people in resolving problems. A couple days ago my wifes car, which is a 2001 Honda Civic, started having multiple problems all at the same time. These problems included the air conditioner compressor not kicking on, the power locks not working, the emergency brake light was constantly on, and the dome light no longer came on when the doors were opened however the dome light itself still worked. After a little research I found out that all of these issues combined point to the MCU (Multi-Control Unit) being the problem. The bad part is the MCU is built into the fuse box so below is information on what I had to do to replace the fuse box.

Technology Errors

Litespeed PHP: configure: error: xml2-config Not Found. Please Check Your libxml2 Installation

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While compiling PHP on a Litespeed web server this evening I ran into multiple issues one of which related to the libxml2 package on the server. This can be confusing because on the server libxml2 was installed. Below is more information regarding the error located in the Litespeed Admin detailed log report which can be easily seen while compiling PHP from the web interface as well as information on what needs to be installed to resolve the error.

Technology Insights

CentOS Yum: Disable A Specific Mirror

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Installing a bunch of packages on a CentOS server today I ran into an issue where the CentOS Base mirror I was using was incredibly slow. First I checked to make sure that the yum-fastestmirror plugin was installed which it was. Next I attempted to clear the fastest mirror plugin cache by running “yum clean plugins” but I ended up with the same exact CentOS Base mirror yet again. Follow the directions below to disable a specific mirror from yum.

Technology Insights

Overclock NVIDIA G210M & NVIDIA 9400G M GPU’s In A Dell Studio XPS 1340

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This weekend I was investigating the capabilities of the two NVIDIA graphics cards in my laptop and a password cracking application called oclHashcat. The oclHashcat application uses OpenCL, the Open Computing Language, to utilize the processing power of your graphics cards GPU’s to crack passwords. My laptop is a Dell Studio XPS 1340 which utilizes Hybrid SLI technology to offer a good amount of graphics power while using the least amount of battery life possible. The laptop accomplishes this by mostly using an NVIDIA graphics card, which is a NVIDIA 9400G M, that is installed on the motherboard and only calling the second graphics card, which is a NVIDIA G210M, when it needs to render something in say 3D or higher quality than the 9400G M is equipped to handle. One thing I happened upon during my research was an NVIDIA utility that will easily allow you to overclock your NVIDIA graphics cards which I describe in more detail below.

Information Security

Install oclHashcat On Windows 7 With NVIDIA GPU, Update Nvidia Drivers

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I have been using Hashcat and oclHashcat a lot in recent weeks but have been limited to primarily using it on Linux servers so I decided to give it a shot on a couple Windows machines. Below I describe how I got oclHashcat operational on Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit on a desktop computer with a NVIDIA 9600GT GPU as well as operational on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit laptop with NVIDIA 9400G M GPU and a NVIDIA G210M GPU. Below is information on what needs to be done to get oclHashcat working on Windows 7.