One of the cool things I’ve been doing lately is using secure shell to mount remote file systems. The great thing about this method is that you’re not dependant of explicitly creating shares as you are in Samba, and you don’t have to rely on repeated scp commands.

As long as you have the sshfs package installed, you should be able to mount the file system. Here’s an example to create a mount point on your desktop:

mkdir ~/Desktop/sshmnt
sshfs user@target-pc:/home ~/Desktop/sshmnt/

That’s it! Once finished you can unmount the folder with the fusermount command:

fusermount -u ~/Desktop/sshmnt

If you have trouble with unmounting a connection (because the target may be switched off), you can force the connection to be unmounted:

fusermount -z -u ~/Desktop/sshmnt

After upgrading to Ibex, I found that I couldn’t sync my Palm with my Windows XP guest.

After trudging through different websites with contradictory solutions I stumbled on this, which works a charm:

Open the terminal and type
vbox /etc/group

You should end up with something like

vboxusers:x:124:john

Make a note of the group ID (124 in this case). Now run
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh

Find this section

#
# Mount proc filesystem on /proc
#
domount proc "" /proc proc -onodev,noexec,nosuid

Below this, copy the following code:

#
#Mount USB file system
#
domount usbfs "" /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs -onoexec,nosuid,nodev,devgid=XXX,devmode=664

Replace XXX with the group ID from above.

Save and quit. Reboot the system. The next time you run VirtualBox, you should be able to see the USB devices and use them.

I had to set up a new SQL Server database, which I haven’t done in a while as I tend to focus my efforts on mySQL. Nevertheless I needed to get grip on a new site to migrate.

After setting most things up, I managed to get to a point where the database wasn’t starting.

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ‘80004005′

[DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (PreLoginHandshake()).]General network error. Check your network documentation.

I really love unhelpful messages. Anyway, after some head scratching I found an article on on the Microsoft Forums from a chap with a similar issue.

To fix the problem, I loaded up the SQL Server Configuration Manager, and expanded SQL Server Network Configuration. Under Protocols for MSSQLSERVER (this is the instance name of the server), I enabled TCP/IP. The error went away. Tada!

I suppose it would help to read the documentation thoroughly – but I got to where I needed to be anyway. I imagine that it makes sense to disable TCP/IP connections until you’re happy that the server is secure. Even so, I was making connections from the localhost, so I would have expected it to work.

Well, Mo’s been beavering away and has almost finished the new forum over at the-company.com. Keep your eyes peeled!

In the meantime there are considerations of webcrawlers and such to extract the content as ProBoards have said, quite simply, you can’t have the database with your content.

Ho hum.

Some of the servers that I manage in locations have a nasty habit of hanging on the final stage of rebooting when trying to apply Windows Updates automatically.

In most locations, I use WSUS to deploy updates around the site which is OK, but when it comes to servers problems arise.

After roaming around on the internet, I found a useful thread at EggHeadCafe which describes the problem I’m having. Apparently, turning off the default user screensaver using the following registry key will solve the problem:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\control panel\screensaveractive
Set the value to 0

This would make sense, as there is a similar problem in Windows XP where if you try to shutdown the system with the power button (or an update) while the screen saver is active, the system will shutdown until the screensaver is turned off by touching the keyboard or mouse.

I’ll find out if this works in a month’s time!

EDIT: Just logged onto one of my servers with this change and it works a treat.

Christ.

I was working and playing with some settings on an Alfresco server to try and harden it security-wise. BIG mistake. I couldn’t get the bugger to start up afterwards. With other work commitments in the way, it’s been down for about a day now. I’ve tried downloading the BETA of Alfresco Labs and read various forums with no joy.

The error was

org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: A previous schema upgrade failed. Revert to the original database before attempting the upgrade again.

FINALLY I found the solution at Bits n Bobs. It’s ridiculously simple: drop the table alf_bootstrap_lock and restart the server.

Now to deal with the next crisis.