How Slack am I

 

Been 18 months since I blogged about anything, just not good enough really so here go’s my blog is back and hopefully this time I will keep at it

I suppose there has been a couple of reason for this, first and for most not really had a lot to blog about (its been winter after all) ,secondly a bit of a re-addiction to the Xbox 360 thanks to Call of Duty  - Modern Warfare, I seem to be over that for the moment. Reading has played a big part in it too been doing a lot of that of late. so not very exciting so on to the exciting thing in life that are coming up. first and for most my wife and I are off  to see Dara O Briain next week this is my wife birthday present and last year we went to see Ed Byrne for my birthday present. Highly recommended as long as you don’t mind losing the ability to talk for hours afterward where you have laughed so much

Other future events coming up is my Mother in law is over for a visit for over a month in august and wow is that one packed month we have coming up

A trip to Spain for a week and then a road trip to Scotland for a few days taking in Derby on the way and York on the way back. Also a trip to Stonehenge and a short trip to Cornwall is on the cards.

The trip to Spain is looking like it could either be wonderful or Hell. Eight of us going my folks mother in law, step father in law my wife both our daughters and me. What is the first thing I said I would never do and this year i find myself doing it going on holiday with my parents last time I did this I was 16 ! the second thing i said I would never do is spend my actual birthday with my parents  and guess what I haven’t done that since i was 16 either so that's two things I haven’t done for 22 years that I will do for the first time this year hmm well I did quite well 22 years is a long time. I have decided the best way to cope with both is vodka a lot of vodka. those of you that know me know i like vodka a lot. I am sure you will read more about my love of vodka later as things come up

My big plan for the year (and at the moment this is a aim not a statement of intent) is to get ready to do the Pennine way walk. This is 270 mile cross country up hills down valley walk and I know I will not do it all in one hit as that’s doing 14 days of 20 miles a day but I would like to section walk it over the next few years. It’s something I have always had the urge to do and after rereading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods I have a even stronger urge to do it, So I have given myself a year to train for it and get a hell of a lot fitter than I am, I have found myself a hiking partner my Father whom I have very little in common with except we both like hiking. I will be blogging more about this in the future I hope.

So a busy summer ahead with my sisters 40th birthday one daughters 11th Birthday and one daughters 12th birthday as well as my birthday. throw into that a wedding to attend, I am going to have to work hard to find time for my training but starting tomorrow no matter the weather I am going to start to walk as often as I can.

Last summer I re discovered my love of photography so that will be a large element in the walks is the pictures I will take.

Now on to a something lighter, So we just had an election in the UK as most of you will know and wow Facebook is now full of groups like I bet I can Find a million people that don’t want David Cameron as PM and Cameron is not my PM

What madness is this the way to have your say about who to run the country is to vote at the election and afterward if the people you voted for didn’t win that's life. I didn’t Vote for Cameron myself but you know that's the way it goes the majority of people did and that's what it comes down to. Ok so this election was a little different being a hung parliament but Labour is out as the majority of people didn’t vote for them so now we have a coalition running the country and a lot of people think that might be a very bad thing however Australia was run for years by a coalition and did pretty well out of it. There was no break down of order or riots (not that I could ever Imagine the Aussies being bothered to riots they would just go down the pub instead). Personally short of a lib dem win I think this is the best result for the country. but time will tell however they are the lawfully elected government and starting Facebook group like I mentioned above really is pointless even kind of childish in a way and joining them equally as pointless. David Cameron is our PM for better or worse, Yes you can find a million people that don’t want Cameron as a MP but equally you can find a million people that don’t want Brown (prob a lot more than a million) and a million people that don’t want Clegg. they recon there is 8.5 million unique  UK membership to Facebook so you target is 1 in 8.8 people don’t want Cameron. but here the big thing of those 1 million people how many are old enough to vote and how many actually did vote. I am betting here that a lot of the people that join these groups didn’t even vote say maybe as High as 35% of them ! btw I have voted for 20 years mainly because It had little affect on me who was in power in my view but this time I felt there was a big enough different that i wanted my say so I voted. Yes I was disappointed with the result but I am not going to become all American about it and fortify my house, refuse to pay tax’s and try to claim to be a independent country of one or that the legally elected PM is not my PM. next time if it matters to you so much first make sure you vote and secondly go out there and join the people fighting to get the people you want elected.

Right Political rant over ha ha god didn’t know I had it in me.

one one last note wasn’t Chris Addison funny as hell on Have I Got News For You, one of the best guests for ages !!

been a bit slack

 

Part 4 of WAIK will come soon just been a little mental here of late so not time for longish blogs,

 

if you have any questions on it thou email me :)

Installing Exchange on Windows 2008

 

here is a quick gotcha

i am migrating my system from windows 2003 to 2008 and as the main system is exchange I decided to start with that one, after all File and print is easy and my test web server will stay the same as my remote live web server on windows 2003 (anyway that's not in the domain)

all was going ok (i will not say well because i had two attempts at installing exchange) I had disabled IP V6 because i wasn't planning to use it just yet and then i noticed that SA was not Automatically starting and also that the new server that was a DC and GC was not being seen by exchange as a GC. After a little research I found this article

http://msmvps.com/blogs/ehlo/archive/2008/06/12/1634433.aspx

it seems that if you don't have IP v6 enabled you have all sorts of silly no related strange problems like GC not being seen and SA not starting

so you have been warned IP v6 keep it enabled ! 

WDS and WAIK for Vista Part 3

ok so below I have detailed how I create a reference PC, some of these setting will depend on how you want the image to work and what you want in the image. but feel free to copy my setup if you wish

creating a reference machine

1. Ensure the Bios is set to booting initially from PXE boot and secondly from CD / DVD in the bios

2. Boot From Vista Installation CD

3. Select Time and Currency to UK English, Note this will also change the Keyboard to United Kingdom (if your in the UK that is)

4. Click next

5. Click the Install Now Button

6. Enter The Product key but ensure that the Automatically Active Windows when online is un ticked

7. Click Next

8. Click the Accept Licence Agreement and click next

9. Click the Custom(Advanced Option)

10. If no partition exists create one min of 80GB, if one exists format it so it’s a clean install

11. Click next

12. The files will be copied and will begin to expand (this will take a little time depending on the machine)

13. The PC will then Restart in windows mode

14. Follow the windows setup process

15. Create a user (I always use WksAdmin)

16. Enter a secure password (make sure it is documented securely)

17. Press next

18. Give the PC A name I normal go for a image style name

19. Press next

20. Select Use Recommend setting on the help protect windows screen

21. Make sure the Date and Time as well as the Time zone are correct

22. Click next

23. Select work as the computers current location

24. Press Start

25. Login as the created user

26. Set the correct screen resolution

27. Go to control panel

28. Go to classic view

29. Go to user Account

30. Select Turn User Account Control on or off

31. Press continue when asked

32. Un-tick Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer depends on your views on this tool personally i find it a pain so i take it out

33. Click ok

34. And click to restart machine

35. Press the start button and right click on computer and select properties

36. In the computer name domain and workgroup setting click change setting

37. Click change on the computer name tab

38. Select domain and enter the domain name

39. Click ok and enter the credentials for the Domain Admin Account, then press ok

40. Click ok on the welcome to domain message

41. Click ok on the restart your computer message

42. Click Close on the System Properties page

43. Click Restart now

44. At login screen select switch users

45. Click other users

46. Login in as the domain workstation admin account

Steps 47 to 53 only if you want office to be part of the image, my initial plan was to have office installed via Group Policy however after much digging i discovered the version supplied with the Microsoft Partnership Pack (MAPS) is a retail version of office and Group Policy can't be used to roll out retail versions of software, so i decided my best bet was to create a share on the network for my app's and install it into the image from there thus giving it a standard path it can go back to if it needs to run a repair or install a component

47. Browse to the application store

48. Run office setup

49. Select EULA and click next, select customize

50. Set the common items to install and everything else to install at first uses (for list of common items see App 1

51. Click install now

52. Install any other app's required for the image (recommend this is done from network unless the image is for remote users then best to copy the install files to the PC and then install)

53. Do Not Install Anti Virus Software as part of an Image!

54. Install any updated drivers for the image

55. Restart machine

56. Login in as domain workstation admin account

57. On the control panel welcome screen un tick the show at start up box at the bottom and close

58. Install any windows updates

59. Set to check for more than just windows updates

60. Run C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe

61. Select OOBE and Generalize option

62. Reboot

63. Press F12 for network boot

64. Select Capture boot image

65. When the capture image screen comes up select the Volume to capture (generally C:\)

66. Give the image a good descriptive name

67. Give a full description of the image including what is installed

68. Click next

69. Press browse next to the name and location select Computer then C: and make a directory called Image go into that directory and give the image a file name (as descriptive as possible)

70. Tick the Upload Image to WDS Server

71. Enter the Host name of the WDS server or the IP address and click connect

72. You will be prompted for credentials enter your domain admin user name and password

73. Then in image group select the group where you would like the image stored i.e. vista x86 etc

74. Then click finish

Now that's pretty easy stuff lets talk about PXE for a moment, PXE is a network boot protocol, but you must be aware that not all network cards support it and some need an additional boot ROM to be able to use it. Personally these days I have have made one network card my standard as it is well support and has PXE built in its the Intel PRO 1000 GT Desktop, they cost about £20 each and in my view excellent cards to use. a lot of motherboard come with a network card onboard these days and most seem to support PXE, you might find however that the Vista boot Image doesn't have a driver for them as standard as happened with me with the Attansic L1 Network card on one of my machines, you can inject drivers into the boot image and we will be covering that in part 4. its not a difficult thing to do but its not overly reliable. if you want to save yourself a lot of hassle get a Intel Pro 1000 GT card.

so how can you find out if your card is PXE enabled well I normally visit the manufacture web site and it should be listed in the extend specification, Sometime it is referred to as the boot agent so be aware of that. if it is a built in network card check your bios there is normally a setting like Enable PXE or Enable Boot Agent sometimes Boot from network

for more information on the PXE Standard Why not visit the wikipedia.

Installing your newly create image

ok so you have your image on the server, so on a PC if you boot using PXE (F12) and select the deployment Image the machine will boot into a windows setup environment,

you will need to go to the WDS Console if this is the first time you have installed from WDS to this machine and look in pending devices, here you will see your machine listed, if you right click on it and say Approve Device, the PXE system will then load on the PC

first select your language settings

you will then be asked for a User name and Password that has access to the RemoteInstall area on the network, use an Administrator account for this

now select the image you wish to install, for example the one we have just created.

next select the drive you wish to install on to (if the machine already has an OS on it I would advise you format the drive

now it will appear like it is running a normal windows installation but of course from the network.

once the installation has complete it will reboot and you will be presented with the windows Quick Setting up screen

First will ask you

select the Country or Region, Time and Currency and the keyboard layout

for me this is all UK setting but you need to use the setting that are right for you

next you will be asked for the Software Key and if you wish to Automatically active windows when online, My suggestion is you don't automatically activate windows until you 100% sure the images are perfect and this might take a few attempts and a few tweaks.

Next you have to accept the EULA (End Users Licences Agreement)

Now you have to create a local user as an admin, anything will do here as I recommend you delete it when you have completed the installation.

Give the computer a name well again depends on your naming convention for computers, some people like to use the user name - PC personally I tend to go for HTTPSDS-WKS- and then a number incrementally

Next you are asked to select the help protect Windows option, personally here I just go for the recommended as I uses WSUS so the setting are over written.

Now you have to set you time zone and make sure the time and date are correct.

you also need to set what network it is on Home / Work or Public location

Click start and log in an either the user you created on the initial image creation in my case Wksadmin or as the user you just created with the quick start wizard

you can then add the machine to the domain and you have a full working machine if you have added office to the image you will need to authorize it again but other than that it will be a fully working install

but isn't that a lot of work after dropping down an image, would it not be better if most of the setting was automated, of course it would and we will look at that in part 4 Unattended.xml and we will also look at how to inject a driver into the boot image.

A bit of a bitch

Ok so someone post on a forum asking a question, hey we are all in the same boat here things change fast and we are all up against a learning curve. personally posting on a forum is my last ditch hope after reading all the documentation and reading all the forum reply's relating to my issue. but if I do post on a forum and then I resolve it I post what I did to resolve it and where I found the answer in the end.

the most universally useless reply is when someone posts an issue then they resolve it themselves and post oh found the answer cheers or whatever, but never explain how they resolved it. to me this is totally selfish and self centred behaviour. they expects someone else to give them knowledge for free but they are not willing to share what they know with others.

so come on people if you find a solution to a problem you have been having(even if it is doh typo alert or something as silly as that) and you have asked people for help share what you have learnt because you damn well expect people to do the same for you !!

Now days if I see a poster that does that I make a note of his ID and if he posts another question and I know the answer I will not reply. that's right people you get on to my shit list and I tell you you stay there! I am more than happy to share my knowledge with anyone that's willing to share their knowledge with me

WDS and WAIK for Vista Part 2

Ok so in part one we setup a Windows Deployment Server. Now in part two we are going to add the boot images.

first of all you need a Vista Install CD with Service Pack 1 DVD. It has to be Service pack one built in or this will not work, for this example I used Vista Business with SP1 DVD

At the server insert the DVD and go to the WDS Console

Right click on boot images and select add boot image

Browse to the DVD and to the sources directory and select the boot.wim file

The Console reads the built in Metadata and puts it in to two text boxes so that you can change it so you know just what to use the boot image for, for example this one i want to use for booting X86 Image for Vista

This is a Image to deploy Vista x86 images so that's what I have called the image and given a full image description, so in this case I have expanded on the Image name.

Check the settings on the confirmation screen before clicking next

After the image has been imported you will be asked to click finish at this point you have a PXE Bootable Image,

so this is what you end up with a Vista Deployment X86 image listed as online and available for PXE networked machines to boot from.

Now that's great we can boot a PC but without any images to install its pretty pointless so we need to be able to capture an image and transfer it to the WDS Server. for this we need to create another Boot image with the Capture tools built in.

Right click on the boot image that we have just created and select Create Capture Boot Image.

First we need to give the Image a new name so we can distinguish between the two boot images. I have changed Deployment to Capture and the same in the description, next you need to browse to where the images are kept for me as I set the Install Directory to D:\RemoteInstall the full path is D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86\Images. Then I gave the new image a file name of Capture.wim. Don't make the initial mistake I made and think that location and file name is of the image you want to use as the source, its not clear but this is the path and the location of where you want the new boot image to be and be called.

Once the image has finished importing then you will end up with this screen click finish and then click out of boot images Right click on the server and select refresh and then click back on to boot images, seems to be a little bug where the boot image section doesn't refresh after creating a capture image.

Once it has refreshed you will be reward with this screen showing that you have two boot images, one for deploying an image and one for capturing an image. In part 3 we will go through the creating a reference PC, Sysprep and capture of image, we will also discuss PXE a little more and how to find out if a network card supports PXE

WDS and WAIK for Vista Part 1

Of late I have been working with WDS and WAIK a lot for a customers projects one this I found is there are a lot of conflicting views about how to make this work, lots of half way house instructions and ideas that I just couldn't get to work so I have decided to detail how I did get it all to work

Some Parts are very easy and we will start with the very easy part.

I am going to assume you are doing this on Windows 2003 server as there is not a huge coverage out there of windows server 2008 as of yet, however everything I describe here is pretty much the same as Windows Server 2008 except about Service packs also Windows Server 2008 has some additional features I will talk about at a later date

So the very first thing you need to is ensure the server you intent to use for you WDS has Service Pack 2 Installed, This has some enhancements for Vista installations. It can only been use within domains and not workgroups. you must have a DNS and a DHCP Server and the location where you wish to store the images must be NTFS. For most people thinking of using this system this will not be a problem at all

Next go to control Panel and Add or Remove Programs, Click on Click on Add/Remove Windows Components, Scroll to the bottom of the list and select Windows Deployment Services click install, It might ask you for your install disk depending on how your server has been configured

close all the open windows and go to Administrative Tools and you will now have two new options to choose from: Windows Deployment Service and Windows Deployment Service Legacy

Click on Windows Deployment Service and a new screen will open in MMC

First thing you need to do is run thought the configuration process.

Right Click on the Server Name and select Configure Server.

This start the configuration wizard click next to continue

Next you need to decide where to store the images, I would recommend that the partition should have at least 50GB Free on it

Select the options that are correct for your setup i.e. if the server WDS is installed on is a DHCP Server then tick the Do not listen on port 67, if you have a none Microsoft DHCP Server you will have to configure server option 60 yourself on the DHCP Server however as I suspect most of you will be using the Microsoft DHCP Server then make sure the configure DHCP Option 60 to PXE Client is selected and this will save you a manual job afterward. Simply put if DHCP Option 60 is not set the network card on your workstation will not be able to find the PXE server to boot from (i.e. WDS).

Next you need to select how the server is going to respond to client requests. now if this is the first time you have used WDS it will not be aware of any of your clients so my recommendation is that you select respond to all (Known and unknown) Client Computers. Now of course this is a security and licensing risk so I would also recommend you tick the for unknown clients notify the administrator and respond after approval, this stops just any one connecting to your WDS server via PXE and stealing your image including any software you have in your image. If you are going to perform a big roll out you can always un-tick this option when you do the big roll out and then re select it, once a machine has received an image from the server once you will not need to authorize it again.

you are now asked if you want to add images right away, personally i would advise you to un-tick this before clicking finished as there is other things to be considered first and the chances are you will not have an image ready to add straight away.

Next you want to add an Image group, right click on Install Images and select Add Image Group

Select a name for your image group, I normally create image groups by Operating system so Vista X86 would be an example of a name for an image group

So you end up with something like this, so Now you have a WDS Server installed and configured and now all you need to do is add the different images, In part 2 we will talk about adding boot images both for deployment and for Image Capture

Sorry its been so long

My god nearly a years gap between posting. Life got a bit crazy for a while but I seem to be getting on top of it all now.

I have now started my own business offering Support, Development and Administration Services to small companies and for the last year I have been mostly working on that

my first major project that is now in phase 2 was Putney Arts Theatre new web site. Phase 1 was the public site, This is a site designed so that all the content can be updated by the users without using a single HTML Editor WYSIWYG or otherwise. all the editing is done online, This is my preferred solution for people for two reason

1. For the customer, they don't have to pay someone with development skills to change some text

2. If all I did all the time was change the text for people in the web sites I would be bored out of my brain, I love a challenge and ok sometimes we have to do the every day stuff but hey if its not a technical issue why is a techie doing it !!

anyway phase 2 is an area for the arts theatres members to keep in touch with each other and throw around ideas so that phase of the project starts in the next week or so, over the next few weeks I also hope to be bring you up to date with the research I have been doing and there is lots of it so stay tuned

I am feeling pretty energized at the moment to get a lot of stuff documented god knows why maybe it was the thrill rides at Thorpe park yesterday blew the cobwebs out of my head and now I am ready to rumble and grumble about all things IT Related 

The Biker

Totally No tech Related, and even thou I am without a bike at the moment I will always be a biker at heart and this well I think it says it all about the misconceptions in the world and the dumb ass attitude of a lot (not all) car drivers

I saw you, hug your purse closer to you in the grocery store line.
But, you didn't see me, put an extra $10.00 in the collection plate last Sunday.

I saw you, pull your child closer when we passed each other on the sidewalk.
But, you didn't see me, playing Santa at the local mall.

I saw you, change your mind about going into the restaurant.
But, you didn't see me, attending a meeting to raise more money for the hurricane relief.

I saw you, roll up your window and shake your head when I rode by.
But, you didn't see me, riding behind you when you flicked your cigarette butt out the car window.

I saw you, frown at me when I smiled at your children.
But, you didn't see me, when I took time off from work to run toys to the homeless.

I saw you, stare at my long hair.
But, you didn't see me, and my friends cut ten inches off for Locks of Love.

I saw you, roll your eyes at our leather jackets and gloves.
But, you didn't see me, and my brothers donate our old ones to those that had none.

I saw you, look in fright at my tattoos.
But, you didn't see me, cry as my children were born and have their name written over and in my heart.

I saw you, change lanes while rushing off to go somewhere.
But, you didn't see me, going home to be with my family.

I saw you, complain about how loud and noisy our bikes can be.
But, you didn't see me, when you were changing the CD and drifted into my lane.

I saw you, yelling at your kids in the car.
But, you didn't see me, pat my child's hands, knowing he was safe behind me.

I saw you, reading the newspaper or map as you drove down the road.
But, you didn't see me, squeeze my wife's leg when she told me to take the next turn.

I saw you, race down the road in the rain.
But, you didn't see me, get soaked to the skin so my son could have the car to go on his date.

I saw you, run the yellow light just to save a few minutes of time.
But, you didn't see me, trying to turn right.

I saw you, cut me off because you needed to be in the lane I was in.
But, you didn't see me, leave the road.

I saw you, waiting impatiently for my friends to pass.
But, you didn't see me. I wasn't there.

I saw you, go home to your family.
But, you didn't see me.
Because, I died that day you cut me off.
I was just a biker. A person with friends and a family.
But, you didn't see me.

Re-post this around in hopes that people will understand the biker community.
If you don't re-post this, It sucks to be you. I hope you never loose someone that rides.
EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE US, RESPECT OUR RIGHTS TO RIDE WHAT WE CHOOSE AND TAKE A FEW EXTRA SECONDS TO BE SURE WE'RE NOT IN 'YOUR' WAY - LIVE TO RIDE . . . . RIDE TO LIVE

ASP.NET Membership Function

So I have been working on a few projects of late so explain why I haven't been blogging much, I know same old excuess well

well one of the problems I have been having is using the .net login system, but i have found the soution, create the database you want to use for your application database. next run

c:\windows\microsoft .net\framework\2.456\aspnet_sqlreg.exe

select the database server (don't forget if its an express server then you need to put the \SQLExpress after the host name of the machine the database is on unless its the local host then its just a . before the \. select the database you created and follow the wizard. afterward open your web.config and put these lines in the connectionStrings Section and your up and running.

then your up and running, Microsoft don't seem to have documented this hack and it took me a while to find it myself so I hope others find it useful and I will know where to find it when I need it ;)

  <remove name="LocalSqlServer" />
    <add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=home-srv04\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog =commerce;Integrated Security=True"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="commerceConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=Home-srv04\SQLExpress;Initial Catalog=commerce;Integrated Security=True"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

 

Only In America

So Target are being sued in the US. in relation to there web site, Why is it because they have been doing false advertising Nope, is it because they took money without supply goods nope, they are being sued because their web site is not accessible to blind people. Now I am all for making things accessible to anyone with a disability, but this does seem to take it a tad to far. I suspect the issue is that the pictures don't have the alt tags completed with meaningful description although it doesn't explain how the web site is not compliant. If this is the case then its a matter of something being over looked by the developer. The problem as I see it these days if there is a problem with something people tend not to communicate the problem to the service provider the first action is to sue.  keeps the lawyers happy I am sure but I wonder what damage this is doing to communities as a whole. People soon will only communicate via lawyers just in case they are sued Crazy world in what we live in. I wonder what's next will a musical artist be sued for not making his music accessible to deaf people ?

 

here is the link to the original new item on yahoo Judge allows class action against Target Web site

Software tools discovered

Ok this week I have a mixed bag of offering for you to take a little look at.. The first is a bit of software called Sharpdevelop. This is a open source version of Visual studio aimed specifically at c#  and VB.net users. the look is similar to visual studio but without the visual bit, this is aimed at true coders. Microsoft have there own free solutions called Visual studio Express they are free but have limitation

I discovered Sharpdevelop. via a tip on a message board in a discussion about Version control software, I have recently installed the sourceforge free 15 user Management system what I have to say is an excellent management tool for development projects. This came with a choice of Subversion or CVS. I had been using WinCVS along with CVSNT but found it lacked a lot of features I would like and could be problematic at times. So I decided to take a look at Subversion, Its not perfect but its a lot closer to perfect than CVSNT. I would fully recommend you use TortoiseSVN if your using a windows based environment.  so all these tools together along with my old fav's have come together to make a great development environment for me to work in. if your using the Sourceforge system I would Highly recommend you get a copy of Sourceforge explorer as well as many other great add in's. Now I know last time I said I would try to blog more often but and I still hope to do that just sometimes life get in the way. and maybe I have spent to much time on the IMVU boards. debating Linux disto's and laughing at BSD users who think they are better than Linux users

Centos and Networking

So I have my improved network environment now I have gone for a TP-Link router as my internal Router, and so far I have been very impressed with this bit of kit, this router is my main firewall between my internal network and my DMZ and also have excellent wireless capabilities because one of my Wireless card is quite old I have decided to use WEP to secure my Wireless network and it works like a dream. Then I have my old D-link router with NAT switch off but rule based firewall enabled to protect my DMZ and to make the actual connection to the Internet, I have two Servers in my DMZ and a further two servers on my internal network only. This gives me two SMTP server using one as a backup using the MX records and two HTTP servers, one running Windows 2003 and the other running Centos Linux. Security seems pretty tight in this arrangement. basically I have 2 firewalls between my clients and the Internet and each server in the DMZ has its one firewall enabled so there is two between each server in the DMZ and the Internet. but is this enough, well I am planning a routine of testing this environment from the outside as well as monitoring all the ports.

 

Syshelpman seems to be taking up a lot of my time hence not blogging much of late, I will try to get better, Today's Recommendation thou is one a lot of Linux hacks will know about, Webmin, what a great tool as much as I love the command line and I use it a great deal both in windows and Linux sometimes its nice to have a well laid out admin interface and that's the best way to describe Webmin, when Webmin first came out it was limited to say the least but now days with all the modules written for it its become a one stop shop for all admin needs, if you manage Linux servers take a look at it .

del.icio.us Tags: Webmin, Security, Firewall, Centos, Linux

New Project in progress

So I have been working mostly on one new project but looks like others are in the pipeline. Most of my time is being taken up with a new Application Called System and Helpdesk Management. what is a management system based around the ITIL. This is an open source project at the moment but who knows where it will go. the basic aim is to build a one stop shop for ITIL but is highly customizable by the Administrator of the system. anyway to read more about it go to the System and Helpdesk Management Blog. This will eventually have its on web site but I only have one set of hands.

The other project in hand at the moment is top secret so I am not going to give anything away on that at the moment except to say we are look at new technology to create it. primary using Ruby what leads on to the next item I hope to be changing my system environment to Add a Linux web server to host Ruby based sites. I let you know how this goes but it will consist of a major change to the present network. so there many be some downtime.

other news I am slowly adding more resource to the resource section and I am still looking for Experts for the forum so if you interested in helping others out join the forum let me know you expert area and I will promote you to expert on the system.

Stoned ideas is still looking for new members  don't be put off by the name the idea behind the site is to make friends and have a good laugh.

Final new design for  The Hitchinson Family site is live I have used some of the code scripts that I have talked about on here so why not check it out and see them in action

MP3 and Backup

So in an earlier blog I talked about including mp3 to be selected and played by the user on a web site, I suggested a couple of systems to do this, well now I have opted for a third option its called the webpod but the whole of the Search This Site should be interesting to most web developers, if you want to see what webpod looks like then visit our family web site and have a look at our music page.

Now on to backups ok for people like me I uses an industrial strength backup system to tape. so I Rarely look at backup systems aimed at the home users, it was only the other day when I was visiting my father in law that I took another look into this area. here the basic story, father in law purchased his first home PC when he retired. been a users for quite sometime in the office so can do the basics but has never had to install software or back up anything. its a big learning curve going from a total end users with support on tap to a PC owner, so over the last few months we have been slowly teaching him new stuff. now he purchased his PC from Dell and although I am not a lover of Dell in the corp Environment I think the PC's they make are fine for home uses. First problem came about a month ago when he kept getting out of disk space errors what is a scary thing after just a few months of a new PC so we set up a remote connect and I had a look, I discovered that Dell had create a 10GB partition and had by default configured Vista (yuk yuk yuk) back to backup all pictures all video and just about everything else and its dog to this 10GB partition, the second problem is Vista backup doesn't do incremental backups or overwrite old backups(that I can find) so 10GB went very fast.  So I cleaned out the old backups but within a month the error message was back. So I had a look to see if you could be more selective about what you backup, Simple answer not really, you can say only backup my pictures and Doc but you can't say Ignore this folder as I have the contents on DVD so it was time to go looking for something else and I found this Cobian Backup I have to say I was Impressed no end, not only can you do incremental backups and also select how many full backups you save but you can ask it to backup to a zip file saving more space but still easy to access even if you don't have the backup software installed scheduling is easy, good interface generally a very good all round produce and its open source too. So if your stuck with Vista dump Microsoft so called improved backup and move over to Cobian Backup, 10 out of 10 to the developer   

del.icio.us Tags: Backup, MP3, Web Design, Vista, Microsoft

Firefox Extensions must haves

Ok I said I would tell you about my must have Firefox extensions, normally my first must have would be the Google tool bar but that's pretty much comes as standard, so i leave it as read that you have that one if not get it! So Onward.  The first extension I always install when I put Firefox on a new PC is simply called Web Developers, Its a great toolbar with tools for CSS Forms Images Cookies also some hand tool to resize your browser so you can test your site in different resolutions. a great tool and my number one must have.

The second must have also relates to web design work IWEBtool, This tool is more aimed at promoting your web site rather than the design, there are tools to help with the design but most are aimed at the age old game of increasing you Google page Ranking.

Ok My third selection is the Del.icio.us Bookmarks mainly as i use Del.icio.us as my online book marking tool for general bookmarks along with my own site for technical Resources.

My next tool is called Clipmarks sometimes you only want to save one part of a page or maybe a picture for future reference, this is what clipmarks excels at, you select the section that you want to save with the clipmarks tool and hey presto as if by magic its saved for you future reference. dead handy for blogging or just for while your doing research. 

Now we come to Firebug, what's a great tool for diagnosing problems with pages both HTML and other including asp and JavaScript.

so there we have it my top five

More to come

del.icio.us Tags: bookmarks, Bug Finding, Extentions, CEO, Development, Web Design

Music forum and photos

So I started the task of rebuilding my personal web sites a couple of weeks ago. The issue wasn't so much the content more the design so that always makes life easier. It content that's always the harder bit, finding things that fit together and grouping them in the right way, This site (Techietone) was the first to be rebuilt. I have added some new features, like personal rating on the resources and a contact form but the main difference other than moving over to using blogger is the Forum, I have used a third party bit of software for this because although I could write it myself why reinvent something that's already out there and working really well. the application is pretty easy to configure and I will be producing a How to for MySql soon. The system is ASP based and therefore you need a host that will allow ASP. Anyway if you want to check it out for yourself here is the site http://forum.snitz.com/. they have a great forum themselves for asking question but if you have a question feel free to ask me.

My next two challenges that I had was for the family web site, Nikki (my dear wife) is in charge of content on this one so I mainly worry about the technical side of stuff and trying to meet Nikki's requirements what makes it fun at times, there was two main reasons for changing the Photo Gallery, the first from a technical point of view was that the present one is Perl based and although I love Perl I love standards more  and the web server that the site is running on is primary a ASP server so I wanted to remove all the Perl applications so I could remove Perl. Again I could have written it myself using ASP and MySql but firstly I couldn't be arsed to design it and then write it, secondly I wanted to avoid a database system because we have a lot of photo's and the thought of importing all the URL's or actual pictures sent a shiver down my spine. the second reason behind replacing it is that Nikki hated the way it organized the pictures on a very simple by album name method. So it had to go we are placing it with ASP Online Photo Album, The basics are very easy to set up, some of the graphics used was a little crap but easy to replace, This is generally a good system and easy to create a great looking web site, be aware thou even thou most of it is classic ASP there is one module that uses ASP.NET so you need a host that supports ASP.net (these days if the support ASP they generally support ASP.net).

what bring me on to my last challenge what's far from sorted but I thought I would let you know what I have found so far, Nikki would like an MP3 Player on our web site, she got the idea from Facebook and well as we have a complete section on music it seems like a good idea. The first system I looked at was amazing and I might still implement it for personal uses in a secured environment. its called One Web MP3 Server its still in beta but wow this is a fully functioning MP3 server that allows you to listen to your music from anywhere you have a web connection and a browser. you can create play lists and search you music collection. but great as it was it was so over the top for what we wanted and would have been hard to integrate into the rest of the site. So I kept looking and that's when I found these people codefuse they have 9 different styled Flash Mp3 players that are very simple to use and work using a simple XML file to list the mp3's. this is the system I am working on implementing at the moment, I let you know how it goes. so here are all those links again

http://forum.snitz.com/ for the Forum

ASP Online Photo Album for the photo Album

One Web MP3 Server  for the Mp3 Server

codefuse for the mp3 player

Hopefully you find this stuff handy

del.icio.us Tags: Mp3, Music, Forums, Photo, Gallary, web Design, Code, freeware, Open Source

Geek Alert Geek Alert

So I was thinking yesterday, (I know its a silly thing to do but I can't stop it) I describe myself as a IT geek but I figured there are different types of IT geek's. So I decided to define what I think are the three major type of IT geek's. You have your always on the computer, trying to solve problems and find good solutions to everyday life stuff this I defined as the Techie Geek and I would put myself in this group. Then you have the other end of the spectrum people that spend hours and hours on the computer in virtual world trying to play the virtual guitar better, race the virtual car faster shoot the virtual enemy. these I call Game geek's, They have no real IT skills as such but they can tell you how to connect to a doom server in Japan. And Finals you got the geek's that span both geekness area's when they are not fixing or programming stuff they are killing stuff, I would say the latter two are the most common, I have tried to get into gaming, I own an X box and a PS2 and I play both once in a while but to be honest I get board of them very quickly. give me a good programming problem or a system not working I would pick that over shoot aliens any day. I wouldn't say one type of geek is better than another just different and we probably all need to get out more to be honest although. I would just like to say thou I don't see a geek as someone with no social skills and no dress sense, they are Nerd to me.

so This IT geek is going back to working on his web site and investigating RSS and MP3 players on web sites. GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK !

del.icio.us Tags: Gaming, Techie, Computers, IT

Someone call security

So McAfee has released a rootkit detective today. version 1 Beta, root kits have become a big issue over the last few years, as people have become more aware of Trojans  and Worm virus. Rootkit's hook themselves' into  Kernel and into the registry undermining the anti-virus software and the spyware detectors but rootkit detective is not for the amateur its a tool for pro's as  you need a good understand of how the operating system works and what processes and hooks there should be. go here to read more

Now some news for the home users, Secunia  has released a Utility that checks for updates. Again this is a beta version and is free for home users and private uses, installation is easy enough and it auto start itself after the first install. To be honest I was impressed on how much software it detected and how quickly I could update software even software like Filezilla. It also told me all the software I had that had become end of life and gave me a percentage score for how up to date my machine was. Of course I have only had a small play but I will let you know if there is any major problems with it after I test it some more. if you want to download a copy for you self then go to the Secunia PSI site

To Much Information Running Through my Brain

Yep I know its an old sting song but its got a lot of truth behind it, the point is these days there is so much information its becoming hard to see the wheat for the chaff (to use an old fashion none technical term) now you can get just about anything deliver to you mail box or listed on you RSS Feeds,

I am going though a culling process at the moment, getting rid of the feeds and mailing list that I haven't had any valuable information from. but its a task, its almost easier to write a rule just to delete it but that's using up bandwidth of course one of the most annoying things for me thou is sites like WAYN or Face book that still send you mail even when your logged on.

Today my official membership to WAYN expires and now I got to find a way of stopping them mailing me to death.

 I mean if I sat and read every mail and every RSS Feed I got I would get nothing else done in the day what we need is RSS Feed reader with Filters, oh god just set myself another project by the looks of it.   

of course I have some must reads like Lazy View and slash dot but a lot is just junk and also not relevant to the claimed subject matter. it seems that some think more is better, I prefer quality information myself and that's something that sometimes lacks on the web.

del.icio.us Tags: RSS, Email Groups, Spam