Author: janne

Janne Paalijarvi is a seasoned IT and Embedded Systems veteran, with a driving passion to document the world of deep technology as clearly as possible. He is also the CEO of StackLake Ltd and available for hire as a consultant for your embedded projects. At least when he is not fully booked. Janne's unsorted collection of focused and random code pieces is available at GitHub.
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Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

UPDATE 2023-07-20: I wrote earlier that WhatsApp might have broken this functionality. But actually my installation has been working just fine after I emptied my 70GB Firefox profile.

We have arrived to the last part of our ESXi WhatsApp saga. This blog post will tell a very cumbersome way of authorizing WhatsApp Web clients so you can enjoy the benefits of the application with you preferred computer and browser. Follow on!

This post is the last part (so far) in the 3-part series:

Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7

Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Complicatedly Authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Continue reading “Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1”

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Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

The journey continues. In this blog post we learn how to get WhatsApp installed on our freshly installed Android x86 7.1 . This article exists for 2 reasons:

  1. To offer completeness in our efforts to get virtualized WhatsApp instances to authorize regular WhatsApp web clients
  2. To show the minor differences there are involved in the process compared to normal WhatsApp install

This is the second article in our 3 article series:

Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7

Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Again, as always, lets get started.

Continue reading “Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1”

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Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7

I am one of those people who are perfectly fine with old style dumb 3G phones. But unfortunately some people are reluctant to communicate nowadays with regular phone calls, SMS or IRC, so I basically need to keep Android at hand for running WhatsApp.

Recently I found a way to run Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7. After a lot of teeth grinding, I was able to get WhatsApp running inside it. And after enormous test and debug efforts, I was even able to authorize WhatsApp Web clients. But with a lot of hoop-running. Extremely lot.

I chose Android x86 7.1 because it seems to be working completely for my desired purposes without (much) graphical glitches. For example 8.1 has horrible glitches which actually make many parts of initial setup widgets invisible 😀 . I chose VMware ESXi 6.7 as host because it is of the most stable main branch of the hypervisor. Host hardware is Intel NUC8i7HVK with 32GB RAM.

This is the list of articles of the whole operation (split due to big amount of screenshots):

Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7

Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1

Props to this external blog post for guiding me to the right direction. But now lets get started with our own stuff.

Continue reading “Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7”

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Disabling annoying Bluetooth dongle LED the hard way

I recently bought a Bluetooth dongle for my wireless keyboard. After lots of measurements, I ended up fixing it to ceiling for optimal signal quality. There was a problem though; the LED. The pulsating blue LED was just too much for me. Or judge yourself, imagine this:

pulsating wildly every night on the ceiling. Not my thing. I could not find anything with google about disabling programmatically the LED, so I went the hard way and removed the entire LED from the dongle myself with soldering iron. Continue reading “Disabling annoying Bluetooth dongle LED the hard way”

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Fixing horrible Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC fan noise by changing fans and thermal paste

Fallout 4 came out on year 2015. Before this, a realization came out, being that my old rig could not handle the new game in its current state. What a bummer. But there was a silver lining. Or bronze. Or at least iron, I swear.

A Finnish computer shop had a bundle campaign: Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC graphics card + Samsung 850 EVO 250GB for 399 EUR. I considered this a deal and bought the bundle. I think they might have had free game voucher also in the mix, but Google evades me on this.

The GPU arrived and it had many problems, it seemed. First there were instability problems with strange block garbage. These cleared after I ditched my “high-quality” Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard for Asrock Z77 Extreme4.

One issue was still present, being absolutely horrible fan noise. This had been present from the start. Seriously. You buy the thing, take it out of the box, run some stress on it, and the whole thing rattles like it is going to give out functional smoke any minute.

The thing is, that I was able to fix it. There is video about the results here, check it out first. Then we show you how we did it.

Continue reading “Fixing horrible Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC fan noise by changing fans and thermal paste”

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LEGACY Crash Course in Debugging C Programs with Emacs GDB (annotate=3)

I have a constant need to debug specific C programs. Because I have mostly worked in constrained embedded systems Linux environments, in reality I have not had possibility to have a debugger available. So I never learned GDB. But recently I was able to compile the application binaries in a regular 32-bit Linux environment. I was finally able to do debugging with Emacs GDB after learning just one day. This crash course will probably help you if you want to learn GDB debugging with text mode Emacs. We will be using the gdb-many-windows variant layout.

Continue reading “LEGACY Crash Course in Debugging C Programs with Emacs GDB (annotate=3)”

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Casio G-Shock GA-800-1A – The best clutter-free watch ever built!

If you are like me (which is quite unlikely but still) you really appreciate a clutter-free experience. I had been trying to find a proper watch for months but there seems to be one diabolical design pattern in every combination analog + digital watch. The designers try to fit F-117 cockpit worth of gadgets to the bezel! It just does not work. With tedious work I was finally able to find one simple watch that caters for my tastes, namely Casio G-Shock GA-800-1A. Read below for my introduction about the watch.

Continue reading “Casio G-Shock GA-800-1A – The best clutter-free watch ever built!”

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32GB RAM for Thinkpad X270 (and other pimp-ups)

I have been using my Thinkpad X230 for 6 years. I have been a bit of a harsh master to it and it shows via all the cracks and loose USB ports. The resolution is also quite tiny compared to modern standards. I decided to get new laptop. I tried first with HP EliteBook 840 G2, but I just couldn’t get used to scrolling without the mouse middle button. I wanted a Thinkpad with FullHD screen, upgradable memory and regular LAN port. X270 is the last Thinkpad to fulfill all the needs, so I got a second-hand one via Finnish online auction. To my surprise the laptop is also able to support 32GB memory stick! Read more to follow the full upgrade process I had with the computer. Continue reading “32GB RAM for Thinkpad X270 (and other pimp-ups)”