Enable ActiveX in Windows Server 2008 R2

This is a classic example of "do what I say but don't follow what I do." ActiveX technology is not something that you will trust on the internet. You may use it in a trusted environment like on intranet but not the world wide web. When you download ISO files from MSDN you would need Microsoft File Transfer Manager which needs ActiveX to work. Windows Sever 2008 R2 and probably the older Windows Sever 2008, IE by default is configured to not allow execution of ActiveX control even if you enable in Internet Options. I can imagine that this is done to minimize the surface attack area of the machine.

To temporarily allow execution of ActiveX in IE, bring Server Manager and click on Configure IE ESC (Enhanced Security Manager).

Then enable the appropriate group - for example below screen shows that for Administrators IE ESC is disabled. Open/close IE so that the changes will take effect.

References:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/agileer/archive/2008/12/05/how-to-enable-activex-controls-on-windows-server-2008.aspx

TFS Express 2012 Express limits

TFS Express 2012 Express limits

• Is limited to no more than 5 named users.
• Only supports SQL Server Express Edition (which we’ll install for you, if you don’t have it)
• Can only be installed on a single server (no multi-server configurations)
• Excludes the TFS Proxy and the new Preemptive analytics add-on.

References:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10926189/whats-missing-in-tfs-express
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/02/23/coming-soon-tfs-express.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/TechOff/Got-some-questions-about-TFS-Express-2012

Samba share not working after reboot on Ubuntu 12.10

So I just installed Samba server on Ubuntu 12.10, configured it, restarted the daemon and everything is happy.

But when I reboot the machine, Samba share always stops working. Restarting the daemon will make it work. I am not sure what's going but adding the following in sbmd.conf seems to fix it.

start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE=eth0)

Fixing staf: error while loading shared libraries: libSTAF.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

 Assuming you have installed STAF in Lubuntu (13.04 in my case), running staf local ping ping you may observe the following error:

staf: error while loading shared libraries: libSTAF.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

To fix this, modify/add LD_LIBRARY_PATH to ~/.bashrc like:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/staf/lib"

Starting STAF for given user on logon in Lubuntu

One way of starting STAF in Lubuntu for a given user is to edit ~/.profile, thus say add the following line towards the end of the file.

/usr/local/staf/startSTAFProc.sh

Set Lubuntu to autologon

To set Lubuntu (tested using 13.04 minimal install) to auto-logon, change /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, see below for samle cofiguration.

[SeatDefaults]
autologin-user=timus
autologin-timeout=0
user-session=Lubuntu
greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

References:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1472113

Recording VNC session

Recording VNC session

1. sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
2. sudo apt-get install python-dev
3. sudo easy_install vnc2flv
4. sudo apt-get install vlc
5. Create ~/vnc/passwd (text file) with the clear text password
6. flvrec.py -P ~/vnc/passwd <IP>

In Ubuntu, stop recording by sending SIGINT, like kill -s SIGINT 7705.
Where 7705 is the process ID of the python flvrec.py run.

The following packages have been kept back

In Ubuntu (or Debian and other derivatives), you might observe the following message when performing sudo apt-get upgrade.

The following packages have been kept back

To get rid of this one, do:

$: sudo apt-get install <package name(s)>

For example, below was one of the error messages I am getting:

The following packages have been kept back
    linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic

To fix this do:

$: sudo apt-get linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic