Today I want to share with you a very useful tool to instantly switch your Windows/Ubuntu hosts file. If you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘hosts file’, this WIKI should help.

Anyway, by using this tool you can immediately switch to a new hosts file, by at most two clicks of mouse (actually, it is one click and one double-clicks ). No installation needed, but you will need a full-write access to your hosts file.

Other than that, depending on your Operating System, you might need:

• Windows:
  • .Net framework 2.0 and upper.
• Linux:
  • Mono 1.2 and upper
  • root access
  • nscd Service
  • ifconfig commmand

Here is how the main interface looks like:

Really simple right?

Interested? You can visit and download it at: Host Profiles @ Codeplex . It’s FREE! And it’s open source too.

Have a great weekend everyone, Cheers!

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After I downloaded Windows 8 64-bit Developer Preview (with developer tools), I quickly create a new virtual machine using VMWare Player.

I am using VMWare Player 3.1.4. Here’s my virtual machine’s setting:

To my dismay, I was stopped by HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED Error.

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Yes, IIS7 has an Application Request Routing extension. But since my public facing server is Windows 2003 Server, IIS7 was out.

Then I read Karl Seguin’s post on using NGINX to improve ASP.NET Performance. So I said to myself, let’s get dirty on this

My first step was to download VMWare Player. Why VMWare Player? Mainly because it’s free. You just need to register, activate VMWare account, then grab the installer.

Next step is to download Ubuntu Server VMWare image. Visit http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ and grab a copy.

By now I believe you already run the Ubuntu server in VMWare Player.

1. Login as ‘notroot’. Password: ‘thoughtpolice’
2. Download Nginx source code. Command: wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.4.tar.gz
3. Follow the following commands to extract the archive:
   1. gunzip nginx-1.0.4.tar.gz
   2. tar -xf nginx-1.0.4.tar
4. Follow the following commands to install the required runtime libraries:
   1. sudo -s
   2. apt-get update
   3. apt-get install gcc
   4. apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev
   5. apt-get install zlib1g-dev
   6. exit
5. Follow the following commands to build nginx:
   1. cd nginx-1.0.4
   2. ./configure
   3. sudo make install

By now you should have NGINX installed to /usr/local/nginx. You could now edit the configuration in /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf. If you’re not sure how, NGINX’s documentation have section with many examples on how to configure NGINX. Editing the .conf is done using vi, so iIf you’re unfamiliar with vi, you could read a simple intro here.

Have fun!

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• Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) for Windows XP released today!!!

No blank CD? No problem. You can also use thumbdrive and make it bootable. How? read README.TXT inside the ISO CD Image file.

Too lazy to read? Well basically it consist of two steps:

1. Copy all files from the ISO CD Image to the thumbdrive
2. Assuming that your thumbdrive is mounted as drive F:, open console/command-prompt and execute this command: F:syslinux.exe -ma F:

Thank You pnh@pogostick.net, you saved me today

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1. Remove the entry in the registry
   Click Start – Run – type Regedit, press Enter. Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
   Find the name of the service, then delete that folder.
2. Using command line
   click Start – Run – type Cmd, press Enter. use the following command:
   SC delete <service name>
   (You might need to enclose the service name with quotes if it contains spaces)

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Background: ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. It is an open standard that defines platform for hardware discovery, configuration, power management and monitoring.

Possible Cause and Resolution

1. Cause: CMOS Battery is Dying

   Resolution: Goto CMOS setup, scroll to POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP, hit Enter, look at it, Hit ESC to exit, Anwser Y to save.

   Source: Win2003 freezes at acpitabl.dat solution

2. Cause: RAID Problem

   Resolution:

   1. Turn off the server.
   2. Unplug one of the hard disk in your RAID.
   3. Boot the server. The RAID status now should change to degraded
   4. You should now be able to see the login screen.
   5. Login, do the necessary backup
   6. Plugin the hard disk, rebuild the RAID array with its software

   Source: sbs 2003 r2 acpitabl.dat hang in safe mode

I stopped my search as the solution no 2 solved my problem I am still not clear with the exact cause, but I suspect that the RAID controller was having problem synchronizing between hard disks (my server is using RAID-1).

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For those of you who is currently managing a Windows 2003 Server (or any server), users upload MP3 files to the company server might poise a possible copyright infringement. If you are, hopefully this ARTICLE will help you do your work.

But please note that it could be possible that user actually upload the whole album in a document archive (zip, rar, ace, etc). So there are ways to work around the prohibition described in that article. So it’s actually a continuous effort from you to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials into your company server.

I take above approach as the curative approach. The preventive approach should be educating the users in your company about copyright infringements. And always let the users know that whatever they are doing in the company’s servers, they should be responsible to their actions. And don’t forgot to emphasize that “We’re watching you!” (and you may finish it with an evil laugh .. )

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What I need now is a small GUI program which strip out all the dashes and white spaces and automatically copy the cleaned string to Clipboard. I used wxGlade to design the GUI and Eric as the editor for my first Python script.

If you are used to Visual Studio, designing your Form using wxGlade will be quite tricky. It will not straight forward just by drag-and-drop. You need to create containers first before you can put any Textboxes, Labels or Buttons. You will not able to position the Controls freely as the layout will depend heavily on the Containers.

Once satisfied with the layout, you then generate the XML file and the Python’s source code.

#!/usr/bin/env python
    def __set_properties(self):
        self.SetTitle("DashRemover")

    def __do_layout(self):
        sizer_1 = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
        grid_sizer_1 = wx.GridSizer(3, 3, 0, 0)
        grid_sizer_1.Add(self.text_ctrl_1, 0, 0, 0)
        sizer_1.Add(grid_sizer_1, 1, wx.EXPAND, 0)
        self.SetSizer(sizer_1)
        sizer_1.Fit(self)
        self.Layout()

    def textEvt_Handler(self, event):
        # the Clipboard class that will help you interact with the
        # GNOME/KDE/Windows clipboard
        if wx.TheClipboard.Open():     #This is a must!
            #remove any dashes or empty spaces
            cleandata = self.text_ctrl_1.Value.strip().replace('-','')
            cleandata = cleandata.replace(' ', '')
            self.text_ctrl_1.Value = cleandata
            wx.TheClipboard.Clear()
            wx.TheClipboard.SetData(wx.TextDataObject(cleandata))
            wx.TheClipboard.Close()
        event.Skip()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = wx.PySimpleApp(0)
    wx.InitAllImageHandlers()
    frame_1 = fmDashRemover(None, -1, "")
    app.SetTopWindow(frame_1)
    frame_1.Show()
    app.MainLoop()

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Before we proceed, I am assuming you already have Wine up & running, and have installed the Windows version of Foxit Reader. What we need to do next is to associate the PDF file to Foxit Reader through Wine in Nautilus (or other File Manager that you have). If you have not install Wine, you could read the tutorial HERE.

After you have Wine up and running, download the Windows version of Foxit Reader HERE. Install it using the default settings.

First save the following script as foxit.sh in your home directory

#!/bin/bash
# Purpose: To convert Linux-style filename to Windows-style to pass as an argument
# to wine when starting Foxit Reader
Filename="z:"${1//\//\\}
#assuming you use the default installation folder for Foxit in Wine
App='eval wine "C:\Program Files\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Foxit Reader.exe" "'$Filename'"'
$App

Use foxit.sh as the Default Application for PDF File (select any PDF file in Nautilus, Right-Click -> Properties -> Open With -> Click [+ Add] Button -> Browse for foxit.sh located in your home folder.

Voila! Foxit Reader is now the default application for your PDF documents.

(Disclaimer: This post was based on 64-bit Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Foxit Reader 2.1 Build 2023)

Download foxit.sh

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