Config Fun

There is a set of free Microsoft tools to analyze instances of different Microsoft Products. Usually they are called Best Practice Analyzers. You can use them to find common mistakes in configuration or any other problems related to specific product. These tools are very straightforward and very easy to use – they will analyze, and report their finding together with advices. The tool I especially recommend is Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. It analyzes baseline security setting of Windows, SQL 2000 server and IIS server. Also it reports Windows and Office missing updates. Here is list of most useful MBpAs:   

• Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
• Exchange Server Best Practice Analyzer -
• Exchange Server Troubleshooting Assistant
• ISA Server Best Practice Analyzer
• SQL 2005 Best Practice Analyzer (CTP)
• SQL 2000 Best Practice Analyzer

If you often interact with databases from your PHP scripts, consider using ezSQL. It is a database abstraction layer, somewhat similar to Perl’s Class::DBI.  Here is a quote from the web site:

It is one php file that you include at the top of your script. Then, instead of using standard php database functions listed in the php manual, you use a much smaller (and easier) set of ezSQL  functions.

It automatically caches query results and allows you to use easy to understand functions to manipulate and extract them without causing extra server overhead.

It has excellent debug functions making it lightning-fast to see what’s going on in your SQL code.

Most ezSQL functions can return results as Objects, Associative Arrays, or Numerical Arrays.

A continuation of the recent post regarding ipw3945 wireless on my fedora core 6 laptop. Today I have found out another problem - while wireless working fine, it I connect a wire to an Ethernet card, the wireless goes off, so I can not use both WiFi and Ethernet (let’s say for sharing the internet or whatever). I looked around I haven’t found a solution yet so if anyone knows it - please share it here.

Few days ago I have changed my laptop from HP nx6110 to HP nx6310 which has a newer Intel wireless card. Fortunatelly I have found the required driver and all other stuff, but each time I booted the system up I and needed wireless, I had to load the ipw3945 module manually and then start the ipw3945d service in order for my card to function.

Today I have found a soluton to the problem, simply add the next line to the /etc/modprobe.conf (on Fedora distro)

install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe –ignore-install ipw3945 ; sleep 0.5 ; /sbin/ipw3945d –quiet

This will load the driver and start the required service for you.

Few days ago I came across new (at least for myself) linux distro: Sabayon Linux. I don’t really remember how I got to it (I think it was a review on OSNews), and I didn’t stay long with it since it was using Gentoo at its base which I don’t like a lot, but I found one more interesting fancy thing over there: beryl.

If you are working on the Fedora Core 6 (which I used to work before) or like fancy stuff in general, you probably heard of compiz which provides a lot of cool graphical effects for linux desktops. Beryl is a similar thing, but includes much more effects and features, more flexible and has a nice configuration application coming with it. You can install beryl on Fedora distro from extras repository using yum (yum install beryl) and play around it.