27Mar How to perform an unattended installation of SQL Server 2008 Express
A while ago I wrote an article called “How to perform an unattended installation of SQL Server 2005 Express“. With the release of SQL Server 2008 it’s time to write another one about how to do the same but for SQL Server 2008 Express. So, let’s get started … (more…)
23Mar Does IE8 suck?
I installed Internet Explorer 8 on my laptop at home (Vista Business x64) and my laptop at work (Windows XP Professional SP2) recently. I’ve been having a bit of a play with IE8 – in fact I have no choice at work as company policy dictates IE is the only supported browser (not an uncommon scenario). Here are a few comments I’ve got about IE8 so far … (more…)
22Mar Cisco ACLs & Windows file shares – What ports need to be open?
I had a situation recently where I had to allow access to Windows file shares on one subnet from Linux systems that are on a different subnet. No problem except that there was a Cisco 1811 router in the way that is locked down pretty tight. Some ports needed to be open but which ones? (more…)
20Mar SQLCMD.EXE on SQL 2008 doesn’t work – HResult 0×2, Level 16, State 1
I’ve built one of my test servers with SQL Server Express 2008 w/ Advanced Services. On a whole load of our servers I use SQL Express for local installations and SQLCMD.EXE works well as a good way to run scheduled backups. It’s done this way because SQL Express doesn’t support SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services), the component required for scheduled tasks. I wrote an article about this a while back called SQL Server 2005 Express Scheduled Backup – How? With SQL 2008, however, that SQLCMD.EXE didn’t work for me out of the box. Here’s how I fixed it … (more…)
18Mar Apache Tomcat 6 – .WAR won’t deploy
We run a Java application here that is published through Apache Tomcat running on Windows. The production version is Apache Tomcat 5.5.1.17 running on Windows Server 2003 with all updates applied. I’m currently carrying out some testing so that we can migrate this particular server to Windows 2008 shortly but the .WAR files wouldn’t deploy. Here’s how to configure everything properly. (more…)
10Mar The Tweet to beat … get paid to Tweet
On Twitter I follow Tim Ferriss, author of the world-famous book “The Four Hour Work Week“. He’s running a charity promo at the moment where, if you start to follow him on Twitter, he will donate $1 to DonorsChoose.org. For each $1 donation another anonymous party will donate $2 to the same charity, making a total of $3 for each person that follows Tim on Twitter. I reckon this is a great way of donating money without having to do ANYTHING. Check it out by going to http://bit.ly/DUQza.
10Mar Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IEESC) on Windows 2008
The default configuration for Windows Server 2008 still has Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration enabled. Considering most administrators probably disable this I wonder why it’s still there … nonetheless here is a script to disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IEESC) from a script. (more…)
09Mar VMware Server 2.0 guest won’t power on
While configuring my latest VMware Server 2.0 host (which is freakin’ awesome by the way) I came across an issue where I was able to create a virtual guest without any problems but couldn’t power it on. As soon as I tried to power on the server it would get to around 40% through the power on process then immediately power off again. Here’s how I fixed it … (more…)
08Mar Why aren’t our systems setup properly?
In my line of work I’ve had to come into a number of different companies and take up roles as the newest member of the technical team. Sometimes I’ve had to take roles that are junior to existing staff members until I prove myself and other times I’ve taken up roles where I’ve been the senior guy from the word go.
No matter what my role is there is inevitably something in the existing configuration that makes me go WTF? “Didn’t the last admin know what they were doing?” Let me give you some examples of weird things I’ve found so far. (more…)
