System Administration

How to free space on Disk C

February 20, 2016 No Comments

There are a lot of system stuff that just eat important space in Windows on disk C (if you have SSD and smaller C partition you don’t want to run out of space).

The best way is to create a junction (symbolic link) and to move some big folder to another partition (you need to have one first).

By doing this Windows will be fooled because you will get the same path but it will be shortcut (pointer) to another real location.

To do this move completely chosen folder to another partition and create symbolic link like this:

mklink /j c:\windows\MyMovedFolder d:\MyMovedStuff\MyMovedFolde

System Administration

Remove annoying Get Windows 10 tray icon

September 17, 2015 No Comments

Control Panel > Windows Update > Installed updates (at bottom left) -> find and remove KB3035583 (under Windows section) -> Restart computer
It can come again with next update so be careful and if you see it then right click on it (under Select the updates you want to install) and click Hide this update
As final check, see if you have a registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx and delete it.

System Administration

Creating virtual host aliases under Apache

July 10, 2015 No Comments

Sometimes you want to create folder alias for your website like this: /images to be mapped to /home/your_account/public_html/images.

To do this, you need to edit Apache httpd.conf file which is located at /etc/httpd/conf

It is clever to put all aliases in one file in the same directory and name them aliases.conf and then only to reference this file from httpd.conf.

You will include aliases.conf in httpd.conf like this:

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
    Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/alias
</IfModule>

You define alias in aliases.conf file like this:

Alias /images /home/your_account/public_html/images
<Directory "/home/your_account/public_html/images">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI Includes
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

System Administration

Custom php.ini in specific CPanel account

July 9, 2015 No Comments

Copy original (default) CPanel php.ini file from location: /usr/local/lib/php.ini to your account folder: /home/account_username/path_to_php_ini/
Add the following code to the .htaccess file within your account’s public_html folder: suPHP_ConfigPath /home/account_username/path_to_php_ini/
Change this php.ini file to suits your needs and That’s all folks!

Note:
replace everywhere ‘/home/account_username/path_to_php_ini/‘ with the appropriate path to your custom php.ini file)

System Administration

Re-keying and Re-issuing MultiSAN SSL certificate in CPanel

July 8, 2015 No Comments

I have lost 6 hours of my time when I was trying to add new MultiSAN SSL on server. We already used one and we just added one new SAN placeholder for one subdomain.

Server: CentOS Linux + CPanel

Entered new SAN, using saved CSR and Re-issued the SSL certificate
Went to https://panel.mydomain.com > SSL/TLS Manager and added the new SSL under SSL/TLS Manager > Certificates (CRT) > Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates.
Nothing helped because when I visited https://subdomain.mydomain.com it said that it is using old SSL certificate which has expired.
Tried everything, Re-keying, generating new CSR, few times downloading newly prepared SSL certificate, editing Apache httpd.conf file but nothing help.
After 6 hours I saw the last option: SSL/TLS Manager > Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS) > Manage SSL sites. Uploaded there all three things:
1. My SSL certificate
2. Decoded private key
3. My provider’s SSL certificate
Restart Apache web server

Voila! It finally worked!

What unfriendly user interface where all 4 options are equal and it is not obvious what needs to be done. Or maybe, I am the exception. Tried 3rd option all the time.

Hate these things, but on the other side I learned something new and you will spare some time if you come to the similar problem. Hope, you will find this post quickly!

I definitely wrote this post also for myself, it was not the first time I was searching for some solution and Google listed me my blog post 🙂

System Administration

Cannot resolve %windir%

January 16, 2015 1 Comment

I faced once strange problem that somehow system environment variable %windir% could not be resolved.

This means that all shortcuts that are pointing to C:\Windows\System32 will not work.

You will not be able to set it directly by clicking with right mouse button on Computer icon and you will get this message

windir

To solve this just open this directly from Start > Run… and set this environment variable

c:\Windows\System32\systempropertiesadvanced.exe

In my case %windir% was pointing to undefined %SystemRoot% so I just added it and make it point to C:\Windows

This didn’t helped. After the research I found out that length of my %PATH% variable was more then 2048 chars.

It must be bellow 2048 chars and when I deleted non-important paths it started working OK!

Conclusion:

Keep your system variables less then 204 chars in length!

System Administration

Hot to check if your Linux server is vulnerable regarding the BASH bug?

September 25, 2014 No Comments

Just type this command in your SSH shell

$ env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c 'echo hello'

If you got this output then you are safe:
bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt bash: error importing function definition for `x' hello

If you got this output then you are vulnerable and need to update:
vulnerable

Here is the tutorial how to do it:
https://brew.sh/

System Administration

Problems with Map Network Drive in Windows Server 2008R2

June 30, 2014 No Comments

To list all network shares use this command from Command Prompt:
net use

To delete specific network share
net use /delete \\SERVER_IP\YOUR_SHARE

If you map “\\SERVER_IP\SHARE1” as drive letter X using “user1” and “password1”, then try to map “\\SERVER_IP\SHARE2” (a different share) as drive letter Y using the same “user1” and “password1”, and you click the “connect using different credentials” checkbox in the Map Network Drive dialog box and specify “user1” and “password1”, you will get this INCORRECT ERROR MESSAGE that says “The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password”.

I figured out that once you have mapped to “SERVER_IP” using those credentials, you can map to different shares on the same server without re-specifying the credentials. This is NOT CLEAR from the “Map Network Drives” dialog box, which leads to users (like me, and I’m a programmer by trade) trying to enter the credentials again and getting this incorrect error message.

System Administration

Stop automatic rebooting of Windows 7 after Windows Update

June 30, 2014 No Comments

If you want your PC with Windows 7 operating system to work as server then you definitely want to stop automatic rebooting after Windows Update install new patches.

To do this you need to do the following:

Open the Registry Edit (WindowsKey + R, “regedit.exe“)
(Remember to be careful! DON’T change anything unless you know exactly what you’re doing!)
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Chances are that you’ll be missing these keys.
If keys WindowsUpdate\AU exist, go ahead to step 3
OTHERWISE, continue through these indented steps…
1. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
2. (Make sure the above key is highlighted and) go to the edit menu and choose New > Key
3. Name the key WindowsUpdate
4. Now, repeat the above steps, except highlight WindowsUpdate and name the next keyAU
With WindowsUpdate\AU highlighted, create a new 32-bit DWORD calledNoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
Right click on your newly created value and give it a value data of 1 (hexadecimal)
Double check all the steps to make sure you did everything EXACTLY how I explained it
Close Registry Editor

System Administration

Fixing Iconia W700P WI-FI unstable connectivity (losing connection)

April 25, 2014 No Comments

(source: menspsychology.com)

After my laptop died I was forced to work on Acer Iconia W700P tablet which is great piece of hardware (I wrote about it here) and after fresh installation I come to the problem that WI-FI network adapter was losing connectivity every 10 minutes. It was a real frustration so I searched for solution and found in one forum that you should try to do these two things:

Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings > Find your WI-Fi network adapter > Right click > Properties > Configure > Power Management > Turn off “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”
Control Panel > Power Options > Change plan settings (of your current plan) > Change advanced power settings > Wireless Adapter Settings > Power Saving Mode > choose Maximum performance (or not to turn it off)

These two advices didn’t help me so I went to Acer website and found the latest WI-FI driver for my model, unistalled previous driver in Device manager, restarted the machine, installed new driver and it is now stable and steady. Finally!

Have a good weekend!