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php_flag vs. php_value
edited by on April 1st 2010, at 15:14
Had an issue where I was not able to change the post_max_size and upload_max_filesize through the Apache2 configuration.
After googling around, I finally found what was wrong: apparently, aside of php_flag, there's also a php_value flag to set configuration variables. The difference?

Use php_flag only when setting boolean values like 0 | 1, off | on.

Use php_value to actually set values other than boolean (like the filesizes of post_max_size and upload_max_filesize).

Thus, a working example looks like:

<Directory /var/www/> <IfModule mod_php5.c> php_flag register_globals off php_value post_max_size 16M php_value upload_max_filesize 16M </IfModule><  ...
 
STOP 0x7E when inserting USB flash drive
edited by on March 30th 2010, at 11:53
Had a rather odd problem with a laptop of a client: upon inserting any USB storage media, his Windows XP bailed out with a BSOD with STOP code 0x7E.

A look with windbg revealed it may be related to an issue with the USB driver (usbport.sys), but as there were no real USB drivers available for it, and he already had the most recent Windows Updates, a "regular" solution would not be an option.

So I went for the more irregular option. I knew that there's probably another Windows Update which had replaced one or more of the USB driver files (in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers) - the problem only surfaces until a month or so ago, but was unable to quickly assertain which one. I didn't fee  ...
 
Wine for Mac OSX
edited by on March 24th 2010, at 14:51

Wine now also has precompiled binaries available. Together with WineBottler (an application to prepare and pack Windows applications for redistribution with Wine), it is available here: http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/.

Wine is an application which allows to run Windows application on linux, BSD or Mac OSX. Rather than full emulation, it acts as a compatibility layer between the application and the OS.
Wine is not entirely foolproof just yet; there is still much to be done, but with each passing release, more and more applications are getting supported.

 
Condor patch 1.1.3 released
edited by on March 23rd 2010, at 22:12

The long awaited Condor patch v1.1.3 has been released. It fixes a critical bug with the newer nVidia drivers, and was particularly a hassle when running Condor in Windows 7.
Aside of the fix, an additional tow plane was added in the mix.

Download the patch: http://www.condorsoaring.com/downloads.htm.

 
Analyze wireless networks with inSSIDer
edited by on March 19th 2010, at 18:37
inSSIDer is a free tool to analyze wireless networks. While this tool may not be as extended as professional ones, it has a few nice features that make this thing a must-have. Add to it that it's entirely free, and you've got yourself a nice tool for troubleshooting wireless networks.

inSSIDer can be used to inspect wireless network and troubleshoot access points. It goes as far as viewing received signal (in dBm) over time, track channels in use, etc. There's also additional GPS support (NMEA v2.3) to locate access points, including support to export it to KML for viewing in Google Earth. The tool uses the native Wi-Fi API and uses a current wireless network card, without actually claiming  ...
 
Flying season 2010 official kick-off
edited by on March 14th 2010, at 00:43
And so the flying season has started again, pretty much in the same way it ended: it was a dark damp and cold day, and not at all without technical difficulties.
The issues with our tow plane that were supposed to be fixed weren't really fixed. Our backup did perform flawlessly (a luck we did not have at the end of last season).

All of the little troubles and discomforts did not thwart the pleasure of having done about a dozen flights, most of them check flights to sign on after a long winter's break. Although having flown last week, it feels good to have flown a succesful tow and subsequent flight and landing on our own field. Kinda reminds me of last year's start and all.
The winter is ru  ...
 
Configure battery packs on your APC UPS
edited by on March 3rd 2010, at 17:48
Suppose you have an APC UPS and have just purchased a battery pack to go with it. Connecting the battery pack is pretty straightforward, but did you know you need to tell your UPS that an additional battery pack has been installed? Setting this in your UPS, optimizes the usage of the entire battery capacity.

If you are using PowerChute software, and have connected the UPS to a computer using serial, USB or network interface, you will be able to set this parameter in the software.

Log into the management card using your web browser (default user and password: apc).

Navigate to UPS, and inside Configuration, select General.

Set the correct battery pack number and click on the Apply button   ...
 
Seamless compression with Squeeze
edited by on March 1st 2010, at 22:45
Seamless file compression has found its way to Mac OSX 10.6 with Squeeze.
The application is a system applet, implementing the new HFS compression technology to transparently compress folders you configure to be compressed. Each folder added with Squeeze will be compressed in the background. To the user, they are just regular files, but they will take up less disk space.

Using Squeeze is easy: just select the folders you want to get compressed, and it will silently work in the background to compress the contents of those folders. Whenever you use any of the files, it will be read like any other file, just like that. Compression occurs completely transparently.
Additionally, Squeeze keep  ...
 
Raptors finally arrived
edited by on February 24th 2010, at 19:26

Finally got the final parts of my computer: the HD's.

Currently, I was using an old HD (a Maxtor 500GB) from my previous system. The idea with the new disks is to set up two Raptors in a RAID0 configuration. As Raptors are already fairly fast, the additional RAID0 - I've been using this method a few years already - should give it an extra edge.
I'm keeping the old HD in to have additional 500 GB of pure storage (like downloads and such, things that don't need the speed).

 
Albatros organizes Condor Soaring competition
edited by on February 19th 2010, at 16:52

Soaring club Albatros (EBZH) has organized an online competition in the soaring flightsim Condor. In this competition, participants have to fly a set of tasks where they have to try and get the highest score by obtaining the highest average speed.

There are seven tasks in the Provence, set out of Vinon. The other seven tasks are all based in Slovenia (the default scenery of Condor). The tasks prove to be a mix of flying by thermals, and a good deal of ridge flying. For each task, up to three tries are possible. The best of three count as the final result for a given task.

Results of the competition can be found here: http://www.zweefvliegen-hasselt.be/Condorcup.

 
Installing Windows XP alongside Vista or 7
edited by on February 13th 2010, at 15:25
If you come across a problem where you can't do anything but install a Windows XP alongside a Vista or Windows 7, don't despair, as it is quite easily done.

First you have to repartition your HD. If you have a second HD you're not using, you can ignore this step. If not, you probably have to resize one of the present partitions. But in order to get the maximum out of the resizing, make sure the partition you're about to resize, is defragmented properly. Note that you cannot resize FAT32 partitions (but who uses that nowadays, anyway).
The resizing can be done through Disk Management. Select the system or another partition, right-click and select Shrink volume. Windows   ...
 
Telenet applies Fair Use Policy
edited by on February 11th 2010, at 13:23
In Belgium, internet provider Telenet announced the application of fair use policy on a number of their internet subscriptions. Additionally, two new subscriptions have been launched under the common name FiberNet, which will be using the new EuroDOCSIS 3.0 specification to obtain the higher speeds.
After Belgacom, Telenet is the second provider in Belgium to apply fair use policy.

The fair use policies will be applied to the TurboNet and FiberNet subscription at the beginning of July this year. ExpressNet and TurboNet will also benefit from a speed increase (30Mbps instead of 25Mbps). The first of the two will not be upgraded to fair use but its traffic limit will be increased multiple   ...
 
Terminal Server 2008 setup fails with 0x8004005 in SBS 2008 domain
edited by on February 3rd 2010, at 11:10
When installing the Terminal Services role on a 2008 member server in a SBS 2008 domain, you may run into the following error:

Quote
Attempt to configure Terminal Server failed with the error code 0x8004005.
Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

The problem surfaces when the 2008 member server was added to the domain, it was misplaced in the SBSComputers OU, rather than the SBSServers OU. As a result, a certain client group policy, which is linked with the SBSComputers OU, interferes with the installation of Terminal Services.

To solve this problem, follow these steps:

Uninstall the Terminal Services role (entirely, including all sub roles).

In Active Di  ...
 
Direct download links to Adobe products through FTP
edited by on February 2nd 2010, at 17:53

Adobe has an FTP site available where you can directly download installers and updates of their products, without going through the site, license agreements and download managers.

Adobe Acrobat Reader & Adobe Reader

For PDF reading, the direct links are:

Links to other products will follow. Keep an eye on this post on the site.

 
Remote Desktop Manager 5.7.1 released
edited by on February 2nd 2010, at 14:30
Devolutions has come up with a new release of their Remote Desktop Manager: a software tool allowing management of all your remote connections (like VNC, RDP, SSH) and so much more. Its latest version is a vast improvement over their previous stable releases, and is a must-have tool for all ICT employees out there with a lot of remote connections to manage (such as myself).

It comes in two flavours:

The Standard Edition is freeware and houses the majority of the features. It allows the storage to various datasources, including MS Access (containing shared access if you will).

The Enterprise Edition is not free, but has some advanced features, such as password saving to a shared datasource  ...
 
Incoming PPTP VPN passthrough on OpenWRT
edited by on February 1st 2010, at 16:46
To set up a Windows PPTP VPN server behind your OpenWRT enabled router, you need to forward the necessary ports and protocols, and install the proper modules.

Finding information about how to do this was a lengthy process. I never actually found the necessary info (although I noticed there are quite a few people which are rather clueless about networking; makes me wonder why they're bothering with OpenWRT in the first place, it's not the easiest firmware out there).
But I've managed to compile the bits and pieces of various sources into a coherent mass. It's not a guide in the literal sense, but will tell you want you need, assuming you do know your way around OpenWRT.

The setup was tested  ...
 
Change SmartHost outgoing port in Exchange 2007
edited by on January 28th 2010, at 17:28
I've written an article before on how to change the outgoing SMTP port for SmartHost in Exchange 2003. Now, I have to do this again for Exchange 2007 as they've changed this procedure.

When you're unable to send e-mail directly to the internet (using MX), you probably have to set up a SmartHost to relay the e-mail for you. This is basically your ISP's SMTP server, but can be another server as well.
In certain cases, the default SMTP port (port 25) cannot be used to connect to the SmartHost, so you have to change this to something else. Gmail for instance, uses port 587 for SMTP. Other 3rd party mail services use this (or another port) as well to circumvent spam protection initiated by a lot  ...
 
Obtain MAC address of the wireless access point connected to
edited by on January 27th 2010, at 11:28
In Windows, it is possible to obtain the MAC address of the wireless access point you're connected to. This is handy when you have multiple access points with the same ESSID (i.e. "roaming") and want to know which one you're connected to. This is done with the netsh CLI tool, available since Windows XP.

To do this, start a command prompt, and type in:

netsh wlan show interfaces

This shows all wireless interfaces on your system. When your wireless is active and connected to an AP, you get output similar to this:

Name : Wireless Network Connection Description : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN GUID : f5ad6606-3b9d-41b  ...
 
Take screenshots on Mac OSX
edited by on January 19th 2010, at 21:16
Taking screenshots in Mac OSX uses Preview.
Inside Preview, you can use the menu to capture screens, but that's not very handy when you're working in other programs.

Luckily, there are some global shortcuts available that implement every way of capturing. As I always forget what they are, and I'm sure others forget this all the time as well, here's a short list.

Cmd + Shift + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and save in on the desktop as PNG. Cmd + Shift + Control + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and place it on the clipboard (instead of saved to the desktop). Cmd + Shift + 4 Captures a portion of the desktop  ...
 
Configure Exchange Server Auto-Discovery
edited by on January 18th 2010, at 13:30
When you are running an Exchange server, and have your users access the server from outside the company network, you usually have to open up access to OWA. This enables users to access their mail, contacts and appointments by using an internet browser. Occassionally, someone also has a ActiveSync enabled phone that they would like to use. This protocol also uses OWA for syncing data. And very rarely, there's also a guy (usually the CEO) who simply wants to use its Outlook to connect - this is possible through web as well using RPC-over-HTTP(S), but that's information for another blog post (on another day in the far far future...) .

One of the hassles when configuring this, is the fact that   ...
 
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