Friday 7 December 2018

Lenovo Thinkpad E480 Won't power off

A colleague presented me with his laptop today, and an unusual problem.
It was powered on, according to the light on the power switch, however there was no video and, the strange part was that we were unable to power it off.

Regardless of how long we held the power button, it just would not switch off.

Most of the folks on the forums seemed to have issues with powering on, not off. Checking the Hardware maintenance manual indicates that this model should have an emergency reset hole, but I believe that to be lies. 
We certainly couldn't find it, and had to resort to undoing the screws on the case and using a spudger to carefully pry the case apart.

Exposing the motherboard enabled me to locate the battery and I was able to unplug it for ~10 seconds. Reconnecting it (it just pulls in/out) was enough to sort the problem and the machine (reassembled!) now boots and shuts down okay.


Monday 19 November 2018

Hylafax Job Purge

I always forget how to purge the Hylafax job queue, thereby removing all outstanding jobs.
To delete the whole lot, you need to use the faxrm job, and on my servers this needs to be done as the fax user...

su - fax
faxstat -s

Have a look and figure out what the range of job numbers is (in broad terms).
Delete them:

faxrm $(seq 1 100)
faxrm $(seq 36500 37100)
Job 37073 removed (from doneq).
Job 37074 removed (from doneq).
Job 37076 removed (from doneq).
Job 37075 removed (from doneq). Job 37077 removed (from doneq).
Job 37080 removed (from doneq).
Job 37078 removed (from doneq). Job 37079 removed (from doneq). Job 37081 removed (from doneq).
Job 37082 removed (from doneq).
Bournemouth Collegiate School Swimming Pool

The school have apparently got a nice pool, where you can get lessons and your child can learn to swim, however the entrance to the facilities are classified. Top Secret - eyes only.


I'm going to bust open the mystery of how to get in, think of this post like wikileaks for BCS!


Park in the street, go through the gate to the minibus parking, and follow the gravel path and to the right of the main school building.


Why the school don't sign-post this is beyond me, nor does it obviously appear in any Google search results... Until now.


Happy 🏊