Archive for November, 2006

Windows Tip: Remote Console with remote.exe

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

EDIT – 2008-03-03: Actually, screw this shady use of the remote debugger. Use psexec like a man instead, and enjoy the power of WMI.

This is nifty. Not something to scream about while tearing your clothes off in a moment of raw ardency, but still, I find it relatively useful.

You perhaps already know how Windows Debugging Tools such as WinDbg can output to a serial or network console, but I found out this concept can be extended to basically any console application that doesn’t really mess around with the terminal. See it as a mix between netcat and screen.

You just need “remote.exe” that comes with the Windows Debugging Tools. I personally use it to launch Macromedia JRun4 in a console on a development server at one of my client sites to debug their web application remotely. That way I can see the log in my local console instead of toggling between the server and Terminal Services. Read on for an overview of how it works. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Windows Tip: Active Directory MMC as Admin

Friday, November 24th, 2006

That title is way longer than it should be. Anyways, I just like to administer Active Directory Users and Computers from my workstation, on which I am logged on as a plain user.

To run the Active Directory Users and Computers with Administrator rights, you can use some runas.exe magic. Just create a shortcut to the following target:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /USER:DOMAIN\adminuser "mmc dsa.msc"

Of course, just change DOMAIN\adminuser to whatever applies.

It works fine for my purposes. The trick is just knowing the name of that particular mmc snap-in. That’s pretty basic knowledge, but I’ve been asked three times this week about it.

PowerShell is out

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

Microsoft PowerShell was just released.

PowerShell is actually the only new technology coming from Microsoft that has gotten me excited. I have played around with the Betas and Release Candidates at work, now I can finally USE it. It will take some time before it reaches the production environnement, but this will make my life substantially more pleasant when working with windows.

Subversion: .htaccess gives 403 forbidden?

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

I’m trying to import a brand new top secret project into my Subversion Repository.

Okay, I’ve had my share of troubles with that set-up — it is behind an Apache Reverse Proxy, with a bit of perl hacking to support move operations accross SSL tunnels. (I’ll post about this soon, I’m sure it will interest someone).

So, I was trying to import my new project and BANG, it dies.

Ajout          public/javascripts/application.js
Ajout          public/javascripts/controls.js
Ajout          public/404.html
Ajout          public/index.html
Ajout          public/.htaccess
svn: PUT of '/svn/repos/!svn/xx/.htaccess': 
302 Found (https://www.underwares.org)
svn: Le message de propagation a été laissé dans un fichier temporaire :
svn:    'svn-commit.4.tmp'

I first wonder the meaning of such foolery (foolery that has nothing to do with Tom, whatsoever) and then slap my forehead loudly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rock the crane

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

I just came accross this [rocktheskillcrane].

It’s awesome, and you must check it out. It’s basically allowing you to play a Skill Crane in some arcade remotely, and then it e-mails you a video of how you did.

Such geekery is not to be taken lightly.