Shortcut Keys for Terminal Server

September 14 2011 by admin in Windows |No Comments

If you’re like me then you spend copious amounts of hours in Terminal Sessions via Microsoft’s Remote Desktop. Frequently I’m in a remote session via a remote session so it can get quite complicated getting around.

Here’s info from Microsoft Support on using shortcut keys.

CTRL+ALT+END = CTRL+ALT+DEL.

ALT+PAGE UP switches between programs from left to right. Similar to Windows ALT+TAB.

ALT+PAGE DOWN switches between programs from right to left. Similar to Windows SHIFT+ALT+TAB.

ALT+INSERT cycles through the programs in most recently used order. Similar to Windows ALT+ESC.

ALT+HOME displays the Start menu. Similar to Windows CTRL+ESC.

CTRL+ALT+BREAK switches the Client between a window and a full screen.

ALT+DELETE Displays the Windows menu.

CTRL+ALT+MINUS (Minus as in the – symbol on the numeric keypad) Places a snapshot of the active window, within the client, on the Terminal server clipboard (provides the same functionality as pressing ALT+PrintScrn on a local computer.)

CTRL+ALT+PLUS (Plus as in the + symbol on the numeric keypad) Places a snapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboard (provides the same functionality as pressing PrintScrn on a local computer.)

Link to article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;186624

 

Lions and Tigers and Google Apps! Oh My!

March 5 2010 by admin in Google Apps |2 Comments

I have just gotten off the phone with my contact at Google and told him to run the card. We’re in with Google Apps. Because we have over 50 email accounts we can take advantage of the Google Apps Fast Track service. This entitles us to us of an implementation specialist to assist in making sure I do the right things going forward with rolling this out internally.

I will blog about my experiences because that’s what people do in the modern age.

I had submitted my card less than a month ago to utilize the trial period they provide. I have setup my email account as a “pilot” account. What that means is that I have created a subdomain called gtest outside of our primary business email domain.

I have setup a new OU in AD and created a new contact in this object with my email address tony@gtest.domain.com. In Active Directory, I opened up my primary login account and in Exchange General and set forwarding to this new email account.

Now I have email coming to my Outlook from both the Google Apps and the Exchange Server.

There is a Google Sync that allows you to push email from one’s account to the new Google App. It took quite awhile for this to run since I have about a Gig and a half of mail.

I’ll continue to blog about the process now that we enter the Fast Track phase. I’ll let you know about how the internal users feel about this change.

Restricting Access by URL to Internet Explorer

February 11 2010 by admin in Browsers |No Comments

I needed to restrict a computer in a public area to specific URL related to HR sites. I found this article on taking care of this in Internet Explorer.
Boutell.com

To summarize: create a IE ratings file with the following content to restrict everything.

(
(PICS-version 1.0)
(name "Thumbs Down")
(description "A fake rating service that doesn't rate anything.")
(rating-system "http://notreally.madeup")
(rating-service "http://notreally.madeup")
(category
(transmit-as "Please Use The Approved Sites Tab Instead!")
)
)

Save as c:\windows\system32\thumbsdown.rat
Open up IE > Tools > Internet Options > Content > Content Advisor
Turn it on and click ok
Goto General tab
Make sure Users can see sites that have no rating is not checked. Leave supervisor can type a password to allow users to to view restricted content checked.
click on Ratings system and remove any previous installed ones.
Click and add the one that was just created and saved.
Click on Approved sites tab and type sites that you want to allow access to.
Then click always.

PHP -safe_mode prevents uploading of themes

February 9 2010 by admin in WordPress + Plesk |No Comments

I was attempting to upload a theme for a new WordPress install and I kept getting an error that read.
The uploaded file could not be moved to /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads

What had happened was when I created this site I did not uncheck the default setting of Plesk 9 for PHP safe_mode
PHP safe_mode settings in Plesk 9

Troubleshooting intermittent network dropping by client

February 4 2010 by admin in Windows |No Comments

I have had a network client who for sometime has reported losing his connection to the network and being forced to reboot to reestablish the connection. Because of the intermittent nature of this problem I have as yet to solve it. This will be a record of future steps taken to fix this problem. I opened our network monitoring device 3COM Network Supervisor. I noticed that the machine in question was being monitored. I turned it off and will wait to hear from the client if this still occurs. If so I will investigate the Auto detection of his network adapter.  I will use the following article in working with this.
http://ask-leo.com/why_does_my_network_connection_drop_every_so_often.html

They lost connection again and so I have opened up a specific app for this on the clients machine called Broadcomm Advanced Control Suite.
I did not have an option to go to 1000 mbps. I did set it at 100 Mbps at full duplex. I will wait and see if this takes care of the problem. All the diagnostic test run via the Contol Suite passed.

Domain unavailable to select when setting up a computer

January 15 2010 by admin in Windows |No Comments

I always do this. I need to setup a new computer. I need to add the computer users domain account into the local administrator group of the local computer. When I do this I can never see the Domain. What I’m doing wrong is trying to do this ahead of setting up the private IP and DNS. By default it is using DHCP from the Firewall. Our internal network is running IPs hardcoded to the NIC. The firewall is using DNS servers that are not on our network. When setting up the private IP, Gateway and internal DNS I can now access the Domain object.

Upgrading wordpress using one click install problems

January 13 2010 by admin in WordPress + Plesk |No Comments

I was trying to use this to upgrade to 2.9.1. The upgrade kept failing with the following message.

Could not create directory: /httpdocs/wp-content/upgrade

Some research indicated this was a permission problem. I created the folder manually but still had problems. I ran the following in SSH session.

[root@host yaddayaddacom]# chmod -R 777 httpdocs

Then I was able to run the one click update. Be sure to turn permission back to something less open.

Storage Problem On MS-Exchange Mailbox

December 2 2009 by admin in Windows |No Comments

I had an internal customer who was getting blocked from sending mail because their storage was exceeded. He had cleaned out his mail to the point that he was under limit but we still could not work past Exchange indicating he was over limit. I also tried setting it to an expanded level. This did not work. What did work was that I did a Restart in the Services for MS-Exchange Store. After that problem gone.

Plesk 9 Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites)

October 2 2009 by admin in Lamp + Plesk |No Comments

To back up a domain (Web site):

  1. Go to Domains > domain name > Backup Manager (in the Files group).
  2. Click Back Up.
  3. Specify the following:
    • Backup file name prefix and description. You cannot specify an arbitrary file name, however, you can set the control panel to add a prefix to backup file names. Note that the control panel automatically adds the date and time of backup file creation (in Universal Time) to backup file names.
    • Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the respective check box and specify volume size in megabytes.
    • Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would like to store the backup file.
    • What data to back up. You can back up Web hosting settings, Web content, and e-mail accounts with e-mail messages.
    • E-mail notification on backup completion. If you want to send an e-mail notice on the backup completion, type the required e-mail address.
    • Suspend the Web site until backing up is finished. If you do not want anybody to make any changes to the site content or settings during backing up, select the corresponding check box.
  4. Click Back Up. The backup process will start and the progress will be shown under the Current Back Up Tasks tab. You can use the Refresh button to update the information on the screen.
  5. When backing up is finished, the backup file will be saved to the repository you selected, and will be accessible either from the FTP server, or from the location Domains > domain name > Backup Manager.

Moving a WordPress site

September 3 2009 by admin in WordPress + Plesk |No Comments

For whatever reason, or maybe I just don’t know the trick yet, but Plesk demands a real domain when creating a site. I had setup an online book catalog for our owner but after testing this out using  Joomla Media Library and everything seemed to work fine, well then it stopped. The errors I was getting indicated a SOAP error. This application relies on the Amazon Web Service. I thought it might be that Amazon had changed their methods for this.

Anyway it didn’t work and I wasn’t sure this was the best way to go with this so I suggest the owner try using WordPress. I felt it would handle the functions he needed and found an WordPress plugin to allow embedding Amazon info, called Amazon Showcase WordPress Plugin and direct the user to Amazon where we are setup as an associate.

I setup up a site with an unused domain of the company so that they could populate their blog with the book data. Then it was time to change the URL pointer of this site to the new one.

In Plesk I deleted the old site and setup renamed the new site using the temporary domain name. You do that by drilling down to the domain’s property pages and in the Domain Adminstration group at the bottom left hand side is Domain Administrator Access.

In the Preferences section you can choose to rename the site. This also changes the folder name of the file on the server. So by changing the domain from originalDomain.com to newDomain.com the folder will change likewise.

I’ve done this on a number of WordPress installs already but this time the links kept refering back to the original blog.

I found this handy fix on the Codex of WordPress where you define these lines in your wp-config.php.

Note: Do not copy and paste this. I just spent some time troubleshooting the white screen of death because of the characters in this sample.

define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://example.com’);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’http://example.com’);

Be sure to leave off any trailing slashes. (don’t use http://example.com/)

I had this on at first and when making updates in the admin the page would return leaving the domain off and triggering site not found error. (URL looked like this http://wp-admin/yaddayadda/)

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