http://www.claudiokuenzler.com Online portfolio of Claudio Kuenzler en-en http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/graph/content/rss.png http://www.claudiokuenzler.com http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=60 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=60 Déjŕ vu. This is the expression used in English and German for an event, which already happened exactly like this (or which is felt as having already experienced). In French it's a simple sentence saying 'already seen'. Both cases describe perfectly my HP Blade experience. As I already described in an old blog post (dated Nov 30th 2008) I've had tons of problems with HP Blade servers. The nightmare seems to continue. New company. Newer blade system. Still HP. Still problems. For several months now several Blade servers show a degraded status, caused by memory problems. Once I described the problem to HP's technician, he admits that the Enclosure might have a problem and that everything has to be upgraded. I mean everything, the whole damn thing: Internal switches, ILO/BIOS/Firmwares of each Blade server and the Enclosure firmware itself. Meaning: Several downtimes. Downtime? Wasn't that the word used by the HP vendor visiting us last week in combination with the word 'no'? I r... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:18:47 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=59 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=59 HTTP Forwards are being used a lot. And it's even very easy to use the actual path if your domain or URL has changed for example. So let's say you are using a free hoster and you want to forward your webpages to another domain: http://username.mywebhost.bla/files/page1.html -gt; has to be pointed to http://www.mydomain.info/files/page1.html Note that only the domain name changes. The problem in this situation was, that mod_rewrite and PHP is not activated on the free hoster server (username.mywebhost.bla). So we have to find another solution. Instead of changing each page of the website and set a meta forwarding to the new URL (this could take a while depending on the size of your website!) there is still the ability to use a JavaScript code. You can let JavaScript make the output of the meta forwarding, altogether with the actual path. This looks like this: amp;lt;script language='javascript'amp;gt; var path = location.pathname; document.write(quot;amp;lt;meta http-eq... Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:48:37 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=58 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=58 So here we go again. As I already let out my frustration about a previous SUN support case, my bad experience with SUN seems to continue. Well everybody in the IT-world is aware that Sun has been overtaken, flagged, purchased, slaughtered (and killed?) by Oracle. But I didn't imagine in my dreams that SUN would just stop to execute customer orders or to satisfy clients. In fact, I just opened a hardware support case with Sun, describing that a sensor of a StorageTek has detected a dying battery which has to be replaced. No problem I thought. -gt; Contacted Sun's Customer Support by e-mail. -gt; Answer from Sun after 40mins, saying the maintenance contract ended. -gt; Another e-mail to apologize we forgot to check that and if I could have an offer for the spare part (or that my request gets forwarded to the concerned dept) -gt; Final answer from Sun: quot;bedingt durch die Uebernahme durch die Firma Oracle bieten wir diesen Service seit dem 01. Februar nicht mehr an. quot; Tra... Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:30:51 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=57 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=57 Today, the first time for a long while, I am again in the need to make a scheduled shutdown of a physical ESXi server. Strangely it seems that this function disappeared out of the vSphere Client. I'm pretty sure, it worked with one of the first VirtualCenter versions. But after a bit of research I found some hints about the vSphere CLI SDK. After a bit of testing I figured out how it works and it works just great. Now I'm able to schedule a cronjob, launching the reboot or shutdown command fully automated. To be able to shutdown or reboot, you have to enter maintenance mode. The command looks like this: /usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/host/hostops.pl --server VCENTER_SERVER --target_host NAME_OF_ESX_HOST --operation enter_maintenance --username VCENTER_USER --password VCENTER_PASSWORD Note, that for the --target_host you mustn't use the IP-address of the ESX/i server but the name used in the VirtualCenter configuration (as you see it in your vSphere Client). Now we make the same fo... Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:34:45 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=56 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=56 Well I've redone some of the tests of the PHP script delapacheuserfiles.php today - with the result of finding some bugs in my own script. D'oh! One of the most important bug is the following: When you launch the script and the root-folder (the lowest folder which is owned by the apache user) is not chmodded 777, the sub-files and sub-folders within will be deleted BUT this folder itself will stay as it is. Even the permissions will stay the same, so it's not even possible to delete it via FTP. I've now changed the handling for the lowest apache-user-owned folder. In some cases it won't be deleted, but the permissions will be changed so the FTP user can still delete it. New updated version can be found in IT Howto's / PHP Script: Delete files and folders created by Apache user.... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:27:20 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=55 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=55 There is one problem on shared hosting servers with Apache and PHP running on it: If a PHP script creates files and folders the owner of those created files is the user under which Apache is running, that's mostly www-data or wwwrun. User's accessing their webaccount by ftp and wanting to delete such files receive a permission denied error - because (of course) they're not allowed to delete those files. Here an example of an ls -l output: -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 2010-01-16 18:30 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 2010-01-16 18:30 file2 -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 2010-01-16 18:30 file3 drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K 2010-01-16 18:30 testfolder1 drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K 2010-01-16 18:30 testfolder2 drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K 2010-01-16 18:30 testfolder3 So if you're someone who was seeking for a solution when you can't delete the files with your ftp user, this is it! Find more information in IT Howto's / PHP Script: Delete files a... Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:56:44 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=54 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=54 As the technical skilled Gmail (Google Mail) users know, one of the few disadvantages of Gmail is the use of external e-mail addresses. Example: If I wanted to send an e-mail to someone with an e-mail address say mailtest@claudiokuenzler.com via my Gmail account, the recipient would see in the mail header that the mail came from my gmail address. Even worse: If someone uses Outlook, in the e-mail it would be written as following: From: myaddress@gmail.com on behalf of Claudio Kuenzler [mailtest@claudiokuenzler.com] That just doesn't look professional, right? Today I discovered that Gmail has changed its settings page (Settings-gt;Accounts and Import). You are now able to add (or edit) an e-mail address where you may set your own smtp server. This way, outgoing e-mails sent on your Gmail account pass via your real e-mail server, where your domain is hosted. Yippee!! ... Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:26:25 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=53 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=53 I've spent a lot of hours these last two days trying to install Zend Optimizer on a Linux server (x64-64) with Apache 2.2 using the worker MPM mode. The actual installed PHP version on this server is 5.2.11. After downloading the newest Zend Optimizer (version 3.3.9) from www.zend.com, you may follow the installation doc but it won't work. So I found hints that Zend Optimizer isn't compatible with a) the Apache2 worker and b) PHP version higher than 5.2.9. Those hints only affect Zend Optimizer versions below 3.3 though, so it should have worked with 3.3.9. However, after not receiving any answers in the Zend support forum I continued my research. I've tried it with a way older version (3.2.6) but here I got the problems with the worker module. With a little trick I was able to download the version 3.3.0 from the Zend website (hidden download) and what a surprise: This version works! Summary: If you want to install and use Zend Optimizer on your Apache 2.2 webserver (with MPM... Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:34:22 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=52 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=52 So I'm back from my vacation and I have received a lot of e-mails from users of the Equallogic plugin for Nagios. As I previously wrote, there is a problem with checking an Equallogic which has several members - the check responses were not programmed to fetch several answers. I've as well asked Dell if that behavior is normal or if it is a bug and they assured me on a phone conversation that this is the quot;architecture of Equallogicquot; to give answers for all members. Luckily I don't even have to tear out even more hair off my head - I already got someone who fixed the plugin to support multiple members. Here I'd like to thank Mathias Sundman for his work adapting the plugin to support multiple devices and Scott Sawin who was the first one mentioning this problem and did a lot of tests for me. You will find the updated plugin in the IT Howto section.... Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:23:30 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=51 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=51 In the last few days I've gotten some e-mails from other sysadmins who are using the check_equallogic Nagios plugin. They informed me, that some checks don't work when there is more than one member in a group. After some checks, it looks like an Equallogic device responds for ALL other members as well, even if you check the eth0-address directly. I contacted the Dell support to get some further information about that, if this is supposed to happen. Seems strange to me (as well as to the other admins) but let's wait for the official answer from Dell.... Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:14:42 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=50 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=50 As previously announced, I was working on a Nagios plugin to check a Dell Equallogic SAN. Well, I consider it to be done, at least to check the most important things. Funny thing is, that the day I actually started to use the plugin (Nov 19) it already showed me a DISK CRITICAL and I was wondering, where in the plugin I made a mistake. But actually it was a real disk error. So already from the first day on it's a proven plugin! You find the documentation and download link of the check_equallogic Nagios Plugin in the category IT Howto's.... Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:29:09 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=49 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=49 Hardware defects are never really funny - but you anyway have to handle them and get the machine back to quot;normalquot; as soon as possible. The declaration of quot;asapquot; is very different, depending on which company you're dealing with. In the last couple days I've had two different support cases, one with SUN and one with DELL - and hell! What a difference! I've opened the case with SUN on November 6th, gave information about the serial number and type of the server, described the problem (hardware fault) and delivered the Linux kernel logs describing the crash. I had to wait 10 (!!!!) days to get an answer saying I have to upgrade the BIOS and other hardware firmwares. I did as said the following day with the same result: Server crashes. And since then I'm again waiting for a response. The second case concerns DELL. My Nagios plugin (check_equallogic, soon generally available) detected a Disk failure. I confirmed this on the Group Manager and really, a disk was showing ... Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:00:35 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=48 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=48 Since not even one month Windows 7 was officially released for the public and is available in stores. Today was the first time, I actually had to work with Windows 7 and ran right into the first problem: NTLM Authentication against a Squid Proxy Server. Each time I started IE (8), a Pop Up would ask me for my login credentials. Even when I entered them, no website was shown, instead the Po Pup came back. I checked the option in IE to allow credentials to be passed further (Tools-gt;Internet Options-gt;Advanced-gt;Security/Enable Integrated Windows Authentication) and it was checked, therefore activated. What could it be? Then I found the following forum post: quot;The problem is the autentificación NTLM of Windows7. It is necessary to create the following key in the registry to solve itquot;. This is the registry key you have to set yourself: In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa create a new DWORD value named LmCompatibilityLevel and set the value to 1. ... Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:40:04 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=47 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=47 I've recently searched for a Nagios plugin which checks the status of a Dell Equallogic - without any success. Probably the first time, I haven't found a plugin. Neither on NagiosExchange (or now MonitoringExchange) nor somewhere else via Google. Solution? Write the plugin myself! I will keep you posted when I'm finished.... Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:38:25 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=46 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=46 As the time changes, conditions change as well mankind to adapt, choosing heaven or hell Early darkness, fulfilled with everlasting nights will take over these days, turn on the lights Coldness will hold in, will each of us do harm Every soul living blank, will be missing the sun And as desperate thoughts seek sun with cries We all know darker times in front of us it lies... Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:00:53 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=45 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=45 I've just wondered about this error message in my Postfix logs and couldn't at the begin figure out, why I see these error messages. It happened for EVERY incoming e-mail, therefore they were temporary rejected. I googled but couldn't find anything relating until I realized that postgrey (Greylisting function for Postfix) was not started. So if you are using Postgrey on your mailserver and you see quot;450 Server configuration problemquot; in your maillogs, check that Postgrey is actually running ;-)... Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:42:26 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=44 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=44 There are lots of Anti-Spam-Solutions out there and the past few months I've excessively digged into this topic and have set up a big anti-spam system. SpamAssassin is one of the most used solutions against spam. Of course, SA itself isn't enough at all but it helps you out in case some spams broke through your first wall (e.g. RBL's). Unfortunately, I haven't found many updates rulesets for SA the last months and SARE seems to be down, too. So over the past weeks I wrote my own ruleset and added several regex into it. Maybe someone out there will find this handy and wants to reuse it. Here's a brief description and the download to it. Have fun. Fight spam.... Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:42:42 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=43 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=43 The website Atelier2.ch was the first commercial website I've ever done, at the funny age of 13 or 14. With it, I've received my first official payment and I was sooo happy with it. Looking back at it now, it was a LOT of work, especially to do all the scanning of pictures (Digicams only just started). It was all done with static websites and with frames (!), my god, what a layout hehe. Time passes by, I get older and got lots of more experience doing websites. That is now, 10 years later, the big opportunity to relaunch the website, and it's done! The old and the new website layouts, 1999 and 2009 As you see in the picture, it looks very different now. The whole new website is dynamical with database access in the background and a fully implemented (and self-programmed) cms system. A big difference to the old one ;-). Oh yeah, before I forget: Congratulations for being more than 10 years online now!!! Not too many websites can say that.... Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:48:44 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=42 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=42 I knew this would happen someday but I was always hoping it never would. Since I live in an apartment on the 3rd floor and my cat is always running around on the edge of the balcony, I knew it is just a matter of time until he slips and will fall down. So happened yesterday night, when he was outside of the window. The ledge is rather big so I'm still surprised that he fell down, maybe he got scared of something and then fell. So he must have been quot;flying downquot; for around 3 seconds asking himself 'Hey.. Whats going on? What am I doing here? Why do I feel so light?' BUMM! And he lands (luckily) on the grass part behind the building. At this time we realized he fell down and got a light to search for him. Indeed, he was on the ground, looking up to the window. Of course I ran down and outside immediately, searching for him, worried if he was hurt. He seemed OK but how scared he was.. But once he was in my arms he surprisingly (and annoyingly) started to get excited and he seem... Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:34:55 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=41 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=41 What a black weekend that was! I know it is meanwhile Thursday but it still is worth a later blog entry. I've planned a maintenance to upgrade 4 HP Blade servers (480c) from ESX 3.5 U2 to ESX 4.0 build 171294. In the upgrade test done last Friday everything went well so it was a GO for the production servers on the weekend. The first two servers didn't cause any problems at all. It just took a LONG time to upgrade all the VM's to Virtual Machine Version 7 afterwards. Let me give you a hint here: Once the ESX is up again running on ESX 4.0: Start the VM's and gather information about the current network settings. Then upgrade VMware-Tools, reboot VM. After that upgrade the virtual hardware and boot the VM again. Depending on the VM it will install new hardware once logged in and will reboot (Windows VM's did that). When the VM is finally up again, VERIFIY the network settings. It is possible that they were overridden or set to DHCP.. OK, we continue... With the next server ... Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:14:43 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=40 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=40 I recently had the chance to be at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival and followed the concert of Ray Parker Jr. Great funky tones, some Rock, great music. At the end of the concert, of course, he played his most famous song quot;Ghostbustersquot;. This groovy song moved my ass - I still like this song after so many years. And that's when I thought: I should redo my research about a new movie! It was 2 years ago when I first did a research with a sad end: Dan Aykroyd already wanted to film a third Ghostbusters movie some years ago but ONLY with the original crew. Bill Murray always refused to play in a sequel, so the idea died. And now, in July 2009, after that concert in Montreux, I decided to check it again and: WOW! Ghostbusters III is in production! With the same crew! The state is currently quot;scriptingquot;, so they're writing the script of the film. Planned movie release: 2012! Whohooo! Who're you gonna call? ... Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:36:38 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=39 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=39 Finally! After months of wait for the return of my favourite tv series, it's finally done: Eureka is back! Hurray!! No clue why the SciFi channel, now called Syfy, stopped the production after the first 8 episodes of season 3 - the season of the new episodes aired on SciFi are now called quot;Season 3.5quot;. If you have no clue what Eureka is, check out the official website on syfy.com.... Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:59:51 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=38 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=38 I'm currently setting up a new anti-spam/anti-virus server. Therefore I have the chance to use a completely new domain to make a test... I wonder how many spam mails I will get within the next hours and days when I now write the following e-mail address to a public blog: paul@openair-kinos.ch Now come here, all you spam-bots outside! :-))... Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:22:06 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=37 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=37 Since the breakdown of my old SonyEricsson V800 in 2007, I have been using a Qtek 9000, a huge stone called Smartphone with a Windows Mobile 2003 Edition on it. It has been in my pocket for the last 6 years and it has been running since then. But time goes on and newer/better/faster phones are available. For the last two months I have been thinking about doing what everybody does and buy an iPhone. Or do something new and choose an Android phone. My decision was leaning towards the HTC Magic which is using the Android platform but last week, Apple announced the new iPhone 3Gs (Speed) with video, faster OS and other small improvements. iPhone 3Gs Pro and Contras ++ Easy to use ++ Many satisfied other customers (proven in business) ++ Multi-Touch ++ Huge internal disk (16GB for the one I am interested) ++ A huge list of applications to install from AppStore -- Only one application open (lying in front of the others) -- Dependent on Apple's will -- U must use iTunes -- No ... Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:58:50 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=36 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=36 I've recently decided to move on with my current job situation. In the past months I was unfortunately almost not able to work with Linux or OpenSource products - something what my quot;business heartquot; is beating for and I think is very important in the IT industry. To not lose my knowledge I was working hard for in the past years I decided to move on and quit my job (that was in march). Tomorrow, 1st of may 2009, I will start my new position as Linux Engineer in an internationally well recognized trading company. There will be way more responsibilities lying on my shoulders but I am ready for it! Wish me luck and success. ... Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:28:22 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=35 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=35 This week I'm on call service, that means, in case of questions or problem I must answer the phone calls starting at 6pm and ending 8am. Usually it is quiet. But this morning at 7.45am I received a call. Here's the call log: gt; Hello, this is Claudio from the IT. - Yes, hello. I have a problem with my computer. I did not shut it down yesterday because someone had to create a subfolder with my 10'000 mails. Now it is not working anymore! gt; OK, what is not working anymore? What do you see on your screen? - Everything is black and there's a yellow thing moving around. gt; *thinking: this must be the screensaver!* I think your screensaver is active. Did you already press a key on your keyboard? - No. gt; Could you please press a button on the keyboard? - Ah! Now it looks normal again! Thank you! This is not a joke, this is really what happened this morning! It's 2009 and there's still people out there who don't know screensavers. That's my personal lesson today =).... Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:24:40 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=34 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=34 So here's now an update to the history of the Windows 7 Beta installation which crashed (see the last blog entry). The failed installation was actually caused by a defect DVD which I've received from a Microsoft employee. It was an original Beta DVD, not a copy, so I thought quot;that must workquot;. I've now downloaded the Iso-file and burnt a completely new DVD and installed Windows 7... with the following results: - Installation was VERY easy and fast. After 30mins my system was complete and I could log myself in. - The boot of the computer takes 35seconds until the logon screen appears. After the logon it took another 12 seconds until the system was ready and was not loading apps anymore. It is fast but of course the machine is empty. - The installation of Firefox took 5 seconds - compared to a new installed Windows XP that is rapidly faster! - The mix between shortcut icon and open program is a thing to adapt but it is a step into the good direction, it is better for th... Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:05:06 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=33 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=33 Tonight I've told myself: Let's test Windows 7! I've recently received the Windows 7 Beta from a Microsoft seller and thought, oh well, let's give it a try. But how the heck am I supposed to test it when it won't install?!!! After 50% of expanding installation files, I receive an error: Install Windows Windows cannot install required files. The file may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all files required for an installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x80070570 Oh great! I've of course redone the installation with the same result. And it is an official Microsoft Beta DVD, not just a downloaded version... Nice start!... Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:29:20 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=32 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=32 When I was young (around 6-8 years) I have seen some movies which stayed in my memories. Without ever knowing what movies they were. Today I finally started my research - with success! Thanks to Internet and the good combination of keywords I've finally found the names of these movies! The Computer wore Tennis shoes (1969) One of my favourite movies when I was a kid. Pretty difficult to find this one! The only thing I remembered of this movie was, that a boy got an electro shock when touching a computer and somehow all the data information of this computer got in his brain. He then won several knowledge quizzes. The movie was from Walt Disney. I've found the next three movies through the list of Disney feature films on Wikipedia. The Cat from outer Space (1978) This was pretty easy to find since there are not too many movies with a cat from outer space ;-) Flight of the Navigator (1986) I've had nightmares of this movie! I still remember this one scene when the boy i... Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:35:17 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=31 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=31 The network installation in my apartment is not the easiest one to describe... Due to a really bad planned power and phone line architecture in this building of the 70's, I was forced to set up two different networks: A wired one for the printer and a NAS device and a wireless LAN for accessing the Internet. The problem: The wired LAN has a higher priority to connect to foreign networks so whenever I plugged the network cable, I got disconnected from Internet by WLAN. A solution, how to use both networks at the same time without being disconnected can now be found in this new How To: Use both wired LAN and WLAN connection and use WLAN for Internet Access.... Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:53:33 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=30 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=30 Today I ran into a VMware problem. When using shared virtual disks between two (or more) VM's and you want to increase the size of a shared disk, the VM's will not boot anymore. You get an error message which starts like this: Vmware ESX server cannot open the virtual disk quot;vmfs/volumes/.../vm1/vm1_2.vmdkquot; for clustering I made a workaround to solve that problem. You will find that in the Howto: Error on boot of VM: ESX server cannot open the virtual disk for clustering.... Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:24:17 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=29 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=29 Yesterday was the official start of the 2009's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. And today, as I was waiting for the bus, I saw the following poster: This poster shows without doubt what the demonstrators want to do: They want to crack the quot;glass of the richquot;, demolish it. As they announce, they want to gather in quot;rue de Mont-Blancquot;, next to all the very expensive shops and businesses. The intention seems clear: They want to break things. In my opinion, this is once more the willingness of chaotics to vandalize something - the WEF is just a good excuse for a so called quot;demonstrationquot;. The spoiled Swiss youth doesn't know what to do - most of them don't even know what the WEF is doing. Surely, the WEF deserves skepticism but those people are just once more showing their disability to talk.... Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:56:41 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=28 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=28 Yes indeed, the rush hour in the morning can be a dangerous thing! At least from what I saw this morning in Geneva's main station at 8.10am. What happened? So the IR (Inter Regional) train arrives and several hundred people are taking the (way too!) tiny exit off the platforms. The people have to wait in front of the escalators because there is only one escalator going down - the other one is going up. When it is finally my turn I stand on the right hand side of it and taking the ride down. 2m before the end I suddenly see a woman who's got her shoe tie stuck in the escalator (as we see it usually with kids). Some men try to help her but the escalator is still running, so a bunch of people are crashing into the standing people in front. At this moment I just get trough and am able to watch the scene. I'm looking for a red quot;stopquot; or quot;emergencyquot; button on the escalator, but don't see anything. A woman see's a button next to the escalator and pushes it. You'd never gues... Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:53:43 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=27 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=27 Yes we can! The USA finally got a president for whom actually people voted and not a bunch of republican judges. I've followed Barack Obama's race to the White House since the begin. It started with a thought quot;Hey, this guy is good!quot; which went on to hope quot;He could change America and the world!quot; which turned to fascination for this man, whose speeches are incredible, smart and full of emotions. It is now two days ago, that Obama got sworn in as 44th president of the United States. The minutes the inauguration took place, I opened a big letter from my mother - surprise, there's a chocolate bar of Obama inside! At least that way I was a bit connected personally with the inauguration. Sweet! ... Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:34:22 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=26 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=26 Yesterday I saw that PHP 5.2.8 was released - after last week's PHP 5.2.7 which was buggy if the magic_quotes were enabled. Oh well, that can happen. So now 5.2.8 is out and let's enjoy that! (enjoy = install, test it). I have compiled PHP for I don't remember how many times so it's like sleepwalking to me. But yesterday it was different. What happened? So I started the configure, followed by the make and of course the make install. At the end of the make install I got the following output on my shell session: Wrote PEAR system config file at: /usr/etc/pear.conf You may want to add: /usr/lib/php to your php.ini include_path Installing PDO headers: /usr/include/php/ext/pdo/ Installing ZIP headers: /usr/include/php/ext/zip/lib hmmm hmmm hmmm...? What does this hmmm mean? It's obviously a small bug according to the bug #46810 on bugs.php.net. It does not harm your PHP installation but still.. where does this quot;hmmmquot; come from? The comment of PHP D... Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:37:26 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=25 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=25 Last week I've received a mail from a customer complaining, that his MySQL entries are not correctly read out on his webpage (Umlaut problems, e.g. ä ü é). First I thought there is a problem with his website charset but nope, all is set to ISO-8859-1 (his website AND of course the MySQL DB/Table/Field). He told me he does the entries not via a web form but direct via phpMyAdmin. I recently installed the latest version 3.1.0 so my guess was now, that there is a problem with this version. After some testing with phpMyAdmin version 2.5.7-pl1, 2.11.9.3 and 3.1.0 I can now summarize this: - 2.5.7-pl1: This old and outdated version shows the phpMyAdmin website with a standard HTML output of iso-8859-1. The Umlaut entries you do manually direct via phpMyAdmin are correct and can be read out without problems. - 2.11.9.3: This is the newest phpMyAdmin 2 version. It shows the phpMyAdmin website with a standard HTML output of utf-8. The Umlaut entries you do manually direct via phpMyAdmin ... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:00:34 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=24 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=24 In the past week I've been fighting 4 days with a HP blade server and there is no end of the story yet. I've never liked the whole Blade idea, don't ask me why, I don't know it. But last week I got the confirmation to not like Blade systems. What happened? First there was a server crash. A Blade server had a malfunctions and shut down. The power LED turned to red. So I call the support and instead of coming to us and repairing the server they want us to make a test with another enclosure. The next day the tech guy came and confirmed that there is a problem with the affected blade server. He took the server with him to replace the motherboard. The next day another tech guy comes by and we slide the blade into the enclosure - nothing happens. Oh! Now there is a problem with the enclosure! I got told we should reboot the whole enclosure - That means to shut down all the other blade servers as well. Before we do that I decided to try to power up the blade server in another enclosure... Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:42:37 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=23 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=23 The snow has already melted but the cold stayed. What happens if you are outside in the cold wind waiting for a bus or a train? That's right: You're thinking of vacation. So it was about time to upload the pictures of our vacations. It was kinda hard to only upload a few pictures - with two cameras we took around 800 pictures. Don't worry, you won't have to look through 800 pix, they're about 65. So if you ever wanted to see some pictures made in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia or New York - here's your chance. You will find the gallery under Travelling-gt;Baltimore/Washington D.C./Philadelphia/New York USA.... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:20:50 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=22 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=22 As of right now, while I am looking outside of the window, snow is still falling and by now roofs, lands and even streets are white. It looks like it's gonna snow the whole night so good luck for the traffic tomorrow :-/ It's the first time it really snows here this year and I wonder what kind of winter we will have this time. I suppose, this year it's gonna be freezing cold with a lot of snow. As long as my Mario Kart Wii works I don't care =). Update monday morning: Something must have happened in the night. There was almost no snow anymore this morning, it was rather raining than snowing. But I saw that there's a lot of snow in the east of Switzerland where I lived before. So strange...... Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:36:09 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=21 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=21 If you read this, you already see the changes I have made yesterday of course. It's nothing big, the changes are simply more user friendly. One thing I changed is the title of each blog entry. It appears now a bit bigger so it should be easier now to see where a new blog entry starts. The second thing is a categorization of the blog entries. You are now able to select a category in the yellow highlighted row. The category you're interested in (e.g. Internet) will show all the blog entries with the topic Internet. ... Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:21:12 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=20 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=20 What a shock yesterday when I opened my Gmail account and everything was in blue! First I blamed my cat for probably having walked on my keyboard or attacked my mouse (computer mouse!) as he does that sometimes. But let's solve that.. my cat must have clicked something hehe. I opened the settings and there was nothing to change the colors or the Gmail layout - and I didn't select anything in the labs to change the colors of my Inbox automatically. So I did a log out and after I logged myself in again there it was: A new feature has been enabled to use themes (different layouts) for your Gmail! The one who has been set automatically (a dark blue one) sucks but there are really some nice ones! Nice little gift from Google before the Christmas time, thanks!... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:42:56 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=19 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=19 Last week I ran into problems with a virtual machine to create snapshots, the buttons were simply disabled and the whole function to create snapshots seemed to be disappeared - only for this particular VM though. After comparing the config files (vmx) of two different vm's, I figured out, it must be something with the VirtualHardware version number. To solve this problem, just follow this howto. Enjoy your weekend!... Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:41:28 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=18 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=18 If you are someone out there who could only see green videos after installing an ASUS EAH 2400 Pro then you're helped with that now! Under this HowTo I describe what you have to do to finally watch normal videos without a green layer again! It took me a while to figure that out...... Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:43:44 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=17 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=17 Tuesday 4th of November 2008. Election Day. Or, in other words: America's chance to prove that the American people learned from what happened 8 years ago and won't make the same mistake again. The chance to prove quot;we learn from mistakesquot; or worse... to prove the stupidity of its citizens with voting for another George W. Bush (as a senator McCain voted 92% similar to Bush). It's hard to admit but I put all my faith and hope into some million voters now. I still love the USA as a country but if its people vote again for the wrong guy.. gosh - I will think about it four times before I go visit this country next time. Point. End. Go vote now!... Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:30:05 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=16 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=16 Finally future transportation systems (meanwhile old again) have made it to Switzerland. Yesterday was the public opening of the first subway in this country, called quot;M2quot; in Lausanne (in the French part of Switzerland). Let's make a little history. The first subway (or métro) was opened 1863 in London and it still runs. The quot;tubequot; is 145 old! But let's be happy and celebrate - as yesterday some did with drinking champagne at 5.20am. Ewwah! But I have to admit, this transportation system is nice. It's way faster than the bus and you don't have to wait in the cold anymore. Plus: It looks nice (now! let's review that in 4 years again) and it gives you the feeling to finally be a part of the future. Enough of words. Lets ride it!!... Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:41:10 +0100 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=15 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=15 Here's a little note to all of you out there who might be in a project transferring the contents of a webserver (Websites, EMails, and so on) to another webserver. The administration software is Confixx. After the transfer we experienced the following problems: - The customer vhosts had the wrong IP's. You can solve this problem when you update the IP addresses in the MySQL DB confixx in the tables quot;kundenquot; and quot;resellerquot;. - PHP Safe Mode is on. I'm currently still trying to get to know where this setting is coming from. As a temporary fix I set a httpd_special entry to every customer quot;PHP Safe Mode offquot;. - Some problems with the email settings of customers. But this is mainly clientside (except from 2 mail accounts which just didn't exist on the server - who know's why).... Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:00:45 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=14 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=14 I've just received a mail from Sřren Klintrup that he has made some modifications of the Nagios Check Plugin check_mysql_slavestatus.sh. Therefore the script is now updated here on the website as well as on NagiosExchange. Thank you for your work, Sřren!... Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:02:31 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=13 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=13 With the new Apache2 on a Debian etch system, there is a little hike to do when you try to use the command quot;make installquot; after your PHP compilation. The problem: The httpd.conf is empty and PHP's make install doesn't find the LoadModule directives anymore. You will find a little workaround for that problem here.... Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:02:10 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=12 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=12 Hola@everybody! This week I've found a weird behavior of a software. The goal was to import data from an excel (xls) file to a local installed database. When trying to import the excel file an error occurred with a missing ODBC driver. So I tried to manually install the MDAC package to give the affected machine the needed ODBC drivers. It was then when I realized that the MDAC 2.8 software is not compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 3!! So before you install SP3, be sure you're not going to use database software which needs an internal ODBC driver. I sent a mail to the Microsoft guys but of course didn't hear anything. Let's hope they fix that.... Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:59:54 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=11 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=11 This week I updated my ESX servers to version 3.5 Update 2 (build 110268). There's obviously a strange bug occurring when you want to connect your VI Client to the just updated ESX server: The whole language of VI Client changed into German! My Windows is German, yes, and the keyboard layout is set to German (Swiss) but it's still a bug when you can't change the language of VI Client anymore ;-). How to get rid of that bug will be explained in the HowTo section.... Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:00:30 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=10 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=10 What an awesome time we had on vacation! We were so lucky with the weather (except one day with tropical storm Hanna), the US-Dollar was pretty low when we exchanged the Swiss Francs and we were right in time for the Sales in the stores! In case you wanna go to the USA too, here are some little rules, what you should do and what you shouldn't do: Do's in the USA Eat cheeseburgers, take a one-hour-boat-tour (Manhattan), go shopping in Outlet-Malls, order Papa John's pizza, use the water-taxi's in Baltimore, drink Fanta Orange (way better than our Swiss Fanta!), order a big beer in Hard Rock Cafe (you get the glass to take home). Definitely Dont's in the USA Using public transportation systems (it takes forever, the schedule is inaccurate and sometimes there isn't even a bus!), using the USA Rail Pass offer from Amtrak (you can only ride 4 times!), be in a motel where somebody opens the ceiling above you and looks into your bathroom, have a cab driver who can't read and doesn'... Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:54:01 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=9 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=9 I just received the new DELL newsletter a few minutes ago and something cought my eye: The new Desktop system called Hybrid. Computer meets Style! Respect, Dell! That's what I call a great innovation!... Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:03:36 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=8 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=8 A real quick productive but not really long blog entry this time. Today I had to mess around with Firefox 3 (don't understand me wrong, I love that browser) and some Flash videos which made the Fox crash all the time -gt; whenever the video/flash plugin was loaded. If you have the same problem with certain flash animations or websites, you may want to check out the problem solving in the HowTo section. Keep the fox alive! ;)... Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:30:33 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=7 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=7 The heat those days remind me of one song, which I like lots by the way: Hot town, summer in the city Back of my neck gettin' dirty-'n'-gritty Been down, isn't it a pity Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city All around people lookin' half dead Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match-head Cool - ah no, hot! - song! But to be clear: I love this weather! I will complain in winter when it is cold again, right now I will just enjoy the sun and its warm weather! During the last few months I was getting into the administration of Bluecoat Proxy Appliance. Because I myself was stuck with it sometimes, I wrote a HowTo for it. This HowTo explains how you can define file extension objects. Find it in the IT HOWTO'S section.... Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:09:18 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=6 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=6 Since my favourite two teams (Switzerland and Sweden) are now out of the Euro 2008 tournament, I can focus on my actual project. It is about transferring the content of two web servers to two different web servers. Sounds easy, but: - Hundreds of domains have to be transferred to another name server. These nameservers will be installed on the same new servers. Of course those domains belong to customers and they have to change the nameservers of their domains. Time intensive thing and I am sure, not all of the customers know how to change the nameservers. - 80GB of data has to be transferred through the internet to the new servers which are located in another datacenter. - Operating system upgrade. The old servers were running on Debian 3.1 sarge, the new ones are running on Debian 4.0 etch. - Recompile PHP and I will run into problems this time because the new servers are installed with the basic system only. So will have to install lots of packages until PHP gets to work. - I... Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:17:27 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=5 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=5 My good-mooded last entry BEFORE the game tells me, how many hopes I put into the EURO 2008 opening game Switzerland vs Czech Republic. Unfortunately, as most of you might have heard, the Czech's won 1-0. Pictures of the way to the stadium, in the stadium and after the game can be found under travelling/Euro opening game. For the next match tomorrow against Turkey there must be a victory, it's gonna be the last chance anyway. Oh yeah: Congratulations to Netherlands for the unbelievable high score against Italy!... Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:27:04 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=4 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=4 OK my friends: Tomorrow will be the day I have been looking forward to the last four years: The EURO 2008 Austria/Switzerland will start. And better than I ever imagined: I will be in the stadium! Huwahhhyeeahh! Of course I will take pictures, of course I will show them here, of course I make you all jealous with that now ;-P. Which nation is the best, who's gonna be Europe's best football nation? My hopes tell me Switzerland of course but that would be a huge surprise. I honestly think this year Portugal could do it. And it makes sense: If Portugal wins Group A, they will most likely play against Germany in the quarter-final. If they win that quarter, they will most likely play against Croatia and after that in the final against France. Thats my presumption but life and the future cannot be seen in advance so we'll just see and enjoy! ... Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:27:20 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=3 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=3 Busy busy times lately with a lot of problems to solve at work. But honestly, I am happy that I can write quot;solve problemsquot;. The last week seemed to be a really buggy week with all kind of different problems. For some I released some Howto's (or workarounds in that case). The newest ones are: - VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 High Availability problem after Update 1 - How To PHP Script: Generate RSS feed with MySQL entries - VSFtpd problem could not bind listening IPv4 socket... Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:30:12 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=2 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=2 What a great day! At 8.15am it was already 25°C and at 10.12am my dad sends me a text message with the following content: quot;Wizard Merlin conjured us tickets!quot;. Hurray!! I'm going officially to the Euro 2008! After already giving up the hope of getting a ticket into one of the matches in the stadiums, 9 days before the surprise is perfect! And it's not just one game: It will be the opening game on saturday 7th of june in Basel: Switzerland vs. Czech Republic! Euro, I'm coming!... Thu, 29 May 2008 10:44:26 +0200 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=1 http://www.claudiokuenzler.com/index.php?newsid=1 Welcome welcome to a complete redesign (and reprogramming) of my old online portfolio which was accessible on www.napsty.de. Compared to the old website, this site includes more technical howto's in the world of IT. Whenever I will have time I will add more of those tipps. It's not only (hopefully!) useful for some people on this world who run into a problem but also a quot;brain reminderquot; for me. Yeah - we all get older! ;-) I wrote enough now for the first entry of this new site. I hope you enjoy the site! :-)... Mon, 26 May 2008 23:45:28 +0200