The Blog Thing

I use MySQL version 5 for a number of databases and have been looking for a fast way to back them up and restore them.

What I wanted was the fastest possible way to create a copy of my databases and a relatively easy way to restore them.

I soon found mysqlhotcopy, but when copying all databases at once, it locks all tables during the copy operation. To circumvent this, I wrote a small Bash script that will execute mysqlhotcopy for every database separately, so the others remain accessible during the backup.

To speed things up, I tell mysqlhotcopy not to include indices, as I can easily recreate those when I need to restore a database.

The script runs from cron on a daily basis, is fairly simple and looks like this: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a long time user of Winamp Pro and used to like the product a lot. Until today, that is.
I installed the latest version, 5.5 and was unpleasantly surprised by a very large advertisement in the Winamp Dashboard.
In my innocence I started looking for an option to disable the ads, but that doesn’t appear to be there.
Don’t you find it strange that a paid for product contains ads? Well, I do anyway.
I’ve written Winamp support about this, but in all honesty don’t expect a satisfying answer.

In the mean time, I’ve resorted to a very old trick to disable the ads.

Windows has a so called HOSTS file and you can use that to fool Winamp (and lots of other applications) to try and get it’s data from a different site than programmed. I won’t explain the proces, but the key is that when looking for (for instance) “ads.winamp.com”, the program is fooled into contacting your local PC, which of course doesn’t serve any ads.
Hackers have been using this technique for years to try and fool you, you can put it to good use now

The thing is that you have to know where the ads come from, so you can insert the correct entries in the HOSTS file.
Luckily, others have gone before us and have created a HOSTS file that holds a huge amount of ad-serving system names. Enter the good people of MVPS.org.
At this link: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm your can get the HOSTS file and instrcutions on how to use it.
After installing the HOSTS file, the ads will no longer appear.

After upgrading my system to a new mainboard, Windows XP wouldn’t start anymore. It would briefly show the XP logo, change to black and reboot over and over.
This is nothing to be concerned about and is easily fixed using your Windows XP CD. Just start the system with the CD, and choose to repair your existing installation. Mind you, that is not the repair console, it’s the option on the next screen.

After the repair, Windows will boot again and you can install drivers for your new mainboard, graphics card, etc. Most of your applications will still work fine, except for some that use specific hardware (such as burner programs, CD emulators like Daemon Tools, UltraISO, etc).

The problem I had on two computers, is that Windows Automatic Updates (WAU) wouldn’t work anymore. Manually or fully automatic, it will tell you that there are lots (80+ in my case) of updates, will download them, and will fail to install any and all. The problem reported is something very general, like “Problem: A problem on your computer is preventing updates from being downloaded or installed” or something along those lines.

What has happened, it that for some reason some components (DLL’s) of WAU aren’t “registered” anymore. To fix this, copy the text below, do a “Start -> Run” and type “cmd” and Enter, and paste the text into the cmd text box that should appear. For every line a window will pop up, saying the the DLL was registered. Restart your computer and WAU should work fine.
The lines below assume that Windows XP is installed in C:\WINDOWS. If yours is in C:\WINNT or any other, change the lines accordingly.

regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuweb.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups2.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wucltui.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuapi.dll

I’ve started using Outlook 2007 and came across an issue that had me searching for a solution for a while. Maybe this post will help out someone

I regularly get quarantine reports from our Aladdin eSafe system. These include an HTML form to release email that has been quarantined, but shloudn’t have. In Outlook 2007, the forms don’t display and I couldn’t use the form anymore.
The reason is that Outlook 2007 doesn’t support HTML forms. The solution is fairly simple: view the message in a browser window.
To do so, choose “Other Actions” from the Action menu and then choose “view in browser”.
From there on, things will work as they used to in Outlook 2000/2003.