Showing posts with label windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label windows. Show all posts

Monday, May 07, 2012

Trying to get LOL to run from behind firewall, and copy


Right, so this is my first post in a series in the hope to get LOL (League of Legends) to run from a non-administrator, behind a firewall PC.

Ok, so bandwidth is a concern, as I don't want to raise too many concerns.  I copied LOL from my home PC folder and extracted some registry keys I thought might be appropriate, though RIOT seems not to be too dependent on the registry (good boys! I prefer it this way).  This is to reduce the bandwidth of actually downloading and patching the game.

Step one, run it... Oops... Firewall blocks it.  It complains of no HTTP access.  Ok, so I have access to a 3rd party external PC that I can tunnel through, but experience tells me I will not have sufficient speed through there to have a decent speed.  So I'll go via my own phone or 3g modem.

To do this I had to try to get my phone to tether (android Samsung Galaxy S+ --- it is remarkably hard to tether USB... strange anyway)...  For this I had to download the USB drivers, which I got here.

I disconnected the LAN connection (This ensures that I use the correct connection) Obviously this breaks all LAN stuff like mapped network drives etc. Next I check that the new connection is working... For this I just ping www.google.com from a command shell.  (Success, and pretty low pings too! 55ms average).

Then I run it...  (I run the lol.launcher.exe.)

It complains could not start as d3dx9_39.dll was not found... :-(((  Ok, Dx9 is 95mb... Will have to find out from someone if we already have that somewhere, as I don't want to download 95mb from here (or my phone)...



Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Git via a http proxy on windows

I found this tutorial on line (there are several ones similar to this one). But that didn't work for me.

Reason being that our proxy is more adamant at asking for the password than most. So what worked for me was:

git config --global http.proxy http://[username]:[password]@[proxyaddress]:[port]


Obviously, everytime you update your password you'll need to update your global proxy setting.
Port is usually 80, or 8080.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Linux vs Windows (the old days, and now)

In the old days, (lets say 8 years ago)... most hardware didn't work on linux except with a LOT of work. In those days, stuff used to "just work" on windows. However, these days, things don't "just work" on windows... You need to install drivers (back then windows had about a list of 100 vendors per device, and had a something that should work with your hardware)... These days, you need to download a driver from the internet (which you may had to do then too - but then it was 1mb), and they come pricy when it comes to bandwidth. 45mb for a driver? You must be f#%king kidding me... Wait... you have a hardware abstraction layer you have to connect to... how hard can it be? 45mb?!!! The *whole* linux kernel is less than that (I believe... I think it's 27mb).

I'll be just naming the product I have in mind here... HP OfficeJet 4255 all-in-one. I think it's a shame that driver sizes has increased as much as they did. I don't know whether to blame windows or the companies, but the bottom line is: linux does it with much less bandwitdh, and probably much less effort.

The fact is just that linux is getting with the hardware curve, and windows is almost falling behind it. (And the vendors creates the drivers themselves!)

A vista driver 163mb (same product)... That's 3/8 of my cap of a month.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

What linux *must* change

I don't want this to be a tech blog, and it will never be... Anyway...

I've been an advanced computer user (programming, modifying, etc) for more than 20 years now. I've worked on Apple II, DOS (from 3.0-the end), several Windowses (95,98,2000,NT,XP,Vista), and several linux distros (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Red Hat, Gentoo). And there is this part on it that totally gets me confused and not wanting to explore...

THE ROOT DIRECTORY:
/bin
/boot
/cdrom
/dev
/etc
/home
/initrd
/lib
/lost+found
/media
/mnt
/opt
/proc
/root
/sbin
/srv
/sys
/tmp
/usr
/var


Hello? Can't we use a "little" more descriptive names?

/bin Ok, so by now I know this is binaries... but which binaries? I'll tell you one thing... ALL the binaries are not there. (Also please note... not a recycle bin - shouldn't be "emptied".)
/boot is good. Like it keep it.
/cdrom... well, it's good enough on it's own... almost like D:\
/dev devices maybe? This isn't perhaps the development libraries? (I'm trying to convey a point...)
/etc well, this is where it all started. What is /etc? What's the difference between that and /usr... and /usr and /home? I've tried to explore it, but it's got about 2 gizillion "files" in it... Windows has "Program files" where the space messed everything up for the first 2 or three years... but one thing I can say is that it's descriptive.
/home I know now. It's good, and can stay. But what is /usr then?
/initrd I have no idea. Something with initialization. But it's not part of /boot.
/lib This I know is libraries. Thinking of it as a literal library may make it easier to accept the total levels of chaos in there... (sorted chaos, but to the untrained eye, it is chaos) *phew* and don't get me started with the cryptic library names.
/lost+found Well, at least it's descriptive. I have no idea how to use it... or what even goes in there. But it's descriptive.
/media This makes sense, and wasn't there years ago. It's a good addition. And in a way makes /cdrom unneccasary.
/mnt GRRRR... I know now (ok for about 12years now) what is a "mounted" device. But we have media now thank you... /mnt or /media... why both?
/opt I dunno... I think it's new from the old days, and I assume it's options. Why doesn't it then go into /home?
/proc Again... No idea. Procedures? Processes? No idea, never visited there.
/root Okay... I know what / is... /root? I assume it's root's /home folder?
/sbin ... Uhmmm /bin is binaries... sbin? No idea.
/srv This one is new to Hardy. I assume it's server stuff. Dunno, don't care.
/sys *sigh* what is in here? Must be "system" stuff... but what isn't covered in /dev /opt /proc /boot /initrd?
/tmp Now here's one I can identify and understand. We don't even need an "e" because the data is so temporary we don't have time for the "e". So /tmp can stay, I'll be forever grateful.
/usr Well... see the comments on /home and /etc
/var No idea... Variables?


A fresh windows (vista, XP, etc... /etc?) install has about 5-8 "folders" in the root. It "hides" all the stuff that I don't want to know about. And it all looks clean and understandable.

Please Mr. Shuttleworth or Mr. Torvalds, please, please can we make this part a bit easier?