What is so good and bad of Windows Home Server
About several months ago, I have participated Windows Home Server Beta Test. It’s a Windows 2003 tweaked for home use as its name. It works pretty well–duplicating data, organizing, and backing up all PCs in home network. However I don’t know if it’s worth $199 or more–as rumors. $150 should be very interesting price point for this OS though. Yet what I really like in Home Server is:-
1. Automatically backup all of your PCs in the network: automatically means truly automatic, you don’t have to do anything–just leave the computer on, the home server will communicate with all PCs and synchonize the hard drive to its storage–all data really. If you are one of the fan of Norton Ghost, I bet you will love this Home Server because not only backup automatically, but also restore pretty easy and fast too–using Windows Home Server CD and boot it in the program. Then choose which partition is the one. After 20-25mins, it’s like time machine.
2. Remote access to any computer in home network; this feature is really useful not only sharing the file over the Internet but also making the remote connection to *any* PC on home network too. This really makes people so convenient to do whatever they want like they sit in front of their own computer at home. Kudos to Microsoft for livenode.com domain (eventually changing to homeserver.com for RTM version and later) to synchronize the home network IP intelligently, so we don’t have to use DynDns or No-IP anymore
These two features above are what I really like about WHS; however, there are what I don’t like as well–maybe it’s what it should included in WHS.
1. Backing-up-over-network really makes other works get slowly and waste a lot of time. I don’t know whether I am exaggerate or not but I really feel it. So I set WHS to back up other computer around 1am – 3am which is not effecting my work. There is still a problem left which is you have to pay your electrical bill more a bit If WHS can wake other computers and shut them down automatically, it should be ideal. Just to wake up it should not be a problem much but to shut them down after finished backing up might be a bit hard. I hope there will be a solution for this soon.
2. Requiring such a complex password. This is what I really hate about WHS. Since it requires all computers to use the same user and password as the ones in WHS, all users in desktop and laptop have to have complex password as well. That’s really suck idea for home network! I don’t care about security much in home network because I want all my family to use computers easily–I don’t think my mom will try to remember such that complex. This rule is just not suitable for most ordinary people I don’t think everyone at home is computer geek though.
note: there is a way to trick this as well but it’s just not practical >> link here
3. I really like WHS included Media Center!! The thing is I don’t want to leave all my PCs on, so this solution should be great idea; maybe it’s just only working on recording by schedule; it doesn’t have to broadcast live TV on this machine. Therefore, it will not handle that much load. Media Extender will come to play another rule Oh, please I really like to have this.
note: there is SageTV 6.26 RC – Stream Digital Media from WHS now; I will try and tell about it soon
All in all, there is a place for Add-in programs, I hope there will be programs that fulfill the lacking features very soon! So far so great, Windows Home Sever! This is really nice idea of organizing computers in your home. While I’m using RC right now, I always check and hope for OEM to hit NewEgg at the right price! Another thing is Home server products from any vendor should be really interesting, I can’t wait to see it!’
check out more info at http://mswhs.com/
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how to config Samba server and user
First, I was switching from all time Windows user to Linux user, more specifically Ubuntu–first Linux that I can use regularly. I was wondering if I can share files over the network with Windows as well. I know that there is Samba service out there but I don’t know how to configure it properly. I messed things up as usual; all I knew to make it work is editing /etc/samba/smb.conf as security=share. Then I could get in there easily but no protection at all. Now I know, so I think it might be a good idea to explain in my ways instead of reading any-distro-docs which sometimes is too complex for novice users.
First of all, you have to install Samba server. I won’t go through this process because if you don’t know about this, you have to find out and get used to Linux first. My recommendation is trying with Debian, such as Ubuntu. It’s really easy to understand.
Second, we have to configure the smb.conf file. This time you have to be as “root” to make a share folder. You have 2 choices here, GUI or editing the file. I found that GUI is easy to understand but I can’t get it work for some reasons, thus I choose the traditional way
After we already created share folders, we have to create a user for Samba too. This the point I misunderstood for a while; I thought that Samba will use the user from the system; however, it’s not and system and Samba user are not the same as well.
These 3 steps are all you have to do to make it work perfectly. I brief all the processes first so you can imagine what we are doing in each step.
for editing Samba configuration file (smb.conf) you have to get in there
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf
once you get in there you will find a lot of comments and samples; you may go through the file for more understanding of each. However, we will pay attention to how to set share folder.
[share-name]
path = /media/hdax/xxx/
comment = whatever you want
available = yes
browsable = yes
public = yes
writable = yes/no
This is what you have to insert at the end of the file. After you put the proper value, you will be able to see this share from another Windows PCs. However, you can’t browse the file right now because of login window. Whatever user and password you fill are not working Don’t be surprise, that’s normal. You still have to know 2 more values which are
valid user = user-name
guest ok = yes/no
the first one, valid user, is which user you give permission to read and/or write. Another one, guest ok, is to enable guest user which is read-only user.
After this step, if you enable guest user, you will be able to see the share folder without any problem. If not, you still have to go on setting user.
For creating user, you will run the smbpasswd utility to create user and password
sudo smbpasswd -a user-name
Then you have to add that user to smbusers file
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smbusers
What you have to put in there is this form
system-user-name = “smb-user-name”
As you see, you may use Samba username (is what you add in smbpasswd) that differs from your username in the system depending on choice of preference.
All these methods above, you will be able to make many share folders with many conditions as you wish
Note: If you just want to share all share folders without any restricts, you may change the line security = user in smb.conf to security = share and that’s all set.
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Cannot double click to open any drive, you are infected!
I haven’t had a chance to meet this virus myself for long time since I heard this symptom happened to my mom’s computer and you know what? I thought it’s a registry broken. I had tried to edit my mom’s registry but no luck. I couldn’t do anything other than this though because I didn’t see it myself. However, the time is come. First I saw this symptom is like some programs override the default shell of Drive. What happen is you have to right–click on drive, just to open it. And you will see Auto-bold to show that’s default of double click action. As you know, it’s just like nothing happen; nonetheless, the virus is activated and spreads into your computer. This virus, aka “flashy” family, use flash or external drives as medium to spread. However, it doesn’t effect other tasks at all, as I know–pls correct me if I’m wrong.
The tool I found is pretty easy to use, just double click and wait. You may find that seems like your computer almost freeze, but don’t worry it’s not. When everything turns to normal, your computer is good to go.
Try by yourself and happy with powerful of double click that you used to.
download: >>Flash_Disinfector.zip<< (I need to zip it for secured reasons)
ref: data about file type association in Windows that I found–it doesn’t help fix this symptom but may be nice thing to know
http://one.mycapsules.com/forum/showthread.php?t=112&f=3
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Digital Speaker with analog connecter really works?
I don’t know that much about the digital speaker since I never have one yet. All I wonder is if digital and analog signal are really different when they all are from computers which use digital signal as a base. If it’s really output as digital, then the digital speaker must have DAC too. Does that sound weird? and why should we have to have a sound card anyway–just to have a digital connector?
That’s what I have to figure out next. Surely, I will get one of those soon.
However, what I want to say today is I had a chance to fix one of my friends’ computer; he had Sony VAIO with SoundMax AC’97 onboard. There are 3 common connectors–line in, speaker, and mic in. Moreover there is one SPDIF as well. The strange thing is he had plugged the RCA coax + converter to stereo plug to line in connector. He claimed that it worked randomly. I really had no idea how it works; I thought it might be the same as my creative audigy ZS which one connector can handle both digital and analog output. By the way, I have no luck to make it work. All I can find is plain drivers which allow sound card to work properly–there is no option to tweak only a bit. At that time, I’m almost pretty sure of that’s his mistake. But I don’t know really because I never have this experience. All a guide book, whatever documents from sony.com don’t help.
After having no hope to tweak those connector to work digitally, I asked him that he had to have a new cable. Fortunately, he gathered all stuffs from his cabinet and found old computers. What I found is Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2. Yes! it has S/PDIF output as well and that port is not optical but electrical which is working very well for his cable. Ultimately I can solve his problem then.
Only the question left in my mind: if it’s an electrical connector which needs electrons to carry the signal–is it digital really? or it’s analog signal with digital encoded inside. If so, it should consider as digital or just analog as same as telephone signal?
Oh I don’t believe that I’m an electrical engineer :’( because I think everything is analog by the way Digital is just for any calculations or processes in circuits. Whenever signal-to-noise ratio does matter, thus digital is all the way. (analog is just what we don’t realize it’s underneath in every single steps)
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All the connector diagram in the world
just to keep it for the archive, so I don’t have to google much I don’t know this is worse than googling when I want. Let’s try =)
http://pinouts.ru/connector/
The common thing we should know:-
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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
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