tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2009-11-13:/MokoFeed2009-11-13T03:14:34+01:00tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2009-04-29:/2009/04/29/backup-plan-6031589/enigmaticeye2009-04-29T20:32:24+02:002009-04-29T20:32:24+02:00 <p>Recently a business where I had worked lost the use of one of its PCs due to corruption of the operating system. I was called in to help sort things out. My experiences made me think what might be a good checklist for any small business with one or two PCs, lets assume they are running windows.</p> <p>A. Write a brief disaster recovery procedure for different scenarios, e.g theft, hardware damage, software corruption, accidental damage to data.<br> B. Have working/backup CDs of all software including operating systems and device drivers.<br> C. Have all codes and passwords recorded somewhere safe.<br> D. Have a backup of all critical data, both on site and off site, and instructions on how to restore it.</p> <p>In considering this I have tried to be realistic rather than what you might do in an ideal world. The resources spent on precautions have to equate with the actual levels of risk. For example, daily imaging of every PC, storing data in carefully configured RAID arrays, is not for everyone, and might be wasted money and effort if the business cost of just re-loading some software and copying files from a memory stick backup is minimal.</p> <p>Specific additional questions based upon what happened in practice are below:-</p> <p>1. If the operating system won't boot: is there an Automated Recovery CD?, in this case there wasn't so Windows XP Pro had to be re-installed from scratch.</p> <p>2. Are there working installation CDs for all critical software? In this case, one of the installation CDs turned out to be damaged, and that was the only copy.</p> <p>3. Have all settings and passwords for internet services such as email been recorded in a readily available form?</p> <p>All these precautions sound like common sense but may be more difficult to address than one might suppose. In a small business there may not be one person whose responsibility it is to see to all these things, ultimately it is the owner of the business who is responsible. However, he or she might not understand fully the implications of every technical issue, whilst IT contractors who have been brought in to do a specific task may not understand the implications of business issues. Responibility may have been delegated to a member of staff at one point, but then they leave, and a new person comes along, who, as it is a small business, may do a slightly different job to their predecessor because they have a different skill set. It is all to easy to assume that just because some action was taken with regards to a risk (i.e. buying a backup drive), that whatever has been put in place will actually work out when the worst happens and it comes to restoring everything. (Has the backup procedure been followed? Did the backup software work properly? Will the restore work on a new set up? How long were backups kept before being overwritten by the next backup?)</p> <p>I don't want to be alarmist, but as data has become increasingly 'real' and 'tangible' as a business asset, it is probably worth while for anyone who works in a small business to ask some of these questions, because it might just save a lot of time and money when the PC won't start one not too distant Monday morning. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2009/04/29/backup-plan-6031589/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2008-06-28:/2008/06/28/use-for-a-pc-with-no-drives-4377549/enigmaticeye2008-06-28T21:01:55+02:002008-06-28T21:01:55+02:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/media/photo/puppy/2623603" title="puppy"><img src="http://data5.blog.de/media/603/2623603_e9b9f176a3_m.jpeg" alt="puppy" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a><br><em><br>My P4 3Ghz XP Shuttle has found new life running puppy linux off of a memory stick, using a Vesa graphics driver, and connecting to the home network.</em></p> <p>It was my main PC until it became increasingly unreliable and finally failed completely earlier this year, and I knew it was time to bite the dual-core + Vista bullet with a brand new PC. Since then I have played about with putting in different hard drives, optical drives and operating systems, trying to get the old PC going as a spare computer. However, the hard drive and optical drive kept disabling themselves on me, until I decided to let it run entirely from a memory stick, and after fiddling around, downloading various distributions, which did not work well for me, I remembered I had already installed Linux on a 2 Gb stick. Disabling the hard drive and optical drive in the BIOS, and inserting the stick in the back of the PC, allowed me boot into the pleasant little OS known as Puppy, browse the internet, word process, and do quite a lot of other things should I feel the need. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2008/06/28/use-for-a-pc-with-no-drives-4377549/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2008-03-21:/2008/03/21/terminal-3915170/enigmaticeye2008-03-21T16:10:59+01:002008-03-21T16:10:59+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/media/photo/stscreen/2421119" title="stscreen"><img src="http://data3.blog.de/media/119/2421119_ffb7ad1202_m.jpeg" alt="stscreen" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>I recently inherited a Toshiba Portege pentium 3 laptop after buying my sister a new Acer dual core one running Vista for Christmas. The Windows 2000 operating system on the Toshiba was making it seem very slow, especially since the extra RAM slot was broken and hence it had a maximum of 64 megabytes. After installing Windows 98, the original operating system, it was working much better, and booted in about a minute rather than five minutes.</p> <p>The other day I decided to install Linux on it as well, and luckily had an original set of Redhat 7.3 CDs to use. After partitioning the disk, the install took about forty-five minutes, but was then up and working, including X-Windows, without any problems whatsoever.</p> <p>The reason I had wanted to have linux on that machine was so I could experiment with serial communications. This is hard to do on a modern PC that has only USB ports. Previously I had tried writing Windows 32-bit software to connect to a telnet server and relay the information to a terminal, with some limited success.</p> <p>In Linux, I set up a process in the configuration files called 'agetty' which allowed a serial device to be used as an extra terminal. For my terminal I used an old Atari Mega ST computer with an original monochrome monitor, experimenting with various shareware and freeware terminal emulator programs. Once I had got the baud rate right, and was receiving recognisable text, I found that I could get complete emulation with a shareware program called CONNECT and partial emulation with other simpler programs, which was okay as long as I disabled colour in the Linux output, and steered clear of interactive text-user interface applications like PINE that would confuse a simple terminal.</p> <p>The whole experience has made me appreciate better the complexities of what I previously saw as trivial: the correct coding, encoding, processing and display of text based user interaction.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2008/03/21/terminal-3915170/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-11-17:/2007/11/17/networking_with_suse~3308939/enigmaticeye2007-11-17T02:56:33+01:002007-11-17T02:56:33+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/media/photo/screenshot/2150580" title="Screenshot"><img src="http://data3.blog.de/media/580/2150580_1d7ee77a77_m.jpeg" alt="Screenshot" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a> <p>I installed CentOS on my new Windows XP PC, having to resize the ntfs filesystem first to make space, with the intention of testing some open source postgres database replication software I was planning to use in my voluntary job. However, I stalled at ever doing this, maybe because there seemed to be too many variables outside my control.</p> <p>Now with the space already partitioned, I decided to install a recent version of Suse Linux there instead. This went smoothly but it inevitably failed to recognise my USB wireless dongle. I eventually downloaded the right Ralink driver, and after installing the kernel source was able to compile it.</p> <p>After some tinkering I was able to connect to my home wireless network. I added the DNS server address of the router in /etc/resolv.conf. To make it all load up at boot time I created a script in the /etc/init.d directory and inserted it to the startup sequence using 'chkconfig --add'.</p> #!/bin/sh<br><tt># BEGIN INIT INFO<br># Provides: rc.local<br># Required-Start: $network $syslog<br># Required-Stop: $network $syslog<br># Default-Start: 3 5<br># Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6<br># Description: whatever<br></tt># END INIT INFO<br>cd /root<br>cd rtl8187_linux_26.1025.0328.2007<br>./wlan0up<br>iwconfig wlan0 essid Belkin_Pre-N_123456<br>iwconfig wlan0 key 12345678909876543212345678<br>./wlan0dhcp</p> <p>I am happy that I got it working, and it all seems quite robust and resposive. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/11/17/networking_with_suse~3308939/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-08-20:/2007/08/20/real_revival~2836223/enigmaticeye2007-08-20T01:40:26+02:002007-08-20T01:40:26+02:00 <p>For many months now, Real Player on my Apple Powerbook has been crashing out whenever I started to play any file or stream. This continued despite deleting the program and re-downloading and installing it.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1896488" title="realplayer"><img src="http://data4.blog.de/media/488/1896488_c0a0bb99e6_m.jpeg" alt="realplayer" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Finally, I'm pretty sure that I've found out where the problem was - a corrupted cache. Trying to empty the cache lead to another crash, but turning it off altogether has solved the problem.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1896487" title="content"><img src="http://data4.blog.de/media/487/1896487_8f1211583c_m.jpeg" alt="content" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>The cache does not seem to be important as my internet connection is very fast and reliable, and most of the streams I access are in the UK. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/08/20/real_revival~2836223/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-08-09:/2007/08/10/the_long_and_wireless_road~2783622/enigmaticeye2007-08-10T00:21:18+02:002007-08-10T01:11:45+02:00 <p>I have finally got a reasonable mobile data connection for my laptop (pictured below), through a tangental series of events.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1869773" title="01-08-07_2058"><img src="http://data4.blog.de/media/773/1869773_5c90b913bf_s.jpeg" alt="01-08-07_2058" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a></p> <p>For a while I've been using my bluetooth enabled Sony Ericson T-610 phone as a GSM modem for my Powerbook and my Palm T3, achieving the pitful speed of 9,600Kb/s. It came to my attention that I could connect a lot faster using GPRS (which is 2nd generation mobile technology). However, when I did this on my last holiday, I soon found that I was burning up credit on my Virgin Mobile pay as you go account very quickly. It was clear to me that a data-specific subscription was the only sane way to be using GPRS, but once I was back home, I soon forgot about it all, and was content to use GSM for the odd bit of browsing on my T3.</p> <p>The issue re-occured when I was attending a local community-based group where people often had practical issues that needed resolving that required information which was freely available on the web, but they were non-tech savy and had no computer at home. Looking at the funding for the group, it stated that internet access would be provided, and yet it wasn't being. The group met in a public building with no technical facilities, so a mobile data connection seemed the obvious answer.</p> <p>I found a cheap data card on ebay, and brought it in to try with the organisation's laptop. Using the SIM card from the group's mobile was unsuccesful as the contract did not include data. The SIM from my phone worked fine though, but the GSM connection was painfully slow. GPRS was still way too expensive an option using my pay-as-you-go SIM card, so a few weeks later I bought a subscription costing 25 pounds a month plus 7.50 a month for (virtually) unlimited data. This worked amazingly well in the laptop. I'd like to say the story ended there, but internal politics and lack of common sense intervened. The upper management who administered the group would not agree to have their laptop used for internet access. So I ended up taking back the card and SIM for my own personal use.</p> <p>What I haven't mentioned is that the subscription came with a free Motorola phone, which is very smart, and I now use with my old Virgin mobile SIM card. It includes a built in camera that takes quite nice photos (see below).</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1869774" title="05-08-07_1554"><img src="http://data4.blog.de/media/774/1869774_da10e3681c_s.jpeg" alt="05-08-07_1554" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a></p> <p>The data card I had was an Option Globetrotter, that worked okay in my old Thinkpad laptop, but the software was very slow to load, being designed for an XP computer of reasonable spec. My Dad's newer Thinkpad worked a lot better with it. Even so, ideally I wanted to be able to go mobile on my Apple Powerbook laptop. To achieve this would need either a dedicated Mac card or some special software. As the former seemed to be non-existent, I opted for the latter, buying a  product called 'launch2net' from the Apple store. I was pleasantly surprised to find it recognised the card first go, but found that it did not seem able to connect. Then I found another cheap card on ebay that claimed to be Mac compatible. Although the bundled software rejected my SIM card as it was from another network, the launch2net utility recognised it and this time worked all the way. Finally my Powerbook has a decent mobile data connection that doesn't cost the earth.<br> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/08/10/the_long_and_wireless_road~2783622/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-05-07:/2007/05/07/building_a_pc~2223674/enigmaticeye2007-05-07T03:51:27+02:002007-05-07T03:54:19+02:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1547673" title="pc"><img src="http://data4.blog.de/media/673/1547673_01aea07728_m.jpeg" alt="pc" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Being quite against throwing away perfectly good computers and upgrading them for no good reason (other than to play a game with slightly more polygons) I finally felt it was time to retire my ~1GHz main PC and build a new one.</p> <p>Why did I decide to build a PC rather than buy one ready made?</p> <ul> <li>First I wanted an Intel Mac, but it was taking too long to save up for.</li> <li>Macs only have specific hardware components, PCs in theory allow mix and match.</li> <li>Maybe I could save a little money.</li> <li>I had helped build systems before, but not that recently, so it would be a learning experience.</li> </ul> <p>I checked the website of a very local dealer, and that lead me to a company in Manchester that sold bare-bones PCs, that is partly assembled units consisting of a case and motherboard. I bought a Shuttle XPC.</p> <p>My first build was unsuccesful, even after changing the processor, memory and graphics card for ones on the manufacturers compatibility list. I sent the unit back, and the replacement worked a treat, until something went wrong while installing a parallel port. The retailer tested the system and said it was fine, which lead me to the conclusion that the graphics card had gone wrong, so I replaced it, with a better one, and lo and behold the system worked again.</p> <p>The whole process took a month or more, and was a bit stressful at times, given that I did not have a lot of resources for problem solving faults and finding out which components worked or not. I am not sure I would buy a fully ready built system, but I might in future have the supplier build a system to my own specifications.</p> <p>The final system has 2Gb of dual-channel memory, a Pentium 4 - 3.0GHz processor, a Sapphire 512Mb graphics card and 250Mb SATA hard drive and a standard DVD writer and I am happy now that it is all working.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/05/07/building_a_pc~2223674/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-04-17:/2007/04/17/samba~2105866/enigmaticeye2007-04-17T03:59:57+02:002007-04-17T04:03:39+02:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1336121" title="window"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/121/1336121_b845e3c55e_m.gif" alt="window" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Having networked a Mac and some PCs for a few years now, I have often run into difficulty when connecting from one to the other because of two problems:</p> <p>1. the default workgroup name is 'workgroup', but my PCs are under 'home'</p> <p>2. the dynamically allocated ip address of the Mac keeps changing, meaning that the required connection string one day will be different the next day</p> <p>Finally I have made some headway, when I had a look at a configuration file on the Mac, stored in the Unix file structure. It is called:</p> <p>/etc/smb.conf</p> <p>Having experimented with Windows Networking under a few flavours of Linux in the past, I recognised that this was the 'Samba' configuration file, which sets up how the machine is viewed on a windows network. Within this file, I found two very useful options, which when changed, made things a lot easier:</p> <p>workgroup = Home<br> netbios name = PowerBook</p> <p>I also enabled home directory sharing.</p> <p>[homes]<br> browseable=yes</p> <p>Now I can simply refer to my Mac by its name, on my PCs, then enter in my Mac's username and password and I immediately have access to all my files.</p> <p>This is a lot easier than going into the router configuration to find out my Mac's IP address, then having to type this in to connect. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/04/17/samba~2105866/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-04-05:/2007/04/06/under_construction~2041367/enigmaticeye2007-04-06T00:32:35+02:002007-04-06T00:32:35+02:00 <p>I was asked to help set up a new web site where a content management system had been installed, and the old content was gradually being copied from the static pages into the database in a piecemeal fashion.</p> <p>The trouble was, that to get to the old site, users had to click on a small link, which many of them missed, and hence could not get through to the info they wanted. The new site was incomplete, but becuase the C.M.S. has to be installed into the root of the web server, it was what users were getting, instead of the old site.</p> <p>I took over the job of copying content from the old to the new site, but first I had to make sure that users would get to the old site, whilst I would get to the new site. This seemed hard, given that there was just one web address which had to be able to serve both the old pages to the public and the new pages to me whilst I was working on them.</p> <p>My first thought was to copy the C.M.S. and database onto my Powerbook laptop, but I did not relish the sort of installation problems caused by different versions of PHP, and I also did not want to have to hack about with the configuration files to change the paths from test-server to production-server.</p> <p>My second thought was to have a simple re-direct to the directory containing the old files. However, doing this broke the C.M.S. meaning I could not preview any of the pages I was working on. Finally, I hit upon the idea of scanning the web client's IP address, and based on this either redirecting to the old site, or continuing and processing the index page as per the C.M.S.'s internal workings.</p> <p>The snippet of code I came up with was as follows:</p> if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']!='82.83.84.85') { header("Location: oldsite/index.htm"); exit(0); } <p>...where 82.83.84.85 was the current dynamic-ish IP address assigned by my Internet Service Provider, which I assumed would not change very often.</p> <p>I inserted this code into the beginning of index.php and there I had it, a web site that I could mess around with at will, without upsetting the all important web-site audience out in internet land.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/04/06/under_construction~2041367/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-03-04:/2007/03/05/lazarus_laptop~1848085/enigmaticeye2007-03-05T00:46:17+01:002007-03-05T00:46:17+01:00 <p> A few weeks ago my old Thinkpad 600E met with an unfortunate accident, which I won't go into, and lost its LCD screen and CD-Rom drive. </p> <p> For a few days, I wrote off the laptop totally as a lost cause. Then a brand new battery arrived in the post, which I had ordered before the laptop got broken. The old battery had a habit of getting down to 60% then running out of power. </p> <p> Having spent this money on a new battery, and not wanting to have to send it back to Germany, where it was dispatched from, I decided to risk throwing good money after bad, and replace all the faulty parts. I opted to buy a new LCD panel, that is the display itself, not including the frame. Instead of getting another CD-Rom drive, I was lucky to find for the same price a DVD-Rom, CD-Recordable combo drive. </p> <p> These parts only took a couple of days to arrive, but I waited for a Sunday afternoon when I was not busy to try and install them. </p> <p> The LCD frame came apart with a little persuasion, and removing 6 screws, hidden behind little plastic circular pads. It was only connected in two places, a white plug for power, I think, and a thin flat ribbon cable for data. The new LCD display fitted snuggly in place, and much to my surprise, worked first go. The only difficulty in putting it back together was aligning the external brightness slider with its corresponding internal slider. I gave up on this and just put the frame back together, and by some miracle, in doing this the slider lined up and started working. </p> <p> A much easier job was putting in the new DVD-Rom drive, which was simply a matter of pushing the catch and sliding the old drive out, and the new one in. </p> <p> Finally, I put the new battery in, and set it charging for a few hours. </p> <p> Thanks to an 'ahem' accident, the laptop now has a recordable drive, a new display (with only one hard to spot duff pixel), and a battery life of over two hours rather than 45 minutes. A saying that I will stick to in this case is: you never appreciate what you have, until you've broken it, and then had to fix it. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/03/05/lazarus_laptop~1848085/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-01-11:/2007/01/11/suse_linux~1540024/enigmaticeye2007-01-11T01:18:38+01:002007-01-11T01:18:38+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1090820" title="network"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/820/1090820_62ca156ffb_m.jpeg" alt="network" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>I have finally got round to installing an up to date version of Linux on my 1.2GHz Athlon PC. To make space for it, I overwrote a 6 Gb partition on my hard disk that contained an older distribution of Mandrake.</p> <p>Installation went smoothly, taking a couple of hours. It replaced my PC's boot up menu without asking me whether I wanted it to do this. However an option on the new menu allows me to boot into windows as before.</p> <p>My hardware such as graphic card and printer were detected okay, but there was no built in driver for my wireless network card. I installed the kernel source code and downloaded the 'Ralink' network driver. It compiled okay, and I was able to get the module working, but no wireless connection. After downloading and compiling the QT gui libraries over-night, I compiled the Ralink Utility that came along with the drivers. After running this, I was able to connect to the network.</p> <p>Everytime I booted I had to run a terminal as the root user, run the Ralink Utility and type in or copy and paste in the 26 hex-digit encryption key. To reduce the hassle, I modified the source code so that I can leave the key field blank and just press okay, and the correct key will automatically be used. Also I wrote a small wrapper program to login as root using 'sudo' and run the utility.</p> <p><code><br> #include <stdlib.h><br> main()<br> {<br> system("echo password | su -c /home/leehanken/RaConfig2500 &");<br> }<br> </code></p> <p>Now it just takes a couple of clicks when I first boot up to get connected to the network.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/01/11/suse_linux~1540024/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-01-09:/2007/01/09/open_source_web_sites~1531741/enigmaticeye2007-01-09T04:08:08+01:002007-01-09T04:15:05+01:00 <p>It is scary how little time, money and effort is now needed in terms of technical work to set up a powerful 'dynamic' web site. A dynamic web site is one where the information on it changes regularly, and is stored in a database. These include typical applications such as content management, ecommerce and bulletin boards.</p> <p>To illustrate I have chosen one from each of these three categories and installed them into a test environment on my laptop, where I run the 'apache' web server and 'mysql' database system.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086661" title="1"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/661/1086661_cd49729f7f_m.jpeg" alt="1" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>This first one is an open source bulletin board in which people can discuss some topic, ask each other for help, etc. It is called 'phpBB', php being the programming language it was written in, and BB standing for bulletin board.</p> <p><br> <a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086662" title="2"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/662/1086662_72f2cef235_m.jpeg" alt="2" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>The second one is an ecommerce web site called 'oscommerce', which is used to sell products or services online, by providing users with a catalogue and taking their orders and credit card details.</p> <p><br> <a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086663" title="3"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/663/1086663_f6cd0021fe_m.jpeg" alt="3" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>The final one is a content management system called 'mambo', which allows one or more editors to write articles or information for their audience, which is automatically formatted according to the wishes of a designer who controls the look, feel and structure of the finished web site.</p> <p></p> <p>Installing these web applications assumes some pre-requisites - that your web hosting company supports the 'php' programming language and the 'mysql' database system. Once these have been set up, installation is relatively simple. First I downloaded the respective packages from the open source projects, and unzipped them into my web directory.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086664" title="4"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/664/1086664_98fd3a8194_m.jpeg" alt="4" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>An important step at this stage was to change the permissions so that the application can modify itself at installation time.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086683" title="5"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/683/1086683_f20c12cfbc_m.jpeg" alt="5" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Then I created the empty databases using a tool called 'phpmyadmin' which is usually provided by the web hosting control panel.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086666" title="6"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/666/1086666_0b151e3ad2_m.jpeg" alt="6" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Then I pointed my web browser at the appropriate installation page for the web site I was setting up, and entered the name of the database, the database user name and password, and any other details requested.</p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1086667" title="7"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/667/1086667_16f12af7e5_m.jpeg" alt="7" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>The final step was to delete the installation directory, so my users would not be able to tamper with the way the database was set up.</p> <p>And voila, the three dynamic web sites, along with their test data were set up and ready to be customised, and used.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/01/09/open_source_web_sites~1531741/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2007-01-07:/2007/01/07/java_example~1523654/enigmaticeye2007-01-07T02:34:40+01:002007-01-07T02:48:41+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1081203" title="javaview"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/203/1081203_d20d0ca81f_m.jpeg" alt="javaview" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>Java is like an international language. Almost every modern computer or mobile phone even can understand it, but at a slower speed than when they process their native tongue.</p> <p>To write programs in Java the software development kit has to be downloaded from <a href="http://www.sun.com">Sun Microsystems</a>. </p> <p>I found that the bundled development tool NetBeans ran painfully slowly on my laptop, so had a look around for something a bit simpler, and found some nifty free software called <a href="http://www.jcreator.com/">JCreator</a> Lite Edition.</p> <p>A new Java program starts of life as a grey rectangle and the only option is exit. To this I added another option...</p> <p><code>JMenuItem menuFileOpen = new JMenuItem();</code></p> <p>...to choose from a directory listing which file the user wants...</p> <p><code><br> JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser("*.*");<br> fc.showOpenDialog(myFrame.this);<br> </code></p> <p>...and this is buffered into memory...</p> <p><code><br> BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);<br> while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)<br> {<br> wholedata += line + "\n";<br> }<br> </code></p> <p>...and drawn on the screen.</p> <p><code><br> Font myfont = new Font("Courier",Font.BOLD, 18);<br> TextLayout tl = new TextLayout(string, myfont, myfontrendercontext);<br> tl.draw(graphic, horizontal_position, vertical_position);<br> </code></p> <p>I was happy that in a couple of hours messing around I had created a program that actually did something useful.</p> <p></p> <p><em>source code:-</em></p> <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1081437" title="test5"><img src="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/img/doc.gif" alt="test5" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a><br> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2007/01/07/java_example~1523654/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-12-27:/2006/12/27/delphi_blues~1482434/enigmaticeye2006-12-27T01:34:51+01:002006-12-27T01:34:51+01:00 <p><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/795/1055795_c1cef8bf64_s.jpg" alt="delphi" vspace="5" hspace="5"></p> <p>For a week or so now I have been trying to help out an associate who needs to demonstrate to potential clients that he can deliver certain specified capabilities in a program.</p> <p>One thing he needs to demonstrate is that he can write a stand-alone program that will connect to a specific secure http server send a message to it, and retrieve a response. This doesn't sound too hard, and indeed it is not, if you are using the right tools. The right tools in this case being an up to date version of the Java software development kit.</p> <p>Within the same evening of receiving the specifications I was able to write about ten lines of code that connected to the secure server, sent the supplied message (in XML format) and retrieved and uncompressed the response.</p> <p>This satisfied me that the server was working properly.</p> <p>I thought it would be a fairly easy matter to duplicate this activity within a Delphi program.</p> <p>Unfortunately none of the components of Delphi 7 (which I run on my Windows 2000 laptop) support making SSL (secure socket layer) connections. I tried to install a version of CurlLib which is based on that handy Unix utility 'curl' that can retrieve almost any kind of file from any kind of server. Eventually I gave up as I couldn't figure out quite how to compile it all.</p> <p>Thinking things would be easier if I was using a more up to date version of Delphi, I installed version 2005, running on my mum's new laptop, which is just about fast enough to make it usable. Sure enough it had all kinds of extra web components, but it took some time for me to cotton on that I needed to use the 'Indy' or Internet Direct components. Once I had worked this out it didn't take too long to come up with some code for connecting to a secure server. This worked for just accessing any old secure web site, but failed whenever I tried to connect to the actual server.</p> <p>Trying to figure what might be wrong lead me down the path of investigating certificates - which are the bits of information that are stored on your machine and the machine you connect to, like ciphers, what let you and someone else communicate without anyone else being able to listen in, or impersonate one of you.</p> <p>Having finally generated and correctly 'self-signed' my certificate, I found that it made no difference. So, I gave up on Indy and moved onto my final attempt which was a library named 'Synapse'. This was much easier to install, and could work even with Delphi 7. I got it connecting to normal web servers, but unfortunately it failed to connect to any secure servers that I pointed it at.</p> <p>So finally here I am, having exhausted all obvious avenues to do something that I thought would be simple. So there is nothing left for me to do but sing the blues...</p> <p><br> <em>My delphi's not working<br><br> It just won't compile<br><br> And when I try to connect it<br><br> I end up losing my smile<br><br> <br><br> Secure socket layer<br><br> Ain't my cup of tea<br><br> I made my certificate<br><br> And my private key<br><br> <br><br> So now I give up<br><br> And call it a day<br><br> Can't talk with that server<br><br> No how and now way<br><br> <br><br> Now there is a moral<br><br> To this sorry tale<br><br> Just stick to your Java<br><br> Or you're sure to fail!<br><br> </em><br> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/12/27/delphi_blues~1482434/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-12-06:/2006/12/06/a_change_of_operating_system~1406791/enigmaticeye2006-12-06T04:15:24+01:002006-12-06T04:15:24+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=1010711"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/711/1010711_4984c46a68_m.jpeg" alt="win2kb" title="win2kb" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p> A few months ago an aging laptop passed into my sole use, originally aquired by my father through his work, at trade price, before he retired. It is an IBM Thinkpad 660E, a sub Gigahertz pentium II with 6Gb of diskspace and 128Mb of memory, running Windows 98. After several years of use by my family, it was finally no longer needed as everyone now has their own laptop.</p> <p> To start with I removed all the excess software and junk, then I put it to use as a testing server for ASP scripts, and developed my website on it (enigmaticeye.com)</p> <p> Eventually I decided it was not much use running Windows 98, and thought about upgrading the operating system.</p> <p> My first thought was to install some flavour of Linux. The main problem I faced was that I would need drivers for the wireless network card, which has a ralink chipset, drivers for which are only built in to modern distributions with a 2.6 kernel.</p> <p> So I started with Ubuntu. Now I had never really experimented with live linux CDs, and I thought it would be a sinch. However, after half an hour loading the graphical installer, I finally gave up, and tried the text mode installer. I gave up on this after about an hour. Next I tried Mandriva, but faced similar problems. NetBSD and Slax I couldn't even get to boot. While I was trying these installations, I managed to download the full five disk set of Suse Linux, but found this was taking forever too.</p> <p> Finally, I got the message, no matter how hard you try, you ain't gonna run brand new software on seven or eight year old hardware. So I tried a compromise, and installed Mandrake 10.0, a distribution a couple of years old, but which uses a 2.6 kernel. It was a bit sluggish, but there was hope. However, having installed it, I found it did not have ralink drivers built in, but that one was available to download. It had to be compiled though, and I soon realised that I did not have the kernel source code installed. The specific version I needed was unfortunately missing from the CDs, and unavailable on the web.</p> <p> Admitting defeat, I have opted for Windows 2000 as my operating system of choice, having the advantage that plug in and play, no hassle, drivers are readily available, and it can run decently even on an old system like my thinkpad!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/12/06/a_change_of_operating_system~1406791/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-11-25:/2006/11/25/sharing_email~1367830/enigmaticeye2006-11-25T15:42:13+01:002006-11-25T15:42:13+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=984885"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/885/984885_c782194be1_s.jpeg" alt="outlook" title="outlook" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>We have a family computer at home which everyone uses to send and receive email using outlook express. For some time I have pondered how people could get their email on their own various laptops.</p> <p>Short of buying Microsoft Exchange Server, I don't really have an answer, but today we moved a step closer.</p> <p>The inspiration came when my father and I were discussing where the email is actually stored - in database files within a special system folder - which we regularly back up as a matter of course. It occured to me that one PC could store its database files on another PC, over the network. I didn't know how possible this was, or what sharing violations might occur if both PCs tried to run outlook express at the same time.</p> <p>My first port of call was the registry where I searched for the string "Outlook Express" and found it in</p> <code>HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2000478354-507921405-1957994488-1003\Identities\{E87DC317-98C4-40FB-B7BF-C1EE5C4E4411}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express</code></p> <p> Within this was a very promising piece of information called 'Store Root' which, it was my guess, pointed to where the database files are stored.</p> <p>All I had to do was change this pointer on the laptop to look across the network at the PC's outlook express database directory.</p> <p>At first Outlook Express could not open the files, but when I shared it with Read-Write access, to my pleasure, it worked perfectly.</p> <p>A little tinkering with my father on the PC and myself on the laptop proved that there were no real sharing problems with accessing the databases from two places at the same time.</p> <p>We could not go as far as being able to send email from either computer, but being able to read emails in the large archive we have accumulated from either computer is quite a useful step.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/11/25/sharing_email~1367830/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-11-24:/2006/11/24/keeping_in_sync~1366234/enigmaticeye2006-11-24T23:26:07+01:002006-11-24T23:26:07+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=983856"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/856/983856_8efa954d7c_m.jpeg" alt="sync" title="sync" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p>I bought my PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) a couple of years ago, and use it to keep track of the appointments I have each month (as well as listen to music). At about the same time I bought a mobile phone that I could use as a modem via Bluetooth (a short range wireless connection) so the PDA could access the internet whilst I was out and about.</p> <p>Add to this that I have a laptop and a desktop PC, each with its own calendar.</p> <p>So far I have managed to organise myself by synchronising just the PC and PDA over a USB (wired) connection, updating the calendar on my laptop by hand, and never using the calendar on my mobile phone.</p> <p>The problem is that recently I have become lazy about taking my PDA with me, meaning that I have to remember appointments, write them on scraps of paper or note them down in my phone temporarily and re-enter them on my PDA when I get home. This system (or lack of system) has lead to me forgetting at least one fairly important appointment.</p> <p>It turns out that I can keep all four systems in tune with each other. Here is how:</p> <ul> <li>Use Palm Hotsync and USB link to synchronise Windows PC running Outlook and Tungsten T3</li> <li>Use Palm Hotsync plugin for iSync and Bluetooth link to synchronise Tungsten T3 and Apple Powerbook running Address Book and iCal</li> <li>Use iSync and Bluetooth link to synchronise Sony Ericsson T610 mobile phone and Powerbook...</li> </ul> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/11/24/keeping_in_sync~1366234/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-11-18:/2006/11/18/salutary_javascript~1344529/enigmaticeye2006-11-18T22:10:35+01:002006-11-18T22:10:35+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=968681"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/681/968681_f0075b8cd0_s.jpeg" alt="Javascript" title="Javascript" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p class="p1">I went for an interview for a job one aspect of which was web design, and was tested to see if I could write javascript validation for a form. Now, I suprised myself to find that I couldn't get a simple piece of code to work and do what was required when I was put on the spot.</p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p1">The fact is, that although, in the past, I have played around a lot with javascript actions on forms, I eventually lost enthusiasm for client side scripting altogether. (One example of client side scripts you can see at the site <a href="http://www.nascroydon.org.uk"><a href="http://www.nascroydon.org.uk">http://www.nascroydon.org.uk</a></a> click on Newsletter archive and choose an item from one of the pull down lists.)</p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p1">My big problem with client side javascript is:</p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <ul> <li>It doesn't work on all browsers, leaving users potentially unable to use your site</li> <li>Malicious users can override your validation by recoding the script, so to be secure you have to code the same logic server side anyway</li> </ul> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p1">Now it has been taught to me that there are good uses for client scripting, for example, warning the user before they delete a record, to make sure they haven't done it by accident.</p> <p class="p2">e.g.<br></p> <p><code>onClick="return (window.confirm('are you sure'));"</code></p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p>What I have taken to heart is that a page must function whether or not javascript is enabled, but that it can provide an enhancement to the users experience.</p> <p>Coming back to the question of how to quickly check whether a field has been filled in on the client side, this can be done in the <code>onClick</code> event of the submit button, which must return true or false depending on whether the input is valid.</p> <p>In the case of my interview, the code I typed was:</p> <p><code>onClick="if (form1.textfield=='') window.alert('you must enter some text');"</code></p> <p>the correct code would have been:</p> <p><code>onClick="if (<em>document.</em>form1.textfield=='') window.alert('you must enter some text');"</code></p> <p>What the incident really brought home to me is how much I depend on using a search engine to find snippets of working code, without which it is easy to forget the exact keywords and syntax required.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/11/18/salutary_javascript~1344529/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-11-15:/2006/11/15/choosing_a_laptop~1334360/enigmaticeye2006-11-15T22:00:43+01:002006-11-15T22:04:01+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=961532"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/532/961532_9aa327d471_s.jpeg" alt="laptop" title="laptop" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p> My mother has asked me about getting a laptop she can use to do her univeristy work on, while my father is using our family PC (which he spends a lot of time on now he is retired). All she needs is to be able to browse the web, run interactive CD-Roms, and write essays using Word. </p> <p><em>How does this translate into a technical specification?</em></p> <p>The ability to run Windows XP I see as the main requirement, as many software/multimedia developers use 2000 or XP as their target platform.</p> <p>Looking at my nearest large mail-order supplier <a href="http://www.novatech.co.uk">Novatech</a> even their cheapest laptops claim to be Windows XP compatible, but I am not convinced that they will be really responsive given a processor speed of less than 2 GHz. I would opt for a little more memory than the bare minimum to help speed things up.</p> <p>Assuming I go for an own-brand Celeron range, the other things I would like are:</p> <ul> <li>DVD Writer</li> <li>54G Wireless</li> </ul> <p>The former is simply because its the latest storage medium, even though its not strictly necessary, it would seem to be worth the minimal extra cost, as upgrading optical drives on a laptop at a later stage is not something I'd contemplate.</p> <p>The wireless capability is important so my mother can use it in any room in the house.</p> <p>Finally comes the choice of software. Having the operating system pre-installed would be ideal. After that, Office educational version would seem like a good choice for the purpose intended.</p> <p>Once all these options are figured in, the final price tag is a little higher than expected, but overall it is a system I am happy to recommend to my mother to suit her needs.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/11/15/choosing_a_laptop~1334360/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk,2006-11-13:/2006/11/13/installing_redhat_linux~1323950/enigmaticeye2006-11-13T01:25:10+01:002006-11-13T01:25:10+01:00 <p><a href="http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/media/media_item.php?item_ID=954556"><img src="http://data2.blog.de/media/556/954556_fa528ca3ec_s.png" alt="Installing RedHat Linux 7.3" title="Installing RedHat Linux 7.3" vspace="5" hspace="5"></a></p> <p> It's been a while since I had a look at Redhat Linux (now superceeded by Fedora Core), but I thought I'd make a fresh minimal install on a virtual machine, running on my PowerBook Laptop. </p> <p> Why do I like Redhat? </p> <ul> <li> Well it has a sophisticated package installation system, using RPM files, which has since been copied by other flavours of linux. </li> <li> The installation was one of the first to be very simple out of the box, easy enough for mere mortals to use, and again, this is something that has been copied by subsequent linuxes. </li> <li> You could actually buy it in a shop, and it came with a limited free technical support. Ditto my other comments. </li> </ul> <p> <small> <a href="http://enigmaticeye.blog.co.uk/2006/11/13/installing_redhat_linux~1323950/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>