Surface Pro 3 & Ubuntu Tip

Monday morning is always a bit of a struggle and it seems my SP3 was really feeling it this morning.

It refused to recognise either the SP4 Type Cover or the SP3 Type Cover during boot and OS load. Normally I'm use to swapping out to the older type cover for Ubuntu (real shame - SP4 Type Cover is a massive improvement) when the two stop talking but today...nothing.

No matter how much I shouted, cursed, cleaned the connectors, pleaded or bargained with it, the device would not recognised the keyboard.

This post is to potentially save someone else out there the frustration of the fix - which I found myself as none of the posts out there seem to fix the problem.

Here we go:

1. Shut down the SP3 in preparation for a boot into the UEFI manager with the type cover attached
2. Hold down Volume Up + Power and then release only the power button after a couple of seconds
3. Got to keep the Vol. Up button pressed until you see the UEFI or UEFI login screen
4. Doesn't really matter what you do at this point as you should be able to navigate / login using your type cover
5. Select "Exit" and reboot

Should now be back in operation. There's something about going into the UEFI kick starts the connectivity between SP3 and TC.

VMWare Player Memory Issues

I had a *facepalm* moment with VMWare Player yesterday and solved it today so thought I'd share it - Either that helps someone out or makes someone laugh at my stupidity (either way it's a positive post).

I've recently been getting things deployed to my brand new Surface Pro 3 and by and large it's been painless - almost everything Windows 8'y was done instantly because of the settings sync between my Surface Pro 1 and my various desktop and R&D VMs using the same Microsoft Live ID. It's optional of course but I found that it makes a positive difference¹.

The only installs I've had to do are the standard laptop / desktop installs, e.g. Visual Studio, Achimate, EA, Office, etc... And VMWare Player^2.

None of these were an issue but when trying to spin up a VM I kept getting an error message telling me that there wasn't sufficient memory for the VM guest. I'd already moved VMX across from old Surface or installed new VM's from scratch so it wasn't happening all the time.

I thought that was a bit strange as my Linux guests tend to have 512Mb RAM for sandboxes and up to around 2Gb for intensive operators (such as some research tools on Kali). With 8Gb of RAM on SP3 and a few days researching memory cache in Win8.1 I was pretty confident that this wasn't the real issue.

Which of course it wasn't. Finally found this conversation chain on the VMWare forums.

Well that made a lot of sense. Should have checked UAC issues out first. I changed the application start-up options via context menu properties on %installPahth%\vmplayer.exe to run as administrator ... restart machine and - lo and behold - it seems to kick it into touch.

Hope that saves someone else the time spent on the problem :)

Outstanding Performance

I was stood outside a branch of [well-known high-street bank] this morning, waiting for my appointment with their business advisor.

As I walked up the steps five minutes before official opening time I noticed a guy in a high-vis [insert name of telecomms firm here] jacket tapping on the glass doors. He looked pretty annoyed and I didn't know what to expect but he simply shrugs at me and says, "I'm just here to fix the alarm line."

Er. Ok. So. What?

I wasn't sure whether he meant what I thought he meant so asked him. Apparently he was actually there to fix the comms line for the branch alarm. No kidding. The staff in the branch just looked up for a moment when he tapped on the glass door, then got on with their work.

They called him to fix an urgent problem but left him on the doorstep for 30 mins.

He was the alarm guy. This isn't Gotham City or anything, this is a backwater town in the West Midlands.

I'd phoned one of this banks competitors two weeks ago (Natwest), and even dropped into one of their branches when they hadn't got back to me. I still haven't heard from them.

All the fun & games you've read about in the news that financiers and brokes were / are [allegedly] having here in the UK and you literally can't give your money away. And even if you could they couldn't store it securely.

I look nothing like this

I picked the wrong month to quit smoking.

Bogus Chroot

I saw the posts about the Google Chromium OS earlier this year and thought I'd take a look. An OS orientated around the old thin client principals perhaps?

From a personal interest level I thought I'd have a crack at compiling the source code myself and seeing what's involved so got the latest Ubuntu running on a VirtualBox VM and started having a play.

That was four weeks ago, and I've been distracted with tinkering on Mono and Java since. Linux has come a long way since I last used it back in around 2005 and I'm pretty rusty! Managed to follow the build instructions all the way to the point of actual build but then get a message that I have no idea about.

"Warning: Possible bogus chroot detected"

Maybe I should have just downloaded the redist and been content with that but for now, converting some of my own-time projects in .NET 4 to Java and Mono will keep me out of mischief. I quite like the Ubuntu environment: if you're a Microsoft-er with a familiarity with C# & PowerShell and have never used linux before you'll pick it up pretty quickly.

It's interesting to have a look over the technology fence and see how the Jones' have been doing lately, but I don't think I'd want to move (they're more than welcome to come over for dinner though).