When I upgraded to OS X 10.7 (Lion), I started using the built-in IPSec VPN client rather than Cisco's VPNClient. I experienced problems immediately. At first it appeared that the connection was being made, but no traffic was passing. When I tried pinging by IP address, I found that traffic was passing, but I couldn't do anything by hostname.

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I released a new version of my Google PageRank Tool for WordPress last week. Google recently changed the URL for PageRank information which necessitated a change in the plugin. The new plugin has been tested with WordPress 3.2.1.

You can download the latest version of the plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Please visit my Projects page for a list of other projects I'm involved with.

This is an annoying problem:

Switch#write
startup-config file open failed (Not enough space)

Switch#dir nvram:
Directory of nvram:/

%Error opening nvram:/ (Function not implemented)

1048576 bytes total (1034573 bytes free)

Cisco Catalyst switches simulate NVRAM on their flash. Once in a blue moon, this simulated NVRAM will become corrupted. In order to clear up the corruption, I changed the size of the NVRAM and rebooted:

aus-bone-02#show boot
BOOT path-list      : flash:c3750me-i5k91-mz.122-58.SE2/c3750me-i5k91-mz.122-58.SE2.bin
Config file         : flash:/config.text
Private Config file : flash:/private-config.text
Enable Break        : no
Manual Boot         : no
HELPER path-list    :
Auto upgrade        : yes
Auto upgrade path   :
NVRAM/Config file
      buffer size:   1048576
Timeout for Config
          Download:    0 seconds
Config Download
       via DHCP:       disabled (next boot: disabled)

Notice that the size of the simulated NVRAM is 1,048,576 bytes. We'll change it back to the default (512K).

Switch#config t
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Switch(config)#boot buffersize 524288
Switch(config)#^Z
Switch#show boot
BOOT path-list      : flash:c3750me-i5k91-mz.122-58.SE2/c3750me-i5k91-mz.122-58.SE2.bin
Config file         : flash:/config.text
Private Config file : flash:/private-config.text
Enable Break        : no
Manual Boot         : no
HELPER path-list    :
Auto upgrade        : yes
Auto upgrade path   :
NVRAM/Config file
      buffer size:   524288
Timeout for Config
          Download:    0 seconds
Config Download
       via DHCP:       disabled (next boot: disabled)

After reload:

Switch#dir nvram:
Directory of nvram:/

  500  -rw-        8807                      startup-config
  501  ----        2072                      private-config
    1  ----          35                      persistent-data

524288 bytes total (512333 bytes free)

If you're a frequent user of GNU screen on your Mac, you are probably tired of using ctrl-a [ to enter scrollback mode. Adding the following lines to the .screenrc configuration file in your home directory in order to scroll with your mouse:

defscrollback 5000
termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@

If your carrier doesn't allow 10 digit dialing for local numbers, you are probably pretty annoyed that you can't just hit the redial button on those missed calls. It's possible to rewrite these dialed numbers in your phone system, but I wanted to do this on my Cisco 7961 IP Phone instead.

Find the Dial Plan

My phone gets its configuration from our TFTP server. The dial plan is kept in a separate XML file. The dial plan file my phone is supposed to download is defined by the dialTemplate parameter. You should either change this parameter in the master phone configuration file or the configuration file specific to your phoen. Mine looks like this:

<dialTemplate>shh-dialplan.xml</dialTemplate>

I'm using a dial plan specific to my phone because I don't want to break anyone's dialing!

Edit the Dial Plan

In my case, I just need to add one line to my configuration. I want to match on 10 dialed digits that start with my local area code:

<TEMPLATE MATCH="512......." Timeout="1" Rewrite="%1" />

This line should be placed in between the <DIALTEMPLATE> and </DIALTEMPLATE> parameters. This line tells the phone to match any dialed 10 digits that starts with 512 (the area code for Austin, TX) and rewrite that with just the last 7 digits (those matched with the dots).

Reset Your Phone

In order to get the new configuration on your phone, you'll need to reset it. Hit the Settings button (on my phone it has a check mark on it) and then dial **#**. The phone will reset and download the updated configuration and dial plan files.

That should be all it takes.