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When having Microsoft SQL databases, its log files can grow quite a bit, potentially slow down the database server and eat up disk space.

To shrink a database, one can run the following line:

EXEC D_ShrinkDBLogs 0,100,1000,'with truncate_only','DB_NAME'
(change DB_NAME with the database’s name)

To shrink all databases, one can use “sp_MSforeachdb” which is an undocumented sql stored procedure:

EXEC sp_MSForEachDB 'D_ShrinkDBLogs 0,100,1000,''with truncate_only'',''?'''

To run this, the following stored procedure need to be installed. It can just be copy pasted from the code below (or download from this link):

CREATE PROC [dbo].[D_ShrinkDBLogs]
  @target_percent TINYINT = 0, @target_size_MB INT,  @max_iterations INT, @trunc NVARCHAR(1000),
  @DB VARCHAR(30)
AS
  SET nocount ON
  SET @trunc = 'with truncate_only'
  --SET @trunc = ''
  DECLARE
      @last_row INT, @log_size DECIMAL(15,2), @unused_at_start DECIMAL(15,2),
      @unused DECIMAL(15,2), @shrinkable DECIMAL(15,2), @iteration INT, @file_max INT,
      @file INT, @fileid VARCHAR(5)

  SELECT @iteration = 0
  PRINT @DB
  CREATE TABLE #loginfo
     (id INT IDENTITY, FileId INT, FileSize NUMERIC(22,0), StartOffset NUMERIC(22,0),
       FSeqNo INT, Status INT, Parity SMALLINT, CreateLSN NUMERIC(30) )

  CREATE TABLE #logfiles
     (id INT IDENTITY(1,1), fileid VARCHAR(5) NOT NULL )
  INSERT #logfiles
    ( fileid )
     SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR,fileid) FROM sysfiles WHERE status = 1048642
     SELECT @file_max = @@rowcount

  IF OBJECT_ID('shrinktab') IS NULL
    EXEC ('create table shrinktab ( x nchar(3000) not null )')
  INSERT #loginfo
     (
      FileId,FileSize,StartOffset,FSeqNo,Status,
      Parity,CreateLSN )
      EXEC ('dbcc loginfo (' + @DB + ')'
     )
  SELECT @last_row = @@rowcount
  PRINT @last_row
  SELECT
      @log_size = SUM(FileSize) / 1048576.00,
      @unused = SUM(CASE WHEN Status = 0
      THEN FileSize ELSE 0 END) / 1048576.00,

  @shrinkable = SUM(CASE WHEN id < @last_row - 1 AND Status = 0
          THEN FileSize
          ELSE 0
          END) / 1048576.00
          FROM #loginfo

  SELECT @unused_at_start = @unused -- save for later
  SELECT 'iteration' = @iteration, 'log size, MB' = @log_size,
  'unused log, MB' = @unused, 'shrinkable log, MB' = @shrinkable,
   'shrinkable %' = CONVERT(DECIMAL(6,2), @shrinkable * 100 / @log_size)
  WHILE @shrinkable * 100 / @log_size > @target_percent
    AND @shrinkable > @target_size_MB
    AND @iteration < @max_iterations
    BEGIN
      SELECT @iteration = @iteration + 1 -- this is just a precaution
      EXEC ('insert shrinktab select name from sysobjects delete shrinktab')
      SELECT @file = 0
      WHILE @file < @file_max
        BEGIN
          SELECT @file = @file + 1
          SELECT @fileid = fileid FROM #logfiles WHERE id = @file
          EXEC
          ('use ' + @DB + '; dbcc shrinkfile( ' + @fileid + ' )')
        END
      EXEC
       ( 'backup log ' + @db + ' ' + @trunc   )

      TRUNCATE TABLE #loginfo
      INSERT #loginfo
       ( FileId,FileSize,StartOffset, FSeqNo,Status,Parity,CreateLSN )
       EXEC ( 'dbcc loginfo' )
      SELECT @last_row = @@rowcount
      SELECT @log_size = SUM(FileSize) / 1048576.00,
       @unused = SUM(CASE WHEN Status = 0 THEN FileSize
       ELSE 0
       END) / 1048576.00,
       @shrinkable = SUM(CASE WHEN id < @last_row - 1
       AND Status = 0 THEN FileSize
       ELSE 0
       END)
       / 1048576.00
       FROM #loginfo

       SELECT 'iteration' = @iteration, 'log size, MB' = @log_size,
       'unused log, MB' = @unused, 'shrinkable log, MB' = @shrinkable,
       'shrinkable %' = CONVERT(DECIMAL(6,2),@shrinkable
       * 100 / @log_size)
    END
 SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR,@iteration) + ' iterations. Log shrunk from ' +
 CONVERT(VARCHAR,@unused_at_start) + ' MB to ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@unused) + ' MB'
 EXEC ( 'drop table shrinktab' )

Note that this procedure wasn't written by me, but ramassed together by a good friend of mine.

Thank you,
Michael

First off, it’s not a Debian specific problem, we had this problem with other Linux distributions also, but decided to standardize on Debian across the organization.

Installing to the MBR fails, and you have to install grub on /dev/cciss/c0d0, although upon rebooting after the installation, Grub throws out an error that it cannot boot off (hd1,0).

When you encounter this, you need to edit the configuration (by pressing e in the initial grub screen), and change the (hd1,0) to (hd0,0).

This did the trick for us,

Thanks,
Michael

Apache was used, since I have a reasonable amount of experience with it load balancing servers such as Webrick, etc. After a few frustrating hours of messing with NTLM, Christian proposed a few alternatives for this.

Having this in mind, we decided to go for HAProxy, to provide load balancing and a reverse proxy for our sharepoint instance. The good this is that it is a very simple tool, it accept HTTP conenctions, and forward them.

Below is our simplified /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg file

global
        maxconn 4096
        user haproxy
        group haproxy
        daemon
        # debug

defaults
        mode    http
        option  forwardfor
        log     127.0.0.1 local0 notice
        maxconn 2000
        contimeout      5000
        clitimeout      50000
        srvtimeout      50000

backend sharepoint
        balance roundrobin
        option redispatch
        cookie SERVERID insert nocache
        server sp1      172.30.16.11:80  cookie spsrv01 weight 30 check
        server sp2      172.30.16.12:80  cookie spsrv02 weight 30 check

frontend httpid
        bind *:80
        acl hosts_sharepoint hdr_end(host) -i intranet.domain.com
        acl hosts_sharepoint hdr_end(host) -i intranet.domain.com:80
        use_backend sharepoint if hosts_sharepoint
        default_backend sharepoint

The configuration is very straightforward, and it got rid of our continuous username/password boxes, especially under firefox.

Hope this helps,
Michael

Eh? I mean, seriously.

Recently we change the Nagios host to another IP address and found ourselves having to change a few dozen NSClient.ini files on the server. Even though we use DNS names as monitoring host (only nsclient access on port 12489/tcp is allowed from a certain host), NSClient by default caches the IP address (Using cache_allowed_hosts, which is set to “1″ by default) so we were bound to change quite some files.

To do this, we have to do the following:

• stop the nsclient service
• overwrite the nsclient.ini file
• start the nsclient service

For reasons i cannot disclose, this could not be done using any group policies. So we went the ghetto batch way:


@psexec \\%1 "C:\Program Files\NSClient++\NSclient++.exe" -uninstall
@xcopy /Y C:\tool\nagios\nsclient\* "\\%1\c$\program files\nsclient++\"
@psexec \\%1 "C:\Program Files\NSClient++\NSclient++.exe" -install
@psexec \\%1 "C:\Program Files\NSClient++\NSclient++.exe" -start
@echo Finished %1


This assumes you have nsclient++ already, which is an awesome piece of software that you can grab from nsclient.org, and that you have psexec installed to execute commands.

Using this script, you can just run C:\tool\nagios\update_nsc.bat server_name to have the server monitored again.

Thank you,
Michael

While questioned a few times on HP forums (such as this thread), questions rose to “installing windows on the server, then reinstall Linux”, it is possible in the web interface to be set. It’s not obviously placed, and hence might require some searching.

First, open the blade’s ILO web interface, and select the concerned blade and choose Web Administration in its ILO menu.

When logged in in the blade itself (usually done through SSO of the enclosure), choose “Adminstration”.

Finally, choose options, and then Settings » Access in the left menu pane. There you’ll see Server name, and you can fill what you want.

True, it has nothing to do with Linux, but it gives us easier to manage hostname links in Onboard Administrator.

Hello, greetings from RIM (Research In Motion) proprietors of BlackBerry. This message is to inform all of our users, that our servers have recently been really full, so we are asking for your help to fix this problem. We need our active users to re-send this message to everyone on your contact list inorder to confirm our active users that use BlackBerry Messenger, if you do not send this message to all your BlackBerry Messenger contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts.

We apologize for the inconvenience but this is the only way possible to resolve this problem. Sincerely Research in Motion. For more information visit:
www.blackberry.com/inactiveuser

Of course it doesn’t take much to realize that this is a chain-mail type of IM. The web page itself doesn’t exist. Wonder how many people forwarded it..

In layman terms, VoIP calls will be billed and the prices will be set by those operators. So we’d have to wait and see if there will be big savings on VoIP calles, if any at all. The licensed operators would be:

• Du
• Etisalat
• Thuraya
• Yahsat

Of course, skype and vonage and the likes remains blocked, as they don’t generate revenue for the local market. Normal for a country with a large number of expatriates, whereby the telco’s main revenue is from overseas calls.

Thank you,
Michael

In our intranet development environment we run Microsoft Virtual Server, it was setup by the consultants who developed our Intranet’s first phase. Now, the second phase is about the start, we dusted off those servers and found out that the virtual machines all had no network adapters installed anymore.

After cursing, and making a plan of migrating this to VMWare’s ESX (sorry consultant) next week, we found out that the only way of solving this was to remove the virtual adapters from the Virtual Server console, and adding them again. In the client machine’s, a static IP assigned adapter was trying to fetch an IP address (yeah, go figure). By just setting it to dynamic (dhcp), and then reassigning the static address, it was solved.

I guess Microsoft is about just re-trying it, rebooting, re-adding. But we’ll be switching to ESX anyways.

Thank you,
Michael