Posted on

Dealing With Unfused JCOP Java Cards Sold from AliExpress or eBay

Recently I acquired a set of 5 JCOP J2A040 Java Cards with the intention of loading the GidsApplet on them for Windows Smart Card Logon with an Active Directory Domain Controller.

Upon receipt of the smart cards in the mail, I’ve ran into this error with GlobalPlatformPro:


pro.javacard.gp.GPException: STRICT WARNING: Unfused JCOP detected
at pro.javacard.gp.GlobalPlatform.printStrictWarning(GlobalPlatform.java:184)
at pro.javacard.gp.GlobalPlatform.select(GlobalPlatform.java:213)
at pro.javacard.gp.GPTool.main(GPTool.java:334)

After a few hours spent with Google and various search engines and some trial and error, I’ve put together an explanation on what an unfused JCOP card really is and how to perform the pre-personalization steps that a card manufacturer would have taken to enable the GlobalPlatform Card Manager so a developer can load a .CAP file on to the card for the end user to use.

Continue reading “Dealing With Unfused JCOP Java Cards Sold from AliExpress or eBay”

Posted on

Upgrading from Windows Azure Websites Update 4 to Update 6 with SQL Server Standard

As you may have known, Windows Azure Websites installations that uses SQL Server Standard Edition for data storage will have issues getting updated to Update 6 as the SQL scripts included in this update used SQL Server Enterprise Edition specific features. I’ve reported this issue to Microsoft on the Windows Azure Pack forums and have privately conversed with a few people inside Microsoft who are responsible for the Azure Pack Websites product following the public post.

Continue reading “Upgrading from Windows Azure Websites Update 4 to Update 6 with SQL Server Standard”

Posted on

Changing the php.ini File for Web Workers in Windows Azure Pack Websites v2

As some of you may have noticed with Windows Azure Pack Websites v2, you can have the user to specify certain settings inside the .user.ini file if they want to enable fancy PHP options.

However, what if you want to make those changes applied globally to all of your tenant’s web sites by default? Doing some quick Google searches leads you to a dead end. However I accidentally discovered this trick when I was upgrading a lab web farm from Update 4 to Update 6.

Continue reading “Changing the php.ini File for Web Workers in Windows Azure Pack Websites v2”

Posted on

Windows Azure Pack Update Rollup 5

This morning Microsoft pushed out update KB3023209 out to the Updates channel. This update is meant for systems running Windows Azure Pack in their private cloud.

The full text of the update is as follows:

This update contains functionality fixes. Among them are: 1) Support for SQL Resource Governor in the SQL Server Resource Provider. 2) Admin support for disabling native Virtual Network Extension to allow for 3rd Party Network Providers. 3) Provide detail on VM Memory type, Memory Startup and Maximum values in the Tenant Portal. 4) Fix to the Get-MgmtSvcRelyingPartySettings PowerShell cmdlet. 5) Fix to the issue of failing to establish an RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) to VMs placed behind a NAT. 6) Fix to the “Attached Network” dialog in the Virtual Machines Extension where the network entries in the list were disabled. 7) Support for increasing capacity of SQL hosting server in WAP.

For clouds that also run Windows Azure Pack Web Sites v2, sorry there aren’t any updates on that for this rollup release.

As always when it comes to applying this update – You gotta bring down all of the machines that serve out Windows Azure Pack before installing the update – you don’t want your tenants messing up things while you’re applying updates.

Posted on

CentOS 6.6 Updates and Fixes for Hyper-V Guests

CentOS 6.6 was recently released. As expected, there are a few fixes and updates for Hyper-V guests.

The changes I can remember off the top of my head for Hyper-V guests are:

  • Updated KVP and VSS user-space daemons
  • CentOS 6.6 is now fully supports virtual NUMA topology presented by the host. In the past, if you have a guest that had processors and memory that spanned across more than 1 NUMA node, the guest would crash due to a bug in the kernel.
  • The hv_balloon driver should now not cause a constant 1.00 load average due to the way how the driver reported the memory pressure back to the host.

Unfortunately, the documentation says that there is experimental support for CentOS 6.6 running as a Generation 2 guest. The installer runs fine, but since there is no hyperv-keyboard driver included in the initramfs image of the installer. You will need to install CentOS 6.6 via automated means by using a kickstart file. Unfortunately, when you first boot into the system, you will notice the guest crashes with a kernel panic. This makes Generation 2 support with CentOS 6.6 somewhat pointless at this time.