However, if an off-site server needs to be access via Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client immediately, yet the Remote Desktop is not enabled on the server, then it will be a headache. Luckily it’s possible to remotely enable the Remote Desktop service on a remote PC or server by remotely editing its registry.

To remotely enable Remote Desktop on another computer, follow these steps:

1. Login to the workstation with administrator credentials.
2. Run Registry Editor (regedit).
3. Click on File menu.
4. Select the Connect Network Registry in the pull down menu.
5. A “Select Computer” dialog search box is opened. Type the host name of the remote computer in the text box, or browse Active Directory to locate the remote server, or click on “Advanced” button to search for the remote computer.
6. Click OK after the remote computer is selected. A node for the remote computer network registry will be displayed in the Registry Editor with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM) and HKEY_USERS (HKU) hives.
7. Navigate to the following registry key for the remote computer:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
8. In the right pane, locate a REG_DWORD value named fDenyTSConnection. Double-click on fDenyTSConnection and change the value data from 1 (Remote Desktop disabled) to 0 (Remote Desktop enabled).

That’s it.

Taken from here

Ozzik.

The solution consists of 2 steps:
1. Open regedit and go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA, then add a new DWORD named DisableLoopBackCheck with value 1.
2. In Win2003 you already have that and in WinXP you have to install it additionally - support tools. Go to start-programs-support tools-cmd (not the regular cmd), alternatively you can just add the path to the system environment.
The tool you need is called httpcfg.exe and this is how you use it in this scenario:

httpcfg query iplisten

this gives you the current IPs IIS is listening to.

httpcfg set iplisten -i xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

this adds the IP (instead of the x’s of course)
3. The secret step - reboot the server. A lot of people had problems before they realized they MUST reboot first.

Good luck!

Ozzik.

Most of the info I took from this post.
Before I start, I wanna mention that I’m using the latest FreeNAS version, which is 0.7, based on FreeBSD 7. This is important, because I don’t know whether lame will work in other versions.

Enable SSH access to your FreeNAS: Web-interface->Services->SSH - enable, allow root.
OK, first you have to install some packages:

$ pkg_add -v -r xtrans
$ pkg_add -v -r xproto
$ pkg_add -v -r xextproto
$ pkg_add -v -r javavmwrapper
$ pkg_add -v -r mac
$ pkg_add -v -r lame
$ pkg_add -v -r flac

I mostly have mp3, flac and ape in my collection, so YMMV if you have other formats - look it up.
Regarding lame, I’m not sure if I installed it this way, because the installation did not go too smooth at first, so I might have used this:

pkg_add -r -v http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/FreeBSD/packages-7/Latest/lame.tbz

Then we install java from here. You should choose the jre package according to your CPU architecture and FreeBSD version. Naturally I chose this one, having i386.

Next we install the Java package:

$ pkg_add -v diablo-jre-freebsd7.i386.1.6.0.07.02.tbz

watch the version - don’t just copy/paste.

Now we install the Subsonic server itself. Download it from here.

mkdir /var/subsonic
mkdir /var/subsonic/standalone
tar xvzf subsonic-3.8-standalone.tar.gz

* Optionally configure the startup script /var/subsonic/standalone/subsonic.sh
In the FreeNAS web interface, go to System > Advanced > Command scripts and add the following script (type: “PostInit”):

/var/subsonic/standalone/subsonic.sh

Now it’s time for some tweaks. You have to copy some codec files in order for this to work:

cp /usr/local/bin/lame /var/subsonic/standalone/transcode/
cp /usr/local/bin/flac /var/subsonic/standalone/transcode/
cp /usr/local/bin/mac /var/subsonic/standalone/transcode/

Naturally, if you installed some other codecs - do the same for them.

Reboot the FreeNAS and in your browser go to:
http://your-FreeNAS’s-IP:8080

Now, for some tweaks from the web-interface.
Go to “Settings”. In “Users” change your password.
In “General” add all of your formats you’ll be playing.
In “Transcoding” you’ll see the execution commands for all kinds of formats. Add yours if you have to. Pay attention, on the right of the line there’s a checkbox for each format that you have to enable. Save and go to “Players”. Choose the right player (web player in my case) and enable the formats for it.

That’s about it for the basic use. You can set a lot of other options later.
The way it works is that it streams the mp3 without any problems to your player, but when you’re playing something other than mp3, it converts it on the fly to mp3 (you can choose the bitrate) and then streams. You won’t feel it while playing, but it pretty much kills the CPU when you’re playing ape, flac and probably some other formats. Of course I have a 1GHz CPU, so if you have the p4 or higher it could be not so bad.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to add your shares:) This is actually great, since my collection is a total mess when it comes to ID3 tags, so playing from shares was exactly what I needed.

Enjoy!

Ozzik.

So as you ALL know - Ubuntu 9.10 is out. Also, as you ALL know - Win7 is out. Actually, so is Snow Leopard, but I’m not an apple fanboy, so I don’t care much about that.

If you google any of these 2 words (win7 and ubuntu), you’ll find 7 billion posts telling you about all the new features, bug fixes, comparisons between the previous versions and of course, the most popular topic is the comparison between these two OS’s. And the most obnoxious eternal question is “Will this Ubuntu version be the windows killer?”

And since I’m being asked about this topic once every few days myself, I decided to post my personal opinion on this. Don’t expect it to be too objective, cuz I’m obviously a Linux fan. But don’t expect me to defend it no matter what, too.

First of all, if you’ve read my previous posts, you’d know that I’m using Linux Mint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04. Plus, I run win7 in VirtualBox. I should also tell you that I only tried Ubuntu 9.10 for 15 minutes running in VMWare server on WinXP at work, so I don’t have much to say about this particular version. I’m waiting for Mint 8, since I like its polishing better than original Ubuntu’s.

So I’ll rather express my opinion regarding the general Linux vs. Windows issue than Ubuntu 9.10 vs. Win7.

As far as I see it, the issue can be divided by few categories:
-Professionals
-Gamers
-Office users
-Home users

Let’s analyze these. Gamers.
I really know nothing about them. I’m not a gamer and I think the only game I ever played (since Mario, before I even had a PC) is minesweeper:) But I do know that Linux is not for gamers. Although I’ve heard that some games do run on Linux, some under Wine, but still - every gamer will tell you - Linux for gamers is a joke. Is this Linux’s fault? No, of course not. The problem is that the “gaming” companies don’t create any games for Linux. Can you blame them? Windows has more than 90% of the market. It’s just business, nothing personal.

Professionals. It doesn’t matter whether you work with photoshop, premier, after effects, visual studio, or any other specific software - you have no other option, but to work with windows. I know you can run photoshop under Wine, but there are a lot of others that you can’t. And while there are a lot of alternatives, and some even better than windows-based programs, it would be pretty difficult for a graphic designer for example to just drop everything he’s used to and start learning from the start. Linux’s fault? Once again - no. It’s pretty much the same story as with the gamers.

Office users. It seems like here we have some potential. Or do we?
What do they need? Office and browser. Oh, and IM client.
Now, don’t rush jumping up and down - it ain’t that easy. Since I myself work as an IT manager in a medium sized company, I can tell you - not so fast. I thought about it a lot, but I don’t really see how I can ever transfer them to my beloved OS.

First of all, let’s face it: Open Office is not MS Office. Period. I actually did install it on about 50 PC’s instead of the MS office. The result? For the first 2 weeks people were crying about how it’s not the same and they have to get used to it. I predicted that and ignored all the whining. And then it came - it’s not very compatible with MS office. I mean, yeah, you can open MS docs in it and save in their format, but a lot of times the formatting got all screwed up and you can’t have that in the office where you work with other companies.

Thunderbird was no Outlook either, especially with meeting invitations sent to Outlook users. So while most of them did stay with OpenOfiice, everyone that worked more or less serious with the suite - was rolled back to MS.

And then there’s the browser. I know all about the web standards and how MS has its own standards and all that. But here’s the deal. There are a lot of websites written especially for IE. And it doesn’t even matter for what reasons it was done and why are they still in that format. It’s a fact. It’s also a fact that most of these websites are pretty important. Like the banks, or the government sites or just some popular web portals people are used too. Firefox or any other browser can’t handle them. Only IE can. There’s not even an IE7 for Linux. You can’t ignore that.

Luckily, we see some changes being done in that area, since Firefox popularity is growing pretty fast and with Safari, Opera and now Chrome we’ll definitely see some changes in the near future.
So, to sum up with the office users - still no. Who’s fault? Don’t want to point fingers, but it seems to me that with a lot of hard work on OpenOffice and IE integration - we could definitely make a step forward in this area. And I do believe it’s an important one.

The last one - users at home.
This one’s actually getting closer by the “version”. I believe we’re only a few steps back from winning here. Those steps are:
Flash - hopefully gnash will answer that some time in the near future.
Nvidia and ATI drivers - hopes on the nouveau and ATI open source driver.
IE and OpenOffice, just like in the previous category.
A better skype client would be nice, but that’s up to them.
Themes and styling - it’s true that you can do whatever you please with the distro later, but the default look is often the one that gives the wrong impression. Say what you will, but Ubuntu’s default theme/style is still something most of us are changing first thing after installation.

Other than that - we’re pretty much there I think.
Obviously I could go on and on about how Linux is million times better than its opponent, but you can read all about it in every other blog on the web.
Basically, I believe we should learn from MS about the way they climbed to the top: be as friendly as you can to the regular user, give him whatever he wants. That same user will come to the office and use the same stuff he uses at home.

So I think that when the desktop problems described above will be solved, and the office solutions will be ready - the professionals and the gamers are going to be a piece of cake, since they (the industry) will come to us themselves.
Oh, and the OEMs will follow.

Prove me wrong. I dare you.

Ozzik.

P.S. I allow myself to say “we” when it comes to open source, although I’m not a developer. But when it comes to contribution, I think that even trying to use as much open source software as you can and try to persuade others to use it as well, should also be considered contribution.

There are two things you’ll be struck by: optical drive and SCSI controller. The first one was not that much of a problem for me, but it sure can be for you. You see, the Redmond guys decided that in 2008 (and later) there’s no chance you have a CD-ROM drive in you server. Because all new servers come with DVD now. Which is true. But what about the older ones? As far as M$ is concerned: it’s your problem - deal with it. The only format win2008 comes in is DVD.

There are several ways to deal with that. Some choose to run BartPE to boot it up, some invent more sophisticated ways. You can google those methods. I actually dealt with it in an easier way (for me). I opened up the server, disconnected the IDE cable that led to CD-ROM and connected a simple PC DVD-ROM to the input. Next, I took an old PC, opened it up and hooked the power cable from there to the DVD-ROM. Powered up both and voila. Btw, you can’t boot the x335 from USB, if that thought ever crossed your mind.

So, as I said, that was an easier problem. The other one showed up later, and unfortunately was never solved. When you install the OS, it all goes pretty smooth, although takes a relatively long time. But when it completes and reboots you get stuck on a driver loading step. It never finishes it and just hangs. You can see it clearly when you try to boot it in the safe mode - you get the same result but at least you see that it’s stuck on “Loading crcdisk.sys”. Now that’s a SCSI controller driver problem.

There isn’t too much info about it on the net, but there is this topic, which everyone is referring to. To sum it up, the guy advises to update the BIOS and MPT(controller) BIOS with an IBM express CD or something. And then to download the latest driver from the IBM site. The links are in the article. Basically, your BIOS should be version 1.15 and your MPT version should be 5.04.07. Mine already was so it wasn’t relevant.

Here’s the awkward part. After saving the downloaded driver on the USB stick (yes, finally we have this option with windows), I relaunched the installation and when I got to the part where windows sees your hard drive, I added the driver. Surprise surprise! Windows said that I have no space left on the device and trying to delete or format the existing partition just gives errors.

Of course, normally I would try other hard drives, or maybe even another controller, but judging by the comments to that same post - there was no point. Most of the guys have hit the same problem.
Anyway, I tried all of the suggestions mentioned there: deleting and recreating the RAID, letting it synchronize first and then starting the installation, breaking the RAID and trying to install it on a single disk - nothing. All failed. Finally, I decided that wasting 2 days on this piece of shit was way WAY too much, and since we had it to be win2008, I took another server: x345.

Now, x345 is exactly the same server as x335, except that it is 2U and has additional SCSI (ServeRAID-4Lx) controller and capable of up to 6 hard drives. Oh, and it has another PSU. So I put it the 2 hard drives, configured the RAID1 via ServerGuide7.4 CD from IBM and installed win2008.

Now tell me, do you really think it was over? Come on.
Of course it hanged on bootup. Was there any other way?
The thing is that when I said “additional SCSI controller” - I meant it. So while all my drives were connected to and configured on the PCI adapter, the previous LSI was still active in the system and was still preventing this crap from booting up. So I had to enter the BIOS settings and disable the Planar SCSI.

After that - I couldn’t believe it myself - it installed fine and even booted up OK.
The downside to this trick is that if you have your server loose power for 3 times in a row or something, it will be reset to the default BIOS settings and it will be stuck in the BIOS screen waiting for your acknowledgment. But if you won’t remember to disable it again - it won’t work.

Anyway, some guys in that thread said they managed to install it. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to join their small community.

Update: After all the hassle, I decided to keep it simpler and just put the RAID card in x335, disabled the LSI in BIOS, transferred the drives and that was it. (Luckily I had a spare controller, so I didn’t have to actually take it out of the x345).
Ozzik.

From the comments on mininova I realized I wasn’t the only one. The guys suggested to upgrade Azureus, so I did. Restarted - nothing, it just hangs the minute you open this specific torrent.

So I went to eztv.it, which is the original releaser of the torrent and saw a topic regarding the issue. The topic linked to the azureus’ FAQ, which said that they do know about the recent problem and they did release a fix, so all you have to do is upgrade. But I did that already!

So the other suggestion they had is to turn off this option:
Tools–>Options–>Connection: Uncheck the “Prompt for selection when a download with an anonymous tracker is added”. Well, that did the trick!
Hope it helps someone.

Ozzik.

So I decided to write about my home setup.

I have a 1 bedroom apartment, with 1 balcony from the living room and 1 from the kitchen. And guess what? Each and every room/balcony has a PC in it:) Go ahead, laugh. But it’s not because I’m crazy - it’s just my comfort. Well, mostly:)

So I have a pfSense firewall installed on an old Dell Latitude x300. The laptop sits in a docking station on a shelf of my desk. It’s not as power consuming as a regular PC, and it’s totally silent. I added a PCMCI network card (Edimax, $20) to it and replaced the Wi Fi card with the one that can be an access point (Intel, can’t remember the model) and voila! It replaces the router most users have at home, but can you really compare the power of this laptop and the quality and functionality of this software with the $50 router?

Anyway, the pfSense is connected to a switch. From there it goes to my primary PC, which I already had mentioned. It’s an AMD quad core Phenom 9850 black edition, on Asus M3A78 Pro, 4GB of RAM, Asus EN9400GT (Nvidia) graphics card.

I’m proud to say that recently I finally purchased the Samsung SyncMaster T240 24″ Monitor. Plus I had my previous 19″ Samsung SyncMaster 930B, so they’re now connected in TwinView configuration, and I gotta tell you - I’m pretty happy with it.

Sound-wise, I have the old Creative Live! card, which works OK for me, so I never thought of replacing it, and my speakers are also pretty old: Creative 4.1 that are easily 7 years old. But don’t worry - this is mostly for just watching some crap on youtube, or maybe checking whether the new downloaded media file has sound.

For music listening I have my old and faithful Luxman R-1040 receiver with 2 huge Magnum speakers connected to the card and to my Denon DN-600F CD player (I still have about a thousand CDs at home. Why, don’t you?). Not to shock you, but I also have a Thorens TD-150, made in Germany, connected to the same receiver. Oh, that’s a turntable. And it’s from 1965. And yes, I do use from time to time, because yes - it’s that special warm sound.

Up until recently I had a JVC Double Cassette Deck with separate equalizer, but since I now have most of my cassettes in digital formats, I decided to disconnect it.

Anyway, the switch I previously mentioned is connected to another small switch, which splits the network to 2 more places: the HTPC in my living room and the lab on the big balcony.
The HTPC setup was already described here, so I’m not gonna repeat myself, and the lab is pretty simple. It’s a monitor/KB/Mouse with KVM for 2 PCs and some other stuff, like the alternative Access Point, network printer, another switch and a lot of crap needed for testing and fixing whatever arrives.

And the last cable goes to the small balcony in the kitchen. That’s where my fileserver is. With FreeNAS, of course. It has 4 hard drives and a few fans, so it’s kinda noisy and has to be somewhere I’m usually not - in the kitchen:) Well, I’m not really a cook. I mostly come there to make a cup of coffee or just hit something up in the microwave.

So, what do we learn from all this? That I’m not only a computer-psycho, but I’m also an audio freak, although not a crazy audiophile - you gotta be rich for that kinda hobby.
And since this post will probably not be read by anyone, as nobody cares about the shit I have at home, I just wasted the last hour of this weekend.

Oh well,

yours,
Ozzik.

But now I decided to give it another shot. Plus they finally added the bridged network. And since I had to do the fresh install anyway, I decided to give the M$ 7 a shot. Well, I can sum up with this: I’m really happy with the speed - it simply flies. The so called OS from Redmond still sucks. It’s the same crappy thing that gave them the “great” reviews last year, but a bit faster. I’m using the final release from July or something.

So before you run buying this piece of shit with a brand new PC or a laptop - think twice. It’s the same, just a bit faster than the previous one. Why am I not returning to XP? Because clearly they decided to move in this direction (look at win 2008 server - it’s pure vista) and I gotta keep up.

Ozzik.

pfSense 1.2.3 is supposed to come out sometimes in October I think, but then again the guys are not in hurry with release cycles, they believe it should be released when it’s ready.
pfSense: The Definitive Guide - a book by Chris Buechler and Jim Pingle is about to hit the stores any day now.

Ubuntu 9.10 will be released October 29th. The beta testers say it will boot in 10 seconds.
Amarok 2.2 is already out and is believed to be pretty good - they’re catching up with all the functionality from 1.4.

I’m really looking forward for the 0.7 release of FreeNAS. Meanwhile there’s only an RC1. So hopefully it’ll happen real soon.
Untangle 7 is out, and while I never really used the distro myself, it’s supposed to be really good - at least the functionality list is pretty hot. Although I wouldn’t use it as a firewall, I would put it behind pfSense for every other task.
Warning: it’s not completely free - they’re licensing the multiwan and some other add-ons.

Some other great news arrived last month from Clear Foundation. It appears, they bought the ClarkConnect distro and in a couple of days will be offering it for free - even the former commercial add-ons - and they’re open-sourcing the whole thing. I actually used this distribution at home for about a year (until I found pfSense and FreeNAS) and was pretty happy with it. But when I installed it at work as a secondary gateway for the office, I faced some problems with the connection to my ISP. We bought the 1 year license of the office version or something. So I turned to the level 1 support and after some mailings the guy told me to look for some other distro as they can’t help me. I was pretty upset about that kind of treatment and like I said I did find another distro, which I’m recommending to everyone ever since - pfSense and FreeNAS. But now that it’s gonna be open source, including the multi-wan, it could be the time to test it again - for some other purposes.

I guess that’s about it.
See ya,

Ozzik.