Mass Copying USB Flash Disk with imageUSB

This afternoon I started a process of making 300 exact copies on a 2 gig flash drive.  To copy a single disk at a time on Mac just using Finder was around 10 minutes.  So at that rate we have 300 x 10 = 3000 minutes or 50 hours of copying.  Not really going to work,  I tried a few google searches for copying multiple disk images to USB on a mac and did not really find anything that would work quickly and efficient with USB disks.  On the PC side there is a free application called imageUSB,  program works perfect and does what it says.

imageusb

Here simply created a image of the a perfect finished flash disk,  then using multiple USB hubs plugin disk and whoalah now I can do 32  at a time at 12 minutes per copy cycle.  This reduces total time to make 300 copies to just around 2 hours.

Download ImageUSB for PC Direct

 

Using generic sub 15$ dollar 10 port usb hubs I setup two PC’s doing 11 on a laptop and 21 on a Desktop. ¬¨‚ĆThis setup with two machines offset a bit gave me time to plug and unplug usb thumb drives. ¬¨‚ĆIf you ever need to mass duplicate thumb drives ImageUSB works great.

Mass Copying in Action

20usb 30usb

 

Free Education Font Pack – For Mac & PC

Here is a collection of free fonts I got off of dkfonts.com.  It is a great website to find fonts but can be a bit painful if you are looking to install say 50-100 fonts.   Here are 72 fonts that are good for Elementary Education and can easily be installed on a Mac.

EducationFonts  (3 megs)

Here are some quick instructions on how to install on a Mac Running 10.8 (Instructions should also work on Macs running 10.5-10.7).
1. Download the file above and double click on it to expand the Zip archive.  Now drag this folder to your desktop.

EducationFonts  (3 megs)
2. Open Font Book, you can use Spotlight to find this program

Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 11.58.06 AM

3. In Font book go to the top and click File Add Fonts

Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 11.58.53 AM

4.  Now navigate to your desktop and select the folder we just dragged there.

Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 11.59.04 AM

Click Open.
5.  If there are any problems just check the box and click  You can pick Select all fonts, then click Install Checked.
Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 12.00.35 PM

6.  Lastly you need to restart your programs that use Fonts, or simply restart the entire machine and the new fonts will be present on Boot.

That’s it.

 

Lots of good Fonts, working on Handwriting, Cursive, great for worksheets.

fontgood

 

Windows 8 Atheros AR9485 Wireless Problems | Cannot Connect to Network

If you happened to buy a new laptop over the holiday seasons chances are you may have Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wireless adapter.¬¨‚Ć I have run across three machines, 2 HP’s and one Lenova that use this wireless adapter all three laptops were unable to connect to Wi-Fi.

When connecting a generic error simply states unable to connect to network.  Unfortunately the help option simply lists very basic things to try and troubleshoot when in fact the problem is in fact the driver for device.  This problem is not apparent because if you glance in Device Manager it will appear the device is working and if you attempt to auto update the device driver it will say it already has best driver.  After a few trial and errors I found a driver that worked for this device on all 3 laptops running windows 8 64 bit.

Here is the working device driver for the Qualcomm Atheros AR9485  Simply unzip the file and run the installer and the wireless will start working.

Some of my initial thoughts on the launch of Windows 8

In general the new consumer class Windows 8 fleet of machines available at retail have good price points but still seemed to be plagued with typical Windows OEM partner problems.  These machines still have lots of junk ware installed by default, Norton trial license, Babylon Search Engines, etc etc.

I also had a machine with a track pad that stopped working and also needed a driver update.

The new Metro  interface still seems a bit jarring and unnecessary for all users,  it works well on touch but seems like Microsoft should have a toggle setting to turn it off and let the user run a traditional desktop if they desire.  Overall my two cents is that Windows 8 future is still uncertain, although I should mention it is quick, boots fast and seems very stable once all drivers are loaded correctly.

Skyward Service Not Available | Fix for Webspeed Error | Memory Leaking wsisa.dll

Occasionally the Webspeed powered web side of Skyward will take a crash and users will be greeted with a message that simply says service not available.  Logging into the server itself you will see generic error messages relating to the wsisa.dll and some executable files attempt to use it.  Simply restarting IIS will fix this error and only takes a minute but the issue can still be annoying.   If you are running Server 2003 you may find that the wsisa.dll executable file is prone to memory leaks and after heavy usage or given enough time it will crash.   Without extensive debugging to find the exact source of the memory leak there is an easier fix which is simply to use. cgiip.exe instead of wsisa.dll.

You can do this by simply chaning the link

https://gcsdskyward.org:444/scripts/wsisa.dll/WService=wsEAplus/seplog01.w

to :

https://gcsdskyward.org:444/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=wsEAplus/seplog01.w

Notice that just past the word scripts I simply change wsisa.dll to cgiip.exe.  Both files can be used interchangeably and performance should be about the same, however I have found that cgiip.exe is more stable.  If you are running Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 (7.5) the wsisa.dll file has been improved  and this should not be a concern.  This fix seems to only apply for Server 2003 using IIS 6 and Webspeed.

If you are set on using wsisa.dll you can also set a scheduled task to reset the webserver once a day perhaps at 3Am, this should also keep skyward running and reset any memory leaks.  To do this create a batch file and place this command

iisreset /noforce.
Schedule a task to run this batch daily at a set time.  You could also do both switch to cgiip.exe and do schedule a daily reset which should keep the service running 99.9% of the time.

 

 

 

Server 2008 Hyper V and NTP Time Server / Time Issues

By default Server 2008 does not use a NTP Time Server to sync its clock but relies only on the internal clock. ¬¨‚ĆIf this server also houses VM images through Hyper V these images will by default pull time info from the host. ¬¨‚ĆTo me I have always like to have clocks synced to a NTP time server which just gives peace of mind that all machines, VM’s, etc will have the correct time. ¬¨‚ĆThis prevents issues with clients accessing resources or logging in being denied due to Kerberos or other time sensitive security measures.

Personally I have find this strange that there is not a simple GUI button to check to to enable this, the fix though is easy enough.  My instructions below will cause Server 2008 to use the time.windows.com NTP server for time syncing.

To Set Server 2008 to use a NTP Time Server in 3 easy steps.

1.  Edit the Registry (regedit)

2.  Now change these three registry keys

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config]
“AnnounceFlags”=dword:00000005 ¬¨‚Ć ¬¨‚Ć

(You are changing this from a 10 to a 5 )

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters]
“Type”=”NTP“

 (Again change the contents of this key to simply NTP)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpServer]
“Enabled”=dword:00000001

(This is by default a 0 you are changing to a 1).

3.  Last step open a command prompt with administrative access.

Net stop w32time
Net start w32time

 

I did find a windows support on this topic but it is a bit lengthly http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042

Norton / Symantec is Adware – Stay Away

I decided to do a quick post on this topic because I cannot count how many PC’s I have improved performance by simply removing all products by Norton\Symantec. ¬¨‚ĆWhy is Norton so bad you wonder? ¬¨‚ĆHere is the deal, in a nutshell Norton pays big money to vendors like HP, Acer, Dell etc to have their software preinstalled as a trial on new machines. ¬¨‚ĆWhen people get these machines from somewhere like BestBuy, a online vendor, Wal-Mart, ¬¨‚Ćyou name it they just click next and start using the computer. ¬¨‚ĆIn 30 days or so scary messages appear about your machine being unprotected, and that you must renew your subscription as the trial has expired. ¬¨‚ĆIf you ignore these messages they will return with Red X’s and other indicators to scare the user into thinking they must comply and give money. ¬¨‚ĆOkay so this is pretty much the definition of Ad-ware, ¬¨‚Ćmisleading messages, scare tactics, pre-installation all for a product that is sub-par. ¬¨‚ĆFor one it takes way too many system resources to run, ¬¨‚Ćin way too intrusive as it pops up safety and scanning messages frequently.

Example of a Bad Norton Product. Norton Security Suite I rate it 1 out of 10.  

But wait I thought you need virus protection on a PC?  Yes you do,  you just do not need a commercial product that is a resource hog, slows down your machine and is overpriced.  For home use you really cannot beat Microsoft Security Essentials.  This product is free, works, does not take up much system resources and updates along side your system updates automatically.  Further this product is fully supported by Microsoft, yes you get a good virus and spyware software, you get full support, and it costs nothing as it comes included with your licensed copy of Windows and/or your new computer.

If you are perhaps a bit anti-Mircrosoft AVG also makes a good free virus scanner from home, although it does not integrate as well it still does a nice job of working.

Security Essentials is something Microsoft should have released years ago,  when you purchase a 200$ OS or a new computer, support and anti-virus should be part of the package.  The multi-billion dollar Anti-Virus industry has resorted to aggressive ad campaigns and pre-installation adware methods to keep business flowing.  This is a shame as a company with this amount of resources has turned to adware gimmicks rather then true innovation to keep profits coming in.  In a nutshell the product they are selling is inferior and will slow down your computer,  further a better and fully supported product is free.

A Good Free Virus Scanner (as it should be) Microsoft Security Essentials.

Okay should here is my advice if you bought a new PC.

1. ¬¨‚ĆCover your ears and head out of Best Buy without buying a single add-on, ¬¨‚Ćthey will pitch a lot of extra’s Geek Squad, etc, etc. ¬¨‚ĆOther companies will do a similar song and dance. ¬¨‚ĆYou don’t need anything extra head home.

2.  Once you have your machine booted and are using windows immediately click on the Start Button, then Control Panel.  In Control Panel click on Programs, or directly on Uninstall a program.  In the list that pops up look for Trend Microsystems (also bad), Norton, Symantec.  And click on each program and choose Uninstall (Sometimes will say the word Change instead of Uninstall).

3.  Okay will the junk software removed, now visit Here and download and install Security Essentials.

Thats it you are done.

What if I already have a machine with a bad virus on it and need help removing it? ¬¨‚ĆAgain first use Security Essentials. ¬¨‚ĆIf virus persists download the free version of MalwareBytes (Can do so here). ¬¨‚ĆIf this doesn’t work go to Major Geeks and download the free program Combo Fix (do this last).

These do it yourself tips should be able to remove over 99% of all virus infections.

 

 

Server Rebuild – Hyper V

In a continuing effort to reduce the number of physical servers and move existing servers into flexible moveable vhd images running in Hyper-V -, I reconfigured the Destiny library catalog system server(http://www.geneseoschoollibrary.org).  Before installing the Windows Server 2008 I created a VHD image of the existing system and then loaded it as a Hyper-V image on another Hyper-V host.  Server is a Poweredge 2950 III with two Xeon chips totaling 8 logical cores.  Upgraded RAM to 16 gigs and enabled VT-X virtualization in bios.

This server is 4 years old and I decided to replace the Hard Drives with Western Digital RE4 drives and have them run in a RAID 10 configuration.

Copied Destiny library back to its original server now running as virtual machine with plans for the machine to host 3 other virtual machines.

There is one last older Pentium III based server left in the district and will plan to move it to a vhd image and run on this hyper-v host as well.

 

Decent Microsoft Apps for iOS | Skydrive & Photosynth

Apple, Google, and Microsoft continue to work hard to get you to store your media and information within each of their own respective cloud storage centers.¬¨‚Ć Recently Microsoft released Skydrive the iOS app.¬¨‚Ć Surprisingly this is a decent app that is pretty close to DropBox and offers 25 gigs of free storage compared to DropBox’s measly 2 gig’s free, or even iClouds 5 gigs free.¬¨‚Ć Yes that is correct Microsoft’s Skydrive is no cross platform, allows 25 free gigs of upload space and works well on iPad or iPhone.

Click the Picture to see the app in iTunes

 

I think the battle for attention and control of users data is really starting to heat up.  Ultimately this is probably a good move for Microsoft as it keeps its name and brand of products relevant in the mobile computing space where its flagship product has still yet to gain any momentum whatsoever.   Still at 25 free gigs of useable cloud storage space this may get a second look from a lot of users and may stop some of DropBoxes momentum.

Still despite it being a decent app there remains one major flaw,  Microsoft restricts an individual file size to be less than 100megs,  this limitation is not included in Dropbox and needs to be removed.  The truth is many users share and use files in the cloud over 100megs,  this restriction takes away from the huge allowance of 25 gigs in terms of overall functionality.  I must wonder why the restriction on file size at all with this cloud storage service?  It appears Microsoft wants to avoid movies and other large media files from being shared through its service which could be by design, perhaps for legal reasons, but overall it does take away from what looks like a very good product.

Microsoft also released an Photo panaroma app called Photosynth.  Again somewhat surprised but the app is really quite good and with a free price tag worth checking out.  Both apps currently are getting pretty good ratings in the iTunes store 4+.

Click the picture to see App in iTunes

ICalendar PHP and local Caching – WGet Download Files in Batch Script

I discovered some useful opensource utilities that are already included in most Linux distributions but are useful on Windows machines as well.¬¨‚Ć One example is WGet which is a command line utility that can retrieve a file online, this is useful as you can use it to create batch scripts to download updated files at certain intervals.¬¨‚Ć In my example I found a situation where I wanted to custom parse an ICS file using iCalendar PHP, to do this more efficiently and reliably instead of using a webcal:// based address I instead use WGET to download the file nightly and then use iCalendar’s PHP to parse it locally after it has been slightly modified.

One issue with WGet is that when running on Windows it requires a series of DLL files you may not have.¬† Trick here is to install openssl first Рand then use a precombiled complete binary.

Download WGET (Windows Binary)

OPENSSL for Windows – Binaries

iCalendar PHP does not appear to still be in active development but it is a open source project that does a excellent job of interpretting, displaying, subscribing, etc all forms of ICS files.  The latest build of iCalendar PHP is 2.4 RC 7 which you can find here.  I use this php engine to create calendar widgets and custom ics subscriptions from other calendars.

(Simple ICS Widget on HS page)

(iCalendar PHP)

 

WGet pulls the ICS data from the website via batch script.¬¨‚Ć Batch Script set to scheduled task nightly – although could be set for as frequent as needed.¬¨‚Ć This concept could be used to easily update url or spam blacklists, etc and them automatically update.¬¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ć For example you could set a batch script to pull and updated hosts file with blocked URL to download – then set the batch to run on login/logoff or daily – in effect creating custom filter on a machine with needing expensive filtering software.¬¨‚Ć Really lots of ideas I am surprised that future builds on windows just don’t include a similar command in the OS.

(Simple Batch Script using WGET)


Hyper V | Moving Old Servers to the Virtual World

The High School Server room contains two older PowerEdge 6400 Servers that are called HSERVER01 and HSERVER02.¬† These units have been workhorses and are the domain controllers, handle dns, dchp, active directory, file shares etc.¬† The machines are huge , Pentium 3 based, and over a decade old.¬† To phase these units out quietly with little to no disruption at all to the current setup I am converting them to Hyper V compatible machine images that will run virtually inside of a much more powerful R700 PowerEdge Server¬† (A virtual computer is a computer that runs inside of another computer).¬† To run these Server 2003 based machines inside of a Hyper V virtual environment just makes sense, for one these older units created enormous amounts of heat and are power hogs, the machines are enormous with three power supplies each (over 1000 watt used).¬† Secondly newer technology with multicore processors have more then enough horsepower to simply run the entire machine as a virtual machine Рmaking backup easier, making reboots quicker, management easier and greatly reducing the amount of electricity needed.¬† The R700 Poweredge server currently has 8 gigs of RAM (plan on upgrading to 16 Рpossibly 32) and has 16 logical processors, this is enormous processing power that dwarfs the power of all 4 physical Pentium 3 processors that were in the old machine.

First step to move machine to a virtual system was to use the Disk2VHD utility.  You can download the free utility here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415).  This machine will create VHD files for each of the logical drives on the server.  With the VHD files you need to boot up Server 2008 (R2) and setup the Hyper V service.  In the Hyper V service most of the options are pretty straightforward, assign a dedicated NIC for the network, configure devices, set boot order.  It can be a little tricky reassigning your SCSI devices as IDE and correctly booting without a blue screen but other than this works well.

Once it is booting correctly simply install the Hyper V Integrations services and reboot.

(Installing Integration Services)

(Hyper V running HSERVER02)

 

(Retired PowerEdge 6400 –Massive machine)

I plan to move HSERVER01 and the MANILLA server over to virtual world of Hyper V and this R700 will simultaneously run 3 virtual images and one core OS.  These servers are all huge power hungry inefficient machines of 10 years.  At the High School I hope to greatly reduce the load on the 20 AMP circuit which should make battery backup redundancy more efficient and effective.   Simply backing up the Hyper V host will backup up all virtual machines in the process making this process much more efficient.

 

 

< previous page — next page >

  • Recent Posts

  • Categories

  • RSS Roodhouse Tech Podcasts

  • RSS Roodhouse Tech Blog RSS feed

  • Archives

  • June 2025
    M T W T F S S
     1
    2345678
    9101112131415
    16171819202122
    23242526272829
    30  

  • Pages