Category: Tips and Tricks
Locked yourself out of Terminal Services? Give this a whirl!
One issue I have run into time and time again at work is when either myself or colleagues leave themselves logged into Terminal Services (using Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP for short) on a server and therefore lock out anyone but themselves from logging back ON to the server. Obviously this is targeted at servers running on the Wintel architecture.
This issue cropped up for me again and I was struggling to find a way to kick the other terminal services connections or terminate them or (well LOL I had a few other thoughts that were kinda graphic but hey we are trying to be professional here). Luckily a colleague was able to assist me and gave me this gem which I was unable to find elsewhere on the net (probably from a lack of the correct keywords).
If you need to force access to the console session for a host running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, MS Windows Server 2008 or probably a host of other Windows server and desktop hosts, give this little command line switch a try.
On the run command prompt of the computer you are connecting from (the guest) instead of running plain old ‘mstsc’ instead run ‘mstsc /v:hostname.yourdomain.com -console /admin’.
I have no idea why (and will try to do some research later unless someone else can shed light on this) the straight up ‘-console’ switch did not work as a lot of people on the net said it would, without the ‘/admin’ switch I just kept getting the error “Terminal Services had reached the maximum number of licences” and so on.
So… I hope this helps you out next time pesky wabbits leave themselves logged onto your servers and stop you from logging on to RDP.
Stuart
Intel network interface on Dell notebook dropping out
If you are suffering from an issue that causes your network connection to drop out when your computer idles then you have come to the right place.I have been using Dell notebooks for many years, and one little trick that I picked up quite some time back relates to the drivers for network cards on Dell Laptops.
Most commonly I have found this issue with the Intel 82567LM Gigabit Ethernet adapter however it is entirely possible that it affects other models too.
What Causes It:
This behaviour is actually a “feature” of the driver and is designed to drop it from 1 gigabit to 100 megabit mode which in turn saves power (on the assumption that you do not need 1Gbps of throughput while you aren’t physically at the machine). I have only ever experienced this with the Intel Gigabit cards (Intel 82567LM) but it may happen with others as well.
How to stop it from happening:
You will need to get a new driver directly from the manufacturer. As I mentioned I have only ever experienced it with the Intel ethernet interface so if you pop over to the Intel Download Center you can grab the drivers from there (if you are having problems specifically with the Intel 82567LM click here to get the latest drivers).
When you have installed the new driver go into the Device Manager and select the network card. Open up the properties panel and select the Power Management Tab, then uncheck the “Reduce Speed during System Idle” checkbox and you should be sweet.
Why you have to get a new driver:
Dell in their infinite wisdom decided that with all the network interface drivers they put out they will automatically enable the above setting and REMOVE the ability for you to change it. Therefore in order to gain the functionality to change the setting you have to use the manufacturer driver not the Dell OEM version.
I have been using this little workaround for at LEAST the last five odd years and have yet to have an issue with using teh Manufacturer Driver over the Dell Driver.
Hopefully this will help someone else out when they run into this frustration.
Stuart
Managing blog advertising with OpenX
As a blogger with numerous sites on the internet I have a wealth of experience on managing content and the like across multiple sites. I therefore wanted to do a short post on how I manage one aspect of this which is managing blog advertising.
The best program I have found thus far for managing blog advertising is the OpenX advertisement management platform.
When I began using OpenX I believe it was only available as a self-hosted version however in more recent times the Free OpenX Community Hosted version has been released. For those of you that are expecting less than 100 million ad impressions per month (which I am expecting to be 99.9999% of the people that will ever see or read this post) the OpenX Community Hosted version will probably suffice. Personally I host OpenX myself as I have a pet hate about being too reliant on other services for my site to operate as well as the fact I have always hosted it myself… but it is entirely up to you.
Essentially OpenX allows you to add numerous websites, advertisers, advertising campaings, and banners (a.k.a ads) into the system and manage the links between all of these. If you have a single blog it is probably somewhat more complex than you might need but when more than one blog comes into play I have found it to be of great assistance. OpenX manages all of these aspects in the background and in turn requires only a single section of code to be inserted for each place you wish an ad to display, the handy thing here is that when the ads change the code on your site does not have to.
OpenX Has Allowed Me To:
- Consolidate all my advertising across three blogs and two galleries into a single location.
- Manage advertising campaigns from various affiliate programs (including the ability to set expiration dates).
- See detailed statistics such as how often banners are displayed, and the effectiveness of each (such as click-through rates).
- Run specific campaigns at certain times. One example being the ability to override all other ads with a campaign that may be holiday related or related to a specific post on the blog (as an example).
- Rotate multiple ads across a single location on a site.
- Change advertisements without having to change the code on my site.
Some things to be aware of:
- In the case of the self hosted version, can take a bit of work to set up.
- It is designed as an enterprise solution so can be pretty much as flexible (complex) as you would like it to be.
- If you are using it across multiple sites (and using the self-hosted version) you may want an additional central domain to run it from. That way the installation is not dependent on any one of your domains so if one site gets shut down in future OpenX is still hosted on a separate domain.
So… that is just a quick and dirty on what I use for advertising management. If you have multiple sites I would highly recommend you at least take a look at OpenX and how it works as it may save you a lot of hassle and time later down the track.
I welcome your thoughts, what are your experiences… or do you have any questions you might like to ask?
Stuart