Category: Administration

Everything related to system administration.

Cryptic error 0x1 in Windows™ Task Scheduler

In case you ever wondered why your task returns 0x1 in Last Run Result instead of 0x0. Check if your task is trying to create any files, if it does, you must tick “Run with highest privileges” in General tab of your task properties. I’ve spent some precious time to uncover that because I’m not a native Winblows administrator 🙂

How to list all PostgreSQL databases and their sizes in MB

You must provide proper database name and user:


File: gistfile1.txt
-------------------

psql -c "SELECT pg_database.datname, pg_database_size(pg_database.datname), pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(pg_database.datname)) FROM pg_database ORDER BY pg_database_size DESC;" -d

How to find Raspberry Pi using MAC address

When you want to find your headless but networked Raspberry Pi and you’re lazy like me use nmap:

sudo nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24 | awk '/^Nmap/{ip=$NF}/B8:27:EB/{print ip}'

Mask /24 means that addresses from 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.254 will be searched. You can extend that to /16 if you don’t know subnet of your device.

Permission denied when script is trying to execute ps_files_cleanup_dir

This is pretty common problem. I’ve encountered it on recent version of the Debian operating system. When you see something like that:

Notice:  session_start(): ps_files_cleanup_dir: opendir(/var/lib/php5/sessions) failed: Permission denied (13) in /mnt/www-data/htdocs/raportMNW/inc/bryanjhv/slim-session/src/Slim/Middleware/Session.php on line 110

You can fix that easily with following Linux commands:

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Now use CTRL+W to find following string session.save_path and configure it like that:

session.save_path = "/tmp"

Save your file using CTRL+X and restart Apache2 service:

sudo service apache2 restart

And voilà!

How to change computer name remotely using Windows 7?

There is a command line tool called netdom. Unfortunately it’s not preinstalled on Windows 7. This guide will show how to add this tool to your system and how to change remote computer name.

Continue reading How to change computer name remotely using Windows 7?

How to remove unwanted HTTP Response Headers in IIS 7.5

Hiding server software is one of ways to protect your services from hackers. It’s quite easy to obscure IIS identity. In few steps I’ll show you how to accomplish this task on WIMP stack.

Continue reading How to remove unwanted HTTP Response Headers in IIS 7.5

How to manualy recreate AWstats logs on Windows

Sometimes it happens that your scheduled task on Windows missed some logs. I’ve recently had a such problem because I’ve deleted a Windows user that created AWstats task. What did I do to repair this awkward situation?

Firstly you cannot simply regenerate daily log from the past. In this case AWstats will simply skip old records. Follow this steps:

  1. Go to AWstats data directory (AWstats\cgi-bin\data).
  2. Use Windows search ability to show only problematic files (if file name is awstats102013.yoursite.txt simply type yoursite in a searchbox).
  3. Mark all found files and move them to the temporary location.
  4. Now run Windows cmd.
  5. Go to AWstats tools dir. In my case:
    cd C:\awstats-7.0\tools
  6. Now create a merged log for a problematic website:
    :: where xx is unique IIS webiste id 
logresolvemerge.pl L:\LOG_DIR\W3SVCxx\* > L:\LOG_DIR\W3SVCxx\merged.log
  7. Go to awstats.pl location:
    w:
cd w:\wwwroot\AWstats\cgi-bin\
  8. Parse merged file:
    awstats.pl -config=yoursite -LogFile=L:\LOG_DIR\W3SVCxx\merged.log -update
  9. Place files from steps 2-3 back to their location. Don’t overwrite new files! Simply skip old ones.
  10. You should be able to see complete stats for your website.

TIP: How to dermine your webiste unique id? Simply go to IIS manager and click advanced settings in a right pane after selecting website.