How To

Feb 28 2008

Enabling User Instances with sp_configure

I was recently creating a web application in Visual Web Developer 2005 and I needed to create a database through the ASP.NET Configuration interface. When I opened the Security tab, I got the following error:

There is a problem with your selected data store. This can be caused by an invalid server name or credentials, or by insufficient permission. It can also be caused by the role manager feature not being enabled. Click the button below to be redirected to a page where you can choose a new data store.

The following message may help in diagnosing the problem: Generating user instances in SQL Server is disabled. Use sp_configure ‘user instances enabled’ to generate user instances.

Its not really clear how to fix that problem from the error message, so I did a search on Google and found the following solution.

Run the SQL Server Management Studio Express application and press the New Query button (or press Ctrl-N). Enter the following in the query editor:

exec sp_configure 'user instances enabled', 1
reconfigure

Execute the query and then restart the SQL Server database. You should be able to create the database now for your ASP.NET application.

By Johan • How To • 0

Feb 20 2008

Dual Booting Vista and XP

Many people have been disappointed with Windows Vista when they realized that some of their applications are incompatible with the operating system. QuickBooks 2006 is one example of a program which will not work in Vista, even if you run it with the Windows XP compatibility mode.

Vista is a major upgrade to the Windows. Its not like the transition from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, where you are actually going from Windows 5.0 to Windows 5.1. A program that ran well on Windows 2000 will very likely run well on XP. Vista, on the other hand, is another story.

With all of the compatibility issues, people are left with either buying new versions of their software (which is what Intuit recommends for QuickBooks 2006), or going back to XP.

These choices don’t really need to be made. You can have Windows Vista and XP residing on the same computer in a dual-boot setup. When the computer starts, you have a choice of running Vista or XP. This way, you can keep the applications that only work in XP on the XP partition and use Vista applications in the Vista partition.

APC Magazine published a step-by-step guide in creating a dual boot system. There are 2 different procedures, one with Vista installed first and one with XP installed first:

• How to dual-boot Vista with XP – step-by-step guide with screenshots
• How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) — the step-by-step guide

By Johan • How To • 0

Jan 27 2008

Installing Flash Player in Fedora

I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on Linux. Proof of that was the difficulty I had in installing a Flash player for Firefox. I had no problems downloading the software, but during installation it asks where your web browser is to install the plugin. I’ve never been able to find exactly where Firefox gets installed in Fedora 6.

Fortunately, there’s yum to the rescue. The first thing you need to do is save the code below in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ folder under the filename macromedia-i386.repo.

[macromedia] name=Macromedia for i386 Linux
baseurl=http://macromedia.rediris.es/rpm/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://macromedia.mplug.org/FEDORA-GPG-KEY

Then from a Linux terminal, enter the following command:

yum install flash-plugin

Then you’ll have the Flash plugin working with Firefox.

By Johan • How To • 0

Jan 26 2008

Installing Firefox 2.0 on Fedora 6

For those people who are still using Fedora 6 (version 8 is the latest), its possible to upgrade Firefox from version 1.5 to 2.0. You can download Firefox from Mozilla, but its a gzipped file and its easier working with an RPM. Red Hat doesn’t provide an RPM for this version, but you can use yum for the installation with the following procedure.

Log in as root and use yum to install the program.

$ su root
$ yum --enablerepo=development install firefox


By Johan • How To • 0

Jan 8 2008

Updating PostgreSQL With yum

One of the easiest way to install software on Red Hat, Fedora, or CentOS Linux distributions is through yum. Its faster to use than GUI installers and it just requires entering the following command:

yum -y install postgresql postgresql-server php-pgsql

The versions of PostgreSQL that can be updated are 7.3 to 8.3 and is available for Fedora (versions 7 and 8), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (versions 3, 4, and 5), and CentOS (versions 3, 4, and 5). PostreSQL is available on the 32-bit and 64-bit x-86 architectures.

Before running this command, you need to add configuration settings to the yum repository, which can be found at /etc/yum.conf or alternately save the settings in a file in the /etc/yum.repos.d folder (i.e. name the settings for Fedora as fedora.repo).

Configuration File for Fedora

# Please change the PostgreSQL major release number , if you need.
[pgdg82] name=PostgreSQL $releasever – $basearch
baseurl=http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org/8.2/fedora/fedora-$releasever-$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
#gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

Configuration File for Red Hat and CentOS

# Please change the PostgreSQL major release number , if you need.
[pgdg82] name=PostgreSQL 8.2 $releasever – $basearch
baseurl=http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org/8.2/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
#gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

Starting PostgreSQL

Once the PostgreSQL is installed, you need to configure the operating system to automatically start it when the system is booted. This can be done through the Services command in the GUI, or at the command line with:

/sbin/chkconfig postgresql on
/sbin/service postgresql start

Testing the DBMS

You can check if the software was correctly installed by running it with the following commands:

su – postgres
psql template1

Setting Permissions

The access configuration file in /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf should be set to use “trust” instead of “identity” as follows:

local all all trust

You’ll need to restart the database service after making this change by:

/sbin/service postgresql restart

By Johan • How To • 1