Webs’ Random Ideas

Want to synchronize your Mozilla profiles? The directions are pretty straight forward, for Linux you will want to do the same thing essentially, but your folder names and location of those folders will be different. For instance Linux does not have “Documents and Settings”, it has “/home”.

So my setup:
Vista on C:
XP on E:
I want XP on E: to be primary profile location with Vista on C: to snyc to E:

You may want to stop and think a minutre here how you want to configure your setup…

Anyways, now we can start. First we need to copy the profile.ini file from the location the profile will be snyc’d to. In my case I go to XP on E:
E:\Documents and Settings\Devil\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

Copy the “profile.ini” file by using CTRL+C or drag and drop. Then paste to:
C:\Users\Devil\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox

Now open the file in a text editor. And make the following changes (below is what my finished file look like):
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=E:\Documents and Settings\jgwebe2\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xl5cg5nh.default
Default=1
[Profile1]
Name=Guest
IsRelative=0
Path=E:\Documents and Settings\Yogi\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\Guest

Make sure you set “IsRelative” to 0 as above. Also, the easiest way to get your profile name and full path is to use My Computer and browse all the way to your location, like I did on XP. Then copy and past the location from the address bar.

Then save the file. And you are done.

As a side note, I did this while reading the directions from Mozilla Firefox, while in Vista. Once I was done I closed down Firefox and reopened it. All was well and it was snycing with the Firefox on XP.

Directions adapted from this very useful HowTo…

What’s the AwesomeBar you ask? Well I have been using Firefox 3 for the last month and the AwesomeBar is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Well actually Firefox 3 is the greatest thing, but the AwesomeBar is pretty sweet too.

The AwesomeBar is the new revamped full feature URL address bar that can do a hell of a lot of stuff. When you start typing into it a list of possible URLs appears as a drop down list. At first it will likely be filled of sites that are a possible match and items from your bookmarks. But as you continue to use Firefox 3 the list will start searching through sites in your history too (porn surfers beware).

The way Firefox 3 does this is by utilizing a SQL Lite database that keeps track of sites you visit, bookmark, as well as other important info, and this allows for better tracking, management, and meta data applications. From what more intelligent minds than myself say, this is long overdue…

But if you don’t wanna take my word for it, Lifehacker has a 10 ten list of features for Firefox 3. Go check it out! Then download Firefox 3.

This is really more of an update to my project of creating an Internet Kiosk Management Server.

The gist of the project is this: Currently we have a boot CD Linux distribution for Internet Kiosks, or walk up Internet/Email stations at work. What this means is that I have a Boot CD with a fully contained Operating System that runs off the CD. So no hard drive or floppy is needed. The system boots directly into Mozilla Firefox with no other applications or options available to the user.

Sounds wonderful right? Well yes, but I have been running into issues with this current system, called Boothbox. As mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, I have run into issues getting Boothbox to run on Dell Hardware. The problem is Boothbox is based on a really old kernel. And updating the kernel in Boothbox just wasn’t working out for me at all.

So a new system is in store.

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I always do the same thing before installing an OS, no matter which OS it is. I grab my handy Ubuntu 7.10 disk, boot up, and partition the drive. I don’t really install it as my favorite OS is Xubuntu, but the partition editor is really easy to use.

It’s important to note this can be done without touching a pre-existing OS install. Follow the directions below and you can be all set for a dual boot. Here is what I do when I need to partition drives:

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This one still has me baffled a little, as from what I can gather the differences seem very miniscule. From the MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual, scroll down to the comments and find “Eric Stevens”:

Please note that REPLACE INTO is a much slower performer than an UPDATE statement. Keep in mind that a REPLACE INTO requires a test on the keys, and if a matching unique key is found on any or all columns, a DELETE FROM is executed, then an INSERT is executed. There’s a lot of management of rows involved in this, and if you’re doing it frequently, you’ll hurt your performance unless you simply cannot do with any other syntax.

The only time when I can see where you’d actually need a REPLACE INTO is when you have multiple unique constraints on a table, and need to drop any rows that would match any of the constraints. Then REPLACE INTO becomes more efficient from DELETE FROM… INSERT INTO…

Makes sense to me.  I also found another link, I have now lost, that alluded to REPLACE being useful for older versions of MySQL and when a different database structure was used. I have no way to verify that, but it sounded scholarly.

Anyways, It seems to make more sense to use UPDATE to me. Does anyone else have thoughts or know more? I guess that’s the wrong question since everyone knows more about MySQL than me… Does someone with more knowledge want to weigh in?

Problem:
Multiple users have reported their shared calendars disappearing. They will log off and back on the next day to find their shared calendars are gone. Sometimes they will restart or shutdown and the shared calendars will disappear. Sometimes they will log off, restart, or shutdown and the shared calendars do not disappear. The issue seems very sporadic.

Configuration:

• Exchange Server 2003
• Office 2007 and Windows XP on all clients
• Clients running in Cached Exchange Mode
  

What I have tried:

• Installing all MS XP and MS Office updates
• Searching the web
• I found the two links below and neither makes any sense. There is nothing in the XML file about shared calendars.
• Some Google Groups posting that mentions items from the nav pane being stored in an XML file
• Another article mentioning similar information and recommends running the resetnavpane switch

Possible Solution:
The information for the list of shared calendars a user is connected to appear to be stored in the Exchange account for that particular user. Which means this information is also stored in the OST file locally. So the most likely scenario is the OST file is somehow corrupt.

Well our users have a Roaming User Profile (RUP). Their local user account folder on the computer is replicated to a server, and the information is snyc’d. So our best guess is the RUP setup is screwing up some files. We will be removing this setup from one user’s account to see if it has an affect as we no longer have a need for RUPs.

UPDATES:

05/09/2008 -
Good news with the RUPs, our control group (the user with the RUP) just reported having her shared calendars disappear. Our test group (the user without the RUP) has yet to report the shared calendars disappearing on her. So we will now remove the RUP from our control user and see what happens. I will keep anyone reading this post up to date!

Found an article on the Tubes that showcases the new Ubuntu Linux Distribution set to release soon! The author had pretty good things to say and was impressed with some new features. Go check it out, I just have one clip below…

For non-Linux users out there, the most significant changes present in Ubuntu 8.04 will be those related to making it easier to take Ubuntu for a test spin without hosing an existing Windows installation.

The first change that the Ubuntu dev team have made in the hopes that it will encourage Windows users to become Ubuntu users is the addition of Wubi. Using Wubi users can install and later uninstall Ubuntu through Windows as though it’s a Windows application in its own right. No partitions or changes to the bootloader are required to play with Ubuntu.

Found via Digg…

So I would like to bring up this topic again (I’ve written about this before, once here and another time here) in hopes I can finally complete what I set out to do awhile back. Get Boothbox working on Dell hardware.

Now that I’ve made that statement it’s time for a curve ball. I think I’m going to scrap Boothbox all together. It’s no longer under development and I am having a lot of trouble re-compiling the kernel so it runs on Dell hardware. The lack of support for Boothbox is just killing me.

So here’s my new idea. Create an Ubuntu Server that is fully configurable and have dummy terminal clients that boot from CD and load a terminal session from the Ubuntu server. Being based off Ubuntu means good hardware support and using a distro that is not likely to go away any time soon. The terminal clients would also be secure in having no local storage as no hard drive is needed.

Eventually the terminal clients will need touch screen support and quite a few scripts to run other items and lock down certain apps. Either way, for now I am going to test the waters and see what happens. If it looks like the idea is feasible I might create a SourceForge project and post more info there. We’ll see what happens.

For now I will post updates on my blog for this project. Officially titled: “Kiosk Ubuntu”.

Scenario:
Only one user cannot connect to Exchange with Outlook. OWA (Outlook Web Access) works fine and no one else has reported the problem. Lower right corner of Outlook shows something like “Cannot connect to Exchange Server”. Reboot Outlook and now Outlook won’t even load up. It starts and you can see something that might be the inbox, but then Outlook closes and throws up an error. I have never seen this before…

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At work we hooked up a card scanning device for a system in a GA office. Everything works fine under our accounts but not the user account on that machine. Every time the user tries to scan an error message pops up about not having sufficient permissions and to contact the administrator.

I did a Google search and found a link for a Microtek knowledgebase article. The article had a solution: go into “Regedit” click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, then “Software”, then click “PenPower”. Just make sure the folder is highlighted and go to the “Edit” from the top menu and choose “Permissions”. Then add the user account or groups you need to and give whomever needs it, “Full Control”.

After I did this the software started giving all kinds of errors, but it could communicate with the scanner under the user account. I then figured the errors were still permission related and on a hunch I gave the same user account “Full Control” for the “Microtek” folder under Program Files. Once I did this everything worked perfectly as expected. And I didn’t have to make the user account an Administrator on the system.