High Speed Web Blog » Thrifty Computing

implementing self-signed certs on multiple sites – windows

jakob — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:33:27 +0000

There’s a way to implement multiple self-signed certs on windows server, over many sites, using a shared IP; however, there’s a bit of a trick in doing this. The IIS6.0 toolkit contains something called SelfSSL, which is capable of creating self-signed certificates but there’s a catch. Its got a bug when it comes to using it for more than one site…

If you’re unfamiliar with SelfSSL, there’s many good tutorials available on how to use it. Here’s one of them. This covers everything you need, from how to find a domain’s ID, to how to creat the cert itself. Very useful and can be followed exactly. The trick comes in when you’re using this method to implement multiple self-signed certs for multiple sites. That’s what we’ll be covering.

First of all, find your site’s id by running iisweb.vbs /query “”. So if I were wanting to find the ID of highspeedweb, I’d do iisweb.vbs /query “highspeedweb.net”. You’ll get a print out with something like W3SVC/1345 or W3SVC/1 or W3SVC/465784. The number after W3SVC/ is the site ID. You’ll need to specify this when creating the SSL cert – it is very, very important.

Once you start SelfSSL the switches in the command line are very easy to understand. Again, it’s broken down very nicely here. Once you have the SSL cert created for the site, fire up IIS, right click the site and go to properties. Got to directory security and click on server certificate. Assign an existing cert, and select the one you just created and finish out the wizard. From here, select server certificate again, and choose export cert as a pfx file. Save it and complete the wizard. From here, choose the server certificate button again, replace the current certificate, and assign the pfx you just exported.

Windows 7 to kill Linux; Linux to retaliate and firebomb Windows 7

jakob — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:01:10 +0000

It’s the same old story every year: Linux will finally dominate Windows, Windows will finally kill off that pesky open-source Linux. My dad’s better than your dad; my mashed potatoes can beat-up your mashed potatoes. The truth simply is it’s not going to pan out like that. Linux will still dominate the server world and Windows will still dominate the desktop world (and if you think vista’s failing is a sign of Microsoft’s slipping, I kindly ask you to remember Windows ME followed by the popularity of XP). So what’s new to the battle front? Well, honestly, it’s not really ‘new’ it’s just what people are talking about these days. ‘Netbooks’. And I highly doubt it will be some epic battle of Good Vs. Evil, either.

Approximately 30% of all netbooks shipped have Linux installed on them. That’s great, there’s many good reasons to put Linux on a netbook. The biggest is Linux runs much smoother with less hardware than windows does. Linux can also do anything windows can do (for the most part), but here’s the difference – there’s a learning curve. Sure some ‘average consumer’ might be willing to try Linux on a netbook, but that does not equate to a full OS rebuild on a desk-top. It may convert some, but it may also remind a few why they have Windows installed in the first place – they’re already comfortable with what they know.

Windows 7 will not kill off Linux. Nor will server 2008. Nor will any other distribution of Windows. Most Linux distributions are free, stable, and secure which keep costs down and everything running smoothly. Gone (for the most part here) are the days of searching for drivers all day. Heck, sometimes it’s harder to find drivers for Vista. While Linux isn’t for everyone, it’s definitely not going anywhere anytime soon and it’s definitely not going to loose much, if any, of its server footing.

I, personally, use both. Linux more-so, especially with the addition of a linux workstation at my home, than Windows – but they both have their places/faults/features.

Free CD burner for windows

BrettW — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:36:40 +0000

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone in the thinking that the cd burning software included with windows is one of the worst, if not plainly the worst cd composition software available to users today. It is severely lacking in features such as those that would allow you to copy a cd, design an audio cd with any normalization or track control, or even simply create an .iso image file. About the only thing it does do is allow you to burn some piece of data on to the physical media that we call cd’s or dvd’s. That’s why I’m happy to have found CDBurner XP.

I’m not going to blow smoke where it doesn’t belong by saying something like, “this is the greatest burning software of all time”. But I can at least promise it won’t suck the moon out of orbit. All in all I’m quite pleased with this software and here is a quick run down of its key features;

burn all kinds of discs
audio-CDs with or without gaps between tracks
burn and create ISO files
data verification after burning process
create bootable discs
multi-language interface
bin/nrg ? ISO converter, simple cover printing and much more!
Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista

I used to be a pretty big fan of the Nero burning rom software, but its become a victim of software bloat. CDBurner XP on the other hand offers a plain and simple user interface that is actually quite flexible and most importantly FREE. Honestly I tried to find something I could gripe about with this software, but well quite simply it does exactly what I need it to do. It even has the ability to burn LightScribe lables. I used to use Nero Burning Rom for most everything, and I found that I have a large collection of .NRG files. Well CDBurner XP has the ability to convert .bin and .nrg files to the standard .iso format. It does still lack one feature that I used on a semi regular basis with Nero and that’s normalization for audio tracks. But it does offer something similar which is RealPlay gain. So if you are looking for an upgrade to your native windows cd burning software then give this a shot.

Cloning drives for free, no matter the operating system.

jakob — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:17:39 +0000

Pretend you’ve got 5 identical windows 2003 servers (or any server for that matter – cent os, windows 2003, 2008, and mac os even!) to setup in one work shift. Why break your back trying to install them one at a time on top of doing all the updates? You can just do one base install and ‘ghost’ the drive. “That’s expensive”, you might proclaim! Not so – in fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret – Gparted. Why spend $700 on cloning software when you can just do the same job for free? Yeah, free! Free as the air you’re breathing right now (unless you’re in space, reading from the ocean, or maybe reading from Mt. Everest).

First things first – you’ll need a copy of Gparted! That’s the iso version, burn it to a cd. Make sure you have the drive you want to clone and an empty drive connected to the same machine (the size of the drive does not matter, unless the data you’re cloning is larger than the space of the disc) and boot to your gparted cd. Before Gparted starts, you’ll need to choose a few options, I’ve personally found the defaults to work just fine every time I’ve used Gparted. Follow the on-screen directions. Once Gparted launches, you’ll see your master drive. Select it and choose the copy option. Switch to your secondary drive choose paste. You’ll be greeted with two warnings, click Ok through those and choose paste again. Apply your action. Once the data is copied over, you’ll need to mark the flag to ‘bootable’ (right click option). Bada-boom, bada-bing, you just cloned your drive. Remove the secondary drive and place it in another machine and watch it boot right up! Pat yourself on the back for saving a few hundred dollars! Now, of course, if you’re doing this with windows, you’ll need to use the same hardware if possible, to avoid a repair and you may need to re-register your copy with Microsoft. If you have a volume license key, and the same hardware, you’ll have no issues with ghosting the drive using gparted. All updates, accounts, settings, etc, etc will be copied over – it’s a true clone. Linux, as always, doesn’t really care, as long as the new hardware is supported.