DevDoctor Blog

Use DiskPart to remove GPT partitions

2010-04-18T00:31:00.003+01:00

The standard Windows XP GUI tools will not allow you to modify a disk which uses the GUID parition table (GPT) instead of the standard MBR. This is a particular problem if you have used an external disk in a Mac; for example, I used an external HDD as the TimeMachine backup device on a friend's MacBook. Now that she has her own external HDD, I wanted my disk back, but Windows appears not to recognise the disk.

To the rescue comes DiskPart (courtesy of pitumbo).

DISKPART> select disk N
DISKPART> clean

DiskPart itself has a range of useful options for managing and inspecting disks, partitions and volumes. For example:

Blogger to remove Publish via FTP

2010-02-02T21:18:00.004Z

As I suspected some time ago, but at a much later time than I thought, Google is finally going to switch off the "Publish via FTP" option from Blogger (http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html, http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/), causing much ranting on Twitter

The FTP feature was great, in that you got all the benefits of the Blogger editor interface, but all the files were published as flat files to a custom web server. Better still, you could cajole Blogger into saving the files as PHP, thereby providing a cunning integration with flat-HTML websites, without the use of a database or blogging software installed on the server.

Apparently, this caused Blogger a great deal of headache, particularly in resolving support incidents: only .5% of active blogs used FTP for publishing (although I bet all those were "real" blogs, rather than spam or SEO-drivers).

I think this means we'll need to install the blogging software on our servers, software such as WordPress (http://wordpress.org/). We need a mechanism which allows PHP scripts, so that the content can be embedded within the website itself, not hosted at some crummy http://blog.domain.com/ separate domain. This rules out the Google Custom Domain option.

Less than two months' notice is not great, but hopefully we should be able to improve on Blogger anyhow.

Verfiied by Visa Confirmed Dangerous

2010-02-02T11:49:00.003Z

New research from the University of Cambridge supports the view that Verified by Visa is deeply flawed and unsafe. I first came across this mess of an implementation a while back, and the situation has only become worse since then:

the scheme has become a target for phishing, partly because inconsistent authentication methods can leave customers confused.

It's time to insist that Visa, MasterCard and other payment gateway providers take some responsibilty for this, and stop pushing risk onto the customer.

WMIC - command-line control of WMI functions

2009-12-29T14:05:00.003Z

Before Windows PowerShell and all the flexibility (and complexity) that brings, there was WMIC, the command-line client for WMI.

WMIC works out of the box with Windows XP and later (including Server 2003 and Vista), and allows access to operations provided via WMI: "a powerful, user-friendly interface to the WMI namespace". Upon first use, the WMIC environment is installed:

C:\> WMIC

Please wait while WMIC is being installed...

Several tasks which normally feel very GUI-oriented, such as checking the battery status, are made very "command-line" with WMIC:

C:\> WMIC Path Win32_Battery Get BatteryStatus /Format:List

BatteryStatus=1

In this case, the batter is discharging. You can see the beginnings of PowerShell in the syntax and detailed status/operations available. Another useful command is useraccount, to return details of the user accounts on the system:

C:\> WMIC useraccount list brief
AccountType  Caption                  Domain     FullName       Name   SID
512          SKELTON-M\Administrator  SKELTON-M  Administrator         S-1-5-21-68**03330-*********-839**2115-500
512          SKELTON-M\Guest          SKELTON-M  Guest                 S-1-5-21-68**03330-*********-839**2115-501
...

Or how about terminating a specific process (notepad.exe) from the command-line? Here we go:

C:\> WMIC process where name='notepad.exe' call terminate

Executing (\\SKELTON-M\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_Process.Handle="4652")->terminate()
Method execution successful.
Out Parameters:
instance of __PARAMETERS
{
        ReturnValue = 0;
};

It's helpful to install the WMI Administative Tools, so you can explore the WMI namespace and investgate the operations available to you via WMIC. For example, to determine the name of the time zone currently used by the system, use the TimeZone path:

C:\> WMIC Path Win32_TimeZone Get StandardName /Format:List

StandardName=GMT Standard Time

The time zone for my computer currently is "GMT Standard Time".

For simple operations which do not merit PowerShell scripts or installation, WMIC is a good choice.

Favicon generator

2009-11-01T17:03:00.000Z

Older IE browsers support only the ICO format for website icons, which is a pain, because very few tools support generation of ICO files.

One solution is http://www.favicon.co.uk/, which allows you to upload a JPG, GIF or PNG, and it will convert this into an ICO file for you.

Improving broadband speed with BT

2009-10-22T00:22:00.008+01:00

If you are not one of the lucky ones to have received a recent cost-free upgrade from BT to 20MBit/s ADSL, and your broadband speed is less than good, here are some steps to diagnose the problems.

First we'll check the actual line speed.

Go to http://bthomehub/ or maybe http://bthomehub.home/ - note: no "www" or "com" in there. If you get a status page then you are looking at the modem/router (BT Home Hub). It should give some stats like these:

My broadband connection


Your broadband line is connected.



Broadband connection details:



Downstream	15,323 Kbps



Upstream	888 Kbps



Connection time	3 days, 22:58:21





Data transmitted	166.57 MB



Data received	3.21 GB

It's the Upstream an Downstream values which you need to record somewhere. The values should be at least 2,000 Kbps Downstream ("2 Meg") and at least 200Kbps Downstream for a basic broadband service (these speeds will soon be mandatory).

If your speeds are less than or close to these values, you can try some of these steps:

1. Get a BT Broadband Accelerator - basically a better microfilter.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/ consumerProducts/displayTopic.do? topicId=25075&s_cid=btb_FURL_accelerator

Go here, and select "Yes" in response to "Do you have more than one working phone socket in your home?" Then choose the socket which matches your "master socket" - hopefully it's like #4. Sockets #1-#3 do not work with the Accelerator. Then you pay the P&P and BT deliver it - no other charges.

Installation should be simple. Do this first (or else establish that your socket is incompatible), and then (if the speed does not increase) try option 2 below.

2. Run the BT speed test wizard: http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php? p_sid=&cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=401&cat_lvl3=407&cat_lvl4=753 &p_cv=4.753&p_cats=346,401,407,753&p_faqid=12666 or here: https://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/doc_serve.php?&5=7. This asks you some questions about your connection.

This page also contains some good advice, which you can check, particularly around faulty wiring: http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php? p_sid=bgLqHKKj&p_faqid=9611&cat_lvl1=346 &cat_lvl2=401&cat_lvl3=407& p_cv=3.407&p_cats=346,401,407

e.g.

Check for faulty home internal phone wiring

Poorly-installed home phone wiring or poor quality phone extension leads (often with a flat rather then round cable profile) are the most common causes of slow broadband speeds. This is because they are more prone to electrical interference, which causes BT Broadband to reduce data speeds to compensate. You can test for this as follows:

If you have a phone master socket like the one in the photo here (that is, square with a horizontal groove halfway down it, and removable upper and lower cover), we recommend you remove the lower cover as shown, taking care not to dislodge any wiring. Do not remove the upper cover. This will reveal a test socket on the right-hand side. This connects directly to the exchange, bypassing your home phone wiring and extensions.
Plug your router or modem directly into this test socket via a microfilter.
Recheck your connection speed as per Step 2 above, ensuring you refresh your browser page first. If your connection speed has increased significantly, this indicates a likely fault or interference source within your home wiring. If it remains unchanged, this indicates either no fault, or the fault or interference is more likely to be in BT's wiring or in your local exchange.

Re-run the line speed checks (at http://bthomehub/) and check the new Upstream and Downstream speeds. Are they significantly different?

3. Finally, if the above do not fix the issue, BT have a "Broadband Accellerator" service where an engineer comes to the house:

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/cci/bt_catpage.php? cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=1282& cat_lvl3%20=1859&p_cv=3.1859&p_cats=346,1282,1859

"The work we do on your home wiring should increase your connection speed by at least 1Mbps" - if your current connection is only 2Mbps, this would represent a 50% speed increase. "If your Internet connection speed (independent of the broadband network speed) has not increased by at least 0.5Mbps, you are entitled to claim your money back."

It's not clear how much this service costs, but I think it's about £80.

Your final option is... move to the city!

MBCS

2009-10-20T22:12:00.004+01:00

I have just been accepted as a member of BCS i.e. MBCS - which I think makes me a professional geek :)

Within BCS there are good opportunities for industry networking, and they push uphold the standards which are so needed in software and IT.

How to tile groups of windows in Windows

2009-10-08T23:52:00.002+01:00

A little-known trick in Windows for arranging desktop windows quickly is to hold down CTRL, select items in the task bar, then right-click: you can cascade, tile, minimze or close the group of selected windows together.

The result is immediately-positioned windows, as you like them. Apparently, this window-controlling feature has been around since Windows 3.1

Send Large Files (UK Version)

2009-09-30T11:00:00.003+01:00

With FTP a bit old-skool (and insecure), and all the firewall problems with FTPS and its variants, online web-based file sharing tools have sprung up over the last few years.

Of these, box.net and yousendit.com are the best known, but suffer a common limitation of many of these services, with small upload sizes (unless you pay), and are based in the US, so upload and download times are increased.

The best UK-based site for sharing large files seems to be DropSend (yes, all the good names have gone), which offers up to 2GB uploads for free, an - crucially for me in terms of respectability - displays its UK registered company number on the home page, unlike some other sites like Pando which seem more like spam factories, with inappropriate adverts (see screenshot).

Merge tracking with Subversion 1.6

2009-08-23T04:04:00.007+01:00

DevDoctor is now running Subversion 1.6 for its SVN repositories. We upgraded mainly to take advantage of the Merge tracking introduced in Subversion 1.5, and improved in 1.6. In particular, Subversion now creates its own "mergeinfo" entries, so you no longer have to use the svnmerge.py script. Subversion 1.6 now has better detection of "tree conflicts" - essentially, problems with the local working copy caused by renames, missing files, etc.

We used the new release of VisualSVN Server to install and upgrade SVN in a painless way (see earlier post on VisualSVN Server). The new version installs over the top of the previous one, so back up your SVN repositories first.

An important part of the Subversion philosophy is "don't break things". Even though VisualSVN Server 2.0 runs Subversion 1.6, the underlying repository format is not upgraded automatically, meaning that the new merge tracking feature is still not (yet) available. To get this working we simply need to run "svnadmin upgrade PATH", like this:

> svnadmin upgrade D:\Data\Svn\DevDoctor
Repository lock acquired.
Please wait; upgrading the repository may take some time...

Upgrade completed.

Following a working copy svn update, you can run svn merge. In this case, I used TortoiseSVN: Here, we were merging from the development branch, so I selected Reintegrate a branch. Once the correct settings have been chosen, you can even "Test merge", which gives you a report of what would happen if you went ahead with the merge. When the changes are successfully merged, Tortoise shows the results:

As normal, the merge needs to be committed, but the crucial difference after the commit succeeds is that Subversion itself has tracked the merge using the mergeinfo property: You can see that an svn:mergeinfo property has been set on the folder, showing the branch from which the merges were done, and the revision numbers (here, 400-409).

All this means that merging (both from branches to trunk, and from trunk to branches) is all much less tricky and error-prone than before (with Subversion 1.4). Subversion 1.6 is also noticeably quicker than 1.4 for all operations so far.

Further reading: http://scm.jadeferret.com/subversion-16-new-features-explained/

PayPal "cart upload" - much smoother than "Add to cart"

2009-08-12T02:34:00.004+01:00

We have just finished some custom PayPal integration for Eaton Square Concerts (ESC). On the ESC booking page, you can now select all the tickets you want before heading to PayPal, thanks to the PayPal "cart upload" feature. Previously, the site was using the single-item "Add to cart" which is a bit clunky, and means the user heads back and forth between the ESC site and PayPal.

We handle the form submission on the ESC site, work out what the user want to buy, read their response to the optional questions, and then send the form off to PayPal. The intermediate step is needed because PayPal refuses to accept a zero-count for items, forcing us to check the item count before POSTing to PayPal.

Formatting an external drive with FAT32 under Windows

2009-08-11T21:38:00.004+01:00

The GUI in Windows XP later OS's allows only NTFS as the format type for external drives; not too handy when you want to transfer files both ways between a PC and a Mac, as Macs can only read (not write) NTFS partitions.

However, you can drop into a command prompt to force formatting using FAT32:

format /FS:FAT32 X:

This is good for drives up to 32GB, which is still a bit small. For drives of up to 8TB, you'll need a partition tool such as SwissKnife, PartitionMagic or Acronis Disk Director.

Original info from here: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/

Loading spinner GIFs - loadinfo.net

2009-08-09T12:55:00.002+01:00

There is a great collection of "loading..." spinner GIF images at http://www.loadinfo.net/ such as this:

Crucially, you can also generate your own spinners, with settings for back- and foreground colours and transparency.

How to encrypt passwords in the Tomcat server.xml file

2009-07-22T21:37:00.000+01:00

By default, Tomcat stores passwords in server.xml in clear text, which can lead to obvious security lapses.

The easiest way to mitigate against user account compromise is to use a password digest (SHA, MD2 or MD5 are supported).

With $CATALINA_HOME/lib/catalina.jar and $CATALINA_HOME/bin/tomcat-juli.jar on your class path, just use the following to generate the digested passwords:

java org.apache.catalina.realm.RealmBase \
   -a {algorithm} {cleartext-password}

The digest technique works by having the incoming clear text password (as entered by the user) digested, and the results compared to the stored digested password. If the Two digests match, the password entered by the user must be correct, and the authenticate() method of the Realm succeeds.

Burn ISO images to CD in Windows XP

2009-07-22T00:30:00.003+01:00

There are some curious anomalies when it comes to writing CDs/DVDs in Windows XP, and one of these is the lack of inbuilt support for writing ISO images to CD. However, Alex Feinman has an ISO Recorder V2 for Windows XP SP2/SP3, which even comes recommended by Microsoft. Petri has more information, including use of CDBurn.exe from the Windows 2003 resource kit, and the screenshots of ISO Recorder V2 (above). If you just need to use an ISO image (without burning a CD), then software such Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120 will mount ISOs as virtual drives.

Default values skew data

2009-06-12T00:48:00.006+01:00

In Raymond Chen's brilliantly diverse blog The Old New Thing, he asks:

Why are so many fake LiveJournal blogs written by 29-year-olds?

The answer probably lies in default values for datetime variables: January 1, 1980 is the "year zero" for DOS date/time values, and - lo and behold - anyone born on that date is 29 years old in 2009.

LightWindow - an excellent LightBox implementation

2009-06-10T00:12:00.004+01:00

LightWindow is perhaps one of the best of the LightBox-type implementations around, supporting almost every media type currently in use.

I found a few gotchas, but these were very minor:

needs XHTML pages with correct DOCTYPE for it work in IE
Might need to edit lightwindow.js to correct the hardcoded paths to the skin elements
Replace the first line with the second in the HTML HEAD:
1. <script type="text/javascript" src="javascript/scriptaculous.js?load=effects"></script>
2. <script type="text/javascript" src="javascript/effects.js"></script>

You can grab the files here: http://www.stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/lightwindow.zip

Sexing up Project Management

2009-01-21T00:50:00.003Z

Nothing could be less sexy than a project management course, but the folks behind the PRINCE2 website certainly try!

Array formulas in Excel

2009-01-21T00:46:00.010Z

Perhaps one of the most useful yet least known features of Excel is its array formulas. Essentially, array formulas are standard Excel expressions which are evaluated over a range of cells, rather than just a single cell.

In my case, I needed to aggregate the status of various DevDoctor projects, tracked in an Excel workbook:

Each row against a status (D5:D9) must aggregate a count of that status from a "status" column (here, column F). Using standard formulas alone, this is not possible (unless you resort to VBA scripting); however, using array formulas, this becomes a breeze.

The formula in cell D5 (counting the projects in Pending status) is:

=SUM(IF((F$12:F$42=C5),1,0))

When you press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER on this formula, Excel converts it to an array formula, and indicates this with curly braces:

The expression is slightly strange, with a conditional being evaluated over a range of cells (F$12:F$42), rather than the usual single cell. In effect Excel calculates the inner IF expression once for each cell in the range, and the outer SUM expression then produces the required summation.

UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework

2008-11-19T22:00:00.002Z

I passed my 70-551 upgrade exam a couple of days ago, giving me MCPD Web Developer certification.

Having developed web-based applications in C#/.Net 2.0 for the past few years, this was relatively straightforward. There are some tricky questions on things like:

serialization
ACLs and code access security
encryption

However, I found the SQL Server 2000 developer exam (70-229) to be more taxing, as well as potentially more useful for building enterprise software, so I am surprised that the new MCPD (Enterprise Applications Developer) certification does not have any detailed database knowledge requirements.

Anyhow, a very handy guide to studing for and passing the 70-551 exam is here: http://www.alexthissen.nl/blogs/main/archive/2006/12/31/prepping-for-exam-70-551.aspx

Removing pesky Dell BIOS passwords

2008-10-02T21:32:00.004+01:00

Removing Dell BIOS passwords is simple. Download dellbiosboot.iso, burn to a CD, then reboot. Works with Dell Latitide D600, though perhaps not with anything newer than March 2006.

Oracle on Windows Seminar

2008-06-06T12:35:00.009+01:00

I recently attended an "Oracle on Windows" seminar in London, organised by Oracle and sponsored by Quantix.

There were four speakers:

Mark Whitehorn - independent DB consultant
Julian Boneham - Quantix
Paul Brankin - Oracle
Jules Lane - Oracle

The talk from Quantix was unfeasably dull; full of sales-speak ("...all vertical markets...") and delivered by a bloke who clearly wasn't interested.

Paul Brankin talked about data silos and how this architecture arises (it's simple to manage initially), how it becomes limiting or fragmenting in business terms (due to inaccessible data, and under- or over-utilization of hardware resources dedicated to a single silo) and how Oracle's Real Application Clustering (RAC) can help solve the problem. Specifically, Oracle has an Active-Active database failover solution, whereas Microsoft's SQL Server has only Active-Passive (in the form of mirroring).

Jules Lane gave an overview of the Oracle middleware application stack. Interestingly, he said ...we are not really expecting people to write Java code any more..., but instead to rely on component configuration and code-gen tools alone when building middleware applications. The Oracle BPEL Process Manager is akin to BizTalk, as a business process orchestrator, although seems more advanced. No mention of WF/WCF in Jules's talk, though of course this technology is still fairly new. Also interesting was the Oracle Webservices Manager, which allows policy-based access control to web services, including ASP.NET web services.

In general, the talks by Oracle and Quantix were disappointing; they were generally too sales-focussed, and their "Oracle on Windows" pitch was somewhat embarassed, as if Windows was something they only supported grudgingly. Far more engaging was the first session, by the independent consultant Mark Whitehorn.

Mark - much to the later ire of the Oracle speakers - said categorically that all three major database engines (DB2, Oracle and SQL Server) are extremely competant database engines, and that debates about their relative merits are pretty arcane and irrelevent. He noted that many people choose databases on religious grounds, proffering out-of-date evidence for why one engine is superior to another (e.g. "it's a poor man's Sybase fork" or "it cannot even row-lock").

He stressed the need to look at the other kinds of tools and features available for these engines as more important reasons to choose one over the other:

Analysis (e.g. Business Intelligence [BI] tools)
Middleware connectivity
Server/Database Management

Mark then went on to give some lucid examples of real-world BI analysis (on 150 year old plant specimen records, collected by Charles Darwin!) to demonstrate how useful this kind of analysis can be, in combination with human domain experts.

He finshed by commenting on the new Spatial data types offered by the three database engines, and how some amazing results can be had using "mashups" (think Google Maps).

Mark was an extremely entertaining speaker, who clearly is an outstanding specialist in his field, and it was a pleasure to listen to what he had to say. By contrast, the other speakers seemed rather awkward and apologetic! It was clear from this seminar that Oracle is still well-placed for extremely high-end database applications, but similar resiliency CAN be implemented using SQL Server, at a reduced cost. All three vendors, but especially Oracle and Microsoft, are increasingly competing head to head for the Enterprise AND medium-size database markets, and this trend is set to continue for the next five years at least.

Subversion made easy: VisualSVN Server

2008-02-23T00:01:00.004Z

Subversion is fairly straightforward to install and maintain, but VisualSVN Server makes the process on Windows almost trivial:

Download
Run Installer
err, that's it

It bundles Apache and the SVN server, and comes with a nifty Admin console which makes it easy to change repo permissions. It even provides pretty repo browsing via XSLT in the web browser.

PHP Directory Listing Script

2007-12-21T21:24:00.000Z

I needed a quick a easy way to list files in a directory, without changing the webserver directory permissions: http://www.evoluted.net/ community/code/directorylisting.php. The only issue with this script is that it's only useful for a single directory and its subdirectories, but that is a minor quibble.

IISAdmin - multiple sites on Windows XP

2007-06-23T12:47:00.000+01:00

The inability to run multiple concurrent websites from IIS under Windows XP is a pain. I need to run Server 2003 and IIS 6 to do that, and live with the resulting slowdown

There is a handy free utility, IISAdmin, which mitigates the worst aspect of the IIS 5 limitation: the need to reconfigure the Default Web Site each time I want to work with a different site. IISAdmin allows you to create new websites, each permanently pointing to a different set of files on disk. The limitation (probably in IIS 5 on XP) is that only a single site can be started at a time.