Technology Tips, and Anything Else
Like Windows 7 and Windows Vista, the Telnet client isn’t installed by default.
In Windows Server 2008, you can install it via the Server Manager GUI tool, but it is often quicker to install it via a command prompt/terminal.
So, open a cmd.exe session and run the following:
servermanagercmd -install telnet-client
And that’s it – once the command has completed, telnet.exe will be available from a command prompt.
I like to watch Apache log files using tail -f but they often get filled up with data I don’t want/need to see – like, when I access the web site.
grep is a great tool to search for certain information in text files – but it can also exclude certain pieces of information which can be equally as useful.
So, for example, if I want to watch a log file using tail -f, but exclude any information relating to the IP address “192.168.1.101” then we can use the grep -v switch:
tail -f access.log | grep -v "192.168.1.101"
What this will do is show everything, apart from a line with that IP address in.
Of course, this works with any other command with text being piped into grep:
cat file.txt | grep -v "heh"
This would output the contents of file.txt but remove any lines with “heh” in them.
You can find out more about the various grep options in it’s man page (man grep from the command line)
What is Aero Glass Remoting?
Can I use Aero Glass on a remote Terminal Services/Remote Desktop session?
Well, with Windows Server 2008 R2, Yes you can!
It’s basically replicating the user experience you get locally of Aero Glass, on remote sessions. It may be useful for task switching etc. Check the guide out below:
http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/06/23/aero-glass-remoting-in-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx
Uptime, uptime, uptime. Everyone loves massive uptime, right?
The “Who’s PC has been on the longest without a reboot?” sort of challenges.
Well, finding out the uptime on an OS X machine is quite easy!
If you open a Terminal (by using Spotlight, then searching for Terminal or open Applications/Utilities and double click Terminal) and then type:
uptime
… so it looks something like this:
user@mac:~$ uptime 23:46 up 11:55, 3 users, load averages: 0.17 0.21 0.23
There is multiple parts of information from this command. The part we’re focusing on is the second part: “up 11:55”. This means that the machine I’m currently on has been booted up for 11 hours and 55 minutes.
So, what’s your uptime? How often do you manually restart your computer? Let me know via comments below!
Instead of going through the long-winded way of installing features using Server Manager, you can install PowerShell quickly in Windows Server 2008 from the command line using the following command:
servermanagercmd -install powershell
Why use the GUI when the command line is much quicker?
During the last few months, I’ve been waking up to mass floods of DCC SEND from bots/people trying to exploit random clients into accepting a file over IRC.
I use irssi for connecting to IRC – it’s an extremely configurable text based client, so I wanted a way to just ignore these DCC requests – I’ve never, ever used DCC in the 11 years I’ve used IRC, and, well, I can’t see myself starting either… so I might as well just ignore them all.
To ignore all DCC commands from anyone (*!*@*), simply type:
/ignore * DCC
And you should receive the message:
(11:24:00) Ignoring DCC from *
What this will do is ignore any DCC from anyone – you just won’t see the request coming in, which makes for a much tidier status window/channel window when someone starts getting a bit silly on IRC!
You may find that this command works in other IRC clients too – it’s a pretty standard feature, but exact syntax may vary.
You can also have exceptions if you want certain nick and hostmasks to be able to still send DCC (from your trusted sources). More information is available here: http://static.quadpoint.org/irssi-docs/help-full.html#IGNORE
You’ll have noticed that Windows 7 is pretty strict with some applications on the tasks they can perform – I often find myself needing elevated privileges in a Command Prompt to edit the routing table for example.
You can, of course, right click on the application from the start menu and run as Administrator, but there’s also a keyboard shortcut:
Ctrl + Shift + (Click Mouse)
If you hold down the control key, the shift key and then click the application, it’ll run it with administrator privileges – you’ll probably get a prompt from User Account Control, letting you know what’s happening. This works from both the start menu, the taskbar, and any icon.
We all use the Windows Command Prompt, but there are quite a few very useful features you may not know about – one being command history viewing.
To access the command history of your current session, press “F7” and you’ll be presented with a prompt containing the last commands you’ve executed.
Please note that it only shows you the command history from the current session.
Windows 7 has restored the “System Repair Disc” option so it’s easy to create.
If you go to Start and search for “System Repair Disc“, it should find “Create a System Repair Disc”.
If you open the application, you’ll get a prompt box to burn the image to CD/DVD. Choose your CD/DVD burner and click “Create disc”
If you do have any problems with your Windows 7 installation, booting from this disc allows you to perform a whole range of features such as:
So, for the cost of a single disc, you can have another option to help repair any future problems you may encounter. Create one now!
So, you want to see the date and time a Windows Server 2008 box last booted up. From a command prompt run:
C:\> systeminfo | find "System Boot Time" System Boot Time: 17/12/2009, 23:09:04
You will then be shown the date and time the server was booted (as seen in the example above).
You can just run “systeminfo” on it’s own (with no ‘| find “System Boot Time”‘), and you will be presented with a lot of other information such as Hotfixes, Network Connections, etc.