For future reference:

OS X:

/private/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Certificates

/etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/Certificates

Linux:

/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Certificates

Windows:

C:\Program Files\Cisco VPN Client\Certificates

“Profiles” and “Certificates” folders can be copied/moved between different systems to replicate configuration when there are CA limitations or restrictive policies on certificate export/imports.

Let me tell you about serial numbers. These are quite useful to keep handy in case your stuff is stolen. Luckily, for most manufacturers like Dell, IBM, Toshiba and HP, there’s a way to find these without leaving the desk, providing they’re running some sort of Redmond operating system and using WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command). Custom built systems may not have so much useful information, but it’s pretty fun nevertheless to peek inside using WMI.

WMIC is available on Windows XP, Windows 2003 and later versions. To use WMI information on older operating systems, download and install WMI core for Win 9x or WMI core for Win NT 4 from Microsoft’s website.

There are a gazillion values that can be retrieved/changed using WMIC. The availability of WMI information does vary across different versions of Windows and it requires administrator rights to be run.

In Windows 2000, there are around 4000 properties that can be monitored and around 40 that can be configured. Windows XP raises these numbers to 6000 and 140 respectively.

Now, for instance, to retrieve the serial number of a computer, run the following command on a DOS prompt:

wmic bios get serialnumber

Or to retrieve the model name (these can get quite cryptic sometimes)  run the following command

wmic csproduct get name

When WMIC is run for the first time, it may take a little time until all possible properties are inventoried. Subsequent times you run WMIC, it will start immediately.

Got most of this info from http://www.ss64.com/nt/wmic.html

As usual , YMMV and Microsoft’ MSDN full WMI reference may provide some extended reading and reference on the subject.

a) have it within the warranty period
b) have the fellow who brought it from San Francisco make the same business trip in a week

The folks at the Apple Store asked no questions and traded the malfunctioning iPod for a brand new (and shiny) one. I also got a Applecare warranty extension for two more years. Needless to say, Apple representatives in Portugal would deny assistance to the iPod with Applecare as they didn’t accept to repair the iPod inside the warranty period. Y’all know the drill with Apple and Portugal, right? But any other Apple store would accept it. A-N-Y.

Back to today. The iPod was left charging overnight and plugged back in to the computer today to confirm the thesis that the disk was screwed up. Windows didn’t recognize it, Ubuntu didn’t (but the /var/log/messages output is slighty more helpful than its Windows counterpart – which is none). A few seconds later, I was greeted with a constant clicking noise coming from the inside of the iPod. And then it reset. And then it made a face at me. Disk failure. No chance of running the diagnostics. No chance of resetting it. A sad iPod icon begging to be taken to the Apple support site.

The Apple support site doesn’t help at all. Last time it happened to me, I was able to put the iPod in disk mode but unable to make it recognizable by the operating system. Next suggestion: open a support call. Yeah right. As if it was possible in Portugal. By this time, it hit me: I had roughly 10 gigs of pictures on the iPod, absolutely no backups (I was waiting to classify them, tag them and burn them to DVD). I started to panic. Even if I got the warranty thing fixed, they wouldn’t recover what was on the disk.

First thing I thought about was professional data recovery. I gave up after visiting a few websites when I understood it could cost me around 500 euro to recover 10 gigs of data from a malfunctioning hard-disk. My photos are my memories, my memories are priceless indeed, so I was slowly willing to forget a little of the previous 3 months and use the money to buy another non-Apple MP3 player.

Second approach: I remembered something about sticking hard-drives in the freezer for a few hours and then using a very small time-window to reconnect them and copy the data to a safe place. A lot has been said about this method, and even if it sounds strange little scientific, haven’t seen any relevant reports of people claiming it doesn’t work. Some people say the disks remain alive for enough time to copy the data, some say the disk resurrect from the dead and work like a charm from then on. I wondered how many so-called data recovery companies do this on a regular basis and charge a bunch of money for it. Decided to give it a go at home, as it wouldn’t hurt to try.

Third approach: I was beginning to feel a little like the iPod icon: sad, so I challenged google images with something like “sad ipod icon” so I could have a IM buddy icon matching my mood (instead of yet another lolcat). The first hit was Tom Coffee’s website (Spilling Coffee) which described a very unusual and unorthodox method of recovering a dead iPod. He mumbles a little about Apple’s official advices on reanimating dead iPods a.k.a. the 5 R’s: Reset, Retry, Restart, Reinstall, Restore and then introduces a new “R” on the equation. Let me quote him:

I had a broken iPod that was resistent to all the usual methods of repair. If I couldn’t get it fixed I was going to have to send it into Apple. So I decided to do what many of the blogs out there recommended:

Purposely drop my iPod to the floor.

This had worked for many, many other people even though Apple’s website (wisely) doesn’t mention this possible fix. I couldn’t quite bring myself to dropping my $300 iPod to the hard tile floor on the off chance that it would spin or wobble on the way down so I did the next best thing: I held it and slammed it onto a pad of paper on my desk (providing some cushion so I didn’t crack the case), charging port down.

And like mana falling from heaven, the tunes started playing.

Apparently there are really SIX R’s in the Apple repair repetoir: Reset, Retry, Restart, Reinstall, Restore and Ram.

This is a ridiculous method but it works. Tom is earning a little extra money selling recovery kits. I had no time to order mine and dog knows it would probably get stuck in customs or lost in the mail. So I hit it. And the sad face disappeared.

Yes, banging my iPod against a ADSL technical paper brought it back to life.

I’ve lost all my faith in technology. But I’ve recovered 4897 photos and I’m burning them to DVD as we speak…

DISCLAIMER:
This tutorial in based on an original document by Paulo Henriques (in Portuguese) which can be obtained here. This is a mere translation with some comments about my experience.

This is an experimental process. If you brick your GPS by using this hack, it is not my fault, you have been warned. It’s been known to work on most of the devices and the worst thing that happened was a registry corruption which was fixed by re-installing Mapsource.

GPSMaps.de has some topographic maps available free-of-charge generated by publicly available databases (digital elevation model published by the United States Geological Survey) and converted to the Garmin img format which can be loaded to Garmin GPS receivers. These maps provide essential information on the topography for mountaineers and hikers. Contrary to the “topo” line of Garmin maps, these maps will only provide “visual” cues of altitude (contour lines).

There are alternative ways to accomplish this task. Sendmap (available on the cGpsMapper package) can be used to upload these maps to the GPS device, but if you use this approach, you’ll be able to treat these maps as any other Mapsource map (mainly identify which tiles you’ll want to upload) and manage available memory more eficiently, by combining sets of maps from different sources at the same time.

1. Register on http://gpsmaps.de (use the contact form) to obtain a user/password which will let you download the individual map tiles. The user and password will be shown on the browser as soon as you press the submit button. Altough you can use bogus data, it would be nice to fill up the form and thank the map provider for sharing his work with everyone else.

2. On the map selection page, choose the area you want map tiles from. Each european map tile covers a 0.5 degree x 0.5 degree area, so be ready to download a lot of files and to keep track of what you’ve got and what you want. As soon as you ask for the first tile, you’ll be asked the username and password you just got by registering. As an example, Portugal has 59 tiles (around 21Mb of .img files).

3. Once you have collected all the map tiles, you’ll have to prepare them to be used with Mapsource. This can be accomplished in two steps:

3.1. Hacking the registry creating a map entry for the maps you’re about to import:
Just copy/paste the text below into a new file called Topographic.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Garmin\MapSource\Products\669]
Bmap=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\TopographicCustom.img
Loc=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\
Tdb=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\TopographicCustom.tdb

This file is a Windows registry file which will tell Mapsource to use the maps at that specific location. Pathnames and filenames are important. In this example, C:\Maps\GarminCustom is used as a base path for all operations we’ll be performing, and this is the path where Mapsource will, from now on, look for these maps.

3.2. Creating a preview file (.img) and a catalog file (.tdb) for use with Mapsource:
3.2.1. Copy/paste the text below into a new file called Topographic.txt:

[Map]
FileName=TopographicCustom
MapVersion=100
ProductCode=62
Color=32
Levels=2
Level0=14
Level1=13
Zoom0=5
Zoom1=6
MapsourceName=TopographicCustom
MapSetName=TopographicCustom
CDSetName=TopographicCustom
Copy1=Garmin
Copy2=Stan
[End-Map]   

[DICTIONARY]
Level0RGN10=000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level1RGN10=000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level0RGN20=111111111110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level1RGN20=111111111100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level0RGN40=111110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level1RGN40=111100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level0RGN80=111111111111111111111100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Level1RGN80=111111111111111111111100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
[END-DICTIONARY]  

[Files]
img=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\20094669.img
img=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\20094668.img
img=C:\Maps\GarminCustom\20094667.img
[END-Files]

This file will be the configuration file for CGpsMapper. Edit the [Files] section, adding one line matching the map filename for each map you’ve downloaded before. Save it on the same folder the maps are (C:\Maps\GarminCustom).

3.2.2 Download CGpsMapper here.
3.2.3 Open up a command prompt, change to the C:\Maps\GarminCustom directory and execute the following command:

cgpsmapper.exe pv C:\Maps\GarminCustom\Topographic.txt

CGpsMapper creates a lot of output. Look out for error messages such as missing files. If everything went right, you should be having by now two new files at the current directory: TopographicCustom.tdb and TopographicCustom.img (these files are the same referenced on the registry file you created before).

4. Make sure all the files are in the right places. For simplicity and consistency, I opted to put them all on the same place (C:\Maps\GarminCustom)

5. Backup your registry (just in case) and then double-click the registry file you created on step 3.1 and import the new setting into the Mapsource configuration. The next time you open Mapsource, you’ll have a new set of maps you can download to the GPS.

2. Uncompress it and change to the directory it creates

bruno@sushi:~$ tar xvfz vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.8.00.0490-k9.tar.gz
bruno@sushi:~$ cd vpnclient

3. Get the header files for yout current kernel version, you’ll need them to build the binary

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

4. Compile (there will be a few warnings)

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ make

5. Install the VPN client

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo ./vpn_install

6. Create a VPN profile entry file (you can also migrate it from a previous Windows instalation – it’s a .pcf file sitting inside your Installation Path/Profiles directory) on /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles/

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo cp /disks/hda1/Program\ Files/Cisco/VPN\ Client/Profiles/corporate.pcf /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles/

7. You probably had it configured to start at boot time, but start the VPN Service anyway

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start

8. If your infrastructure uses certificates to authenticate you, you’ll need to import the root and user certificates you’ve previously had exported.

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo cisco_cert_mgr -R -op import -f /disks/hda1/root_certificate_export.cer
bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo cisco_cert_mgr -U -op import -f /disks/hda1/user_certificate_export.cer

9. Connect

bruno@sushi:~/vpnclient$ sudo vpnclient connect corporate


Tested on Ubunty Dapper 6.06 with Kernel 2.6.15-27-386