FreeDOS is a free DOS-compatible operating system that can be used to play games, run legacy software, or support embedded systems. FreeDOS is basically like the old MS-DOS, but better! For example, FreeDOS lets you access FAT32 file systems and use large disk support (LBA) — a feature not available in MS-DOS, and only included… Read More
As of late, I have had several clients receiving Hewlett Packard Critical Advisory’s concerning a manufacturing defect with certain hard drives. This specific advisory states that the customer must run an ADU Disk Report in order determine whether or not their drives are affected. With that said, most if not all of my clients are… Read More
Previously I wrote and article detailing how to Monitor HP RAID Array on Debian, unfortunately since that writing I have found a fatal flaw in it’s methodology. While our automated monitoring system using cciss-vol-status will in fact report a failed drive/array, it’s flaw lies in not reporting a predictive drive failure. The hpacucli tool is… Read More
As of late it seems as if everyone is jumping on the MariaDB Database bandwagon. In this article I will provide a bash automation script as well as detail it’s usage in order to ease the MySQL Server to MariaDB Server migration. The script is broken down into four stages. Below I will break down… Read More
If you’ve ever looked into high-availability, you are well aware that there are probably one hundred different solutions. In this article we will show you our no nonsense solution using software called UCARP. Using this simpler approach you will have a pair of hosts each of which is prepared to take over a single Virtual… Read More
Time and time again I have clients requesting that OpenVPN GUI connect automatically when they login to their windows machine. Although there is no built in solution using OpenVPN GUI, it can be done. Below we will detail the three step process that will be required to enable OpenVPN Auto Connect. The first step is… Read More
I recently ran into a situation where a customer of mine had purchased a new HP Proliant server with a Windows Server 2008 R2 ROK license (Reseller Option Kit). This specific customer is using the Proliant as part of their virtual infrastructure, so naturally the server has VMware ESXi Server installed on it. The issues… Read More
SharpDevelop (also styled as #develop) is a free and open source integrated development environment (IDE) for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft’s .NET platform. To allow for easy project migration, SharpDevelop works natively with Visual Studio project and code files. It is able to compile applications for .NET Framework version 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0… Read More
WinDirStat is a free, open-source disk usage analyzer and cleanup software for Microsoft Windows. Mac OS X users should use Disk Inventory X or GrandPerspective alternatives. Linux users should try KDirStat or others such as Baobab (a component module of gnome-utils package). The program can scan local partitions or entire hard disk drive, presenting the… Read More
If you would like to use the latest version of XtraBackup and prefer using the package manager like me, the following steps below will enable you to install XtraBackup from the Percona repositories. At the time of writing, the latest version in the Percona repo is 2.1.8.