The Binary Idiot » SysAdmin

Adventures in Administration: USB Extension Cables over Cat5e Ethernet

AdamD. — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:33:55 +0000

While working as an admin you come across some unusual requests. We have a conference room at work where we've been requested to have a fixed-position USB webcam, but they want to locate the usb cable approx 25+ feet away. They've also requested not to have a lot of running cables in the room, so this means also hiding the cables away in the wall. This would also mean some kind of adapter/extension cable. Looking around online, you can buy USB extension cables (some powered), that run 50-ish feet, but they're usually in the $40+ range. I'm cheap, so I wanted a viable alternative.

Windows 8 Developer Preview – First Impressions

AdamD. — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:10:21 +0000

I don’t think this site could be considered Windows-centric by any means. The majority of articles I post tend to lean heavy on Linux with a smidgen of Mac OS X thrown in for good measure to stir the pot. However, I …

OS X Lion Upgrade – Skipping / Jumping Characters in Nano via SSH

AdamD. — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:09:52 +0000

As I mentioned previously, I spend a fair bit of time on the command line in OSX, usually SSH'd to another machine. I found it rather irksome that, after the upgrade to OSX 10.7 (Lion), as I moved around and deleted text in nano while SSH'd to a Linux box, the text would skip and not show the right output. Did some quick googling and found this page, which has the solution. If that fixes your issue, let them know by dropping them a comment!

Realtek RTL8191SEvA Wireless in Fedora

AdamD. — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:48:27 +0000

We're rolling out a bunch of Fedora-based thinclient-like devices at work that contain a RTL8191SEvA chipset. Unfortunately, this isn't built into the kernel as of 2.6.38.8-32.fc15 (I think there are licensing issues at play), so it has to be compiled and inserted by hand.

Default File Association in Gnome 3.0

AdamD. — Mon, 30 May 2011 08:13:14 +0000

This apparently holds true back to at least GNOME 2.12 or before, but more importantly it still holds true for GNOME 3.0. As a former primarily-Windows user, I always kind of expected to be able to change default file association …

The $1500 SAN: Part 1

AdamD. — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:34:43 +0000

Inspired by the folks over at Backblaze, who describe in this post how they build (pretty much from scratch, and with a breakdown of components and basic wiring diagram) their own Debian-based SAN devices to power their backup business, I've decided to try and build my own Linux-based iSCSI SAN device.

RHEV for Servers 2.2 Administration Guide Notes

AdamD. — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 03:25:30 +0000

At my place of business we're gearing up to deploy Redhat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers 2.2, and, as such, I had to read the Administration Guide. 200+ pages of technical information. Not the most entertaining read, but highly informative. If you also need to read it and have been putting it off, or just want to see what it's all about, I've embedded my key-points notes (AdamD's Notez™) so you can get a general idea of what it's all about.

Powershell: Convert Hex Groups to ASCII (Softalk Mail Server)

AdamD. — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:03:27 +0000

A friend came to me the other day asking if I knew how to convert hex strings to ASCII. For some backstory, the e-mail server they use at his workplace (Softalk Mail Server) wasn’t archiving e-mail properly, so he had …

Powershell: Find Installed MSI’s on Remote Machines

AdamD. — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:01:38 +0000

As an admittedly lazy IT person I'm all about crafting ways to automate tasks, even if it requires a bit more forethought on the frontend. I had a request come up to do an "inventory" of who had a certain software package on our machines. This is what I eventually came up with.

Static Content with Far-Future Expires Headers

Robert Hollencamp — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:01:40 +0000

An easy and efficient way to add far-future expiration tags to static content.