My notes, things I have learned, and documentation I have created.

This is the procedure I used to root my T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 (with no SD card installed and USB debugging enabled) and install the Overcome Gingerbread ROM. The computer I used is a Macbook Pro running Windows 7 64bit in VMware Fusion 3.1.3.

First, a little background. Why did I wait so long and what finally brought me to do this? I waited so long, because I am under a two year contract, and I wanted to give Samsung and T-Mobile the opportunity to do good by use early adopters of the Android tablet ecosystem. I was encouraged when I heard that the other carriers were getting the Gingerbread update. I really wanted to run Gingerbread on the device, because it was clear pretty early on that some fixes were needed. Several months later and basically a no response kind of response from Samsung on several occasions did not give me much hope. I decided I would give it a year which would have been in January. Well, Google Music release came along and pushed toward updating sooner. I had used the beta on my Froyo Galaxy Tab for a while. While not impressed, it did work. I uploaded music and could stream on multiple devices. However, when Google released Google Muisc and introduced the music store, I found it completely unusable. Everything, I looked at seemed to indicate that is should work in Froyo, but did not work much more often than it did. What led me to Gingerbread, was when I tried to access Google Music via my Dolphin web browser. I got a message stating that the version of my device was not supported. I thought this was pretty funny, because the web site works surprisingly well on IOS. I checked out Google Music on a Samsung Vibrant running Gingerbread and it seemed to work ok (a little slow, but I could see everything I bought and uploaded). So, I decided to jump in and give a go. So far, I am pleased with the smoothness and what seems to be a little speed boost (especially in K9-Mail and browsing the web using the Dolphin HD browser). Also, I am pleased with the performance of Google Music on Gingerbread. It works much better than on the Vibrant. So far, I have had only on “Force quit” come up (K9-Mail). We will see how it goes, but so far it looks like an improvement.

Computer OS: Windows 7 64bit
Android Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 T-Mobile version running Froyo (Android 2.2)
Gingerbread ROM: Overcome Series 7 Version 4.0.0

From Windows 7:
Ensure the you have at least Framework 2.0 installed. I had Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 installed.

From Windows 7:
Make sure you have the drivers for your Galaxy Tab installed and working properly. I have my Windows installation configured to use Windows Update to locate and install the correct drivers, if they cannot be found on the system already. This worked well for me.

From Windows 7:
Root using SuperOneClick:
Download the zip file from http://shortfuse.org.
Unzip the file on your computer.

From Windows 7:
Execute the SuperOneClick.exe as administrator ( right mouse click and Run as administrator).
If successful, you should end up with SuperUser icon in your Applications.

From Galaxy Tab:
Download and install “Titanium Backup root” from the Market.

From Galaxy Tab:
Once rooted, patch the boot loader by downloading and running the app file on your Froyo based Tab only. I downloaded it from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=888071

Connect your Galaxy Tab to your computer (make sure the drivers are installed and loading successfully) and turn on mass storage (I did this by pulling down the notification on the Galaxy Tab, and clicking on the USB notification and turning on USB Storage.). Navigate to your device drive via Computer in Windows, and create a TitaniumBackup directory on the root of the drive.

From Galaxy Tab:
Launch Titanium Backup and backup up all you data and applications by choosing user data and apps from the the batch option. Backup to the TitaniumBackup directory on your device.

Connect your device to your device to your computer and turn on mass storage.

From Windows 7:
Copy the TitaniumBackup directory on your Galaxy Tab to your computer.

From Windows 7:
Download the following three files from the TeamOvercome website:
001001-GB-stock-safe_v5.zip
002001-Overcome_Kernel_v4.0.0.tar
001002-Overcome_7_Series_v4.0.0_Wipe.zip

From Windows 7:
Unzip 001001-GB-stock-safe_v5.zip on your computer.

From Galaxy Tab:
Put your tab in download mode.
Turn it off.
Press the Volume Down button and the Power button at the same time.
Hold them until you see the “Downloading… Do not turn off Target!!!” message displayed on the Tab.

From Windows 7:
Go to the folder where you unzipped the 001001-GB-stock-safe_v5.zip file.
Navigate to the Odin3_v1.7 directory and launch the ODIN executable by right mouse clicking on it and selecting Run as administrator.

From Windows 7:
At this point, you can tell that everything is fine, if you have a yellow shaded box under ID:COM with something like 0:[COM4] in it. If not, it is either an issue with the drivers or you did not execute ODIN as administrator (The mistake I made the first time, I tried this.).

From Windows 7:
Click PIT button and choose gt-p1000_mr.pit from the files you extracted earlier.

From Windows 7:
Click the PDA button and choose the GB_Stock_Safe_v5.tar file.

From Windows 7:
Click the Phone button, and navigate to the T-Mobile Modem directory and choose the modem.bin file (note; this is only for T-Mobile tabs. Other tabs will use different modem files. See the TeamOvercome site for those.).

From Windows 7:
Click Start. This will go through the process of installing the Samsung JQ1 ROM. Let it go without interrupting.

From Galaxy Tab:
In my case, the ROM installed but then just sat in the Reboot menu. I had to hit the power button to have the device reboot.

From Galaxy Tab:
Once the device is back up, you are presented with a setup wizard. I selected English (it came up in Italian), and just clicked next or cancel through the wizard.

From Galaxy Tab:
Next you need to turn on mass storage and connect your tab to your computer so that you can copy the following file to your Galaxy Tab to the root of your device:
001002-Overcome_7_Series_v4.0.0_Wipe.zip

From Galaxy Tab:
Once the file is copied to the root of your mounted device drive , power down your device and put it in download mode again.
Turn it off.
Press the Volume Down button and the Power button at the same time.
Hold them until you see the “Downloading… Do not turn off Target!!!” message displayed on the Tab.

From Windows 7:
Fire up the ODIN utility again, and click the PDA button.
Select the Overcome_Kernel_v4.0.0.tar file you downloaded earlier.
Click Start. Your Galaxy Tab should reboot automatically. Mine rebooted fine (no reboot menu like previously).

From Galaxy Tab:
Once up, we need to go into Recovery mode.
Power down the tab.
Hold the Volume Up bottom and the Power until you see the Galaxy Tab on the screen.
You will know you are in recovery mode, when a menu display comes up in the upper left corner of display.

From Galaxy Tab:
Once in the recovery mode, navigate to the “install menu” using the volume rocker and hit the Power to enter the install menu.

From Galaxy Tab:
Navigate to “choose zip from internal sdcard” and hit the power button to select the zip file you copied to your device earlier.

From Galaxy Tab:
If you copied the 001002-Overcome_7_Series_v4.0.0_Wipe.zip to the root of your internal storage as outlined earlier, you will see the file listed.
Navigate to it and select it by hitting the power button.
To confirm you need to hit the power button again. This will install the Overcome ROM. You will get a message welcoming you to the Overcome Experience.

From Galaxy Tab:
Once done navigate to Go Back option and hit the power button.

From Galaxy Tab:
Then select the reboot menu and hit the power button.

From Galaxy Tab:
Then select reboot the system and hit the power button. This will reboot the Galaxy Tab with the Overcome ROM.

From Galaxy Tab:
Once the Galaxy Tab is up, you need to run through the setup wizard again (I think this was initially in German this time.).

From Galaxy Tab:
Once through the wizard, turn on mass storage, and copy your TitaniumBackup directory to your Galaxy Tab.

From Galaxy Tab:
Go to the Android market and install “Titanium Backup root”.

From Galaxy Tab:
Launch Titanium Backup, and restore your applications and data. This worked great for all my applications, except voice application (Voice Synthesis?) that was recently added to Google Maps.

The following was done from MacOS 10.7 Lion.

Because I did not use my iPhone 3Gs for a while, I missed getting my IOS 4.3.3 shsh blob saved, so I was only able to use this procedure for IOS 4.1. I used the following procedure upgrade the baseband to iPad version 06.15.00, since I mistakenly updated the baseband to 05.16.01 previously. With this baseband installed I was able to use Ultrasn0w to unlock the phone.

Software used:
Redsn0w 0.9.6RC16: redsn0w_mac_0.9.6rc16.zip
iTunes 10.2 or later
IOS 4.1: iPhone2,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw

Unzip Redsn0w and launch redsn0w from the redsn0w_mac_0.9.6rc16 directory.

Browse to the IOS restore distribution, in my case, iPhone2,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw.

Next you are asked to choose whether your iPhone 3Gs is an older or newer model. I had a
3Gs I bought within the first week of release, so I chose “No.”.

After patching the IOS package, you are prompted to choose your options. Only select “Install Cydia” and “Install iPad baseband.”

Next you are warned, because this pretty much a point of no return installation, so make sure you understand the consequences. I needed to unlock the phone to use on the T-mobile network.

Connect your phone via the USB cable.

Now you need to put the phone in DFU mode. I find the following easier than following the on screen prompts:

With device powered on and unlocked:
Hold the Power and Home buttons.
When the screen goes black, count to 2.
Then, release the Power button, and hold the Home button for 10 – 15 seconds.
You know you are in DFU mode, if the screen stays black.

Once in DFU mode, click through the next prompt. Then, redsn0w will update the baseband and install IOS. Once complete and the phone restarts, go to General/Settings/About and verify that the baseband is updated to 06.15.00. Also, verify that you have the Cydia icon installed.

Install Ultrasn0w 1.2.3 from Cydia by adding the following repository under Manage/Sources:

http://repo666.ultrasnow.com

Once the repository has been added, type in ultrasn0w in the search field and install Ultrasn0w.

Reboot the phone when prompted, and you should be set with an unlocked iPhone 3Gs.

Now for the issues that I have with this installation:

Because I had to install IOS 4.1, I lost MMS capability with this installation. Also, since Find My iPhone was not free until ISO 4.2, I am unable to use the service. I cannot get the device recognized to register it to use the service.

I realize that I could upgrade the IOS to a newer version, but from what I have been able to tell any update would have to be tethered at this point, which would not really be practical for me now.

Boot your rescue media.
Scan for volume groups:
# lvm vgscan -v

Activate all volume groups:
# lvm vgchange -a y

List logical volumes:
# lvm lvs –all

With this information, and the volumes activated, you should be able to mount the volumes:
# mount /dev/volumegroup/logicalvolume /mountpoint

I was unable to view a Google calender that was shared with me on my iPhone. I came across the following link where I was able to simply check the shared calender to have it display on my iPhone. I have no idea how to navigate to the link. It sure is not obvious.

www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

Furthermore, you can configure notifications for the shared calender after you validate your phone (not iPhone specific now), which you can get to from Google Calender, Settings, and Mobile Setup.

Once your phone has been validated, you can configure your notifications to send you email, pop-ups, or SMS notifications.

Now, I am curious to see how it works with the shared calender on my Galaxy Tab, since I did not have notifications setup for the shared calender. I hope it does not need to configured as a mobile device too, because I did not see an option to verify a second mobile device.

Update: Ok. I got this figured out now. Notifications for shared calenders are not propagated to any device. You can set up notifications on my iPhone and my Galaxy Tab or you can manage the notifications from your Google Calender account. The later would be the best way to deal with more that one device. You just set up the reminders, and choose a number of options, including email, SMS or pop-up. You can even set up default notifications for a calender shared to you in the calender settings. However, this does not apply to entries already shared to you.

First, just a few comments about webos. Webos is a good mobile OS. It has/had (depends on how you look at it) the potential to be the best mobile OS out there. The basic operation is much better than any other mobile OS I have experienced, including IOS and Android. It is easily the best web browsing experience I have had on a smaller screen device. Great for a tablet form factor. However, it seems to me that it has fallen behind the other major players. It just feels like it is really close to being great, if it only got the attention it deserves. It needs a number of patches and bug fixes to address issues. It needs a chance to mature more. It should have matured quicker than it has thus far.

Note: This is the procedure I used get Preware installed by connecting my HP Touchpad to MacOS computer running Lion. I suspect that procedure is very similar in Windows, however I bet the novacom drivers installed without needing a workaround as outlined below.

Install Preware:

Connect Touchpad to your computer using the micro USB cable provided with Touchpad. Do NOT choose mount as USB device.
Download and launch WebOS Quick Install, which I downloaded from here:

http://forums.precentral.net/canuck-coding/274461-webos-quick-install-v4-0-a.html

If you get an error installing the novacom drivers, open terminal and enter the following to start the daemon:

sudo /opt/nova/bin/novacomd

Then, WebOS Quick Install should detect your device.
Click on the globe icon to download the list of homebrew applications, etc..
Select and install Preware.
This will put a Preware icon under Downloads on your Touchpad.

Launch Preware to install patches to help improve performance:

I installed the following as recommend by the following post on the PreCentral website:

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/287848-my-hp-touchpad-seems-running-so-fast-2.html#post3027858

Make It So
Muffle System Logging
Remove Dropped Packet Logging
Unset CFQ IO Scheduler
Unthrottle Download Manager
Quiet powerd Messages
Faster Card Animations HYPER Version
Increase Touch Sensitivity And Smoothness 10
Max Blocker
Private Browsing

Applying these patches to my 3.0.2 upgraded HP Touchpad helped to make it run much more smoothly. I wish I could say the same for the UberKernel and overclocking to 1.5GHZ, but that is for another day when I make another attempt.

Update: I did make another attempt at overclocking to 1.5GHz. It seems to be working better, but I am not sure that it is as significant any improvement as I have heard others proclaim. Applications do seem to open a little faster. Nonetheless, I am going to leave it for now.

I did a fresh install of MacOS Lion on my MacBook. I had a Time Machine backup of my Snow Leopard installation. I installed the latest version of the Garmin Training Center software to export my running history from my Garmin Forerunner 305. I needed to restore my old data from my Time Machine backup. It took me quite a while to determine the file and location of the database file. The file you need to locate has an gtc extension. I used the default installation path in both Snow Leopard and Lion. My database file was located in ~Library/Application Support/Garmin/Training Center. I simply had to replace the database file created at install (Training Center.gtc) with the file of the same name from my Time Machine backup. And that was it. It took me longer to find the file location than to do the restore.

Here I have chosen to use a separate zone file for my subdomain. This is not the only way to do this, but it is the way I did it. I did this in CentOs 5.x.

One using it own zone file:
vi /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf
…
zone “mydomain.com” in {
type master;
file “mydomain.com.zone”;
allow-transfer { xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa ; bbb.ccc.ddd.eee ; };
};

// Begin MyDomain.com Subdomains
zone “subdomain.mydomain.com” in {
type master;
file “subdomain.mydomain.com.zone”;
allow-transfer { xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa ; bbb.ccc.ddd.eee; };
};
// End MyDomain.com Subdomains
…

vi /var/named/chroot/var/named/subdomain.mydomain.com.zone
$ORIGIN .
$TTL 86400 ; 1 day
subdomain.mydomain.com IN SOA ns1.subdomain.mydomain.com. root.localhost.subdomain.mydomain.com. (
201002224 ; serial
7200 ; refresh (8 hours)
7200 ; retry (2 hours)
604800 ; expire (1 week)
86400 ; minimum (1 day)
)

$ORIGIN subdomain.mydomain.com.
NS ns1.subdomain.mydomain.com.
NS ns2.subdomain.mydomain.com.
IN MX 10 mail1.subdomain.mydomain.com.
IN MX 20 mail2.subdomain.mydomain.com.
IN A xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa
ns1 IN A xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa
ns2 IN A bbb.ccc.ddd.eee
mail1 IN A xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa
mail2 IN A bbb.ccc.ddd.eee
host1 IN A xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa
host2 IN CNAME host1.subdomain.mydomain.com.

Right click on Computer and go to Properties.
Click Change Settings .
In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
Under User Profiles , click Settings .
In the User Profiles dialog box, select the profile that you want to delete, click Delete , and then click OK .

Locate and then expand the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Right-click the SID that you want to remove, and then click Delete .

Log on to the computer and create a new profile.

Software: VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 1, Windows 2008 R2.
Cluster Members: VMCLMEM01, VMCLMEM02.
Cluster Name: CL01.

In the vSphere client, you need to create a virutal network to support the cluster heartbeat communication.
Click on your ESXi host, and then the Configuration tab.
Select Networking under Hardware.
Then Add Networking…
Connection Type: Virtual Machine
Create a virtual switch.
Network Label: Private

Create new virtual machine from the vSphere Client:
Options:
Typical
Name: VMCLMEM01
Datastore
Guest Operating System: Windows 2008 R2
Create a Disk:
Disk Size: 20GB
Disk Provisioning: “Support clustering features such as Fault Tolerance.”
Check “Edit the virtual machine settings before completion.”
Add…
Hard Disk (For the cluster quorum disk)
“Create a new virtual disk”
Disk Size: 2GB.
Disk Provisioning:
“Support clustering features such as Fault Tolerance.”
Virtual Device Node:
SCSI (1:0) # You need to chose a different SCSI controller than the one you used for the system disk (My system disk in on SCSI (0:0).
Select the newly added SCSI controller, and select “Virtual”
Add…
Ethernet Adapter
E100
Network label: Private
Connect at power on
Remove the Floppy.
Configure CD to connect to the installation source (I used an ISO stored in one of my datastores.).

Create the second cluster member from the vSphere Client:
Options:
Typical
Name: VMCLMEM02
Datastore
Guest Operating System: Windows 2008 R2
Create a Disk:
Disk Size: 20GB
Disk Provisioning: “Support clustering features such as Fault Tolerance.”
Check “Edit the virtual machine settings before completion.”
Add…
Hard Disk (For the cluster quorum disk)
“Use an existing virtual disk.”
Browse the 2GB virtual disk you created for VMCLMEM01 and select it.
Virtual Device Node:
SCSI (1:0) # You need to chose a different SCSI controller than the one you used for the system disk (My system disk in on SCSI (0:0).
Select the newly added SCSI controller, and select “Virtual”
Add…
Ethernet Adapter
E100
Network label: Private
Connect at power on
Remove the Floppy.
Configure CD to connect to the installation source (I used an ISO stored in one of my datastores. Make sure you check “Connect at power on.”).

Install the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Full in VMCLMEM01 on the 20GB virtual disk. The 2GB disk will not be used until the cluster software is install and configured. Do not start the VMCLMEM02 installation yet. Complete the installation (network, name, time synchronization screen resolution of at least 1024/x768, and join the domain). Don’t forget to assign an IP address to the second interface (I used 10.1.1.1 and 10.1.1.2, and I renamed the interfaces to Private.). The cluster members need to be joined to a domain. I believe the same domain.

Shutdown down VMCLMEM01, and install Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Full on VMCLMEM02 as you did on VMCLMEM01.

Once Windows is installed and the cluster members joined to the domain, all logins will be using the domain Administrator account.

Once Windows is installed and configured on both future cluster members, shutdown down VMCLMEM02 and boot VMCLMEM01 and login with domain Administrator account.

Bring quorum disk (2GB) online:
Start a command prompt by right mouse clicking on “Command Prompt” and selecting “Run As Administrator.”
DISKPART
SELECT DISK 1 # See my post on DISKPART for more information.
SAN POLICY=ONLINEALL
ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
ONLINE DISK

Bring up Computer Management, and click on Disk Manager:
Click on Ok to initialize Disk1.
NTFS Format Disk 1, and assign it a drive letter (I chose M.) and label QuorumDisk.
Add the “Failover Clustering” Feature from Server Manager.

Boot the second cluster member, and add the “Failover Clustering” Feature from Server Manager.

Bring up “Failover Cluster Manager”on VMCLMEM01.
Right mouse click on “Failover Cluster Manager” and choose “Create Cluster.”
Add VMCLMEM01.
Add VMCLMEM02.
Run validation test.
Run all tests.
Enter your cluster name (CL01), and IP address for the cluster.

This will get you virtual Windows 2008 R2 cluster running on one ESXi host. Now you can add any supported cluster services and applications. I set up file and print services, as well as IIS which I will document later.

To enable core file creation for daemons:

# vi /etc/security/limits.conf
…
#* soft core 0
* soft core unlimited
…

# vi /etc/sysctl.conf
…
kernel.core_pattern = /tmp/core-%e-%s-%u-%g-%p-%t
fs.suid_dumpable = 2
…

# vi /etc/sysconfig/init
…
DAEMON_COREFILE_LIMIT=’unlimited’
…

# sysctl -p

To enable core dumps for xinetd services, I just needed to install the Automatic Bug Report Tool (abrt), and start the service:

# yum install abrt-desktop

# service abrtd start

Some command line commands:
# abrt-cli –list
# abrt-cli –report crash_id