I installed a Windows Deployment Server today and while setting up the PXE boot options I hit a road block. No where in the MS documentation that I’ve come across is this info given. All the tutorials I’ve watched all install a DHCP server on the same servers as WDS. I was only able to find the reference here.
For future reference the DHCP settings are:
OPTION 66 = IP OF WDS Server
OPTION 67 = \boot\x86\wdsnbp.com
I came across the following error while trying to add a mail enabled group to a Public Folder:
1st I tried changing the group from distribution to security, but, I still got the same error.
Then I found this post. Turns out the GUI doesn’t completely change the object. You need to run the following command from the Exchange Management Shell (Exchange 2007 for me):
Set-Distributiongroup–identity
In my case it was:
Set-DistributionGroup -identity AmbCare
You can read the linked post for the command for Exchange 2010.
While building my XenServer farm I had a couple servers die on me, requiring XenServer to be re-installed. This left the local storage, DVD & removable storage from each dead server dangling in the pool. They show up in XenCenter as greyed out repositories.
To get the GUID of the dangling SR’s run this command from any host in the pool:
xe sr-list –minimal params=uuid host=”<not in database>”
Then run this command using the GUID’s from the above command to remove them:
xe sr-forget uuid=%dangling-SR-GUID%
Repeat the command to remove each of your dangling storage repositories.
I needed to quickly add a second disk to a VM during our recent facility move and didn’t have time to create a new Storage Repository (SR). Now with some time to clean things up in my XenServer farm I wanted to move the disk to its own SR. I ended up being stumped when using the XenCenter console and needed to use the xe CLI. This page had the commands that I required to make the copy to the new SR. Just remember to use the vdi-uuid of the vdisk you want to move.
With the impending closure of
Xmarks this January I decided to look for a way to keep using the service. Since I still used Firefox as my primary browser and I remembered that you could host your own bookmarks with the Xmarks BYOS Edition I decided to head down that path. Xmarks BYOS is only available as a Firefox add-on. I don’t expect development to extend to Chrome, IE or Safari.
You will need to have access to a FTP server to host your own Xmarks files. You can host your own FTP server with Filezilla Server or use space on a web server if you have FTP access to it. (Setup of Filezilla is beyond the scope of this post. I may add a tutorial on this in the future.)
Here are the steps we will follow to use Xmarks BYOS:
Step 1: Uninstall Xmarks
Step 2: Setup your FTP server
Wow that was easy wasn’t it?
Step 3: Install Xmarks BYOS
Step 4: Configure Xmarks BYOS
You can repeat steps 3 & 4 on as many computers are you require. Just make sure the settings are exactly the same or sync will not work.
If you’re using your own FTP server make sure to make backup copies of your .json files.
UPDATE 29/09/10:
Thanks to Jonathan & Alicia we see that BYOS will not work with Firefox 4.0, whenever it is released. However, Alicia reports that these instructions do work with the latest Xmarks release, which you can find info on here.
I’ve been having issues with the automatic update of plugins and the WordPress core files for some time now and I could never quite track it down until today.
I was at my wits end with the updater and was contemplating exporting the WordPress MySQL database and installing it on to a new install folder. My best guess was that the issue was related to a core file that wasn’t overwriting correctly from my FTP upload, as it has happened before but with other side effects. After I exported my SQL file I noticed it was 6.3MB, which is huge. I dug into the SQL table and noticed that wp_options was about 6MB alone. Further inspection showed a bunch of RSS files that turn out to be cache files that are supposed to be purged. There were also lots of references to old plugins that I no longer used. My initial thought was to manually delete these entries but there were 300+ of them and that would have taken way too long. It could have also lead to me deleting an entry that was needed. A quick Google search turned up this plugin. I deactivated my current plugins so I could activate the Clean Options Plugin (internal server errors after enabling plugins were another symptom I was seeing) and ended up cleaning up over 350 orphaned entries! The wp_options table is now down to 50KB.
Now my plugin and core updates all work correctly. My dashboard also is able to load more than just a couple widgets and in general the admin interface just works better.
A friend asked me to take a look at their Acer Aspire One as it wouldn`t boot for them. They would press the power button and it would light up but nothing would happen after that. I haven`t had too many net books in the shop, and I dislike the form factor so I don`t own one of my own, so I was light on ideas. A quick search lead me to a post that had the same issue my friend was seeing.
The Fix:
The Aspire One has a built-in BIOS recovery routine, making it possible to flash the BIOS even if the system doesn’t boot anymore. It’s only meant for emergencies and may void your warranty, so use at your own risk.
I followed the process and the Aspire One did exactly what it was supposed to do. I`d day the entire fix took 20min, from beginning the search to finishing the boot into XP.
This guide would have been good to find about a week ago. I’ll have to readjust my storage repositories to have 1 iSCSI LUN for each VM instead of 1 large storage repository for my resource pool. I wonder if I’ll be able to copy directly from the old LUN to each of the new LUNs?
Now that I read the title of this post, it sounds a touch dirty…
I had created a couple generic Win2k8 R2 VMs last week with 25GB OS drives. I hadn’t decided which services would be running on the boxes and 25GB would be more than enough for most applications. The only problem was that I had decided to install Sharepoint 2010 Foundation on one and SQL 2008 R2 on the other and both require 80GB of disk space. Good thing XenServer 5.6 and Window Server 2008 R2 make it easy to increase the disk size.
In XenCenter 5.6 select the virtual disk from the storage tab of the virtual machine, click Properties, select Size and Location, then increase the size of the disk.
Super simple, eh? This feature has been available for quite some time, v4.1 I believe, via the CLI but was exposed to the GUI in v5.6.
Now you need to extend the partition in Windows. Right click My Computer select Manage, select Disk Management, right click on the disk you want to extend, and select Extend. This starts the Extend Volume Wizard. Follow the prompts to complete the process. By default Win2k8 R2 extends the partition to the maximum available space available. So this wizard is just about clicking next, next, finish.
Take a look at the Citrix KB article for more info and additional instructions for the CLI procedure and how to extend a partition in Linux operating systems.
Note: Windows 2003 and XP are not able to extend the partition while the OS is running. You need to attach the disk to another VM and use DiskPart to extend the volume.
When you work with virtual machines, either converting physical or working with new builds, you often have issues with hidden devices. Most often the hidden device that gives the most grief is old physical network cards. Thankfully the issues easily resolved.
To work around this behavior and display devices when you click Show hidden devices (source):
NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Managers before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.
