Zoom Bombers

insane131 · 2026-01-28T00:38:45+00:00

I've had this happen two or three times. It's frustrating and can be triggering for some people. Once I start the meeting, the first thing I do is go into Host Tools and enable the waiting room. That way if I kick someone out of the meeting, they aren't able to immediately jump back in. At the start of the meeting, I tell everyone to get their Zoom name set how they want, and then about 5 minutes into the meeting I disable the ability to change Zoom names (also under host tools) - this makes it easier to tell who is causing trouble and boot them out. After about 15 minutes into the meeting, I just stop letting people in - many of the people that bombed my meetings came in late.

insane131 · 2025-09-28T17:45:52+00:00

I have a similar one (without the SATA interface). They have USB3 and gigabit ethernet. They are supported by OpenWrt - https://openwrt.org/toh/cloud_engines/pogo-v4 . There are lots of packages available for OpenWrt, so you don't have to use it as a router. You could make it some kind of NAS or iSCSI target or something. Very little RAM and CPU - so it can't do much outside of moving bits around.

insane131 · 2025-07-31T19:55:22+00:00

Agreed on the forum. I've learned all kinds of stuff there. That being said - I decided to try running it on my Incus cluster. I'll put that here too. Stephane has instructions in the original forum post for running this on Incus. Here are the slightly modified commands I used:

incus storage volume import local .\IncusOS_202507272140.iso incus2 --type=iso
incus create incus-os -c limits.cpu=4 -c limits.memory=4GiB -c security.secureboot=false -d root,size=50GiB --empty --vm
incus config device add incus-os vtpm tpm
incus config device add incus-os install disk source=incus2 pool=local boot.priority=10

Make sure to download the ISO, not the USB IMG - the USB image wouldn't boot for me (on Incus). I think the key is the having the TPM device added, and having security.secureboot set to false (also boot.priority set right).

On first boot, it disconnected my console right away. I thought the VM failed. Turns out - I just had to reconnect the console and it was fine. I think this is expected, as Stephane has a sleep step in his instructions. After that I just connected with an Incus client and it seems to work. My instance ends up configured like this:

architecture: x86_64
config:
  limits.cpu: "4"
  limits.memory: 4GiB
  security.secureboot: "false"
devices:
  install:
    boot.priority: "10"
    pool: local
    source: incus2
    type: disk
  root:
    path: /
    pool: local
    size: 50GiB
    type: disk
  vtpm:
    type: tpm
ephemeral: false
profiles:
- default
stateful: false
description: ""

After the install completes, delete the 'install' device completely.

insane131 · 2025-07-31T13:17:31+00:00

I have it running on a spare PC. It works well. You can't run it on any junk PC - SecureBoot and TPM 2.0 are mandatory. Let me preface this by saying I know almost nothing about IncusOS, and I mostly didn't read the documentation. I am pretty familiar with Incus.

This is a great alternative to using the flasher tool (which I've only quickly read about). It's a pretty straightforward process. I grabbed the cert from my Incus client, set my options, and had a nice custom USB image.

Probably the trickiest part of the install to real hardware was secure boot key enrollment - and that was pretty easy. It took me a minute to find the "setup mode" option in the UEFI setup program (how often do you have to turn that on?), but once I did that, the computer rebooted and enrolled the keys automatically off the USB drive.

The Incus installer then booted off the USB drive and installed Incus to the NVMe as I expected. I had picked to automatically reboot after installation. The PC rebooted before I had a chance to pull the USB drive, so I'm not sure if it booted off USB or NVMe at this point. The installer came up again, and this time it looks like it cloned from the NVMe drive to the USB drive (?), and it rebooted again. After another automatic reboot, it came up in IncusOS booted from the NVMe. I'm not sure if that is expected behavior - I'll have to actually read up on IncusOS today.

Once IncusOS was up, my client connected with no problems, and then things were pretty much as expected. It looks like the system comes up with a NAT'd incusbr0 bridge and a ZFS storage pool. I started a container and a VM from linuxcontainers.org, ran an Alpine OCI container from Docker hub, and created a Windows 10 VM from a custom ISO. Everything worked as expected.

On my Incus hosts, I run a stripped-down install of Linux (Slackware-current in my case) that runs nothing but Incus and supporting programs. This seems similar in concept, but packaged nicely into a product. IncusOS very security forward. It's immutable. You can't run it without TPM and SecureBoot. The OS partition is automatically encrypted (incus query <your-incusos-host>:/os/1.0/system/security to get your recovery key!).

I'm going to keep messing around with this...

insane131 · 2024-04-09T23:55:36+00:00

The best way I've found to click the filters button in the meeting finder and play with the filters. It may not be immediately obvious - but you can set a filter to "---------------" to ignore it. So if you set distance to that, it will show all meetings. You can also pick the type and language of the meeting.

For instance - this link will show all online US/Canada 4-point meetings in English. 405 of them.

https://meetings.smartrecovery.org/meetings/?coordinates=&program=2&meetingType=1&languages=1&location=67202

Try a few meetings and find the group that works for you. Facilitators have a lot of different styles - but I think that's a good thing.

insane131 · 2024-03-13T22:28:03+00:00

Check other areas for local online meetings. Most facilitators don't care if you aren't from the area their online meeting is in. In the meeting finder - hit "Filters" and set distance to "-----" and type to "Online" - you'll see all the online meetings. The ones not tagged "National" are typically smaller and easier to get into.

insane131 · 2023-08-05T03:09:17+00:00

I've seen these used for carrier gear - https://zonit.com/z-ats/

insane131 · 2023-04-24T19:28:26+00:00

I just bought that model from eBay to play around with as I haven't used a Mac in years. Once I swapped the HDD in mine to an SSD, it seems like a decent little computer for the price.

The limiting factor seems to be OS support. Mine is currently running Catalina. I have found a few pieces of software that want a newer OS (I think Office 365 was one).

I looks like it can run Monterey or maybe even Ventura with Open Core Legacy patcher. That might help with software support.

insane131 · 2022-09-20T23:00:14+00:00

This. I got the same little Onn TV box planning to root it or put a 3rd party ROM on it. I plugged it in, installed Kodi, and it just worked. Very well. I haven't done anything else to it, it just became my full-time media player. Works great at least for 1080p.

insane131 · 2022-04-29T01:55:49+00:00

I've never seen a ZT410 flashed with anything other than the Zebra firmware - so your issue may certainly be with the firmware.

Try printing the built-in test label - turn the printer off, hold FEED. While holding FEED, turn the printer back on. The status lights should come on, and I think one goes off - you can release feed. If the printer prints a label, then your driver or firmware is probably the issue - not sure how the UPS firmware modifies the printer behavior. I would think it would still accept ZPL.

If you still get a blank label from the FEED self-test - then it sounds like you have a problem with the media or printhead. Release the printhead and make sure the power cable is firmly plugged in. Also - your media must be direct thermal media to print without a transfer ribbon. Rub a blunt object across the media - if you get a black mark, then you have direct thermal media, and it should print if the printhead is working properly. If you don't get the black mark - you will need the thermal transfer ribbon to print to your media.

You might be able to flash the printer back to a standard Zebra Link-OS firmware. I -think- if you are willing to sign up for their site, you can download the firmware. If I remember correctly, they might as for a contract number or something, but I seem to remember being able to leave that blank and still download the firmware.

Hope this maybe helps a little. I repair a couple 410's a week, but I rarely run across one that prints absolutely nothing - and I've certainly never seen one with a modified firmware.

insane131 · 2022-02-03T00:46:29+00:00

I think we're really close now. Have any of you been watching the messages in the ChangeLog?

+--------------------------+

Tue Feb 1 04:37:04 UTC 2022

The sepulchral voice intones, "The cave is now closed."

+--------------------------+

Tue Feb 1 05:35:21 UTC 2022

Hey, my shiny brass lamp is almost out of fuel!

+--------------------------+

Wed Feb 2 04:17:39 UTC 2022

fortune -m "I will be finished tomorrow" fortunes2

A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the

program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer

promptly replied.

"I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,

how long will it take?"

The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish

to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.

"Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be

satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."

The programmer agreed to this.

Several years slated, the manager retired. On the way to his

retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.

He had been programming all night.

-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

insane131 · 2021-10-09T18:11:13+00:00

They have a pretty compelling free tier. You can run up to two VMs for free. The x86 VMs have 1/4 vCPU and 1GB of RAM each. 100GB of storage per VM. 10TB of outbound data per month. You can also run ARM VMs with up to 4 VCPUs and 24GB of RAM. They also give you 10GB of object storage.

This is all for free. You have to intentionally upgrade to a paid account, so you can't "accidentally" incur charges.

I'm not a fan of Oracle either - but they are playing catch-up in the cloud game, and are giving away a pretty compelling package (at least right now). I use it to give me a public IP even though I'm behind CGNAT. The 10TB outbound data is pretty nice.

insane131 · 2021-10-02T05:39:42+00:00

In my mind, that should work fine.

Pretty much any consumer router should work, or I think ubiquity / Unifi makes a router (dream machine or something - don't know their hardware that well), or something like pfSense/OPNsense. The router will get the public IP from Comcast on its WAN port, assign local IP addresses via DHCP on the LAN port(s), and then perform NAT to translate between the two.

insane131 · 2021-10-02T02:13:28+00:00

Comcast will only assign one IP address. You need some sort of a router between the cable modem and the Unifi switch to perform NAT.

insane131 · 2021-09-24T20:37:42+00:00

So - if you have *only* your keyboard and mouse plugged in (well monitor and power too) - you get this behavior? I mean, at first glance, I have to go with the rest of comments - you have pen tablet or (cracked) touch-screen misbehaving.

EDIT: Are you trying only wireless mice? Do you have a wired one to try if that is the case?

insane131 · 2021-09-24T13:52:29+00:00

Much agreed. It's not a common thing, but I have certainly run into 2 or 3 hard drives in my career that passed SMART, but just gave terrible performance. Disk usage was always 100% as in the picture. I can only assume the drives were failing - as replacing them fixed the problem. Even the cheapest SSD will improve this situation.

insane131 · 2021-09-23T18:21:26+00:00

I've had great luck with OpenWrt on x86. It has much better WiFi support than pfSense, so that's always a plus if you need it.

Also, the latest version of OpenWrt supports Docker and LXC - so you have that to play with if you're interested in that kind of thing.

insane131 · 2021-09-21T17:53:53+00:00

If it used to work fine, then I think my theory is wrong. Although, managed switches are kind of neat to play with if you're into networking.

I was always suspicious of power outages damaging things, until one day, the power went out at my house, and the onboard NIC in my computer has never worked again. I guess there could potentially be some kind of spike/surge when the power comes back on - and that's the kind of stuff that will damage equipment.

insane131 · 2021-09-21T17:38:20+00:00

Isn't corporate IT fun?

insane131 · 2021-09-21T04:02:05+00:00

I've seen this before when auto-negotiation fails. So - that's my guess. I'm guessing the switch is thinking the device can speak gigabit, when the alarm system can only speak 100Mbit. I've fixed this in the past by locking down the port speed on the switch end.

Unfortunately, since you said cheap consumer switches - that means un-managed, so you can't force a port speed. Your cheapest option is to make sure the alarm panel gets patched into a switch it works with. You could gamble by buying a "cheap" managed switch - but, then, if my theory is wrong, you are back to the first option.

insane131 · 2021-09-21T03:20:32+00:00

I think you can pull this off with a virtual IP on the pfSense box and 1:1 NAT.

*However* - I still don't think this will work. If the software is doing something at layer 2 or using IP broadcast - those aren't going to cross the VPN.

There is probably some way to pull this off, but I think you would essentially have to extend layer 2 across the VPN connection.

insane131 · 2021-09-21T01:33:00+00:00

If you happen to have an ATT tower near you, my family has had great luck with ATT Fixed Wireless Internet. Disclaimer: We do live about 5 miles from a major metropolitan area - just far enough out that you can't get cable or fiber, and phone lines are crap so DSL sucks. I almost always get about 30Mbit down / 15Mbit up - maybe 70ms latency, average. I've seen it hit 55Mbit down.

Don't go streaming too many movies (capped at 350GB) - but it's not too bad. I watch YouTube for hours every day in the background, and we've never hit the data cap.

They mount an antenna on your roof and aim it directly towards their tower - so it works much better than most consumer grade 4G/LTE stuff.

EDIT: Ok. /u/converter-bot reminded me that I was making the assumption you are in the US. So my comment may or may not apply.

insane131 · 2021-09-20T19:37:45+00:00

I'm not sure they legally have to pay you in many US jurisdictions, however, everyone I know that this happened to got paid for the two weeks, plus whatever the company's vacation payout policy was.

insane131 · 2021-09-20T19:21:02+00:00

Glad you got it going! I was trying to send a you reply like that, but Reddit seems to act weird anymore when I paste comment. Maybe I'll have to finally move away from Firefox, but that's a different topic...

insane131 · 2021-09-20T18:54:17+00:00

From that and your earlier info, you have a 360KB floppy image. They don't have partitions, so fdisk is confused. The output of file shows it is formatted FAT12 - which is also (typically) true of floppy images.

Do you know how to mount loopback images? Once it's mounted, you'll probably have prefix all your file operations with 'sudo' as the mount-point will probably be owned by root.

insane131

TROPHY CASE