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How to install Office 2010 on Windows XP x64-bit edition

datePosted on 15:17, September 23rd, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

Let me guess…..you tried it and it failed. Well, there is a way (probably not sanctioned by MS) to get this done. I’ve installed it on two separate machines and verified that it works. First you need to download MSXML 6 from Microsofts website. Just go to microsoft.com and search for MSXML. There should be a link to MSXML6.0 download. Download the 64-bit version of the software and install it. Then force a windows update by choosing windows update from the start menu. You will notice a bunch of updates for MSXML. Let it update the files and reboot after that’s done.

Now you need to get the x86 version of office 2010 off the cd and copy it onto your computer somewhere (I just dragged the folder onto my desktop). We need to modify something and you can’t do that on the CD/DVD. Once the copy is done, find setup.exe right click on it and choose properties. Under the Compatibility tab choose “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and choose Windows XP from the pull down.

Click Apply/Okay and double click setup to run it. That’s it. It works…..Happy days are here again :-) .

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Map any network drive to Mac OS X that auto mounts after system reboot

datePosted on 13:34, September 20th, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

Here is a quick recipe for making a network drive auto mount on your OSX machine. This works with pretty much any protocol supported by Finders “Connect to Server” option. Here is how you do it:

  1. From the Finder, hit Command+K or select Connect to Server from the Go menu.
  2. You’ll see the following window, enter the relevant information (ie: the network drive location, be it afp:// or smb:// or http://) and hit Connect button.
  3. Enter your login/password and click “OK
  4. Make sure your Finder Preferences are set so Network Drives are visible on your desktop:
  5. At this point you should have a icon like on your desktop
  6. Now go to System Preferences under the Apple menu
  7. Click on the Accounts icon under System and select Login Items tab (you might have to unlock this panel by clicking the small lock icon on the bottom left of that screen):
  8. Click the “+” sign to add a Login Item to the list and in the following screen go to your Computer icon (on the left under Devices) and select the mounted volume icon from the list on the right and click Add:
  9. You’ll end up with a screen similar to the one below. Click on Show All and exit Preferences. Reboot and make sure it all works.

That’s it…..Enjoy :-)

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OSX Server: Could not setup Mach task special port 9

datePosted on 12:57, August 26th, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10f860.cron[43786]): Could not setup Mach task special port 9: (os/kern) no access

If you’re seeing this warning/error in your OSX Server log files, it is more than likely caused by cron running jobs for mailman subsystem. Even if the Mail process is disabled in Server Admin, OSX will try to run these cron jobs. The way around this (only do this if you’re NOT running mail server or mailman mailing list manager on your box) is to comment out all lines in /usr/lib/cron/tabs/_mailman file (insert a # character at the beginning of each line that doesn’t have it). This fixed the problem for me…..hopefully it will also work for you :-) .

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MySQL Replication howto for Snow Leopard…

datePosted on 16:58, August 23rd, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

We recently upgraded our servers from old XServe G5′s running Tiger to the latest greatest running Snow Leopard. In this small howto I will deal with the procedure I followed to setup mysql master-slave replication between two new servers. I start out with two (master, slave) empty DB’s, setup the replication and then import my data from a third server (my old G5 X-Serve). Of course like anything else I will try to show you how to get out of — what I like to call — Steve Jobs Hell Holes :-) . There are other ways of doing this procedure, for more info check out this page.

- First things first….the magic command that stops mysql server from command line, just in case you screw something up and need to restart (This should be used on your master and slave servers prior to them going live…..DO NOT USE THIS ON A LIVE SERVER):

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mysql.mysqld.plist

This will stop the launch Daemon from continously launching mysql when trouble is brewing. This usually happens when you screw something up badly and the symptom is that the Server Manager Status for MySQL will say “Starting up“, but never changes to “Running“.

- Next I want to blow away my DB files on the master and slave (remember these are NOT production servers yet…..I’m still rebuilding them. You DO NOT want to remove the DB’s on your production servers). You’ll need to find the path in the “Settings” tab of the server manager, under “Database Location“. I removed everything in that directory (rm -rf *) from the command line. AGAIN, I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU ISSUE THESE COMMANDS.

- I did this on both the master and the slave.

- Now on the Master change the following in /etc/my.cnf (You should have this file, if you’ve got a my.cnf.default, copy it my.cnf).

[mysqld]
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
sync_binlog=1

- On the Master still, check the “Allow Network Connections” check box in Server Manager and set the root password (for mysql) by pressing the “Set MySQL Root Password…” button. Then press “Save” followed by “Start MySQL“. This will initialize mysql with the default tables and setup the root password.

- Now on the Slave change the following in /etc/my.cnf (You should have this file, if you’ve got a my.cnf.default, copy it my.cnf).

[mysqld]
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=2

- Back on the Master, you need to create a user (I call it repl) that has REPLICATION SLAVE privilege. Use the following two commands (make sure you replace mydomain.com and slavepass….LEAVE repl as the userid:

mysql> CREATE USER 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass';
mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com';

- Next we need to flush the tables and issue a read lock (yes, just because we can):

mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;

- Still on the master we find out the current binary log file name and position:

mysql> show master status;
 +------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
 | File             | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |
 +------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
 | mysql-bin.000004 |      340 |              |                  |
 +------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Note down the filename and the Position number. We will need them later.

- Back on the Slave, go to Server Manager and set the root password (for mysql) by pressing the “Set MySQL Root Password…” button. Then press “Save” followed by “Start MySQL“. Connect to the DB as root and issue the following command:

CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='master.mydomain.com', MASTER_USER='repl', MASTER_PASSWORD='slavepass', MASTER_LOG_FILE='mysql-bin.000004', MASTER_LOG_POS=340;

This will setup the slave to talk to the Master and do it’s thing. While we are here, we might as well verify that the repl user can log into the master from the slave:

mysql -h maste.mydomain.com -u repl -p

should prompt you for password and if you type in the ‘slavepass’ you assigned above, you should be able to get in.

- Back on the master unlock the tables:

mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;

- Last but not least on the slave, turn on the slave mode:

mysql> START SLAVE;

Done…..Now you can go to your production server and suck it’s brains (ahemm…..DB’s) out and import it into your master. Your slave should follow and replicate whatever you import into the master Server. I used the following command (you mileage might/will vary):

mysqldump -x -c --add-drop-table --add-drop-database -u root -p --databases dbname1 dbname2 dbname3 >goodies.sql

Transfer “goodies.sql” text file from your production server to the master server (ssh/scp/ftp….whatever).

mysql -u root -p < goodies.sql

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MySQL: Transfering users and priviledges to a new server….

datePosted on 15:32, August 19th, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

So this was a great big mystery this morning. How the heck do you transfer the users and their privileges out of a old mysql server and “import” them into a new server. We recently upgraded from OSX 10.4.11 to a couple of spanking new Snow Leopard servers and during the mysql export/import cycle this issue came up. Well the simple answer is…..DON’T USE mysqldump on your mysql DB (you know the default DB that stores all your users and privileges. It’s a bad idea and will probably do more harm than good. Instead use the following procedure:

1) On your old server (the one that has your data/users/tables on it) issue the following command (replace YOUR dbadmin/root username and  password in the 2 appropriate places:

mysql -B -N --user=admin --password=yourpassword -e "SELECT DISTINCT CONCAT('SHOW GRANTS FOR ''', user, '''@''', host, ''';') AS query FROM mysql.user" |mysql --user=admin --password=yourpassword | sed 's/\(GRANT .*\)/\1;/;s/^\(Grants for .*\)/## \1 ##/;/##/{x;p;x;}'

The output of this command is something like this:

## Grants for admin@127.0.0.1 ##
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'127.0.0.1' WITH GRANT OPTION;
## Grants for fabrik@localhost ##
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'fabrik'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'HASHEDPASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `fabrikdb`.* TO 'fabrik'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
## Grants for nerdlogger@localhost ##
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'nerdlogger'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'HASHEDPASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `nerdlogger`.* TO 'nerdlogger'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
## Grants for research@localhost ##
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'research'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'HASHEDPASSWORD';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER ON `research`.* TO 'research'@'localhost';
## Grants for admin@localhost ##
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'HASHEDPASSWORD' WITH GRANT OPTION;
## Grants for root@server.domain ##
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'server.domain' WITH GRANT OPTION;

2) Now you’re ready to selectively cut and paste the appropriate users and associated grant into a new mysql session (which you have to open) on the new server.

Goodluck….

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How to view slashdotted sites….

datePosted on 16:43, April 26th, 2010 by Many Ayromlou

This is a quick tip I came across while trying to get to a site that had gone down due too much traffic. Seems to work in most situations, unless the site was brand spanking new or something.

Method 1: You can do a google search for the following cache:nerdlogger.com where nerdlogger.com would be the downed site.
Method 2: You can add .nyud.net to the end of the URL address (ie: go to http://www.nerdlogger.com.nyud.net/ instead of http://www.nerdlogger.com) to see if Coral Content Distribution Network has a cached copy of it.

Hope this helps…..

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