Networknet.nl

Ivan Versluis March 31st, 2008

Two hours ago I upgraded Networknet.nl with Wordpress version 2.5 and immediately after the php binaries and database were upgraded I hit my first problem. Within my Widgets Design Sidebar I have the Pages widget which shows all pages on the right side of my blog starting with “About me”.. VMware. For some topics I created pages instead of Wordpress posts and linked those pages to a parent page; these two pages were excluded from “Pages Widget”. After the upgrade my pages widget become really huge showing 30+ pages. I did a search on Wordpress support site and someone else already reported this problem; no response yet except me on this post. 

I didn’t want to downgrade my new Wordpress version and therefore I used this method to query the parent pages and exclude them manually without doing the PHP code research how to exclude them.

• Open phpmyadmin
• Select your wordpress database
• Open wp_posts and click SQL

• Paste this sql query

SELECT id
FROM ‘wp_posts’
WHERE ‘post_type’ = ‘page’
AND ‘post_parent’ NOT LIKE ‘0′

• Click GO button and click Export; I export to CSV to excel and copied all cells into Notepad.

• Paste these pages into the exclude for your pages widget.

Dirty solution but I solved my problem in less than 5 minutes for now…

Tags: 2.5, exclude, fix, pages, widget, wordpress

• OpenSource
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Ivan Versluis March 27th, 2008

Are you looking how to share your calendar with co-workers, customers or any other email contacts who are not sitting in your Exchange organization? Today I shared my Outlook 2007 calendar which is sitting on a Exchange server with Microsoft’s Outlook Calendar Sharing Service.

The published calendar is based on the iCalendar exchange standard which is defined in RFC 2445. I love the Mircosoft’s integration and smooth registration on the internet. Check out my howto to configure this with your own Outlook 2007 calendar. 

Tags: 2007, 2445, calendar, ical, office, outlook, publish, rfc, share

• Office 2007
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Ivan Versluis March 25th, 2008

Today I passed my third IT certification exam in 6 months. I successfully passed the 70-296 “Planning, Implementing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment for an MCSE Certified on Windows 2000″ exam with a score of 800. I prepared myself with one ebook  from Syngress and some additional example questions in four weeks. From today I am MCSE certified for Windows Server 2003 and I am looking forward to upgrade my certification to Windows Server 2008. I will wait for a while and get familiar with the new released operating system but eventually I will give it a try. Since 2003 I successfully passed 11 exams on row and the one of today was good example of combining my knowledge and experience and passing this one. Microsoft did a good job of getting the exam streamlined with one testing provider and hopefully things will go more smooth than today with taking the exam. With Thomson Prometric Test Center my session hanged again twice for at least 90 seconds. My next IT certification project will be VMWare Certified Professional.

• Certifications
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Ivan Versluis March 25th, 2008

Before you start downloading the SP1 package check your Windows Vista version. To find out which edition you are running, click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties. In the System section, you can view the operating system under System type. If you are installing SP1 from an installation disc, the correct version will install automatically.



Currently I am running 64-bit Operating System of Windows Vista. Download the Windows Vista SP1 Standalone update: x64 | x86



Select the language and download installation package.



After the download has completed locate the Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe file and exceute the SP1 update. Make sure there is enough free space on your computer’s hard disk to install the service pack. The 32-bit SP1 requires a minimum of 7 gigabytes (GB) of free space; the 64-bit SP1 requires a minimum of 13 GB of free space. Click Run if you get a security warning and click continue if UAC is enabled.



Click Next



I unchecked “Automatically restart the computer” and click Install







  Click Restart. Vista will reboot and it will some more minutes to finish the update.



    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Installation of Service Pack 1 was successful.  I tried to install the beta versions before and as posted the installation failed each time.

Tags: installation, kb939330, screenshot, sp1, update, vista, Windows

• Windows Vista
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Ivan Versluis March 20th, 2008

ClustrMaps is the only hit counter that (i) accurately shows you the locations of all visitors to your site on a thumbnail map embedded in your page, (ii) uses dot-clusters that scale up to huge numbers, and (iii) lets you store old maps in an archive.

The advantage of ClustrMaps Pro is that you can embed the maps into your own site rather than linking to the ClustrMaps site for zoomed-in map details. On the other hand, it requires more site admin expertise, since you need to be able to access your own server logs in order to ship statistics back and forth to ClustrMaps.

Since 17th of January this year I added the ClustrMaps hit counter to see visitors at Networknet. Yesterday the website had 297 visitors and it was best day ever since the launch back in June 2007. I am working to finish my MCSE 2003 upgrade exam this week and looking forward to have some more spare time and get the blog optimized in all areas. Thank you and looking forward too see you back here.

Networknet.nl ClustrMap 20-march-2008

• Personal
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Ivan Versluis March 19th, 2008

In the following example I am configuring port forwarding to a Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition PPTP VPN server. My configuration has been configured as shown in the diagram. I have a /28 network registered on the Internet and 14 public IP Addresses are available though the SDSL ISP modem. The SDSL modem is providing these IP addresses by the internal DHCP server. For the Cisco PIX 501 firewall I am using manual assigned Public IP Address.

In the CLI command lines below I am configuring static NAT on a public IP Address for tcp port 1723 (pptp) and assign the private IP Address/hostname to VPN-02 which has been defined in the line “name”.

fixup protocol pptp 1723

name 192.168.5.35 VPN-02

access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 194.0.0.2

access-list outside_access_in permit gre any host 194.0.0.2

pdm location VPN-02 255.255.255.255 inside

static (inside,outside) tcp 194.0.0.2 pptp VPN-02 pptp netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0

What did I achieve with this configuration? After I applied this configuration I was able to connect from my Windows XP & Windows Vista clients with built-in VPN client and connect using the PPTP protocol. I also used static port forwarding on tcp 1723 port and enabled the GRE IP protocol fix by using the “fixup protocol pptp 1723″ command. Without the fixup for pptp protocol I was forced to translate complete internal host (VPN-02) and using all TCP ports. If you don’t apply to fixup than you probably will get eventlog message like one below.

Tags: Cisco, forwarding, nat, pix, port, pptp, static

• Cisco
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Ivan Versluis March 19th, 2008

For a while I have been struggling with Office Communicator 2005 and Windows Vista. Office Communicator 2007 is not supporting Office Live Communications 2005 server and there I am forced to use the Office Communicator 2005 client. All presence and chat features worked fine with 2005 but when it came for sharing your desktop or sharing a file the communicator started to complain about the firewall or me sitting behind a Network Address Translator (NAT).

Cannot establish the data sharing session with user1, either because user1 canceled the session, or because you or the person you are calling is behind a firewall or Network Address Translator (NAT).

 

How to resolve this issue?

Uninstall Microsoft Office Communicator 2005
Get the KB927853 hotfix from Microsoft. This update will install the NetMeeting 3.02 version which is compatible with Windows Vista.
Reboot the machine
Install Microsoft Office Communicator 2005

I scripted the Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 into a Altiris SVS application layer but after installing the hotfix it still didn’t solve my problem. Make sure you uninstall the Communicator first or delete the SVS layer and than reinstall the packages.

Tags: 2005, communicator, data, establish, issue, office, problem, session, sharing, vista, Windows

• Microsoft , Windows Vista
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Ivan Versluis March 17th, 2008

Last year I download and installed the Vista Codec Package; couple minutes ago I was trying to get one xvid screencast opened by Windows Media Player but it was not able to acquire the codec. Vista Codec Package includes all popular codec components like Xvid, DivX, AC3 and others which your default installation of Vista is missing.

Go to this website http://shark007.testbox.dk and check out yourself.

Tags: Codec, divx, download, package, vista, xvid

• Codec
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Ivan Versluis March 16th, 2008

March 12, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced its intended acquisition of Kidaro, a leading provider of desktop virtualization solutions for enterprises. In combining Kidaro’s virtualization technology with its suite of desktop management tools, known as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, Microsoft will enable IT professionals to optimize their desktop infrastructure by providing management capabilities for Virtual PCs, streamlining deployments and easing application compatibility issues.

Turning Virtualization Into Tangible Benefits

Managing desktops across an enterprise can be time-consuming, complex and costly. Adding Kidaro’s desktop virtualization capabilities to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack suite will provide Microsoft Software Assurance customers who have purchased the add-on subscription with the enhanced ability to do the following:

• Accelerate Windows Vista migrations by minimizing compatibility issues between applications and the operating system
• Easily deploy managed Virtual PCs to Windows desktops
• Drive business continuity by enabling rapid reconstitution of corporate desktops
• Minimize the tension between IT control and user flexibility by applying policies in locked-down corporate Virtual PCs while giving users more open access to the underlying host operating system
• Speed user adoption of desktop virtualization by making Virtual PCs “invisible” to end users
• Reduce IT investment in desktop image management by delivering virtual images independent of hardware or local desktop configuration

“Virtualization technology has tremendous potential to help companies reduce costs and increase control over their desktops, while simultaneously delivering benefits to end users,” said Kevin Brown, chief executive officer of Kidaro. “By adding Kidaro’s technology to Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, Microsoft can deliver sophisticated virtual desktop capabilities and management to a wide variety of enterprise customers.”

Kidaro technologies will be incorporated into future updates of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, which currently includes five key technologies that help enterprises manage their desktops:

• Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Microsoft Asset Inventory Service
• Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management
• Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset
• Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring

How does Kidaro concept work?

As you can see it has different options how to deliver the vm image to the end user. a) DVD –”one-click”, streamlined deployment of the corporate virtual machine, with no user intervention, b)Kidaro ToGo - an encrypted corporate desktop, carried anywhere on a USB drive or iPod and c) Trim Transfer™– advanced de-duplication technology accelerates download of initial and updated VM images over the LAN or WAN. Finally Microsoft is going to have some kind of centralized and managed solution integrated in to their suite of virtualization products. I personally would like to see this as a System Center suite than having to purchase the MDOP from Software Assurance. Very challenging to see Microsoft is having a solution on the horizon but on the other end VMWare ACE Management server is out for a while. I am looking forward to see how things are going to work and I will keep you updated once the product is being integrated and made for public through the connect website. For more information on Kidaro please go to this website.

Tags: desktop, kidoro, managed, Microsoft, optimization, pack, virtualpc

• Desktop Virtualization , Microsoft
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Ivan Versluis March 15th, 2008

In the document below I have summarized a small list of supported features of my favorite desktop virtualization products. Hopefully it will help decide which of those you should evaluate. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 if for free but VMWare Workstation 6 and Parallel Workstation 2 have some features which are missing in Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007.  Parallels Workstation license is $50 and the VMWare Workstation 6 is $190 so depending on your requirements you should be able to make a good choice. For more details check my hardware-virtualization page which has direct links.

I would choose for VMWare Workstation 6 because of the following reasons:

• Supports x64 virtual machines. The main reason for this because I like to have Exchange Server 2007 installed without the 32bit trial version. I have been running exchange server for 6 months now in a guest with 2GB ram and works great.
• Support for running ESX 3.02 server into a virtual machine. I have been playing for a while with ESX server and using the VMWare Workstation tool it helped me to get more familiarized with the product. ESX3i and ESX3.5 can be installed in a virtual machine with VMWare Workstation but the virtual machines can not be powered on.
• USB2.0 support. I redirected dozen of USB devices into my virtual machines for testing. One example was having a USB ADSL modem and the drivers were not available for Windows Vista; so I got my Windows XP virtual machine booted; redirected the USB ADSL model to my virtual machine; installed the drivers and I was able to browse the Internet. Redirected my finger print reader and tested the software on Windows Vista and Windows XP virtual machines, etc.
• Team of virtual machines. Neat feature and really useful when building a test lab with different kind of virtual machines (domain controller, dns, isa and exchange). 

Tags: Desktop Virtualization, hardware, Microsoft, overview, parallels, reasons, VMWare

• Desktop Virtualization
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