By Steve Radich on 2/28/2010 1:44 PM

So today I log into my computer and see the following message come in via Skype:

[9:59:17 AM] Update Registry: WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
URGENT SYSTEM SCAN NOTIFICATION ! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY !!

Is this a scam? Does Microsoft post via Skype to the world? No, they don't..

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By Steve Radich on 2/20/2010 2:56 PM

If you can't print a file attachment in your gmail account then it's likely google not actually sending the attachment to your computer.  The interface can print, it's just a bit confusing - especially if you have scrolled down the page..

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By Steve Radich on 1/27/2010 4:42 PM

After you install PHP on IIS you may want to install phpMyAdmin somewhere.. This is a pretty simple process that's well documented..

However the most common error is 500 errors, which in reality tell you nothing. Here are some handy tips for a troubleshooting step I ran into today:

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By Steve Radich on 1/21/2010 7:49 AM

Sometimes you may need to move your iSCSI targets to a different storage pool. The process is actually quite painless..

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By Steve Radich on 1/12/2010 3:59 AM

This is what you REALLY don't want to see when replacing a failed drive in a RAIDZ (Raid5 like) array:

  pool: tank1
 state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices has experienced an error resulting in data
        corruption.  Applications may be affected.
action: Restore the file in question if possible.  Otherwise restore the
        entire pool from backup.
   see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-8A
 scrub: resilver in progress for 28h8m, 100.00% done, 0h0m to go
config: (note: 100% done doesn't mean done, I don't know who wrote the % done formula but it's useless).

        NAME             STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank1            DEGRADED     0     0 6.32K
          raidz1-0       DEGRADED     0     0 12.8K
            c7t8d0       DEGRADED     0     0     0  too many errors
            c7t4d0       DEGRADED     0     0     0  too many errors
            c7t10d0      FAULTED     27   563     0  too many errors
            c7t11d0      DEGRADED     0     0     0  too many errors
            c7t12d0      DEGRADED     0     0     0  too many errors
            replacing-5  DEGRADED     0     0     0
              c7t13d0    FAULTED      4 9.60K     0  too many errors
              c7t3d0     ONLINE       0     0     0  384G resilvered

errors: Permanent errors have been detected in the following files:

        /tank1/sqlbackups/...masked..._200911240001.BAK

So did we loose data? Read more..

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By Steve Radich on 1/8/2010 3:42 PM

I was working on a something in VirtualBox mounting the disk via the built in iSCSI Initiator with the backing store on our COMSTAR / Open Storage / iSCSI Target on OpenSolaris and couldn't get above about 5k/second for disk writes.  Trying to install windows was going to take multiple days at this pace..

Various errors came up in trying to check the disk cache settings, nothing worked. Finally a breakthrough..

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By Steve Radich on 1/1/2010 1:26 AM

So you thought we were done with programmers thinking a century changing would never happen, eh?  Well one of the SpamAssassin rules thinks 2010 is "grossly in the future".  How do you fix this?

 

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By Steve Radich on 12/30/2009 4:49 PM

This is generally a fairly simple problem, the password in the database is using the older short hash method instead of the newer method.  To fix you just...

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By Steve Radich on 12/22/2009 1:30 PM

If you are like most businesses, or even homes, a wireless bridge is a handy device - You may have a wireless network, but then you either need to tie in a second wire network to it, or perhaps just use the bridge for a single device (game systems used to be a common need). But what do you buy?

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By Steve Radich on 12/22/2009 1:21 PM

So you get frustrated with your computer, server, network, whatever? Well, let's try this at a data center...

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