QWORQS

This is much simpler than you’d expect (provided there are no hardware passthoughs, and there usually isn’t), All you need to do is copy both the Disk and the XML file (Typically in /etc/libvirt/qemu) then

1- edit the following in the XML file

Create a new virtual machine ID

uuidgen

Create new MAC addresses for every network adapter

https://olavmrk.github.io/html-macgen/

Change the path to the disks to point to where you put the new copy of the disks

Thats it, now you need to tell KVM about it so….

2- Tell KVM about the new definition with the define function

virsh define /etc/libvirt/qemu/newxmlfile.xml

My $25 GoDiag GD101 Nano showed up in the mail yesterday, Acording to the seller, it has functionality similar to Tactrix Openport 2.0, but we are yet to test this theory

Planning to test the tool with a bunch of software and post results here

Since the tool makes no claim about being compatible with Mercedes xentry passthrough, I will be starting there (Verified, Works well with Xentry/DAS, Speed is not bad, no special setup required besides installing the driver)

as soon as I plug in the godiag USB, windows 10 Added USB Serial Device (COM 3) at 9600bps, 8 data bits, and 1 stop bit, while Linux (lsusb) returned “Bus 003 Device 005: ID e327:2534 NATIONS N32G43x Port”, again, this is probably just the UART adapter, and has nothing to do with what to expect in terms of functionality

To begin with, I will be installing everything in a KVM machine, and passing the godiag device to it with the following file “/etc/libvirt/qemu/usb/godiag.xml”

<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb' managed='yes'>
    <source>
        <vendor id='0xe327'/>
        <product id='0x2534'/>
    </source>
</hostdev>

Then, I can attach/detach the device with

virsh attach-device mercedes --file /etc/libvirt/qemu/usb/godiag.xml --current
virsh detach-device mercedes --file /etc/libvirt/qemu/usb/godiag.xml --current

Recently, Windows defender antivirus has become very hard to disable in Windows 10 (And probably 11), previously, you would disable tamper protection, then open gpedit.msc, navigate to the setting and voila, recently, doing this o longer works, now, as soon as you close group policy editor (gpedit.msc) and open it again, the setting to disable windows defender antivirus pops up again ! You were also abe to do this from the registry, which does not work now.

So, it turns out that you need the following extra steps now, So here are the complete instructions

1- Start as you would by disabling tamper protection, you can do that by going to “Windows security”, then Virus and threat protection, then click on the “Manage settings” button, and finally disable tamper protection

2- Create a file with the .REG extension containing the following and execute it !

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SecurityHealthService]
"Start"=dword:00000004

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wscsvc]
"Start"=dword:00000004

Now execute the above, if it does not work because “binary values can only be edited manually”, then you will need to visit the locations above in regedit (Run as administrator) and switch the values of both to (4) which means disabled

Now before proceeding to the following procedure (The same OLD procedure), You will need to restart your computer for the settings above to take effect

• Run gpedit.msc as administrator
• Computer configuration => Administrative templates => Windows Components => Microsoft defender antivirus
• Now, you should find the entry “Turn off Microsoft defender antivirus”, double click it, and select Enable then okay
• Restart your computer again

A message still appears urging me to enable it, Click the three dots at the top of that message and disable this notification so that you won’t accidentally re-enable antivirus by clicking the message

Hyper-v disk files, with extensions such as vhdx and vhd can be mounted under linux directly with the libguestfs-tools tool, mind you, many packages will be installed… mostly libraries relating to the formats it is capable of mounting

sudo apt-get install libguestfs-tools

Now, the following command should mount the disk inside the virtual machine

guestmount --add diskname.vhdx --inspector /mount/dir/name

If the system does not detect a system, you will need to tell guestmount what partition to mount, to explore the partitions, you will need ….

 virt-filesystems -a disk.vhdx

Once you know your partitions

guestmount --add disk_d.vhdx -m /dev/sda1  /hds/loop

If you would rather mount the disk as read only, you can add the –ro switch

guestmount --add yourVirtualDisk.vhdx --inspector --ro /mnt/anydirectory

To unmount, you will need to use the following command

guestunmount /mnt/anydirectory

First, If you are here to research before you buy, the post explaining everything not specific, but applies to VW is here.

VW- group cars include Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Bentley, MAN, Lamborghini, and Bugatti, all those vehicles use the same VW diagnostics software.

The software for VW cars is called ODIS and comes in 2 flavors, Service and Engineering (ODIS-S, and ODIS-E)

You don’t need all of the hardware to run the ODIS system as any windows based machine should replace most parts of the station, What you will need is a VCI pass-thru device.

In fact, you don’t need the original hardware at all for that purpose, Your laptop and a cheap passthrough device should do, for example, the GODIAG GD101 is a $20 passthrough piece that works with VWs own software

Legend:
Red = Complete system
Green = VCI passthrough plug

• VAS5052A (Computer)
• VAS5054 (VAS5052A) (VCI, OKI Chip, Bluetooth)
• VAS5054A (VAS5052A) (VCI, OKI Chip, Bluetooth)
• VAS6150B
• VAS 6154A (Like B but different wifi chip)
• VAS 6154B (VCI, ODIS-S 23.0.0 and newer only)
• VAS6160A (VAS 6160 (Newer vehicles), VAS 5051 (Older vehicles), VAS 5052 (non-brand vehicles), VAS 5052A)
• VAS6160C
• VAS6150E-NV
• VAS6150F (VAS6154B)
• VAS6150F-NV

This special CAN BUS hardware (https://cantact.io/cantact/users-guide.html) is very nice in the sense that it lends itself to many possibilities, and this is why I am creating this separate post about it.

An alternative board is the https://canable.io/ board, but I will stick to the board I own for this post

The standard firmware for my Cantact is candlelight available at linklayer/candleLight_fw, And there is a firmware here (https://github.com/HubertD/candleLight), the official users manual page is here (https://cantact.io/) and here (https://github.com/linklayer/cantact-book)

Linklayer also provides some very nice tools such as (https://github.com/linklayer/cantact-app)

Now, with that out of the way, let us take a look at the board itself

microcontroller

etching reads…

stm32f
042CbTb
GH238 93
CHN 708

Which tells us that the microcontroller is an STM32, A great choice for such a device (See the wikipedia article linked)

On linux, can-utils is a great tool for this thing

I actually made a 3D model casing that fits the board perfectly, I will post it here when i find it

This is a list of software and hardware that are relevant to repairing and parts of cars and trucks

Terms and concepts

Obviously, all of this is missing many details that are mostly irrelevant to why you are reading this post, You are probably here to figure out what tools you will need, and that is what I will focus on.

• PID: Parameter IDs: The test software sends IDs and expects error codes or information in return, Some IDs are mandated by the state, other IDs are specific to a manufacturer.
• response (Ex: Error) codes: Just like the PIDs (The questions- sent by the testing instruments), some responses are mandatory standards and others are manufacturer or car specific.
• J1979: A standard set of PID/Response codes of which many are mandatory for all vehicles mostly for emissions regulations purposes
• J1962: A standard for the hardware connector plug you can see under your instrument panel (Under your dash, in the footwell), formally named The DLC (Data link connector), Starting 1996, the OBD-II (OBD2) connector with both its variants (OBDII-A for 12V and OBDII-B for 24V) should be available for all cars sold in the US. Although it is now universal, some cars in other parts of the world didn’t get them until a few years later.
• ELM327 command protocol:
• J2534: THE TOOL, A tool that supports the J2534 standard should be able to speak to the vehicle in all of the following protocols (ISO9141, ISO14230 (KWP2000), J1850, CAN (ISO11898), ISO15765, SAE J2610, and J1939 (2005+))

Continue reading “List of OBD-II and Automotive repair software”

Well, MP3 players are a thing of the past I know that much, but i do appreciate the compact size and dedicated hardware so I got this one, it came with 32GB of storage, Here are my findings

1- You need to heat up and remove the glass before you remove the frame as the frame has 4 screws under the glass !

2- The storage is a simple 32GB SD card, i took it out, Used DD to copy it to a 128GB SD card, put it back in, then used the format function on the device itself and it works !

That’s it, you can expand this to 128GB (Probably more, but i can’t guarantee that), but again, the firmware of the device is on the SD card, so you need to duplicate it before you put the new card in.

A private network connects select virtual machines to other virtual machines on the same host, and to the host itself, I usually use it to use samba shares between all virtual machines without giving those virtual machines access to the internet.

To do this, you will need to add a vridge to the host computer without an actual network interface that the bridge connects to, you can also add DHCP if you don’t care to hard code the IP addresses, the virtual machine can then use this interface to talk to other virtual machines or the host itself, A virtual machine can have both this network interface and another that does have access to the internet if you so chose

Continue reading “Adding an internal network to KVM”

VNC and RDP are great and all, and for so many purposes, they are the goto solution for remoting into a machine.

Now, another solution which is great (And much better if you have the bandwidth) is to broadcast your screen video and do all the work on the server rather than the client

The solution used to be nvidia’s game stream, which was abandoned by nvidia, the new solution based on nvidia would be the sunshine (Server) and moonlight client

The sunshine+moonlight duo work on almost every platform I need, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Even LG TVs running web OS… in short, it is a more universal solution. You can even create a virtual non existent monitor under linux and stream that to a different device !

So, let us start with the server (Sunshine)

Sunshine on debian

Installing sunshine on debian is very easy as a .deb installation file is provided, sunshine is not yet in the debian repositories, but if i understand the license correctly, it can be some time in the future

Now, go to the sunshine website, and download the deb file., in my case, I visit this webpage, and download the sunshine-debian-bookworm-amd64.deb file

Now, from the command prompt, su (to run as root), then cd to the directory where your deb file resides, then “sudo apt install ./sunshine-debian-bookworm-amd64.deb”, We should now have the server running and waiting to be opened in the web browser, Now, on the command line , type “sunshine”

Point a web browser to https://localhost:47990/, ignore the problem with self signed certificates, and set your username and password

Now, your debian computer is running a sunshine server, go to any other machine where you want to install the client (moonlight) from here , and connect to your server by its IP address.

You are done !

Sunshine on Windows

Download sunshine on windows from the latest release (As of today, you will fine it here)

Install it like you would any other application, once done, the official help page will show up (this)

once you click finish, a page at https://localhost:47990/welcome will open, asking you to create a password, create one, the default username is sunshine, but you can use whatever you want (In my case, it is my default RDP password)

you are done, you can now access the windows PC from any device with moonlight

Moonlight on Windows

you can download moonlight ether from github (Here) or from the official website (https://moonlight-stream.org/),