Posted by walsh_r on 23 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Microsoft, Windows
Recently I discovered after installing Windows Vista SP1 that the /console option was missing from the Remote Desktop Client. Luckily, the functionality remains, only with a new command.
Prior to version 6.1 of RDP, to access the console type “mstsc /console”.
Post version 6.1 of RDP, to access the console type “mstsc /admin”.
Posted by walsh_r on 27 May 2008 | Tagged as: Backups, Databases, Microsoft
Those of you looking for a simple backup setup for your SQL server 2005 databases are in luck! I’ve stumbled across this script, and modified it to work for me in my environment.
I am not suggesting that your entire SQL server backup strategy should be to create backup files from your databases nightly. However, a nightly backup scripted to an alternate location is absolutely a crucial component of your SQL server backup strategy.
Use SQL Server Agent to create and schedule a job containing the following code as the command portion of the only step the job will contain:
DECLARE @DBName varchar(255)
DECLARE @DATABASES_Fetch int
DECLARE DATABASES_CURSOR CURSOR FOR
select
DATABASE_NAME = db_name(s_mf.database_id)
from
sys.master_files s_mf
where
– ONLINE
s_mf.state = 0
– Only look at databases to which we have access
and has_dbaccess(db_name(s_mf.database_id)) = 1
– Not master, tempdb or model
and db_name(s_mf.database_id) not in (’Master’,'tempdb’,'model’)
group by s_mf.database_id
order by 1
OPEN DATABASES_CURSOR
FETCH NEXT FROM DATABASES_CURSOR INTO @DBName
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
declare @DBFileName varchar(256)
set @DBFileName = datename(dw, getdate()) + ‘ – ‘ +
replace(replace(@DBName,’:',’_'),’\',’_')
exec (’BACKUP DATABASE [' + @DBName + '] TO DISK = N”c:\db backup\’ +
@DBFileName + ”’ WITH NOFORMAT, INIT, NAME = N”’ +
@DBName + ‘-Full Database Backup”, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 100′)
FETCH NEXT FROM DATABASES_CURSOR INTO @DBName
END
CLOSE DATABASES_CURSOR
DEALLOCATE DATABASES_CURSOR
Edit the line which contains c:\db backup\ to point at the location where you would like the database backup files to be deposited.
Modify the line with datename(dw, getdate()) in it to change the output file name of your database backups. If you leave the above script unchanged, your database backup files will be named: Monday – dbname.bak, Tuesday – dbname.back etc. In my case, I chose to leave this naming convention for one particular reason. I schedule the SQL Server Agent job to run a few hours before I schedule a task in Windows to execute a batch file which copies the contents of my backup directory to a network file server. By keeping all of my files named using days of the week as the only delimiting factor, I know that my file server will never have more than 7 days worth of data saved onto it (since every Monday will overwrite every past Monday, and every Tuesday will overwrite every past Tuesday, etc).
Posted by walsh_r on 16 May 2008 | Tagged as: Backups, Imaging
Starting my 3rd major IT job in the last 5 years, I find myself talking companies into investing into tools that I use on a regular basis time and time again. Naturally, when I found out that my new employer did not have an imaging solution in place for me to use as a safety net prior to reconfiguring some critical server componants, I decided to go shopping. This time however, what I found had a $0.00 price tag.
Clonezilla is available in two editions, Clonezilla live, and Clonezilla server. Live is suitable for single machine backup and restores, and is completely self contained into one linux based bootable cd. Clonezilla server edition can be used to clone multiple machines simutaneously (similar to Ghostcasts from Norton and Symantec’s products).
In my test environment, I was able to use Clonezilla server to image 4 machines at once (using multicast) with an image size of approx 6 GB. The entire process took just over 12 minutes.
Check this great product (did I say that it was FREE?) here.
Posted by walsh_r on 18 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: GMail, Google, Microsoft
Google has forged ahead yet again!
Many thought GMail’s previous support of IMAP had finally made Google a major player in the online application industry. However, one major downfall has always been the lack of standardized support to syncronize Google Calendar with the heavily used personal and business used Microsoft Outlook.
Early this month, Google officially announced that Google Calendar will now sync with Outlook 2007, and 2003. Synchronization is made possible by use of a small resource light tool called Google Calendar Sync.
Once installed, this software can monitor your primary Google Calendar, and default Outlook Calendar. It provides directional control over the flow of information (one or two way synchronization options). Syncs can even be configured to automatically run at a minimum of every 10 minutes.
Check out this Google Calendar Help page for more information, and to download the latest version of the Google Sync software.
Posted by walsh_r on 10 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Printing or Scanning, Windows
Symtoms:
Cause:
Resolution:
Anyone managing a group of Windows XP workstations noticing SPOOLSV.EXE hogging the CPU from task manager should give this a try.
Posted by walsh_r on 07 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Media Center, Multimedia, Xbox 360
Thanks to Chris Lynch for helping to refine the MKV to WMV conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.
Click here to download the guide by Chris Lynch in PDF format.
This guide demonstrates a very polished method of converting MKV files into WMV-HD video files with 5.1 audio surround sound, using Windows XP or Windows Vista. This guide accomodates multiple types of audio sources (AC3, DTS, etc), where older conversion methods failed in the past.
Background from previous article…
The Xbox 360 was officially released by Microsoft on May 12, 2005, as a 7th generation gaming console, and network ready media center extender. The hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 make it the best high definition video player on the market for its price. However, the software limitations imposed upon that hardware by Microsoft leave much to be desired by users hoping to to consolidate their living room multimedia equipment into one box. Originally, the biggest fall back of those limitations is by far the lacking support for any digital video file support other than WMV. The majority of internet available digital video content is not in WMV format.
Recent updates via Xbox live have enabled support for .avi and .divx files. However, the current popular format for internet digital high definition video content is Matroska video (MKV). MKV container files include x264 HD video content (720p, 1080i, and 1080p), along with 5.1 AC3 or DTS audio. The Xbox 360’s software limitations prevent it from being able to display MKV HD video files. MKV playback is not natively supported on the Xbox 360.
Posted by walsh_r on 10 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Media Center, Multimedia, Xbox 360
**Update Visit http://www.ryanwalsh.ca/blog/?p=8 for a new polished tutorial similar to this one, to convert all of your MKV’s to WMV (DTS support included).
With all of the required software from Part 1, we are now ready to start converting x264 MKV video files to WMV-HD.
Process:
The first step is to separate the audio and video portions of the MKV file. By doing this, we will minimize the reduction in quality associated with converting video files from one type to another. Skipping this step, will negatively impact the frame rate of the outputted WMV-HD files.
The second step in the conversion process is to create an AVIsynth script to be used in a TMPG Express project (the software which we will use in the next step).
Our next step is to create a project in TMPG Express, using the AVIsynth script as our video source file, and the extracted AC3 file as the audio source.
Thanks again to Cody Browning for helping many of us come up with this conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.
Posted by white_b on 23 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Linux
Some of us have run across situations where we want to be able to keep user-mode programs running in a Linux TTY session, but still want to be able to manage them remotely through SSH or other means.
One solution is the ‘linuxvnc’ utility, which can grab a TTY session and display it for use in a VNC window. I will be covering this utility, as tested on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty (although it should work for virtually any distro).
For starters, let’s grab linuxvnc from the repositories with apt:
sudo apt-get install linuxvnc
Once that is done, fire it up: (root access is required to grab TTYs)
sudo linuxvnc X
Where ‘X’ is the TTY # you want to grab. linuxvnc should indicate that it’s listening on port 5900.
You can now connect with any VNC client, such as RealVNC, KRDC, or whatever. One thing I’ve noted is that KRDC has trouble with linuxvnc sessions if it attempts to use ‘Tight’ VNC encoding. I would recommend using zlib instead.
Of course if you’re using VNC over the Internet, I strongly recommend tunneling it through SSH. That, however, is a tip for another day.
Posted by walsh_r on 22 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Media Center, Multimedia, Xbox 360
**Update Visit http://www.ryanwalsh.ca/blog/?p=8 for a new polished tutorial similar to this one, to convert all of your MKV’s to WMV (DTS support included).
Thanks again to Cody Browning for helping many of us come up with this conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.
The Xbox 360 was officially released by Microsoft on May 12, 2005, as a 7th generation gaming console, and network ready media center extender. The hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 make it the best high definition video player on the market for its price. However, the software limitations imposed upon that hardware by Microsoft leave much to be desired by users hoping to to consolidate their living room multimedia equipment into one box. The biggest fall back of those limitations is by far the lacking support for any digital video file support other than WMV. The majority of internet available digital video content is not in WMV format.
The current popular format for internet digital high definition video content is Matroska video (MKV). MKV container files include x264 HD video content (720p, 1080i, and 1080p), along with 5.1 AC3 or DTS audio. The Xbox 360’s software limitations prevent it from being able to display MKV HD video files. This tutorial will demonstrate one method of converting MKV files into WMV-HD video files with 5.1 audio surround sound, using Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Required:
Background:
There are lots of different video codec combinations that can be used to decode MKV files, however, many of these packaged tend to have conflicting versions of video codecs (namely ffdshow) which cause unsatisfactory encodes to WMV-HD (choppiness, image quality, etc). It is my recommendation to uninstall all existing video codecs on the machine which will be used to encode the WMV-HD video, and install only the codecs listed above. Install any other future necessary codecs one at a time, and test encodes to verify that the new codecs have not introduced any problems.
Unfortunately TMPG 4.0 Express is not a free or open source product. I’ve chosen it in my demonstration because of its ease of use, flexibility of encode times/quality settings, and price.
Preparation:
After completing the above steps, you are now ready to convert MKV (x264) to WMV-HD for the Xbox 360.
Posted by walsh_r on 16 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Databases, Web Design
The creation of a database driven website is very simple in concept; add content to the database, and display the content on pages. The work going on behind the scenes to make this concept function, is not always so simple. There are numerous methods and products that can be used to accomplish different parts of this task, but getting them all to work nicely together can deliver headaches to anyone.
One popular combination often chosen by developers is the use of the PHP scripting language, and MySQL database. Both products are free, open source, cross platform, and have a large base of corporate and personal users.
Getting PHP and MySQL to work nicely with Windows Server 2003 and IIS can be troublesome, mostly due to the many different versions of PHP and MySQL, and the frequency that each product is updated (don’t get me wrong, free updates to products are great, once they are configured and working as expected). After experiencing some problems related to versions myself, I decided to write this tutorial on how to configure an operational MySQL database capable of interacting with PHP, IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.
Required:
Background:
PHP Installation
To test the PHP installation, create a new file in notepad that contains the code below. Save the file as test.php in the root directory of your website.
<?PHP
phpinfo();
?>
Open a web browser from your web server and test http://127.0.0.1/test.php . If PHP is installed correctly, you will get a listing of the PHP configuration.
MySQL Installation
*Remember the password that you assign to the root account! Document the password in a secure, reliable location.
To finish things off, we need to configure PHP to load some MySQL extensions. This will enable the web server, PHP, and MySQL to work together while server content to web pages from the MySQL database.
To test the configuration, create a new file in notepad that contains the code below. Save the file as mysqltest.php in the root directory of your website. Edit the code to replace the root password with the one previously assigned.
<?PHP
//(”server name”,”username”,”password”)
$rst = @mysql_connect(”localhost”,”root”,”insert_password_here”);
if (!$rst){
echo( “<p>Unable to connect to database manager.</p>”);
die(’Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error());
exit();
} else {
echo(”<p>Successfully Connected to MySQL Database Manager!</p>”);
}
if (! @mysql_select_db(”mysql”) ){
echo( “<p>Unable to connect database…</p>”);
exit();
} else {
echo(”<p>Successfully Connected to Database ‘MYSQL’!</p>”);
}
?>
Open a web browser from your web server and test http://127.0.0.1/mysqltest.php . If everything is configured correctly, your web browser will display Successfully Connected to MySQL Database Manager and Successfully Connected to Database ‘MYSQL’.
The Web Server is now ready to serve PHP web pages and communicate with a MySQL database.
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