Today I have been mostly... installing Sophos

For several months now, one of my servers has been a little overloaded. It is a dual Opteron 248 with 4GB RAM but it has been performing the following roles:

• Exchange 2003 Server (for 1100+ users)
• WSUS Server
• Sophos Enterprise Manager and Library Server
• Print Server (including Print Manager Plus)
• Retrospect backup

As you can imagine, it didn't like doing all this (especially the huge email database combined with the two instances of MSDE for WSUS and Sophos). I decided that the easiest thing to move was Sophos and the re-homing coincided nicely with the release of the latest release of the admin software. Having downloaded the package from the Sophos website, I unpacked the files and set about installing it my second DC. All was going very well until the installer tried to set up MSDE. No matter what I tried I could not get MSDE to install... even when I tried to install it from the redistributable fresh from MS. It was most odd; the MSI installer crept along until a couple of blocks from the end and then sort or re-wound with no explanation other than a message in the event log saying that the MSI installation had failed! After this had annoyed me for nearly an hour, I decided to approach the problem from a different angle... enter SQL Server 2005 Express. I installed this and then just told the Sophos installer to use this instance rather than installing MSDE... easy as! After then going through all the EM Library options, I left the server downloading the Sophos AV packages for 2000/XP, OS X and Linux over lunch and upon my return all was well. The new version of the EM Console works well and all the installations went flawlessly. I was particularly impressed by the new policy-based system. Time will tell how well this continues to work and I must admit not all of my machines were on.

I officially HATE SIMS .Net!!!

Up until now, I haven't really had too many problems with SIMS - not as many as most. Admittedly, there is the usual voodoo that needs to be done to the file permissions to let it run and auto update using SOLUS... plus the strange problems that FMS seems to throw up but all these things are easily overcome.

yesterday, however, all hell broke loose. I don't usually do the updates to SIMS; leaving it to the deputy head instead... he seems to like doing it so why upset him? ;-) When the download of the new packages with SOLUS 2 went tits up it became my problem though. This was approach. 11am.

I eventually re-downloaded the packages only to find that there wasn't sufficient space on the disk partition to perform the DBUPGRADE backup... this is due to the cr@p way that our local SIMS support people installed it and is worthy of a rant in itself. After removing everything I possibly could plus compressing lesser used files I managed to have 1.84GB free... still not enough it turned out (despite the fact that the database is only 1.73GB!).

By this point it was 5.35pm and I decided enough was enough and I went home.

This morning I waited for 45mins for the support desk to open, only to be told to re-download the packages another couple of times only to prove that there wasn't enough space to do the upgrade. The support guy then told me about the '/nobackup' switch which allowed me to run the database upgrade... this eventually finished at about 1.30pm.

After the database upgrade, I then had to download the packages AGAIN and after another 45 mins the setup started to run and eventually ended successfully.

At this point I then had to go around 13 workstations to make sure that they all upgraded properly and that the permissions mentioned above were OK. Obviously they weren't and some of the machines required intervention... it was 3.40pm by the time I had all the machines finished.

All in all, it took about 13 hours of my time to do this upgrade. Ridiculous!!!

On the upside, the new GUI looks quite nice and the front-office staff like the new easy-access icons that happen to give them access directly to the areas that they use most often.

I am dreading the time when I move the database files in a couple of weeks though. I'm definitely not going to pay the local support guys £70-odd per hour to do it for me though until I know it's going to be too difficult!!!

YAY! MCE Works Again

For a while now, I've been struggling with Windows XP MCE... in particular I couldn't watch a handful of channels (including Channel 4 and E4 which I watch a lot!).

After copious Internet scouring, I came to the conclusion that it was something to do with the dual Black Gold Digital TV Tuners that I use. I think it was a recent MS update that mangled it.

Anyway, I eventually found an update to the drivers... from v5.11 to v5.17 (although I had to get the updated drivers from the Evesham website rather than GDI's). After much wire fiddling, re-scanning, registry hacking (deleting the bit to do with the tuners) and more re-scanning, it all now works.

It was a little late to record the new series of Lost, although I've managed to watch all the episodes so not too much 'lost' but better late than never I suppose.

I can now thoroughly recommend these cards again - the picture quality is great! MCE is now great again! I can now automagically sync the recorded programmes with my Creative Zen Portable Media Center! 'YAY' all round!!!

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter Multiplayer

Right... I just got off my first go on the Internet multiplayer game of Ghost Recon. It's pretty good, even if I'm not!

Most people appear to play on the 'Domination' style of game. This involves wandering around the map to out-number the opponents in different zones. As a bonus, you re-spawn when you (inevitably in my case) get killed.

I think that I will be enjoying the nultiplayer for some time ;-)

Yesterday, I was playing the multiplayer on my brother's XBOX360. Although the games have the same title, they are quite different. The attitude of the XBOX Live players is different too, taking a less strategic approach to gaming. Just an observation - not a bad thing because sometimes people sniping you from on top of some remote building just pisses you off!

MMC In Vista

I was having a quick look at the MMC in Vista earlier and it came to my attention that EVERYTHING is done using a MMC of one form or another. This could prove promising for further customisation and locking down systems at a later date. Even your standard folder explorer is a MMC! I think that the MMC writers at MS were probably the second highest earnest after the Wizard writers ;-)

Along with this new MMC-centred view, a load of new and glammed-up MMC snapins have been added. Performance Monitor and Task Manager have been combined to form the shiny new Performance Diagnostics - by far and away my favourite new MMC. This also includes clever graphs about reliability and all sorts. Well worth a look... even if it doesn't help to explain the constant hard disk reading and the 68% memory usage when idle!

I have yet to check out the new GPMC and other gubbins (such as the printer stuff) - I need to be connected to a domain for these features but they should be good if the local tools are anything to go off.

Maybe I'll get chance soon ;-)

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

I'm not a big gamer but, since I acquired my new machine, I have been eager to see what the stupidly big graphics card can do. I decided to buy the latest in the Ghost Recon range of games and try my hand at killing some rebels.

I installed the game and though... why not try it at full res with all the trimmings? I do have a Pentium-D 3GHz with 2GB RAM along with the nVidia GeForce 7800GTX (256MB) after all. It didn't like this and locked up on me :-( So since then I have been playing it at a lowly 1024x768 without issue ;-)

I must admit, a lot of thought has gone into the game graphics and it looks really good. The controls took a little getting used to and I don't think I've ever played a game like this before where you can't jump. I do like the way you control your team members though and they generally do what you ask of them - only occasionally getting in your way and they usually stand where they tell them too.

I'm still rubbish at playing these games so I haven't attmpted the multiplayer yet - a little more practice first methinks. When I do, I'm sure it will be good and I'll update all you keen blog watchers ;-)

More on the woes of wireless in Vista

OK... so I managed to blag a different NIC off a teacher - a Liksys WPC54G Wireless-G adapter which uses a Broadcom 802.11g chipset. Again, I could not connect to the AP successfully - no matter what combination of encryption I tried.

This led me to have the genius idea to upgrade the firmware in the AP. I flashed the AP (not by revealing myself to it!) and I found that I could connect if I set the AP to use no security. Things were looking up... or at least they were until I re-enabled the encryption and it all went tits up again.

So, at the moment, I must conclude the wireless still sucks in Vista and I will be continuing to use a wired connection... an unsecured network is not an option in this area!

On the plus side, the paging problem doesn't seem as bad as it was and I know that TFTPD32 runs in Vista! ;-)

Stay tuned for more!

More on Vista

I've been playing with Vista a little more today. Today's topics will be the 'Windows Sidebar' and WiFi.

The Sidebar is not automatically enabled in build 5381 so I had to have a hunt through the annoying wizardy-things. I eventually found it lurking in the depths of the Control Panel. Anyway I enabled it and immediately decided that suing the 'always on top' option was out of the question on a 4:3 screen. Secondly, I'm left thinking, "what is the point?"

There is a big analogue clock which looks very pretty but you may as well use the (easier to read) digital clock in the taskbar. An RSS reader could be handy, except you only get two lines of each feed item and the text is tiny too. A PostIt Note-type pad could prove handy for jotting things down and there is a CPU/memory usage 'gadget' that showed me how hard my machine is working just typing this!

Onto the disaster that is wireless networking. Until I have a different NIC available, I cannot promise that part of the problems aren't due to the D-Link DWL-G650+ cardbus adapter that I am trying to use. My AP is a 3COM 8250 which has had no problems with MacOS X, Windows XP or Windows Mobile.

After trying every type of encrypted and unencrypted connection, I couldn't get a connection between the laptop and network. When a connection was made, no IP address could be gathered. Most bizzarre!

As an aside, something else that I have noticed, is that the laptop is CONSTANTLY reading from the hard disk. This certainly does not bode well and I'm not even sure why it is happening - it's not as if it needs to be paging!

More to come soon ;-)

A few pictures from today

I took a few pictures around the house today.

I began with the pond. I was looking for frogs and newts but they had decided to hide so I had to settle for the fish. The first one is some odd fish and there appears to be lots of them. I haven't got a clue what they are.



There are also some goldfish.



I then decided that it was about time to take a couple of pics of the new lambs. These Hebredian sheep rarely have more than one lamb at once and are supposedly bad parents. You can imagine our surprise to find twins. Pretty cute eh?



Finally, I checked out Tom's chicks. These were a little more tricky to get a decent picture of, due to the chicken wire, but I managed to get a couple of half-decent ones.

The Vista trial begins!

Firstly, a big thanks to Nick Umney of Microsoft UK for kindly getting me an invite onto the Windows Vista Beta 2 program.

I downloaded the DVD ISO of the x86 version of Vista (Build 5381) last night... it only took three and a half hours on my cable connection! I then installed it on a HP nc8000 laptop this morning.

The install was very easy, asking only for a couple of details and then going off and doing its stuff. After about 1 hour I had a laptop running Vista! I then just had to tweak the display settings because they were in 8bit mode for some bizzarre reason and install a driver for the cardbus.

So after a day of on and off usage, I've not found Vista to be nippy by any means but it's not as slow as I thought it may have been. I've also noticed that the MS 'Wizard Designers' have been earning their money. EVERYTHING has a wizard and it is VERY annoying. You also have to confirm stuff all the time - "Do you want to do this?" "Are you sure you want to do this?"

I'll update the blog more as I get increasingly pissed off or find nifty little features. I'll also mention how to make WiFi work when I figure it out properly - it hates me at the moment!

Rebbit!

I've been meaning to post this pic for a while. I was really impressed by it!

The image has not been editted in any way. All I have done is 'processed' the RAW image into a JPEG and shrunk it down to display on the web.

I hope you like it ;-)

The Towers of London Gig - Tuesday 02/05/06

Last Tuesday I went to see The Towers of London at 53 Degrees in Preston with Pete.

We started off the evening in Greyfriars with a few pints of reasonably priced beer and a reasonably priced meal. This was then followed by another reasonably priced beer in The Ship.

When we arrived at 53 Degrees, the first support had almost finished... the music from these guys (Gundown Sunday) was rather good although the female singer wasn't all that great. The second support (Hooker) was much better with their punky, rocky, style.

Following Hooker was the main act. The Towers of London permormed admirably and a great time was had by all.

As for the venue itself, upstairs in 53 Degrees, it was pretty good. There wasn't too many people there and the smallish room meant the atmosphere was good... we were also able to stand right up front to see all the action ;-)

There's was also a handy chap in the gents, dispensing soap and handing out towels... quite odd really. He also had a large selection of cheap fragrances and gave me a couple of lolly pops to take away with me :-D

Bank holiday weekend...

So it's nearly 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Bank Holiday Monday. It's great not having to work, although waking up to discover that you broke the boiler the previous day when you touched it causing the control panel to drop off and the bleed valve for the heating circuit to empty water everywhere outside! After downloading the installation instructions and discovering how to refill the heating system up to the requisite temperature for the thing to work again, I was able to have a shower!

I've been on my third walk in three days. Each one was just around the block (approx. 70mins) taking in the sites of the prom and coming back past the golf course. Today, I may have even got some good pics of waves crashing against the sea wall... I'll check those out in a minute (see below for one of the better shots from today). Even though I wasn't down by the water I still got a little wet from the spray!

Other than my walks, it's been pretty quiet. I've now got a fully functional Zen Portable Media Center which is working great. I'm starting to get into podcasts and I think that they could be useful for keeping abreast of new technology. There's also the commandn.tv video podcast with the very hot presenter ;-)

My parents have gone away again... Switzerland this time... so we'll see what state the house is in when I pop back there tomorrow. I will be in Preston to watch The Towers of London at 53 Degrees with Pete. Should be good!

The EduGeek Conference North 2006

OK... I got back this morning from my outing to Rochdale for the much talked about EduGeek Conference North 2006. So what was it like? I'll start at the beginning...

On Tuesday afternoon I finished work at 4pm as usual, grabbing a couple of terminals and some CDs as I walked out the door - these would later allow me to do my talk. I sat in the car, fired up TomTom and stuck in the address for Rochdale CLC and off I went.

The journey was going great - not too much traffic, used the correct lanes on the motorway, etc. - and here I was in sunny Rochdale. The lovely woman in TomTom then politely asked me to turn left, then right and then turn around - all within the space of about 3 seconds! At this point I knew that I was going to end up VERY lost.

I soon gave up and after 2 phone calls, lots of directions and a couple of laps of the block I eventually arrived at the CLC. Upon my arrival I found out that one of the PCs for my talk (a 'RM One') contains some wonderful new Intel network card which does not have drivers for Server 2003! This meant a VERY QUICK re-think! VMWare to the rescue again!

So I left Server 2003 installing as Tony turned up (8 hours after he was expected!). We then made our merry way to the Moorcock Inn. Upon our arrival, Tony announced that he had not booked a room! Russ and I explained that when we both told him to 'book the room,' what we actually meant was 'pick up the phone, ring the hotel and book your room NOW!'
Anyway, I very kindly allowed him to use the spare bed in my twin room... how generous am I?

So, Tuesday evening we had a lovely meal at the Moorcock and a few beers before Beeswax, Nathan and Mark left us.

Wednesday morning we were up nice and early and downstairs for breakfast at 7am. A very nice breakfast in fact - full english! Then off to the CLC for just after 8am to continue with the set up and welcome people. Of course a lot of people were late due to problems finding the place! Other than that all the talks went well (mine ran smoothly!) and reviews, etc. can be found at www.edugeek.net and www.edugeekconference.net. The food was good and people were able to do lots of networking - plus everybody went away with a prize (even if it was just a Netgear wifi sniffer). The biggest problem of the day was when I went to get a cup of water and crashed the water cooler! A swift powercycle seemed to fix it though ;-)

Following the conference, we all (well some of us) piled down to a local curry house and had a great meal. A great time was had by all and Oliis very kindly took care of the bill. Russ and I then went back to the Moorcock and had many more beverages.

A good night's sleep followed and another great breakfast before Russ and I popped back to the CLC to help Beeswax with the tidying up.

All in all I had a very good time and had a good chat with a few people and learnt a bit too. Now I just need to fill in the expense form for the hotel.

Time for an update

I thought, since it's my birthday, it would be a good time to update my neglected blog!

A lot has happened since the last post. Not least, the replacement of my old system for a new Dell Dimension 9100. I know I hat Dells but this was too good to miss for the money - Pentium-D 3GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard disk and nVidia GeForce 9700 GTX!!!

The new machine works brilliantly and Doom 3 looks fantastic on it! I'm also able to run several virtual machines simultaneously too using VMWare.

I have also upgraded and added to my camera equipment. I now have an awesome Canon 75-300mm lens with an image stabiliser. This has allowed me to take some brilliant wildlife pictures (which I will soon post). Another upgrade is the Speedlite 420ex flash. This flash is great and has lots of switches, lights, tilting and swivelling bits, etc. I'll no doubt never use it to its full capacity but it should allow me to take some great pictures since it works with the camera to work out the flash timing.

I'll post more soon about what's been going on - along with the pictures of the frogs!!!

I can see clearly now...

OK! On Friday I picked up my new specs and bought a new monitor (NEC Multisync 2080UX+ TFT). My new Gigabyte Geforce 6600 also arrived on Friday to complete my visual treat.

Since then, I've been mostly enjoying having the ability to see (after wearing no glasses for a month or so due to one pair breaking and me misplacing the others) and playing Doom 3. I say that I have been playing Doom 3, more precisely, I've been playing Last Man Standing which is an awesome co-op multiplayer mod for Doom 3.

My new graphics card and monitor really do make playing LMS a treat. The performance is truly amazing and I now just need a bit more RAM and a faster CPU to bump the performance another couple of notches :-)

Bundled with the card was also a game called Thief - Deadly Shadows but I'm yet to install that. I'll update on that and Earth 2160 (when it arrives) as soon as I've had chance to 'test' them.

The new graphics card

My shiny new graphics card with possibly the biggest heatsink I've ever seen - it's mounted on both sides of the card with a heatpipe between the two halves!

The League of Gentlemen - Live!

On Wednesday, we went to the Apollo again - this time for the League of Gentlemen. A very good (and rather funny) show.

The first half of the show was open auditions for the 'Communitivity' that the Legs Akimbo Theatre Company were to perofrm. The idea was that members of the Royston Vasey community would perform in a nativity play.

The second half was a pantomime featuring all the characters that hadn't featured so far.

It was great how they managed to get all the characters in and I would definately recommend it if you like the TV show.

A fun-filled weekend!

Well a busy and enjoyable weekend was had.

On Friday I went to watch the quarter-finals of the snooker at the Guild Hall. We watched Steven Hendry play David Gray - Hendry won - and we could clearly be seen on the TV. :-)

On Saturday I then went to the Apollo in Manchester to watch the Kaiser Chiefs. Not a bad gig. Supporting were the Cribs (appauling!) and Maximo Parks (not bad - although Caoline thought that they were rubbish). The Kaiser Chiefs performed well though - since I'm not a huge fan I didn't enjoy it as much as Caroline but they were good.

I was a little dubious about the parking, however. We parked down some street where we paid a guy in a yellow jacket £5 to look after the car. Sounds even more dodgy than it seemed at the time - if that's possible. At least my car was still there and unharmed when we got back to it so all was good. Caroline's a little concerned about leaving her car there on Wednesday when we go to see the League of Gentlemen (more about that after the event).

Sunday was then spent at home stripping wallpaper in my bedroom. I now have 4 walls and a window so the end is nearly in sight - there is a lot still to do before the house will be finished though.

The keyboard & mouse arrived!

Well the keyboard and mouse arrived a couple of weeks ago now and they're are brilliant - at least the mouse is. I'm not sure that the keyboard is wirth it but the bundle only coat £10 more than just buying the mouse and a cordless keyboard may come in handy at some point.

I'm yet to really test the kit since Doom 3 has been playing up - I keep getting jittery graphics. This could be due to only having a GeForce FX 5200 but it has worked fine in the past so it must be somthing I've done recently - I've been playing about with Omega drivers and they may have cocked something up.

The proper test can wait until I get a new machine - I'm just biding my time until I can get a cheap dual Xeon workstation. I'll then do a fresh install and see what happens. :-)