Computer Plumber

How to control Windows with Apple Remote Desktop

If you do not want to use the Microsoft Remote Desktop application as detailed here. You can do the following to allow you to control Windows via Apple’s Remote Desktop application.

Install RealVNC Server (www.realvnc.com or www.tightvnc.com) on your Windows PC.

Once installed it will appear in the tray area of the taskbar or in your program files, select options and set a password, and adjust any necessary settings.

Now on Apple Remote Desktop you can connect to the Windows PC via the IP address. You will have remote control and view capabilities but no other Apple Remote Desktop features such as remote install.

ODBC.ini update did not work

After running the same database for quite some time for a rails application, we finally had to change the database in odbc.ini to point to the new server. Alas we changed the odbc.ini file, shut down the old database and relaunched the application. Expecting the application to immediately start talking to the database on reboot (since we just changed an IP) we were surprised to find that the application was not connecting to the database anymore.

The rails application was connecting to SQL Server as detailed in this previous post using ODBC and FreeTDS.
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Simple Setup of SSL on Apache with mod_ssl and OpenSSL

This is a very simple way of setting up Apache with SSL from a trusted Certificate Authority(CA), just follow these steps and you will have it running in no time. I am assuming you have all the prerequisites installed, Apache with mod_ssl enabled and OpenSSL. I add the following to the server configuration (either httpd.conf or apache2.conf) so it knows to listen on port 443, you can do this in the virtual host file if you wish:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
NameVirtualHost *:443
</IfModule>

The next thing you will want to do is create an RSA key for your server. There are 2 ways to do this you can do it so that Apache will require a password at startup/restart, or you can do it without this added encryption. If you choose not to use encryption, you should make sure you protect this key as much as possible! Rename domainname with your actual domain name you want to secure.
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Finding Duplicate Fields in a Database Table

Occasionally it is necessary to find duplicate fields within a database table.  The following query can be used to accomplish this easily.
SELECT *
FROM 'table'
WHERE ('item' IN (SELECT 'item'
FROM 'table'
GROUP BY 'item'
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1))
ORDER BY 'item'

This will list all rows in the desired ‘table’ where the given field (‘item’) is duplicated. This is a great query to use if you want to find duplicate email addresses in a database, or any other field that may be duplicated.

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Setting Up Ubuntu for Rails Development

These are a the procedures we use to setup a PC or VM for development of a ruby on rails application.

First things first, get your install software ready.  These instructions are based on the Hardy Heron version of Ubuntu (8.04).

Install the base OS and then fire up the terminal so you can copy and paste the following commands. 

So once you have the base installed, make sure your distribution is up to date:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

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