Entries Tagged 'Administration' ↓

Windows Server 2008 FTP Service

Since the IIS7 Team published the FTP Server in Version 7.5 life just became easier. It now also supports SSL and the setup is really comfortable. Get the executable from the URL mentioned underneath this post, install it, add Basic Authentication and a suitable FTP User and execute these two lines from the Commandline:

  1. To open Port 21: netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”FTP (no SSL)” action=allow protocol=TCP dir=in localport=21
  2. To enable passive transfers: netsh advfirewall set global StatefulFtp enable

That’s pretty much it. Enjoy a thin and powerful FTP Client from Microsoft for free.

Check this post for all the updates.

Best Online Storage Service

Welcome to the broadband Internet. Nowadays I even get a 3,6MBit Connection when I’m outside and connected through UMTS. It’s not a problem anymore to move bigger files through the internet. Yes, what we want is to be able to carry and access our digital lives wherever we go and from whatever device we may have in hand. Photos, video, documents, contacts, spreadsheets and everything else we want have access to. Can this be stored comfortable in just one place, accessible from everywhere?

When you use these online apps, it’s because you’re saving a lot of time and putting lots of different people on the same page. It will be a natural process for companies to become more webcentric as they notice what the benefits are.

Edit Documents Online, manage multiple users and much more, I highly recommend trying this provider 14 days for free. My experiences are that this is the easiest way to share and manage your files online, everytime and everywhere.

Windows 2008 Server Mailserver

Last week I installed Windows 2008 Server Standard on one of our dedicated Servers. So far I really like it, IIS7 seems to be pretty nice and the administration features evolved a lot. I also like the improved Remote Desktop, it’s logging in way quicker and feels more smooth than before. The installation itself had been a piece of cake, even the beta drivers of our 3Ware RAID-1 Controller are working flawless. Although we plugged in 8GB of RAM but we can only use 4GB as we have to use the 32-Bit Edition of Windows 2008 Server. Some payment gateways do not provide 64-Bit Software yet and that’s why we had to stick with the rusty 32-Bit bits, but it’s ok.

After setting up a couple of ASP.NET Webs we had to take care about the E-Mail delivery. These days you should carefully choose your Mailserver as the ropes of E-Mail Delivery are very much tightned. So besides of avoiding spam filters with your ASP.NET Application you have to be even more critical about your Mailserver.

Windows 2008 Server comes with a build-in SMTP Service which is still running on old IIS6 bits, that’s one of a couple of services depending on IIS6, so it’s still installed. Comparing the IIS6 and IIS7 Administration-Consoles is like comparing 2 different worlds. After playing a bit around with it I wasn’t able to set it up as a perfect mail delivery service. I think it only works great if you can bump your mails to an external, dedicated SMTP Service. Another drawback is that there’s no POP3 Service anymore coming with Windows 2008 Server. So afterall you need a standalone Mailserver anyway if you want to use POP3.

Not all of us are blessed by having a dedicated Microsoft Exchange Server which is taking care of all the mailing stuff. Installing it on our current Windows 2008 Server system would steal to many resources which are desperately needed for our high traffic webs.

We can’t use Google Apps as they are limiting the outgoing mails to 500 per day (per Account). Of course we could work around that by using several Accounts and run a counter on the sent mails but we wanted to use something bullet proof using just one e-mail address like noreply@domain.com.

Mercury Mailserver is a free standalone Mailserver of the creator of Pegasus Mail. It’s pretty light but offers SMTP, POP3 and even IMAP. Although we ran into pretty heavy DNS problems while using it and it ran somewhat unstable on Windows 2008 Server. Another drawback is that it’s not coming along with a Windows Service, there are some addons for that but it’s just too unstable.

There are a couple of other free Mailservers like hMailServer and Surge but none of them ran stable on Windows 2008 Server, it looks like they’re not compatible yet to the Vista-Like-Architecture.

So we ended up with Kerio Mailserver. It’s already Vista compatible and runs great on Windows 2008 Server. It has a lot of features, in fact more than we needed, but it’s still smaller as Microsoft Exchange. Although it’s also not that cheap, but at least our proper Mail delivery is guaranteed – which is very important for stuff like Activation Mails. The alternative would have been Smartermail which is based on ASP.NET, but we went for Kerio this time as we have had good experiences with it in the past.

If anyone of you guys got additional information or tipps on this topic, feel free to leave a comment! As of know there’s no free Mailserver for Windows 2008 Server available, at least the ones I found didn’t run stable yet.

BlackBerry Desktop Manager and Vista

I got my new BlackBerry Curve 8310 today and honestly already expected to experience problems when trying to run it on Windows Vista.

So here’s what you have to do to properly install the BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.3 and your BlackBerry Device:

  1. Install the BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.3, be sure to download the latest Version here. I’m using 4.3.0.15 (Auguest 2007)
  2. After the installation don’t reboot your PC and do not start the Desktop Manager yet
  3. Plug your BlackBerry in by using the supplied USB Cable
  4. Now the important part: Vista will tell you it found new hardware but no proper driver for it. Choose to manually search for a driver, type in C:\ and hit enter.
  5. This will occur several times, just proceed with C:\ and enter.
  6. After about 5 times you should be done, now you should be able to start the Desktop Manager and use your BlackBerry.

If you don’t do it that way, the Desktop Manager will detect your BlackBerry phone but it won’t be able to work with it, the connection will always fail when you try to use the Synchronizing Service or the Backup/Restore Manager.

Furthermore you should update your BlackBerry Device Software, for T-Mobile Germany go here to download the latest Firmware: BlackBerry Device Software Downloads. Thanks to Quintt for the comment!

WebDAV and Windows Vista

Was anyone able to get this running on Windows Vista 32Bit or Windows Vista 64Bit? The funny thing is, 32Bit throws a different Error than 64Bit.

While Vista 64Bit is complaining about some folder called DavWWWRoot, Vista 32Bit says no matter what the folder I would like to set up is invalid.

I found this fix here: Software Update for Web Folders but it didn’t help me, same error.

How did I setup the WebDAV Folder on Windows 2003 Server? Pretty straight forward in fact:

  • Created a folder called WebDAV in my WWW root, in details: C:\root\domains\WebDAV
  • My Website is located in C:\root\domains\WebDAV\domain.com
  • I added a virtual folder to my website in IIS6, pointing to C:\root\domains\WebDAV and carrying the name WebDAV
  • I disabled anonymous connections and just enabled Windows Authentication
  • I made sure I got proper rights on that folder with my local Account
  • I fired up “Computer” on my local PC, added a network ressource and filled in http://www.mydomain.de/WebDAV as path.
  • I received an invalid folder error after typing in my credentials on Vista 32Bit, just using the domain without the WebDAV folder doesn’t help either.
  • On Vista 64Bit I’m receiving another error includin something about a DavWWWRoot which is as far as I know the standard root directory for WebDAVs – I even tried calling my folder DavWWWRoot but it didn’t change anything

So I were not able to get it running on Vista x32 or x64. This seems to be a serious bug in Vista as XP seems to do just fine. I can even connect to the folder with IE7 after filling in the credentials, but no drag&drop supported anymore as you can’t open it as WebFolder in IE7.

Does anyone have a fix or workaround for that? It’s really pretty annoying, I can’t believe Vista implented a buggy WebDAV Gateway and noone cared about it after almost 6 months!

nForce Chipset? No thanks!

I bought a new PC for Vista this month. Here’s what I got:

  • CPU Intel Core2 Duo E6600 2×2.4GHz TRAY 4MB
  • ASUS P5N32-E SLI nForce680i SLI
  • 2x 2048MB Corsair PC2-800 CL5 KIT TWIN2X2048
  • Coolermaster Mystique RC631 Black ALU o.N
  • 500W Enermax Liberty ELT500AWT
  • Zalman CNPS 9500 AT
  • 2x WD SE16 250GB WD2500KS 7200U/m 16MB
  • ASUS (R) 8800GTS 640MB 2xDVI/TV
  • Creative (B) X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

I put everything together, started up the PC and was introduced to a freezing/reboot hell. At first it looked like the RAM didn’t work that well with the motherboard, so I changed them. Thing’s were still not stable at all. I upgraded the bios to the latest beta bios (successfully) and BAWM.. that was the end of it. Just a black screen, no booting up anymore. Lots of people are reporting that they have got big problems with nForce680i Chipsets. I’ve sent the board back for a repair now.

In the meantime I got myself the Abit AB9 QuadGT with Intel Chipset. I put everything together yesterday and it’s running very smooth without ANY problems. Intel is the way to go.

nForce is really bogus, I wouldn’t recommend it anymore. Nvidia does great gfx cards but the mainboard chipsets are just horrible.

However, finally I’m setup with Vista, .NET 3.0 and all the other new shiny stuff 🙂

/usr/bin/phpize: No such file or directory

This sometimes happen if you are going to install eaccelerator 0.9.5 for PHP optimizing. We just received our new dedicated server with debian sarge for our vBulletin forum and I’m optimizing it at the moment. There are many results in google for this error, however, none of them helped me.

What actually did help me was this:
apt-get install php5-dev

hth, one of my few non-windows posts 😉

Use one of the best Spam Filters for free

I just came up with an idea for our mails at work. We’re battleing spam every day and received more than 23 mio spam mails for 2006 so far. Good spam filters are most of the time very expensive.

What we did now is.. setting a gmail account in between:

One catchall address on our mailserver -> mails are getting forwarded to gmail -> gmail forwards the mails back to our postmaster address -> our local mailserver routes the mails to the proper persons

There you go, you probably can’t get a better spam filter for free as the one from Google.

PS: We don’t care about delivering our mail through Google but it’s eventually not that good for Yahoo or MSN employees 😉

Updating to vBulletin 3.6 – Update Timeouts

If you’re running in this specific problem you are probably trying to update a pretty large forum. This happens because the post table is too big and the PHP Connection Timeout is being fired.

The browser might just stop loading or showing a blank white page. In some cases this error pops up:

This request takes too long to process, it is timed out by the server. If it should not be timed out, please contact administrator of this web site to increase ‘Connection Timeout’.

..so, whether you increase the Connection Timeout or you manually run the tables by using SSH Access.

If you want to update the big tables manually, here are the queries:

  • ALTER TABLE vb3_post ADD COLUMN infraction smallint(5);
  • ALTER TABLE vb3_thread ADD COLUMN deletedcount smallint(5);
  • ALTER TABLE vb3_post ADD COLUMN reportthreadid int(11);
  • ALTER TABLE vb3_thread ADD COLUMN lastpostid int(11);

The post tables took around 48 minutes here, updating 1,6 million rows of postings.

After running those queries, open up upgrade_360b1.php, find Alter Post table OH NO HERE WE GO! — new system will allow a refresh if it dies at least and comment out the following:

	$upgrade->add_field(
	sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'post', 1, 1),
	'post',
	'infraction',
	'smallint',
	FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'thread', 1, 1),
		'thread',
		'deletedcount',
		'smallint',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->execute();


	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'post', 1, 1),
		'post',
		'reportthreadid',
		'int',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->add_field(
		sprintf($upgrade_phrases['upgrade_300b3.php']['altering_x_table'], 'thread', 1, 1),
		'thread',
		'lastpostid',
		'int',
		FIELD_DEFAULTS
	);

	$upgrade->execute();

Then run it and you should be fine.. hope that helps!

ASP.NET on Apache

This is a quick and dirty HowTo ASP.NET on the popular Apache Webserver. It works with ASP.NET v1 and ASP.NET v2!


1) Download and install mod_AspDotNet

2) At the end of your httpd.conf file add the following lines:

#asp.net 
LoadModule aspdotnet_module "modules/mod_aspdotnet.so" 

AddHandler asp.net asax ascx ashx asmx aspx axd config cs csproj licx rem resources resx soap vb vbproj vsdisco webinfo 

<IfModule mod_aspdotnet.cpp> 
  # Mount the ASP.NET /asp application 
  AspNetMount /SampleASP "c:/SampleASP" 
  #/SampleASP is the alias name for asp.net to execute 
  #"c:/SampleASP" is the actual execution of files/folders  in that location 

  # Map all requests for /asp to the application files 
  Alias /SampleASP "c:/SampleASP" 
  #maps /SampleASP request to "c:/SampleASP" 
  #now to get to the /SampleASP type http://localhost/SampleASP 
  #It'll redirect http://localhost/SampleASP to "c:/SampleASP"

  # Allow asp.net scripts to be executed in the /SampleASP example 
  <Directory "c:/SampleASP"> 
    Options FollowSymlinks ExecCGI 
    Order allow,deny 
    Allow from all 
    DirectoryIndex index.htm index.aspx 
   #default the index page to .htm and .aspx 
  </Directory> 

  # For all virtual ASP.NET webs, we need the aspnet_client files 
  # to serve the client-side helper scripts. 
  AliasMatch /aspnet_client/system_web/(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)/(.*) "C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v$1.$2.$3/ASP.NETClientFiles/$4" 
  <Directory "C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v*/ASP.NETClientFiles"> 
    Options FollowSymlinks 
    Order allow,deny 
    Allow from all 
  </Directory> 
</IfModule> 
#asp.net

3) Continue with creating C:\AspNetTest.
4) Create a file “index.aspx” and add the following lines to it:

<%@ Page Language="C#" %> 
<html> 
   <head> 
      <link rel="stylesheet"href="example.css"> 
   </head> 
   <body>        
<form>
           <% for (int i=0;i<5;i++= { %> 
              <font size="<%=I%>"> Sample ASP.NET TEST</font> <br> 
           <% } %> 
       </form> 
   </body> 
</html>

5) Restart Apache and visit http://localhost/AspNetTest – it should be working!

Hope that helps..

Install PHP5 on IIS6 – Windows 2003 Server

A quick Tutorial, if you are a lazy reader, this is for you – Install PHP5 in 5 easy steps:

  • Download the PHP5 Zip Package here
  • Extract it to C:\PHP
  • Add C:\PHP to your PATH Variable
  • Open IIS Configuration Panel, WebService Extensions, add C:\PHP\PHP5ISAPI.DLL and set it to allowed
  • Click down to Web Sites. Right click the folder and select Properties. From the Home Directory tab click the Configuration button. Click Add to add an Application Extension. Enter C:\PHP\PHP5ISAPI.DLL as Executable and PHP as Extension. Leave the rest as default and click Ok.

That’s it, enjoy!

Virtual Server 2005 R2 – Enterprise Edition released!

Great News for all Developers and it’s even free!

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is an ideal, production-quality tool for consolidating multiple workloads onto a physical server, allowing organizations to make more efficient use of their hardware resources. Built upon Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 SP1 and bolstered with new functionality, Virtual Server 2005 R2 enables IT organizations to enhance their administrative productivity and rapidly deploy new servers to address changing business needs through automated deployment and configuration of connected virtual machines that are easily administered with standard server management tools. Virtual Server 2005 R2 is an extensively tested and well supported virtualization solution that is supported both by the broader ISV community and by Microsoft in conjunction with its server operating systems and applications.

Because it is part of the Microsoft Windows Server System, Virtual Server 2005 R2 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments. For more information about Virtual Server 2005 R2, see the Virtual Server Product Overview page.

In addition to the license terms of this downloaded software, you are also granted rights to use the software to provide hosted services. End customers receiving this software service are not required to obtain their own Microsoft software licenses. End customers receive the right to interact with functionalities of Microsoft software through the services of the provider’s hosted environment.

Download here

New IIS Diagnostics Toolkit released!

The IIS Diagnostics Toolkit is a combined release of popular tools used by today’s IIS users. In the January 2006 release, Microsoft has combined the previous four tools with three more powerful tools aimed at helping solve the spectrum of IIS issues.

  • Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics 1.0
  • SSL Diagnostics 1.1
  • SMTP Diagnostics 1.0
  • Log Parser 2.2
  • Trace Diagnostics 1.0
  • WFetch 1.4
  • Debug Diagnostics 1.1

Get it here