Richard Vrijhof's Toy

My e-books page has gone live!

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2011-09-10T10:24:33Z

Check it out! I have made an e-books page for the e-books I've written (one until now), where you can view information about them and download them. They are (and will be) in the EPUB format and don't have any DRM whatsoever (because I hate DRM)! I hope you'll like them.

Force resync of computer time with internet time server on startup of Windows XP/Vista/7

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2009-11-07T00:34:09Z

Also have a computer with both Linux and Windows 7 (or XP or Vista) in dual-boot configuration and having the problem that every time you start Windows, your clock is on UTC time? I did, at least, and the problem was, that you could set an internet time server to sync with, but Windows would not sync at startup, only once a week. Here is how I solved it.

Make a new task in the Task Scheduler, running under the SYSTEM account, triggered to run at system startup, starting the program "w32tm /resync" and with the further condition that the network connection should be up-and-running (I think this last possibility is missing from XP, so here the task will probably fail because it is too early). Voilà, finally solved!

Download section

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2009-10-24T05:31:00Z

Apparently something was wrong with downloading some files from the download page, as they were compressed (again) by the web server, which is a waste of time and effort (as I'm talking here about the compressed files) and looked like it was responsible for corrupt downloads in some cases. That should have been fixed now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Huge power outage October, 30

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-10-24T20:45:32Z

I've received a paper that says there will be a power outage on October 30, between 08:00h and 16:00h (CEST, so +0100), for at least five hours, because of maintenance to the grid. That means my web and mail server will be offline during that period. When power comes online again, the server should power up again automatically and be online some minutes later.

I don't have the illusion that a lot of all my loyal readers (all hundred thousand of them) are now thinking: "Oh, no! My god! I have to miss Richy's website for a whole day! I just cannot bear the thought! Better go kill myself!", though...

But, at least, now you know.

Connection OK again

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-05-15T07:09:39Z

It looks like the connection problems are over (at least mine are). Finally! I've never experienced an outage that lasted this long. Hopefully now we've seen the end of it.

Huge connection problems

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-05-14T19:02:22Z

The whole country is suffering from a huge outage of internet connections, and I'm one of them. It started yesterday morning and it looked like it was solved this morning. During the day I could connect to my server without any problems, but coming home, it took a turn for the worse. I don't know how long this is going to last, but it surely is nasty!

New hardware

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-05-12T21:16:58Z

My server is now running on a Pentium 4 instead of a Pentium 3, with 80-pin ATA instead of 40-pin ATA, and I can really notice the difference! I was first worried about how much extra energy this server would use, but after connecting it to my UPS (with the three hard disks and the DVD writer of course), it looks like it is only a few percent more when not very busy and maybe ten percent more when really busy (like backing up, or remirroring).

Pity for my girlfriend; she'll have to make do with her Pentium 3 for now...

New modem/gateway/router/switch/AP

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-03-16T01:06:36Z

I've got a new modem/gateway/router/switch/AP and configured it. So the temporary modem from my girlfriend can go back to her place.

The device possibilities are quite extended, although I think the configuration (at least the web configuration) doesn't offer all possibilities I'd like, but nothing I can't live with.

And this time I did check if my server was reachable from the internet...

Stupid me...

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-03-10T17:48:40Z

Of course, it would have been a good idea to test whether my server was reachable from the internet (which it wasn't)... I forgot to configure the NAT section of the modem, which means no NAT at all...

Stupid me!

But now, finally, my server is reachable again.

Temporary modem

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-03-09T01:41:18Z

I've borrowed a modem from my girlfriend, as she doesn't need it now herself, because her ADSL line still isn't working since she moved. This will of course only be temporary, but she'll probably lend it even when her ADSL line starts working, but I hope my internet provider will be willing to supply a new modem to me and that it will happen soon.

Then my internet connection will of course go offline for a while when connecting and configuring that new modem, but hopefully it won't take much time (as it will be supplied by my internet provider and will be pre-configured by them to working values).

But finally, I've got a life again, after being (almost entirely) disconnected for a few days...

Modem problems

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-03-06T22:53:13Z

My modem seems to be having trouble right now. I don't know in advance how long it will take for me to correct the situation, but it will probably take a while.

SSL

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-01-30T19:46:00Z

Some parts of my web site have been configured to use the HTTPS protocol, with 256-bit encryption by a certificate you can get for free at http://www.startssl.com/, a Certificate Authority which is recognized by about any browser, except Internet Exploder and Opera. However, unfortunately they now use a Class 1 Intermediate Server CA for these certificates, and this Intermediate CA isn't installed (yet) in these browsers (and you have to get the Root CA for Internet Exploder and Opera also anyway, because they don't recognize StartSSL at all)...

To install this Intermediate CA, go here for the CRT file and here for the PEM file. For Internet Exploder and Opera, first click here to retrieve the Root CA (and if that doesn't work, click here to retrieve the PEM file instead), then get the Intermediate CA on the left. Then all your troubles will go away and you can live happily ever after.

Server finally running to my liking again

nospam@example.com (Richard Vrijhof) — 2008-01-28T00:57:38Z

Had a disaster with my server a few weeks ago. My hard disk broke down. Now it is running the very latest of Mandriva, with a RAID-1 configuration so that it is still there when a hard disk fails. Frequent backups are made to a third hard disk.

It took some time to get it running to my liking again, because I didn't have backups of everything (like /etc configuration) or very old data (like /var/lib/mysql, so my SQL databases) from an old Ghost image I made in 2005.

But it's new, and it's spiffy now!