Peder Borg Borup

For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to setup a couple of Linux-servers, and stumbled upon this site with some great HowTos for different linux-distribution and different server-configurations: http://www.howtoforge.com/

During the last couple of days we have experiences some problems connecting to specific sites on the internet.

It started of wednesday afternoon, where out of nowhere I was unable to connect to some FTP-sites (mirrors.dotsrc.org, ftp.belnet.be etc.). The strange thing was, that I was actually able to connect – but I never got further that Connect.

Later wednesday my GMAIL notifier started telling me, that it was unable to check my email – some sort of connection problem. And I could’nt get to www.google.com/analytics

Thursday at some time just after dinner – we were unable to reach Google (you know, the search engine who has serverfarms all over the world).

However – the company we have our Internet connection through friday afternoon solved the mystery with some help from Cisco. It turned out, that it had something to do with VLANs.

But it has made me realise, that I really need some good network monitoring tool, so that I could tell the Internet-guys, that this is not a problem at our site. And also, be able to specify more specifically where the problem seems to occur. Anyone got any good recommendations?

Flock is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online. Share photos, automatically stay up-to-date with new content from your favorite sites, and search the Web with the most advanced Search Toolbar available today.

Flock - the social web browser

One of my colleagues recommended the Flock browser, so I thought, that I just as well should let it go for a spin. Mostly because it should have some great RSS-reading capabilities, and because it actually makes it possible to blog directly from the application. Like this entry.

Blogged with Flock

Have done a bit of research into the possibilty of running the Cisco VPN Client on Windows Vista, and it seems, that it is actually possible using a BETA of the Cisco Client.

I have however only tried this on Microsoft Virtual PC, but don’t see any reason why it should’nt work “on a normal pc”.

1. Download vpnclient-win-msi-4.8.01.0410-k9-BETA.exe from this address: http://vpn.doit.wisc.edu/download/test/ (don’t know if it’s available elsewhere)
2. Right-click the downloaded file, and select “Run as administrator”.
3. Install the program
4. Reboot your computer
5. Upon reboot launch the VPN Client and import your existing profiles, if they are not already there.
6. - and connect…

Having just done a reinstall of my laptop, I decided to once again take a plunge into Windows Vista, this time RC2.

I have previously tried Windows Vista RC1, but I think, that RC2 is greatly improved over this version judged on performance and driver-support. It seems, that, apart from one item, all devices in my laptop (HP NC8230) is supported “out-of-the-box”.

For the last week, I have, on and off, been testing some of the applications I use the most, just to make sure, that they work on Windows Vista.

These programs are:

1. Microsoft Office 2003
2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professionel
3. Microsoft SQL Server Express (SP1)
4. SQL Server Management Studio Express (use Run As “Administrator”)
5. iNEWS (Newsroom System)
6. Planning-software based on Progress
7. FileZilla

However I have not been able to install Sony Ericsson PC Suite 1.20.237 (although I have altered the MSI-package). During the installation it fails on writing to some directory, and complaing that the MSI-installer lacks rights – however, I’m installing it as Administrator. If someone has successfully installed the suite – don’t hesitate to let me know.

Microsoft has released a BETA of Virtual PC 2007 throug the Connect-program.

If you wan’t to participate, then go to this adress: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx - sign in, and participate in the program.

After spending some time trying to set up blogging by email in wordpress and getting it to run using WP-CRON, I think that I finally got it working.

I followed these steps:

1. Download Postie (http://www.economysizegeek.com/?page_id=395)
2. Unzip the file, and follow the instructions in the readme-file for configuration
3. Test that it works, using e.g. http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php
4. Download WP-CRON http://www.skippy.net/blog/category/wordpress/plugins/wp-cron/ (if you don’t have access to setup a real cronjob on your server)
5. Unzip the file, upload and configure using the readme-file.
6. Next you’ll have to create a new PHP-file, that actualle runs exactly the postie get_mail.php. The file should look something like this.
7. Put the file in /wp-content/plugins/wp-cron-folder/
8. Activate the plugin under Plugins.