Archive for August, 2009

It looks like I will need a windows backup solution for a small project soon. As you probably know I don’t typically do Windows so I am reaching out. I typically use rsync for most of my backup needs. To be more specific I like to use rsnapshot which is a wrapper around rsync. Have you ever wanted rsync on windows? What did you use.

I am aware of several options.

There is of course cygwin. Beyond cygwin it seems nasbackup (http://www.nasbackup.com) and deltacopy (http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp) were the best options I could find.

Do you have any suggestions? What other solutions for windows backup have you used. I don’t have a specific reason but I just cringe at the thought of using windows internal backup mechanism.

It took me a long time to hunt these down and I think default passwords should be freely available.

Aspire webpro (default ip is 172.16.0.10):

Administrator Username: ASPIRE

Administrator Password: 12345678

Extension Username: extension number

Extension Password: 1111

UltraMail (default ip is 192.168.1.250):

Service Number: 2000

System Password: CTL

I also found a manual for UltraMail, and a UserPro manual for programming the handsets with the web interface.

Hopefully none of you are stuck with one of these systems. Hopefully given the option you choose something like Asterisk. Hopefully if 1 and 2 are not true this information helps you.

I’ve been wiping a lot of hard drives recently. I use shred to do the job.

shred -n6 -z -v /dev/sdx

What do you do to your drives before disposing of them?

Wow I can’t believe these never made the top 40!

IBM One Hundred Percent Club

IBM anthem

March On With IBM

IBM rally song

Inspired by Ben Rockwoods comment today about the IBM Songbook

I am a big fan of chat support. I don’t have to drain my battery waiting on hold until its my turn in the queue. Plus when dealing with error messages its infinitely more helpful to be able to copy/paste to the agent. Sadly finding competent help is still an issue. Here is an excerpt from a recent chat support experience.

(8:39:41 PM) Sheldon He: The SSL will need to be re-issued, since they are IP specific.
(8:40:06 PM) Nick Anderson: ssl certificates are not tied to ip addresses
(8:40:56 PM) Sheldon He: Actually they are. They are domain and IP specific. That’s why it needs a dedicated IP.
(8:43:06 PM) Nick Anderson: ssl is just tied to a name, but you can only run one ssl cert per ip without the Server Name Indicator tls extension to openssl
(8:43:20 PM) Sheldon He: Well, according to our SSLs in the past, the SSL needs to be re-issued when you move from a Shared to a Reseller.
(8:45:40 PM) Sheldon He: I’m unable to change the settings here, this will require an admin. Please email them at [email protected] and we’ll be able to help you with this issue.

Luckily his final answer was correct and whoever answers the support emails was able to complete the ssl cert migration.

On a side note, its things like this that make me tell people to not use shared hosting accounts. Get yourself a VPS or a dedicated server if you want to do anything worth while.