Due to an upgrade, Khanun Fodder will be down Wednesday 30 December 2200 CET and until I get a green light for adjusting for the new server locations. With some luck I’ll be up and running within the hour.
Tips and tricks for IT pros and not so pros….
Dec
26
All of a sudden I got a Most recently used icon on my desktop in W7. It turned up when I emptied the list using Windows Explorer. Nice. Not. Even better, this was not a shortcut, so I could not just delete it.
I right-clicked the desktop and selected Customize – Change Desktop icons and then cleared the only tick mark I could find – the waste basket – and both the waste basket and the annoying MRU vanished. I turned the basket back on and could close down the windows – no more MRU. Good.
If you need a random number no larger than 32767, you can use the reserved environment variable %random% to generate one. Try this in a command window:
echo %random%
This should return a value between 0 and 32767. If you need larger, create another random number and multiply them. If you need less, figure out a formula. It is actually quite easy…
To customize the logon screen wallpaper, you can do one of the following:
- Find a freeware program to create it for you
or
- DIY
Since doing it yourself is so much more fun… do the following:
- Click Windows-key+R and type regedit
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
- Create (if it does not exist) the DWord OEMBackground and set the value to 1
- Close regedit and open Windows Explorer
- Navigate to
%windir%\system32\oobe - Create (if they do not exist) the subdirectories
\info\backgroundsso that the full path is%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds - Put your desired logon screen image into this directory and call it backgroundDefault.jpg. This image must be less than 256KB. Thanks, Christian, for pointing out the slip as of the quantifier.
Log out and you have a new background on the logon screen.
…aaaaaand – if you happen to change the theme in W7, the OS reset the OEMBackground to 0. So, you have to set it back to 1.
Nov
24
So, you have several users on your PC at home – and all those accounts showing like zits on a teenager’s face on the logon screen. Well, you can get rid of them! The following tip works on Vista and W7.
- Press
Ctrl+Rand type inregeditand hitEnter - Go to the following key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon - Right-click the free area on the right-hand-side window and add the key
SpecialAccountsand then under that oneUserList. The full path (well, technically the key) is nowHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList - Right-click in the empty area in the right-hand window and create a new
DWordwith the exact name of the account you want to hide. Repeat for all accounts you want hidden.
When you log off or reboot now, the unwanted accounts are hidden. To log on, press Ctrl+Alt+Del if you need to type in the account name. If you want to re-enable the click-and-drool-icon for one or more users, either delete the corresponding DWord or set the DWord value to 1.
To be able to play music on one PC and to control the very same PC from another using HTTP, you need to set up the HTTP interface properly.
Open
C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\http\.hosts
and either add a new or uncomment an existing range and do not forget to adjust the netmask if yours deviate from the norm:
#
# Access-list for VLC HTTP interface
# $Id$
## localhost
::1
127.0.0.1# link-local addresses
#fe80::/64# private addresses
#fc00::/7
#fec0::/10
#10.0.0.0/8
#172.16.0.0/12
#192.168.0.0/16
#169.254.0.0/16# The world (uncommenting these 2 lines is not quite safe)
#::/0
#0.0.0.0/0
Localhost is already uncommented, meaning you always have access to the web interface from localhost. Save the file.
Open VLC, go to Tools:Preferences, Click Show settings:All at the bottom, so VLC shows you – well – all its settings. Hence the name, I guess…
Now, click Interface:Main interfaces:HTTP and in Host address enter 0.0.0.0:80 to enable broadcast to everything on port 80. The default is everything on port 8080. If you want it on port 8080 you do not need to enter anything. In Source directory, enter the path to VLC’s HTTP directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\http on my system.
Save and restart VLC. As long as VLC is started, you should now have it receiving control input from the web.
Nov
15
Since I have a PC dedicated to the TV, I took the next logical step and hooked the very same PC up to the living room stereo. One cable at our local equivalence of “Radio Shack” solved that matter.
Enter stage left – VLC: A free media player that need no codecs (built-in) and a ton of features. One of the things it can do that caught my eye: An http interface, making it possible to control the player via any web browser within allowed IP range. Not all browsers can handle everything, but in essence: I have successfully used my mobile phone connected to my local network to adjust the volume…!
What I did: Media:Services Discovery:Shoutcast radio listings and thenI went into the playlist (Ctrl+L) and just clocked something. Seems to be a bug somewhere, because unless I do this, nothing show up elsewhere. In another posting I’ll describe how to prepare VLC for http before this actually works. The playlist contains a lot of radio stations – all free. So, I selected one and then tried controlling from another PC. Yep, works.
Note! Needs setup of http interface first.
In an earlier post I wrote how to get around the locked-out root user on Linux flavors that feel root should never be used. Well, there is an even easier way:
sudo passwd
<enter your password>
<invent a secure password for root>
and that’s all.
…One more thing: Linux’es using this mechanism will prompt for your password, not the newly generated root password when you as yourself do things requiring root access.
If you want to resize the disk under VMware, you have to do some of the steps in a command window on your computer (the host), some of it in the VMware GUI, some in gparted – and finally observe the results in your guest OS to see if everything went as planned.
Step 1: Remove any snapshots you might have. This will take time. It does not take a long time to create a snapshot, but removing them is slow. Press Ctrl+M on your powered-down machine and mark the snapshots you want to remove and then click remove. Go for a cup of coffee.
Step 2: Resize the disk using the supplied vmware-vdiskmanager tool:
vmware-vdisktool -x 20GB YourVMdisk.vmdk
where disk size is the new, absolute, size you want. Add appropriate paths to the above, of course.
The resizing will take time, so go for another cup of coffee. When this finishes, go into the VM and observe that you in Disk Manager now have a raw disk corresponding to the difference between your old disk and the size you requested. To put this new size to use, you must use a partition manager, for instance GParted. Downoad the ISO file.
Step 3: Mount the GParted file you downloaded in Step 3 and start your VM. Be quick and press Esc on the POST to enter the boot menu. Select the CD player.
Step 4: Answer all the boot questions.
Step 5: I had problems controlling the mouse, so be prepared to use the keyboard. Experiment… Select the partition you wish to expand and select Resize/Move. I changed the new Size to be the max allowed – and had to try twice to get this working. You might want to leave one MB after the resized partition, to avoid problems later. Accept changes and ask it to process this.
Step 6: Restart the VM and log into Windows. Windows may ask for you to reboot after it has applied changes to the hardware. Do that and then log in again and go into Disk Manager (MMC snap-in) to check the size. if the Windows report corresponds to the one reported from Disk Manager and this again corresponds to what you expected, you’re done. If not …
Step 7: Restart GParted and confirm that Free Space following is indeed 1MB and not 0. If so, do a resize – and accept its complaint that you do not really contribute any changes.
Step 8: Reboot. When Windows starts, it may ask for a file check. Let it. Then, when fully restarted and logged in, you mayfinally see the numbers add up in Disk Manager.
Favicon.ico, favicon.gif, … or png, apng, jpg… or any other name, actually are the names of the little picture many websites publish to show their logo next to their web address in most major web browsers these days. The image may be 16×16, 32×32 or 64×64 pixels in size. Traditionally, you had to make it a standard Microsoft .ICO format and give it the exact name favico.ico or it would not work at all. Now you can call it whatever you want, place it where you want and use the format you want too.
To get started, make an icon and decide where to place it within your web. Personally, I tend to put it in the default “root” location of the WordPress installation and calling it favicon.png, but read on for alternatives and why you might want to choose otherwise.
Now, find the file header.php and open it in your favourite text editor. It is in the directory where the current theme resides. Since I at the time of this writing use “blue-server”, the path is (web/*nix style)
/wordpress/wp-content/themes/blue-server/header.php
Inside this file – assuming your file is favico.php, located at the root of your wordpress, add above the other lines starting with <link rel=… a line like this:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="http://yourdomain.com/wordpress/favicon.png">
Save the file and if necessary, upload and replace the original. If you switch view for instance every eason, it would be wise to either keep the favicon file inside each theme directory or to name the favicon properly. Or both.
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