/dev/null - Music, Technology and Creative Pursuits

June 22, 2011

Sessions for Novell’s BrainShare 2011 are now online and waiting to be voted on. The top voted items (and those chosen by Novell) will be presented at BrainShare. For your consideration, I will (hopefully) be presenting the following sessions:

Session Title: Moving Groupwise to Linux
Type: Technical Tutorial
Session Abstract: Protect your email by migrating to Groupwise on SUSE Linux. Participants will learn how to successfully transfer an existing Groupwise environment from a Windows or NetWare server to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Session Title: Migrating from NetWare to OES2 Linux
Type: Technical Tutorial
Session Abstract: Protect your server environment by migrating to Open Enterprise Server on SUSE Linux. Participants will learn how to prepare their existing NetWare environment for migration and easily move all their existing services to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Open Enterprise Server. Topics covered will include NSS, iPrint, DNS, DHCP and more.

Session Title: Maintaining Your Mobile Workforce Securely and Remotely
Type: Technical Tutorial
Session Abstract: Utilizing the NOWS SBE server, easily deploy and manage your company’s remote workforce. Participants will learn how to securely deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop in minutes and enable their staff to maintain secure access for troubleshooting or desktop management no matter where in the field the mobile workstation may be.

I humbly ask that if any of these sound interesting to you, show your support by visiting http://www.novell.com/brainshare/participate/ and clicking “Vote Now!”

Hope to see you there!

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Traveling in Hell

May 2, 2011

Sitting this morning in the Dallas Fort Worth airport. I think I’m outraged at American Airlines, but too tired to tell right now.

I flew out of Burbank yesterday, Sunday afternoon. The flight was to be Burbank -> Dallas Fort Worth -> Jackson, MS. There was even a significant layover in Dallas, ensuring I’d make my next flight. Well, sort of.

Moments after the cabin doors close in Burbank, it’s announced that we’re being diverted to Tuscon, AZ to refuel. Apparently there’s “weather” in Dallas and they’re afraid of getting diverted and not having enough fuel to reach the next destination. Also, because of this we’re all probably going to miss our connections, and no, we can’t get off the plane.

We fly to Tuscon, land and the 20 minute refueling takes 45 minutes.

We fly to Dallas! We’re here, land and then… lightning storm. Yup. All ground crews evacuate the runway and we start waiting on the tarmac for the storm to relent.

Relevantly, this is when the news comes out that Osama bin Laden has been killed. That definitely improved the mood on the plane. There was even some celebrating with a little airline sized bottle of Jack Daniels.

Soon, the weather lets up enough for the ground crews to return (i.e. an hour later). It’s past midnight now and I find the nearest Marriott to crash in with a new boarding pass for a 6:30am flight.

I sleep for about three hours, ish.

6:00am rolls around and I’m at the airport, waiting to board my flight.

6:15am. There’s an announcement. The previous night the plane had been hit by hail, so they’ve (just now) decided the plane needs to be checked out by maintenance.

8:00am. Hello, there! I’m sitting here writing this and have put up with numerous 15 minute updates of “We don’t know anything yet, hold on.” Really wish I could’ve gotten that extra sleep. Sorry if I rambled.

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Add A Logfile To Your VBScript

March 22, 2011

Today I’m going to share a little bit of code that I wrote. It’s nothing fancy, so if you’re accustomed to writing VBScript this most likely wont help you.

Put this at the top of your own scripts to add a function to write all debug comments to a log. I found myself needing this when my scripts were going to be run en masse and outputting comments to the terminal wasn’t going to cut it.

NOTES:

Set boolDebug to True to turn on debugging. Alternatively, call /DEBUG from the command line to turn on debugging (and override boolDebug)
Set strDebugDir and strDebugFile to a location the script has write privileges to.
To use it, call the Debug() function with whatever you want written to the file. i.e. Debug(“Text message goes here!”) or Debug(“Error: ” & strErr)

''' BEGIN USER DEFINED VARIABLES'''
boolDebug = true
strDebugDir = "C:\Debug" 'What folder will your log be in?
strDebugFile = "\logfile.txt" 'What is the name of your logfile?
''' END USER DEFINED VARIABLES '''

On Error Resume Next
'Handle user variables
intCount = WScript.Arguments.Count - 1 ' reset arguments to proper counting
for i = 0 to intCount
	strArgument = UCase(WScript.Arguments(i)) ' to uppercase
	if strArgument = "/DEBUG" then
		boolDebug = true
	elseif strArgument = "/NODEBUG" then
		boolDebug = false
	end if
next

'Setup Debugging
if boolDebug = true then
	set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
	if not objFSO.FolderExists(strDebugDir) then
		set objDebugDir = objFSO.CreateFolder(strDebugDir)
	end if

	if not objFSO.FileExists(strDebugDir & strDebugFile) then
		set objDebugFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strDebugDir & strDebugFile)
	end if

	set objDebugDir = nothing
	set objDebugFile = nothing

	strDateStamp = Now()
end if

'Handle all debugging
sub Debug( strLog )
	if boolDebug = true then
		set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strDebugDir & strDebugFile, 8, true)
		objTextFile.WriteLine( strDateStamp & ": " & strLog )
		objTextFile.Close()
	end if
end sub

Enjoy! I always appreciate feedback and credit, but it’s not required.