How to determine your iPhone’s UDID.

You need to pass your UDID onto iPhone developers, if you want to beta test their software. To access your UDID, plug iPhone into your computer and bring up iTunes. Then, click on your iPhone under devices. Next, click the serial number, and the UDID will be displayed. From here, you can copy using Command + C or Control + C. I tested this MacOS, but not Windows. However, I am pretty sure it would be the same procedure. I would suspect that the same procedure applies to iPod touches too, but I do not know for sure.

Windows 2008 server – Enable remote desktop administration.

I don’t know why, but I keep forgetting how to enable remote desktop administration in Windows 2008 server, so I am writing it down here. Maybe, I keep forgetting, because it is so simple.

Bring up the System properties. The easiest way for me is to right mouse click on Computer and go to Properties.

From here, click on Remote Settings.

Chose either “Allow connections from computers running any version of “Remote Desktop (less secure)” or “Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication (more secure).”

VMware ESXi – adding copied virtual machines.

When copying a virtual machine (VM) from on datastore or other VMware instance, you will need to add the copied VM to your ESXi inventory. To do this is not entirely clear, at least no to me. A lot of the postings I saw on this did not make it clear, so I want to get this down while I remember it.

Copy the VM to one of your datastores (i.e. /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ ).
Once the VM has been copied or moved, you will need to bring up the vSphere client.
Select your ESXi instance in the left panel.
Click on the Configuration tab.
Click Storage under the Hardware section.
Then, right mouse click on the datastore that you just copied the VM to, and click Browse Datastore.
This will bring up a window that will display all the directories under /vmfs/volumes/datastorex.
Drill down into the directory where you copied your VM and select the appropriate configuration file ( .vmx ).
Right mouse click on the configuration and select Add To Inventory.
This will run you through a small wizard procedure to name the VM.
Once completed, you can power on the virtual machine, by right mouse clicking on the VM and selecting Power On.
Note: Because you copied or moved the VM, when you power the VM for the first time, you will need to switch to the console and chose the appropriate option (copied, moved or cancel).

Garmin Forerunner 305 reset.

To reset a Garmin Forerunner 305:

Hold the Mode, Reset and Power buttons at the same time for 3 seconds.

This has helped me to get the device to turn on. This has only happened to mine while in the charger. It has happened about five times in the last two or three years.

Postfix address masquerading.

I configured postfix on my CentOS 5 machine to masquerade my entire private LAN Microsoft Exchange domain to my public internet domain so that sent Exchange email can be routed on the internet.

# vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

smtp_generic_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/generic

vi /etc/postfix/generic

@msexchangedomain @publicdomain

postmap hash:/etc/postfix/generic
service postfix restart

How to reset the SMC, NVRAM and PRAM on Intel Macs.

Sometimes resetting the SMC (System Management Controller) on a Mac can resolve an apparent hardware issue. I have found this to work sometimes, but usually it just delays the inevitable hardware issue. I have also documented how to reset the PRAM (Parameter RAM) and NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM). This is usually one of the first things tried by an Apple repair technician.

Intel Mac notebooks with removable batteries:
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Disconnect the power.
3. Remove the battery.
4. Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
5. Release the power button.
6. Reconnect the battery and power.
7. Turn on the computer.

Intel Mac notebooks without removable batteries:
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Ensure that the power is connected.
3. Hit the Shift-Control-Option keys (on the left side) and the power at the same time.
4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
5. Turn on the computer.

Intel desktop Macs:
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Unplug the computer.
3. Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
4. Attach the computers power cable.
5. Turn on the computer.

To reset the PRAM and NVRAM:
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Turn on the computer while holding the Command-Option-P-R keys (4).
4. Hold down the keys until you hear the startup bong for the second time.

Test Tweet with Yourls

Testing after yourls upgrade.

Upgraded Yourls from 1.2 to 1.4.3.

I finally upgraded Yourls in an attempt to get back to the Twitter plugin. Simple to upgrade.

Backup yourls directory location.
Backup yourls MySQL database.
Remove everything from your yourls location.
Unzip the new yourls software.
Copy the config_sample.php to config.php. The configuration files are location in the includes directory.
Modify the config.php with your site specific settings.
I had to modify the following definitions:
YOURLS_DB_USE
YOURLS_DB_PASS
YOURLS_DB_NAME
YOURLS_SITE
$yourls_user_passwords

And, because I was upgrading from 1.2, I had to add the following definitions:
define(‘YOURLS_DB_TABLE_URL’, ‘url’);
define(‘YOURLS_DB_TABLE_NEXTDEC’, ‘next_id’);

Go to your yourls site:
http://yourls-url/admin
Login and upgrade.

How to enable compression in an apache web server.

This worked great for me for all of my websites. I did this globally by adding the following in my /etc/http/conf/httpd.conf file. I had no other Location options enabled. I could do this by VirtualHost, buy opted not to for now, since I have very little upload bandwidth.

I took this, as is, from http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html.


# Insert filter
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Netscape 4.x has some problems…
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
# BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48
# the above regex won’t work. You can use the following
# workaround to get the desired effect:
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# Don’t compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

# Make sure proxies don’t deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

Wordbook plugin.

I am trying to get the wordbook plugin to post on my facebook wall.

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