Of Ones and Zeros

Locating MySQL Root Password for Plesk 10 Client Server

Posted on 10. Nov, 2011 by bryan.

If you need to access the client MySQL instance on your Plesk 10.x box, you will need to connect to the admin instance first. To do that, do the following:

"%plesk_dir%\mysql\bin\mysql" -P8306 -uadmin -pyour_password psa

The password for connecting to the plesk admin instance is the same as your plesk admin password. If you need a refresher, run the following:

"%plesk_cli%\admin" --show-password

Okay, so once you’ve connected to the admin instance, you will want to execute the following:

select * from databaseservers;

The results will give you not only the admin username and password for the client MySQL instance, but also MSSQL if you have it installed.

Good luck!

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Troubleshooting TCP/UDP connectivity

Posted on 18. Feb, 2011 by bryan.

I have spent the past several weeks installing, configuring, and mainly troubleshooting an OCS 2007 R2 instance. One of the issues that we were facing is that we could place EV calls from within our network, but calls from outside the network (coming through the edge) would fail. Basically the call would be placed, but as soon as the opposite end answered the call would disconnect.

In any event, those details are not really why I am posting this. What I ran into is that there are several network segments and firewall rules between the client, the edge, the mediation server, the front-end, etc. While we all know how to troubleshoot TCP connectivity issues easy enough using telnet, I was struggling to troubleshoot UDP connectivity, specifically for the STUN protocol (UDP port 3478). I came across the following utility that was infinitely helpful in determining the issue:

• http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/pcattcp.htm

This utility allows you to setup a transmitting and receiving pair, it’s a tiny executable, and it has no discernible external DLL requirements.  I highly recommend adding it to your toolbox!

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Windows 7 Preview Pane

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by bryan.

First off, I didn’t even realize that Vista had a Preview Pane feature, but today I had the need to quickly glance through several Word documents and was trying to find a way to quickly preview the contents. I noticed an icon within Explorer in the upper right that looked like a preview button and wha-la! I haven’t tried for other file types yet but for Word documents the experience is fantastic.

Gizmodo has additional info here: http://gizmodo.com/5140434/win-7-tip-windows-explorer-preview-pane-works-much-better-than-vistas

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Free Expression Encoder 3 For Up To 10 Minutes

Posted on 02. Feb, 2010 by bryan.

Microsoft has released a free version of Expression Encoder which can be used to create screencasts up to 10 minutes in length!  You can include video and audio with the screen cast recording.  I played with this a bit this week and the performance and quality of results are very impressive.  Download it here.

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A.D.D. Be Gone!

Posted on 14. Jan, 2008 by bryan.

Working with SharePoint, particularly within VPN environments, can be a focus-challenging task. Write new master page, compile new web part, wait for SharePoint to recompile (okay, more specifically ASP.NET), lose focus, fire up FireFox, browse net for 15 minutes, forget what you were working on, remember, and continue work. Now I am a BIG fan of multi-monitor setups, I feel it generally improves productivity. However, when I find myself staring at IE while waiting on SharePoint, I will often glance at my other monitor and see all those pretty desktop icons, or a tempting FireFox browser session, and I’ll fill time while waiting on SharePoint.

The thought occurred to me earlier this week — what if I could black out the rest of my screen and see ONLY the window that am currently working on? Sure, in full-screen scenarios that may be simple, but when you regularly work within VPC’s and have a multi-monitor setup with different screen resolutions, the solution is not as simple. So I did a google search for this very creation and alas, I am not alone! Over at www.lifehack.org I was able to find a fantastic utility application to achieve exactly what I want, and it is called Dropcloth written by Adam Pash.

Once you launch Dropcloth it will take up residence in your systray. The “Settings” menu provides the ability to change the screen overlay, whether Dropcloth appears in the taskbar, whether Dropcloth should keep the active application above the Dropcloth, the transparency level of the overlay, and a hotkey.

When you want to stay focused on a given task and see only that window, simply press the hotkey combination, in my case Ctrl-Shift-C. The rest of your screen will black out (or whatever color you have chosen). In order to remove the dropcloth you can press the hotkey combination again and your screen will be restored.

As an added bonus, this utility is great for taking screenshots. In that instance it may be best to set the background color to #ffffff (white).

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Life Under a Rock

Posted on 10. Aug, 2007 by bryan.

My family and I are having a new house built.  Seems appropriate, as my former abode was located under the following:

You think I’m kidding?  I assure you I am not.  And I offer as proof this tidbit:

Did you know that since Windows 2000 one could mount drives to a folder?  Chances are, you did know that.  Or, you were one of my neighbors.  Did I know that?  I vaguely remembered it, but was absolutely appalled that I have never put it to use. 

Okay, maybe you are in the dark ages with me (please say it is so!), the following article contains additional information:

http://pctoday.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2005/t0306/06t06/06t06.asp&guid=

I will not take this second chance at mount points lightly.  I am going to emerge from the dark ages of drive letters, I am going to install MOSS 2007 using mount points, and the world will rejoice! 

Stay tuned.  (or return to your rock)

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Just When You Thought You Knew RDP …

Posted on 23. May, 2007 by bryan.

So you have probably used RDP about 5.1 gajillion times, but then you learn something new that shakes your foundation. Well that is what happened to me this past week when I learned 2 new things with RDP, and I am not ashamed to admit it either! Here goes nothing:

What we are looking at here are the command line parameters for MSTSC.EXE, our beloved RDP client. The 2 that jumped out to me this week were /span and /console. /span allows you to have a fullscreen RDP session that spans multiple monitors (difficult one for a screen shot, sorry folks!). The other, /console, allows you to connect to the console session (session 0) on the system, which as you can note above is only possible for Server 2003.

Hmm.. Alright, I confess, maybe it’s 3 things I picked up on this week. Last, but not least (actually probably my favorite for day-to-day), is that there was a Remote Desktops MMC plug-in that snuck into Windows Server 2003. Have a look:

What we have here is the ability to define various RDP server connections, and the connections will actually appear in the view pane. You can then click between the various servers and have it appear in the view pane. This makes it very simple to switch between multiple RDP sessions.

In order to get the Remote Desktops MMC you need to install the ADMINPAK.MSI from the SYSTEM32 folder of a Windows Server 2003.

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