I have just finalized a custom VNC MSI File and a ADM file.

Firstly the ADM is not fully managed – so beware if you add it then remove it.

I have not changed any Tight VNC source.  Just streamlined the installation.

Notes:

The typical installation – installs VNC server as a service.  No viewer is installed – this is perfect for workstations.

So a quiet install would achieve this.

Customization the installation allows you to add the viewer, as well as the ADM template. (%Windows%/Inf) directory. Plus some other ancillary vnc stuff.  Check the Adm for a description of the settings

FINALLY – THIS INSTALLER SETS THE DEFAULT PASSWORD TO BE BLANK (not empty) and sets the Autherization required to disabled…meaning no password is required to connect to the workstations it is installed on! The Authhosts settings restricts connection to the localsubnet only. As does the installed firewall entry for the server.  THESE SETTING MAY NOT SUITE YOUR ENVIRONMENT – USE ORCA TO TRANSFORM THE INSTALLATION IF NEEDED.

Check the Tight VNC site for an explanation of settings.

This file was created with WIX.

VNC Network Installation File (updated 18/4/09)

If you find this useful please let me know – I am debating whether to learn enough C to reverse engineer Tight VNC to allow it to be fully managed under Group Policy.

Corporate Veterinary Medicine has been an issue that has been growing for veterinarians world wide.   America was probably the first country to have to face this issue and it has never really gone away.  Australia is now facing the first of what will probably be a few corporate buys.   As always there are two sides to every coin and I hope to examine the issues facing both the veterinary client and the veterinarian.

Issues facing Veterinarians…..

I am 55, I have been the sole owner of a two man practice for the last 15-20 years.  The practice has a nice annual turnover and I do okay.  BUT.  I am the sole provider for my family,  I have put 2 kids through school and I live in a nice suburb in an average to good house, which I don’t own yet but I am pretty close.  I have about $300,000 in super which has recently taken a massive beating on the stock market to half in value!

While this is completely fabricated, there is a certain reality to it that will ring true in a number of veterinary owners.   What options do they have?  They can ask the associate if they would like to buy into the partnership, and then plan a sucession.  They can sell the practice outright.

Selling outright has its issues with the transfer of goodwill and the valuation.  The partnership process can be stressful and owners used to answering only to themselves can find the concept of shared decision making affronting.    Plus associates now days leave university with massive debts to repay from their education and find it hard to cover the funds that veterinary practice owners expect to receive.   Enter the Coporation…..they are often flush with cash and have motivation in buying certain practices beyond the turn over of the individual practice.   Who can blame the overworked, stressed out and tired practitioner taking the money and running…..

….The Veterinary Employee….

So I need a job….I have a 70k debt from uni….I want a practice that will support my development and provide good working conditions, I am not particular fond of working after hours.

The sole practitioner looking for an associate is going to have a hard time convincing this person to work for them…they need and expect a associate to put in the same hours and hard work they did…its a rite of passage to owning a practice…..

The corporate beast however can offer excellent working hours…with no after hours or very minimal as they can spread the load across their clinics.

Where would you go…..

Issues for the Client…..

So what do we lose.

We lose the community nature of veterinary practice….the local vet was a member of the community.  He usually was found supporting the community after all they represented his income…

We lose the continuity of care a sole practitioner could provide, the unique rapport  they develop with clients.  Sure the corporate practices are not going anywhere but I would say they normally experience a moderate amount of staff turn over so the vet you saw last year may not be there next year.

We lose market competition.  You can argue what you like but there is no doubt that the trend to large corporate owned supermarkets has lead to less competition and increasing prices in the consumer experience.  It’s not hard to see how that can be applied to any industry.   There is no doubt we will see market pressure applied to smaller practices to force them out….

I could go on….

I am seeing a number of clients leaving the corporates to go back to the local practitioner who runs a solo practice, but in the same breath I see people who in this consumerist society don’t give it a second thought and in the process of yearly and routine checkups it wont really affect them…but when the cookie crunches and there pet is sick and they need to find the compassion financially they are going to be left with a bitter taste.

In the end it will be a community and public decision voted with feet.  Where would you prefer your pet get treated?

I had seen a number of scripts detailing how to send mail from Powershell v2.0, but the limitation that always seemed to appear was that they used SMTP to do so and didnt allow complex mail formation… So I investigated .Net to see if it was possible, low and behold I came accross the following Class….

System.net.mail Namespace

and then more specifically

System.net.mail.mailmessage Class

It was this mail message class I based the following script on

#Collect Events from That are errors and report
$A = Get-date -hour 0 -minute 0 -Second 0
$logfile = $env:Temp,"applog.html" -join ""
$logfile2 = $env:Temp,"syslog.html" -join ""
$SmtpClient = new-object system.net.mail.smtpClient
$SmtpServer = "smtp.domain.com.au"
$SmtpClient.host = $SmtpServer
$log2 = Get-EventLog -LogName System -After $a -EntryType Error
$log = Get-EventLog -LogName Application -After $a -EntryType Error
If (($log.count + $log2.count) -gt 0)
{
$MailMessage = new-object system.net.mail.Mailmessage -Args "system@domain.com.au","user@domain.com.au"
$MailMessage.From = "System Log <ystem@domain.com.au>"
$MailMessage.Subject = "Syslogs for $a"
If ($log.count -gt 0){
$log | convertto-html -Property index, TimeGenerated, InstanceID, Source, Message   -Title "Application Log for $a" > $logfile
$mailmessage.attachments.add($logfile)
}
if ($log2.count -gt 0){
$log2 | convertto-html -Property index, TimeGenerated, InstanceID, Source, Message   -Title "System Log for $a" > $logfile2
$mailmessage.attachments.add($logfile2)
}
$SmtpClient.send($mailmessage)
$mailmessage.finalize
$mailmessage.dispose()
$SmtpClient.finalize
If (Test-Path $logfile){Remove-Item -Force -Path $logfile}
If (Test-Path $logfile2){Remove-Item -Force -Path $logfile2}
}

So thats the entire script…now onto a breakdown

So we start with this

$logfile = $env:Temp,"applog.html" -join ""
$logfile2 = $env:Temp,"syslog.html" -join ""

Here I declare two objects containing two temporary files I intend to fill with information and then attach to an email. $env:temp simply takes the default temp directory path and appends it two the file name with a join. A new cmdlet is planned called new-path which I think will be a better alternative here.

$SmtpClient = new-object system.net.mail.smtpClient
$SmtpServer = "smtp.domain.com.au"
$SmtpClient.host = $SmtpServer

This section declares a new object as a net smtpclient – this object will send my mail a little later.

$log2 = Get-EventLog -LogName System -After $a -EntryType Error
$log = Get-EventLog -LogName Application -After $a -EntryType Error

Here I am getting some info to send my self  – in this case I am asking for any errors in the application and system logs that have occured today. I define a$ previously as

$A = Get-date -hour 0 -minute 0 -Second 0

Basically a time call.  Okay now I need to process my data a little do some checking to ensure I am not processing nothing and then send the mail.

If (($log.count + $log2.count) -gt 0)
{

This just checks that one of the logs actually returned some entries otherwise we are wasting our time and I dont need empty emails!

$MailMessage = new-object system.net.mail.Mailmessage -Args "system@domain.com.au","user@domain.com.au"
$MailMessage.From = "System Log <ystem@domain.com.au>"
$MailMessage.Subject = "Syslogs for $a"

Now this part is the message.   I created a new object based on the Mailmessage class.  You need to specify the from and to address’s as args as the class property of  “to” is readonly and if you tried to declare it like

$mailmessage.to ="user@domain.com"

You would get an error stating the property was readonly.

Now some more error checking to ensure  which log returned values.  Then only attach that result.

If ($log.count -gt 0){
$log | convertto-html -Property index, TimeGenerated, InstanceID, Source, Message   -Title "Application Log for $a" > $logfile
$mailmessage.attachments.add($logfile)
}

Here we see I parse the result to a html file.  It makes for a nice easy read.  Then I call the Add method of the mailmessage.attachment property and add the log file to the message.

The attachments property is actually a collection and you can use a single command to add more that 1 file as long as you delimit each file with a comma.

I repeated the process for log2

$SmtpClient.send($mailmessage)

And then I send the message

Now I need to clean up. This part is really important particularly if the script is executed in a continually running powershell session rather than a 1 off instance.  For two reasons.  The mail message class once you add a file locks it.  Even once the script ends the file will remain locked.  It will only unlock after the powershell instance ends.  Thats too late as you cant remove your temp files and clean up after yourself which is just rude!

So I need to call two methods, firstly I finalize mailmessage, I am not sure if this was actually neccessary but reading the technet docs it seemed the smart way to go.  Then I dispose of the mailmessage object.  This unhooks it and leaves the files that you added open to removal.  I think after going a bit of reading net objects have a habit of doing this and it is probably good policy to always dispose the objects once you are finished if its possble.

So her goes

$mailmessage.finalize
$mailmessage.dispose()
$SmtpClient.finalize
If (Test-Path $logfile){Remove-Item -Force -Path $logfile}
If (Test-Path $logfile2){Remove-Item -Force -Path $logfile2}
}

And we are done.  One last comment

I hate errors, so I test for the existence of each logfile before removing them …just to avoid errors in case I never created them.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 includes several significant features that extend its use, improve its usability, and allow you to control and manage Windows-based environments more easily and comprehensively. Windows PowerShell 2.0 is backward compatible. Cmdlets, providers, snap-ins, scripts, functions, and profiles that were designed for Windows PowerShell 1.0 work in Windows PowerShell 2.0 without changes.

I have had 3 domain names for a while now representing 2 seperate business’s.  My problem has been I didnt have the time to write content for 2 seperate Joomla installations.  It was far easier to have 1 installation and set up some iframes for the 2 business domains.  The problem I discovered was that Google does like iframes and does not index them effectively. (it records the hidden address not that of the iframe, which makes sense)

So I decided to work out a way to have 2 domains (with seperate home pages accessing the 1 installation of Joomla.    Now I am guessing 2 installations of Joomla accessing the 1 database would work as well…but that wasnt what I wanted and has its own problems.

So to start with point the domains at the same host with the same document root.   This is done easily with cpanel.  Use add domain and just enter the doc root.  This sets up the virtual host.

Obviously you need to ensure your dns points at the same IP…I like using zoneedit.  Its free for less than 5 domains and for more well…its not that expensive.  My webhost did not allow DNS editting so because I use a unique mail server I needed a service like ZoneEdit.

Okay so your DNS is setup…and you have it pointing at the same Virtual host.

Now Joomla..you are going to need to edit 2 things

1. .htaccess
2. configuration.php

In .htaccess you need to turn modrewrite on.  Most people using SEO will have already done this.  at the bottom you need to add the following

Rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain2.com$ [OR]
Rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain2.com$
Rewriterule ^$ "index.php?content=eg,blog=76 ...." [R=301,L]

This basically takes anyone coming to you site via the 2nd domain and rewrites the request uri to the homepage of your 2nd site.  Obviously yuo should replace the index.php part with the correct path to your second home page….

So cool now when we access via domain2 we end up at the right page.  BUT all the links on the page will reference domain1 – not great for coherance.

So we need to make the site name dynamic and the site address as well, so the seo works.

So open the configuration.php in your favourite file editor (if your using cpanel use the “File Manager” select the file in the doc root and choose “Code Edit”).

Find the variable

$mosConfig_live_site
change the line to read
$mosConfig_live_site = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];

Find the variable

$mosConfig_sitename
change the line to
IF($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']=='www.domain2.com.au'){$mosConfig_sitename
="Title of Domain 2 Site";}else{$mosConfig_sitename ="Title of Domain
 1 Site";};

You can use a similar line to the above to vary any variable based on host.

Now change the file permissions of configuration.php to 444.  You can no longer use the Global config in the Joomla admin as it will change these settings back.

Check it all out you should be good to go.

Let me know if it works for you.

At the outset I am going to state that using the standard windows (xp) removable drive drivers, you cannot partition a USB drive.  It just is not supported, you can reformat the drive to NTFS (for security) with a bit of tweaking, but you cant create multiple partitions.

So I found this simple trick to make windows see a USB as a fixed drive and allow multiple volumes and partition resizing.    You will need admin privileges for the system.

The first step in this process is to plug in the USB drive making sure it contains no critical files and just to be sure format it as Fat32 using the standard windows methodology.

Now determining the USB drives HID.  or Hardware ID, you are going to need this to tweak the install file for the new drivers.  To do this there are a number of methods. The easiest I have found is to open “Device Manager” .  Click the view menu and select “View by connection”. Now open the drop down lists below (the names may vary depending on youy system) until you find the PCI to USB Controllers (there may be more than one) open each in turn and until you see the name of the USB drive you have connected listed.  Below that should be “Generic Volume” Right click and select properties. Then select the details tab and in the “Property” drop down list select “Device Instance ID” – copy the displayed value to a notepad.

Alternatively if this does not work look in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR

find your Drive and copy the key using everything after enum eg:

USBSTOR\DiskBUFFALO_USB_Flash_Disk__2.00

Cool you now have the device id.  Now you need to use it to edit the install (inf) file for the new driver.

I used the following driver “Hitachi Microdrive” Download it and save it to your desktop and extract the files to desktop.

One of the extracted files is called CFADISK.inf

Open it with your favorite text-editor I prefer Notepad++ found here.

Now find the section entitled [cfadisk_device]

Within that section you will find lines of text like this:

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDE\DiskIBM-DSCM-11000__________________________SC2IC801

Basically what you need to do is comment out all (in this section) of them except one, the first one, place a “;” at the start of each line you wish to comment out.  In the first line replace anything after the “%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install, “ with your Device Instance ID.  Now save the file.

Now you need to update the driver for your usb drive with your modified driver.  Go back to your Device manager and select the Generic Volume you found before (make sure its the right one) and chose “Update driver” from the driver tab.

On the first screen select “Not at this Time”

Second screen Select “Install from a Specific Location(advanced)

Third Select Dont search I will Choose the driver

Finally select “Have Disk”

Then Browse and chose the folder you saved the driver and install file you just updated in.

If you changed the ID correctly it should show you the a driver.

I have this working under XP but not under Windows 2003 I have yet to find a driver that 2003 will allow.

Keep in mind you need to install the driver on every system you wish to access anything above the first partition.  SO what I did is this

Created the first and largest partition as FAT32 I then created a Secure NTFS partition after this… This partition is not accessible unless I install the driver which I keep in the primary partition.  (copy it to desktop before you try and install it)

Good luck

Extra details here

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2213125.php

So…I started in website building and marketing about 3 years ago.  I wanted a clean site for my business that gave my customers information that was relevant to them and thier pets.

Initially I wrote all the html myself having grand ideas about what I could make of the site…the result?

Failure!.  Raw HTML design is slow,frustrating and incredibly time consuming DONT DO IT!

My first piece of advice use a GUI interface if you are going to build in HTML.  Some software I trialled but due to the fact I was just starting off I could not afford to use or purchase at the time.

My favourite had to be Dreamweaver from Macromedia .. now owned by Adobe. You can still download a trial of the latest edition from the Adobe website.  Purchasing it can be expensive 399.00 US$ standalone or US$1699.00 in the suite, this product is top end, but I find adobe’s support is good.  If you have loose cash, go get it!

So….once my trial expired I had accomplished 2 things – I had a basic website and now no way of updating it!  I went looking for an open source alternative.  Let me make things clear, I love the open source concept.  I use a large number of open source software solutions published under the GNU licensing standards.

Nothing really worked for me as comprehensively as Dreamweaver had….but I did manage to find some handy programs to help out.  The first was Notepad++.  If you arent using this program already your crazy.  It is an upgrade of the microsoft supplied Notepad, I should say revolution.  Firstly you can download it here from sourceforge.  The makers describe it as

Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.

Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendlyness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.

Get it and install it – you wont regret it…..for editing text files it is so much better than Microsofts Notepad.  The GUI is friendly and it is regularly updated.

The problem is that Notepad++ can’t intuitively display your HTML as you work, and it was also at this point that I realized designing a new page for each content item I wished to add was slow and I was never going to get a big site.   I needed something new I just didnt know what it was.

Enter Joomla…

Content Managment Systems are one of the best inventions the website maintainers could have asked for.  They ease content management to the point where the end user can maintain and update a site easily.  Secondly they come with Templates… Templates mean you can make your site look however you like and they are completely customizable.  Thirdly many of them are free….completely free…you dont need to register, provide credit card details or any of that rubbish.  There are lots of them too. Heres a list of the ones I have come accross.

• Joomla – download it here
• Mambo

These are the two I ended up focusing on however this link provides a list of all of them. Be aware some of these are not free…the ones above definitely are, the link that follows should show the free and the not so free.  But before we go further….if money is burning a hole in your pocket my advice? Start with a open source cms and then pay for support from a reputable support provider (most of the Open Source CMS sites clearly show recommended profressional support providers) and donate to the development.  The money is better spent this way.

OpenSourceCMS – My advice would be to sort them but “Votes Cast – Most to least” to get an idea of the most active projects.  Activity or development of the CMS you choose is the most important thing.  You want new features – if the project is dead you want to have the source and be a great programmer or have people working on the source…I prefer the later…I am lazy.

So I had my CMS system – I had the content…but I didnt have artistic talent.  I felt that it wasnt that important I was delivering good content so as long as the site was clear and concise I could move forward.  To that end I modified some existing templates to colours more suitable for my business and away I went.

Next time  I will discuss SEO – what it “was” , is and will never be….

Hi all, I am a website / network admin for a small business, which I part own.  What I hope to cover here is all the stuff I wish I could say officially but cant.  I hope to cover network tips and tricks that I have learned or am learning.  So what sort of stuff am I familiar with

Firstly and formostly…..I am a vet.. so one of my main interests is Veterinary Medicine and Surgery.

My main focus here is small animal (read dogs and cats) internal medicine and surgery.  I am a member of the College in my country which indicates I have sat extensive exams in this field.

Secondly I have an avid interest in IT, gadgets and all thing wacky.

My IT interests expands into network security and penetration testing.  I use windows as my main OS, but regularly setup Linux boxes for personal use.

Software wise – I use the reliable but ancient Lotus Approach as a database but I am constantly waiting for the day a windows os wont support it any longer and I need to redesign the database.

I have some experience with html, php, javascript, powershell, dos (cmdline programming), as well as trying to learn java, visual basic.

I love the concecpt of VoIP and have tried out a number of Open Source PBX systems that are based around the system.

Well thats enough for now.  I’ll get more specific tomorrow.

Cheers!