Archive for January, 2006
How to make an exchange auto-install CD
By: Daniel Petri
You can configure Exchange 2000/2003 to install without having to manually enter the CD key during the setup process.
First, you should copy your Exchange 2000/2003 setup files from your CD to your hard drive.
Find a file called Setup.sdb (which is found in the \SETUP\I386 subfolder). Right click the file, select Properties, and remove the Read-only checkmark. Now open the file to edit it.
Look inside your Setup.sdb file for a section called
[Product Information]
In that section, look for a line beginning with:
DefaultPid30=
If you cannot find such a line, insert a new empty line somewhere in that section, and paste the new value in the following format:
DefaultPid30=ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY
note: Use your own CD key, the above string is just an example!
Save the file, burn the whole folder that contains the installation files to a CD.
That’s it! Now you can now install Exchange 2000/2003 without needing to supply a CD key during the setup process!
How to change the product key on windows 2003
By: Daniel Petri
Warning!
This document contains instructions for editing the registry. If you make any error while editing the registry, you can potentially cause Windows to fail or be unable to boot, requiring you to reinstall Windows. Edit the registry at your own risk. Always back up the registry before making any changes. If you do not feel comfortable editing the registry, do not attempt these instructions. Instead, seek the help of a trained computer specialist.
Note: Microsoft recommends that you run System Restore to create a new restore point before you complete the following steps:
1) Click Start, and then click Run.
2) In the Open box, type Regedit, and then click OK.
3) In the left pane, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\WPAEvents
4) In the right pane, right-click OOBETimer, and then click Modify.
5) Change at least one digit of this value to deactivate Windows.
6) Click Start, and then click Run.
7) In the Open box, type the following command, and then click OK.
%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a
8) Click Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows, and then click Next.
9) Click Change Product key.
10) Type the new product key in the New key boxes, and then click Update. If you are returned to the previous window, click Remind me later, and then restart the computer.
11) Repeat steps 6 and 7 to verify that Windows is activated. You receive the following message:
12) Windows is already activated. Click OK to exit.
13) Click OK.
Apache hits 80 million website mark
(originally from netcraft.com)
In the October 2005 survey we received responses from 74,409,971 sites, an increase of 2.68 million sites from the September survey. The large gain makes 2005 the strongest year ever for Internet growth, as the web has added 17.5 million sites, easily surpassing the previous annual mark of 16 million during the height of the dot-com boom in 2000.
This month also saw movement in web server market share for the first time in many months, with Windows servers gaining 0.75 percent market share in active sites, while Apache’s share fell by 0.67 percent. Apache continues to maintain a large lead in both active sites and hostnames, and in fact improved its share by 0.74 percent in hostnames. With this month’s growth, Apache now powers more than 50 million sites.
| Developer | September 2005 | Percent | October 2005 | Percent | Change |
|---|
| Developer | September 2005 | Percent | October 2005 | Percent | Change |
|---|
PHP for the ASP developer
(originally by nathan pond)
Over 4 years ago I set out to learn how I could build a web page. Within months I had immersed myself into the world of ASP and databases. It was all so cool… I wanted to use it on my personal web site.
For starters, PHP is very well documented on the php.net web site (http://www.php.net/docs.php). One key difference I noticed was the built in functionality. As I’m sure most of you know, to do just about anything in ASP you need to create an instance of an object. This isn’t the case in PHP. There are built-in functions for e-mail, file manipulation, dns lookups, images, and just about everything else you can think of. Tasks such as e-mail sending can actually be done with one line of code. But before I talk PHP up too much, it should be known that I was upset with one major weakness. Version 3 of PHP had no session support. This has been added in version 4 of PHP, but not all hosts have made the upgrade yet, so be careful to look for that if sessions are important to you. I ended up just writing my own session routines.
One thing that always came back to nip me in the butt was forgetting to end each line with a semi-colon (;). PHP is much more picky about syntax than ASP. If you are a c++ programmer, this is nothing new to you. I haven’t used c++ in over a year, and had grown accustumed to creating ASP with VBScript, so it was a big change for me. (Likewise, if you have been creating ASP pages with JScript (or even better still, PerlScript), then the conversion process to PHP should proceed much more smoothly…)
Commenting - There have been numerous times when I have wanted to comment out a block of code. In ASP I had to insert and apostrophe at the beginning of each line. PHP uses the same methods as c++.
Here’s an example:
<%
‘this is a comment in ASP
%>
<?
//this is a comment in PHP
/*
This can also be used to comment out large chunks of text
this line is still commented
so is this….
*/
?>
Another huge difference is that in PHP all variables are used with a dollar sign ($). This is a little difficult to get used to at first. All variables must start with a $ as shown:
<?
$myVar = 0;
?>
Case sensetivity - Now before you get too scared, let me explain. Variable names are case sensitive. $MYVAR and $myvar are two separate variables. However, function names and commands are not case sensitive. Meaning that
<?
ECHO “This is a test”;
?>
and <?
echo “This is a test”;
?>
are the same thing.
The equals sign - In VBScript, and Visual Basic, the equals sign (=) does everything. It assigns values to variables and also checks conditions in if statements and loops. This isn’t so in PHP. A single = will assign a value, just like in ASP.
<?
$myVar = “This value”;
?>
However, when you are using conditionals (if statements, loops, etc..) you MUST have a double equals sign == or your script will not work. This is one of the most common mistakes. A script won’t work right, and you look over you code again and again and can’t see anything wrong. I have wasted up to an hour trying to debug when I made this mistake.
Kind of on a related note, inequalities are tested with != instead of .
Connecting Strings - Strings are concatenated in PHP by the dot ., as opposed to VBScript’s ampersand &.
Connecting Strings - Strings are concatenated in PHP by the dot ., as opposed to VBScript’s ampersand &.
<?
$myVar1 = “This is a test.”;
$myVar2 = ” And I love it!!!”;
$myVar3 = $myVar1.$myVar2;
echo $myVar3; // $myVar3 contains the text:
// “This is a test. And I love it!!!”
?>
Function return values - In VBScript, to return the value of a function you simply set the function name to the value you want to return. Like this:
<%
Function myFunction()
myFunction = 1 ‘Return value
End Function
%>
However, in PHP you use the return command. <?
function myFunction{
return 1; //Return value
}
?>
Of course, there are many more differences, but this will get you started. If I had known these points when I was learning PHP it would have saved me a lot of late nights.
Happy programming!
Mysql: Client Does not support authentication protocol
Introduction
If you have ever gotten the error “Client does not support authentication protocol” when trying to use php or any other language to connect to a mysql server, there is a simple method to fix it.
Why Does this happen?
MySQL 5.0 uses an authentication protocol based on a password hashing algorithm that is incompatible with that used by older (pre-4.1) clients. If you upgrade the server from 4.1, attempts to connect to it with an older client may fail with the following message:
shell> mysql
Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client
Solution
To solve this problem, the following has been the easiest and most effective
SET PASSWORD FOR
-> ’some_user’@’some_host’ = OLD_PASSWORD(’newpwd’);
Alternatively, use UPDATE and FLUSH PRIVILEGES: mysql> UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = OLD_PASSWORD(’newpwd’)
-> WHERE Host = ’some_host’ AND User = ’some_user’;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Substitute the password you want to use for “newpwd” in the preceding examples. MySQL cannot tell you what the original password was, so you’ll need to pick a new one.
Tell the server to use the older password hashing algorithm:
For each account record displayed by the query, use the Host and User values and assign a password using the OLD_PASSWORD() function and either SET PASSWORD or UPDATE, as described earlier.
Note: In older versions of PHP, the mysql extension does not support the authentication protocol in MySQL 4.1.1 and higher. This is true regardless of the PHP version being used. If you wish to use the mysql extension with MySQL 4.1 or newer, you may need to follow one of the options discussed above for configuring MySQL to work with old clients. The mysqli extension (stands for “MySQL, Improved”; added in PHP 5) is compatible with the improved password hashing employed in MySQL 4.1 and higher, and no special configuration of MySQL need be done in order to use this MySQL client library. For more information about the mysqli extension, see http://php.net/mysqli.