After around three months of installing various software that uses SQL Server 2005 on my ESX server, my SQL VM finally reached it’s disk limit. I was poking around in the command line for the actual ESX server, and found a tool called vmkfstools that could do the job for me. You can resize the disk by running the command:

vmkfstools -X <size-in-mb>M <image-file>

So for example if i wanted to resize the file server.vmdk to 60GB, I would run:

vmkfstools -X 60000M server.vmdk

That was the easy part. Now I booted into Hiren’s BootCD (you can find this on the net), and ran Acronis Boot Manager to resize my partition. You can alternatively boot into the Recovery Console for Windows 2003/XP or run the Command Line on Windows Vista/2008 and run diskpart to accomplish the same thing.
That went all well and my disks were properly resized…. or so I thought, till I was greeted with the following message on boot:

Winload.exe?! Well scared that my OS was corrupt, I booted into the Windows 2008 Server CD and ran the command prompt. dir C:\ still showed all my files there, and C:\Windows\System32\ still had winload.exe in it. Just for shits and giggles, I replaced the file with the one in X:\Windows\System32 and tried rebooting.

Still didn’t work.

I booted back into the install DVD, clicked “Repair Computer”, but this time I noticed that my disk size was 0, and it said “Unknown” next to the disk. My gears were turning, and I realized that this might mean that my MBR was corrupt. Running bcdedit.exe /v confirmed that. Instead of saying:

device partition=C:

it said

device unknown

Recalling what I did a year a so back when my MBR was corrupt, I ran the following commands:

bootrec.exe /FixMbr
bootrec.exe /FixBoot
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

As soon as I rebooted, my system booted up without any issues!

Hope this helps anyone else this has happened to,

Brennan

When using SharePoint with a proxy server such as ISA, you will need to configure SharePoint Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) if the external address and the internal address are different. For example, if your internal address is http://wssserver/ and your external address is http://wssserver.domainname.com/. Here is a simple guide to configuring AAM on MOSS or WSS Server.

1. Open up your SharePoint Central Administration on the server running SharePoint.
2. Navigate to Operations under Central Administration.
3. Open up Alternate access mappings under Global Configuration
4. Click Edit Public URLs
5. Select your Alternate Access Mapping Collection (your web application)
6. Then enter the respective URLs that the application will be accessed via.
7. I usually do an iisreset /noforce after this.

I found that the other tutorials on the internet wern’t straight to the point, and it was hard to understand them. Hopefully this clears things up for Sharepoint novices out there!
Brennan

From time to time I have to generate my own SSL certificates for development purposes in Apache, and I keep on forgetting on how to do it without apache prompting me for a password everytime I boot and/or run apachectl. Here is a down and dirty quick how-to.

Step 1: Generate Private Key

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

Step 2: Generate CSR

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

Step 3: Remove Passphrase

cp server.key server.key.org
openssl rsa -in server.key.org -out server.key

Step 4: Sign the Certificate

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

After that, copy your newly generated keys to wherever your server stores your keys (in my case /etc/apache2/ssl/)

I hope this reference saves some time for some people

Brennan

I recently went about the task of installing Mac OS X on my ThinkPad T43. I installed both Leopard and Tiger, so I will layout pretty simply how to install either on your T43. First of all the disclaimer: I will not be responsible for what may happen to your laptop, or the grey hairs you may get doing this. And you are only supposed to do this if you are an Apple developer and or have a license for the OS you are installing.

It is actually pretty cool to show off to your buddies that you are running OS X. My computer specs are the following:

IBM ThinkPad T43, Intel 915GM Graphics Chipset, AD1981B Sound Chipset, 2GB DDR2 RAM, and 60GB HDD.

Now onto the fun stuff. Firstly, the steps that are the same for Tiger and Leopard.

• You must use the paperclip trick to short out pins 6 and 12 on your VGA out. Just bend a paperclip into a U shape, with ends long enough to touch the contacts on both sides. Look at the following diagram to see which pins. Alternatively, you can take apart your laptop and solder the pins together from the inside like I did.

• Now you must back up all your data onto an external HDD, because we will be formatting the entire drive.
• Also, disable all CPU power management features in the BIOS because this slows the computer down quite a bit.
• We are done the initial setup stages.

Leopard:

• Download the install ISO from the green demon, or the pirate of the internet seas. Make sure you get the Kalyway 10.5.1 ISO and not any of the ToH ISOs. I repeat ToH WILL NOT WORK!
• Fire up the computer using the burnt DVD, and press enter when it asks you for startup options.
• Now, get a beer, and wait for this thing to boot up. If you get stuck on a blue screen with no cursor, that means that you did the paperclip mod wrong.
• Open up Disk Utility from the top menu, and create one partition (and name it whatever you want)
• When you get to the setup options screen, select SSE2 System, the MBR Bootloader, and also the Azalia Audio package.
• Wait for the computer to finish installing, and then restart your computer.
• Everything except the wireless and Quartz Extreme should be working now (No GMA900 leopard support yet).
• Go to http://code.google.com/p/iwidarwin/ and download the latest 10.5 Stable package.
• Run this in your terminal

  sudo -s
  chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions
  chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
  rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext (if exists)
  rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache (if exists)

• Reboot, and everything should be working at this point.
• Enjoy.

Tiger:

• Download the XxX 10.4.11 ISO from your favorite ’source’.
• Put DVD in, reboot, and press enter at the prompt to start the install.
• As same as Leopard, if it stalls at the blue screen without a cursor, it means that your did the paperclip trick wrong.
• Open up Disk Utilitiy from the top menu, and create one partition (and name it whatever you want)
• For the install, Select the NoEFI Package, the 8.9 SSE2 Kernel, and the GMA900 package, but NOT the fixer.
• Wait for the install to finish, then reboot.
• Once running, you will probably notice that not much is working, don’t worry we’ll fix that.
• Insert the Install DVD, and install the GMA900 Fixer and the AD198x package. You may have to dig in the install DVD to find the latter package. Once installed, reboot.
• You should not notice that you have working QE+CI, and also working sound.
• Now, download the Broadcom Ethernet Kext file, and extract it to wherever you can remember. You will need to copy this file over from another computer because ethernet/wireless isn’t working yet.
• Now, run the following commands.

  sudo -s
  rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext
  mv /PathToFile/IONetworkingFamily.kext /System/Library/Extensions
  chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions
  chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions

• Now reboot, and you should have fully working ethernet, with the exception of your MAC address being 00:00:00:00:00:00. You can set your MAC Address by using the command:

  ifconfig en0 ether <MAC Address>

• Go to http://code.google.com/p/iwidarwin/ and download the 10.4 Installer (Stable), and install the package. Reboot, and you should have working wireless (although you can only connect to unencrypted or WEP APs).
• Enjoy!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask via comments or just send me an e-mail.

Brennan

It’s a bit late but here is a a quick tutorial on how to get EVDO Rev. A (a la speeds I was getting in my last post) on your HTC Titan/Mogul/P4000. First, you will need to obtain the OilPro 1.2 Unlocker from here, the newer OilPro 2.4 Unlocker here, and last but not least, the magical official Sprint 3.35 radio from here.

To make everything simple, I decided to make this tutorial into five easy steps.

1. Unlock (or Downgrade) your bootloader to the OilPro 1.2 Unlocker that you downloaded.
2. After you completed the downgrade, upgrade your Radio using the radio installer (this works for all carriers by the way).
3. Upgrade your bootloader from 1.2 to 2.4 using the file you upgraded (note: if you get a error at the very end, you can safely ignore this.
4. Do a hard reset. Hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen. Do a hard reset. Hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen. Do a hard reset. Hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen. Do a hard reset. Hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen. Do a hard reset. Hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen.
5. Install your favorite ROM…. I highly reccomend No2Chem’s NueROM 6.1 I have never found a ROM faster than this. The turotial is located at http://www.kooty.net/?p=18 . Be sure to visit XDA-Developers or PPCGeeks for questions – or of course contact me.

Please make sure you backup all your PIM info before you upgrade. You may have to reprogram your phone via your carrier (easy process, don’t be frightened) after this update – those who updated their ROMs before shouldn’t have to.

By the way, Telus users should call *22803 and press 2 to upgrade their tower information to the latest version. Also, follow the instructions on the NueROM tutorial by me to edit your network settings.

Brennan

I’ve got a HTC P4000, also known on the market as the HTC Titan, or HTC Mogul. I was really bugged at the fact that the OS was really slow. After a bit of looking into it, I realized that most of the stock ROMs are running very bloated, with all this shit running in the background that isn’t supposed to be. Well after a lot of hacking and research, I found that the best ROM to run on the phone….. Windows Mobile 6.1 by No2Chem. I swear it’s the fastest ROM that I’ve ever used in my life. It used to take at least 4+ seconds to open the \Windows\ Directory, but now it only takes a maximum of around 1.5 seconds. I say that’s an amazing improvement.

I’ll lay out a VERY simple install guide for you n00bs, but for those of you that have issues, you should look at the official thread located here.

• Unlock your OS using the OilPro 2.4 Unlocker, and follow the steps on the install carefully.
• You should now be on the tri-color screen that should show that you are running the OilPro bootloader now.
• Download the latest ROM from the PPCGeeks FTP here, or e-mail me, and I’ll give you a direct dl link from here.
• Disable ActiveSync on your phone.
• Flash your ROM using the Rom Update Utility here
• Do a hard reset, and have fun (To do a hard reset, hold the two buttons with the round icons under the screen and depress the reset button, and follow the instructions on the screen).

For Telus users, please set your CDMA1x username via. Connections to <phonenumber>@1x.telusmobility.com and your password to your ESN that you can find in your device information.

EDIT: I updated the ROM link to point to build 5059 that is based on the official WM6.1 Build 19202

Brennan

I recently was required to install BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) on our corporate network. I did the usual configuration following the step that I found on the BB site here.
I then proceeded to make an ISA Firewall Rule that enabled outbound acccess from the bes server (a computer object) to external on port 3101. I also created the corresponding inbound rule on port 3101 as well just to be extra sure.
I followed the steps word for word (or so I thought), and tried syncing a BlackBerry to the servers, and it just timed out on me. So then I went back to the drawing board, and realized that I didn’t setup my permissions on the Active Directory (AD) user accounts properly. So I uninstalled the server, followed the following steps:

1. Local Administrator rights on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
2. Local Security Policy permissions for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server service account
3. Microsoft Exchange permissions at the Administrative Group level
4. Microsoft Exchange permissions at the Microsoft Exchange Server level
5. Send As permission at the Domain level
6. Database permissions for managing the BlackBerry Configuration Database

And reinstalled the server. Still no avail. I looked into the logs and noticed this line in the BES_DISP logfile:

IPPa] {User Name} Forwarding status to BES Agent (S61887304_001), intTag=5, extTag=1
[30222] (03/20 16:20:19.482):{0×898} {User Name} MTH: contentType=OTAKEYGEN, sizeOTA=216, sizeOTW=216, TransactionId=-941432706, Tag=2
[30310] (03/20 16:20:19.482):{0×898} {User Name} Forwarding internal data to device, contentType=OTAKEYGEN, routing=S61887304, device=301D4AC4, size=258, cmd=0×3, ack=0, TransactionId=-941432706, intTag=8, Tag=2, Submit=1
[30375] (03/20 16:20:19.576):{0×8A0} {User Name} Packet returned as FAILED – could not be delivered to device, Tag=2

After doing some research, I found out that you NEED to have the BES option on your phone which can only be set by your carrier. To find out if you have this or not, just go to options -> advanced settings and see if theres an option for Enterprise Activation anywhere. If there isn’t, that means that you do not have the BES package. To get this, just phone your carrier, and ask them to add BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES or pronounced B’ezz) to your account and you should be good to go!
Brennan

I’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and realized that WP-Cache has stopped working. I decided to search for alternative solutions for WordPress caching, and on a comment for WP-Cache, I discovered WP-Super-Cache. It seems a lot better than WP-Cache from my preliminary analysis. Wp-Super-Cache can handle nearly 2500 requests per second (as opposed to 4 without any caching). I do notice a faster load speed even by using my browser (I have 5 static IPs, and since my switch isn’t working correctly, all my network traffic is getting routed to my ISP and back).

To install the plugin, just download it from here,install it as usual by putting into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate it using the Plugins menu. Now, before configuring the plugin, you must put the following code in your .htaccess in the ROOT of your web server:

—————–.htaccess—————–
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html [L]
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
—————–.htaccess—————–

After you have done that, you should be able to configure all the features in WP-Super-Cache.
By the way, if anyone is wondering, and/or anybody wants a GREAT PuTTY mod to use, use PiETTY. I have been using this client for over a year now. It has full UTF-8 Asian language support, and alphablend transparency. It looks sweet when used together with Vista’s Aero.
Brennan

Here is a quick guide on Jailbreaking an iPod touch. I personally recommend just capping it at 1.1.3 until 2.0 comes out with full SDK support. You get all the vibrating icons, and movable icons, and still get to install the ‘unofficial’ official iPod touch applications (eg. Mail, Weather, Stock, and RSS).
Jailbroken Touch

1. Firstly, if you already upgraded to the official 1.1.3, downgrade to 1.1.1 and navigate to jailbreakme.com to jailbreak your iPod using the TIFF exploit.
2. Then, add http://ijailbreak.com/repo.plist to your Installer.app Sources.
3. Now, a crucial step before you run the Jailbreak. Go to Settings->General, and disable Auto-Lock. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL
4. Launch Installer and you should find a new version of Installer is available (refresh your Sources otherwise.) Install the Update. Be sure to follow its instructions.
5. You will also update the “Community Sources” package. If not, go and install the it; it’s under the “Sources” category.
6. Now you want to install the “BSD Subsystem” package. You can find it under the “System” category. After installing it, you must reboot your iPod touch by holding down the Power button until the Red Slider appear, otherwise iJailbreak.app will not work.
7. Go to the “iJailBreakMobile” category and select either the “iJailBreakMobile 1.1.1″ or the “iJailBreakMobile 1.1.2″ (depending on your current iPod touch’s firmware version) package to install. After installation, you will find a new app by the name iJailbreak
8. Tap on iJailbreak on your mail screen. If you see that it’s stuck with just a spinning wheel on the screen, it’s safe to manually reboot the device. But you want to do so after at least 45 minutes since you started.
9. Launch Installer and install the “Remove 1.1.3 Upgrade Data” package. It’s in the “iJailBreakMobile”. You can Uninstall it after it’s done.
10. You are done! Install your third party apps without having to pay!

Brennan

Another one my wonderful fixes/tutorials on what Microsoft should have flippin documented in the first place. But I guess they can’t test and document everything eh?
Well heres how you get ISA 2006 and Outlook Anywhere with Exchange 2007 to work nicely using NTLM Authentication.

WARNING: You must have OWA and Outlook Anywhere running on different web listeners.

1. First Configure your Firewall Rule authentication method to “No authentication, but client may authenticate directly”
2. Then set your Web Listener to HTTP Authentication with Basic and Integrated authentication methods selected.
3. Go to the Exchange Management Console and make sure that Outlook Anywhere is set to NTLM Authentication mode. You can do this under the “Server Management” area.
4. Go to the IIS Management Console, and make sure that Integrated Authentication is enabled for your Outlook Anywhere Web Site (usually “Default Web Site”)
5. Switch over to NTLM Authentication in Outlook, and you should be rockin!

By the way, this isn’t as secure as using Basic authentication because ISA is just passing the session through to the Exchange server, and not proxying everything. But I’d say not having to type your password everyime is worth that sacrifice.
Brennan