Jason Golod Blogs » Administration

Tabbed SSH Client for Windows (NOT SecureCRT)

Jason — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:12:09 +0000

Original post from Tabbed SSH Client for Windows (NOT SecureCRT).

Well, I have had one thing go my way so far today…I just discovered (I am slow) that there is an alternative to SecureCRT when it comes to an SSH client for Windows that has tab capabilites…Putty Connection Manager. I have been using Putty now for a year or two because it is free (I have bought SecureCRT before, but they don’t allow you to use your key on newer versions and you need the executible for the version you have the key for….and they don’t have them on their site for download). Anwyay, I now have a free, windows, tabbed ssh client. Suckit VanDyke.

How to Run Disk Defragmenter as a Scheduled Task

Jason — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:57:08 +0000

Original post from How to Run Disk Defragmenter as a Scheduled Task.

Disk Defragmenter

Command Line Kung Fu

I was trying to figure out how to run Disk Defragmenter from the command line on a SBS2003 box as I was not sure how to specify what drive I want defrag.exe to run on at a specific time. Turns out that you can just browse to defrag.exe (…/system32) and then tell it what drive to run on in the advanced properties of the Task Scheduler. Microsoft has a write-up on the whole process.

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Installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a Thinkpad x22

Jason — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:59:22 +0000

Original post from Installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a Thinkpad x22.

For those of you trying to install Ubuntu on an IBM Thinkpad x22 or X2x series laptop, you will need to hit F6 and then enter vga=771 and then press enter when the installer menu comes up. I ended up finding success using the “Ubuntu 8.10 Alternate CD” ISO. The Thinkpad laptops’ video doesn’t play nice with the Debian/Ubuntu installer, but using the vga=771 flag makes it all good in the hood.

WordPress Upgrade

Jason — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:38:53 +0000

Original post from WordPress Upgrade.

Just made the upgrade to WordPress 2.6.2 (I think). As sad as it may seem, my motivation for the upgrade was so that I could use the iPhone app to post. It has been so long since my last upgrade…I was still running the 1.5 branch which I guess is pretty old school these days. It is going to take a fewcdays to get everything updated and figure out how to get some of the old features working again…so stay tuned.

Yes, I did write this on my iPhone.

iPhone Exchange Integration – Review

Jason — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:53:50 +0000

Original post from iPhone Exchange Integration – Review.

Some of you may have read my post on troubleshooting iPhone and Exchange 2003 I wrote up a couple of weeks ago. In case you still don’t know, the iPhone will only work with Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007. 2003 NEEDS SP2 to be installed and there is a not so intuitive procedure for finding out what version of Exchange you are running…so check out the post if you are still having problems with your iPhone and Exchange 2003.

I wanted to write up a little review of my first impressions of how well the iPhone integrates with Microsoft Exchange as there is a lot of hype on both sides of this issue out there. First, a little background. I have been using the Cingular 8125 for three or four years now (also known in some circles as the HTC Wizard). The 8125 is a Windows Mobile 5 phone that has a slide out keyboard, large touch screen and uses Cingular’s/AT&T’s EDGE data network. This phone, while pretty bulky, has served me very well for a long time. I could never give it up because the touch screen made using the windows features so much easier and faster. Plus, I had one of the best products Microsoft has going called Voice Commander. If you have a Windows Mobile phone, you will want to see if this thing works on your phone model…it is truly incredible. Combined, this was a winning combination for a long time.

While in New Orleans for Jazz Festival this year, I used a friend’s iPhone and was pretty impressed with the user interface. But, they still had not released anything allowing for Exchange to integrate. Then comes the announcement that Apple was planning on releasing the 2.0 software for both the 1st and (yet to be released) 2nd generation, aka 3G, iPhones which will provide Exchange/ActiveSync integration. I have learned my lesson many times about being an early adopter of technology and using it on something as mission critical as a cell phone or main computer. This time however, I purchased a mint condition 1st generation iPhone a few weeks after the 2.0 software came out.

Exchange With the iPhone

So, how does it work? Amazingly well. After figuring out that I was not running SP2 on my Exchange 2003 installation, everything worked perfectly out of the box so to speak. I left all of the default settings in the Exchange setup on the iPhone. This means that I am setup to sync email, my contacts, and calendar between my iPhone and Exchange server. Plus, push email works flawlessly.

Sub Mailboxes

I have access to all of my “sub” mailboxes quickly and easily…it simply takes a few seconds to download messages from a sub-mailbox. With Windows Mobile, I would have to dive into the ActiveSync options and configure it to fully sync each mailbox next time it sync’d with Exchange….less than ideal, but it worked. On the iPhone they are right where they should be….accessible.

Layout

Given that the iPhone screen is bigger than my Cingular 8125′s, the amount of real estate Apple can use to display email information is bigger. But, as usual, they seemed to have spent more time designing the layout including font, color, size, etc. The end result is that the information displayed is easy to read, names of senders bolded in large print, subject line bold in smaller print and then the first few lines (how I have it configured) of the email are shown in regular text that is slightly smaller still.

Attachments

This is something that I expect the Apple team will tweak a bit more. All email attachments are found at the bottom of the email, no matter how many replies there are in between. This is slightly annoying if you have a long email thread and someone decided to attach a file to the last one. But, it is not that big of a deal. The bigger item is that I cannot double-click to zoom in on PDF files…making most not readable. In comparison, my 8125 used an application called ClearVue to view PDF files. This application, while allowing for zooming in and out, was buggy, slow and almost useless (because of the speed). ClearVue could not open many PDF files I received for some reason and was not something I spent any time trying to figure out.

I had heard somewhere that iPhones could not read Microsoft Word files…that is not the case. While you cannot modify them, you can read them, zoom etc. The Excel file reading will display individual sheets of a multi-worksheet file, formatting (bold, lines, highlighting) as well as zooming in and out. For me, this is all I really would want.

Contact Integration

Contact integration is pretty good as well. The alphabet runs vertically in small print along the right side of the screen. If you want to jump to a certain letter, you click on it, or close to it, and you then jump to that letter. This takes a little longer than I would like, but then again, I have about 400 contacts. Surprisingly, it is very good at detecting what letter you are selecting even though your fingertip covers about 4 letters. This will probably get some tweaking along the way, but is more than usable in its current form. More importantly however is what you get when you click on a contact. All phone numbers and addresses are displayed, plus a picture at the top, and two buttons to text or add the contact to your “favorites” list. The favorites list is a great way to have fast access to people you call and is accessible from the phone button. You can also easily select a ringtone for a contact via a button. As with most of the iPhone GUIs, you can slide your finger up and down on the contact list to quickly run up or down the list. Tapping or holding your finger on the screen will stop it…cool and functional.

Calendar

Lastly, the calendar function. I don’t really use the calendar function to add things to my calendar from my phone…usually. I typically use these functions when I add appointments to my desktop calendar with alarms. This has been one of the most important reasons for Outlook/Exchange integration on cell phones for me since day one…alarms for events and appointments. The iPhone handles them well. The display of calendar events is decent. It was better on my Cingular 8125 as events and times were displayed on the main screen in a list. You can view your calendar by Month (default), Day or List. The Month display is nice for seeing when you have “free” days. If you have a day with an appointment, it shows up with a dark dot…free days do not. The Day display gives you a nice clean hour-by-hour display of your day…showing any appointments. The List display gives you all of your upcoming appointments listed by day and time…pretty nice.

All-in-all, I give the Apple team and A for their Exchange integration. IMHO, it is better overall than the one found on Windows Mobile phones…and this is coming from a guy who walked away from the Macintosh 15 years ago. While the keyboard takes a little getting used to, I think Apple has the best solution out there right now, especially when you add in the rest of the features and usability of the phone.

[tags]iPhone, Exchange, Exchange 2003, Review[/tags]

Website 101 – Part 1

Jason — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:02:38 +0000

Original post from Website 101 – Part 1.

Ok, so people usually ask me some kind of computer / internet related questions every day. So, I figured I would start to point out a few important items along the way when I come across them. Today I want to talk about music on your website. In my opinion, it is never a good idea to have music on your website that will play without someone clicking on a big fat Play button. There are a myriad of reasons not to automatically play music when someone browses to your website. First of all, it is annoying as hell. It may be really cute to you, but it is annoying to those of us regular people. Some of the most common offenders of the music on the website game appear to be real estate agents. This is probably due to some mega-template website company selling them on a package deal. BAD IDEA. Why? Well, I assume that a lot of people that are looking for houses are doing so at work. Because, looking for houses is more fun than most people’s work. Blasting some elevator music when someone is looking for more information on a house is a quick way to get them to stop looking for houses at work.

When is it okay to play music automatically? Never.

[tags]Webmaster, Website 101, Music[/tags]

Nokia 6620 Review Part 3

iPhone and Exchange 2003 Configuration Troubleshooting How-To

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:36:44 +0000

Original post from iPhone and Exchange 2003 Configuration Troubleshooting How-To.

Ok, I have to admit, I don’t like reading manuals. But, in the case of the new iPhone 2.0 software and Microsoft Exchange 2003, I did in fact read the Apple Exchange 2003 deployment guide. It is about zero help for someone who has configued Exchange 2003 to work with Windows Mobile devices in the past. But, I could not for the life of me get the iPhone to pull email, contacts or my calendar. I knew that the first thing that was needed was Exchange SP2…but, I thought I had checked what version of Exchange I was running…and, thought wrong. Instinctively, I did the Properties of My Computer and thought that I saw something somewhere that said Exchange was running SP2. Well, here is the deal, apparently you cannot get SP2 for Exchange 2003 via Windows Update. You have to download Exchange 2003 SP2 manually. The short of it is, I am an idiot.

There were a number of issues that I thought I was seeing. First, when I configured the Exchange settings on the iPhone, I would see Configured Sync with (null). I thought this was a little glimpse into where the sync problem was. It turns out that the iPhone inserts “null” if the name you specify for the Exchange account is too long (I verified this is the case). I finally decided to start from scratch to make sure I was not missing something. I found out how to check what version of Exchange 2003 I am running. Once I did that, I saw that I was running SP1. DUH. So, I downloaded Exchange 2003 SP2 from Microsoft, installed it and BOOM. Email, Contacts and Calendar. What a rookie move.

Dedicated and Managed Server Hosting

Jason — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:34:54 +0000

Original post from Dedicated and Managed Server Hosting.

Some of you may have read my posts about Server Beach’s dedicated hosting (managed and un-managed servers). I was fortunate enough to be invited to their first customer appreciation dinner in San Francisco last night at Town Hall. It is always great to be able to put a face to a name, or in this case to a company. I met a number of people including the President/CEO Fabio Banducci….what a nice guy. They were gracious enough to invite me based on me being a small client and writing a nice blurb about them here. Everyone I met was clearly smarter than the average bear and the kind of people you want to know are behind a company you rely on. If you are seriously looking for managed or un-managed servers, I would be sure you speak to the team at Peer1.com/ServerBeach.com before you make a decision. Good people who get the business of dedicated hosting.

[tags]Dedicated Hosting, Managed Servers, Un-Managed Servers, Peer1, Server Beach[/tags]

Server Beach Rocks

Jason — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:28:31 +0000

Original post from Server Beach Rocks.

Every once in a while you come across a company that just gets it. They get it so well that you forget that you use them, pay them, etc. Server Beach is one of those companies for me. I have dedicated servers with a couple of different companies and I have to say that Dedicated Now sucks (sorry dad…we were not allowed to say the word suck growing up). Not only did they offer outdaded OS options when I signed up, they run and hide when major outtages happen…and they have happened. The box I still have with DN has so much “stuff” on it, that I simply can’t fathom moving it.

Anyway, back to the point here. Server Beach jams. They send out notices in advance of any potential problems and even when they expect problems I have not had any. Plus, people can get $100 bucks off with my Server Beach coupon code and I get credit on my server. Now if I can only figure out how to move everything over to a new Server Beach box.
[tags]dedicated server, debian, Server Beach, Dedicated Now[/tags]

Server Beach Coupon Code -> Save $100 on a Dedicated Server

How to Make the POP3 Connector Check for Email More Frequently

Jason — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:50:38 +0000

Original post from How to Make the POP3 Connector Check for Email More Frequently.

If you are running SBS2003 and Exhange and you are using the built in POP3 connector to check for email on other pop3 boxes, you are probably really annoyed that you cannot check pop email boxes more frequently than every 15 minutes. Well, there is a way to make the POP3 Connector in SBS2003 check for email as frequently as you like. Here is what I did and it seems to work fine on the two SBS 2003 boxes I am running:

1. Open regedit and browse to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/
Microsoft/SmallBusinessServer/Network/POP3 Connector

2. On the “Edit” menu, point to “New”, and then click “DWORD Value”.

3. Type “ScheduleAccelerator” (no quotation marks) as the entry name, and then press ENTER.

5. On the “Edit” menu, click “Modify” or just double click ‘er.

6. In the “Value data” box, type the value that you want, and then click “OK”. To determine the polling interval, the value that is configured on the “Scheduling” tab in the GUI is divided by the value that you type for the ScheduleAccelerator entry. Assuming you already have this at 15 minutes, the value you put in here would divide 15. So, if you enter 5 the POP3 Connector will check for email every 3 minutes. Boom.

FYI, you can enter the value as Hexidecimal, which should be the default.

7. I then restarted the POP3 Connector Service by going into the Services console, finding POP3 Connector, right clicking it and selecting restart.

[tags]POP3 Connector, SBS 2003, Microsoft, Small Business Server, Exchange[/tags]