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2nd Place in AT&T Seattle Mobile App Hackathon!
Self Signed Certificate for Exchange 2010
For those who are having the same problem as I am. Neither IIS nor Exchange Management Console was able to generate a Self Signed Certificate with my external internet hostname. i.e. mail.microsoft.local. The point in having a correctly hostnamed ssl certificate is to allow users to install the certificate. After digging around the internet I found out that Makecert can do the job but requires visual studios 2010 installed and/or Windows sdk. The thought of installing more bloating software on my server made me cringe. So I went about the lazy way and exported my old certificate into pfx format and imported it into IIS. Once done. goto IIS’s bindings for 443 (https port) and change the certificate to the new one.
A certificate from an ubuntu server should also work if it exports to pfx as well. In my case, my certificate was from a server 2003. I will keep a server 2003 in a virtual environment handy just to issue new SSL certificates.
UPDATE: after a power failure I realized I had come across a problem where my server was stuck at “applying settings” apparently there’s a problem with installing ssl certificates on server 2008 resulting in some services entering into a deadlock. google for the http.sys fix. it’s a simple registry to work around the problem. As well another source of “applying settings” hanging stemmed from me turning off IPv6 thinking I didn’t need it. Yes, you do. At least in my situation with AD&Exchange environment.
Moving from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010
Sad day today. I have officially moved from Exchange 2003 and now onto Exchange 2010. With Google offering free personalized domain gmail accounts it almost feels irrelevant to host my own corporate account. My experiences so far with Exchange 2010 is what I expected. filled with love/hate running across new interface with new error messages I now have to constantly google for a solution to. Thankfully most of the answers were found from microsoft.com. The upside now is the powershell integration. Whatever obscure changes that are needed can be expressed in a commandline scripted manner. I leave Exchange 2003 resenting the fact that the only reason why I upgraded was simply because current gen software no longer supports Exchange 2003. My Windows Phone 7.5 had bugs with attachments specific to Exchange 2003 users (bug fix was apparently on the pipeline however I am impatient). MS office 2011 (for osx) and MS office 2010 (for windows) both are incompatible to Exchange 2003. It was almost a decade ago that I was just learning the ins and outs of Exchange 2000 and 2003. I’m glad some of the experiences was transferable and lead to a near problem free Exchange 2010 setup.
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ssh without password
Been remoting to various servers recently rectifying load balancing. This saves me digging around passwords for each server. more time to do real work.
on local do:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh username@destination.server.local -p 22 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
finally test:
ssh destination.server.local -p 22
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Selectively checking out subfolders with SVN
Recently encountered a need to archive some large source code but also only needing to tend to a small subfolder. the trick is to do a checkout with zero depth, only retrieving the root folder’s file and subfolder and nothing below the subfolder
svn co http://your/svn SOME_LOCAL_DIR --depth immediates
goto the directory you want and then run the following to retrieve those contents
svn update --set-depth immediates
do this as many times to get to the intended folder you want. and svn commit will just deal with only those folders you’ve checked out.
or execute the following to checkout everything below the current folder.
svn update --set-depth infinity
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Free Conference call setup. Xbox Party Chat for PS3
A few years back I had setup an asterisk server and even bought a compatible zaptel modem card for incoming/outgoing calling. At the time, I had wanted to provide a solution for PS3 party/lobby chat, a major advantage the Xbox has over the PS3. In Xbox, you’re able to chat with your group of friends who sign on while playing the same or different games. In PS3, you’re faced with a variety of games that implement their own lobby chat system where you may or may not chat during the loading of the game. worst, yet if you’re not in the same group starting the game you’re left waiting without ability to chat and only option is to send text messages through the ps3 menu. Since most of my friends lacked a smartphone or a computer nearby, it wasn’t worth the time. Times have changed now, everybody’s either got an android or iphone which is capable of connecting to a voip account, such as our “office” PBX we are about to set up right now.
I was able to get this running reasonably well in a virtual environment running Ubuntu. Probably will have less compression issues and sound clipping out if it was run from a physical box.
apt-get install asterisk
vim /etc/asterisk/sip.conf
add the following:
[common](!)
type=friend
context=default
host=dynamic
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
allow=g723
allow=g729
dtmfmode=rfc2833
[employee](common)
username=guest
secret=SOMEPASSWORD
you may also consider changing the port (default is 5060) while you’re at it. look for the line:
udpbindaddr=0.0.0.0
Next set up Conference Room
vim /etc/asterisk/meetme.conf
uncomment or add the following after “[rooms]“:
conf => 1234
Next set up an Extension to direct to the conference room:
vim /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf
uncomment or add the following after “[default]“:
exten => 8600,1,Meetme(1234)
We now need to start asterisk if it hasn’t started already
asterisk
In order to interact with asterisk we need to bring up the console
asterisk -r
Here we can issue a reload command
reload
Finally all you need to do now is to connect to the server using any sip/voip dialer. I recommend linphone for android and iphone and windows. for OSX you can use telephone which is found free on the app market. Currently there are no free dialers on Windows Phone =(.
your connection information should be:
server:YOURASTERISKIP
username:guest
password:SOMEPASSWORD
If you changed the port you’ll need to try altering the server name to YOURASTERISKIP:SOMEPORTNUM if the dialer doesn’t ask for one. Don’t forget if you are trying this remotely, there is no guarantee the coffee shop or your home internet provider will have port 5060 open.
Once connected, simply dial 8600 and you’re in the conference by yourself! you can use the same account information on another device to test a 2 person conference. I haven’t found any major issues with conference calls of 4.
From here, we can set up outgoing and incoming voip account/phone numbers including gmail voice! Security should be addressed next because the sip port can be easily bruteforced.
MySQL WorkBench importing GeoIp in CSV
Not much mention of this working. alot of the info on the net is out of date. Importing CSV is possible through WorkBench.
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS location;
CREATE TABLE location(
locId int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
country char(2) NOT NULL,
region char(2) NOT NULL,
city varchar(50),
postalCode char(5) NOT NULL,
latitude float,
longitude float,
dmaCode integer,
areaCode integer,
PRIMARY KEY (locId)
);
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/my/local/location/of/file/GeoLiteCity_20110301/GeoLiteCity-Location.csv'
INTO TABLE location
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '\"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n';
Windows Phone Tethering for Samsung Focus on Bell network.
Finally figured out how to get tethering working with the Samsung Focus on Bell network. Most of the information around the net is for at&t/Cingular. For Bell, you need to add an apn pda.bell.ca into the GPRS connection settings. also the number to dial is #777. It worked on my Mac. Not sure how to get GPRS settings from a windows dialer.
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Windows Phone as a barebones phone
I have a Samsung Focus i917 as a test unit.
First off the hardware is great. The screen’s beautiful (AMOLED), battery life is typical, with only the memory card (perminant) pairing being the only issue.
The OS however feels lacking. Windows Phone works. There’s nothing wrong with it, hasn’t locked up on me nor had any major issues to point at. The real negatives is what the OS doesn’t have off the get go. No native msn messenger. No Remote Desktop Client. No SIP Dialer. For me, I have come from an Iphone where all those were possible. Upon research on implementing my own alternatives I found out the primary reason why nobody has bothered to release a proper messenger,RDP,SIP dialer, the os currently only provides http/https communication. no udp/tcp packets are possible for the applications to utilize. This seems consistent with what’s offered on the OS, facebooking,office,skydrive and emailing all likely done through HTTP/HTTPS (WebDAV). Youtube being the unconventional and offering only a mobile browser site that links to their streaming friendly video clips that likely runs off Windows Phone’s media player.
If you don’t ask alot out of your phone then windows phone fits the bill. I can see why MS took the stance of marketing the device as a glance and forget phone promoting people to minimize their time spent on the phone.
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persistent port forwarding
one of the challenges I’ve had to deal with regularly is port blocking. there is ways around this if you have full access to a server.
you’ll need autossh and screen installed but the jist of the command you want is:
/usr/lib/autossh/autossh -i /home/username/.ssh/id_dsa username@servername.local -L 25:servername.local:25 -g -N
with this command your server will auto reconnect and keep the connection open indefinitely. as you can see from the example above, port 25 and other lower ports will require root user access.