Category Archives: software

Vista upgrade done

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Well, it’s not really an upgrade, it’s more like a switch as the upgrade process didn’t work (see here). So, I did a complete backup of my system partition and fire up the install. Surprisingly enough, it worked like a charm and the system was up and running in less than two hours. The only bad thing with this “clean install” is that I had to reinstall all the programs. Oh well…now that it’s done, it’s done and it feels good to have this whole thing up and running – probably a better idea than to hop around hoping for the upgrade to work and spending hour after hour with it.

The only thing that’s bothering me: Why does a clean install work like a charm when the upgrade process doesn’t? I mean, I didn’t install anything different or anything, no hardware or software change (as I installed exactly the same stuff that was on it before with Windows XP Pro)…weird…

So…my initial review of Windows Vista Business:

  1. Look and feel: sweet…although it’s a matter of taste…do you really need all the transparency and stuff? The answer is quite simple: not really. But if you’ve got the resources (e.g. CPU, ram, video card) anyway, why not…
  2. Performance: Everything is running smoothly, although Vista gave my video card (nvidia onboard model) only a 2.5 (which is rather low end on the performance scale). Everything else is way up there though (X2 3800+, 2GB ram, SATA HDD, …), especially since I added another gig of ram today gotta love that the price of DDR2 ram dropped by a third since december (back then around 90 Euro/GB, now 60 Euro/GB).
  3. Sidebar: I love it and the widgets errm gadgets are sweet…I especially like the multi-meter and the weather gadget so far…
  4. Compatibility: Well, after installing program after program I gotta say that most of the stuff I usually have on my pc is running fine. The only downside so far was that I couldn’t install divx as it doesn’t support Vista (yet), that’s a bummer.
  5. Sure? Sure? Sure? Click! Click! Click! This is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever seen. Why oh why do you ask me again and again if I want to do x? Hello, I’m an admin here, I told you to do so…so get off my back – I guess I need to search around a little to figure out if there’s a way to circumvent and/or disable this whole question/answer thing…
  6. Startup time: A little slower than Windows XP Pro, but not all that much (I would say around 10-20% slower).

Screenshot

Windows Vista upgrade nightmare

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So…as you already know I received my (upgrade) copy of Windows Vista (Business) this week…today, I tried to do the upgrade…so…backup all important files and do the upgrade boogy…

1.5h later…almost done….BSOD….reboot…options: Restore XP…errm?! Okay….

1h later…rollback done…check dump file…ntfs stop message…hmm…

0.5h later…search and search and search….nothing to be found about the particular stop code in relation to Win XP or Vista or an upgrade to Vista…nice, not!

1h later…do the whole checkdisk shebang and all…uninstall some software and stuff…try again….

1.5h later…upgrade almost done….BSOD…reboot… options: Restore XP…errm?! Okay….

1h later…rollback done…check dump file…ntfs stop message…hmm…

Curse, curse, explicit, curse, curse…

Who the hell designed that upgrade process? If there’s an error during the upgrade, why the hell is the only option a rollback? Why can’t I select, please try again using setting x, y or z? No, I need to do the whole rollback and I’m back at square one…what a joke.

So…all that’s left to try is:

1. Do an image of the current install…

2. Do a clean install of Vista…

3. Pray and hope…

4.* Install the whole software shebang again, because the stupid upgrade didn’t work…

5.* Enjoy Vista…

* – if 3. helps and the setup works this time…so sick…

Vista shipped

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Finally some good news from the “upgrade nightmare” front. Finally, finally, they shipped my upgrade copy of Vista Business on tuesday (so basically just on the day I ranted about them not shipping it, lol, did they read my blog?! ;))…now it should be only a matter of a few days until I hold it in my hands, the excitement :)

Letting go…

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I’m usually a “collector” type of guy, but it’s time to let go. Last week I decided that I would let go of my proxy network (browsetastic.com) and put it up for sale at the MarketPlace of the great SitePoint Forums, where I’m an advisor (moderator).

Although the number of inquiries was huge, the number of bids was little…at least in the beginning. Then, it happened pretty quickly. After I posted a BIN, it was sold within 24hours…which leads me to believe that the BIN (12x net monthly revenue) was a little low, but hey, I’m not the type of guy who’s whining afterwards. I’m happy that I sold it at the price I did and all that’s left is to wait for the money to roll in and then getting everything setup to make the transfer smooth and easy…

…and on the upside, I’ve still got more than 40 sites to my name, so I’m not really retiring from the website business…and with the cash raised in the sale, I’ll get myself a new laptop (among other things) which will be put to good use in my upcoming diploma thesis… ;)

Waiting for Vista

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Man, this really sucks. Now, I’m usually not the one to jump on the train right away anyway, so it’s basically not the biggest deal, but slowly I’m getting annoyed. Why? Because I ordered a WinXP license with an upgrade coupon back in december when I built my new pc. So far so good. I then sent the upgrade coupon to Modus Link (the company handling the upgrades). That was in the first week of January. Since then I’m waiting and waiting and waiting…

Today, I checked the status again and the upgrade claim has finally been approved. Well, that’s the first step, but the thing still isn’t shipped yet. Are you kidding me? Three months and you’re unable to send me a dvd with a license sticker? Hello?! Absolutely ridiculous! The only upside: by the time I receive my copy I can be absolutely sure that there are drivers for everything in my pc and on a funny note: maybe SP1 will be already out by then ;)

End of the year, time for some upgrades

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Well, it’s been a while since I last upgraded my pc…almost 3 years…

So, I decided it’s time for a new one…some funky dual core stuff or something and yup, there are lots of possible configurations.

First decision: Intel or AMD?

I know that Intel’s Core 2 Duos are powerful, fast and sexy…but they’re a little more expensive too…so I thought I’d go with AMD, yet again…(my current system is an AMD Athlon XP, the one before that was an AMD, …)…

Second decision: Fastest/expensive, medium/alrighty, lower end/cheap

I decided to go with middle ground…an AMD x2 3800 it is, the Energy Efficient version of it – that’s perfect for a smaller case and it’ll help me save some energy costs, after all my pc is running most of the time. Combined with a funky mATX board, 1GB of ram (for now), 500GB Samsung SATAII (16MB Cache), DVD-burner, DVD-Rom and a nice mATX case by aplus…

aplus blockbuster

The case arrived today and I’m hoping that the rest will arrive tomorrow (it was sent off by the shop today)…it’s going to be fun to build a pc, haven’t done that in a while…

Ooooh and I almost forgot, I ordered a new copy of Windows XP Pro…117€ including an Express upgrade coupon to Vista business….sounds like a good deal :)

I’ll post some pics once I’m done building…

Postchristmas update

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So much to report, so little time. It’s been a while since my last decent post, but don’t worry…everything is fine, although I tend to not find the time to post in recent days. So, what else is new?

The new server

This blog along with some other sites is still hosted by dreamhost, but sites are being moved to my new dedicated server piece by piece. As mentioned in my Nov 25th roundup I just had to get myself a new dedicated server as the low-end AMD Sempron just didn’t cut it, especially due to the “low bandwidth deal” I had on that server (“only” 200GB). So I ordered an Opteron beast, but they couldn’t deliver it right away so I was stuck. After a lot of haggling with the technical support I got an interim server (AMD Athlon 64) free of charge until my real server would be ready. Happy news: the server was finally shipped and installed in the ISP’s datacenter on December 24th…! It took me a while to set it up with all the domains, DNS, mail accounts, etc etc but I got the job done.

Tech Specs:

  • AMD Opteron 146, 64bit server cpu
  • 1GB Ram
  • 2x160GB
  • unlimited traffic! (as this is with one of germany’s leading hosters this is a real deal, although unlimited should really be called unmetered as there’s no such thing as unlimited, it’s 100MBit NIC max data rate * days in a given month)
  • 160GB backup space in another data center

I’m running the box on Suse Linux 9.3 with Plesk 7.5 Reloaded, which is really comfortable especially due to the preinstalled Plesk modules (Courier IMAP, both Antivirus + Antispam solution, etc). I tweaked the linux install a little – now I’ve got stuff like apt-get known from debian for easy updating and installing of packages.

As I plan to migrate all the stuff over from all the different hosters one of the first things I thought about was data security – or in other words: BACKUP! So I thought a while of how to accomplish what I really wanted: daily backups of all the home shares, mail accounts, databases and configuration files. I came up with a shell script which will run once every night and which will backup all the stuff, zip it and move it to both the second hdd and the remote backup location (in another data center) automatically via cronjob. This way I’ve got daily backups which will be valid for one week, then they will be overwritten…

Here’s the code:

#!/bin/bash

MYUSER=myLocalUser

MYPASS=myLocalUserPassword

FUSER=remoteDataCenterUser

FPASS=remoteDataCenterPassword

mkdir -p /backup/mysql

WOTAG=`date +%a`

rsync -az –delete –delete-after /home /backup

rsync -az –delete –delete-after /etc /backup

rsync -az –delete –delete-after /var/qmail/mailnames /backup

rsync -az –delete –delete-after /var/www/vhosts /backup

cd /backup/mysql

mysqldump -AaCceQ -u$MYUSER -p$MYPASS -r mysql.dbs

cd /backup

tar cjf etc_dirs.$WOTAG.tar.bz2 etc

tar cjf homedirs.$WOTAG.tar.bz2 home

tar cjf maildirs.$WOTAG.tar.bz2 mailnames

tar cjf vhosts.$WOTAG.tar.bz2 vhosts

tar cjf mysqldbs.$WOTAG.tar.bz2 mysql

cp *.bz2 /mnt/zweite/backup

ftp -u ftp://$FUSER:$FPASS@remoteDataCenterLocation *$WOTAG*

IngoalNetwork

As you may have noticed there’s this whole network bar thing at the top of this blog and at the top of all the other sites which I own…I had the idea to put them all together under “one roof” by creating this network, the network bar and the corresponding website. Today I finally finished the Ingoalnetwork Webpage(s) – IngoalNetwork.com, IngoalNetwork.de – as you may have guessed the .de site is the german version and the .com site is the english version. Both are coded in valid xhtml transitional. I’m especially proud of the lovely AJAX enhanced contact form.
WordPress 2.0
I backed up everything here at Ingoal’s Insight this afternoon, so I’ll continue and upgrade as soon as I’ve finished this post. On another note: I’ve already done two upgrades today and both went really smoothly, so I don’t expect any complications…Update: done, no problems

WordPress.com is open for signups

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WordPress.com is open! After working with invites so far, it’s now finally open to signups. So, if you’re looking to setup a WordPress blog without any hassle (not that it’s much of a problem to install WordPress, especially due to the fact that most hosters offer one-click installs these days) and can deal with some restrictions (as far as I can tell you can’t point a domain to your blog, but you will have to stick with the username.wordpress.com domain, as I don’t want to signup just for testing around I can’t say much more about it, but I guess that some other restrictions most certainly apply (plugins, etc)?!), WordPress.com is for you – especially because it’s free (at least for now!)

Windows Vista everywhere

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Although it’s still in early beta stage, Windows Vista (or the Windows formerly known as Longhorn) is everywhere. Screenshots, reviews and discussions are flooding the net and I ask myself: Why? – True, some people have been waiting for this one for a loooong time now, nontheless I’m not overly excited yet – after all it’s going to be at least another 3-6 months until the real deal is in my hands and who knows which features will be in the final product…so here’s what I’m going to do: sit back, relax, have a look at screenshots and a laugh at the Pro/Contra Microsoft/Windows discussions as they start to pop-up once again… ;-)

Third pc up and running…

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…not as I expected though. As mentioned here I wanted to do a nice new and clean install of Gentoo linux. So I got myself the livecd (2004.2) and started to install away. I gotta say the installation “manual” is really good and if you take the time to follow it through it will make it easy for you, even if you don’t have much (or any) experience with linux installation [nontheless it might not be the ideal distribution for complete newbies, but that’s another story].

So I got the system installed and all (basic system without X etc), but when I tried to install X and a desktop manager (KDE) the system kept freezing during the build process. I tried it over and over with all sorts of settings. It would build and build and build (as it’s an Athlon 1100MHz it’s quite clear that extreme compilation like this will take some time) and just freeze somewhere in the middle or near the end of completion. So now I was reall fed up and thought: There are two possibilities now, either try and try and try again or give up altogether. I chose to go with the later as I had already spend some good two days in total and had nothing on my hands [I was slowly starting to think that the pc might have a hardware problem, but memory tests and all came up with nothing].

So I downloaded Suse 9.1 personal yesterday (go ahead and call me cheap ;-) ) and ran the installation – one things for sure: the setup process is at least as good as the windows setup, it let’s you configure everything using their “YAST” install-tool. And after a little under one hour the system was up and running. Now I’m just downloading system updates and new nvidia drivers and I’m set – finally.

Firefox 1.0 PR (aka 0.10)

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So…here I am…Firefox 1.0 Preview Release up and running…another smooth transaction from my previous version (0.92). Now I just need to get my hands on a new skin (as Qute 2.1.2 isn’t compatible with 1.0 (yet)) :-)

First thing that catches the eye: popup-blocker-status bar? That strangely reminds me of the one in the SP2 IE…/hits right mouse button -> don’t show… ;-)

Update: Noia 2.0 Lite (2.75) it is for now then…I hope Arvid Axelsson will release the new Qute version for 1.0 PR+ soonish though…