Stop hotlinking
by Mats Hellman on 29.Nov, 2010 under Linux
I was looking at my webserver logs tonight and saw that there where quite a few sites hotlinking some of our icons and buttons. Putting pictures on the web they are gone in a second but please people, use your OWN bandwidth, not mine. Anyway this made me decide I had to do some .htaccess magic and stop this bandwidth theft. And as always, I thought I’d document it here so someone else can use this if someone is linking in to use their pictures.
The new picture
First I created a new picture to be sent to the hotlinkers. And if they didn’t use image size properties I made it double the size of the old one so hopefully it might mess with their layout a little.
The image created looked like this
The .htaccess file
After the new nice image was done I just had to do some .htaccess magic to replace what was sent out to the requesters.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?nixadmins\.net/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://image_dump_host.com/no_hotlink.gif [L]
That’s it. Now anyone linking in on images will only see the image from the image dump host. You could use imageshack or any other service for this.
iPad comming to Finland
by Mats Hellman on 29.Nov, 2010 under Apple
The day many have been waiting for is here. The iPad will be released in Finland tomorrow. I was watching the release via the TWIT Network when Apple released the device and my thoughts of it back then weren’t really high. Still, I really can’t see a use for this device, photographers using it as a portfolio is the only use I’ve seen that I could say is a justifiable reason to buy this device. Otherwise it is a stripped down version of a computer, and to top it of restricted by Apple’s policies.
Right now you are probably thinking I’m one of those Apple hating guys since I write mostly about Windows and have such thoughts about the iPad. Well to be honest I own three Apple devices, iMac, MacBook Pro and *tada* an iPhone 3GS.
I do love my Apples, I just don’t like the iPad and the hype building up around it.
iPad for books
Some of my friends are thinking about this device to read books on it, and I have to say electronic books will never get me. First of all I usually read in bed or outside in the sun when I want to get a small break from this electronic world. How the book feels is just as important to me as how it’s written. I like my books in paper and the feel and smell of paper, also it’s nice to keep them in a bookshelf.
And for anyone who has children, take a look at your child’s face the next time they are picking out a book at the bookstore or from the shelf. Thinking about which book to pick, looking at them and taking in the whole experience. You just can’t compare that to picking a book from an cold electronic device, tapping the file to open the book. It’s just that simple.
I can’t see myself using this instead of any traditional print media, I may be old fashioned but if I want to read magazines or books I really want them printed in paper. Any PDF manuals I read I print out, I really don’t like reading from screens. News, and articles are readable but anything more than that and I want my paper.
iPad for web
For this purpose I use a computer, why? Because when I browse I usually also do other things like, writing code, editing photos, work, talking to friends on MSN, ICQ, Skype etc. And that would be pain on a screen size 10″. I really don’t need another device to keep in my living-room. If I need to just check facebook, twitter or news a mobile phone is more than capable for the task.
Games
This might be a good argument for the device but it’s just too expensive. To put it in perspective Finnish prices are
- Sony Playstation 3 slim 160gb: 299.00€
- Microsoft XBox 360 S: 259.00€
- Nintento Wii (Sports Pack): 199.90€
- Sony PSP: 149.90€
And the iPad will probably cost 499€ to 899€. And that’s way to much for a device like this.
Where I see the usefulness of tablets
No, I’m not talking about the iPad specifically here. Any tablet would be usable in places like hospitals, large warehouses. Any place really where you need to access data without using traditional computers.
That’s it you say, that’s where we need them. Well maybe, but do you really want Apple to be in charge of testing the health care software your hospital uses? Or in charge of which software’s should be available on the device.
This is true on the iPhone, and I find nothing wrong with the business-model there. You get an phone not a replacement for your computer. But if I get a tablet I’m the one saying what should or should not be installed on the device. And if I want to run your competitors software on my device I should be able to do so. After all, it’s my device after I cough up cold money for it.
Convince me?
If you think everything I’ve said here is a bunch of c**p and you want to prove me wrong please do comment and we can discuss this.
Configuration Manager computer association speed up
by Mats Hellman on 24.Sep, 2010 under ConfigMgr, Server 2008 r2, Windows, Windows Deployment
Usually when I install bare metal systems I have to wait over an hour for SCCM:s PXE to work on the newly imported computer. Before the Windows deployment services cache has expired that is. And the standard setting for that i 3600 seconds.
Sometimes you really don’t have the time to wait for the hour to pass by. I’ve found two ways to speed this up, if you know something I don’t please inform me in the comments.
Speed up for lab environments
This first one is NOT recommended in production environments. If however you use a test environment this is a nice way to speed up the PXE service once and for all.
On the server running PXE and Windows Deployment Services (WDS) open regedit and add the following key
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SMS\PXE\CacheExpire
The type should be DWORD and the Value 300 for 5 minutes in decimal. Without this key the standard cache time is 3600 seconds as mentioned above.
Speed up for production environments
This way is not in any way permanent. And it’s really easy when you need to get an install going quickly.
Just open services on the server running WDS and PXE service point. Find Windows Deployment Services and restart the service. Once restarted the cache is cleared and the bare metal system should go to PXE boot immediately instead of abortpxe.
Hope you found this useful and don’t hesitate to comment if you did.
Unable to use Active Sync / direct push on Exchange 2010
by Mats Hellman on 24.May, 2010 under Active Directory, Exchange Server
We had some trouble with users not being able to sync their mail, contacts and calendar to their mobile phone. The configuration works but when the synchronization starts we get a entry in the local log “Error in Exchange Server”.
Checking the logs on the Client Access server pointed me to look at permissions and it seems like some accounts have disabled the inherited security rights. This is the problem since Exchange can’t access the account information.
To check this you use Active Directory Users and Computers and open the user in question. Open the Security tab and press Advanced. On the open window you should se the “Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent”. If it’s not selected your Active sync will fail.
Hope this shortens someone’s troubleshooting session.
Affordable SAN(UCC) certificates for Exchange Server
by Mats Hellman on 17.May, 2010 under Exchange Server, Windows
We are currently in the process of setting up our new Exchange 2010 environment and I was looking for a certificate supplier that doesn’t require you to pay an arm and an leg for a certificate.
When you set up your Exchange server to use auto discovery and other services you probably won’t run everything on autodiscovery.domain.com. So you need a certificate with Subject Alternative Names or SAN. Also called Unified Communications Certificates or UCC.
You could buy them from Verisign or Thawte or any of the ones Microsoft currently supports, which is three suppliers you can find them here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929395
Anyway, I wanted a simple certificate to encrypt the traffic between the server and the client and to be able to use auto discovery without any error messages for the users about untrusted certificates. Using AD-CS will remove the problem from the normal Active Directory computers but not mobile devices not belonging to the domain. So googling around I found this supplier and decided to post it here for future reference and so you can save a few bucks on the certificates. The supplier is http://certificatesforexchange.com/
Checking their prices today a multiple domain certificate costs 59,99$/year. And believe me that’s cheap.
