Backup Exec misadventures

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking , , ,

(Subtitle: My coworkers’ favorite new Dave Farquhar quote)

If your product isn’t suitable for use on production servers, then why didn’t you tell us that up front and save us all a lot of wasted time?

(To a Veritas Backup Exec support engineer when he insisted that I reboot four production web servers to see if that cleared up a backup problem.)When I refused to reboot my production web servers, he actually gave me a bit of useful information. Since Veritas doesn’t tell you this anywhere on their Web site, I don’t feel bad at all about giving that information here.

When backing up through a firewall, you have to tell Backup Exec what ports to use. It defaults to ports in the 10,000 range. That’s changeable, but changing it through the user interface (Tools, Options, Network) doesn’t do it. It takes an act of Congress to get that information out of Veritas.

What Veritas doesn’t tell you is that the media server (the server with the tape drive) should talk on a different range of ports than the remote servers you’re backing up. While it can still work if you don’t, chances are you’ll get a conflict.

The other thing Veritas doesn’t tell you is that you need a minimum of two, and an ideal of four, ports per resource being backed up. So if the server has four drives and a system registry, which isn’t unusual, it takes a minimum of 10 TCP ports to back it up, and 40 is safer.

Oh, and one other thing: If anyone is using any other product to back up Windows servers, I would love to hear about it.

Ghost won\’t let me use my monster hard drive!

Dave Farquhar Software , , , ,

Here’s a familiar problem, I’m sure.

You need to back up your laptop, so you buy a monster (200+ GB) USB or Firewire hard drive. And then you can’t use it in Symantec/Norton Ghost, for one of two reasons:

1. You can’t format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32 gigabytes.
2. Ghost chokes when it tries to make a file larger than 4 gigabytes.These are limits of the operating system, not Ghost. But there are workarounds.

To format a FAT32 drive bigger than 32 gigs, you need a DOS boot disk. If you don’t have a Windows 95OSR2 or Windows 98 DOS boot disk handy, you might try bootdisk.com, or download the latest version of FreeDOS, which now supports FAT32.

You’ll have to use good old FDISK and FORMAT, which is clunkier than Windows XP’s computer management, but at least it’s possible.

Ghost can choke when the image file exceeds 4 gigabytes in size because FAT32 won’t let you make a file larger than that. It’s a limit of the FAT32 file system. The workaround there is to split up the image. Pass Ghost the -SPAN -SPLIT=4095 parameters when you launch it to get around that problem.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not a license to say anything you want

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

Yep, I’ve got another pet peeve. Last weekend I wrote about passing “Christian” judgment.

This week I’d like to talk about another favorite tool of the fundamentalist: so-called “Christian Love,” which, when it has the qualifier, often is anything but.Many fundamentalists belive that Christian love is a license to rip someone a new one any time they feel like it. They justify it to themselves by saying it’s their duty to point out their Christian brothers’ and sisters’ faults.

No one has ever shown me the verse that gives us that right. And that idea isn’t exactly compatible with Jesus’ command to get the log out of your own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s (Luke 6:41-42), or that he who is without sin should cast the first stone (John 8:7). (Note that in John 8, He Who Was Without Sin refrained from throwing any stones. He told her to cut it out and go home. He didn’t even tell her what to cut out. She knew full well.)

Let me tell you why I think “Christian love” is often anything but. Let’s refer to 1 Corinthians 13. I know you heard it at the last wedding you went to. But this chapter has a whole lot more to do with interpersonal relationships than it does with weddings.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

My pastor is fond of personalizing this. “Dave is patient, Dave is kind. Dave doesn’t boast and isn’t envious, and he isn’t proud or rude.” And he interjects “Tell me when to stop,” in there frequently, because he knows none of us can measure up to this chapter. The fact is, too often we aren’t patient, we aren’t kind, we boast like crazy, we burn with jealousy, we try to make ourselves look good… Need I go on?

So the next time you get the urge to chastise your Christian brother or sister, and you feel the need to sign, “In Christian love…” drop your pen, grab your Bible (don’t rely on your memory; it’s selective) and turn to 1 Corinthians 13. If what you’re writing isn’t patient or kind, then don’t sign it like that. If it’s a record of wrongs, you could be in for a world of hurt. See Matthew 18. The part of Matthew 18 that everyone likes to forget about, that is (verses 32-35):

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how [God] will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Christianity isn’t a race. We don’t get extra floors on our mansions in Heaven for each sin we point out. We have nothing to prove. Max Lucado once pointed out the futility of this with an illustration: What if God changed the rules and said forget all that stuff in the Bible; all you have to do in order to be saved is jump to the moon on your own power. So get to it.

Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Jordan or if you’re Christopher Reeve. Michael Jordan might be able to jump 15 feet in the air if he tried. Christopher Reeve can’t jump at all. But when the goal is the moon, which is a quarter of a million miles away, Michael Jordan’s 15 feet is a rounding error. Who cares? Someone standing on the moon wouldn’t be able to see it!

I like the illustration in Matthew 25:34-40.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

There seem to be several points to this verse, but one of them is that we won’t know all of our good deeds. I wonder sometimes if the truly righteous don’t know any of them, and I wonder if, when God counts our good deeds–which don’t get you into heaven; remember, Isaiah 64:6 calls our good deeds “filthy rags” in the nice translation, and in the not-as-nice translations, it uses words closer to “soiled undergarments”–maybe when God counts up our good deeds, maybe only the ones we don’t know about are the only ones that count.

Because it sure seems to me those are the only ones we do without some ulterior motive.

So tear up that note. Skip that conversation. Read 1 Corinthians 13 out loud, substituting your name for “love,” and then read Romans 2 for good measure.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

Kindness leads people to repentance. So what’s the best way to be kind? Start with love. How do you love? See 1 Corinthians 13.

It’s funny how the people who are best able to take those two passages to heart have the best, longest-lasting relationships. Non-Christians like those people too. It’s funny how non-Christians are impressed by kindness and forgiveness.

It must be because usually when they look for it in the places it’s supposed to be, they don’t find any.

Refinishing without refinishing

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

As I was walking through the paint section of my local hardware store, I spied a product on the shelves that claimed to work miracles. It was called Howard Restorafinish. The can shows a picture of someone wiping a door or tabletop that has scratches, water marks, and other nastiness and making it look brand new.

Too good to be true? Probably. But it was about five bucks. So I bought a can.I have a grandfather clock that belonged to my dad. A family friend built it for him in 1978. To most people it would be nothing special, but for whatever reason it meant a lot to my dad, and he lost it under some questionable circumstances and ended up going to a lot of trouble and expense to get it back.

Since then it’s endured four moves, and it’s spent the majority of the past 10 years sitting in basements. It sustained some damage in at least two of the moves, and in the last move it got some nasty scratches. Scratches is probably putting it nicely. I want it in my combination study/den, next to my wall-size bookcase, where I think it’d look gorgeous, but not with those huge gouges in it.

Since the clock needs to be sanded down and refinished anyway, I figured this stuff couldn’t do any harm, and I figured it was worth my five bucks to find out. So I took it home, grabbed an old sock, took the Howard Restorafinish and the sock down to the basement, and went to town.

The results were mixed. It really does seem to make minor scratches disappear. It also seems to help tired, faded color. I don’t really know how to describe it, other than spots that seem dry and lifeless. It also seems to do a good job of eliminating dirty buildup that turns the wood almost black.

The parts that were passable before now look bright and shiny–better than I ever remember it looking.

At first I was really impressed with what it did with the gouges. It recolored them. After 24 hours, I’m a bit less impressed. The cherry tint it put down is too dark. It seems where there’s no finish left to restore, its results aren’t as good. But I have to admit it still looks much better than before.

I found a few other light spots that it wasn’t able to do much of anything with. They’re minor. I can live with it.

The verdict? It didn’t exactly work miracles, but it made the clock look more than presentable again. I might need heavier-duty artillery for the spot that gave me trouble, but in all honesty I might be the only one who’ll notice it. I’m glad I spent the five bucks.

At some point I do need to sand it down and restain and refinish it. I’m sure I could sand it down, stain it and lacquer it and spend less than $100. But I really don’t have the time right now to do it. I can easily come up with five bucks and half an hour.

So I wouldn’t buy it expecting to make thrift-store furniture look like it came from Neimann Marcus, but for a scratch or a watermark on a kitchen cabinet, a piece of furniture, or a hardwood floor, it might save you a time-consuming refinishing job, or at least let you put that off until a more serious accident.

I’ll be buying the oak and walnut varieties to see what it can do for a couple of spots on my hardwood floors and my kitchen cabinets.

Taking decent photographs

Dave Farquhar Photography , , ,

I’m not a serious photographer and I don’t play one on TV. But I’m tired of looking at dark, fuzzy, tiny photographs that don’t tell anything, so here’s a way someone who knows nothing about photography–such as Yours Truly–can take a decent picture.For some examples of my photography, which I consider barely acceptable, here’s a windup train and an American Flyer electric.

The second photograph is worse than the first, for two reasons. I took the second photograph indoors, and used a rug as a backdrop. The texture of the rug detracts from the photo. As does the lack of light.

I took the first photograph outside. It wasn’t all that sunny of a day, and it was about 9 in the morning on a Saturday. I used a white towel as a backdrop. A neutral-colored sheet would have been even much better, but I had the towel handy. The photograph is small enough that the towel’s texture doesn’t detract as badly as it normally would.

So the first trick is to use a decent backdrop.

Light is trick #2. Get enough light on your subject to not need the flash. Light up the room, take a shot, and see what happens. If the camera flashes, get more light. Better yet, take the object outside. In the daytime, of course. Ideally, the majority of your light should be coming from behind you and the camera, rather than from behind the object. A little bit of light behind the object to eliminate shadows is a good thing, but too much will look harsh.

Focus is trick #3. I assume you know to push the button halfway to focus it. That’s the first step. The second step is to take five or six shots because one of them is likely to look better than the worst of them.

The rule of thirds is something they actually teach you in school. (I spent about a month studying photography in journalism school because they make everyone do that. The rule of thirds is about all I remember.) Professional photographers can disregard this rule the way professional writers sometimes disregard rules about sentence fragments. People like me need to follow it. Look at an existing photograph. Mentally draw two horizontal and two vertical lines, dividing the photograph into thirds. The intersection of each line is what the human eye is going to find interesting. So at the very least, position your object so that part of it is hitting as many of those points as possible.

Use a tripod. You’ll get sharper pictures because a tripod holds the camera steady. I didn’t use a tripod for either of these shots, so it’s not absolutely necessary, but it helps. For small objects, a three-inch pocket tripod from Kmart will do just fine. Mine cost about $5. For larger objects, a larger tripod is necessary. Generally speaking, even a cheap and nasty tripod is better than no tripod, so long as it isn’t so wobbly that it can’t hold the camera straight.

And finally: Crop. After you’ve taken the photograph and you get it into the computer, crop it. This lets you make the picture smaller without losing resolution. It also lets you get rid of unnecessary whitespace and/or objects. Did you catch the edge of your backdrop, revealing the concrete or table underneath? Crop it out. Did you forget the rule of thirds? Crop the picture to move the object into place. I cropped both of the pictures I used as examples because otherwise you’d have seen two pictures with lots of towel or carpet and itty-bitty trains. But I wanted pictures of trains, not man-made fibers.

If you follow these simple principles, you can set your camera to auto everything and get a decent shot. The idea is to make the job as easy on the camera as possible. If you halfway follow the rule of thirds, you get an even better shot.

I almost forgot one other thing. I cleaned the objects in the photos. You might be reluctant to clean objects for sale on Ebay for the legitimate fear of damaging them, but at least brush the dust off with a soft brush, such as a makeup brush or soft paint brush. Chances are, anything you photograph looks better without loose dust covering it.

Following these tips won’t make you look like a pro, but your Wikipedia articles will look better and so will your Ebay listings. And on Ebay, a good, clear photograph means more bids and higher prices.

Remember type-ins?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , ,
Remember type-ins?

An article on type-in programs showed up on Wikipedia in September 2004. Ah, memories. There was a time when the programs listed in the back of a magazine were at least as important as the editorial content.

I mentioned to the initial author of the article that type-ins became a bit of a bragging right. Soon after meeting someone else who subscribed to the same magazines as you, you’d ask about the longest program they’d ever typed in. I’m pretty sure in my case the longest would have been SpeedScript 128, which was a word processor published in 1987 or 1988. Another candidate is Crossroads, which was a 2D shoot-’em-up (and a really good one at that) published in 1987, but I may have bribed my sister into helping me type parts of that monstrosity in. You’d get cross-eyed after a while after looking at those pages of hexadecimal code.

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Pretentious Pontifications: Raunche sells out

Dave Farquhar Humor/Satire ,

Raunche interrupted my presidential campaign today by coughing up some bile about the prototype for his new computer.

I had to remind him that there are two hardware companies to trust: Intel and Microsoft. This computer incorporates neither. And multiple G5s does not a supercomputer make. Especially when it runs a second-rate operating system, which means anything but Windows, of course.What multiple G5s make, regardless of whose name ends up on the front, is nouveau riche computers suitable for aristocracy that wears high heels. (My evil twin, David, asked me if he also wears suspendies and a brar. I almost laughed.) I do hope IBM had the good sense not to put it in a translucent case with blue polka dots, but I will not hold my breath.

As for my adoring fans, you may catch a brief glimpse of me at the Scottish Festival in St. Louis at Forest Park on 9 September before I resume my run for the presidency.

Tin litho buildings for a traditional pre-war train layout

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Tin litho buildings for a traditional pre-war train layout

In 2004, after being back in the hobby a few months, I decided I didn’t want a train layout like the ones I saw in the magazines, which all take a hi-rail approach. The layouts looked nice, but they all had the same buildings and figures on them. I wanted to do something different. That got me looking for tin litho buildings for a traditional pre-war train layout. And it started a quest that continues to this day.

Don’t get me wrong. Today I have more than enough tin buildings to populate an 8×8 layout. Had I known what I was looking for from the start, it would have taken a lot less time. I might as well share my experience.

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Fixing Windows font sizing. Sort of.

Dave Farquhar Windows

So, I’ve got this nifty new laptop. It’s fast and reliable and it’s got a huge 15-inch screen.

The screen’s native resolution is 1400×1050. So the huge screen is full of tiny text.No problem, right? Right-click on the desktop, hit properties, go to appearance, go to font size, select extra large, and go to town, right?

Not quite. When I did that, I got big, gorgeous fonts some of the time and little teeny fonts other times and lots of apps, even those from the Vole itself, can’t handle the font size change without going all goofy.

A better solution is hidden more deeply. Right-click on the desktop and select properties. But go to settings, advanced, and under general, you’ll find a DPI setting. Since the default is 96 DPI and this screen’s resolution is about 50% larger than I would like, I switched to a custom setting and scaled to 150%, which gives 144 DPI.

Many CSS-heavy web pages still display goofy, including this one, so I end up hitting CTRL-+ and CTRL– to adjust the sizes of pages to make them readable, but apps like Outlook (yes, I’m one of those poor souls stuck in an MS Exchange environment) that don’t respond well to the large fonts setting work much better when you change the DPI.

So now I can take advantage of the high resolution display to actually make the computer display look better, rather than merely cramming lots more stuff in the same space as before.