WAOH Blog

MS launched Windows Server 8 Beta along with the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/v8-default.aspx

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview

Your https sites on IIS7 may not work after applying below patch.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24360

To fix:
Go to Sites >> Select your Site >> SSL Settings >> Ignore Client Certificates

Backup process is divided in two phases:
1. File Backup
2. Database Backup

Security Tip: Always upgrade your wordpress instance and plugins to latest version. Before upgrading, always backup your site to be on safe side.

To backup your wordpress files on your machine, please follow below steps:
1. Use FTP programs like Filezilla, FlashFXP, CuteFTP to ftp your site.
2. Your ftp login and password is same as your cpanel login
3. Once you are logged into ftp, go to /public_html
4. Select all files and folder and download it to your machine.

Security Tip: Never save your ftp password under FTP programs

To download database backup, please follow below steps:
1. Go to Cpanel >> PHPMyAdmin
2. Click on your WordPress Database from left panel
3. On right pane >> Click on EXPORT Tab
4. Select All the tables, and check the SQL radio button.
5. Check the “Add DROP TABLE” box. (This can be useful for over-writing an existing database.)
6. Check the “Add IF NOT EXISTS” check box.
7. Check the “Save as File” box
8. Check the “None” for compression. If your database is very large use a compression method.
9. Click Go. The data will now be saved into your computer.

Are there any automated solutions available for WordPress Backup?
Yes. There are several methods of automating the backup process available, but back up those auto backups with a manual backup every once in a while to guarantee that the process is working.

Automated Backup Solutions
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups#Automatic_Backups

Reference URL’s :
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups#cPanel
http://codex.wordpress.org/phpMyAdmin
http://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_FileZilla
http://codex.wordpress.org/Updating_WordPress

Outlook Web Access (or OWA) is one of Exchange Server’s best features, allowing you to connect to your corporate mailbox from anywhere using web browser

To configure SSL for Outlook Web Access on Exchange Server 2003 complete the following
I bought SSL Certificates from http://www.rapidsslonline.com/ to secure my OWA, they are offering RapidSSL at good price

PHASE – I Generating CSR for OWA site
1. Open Start >> Programs >> Administrative Tools >> Internet Services Manager
2. Right click on the website that is hosting your OWA component (this is by default the “Default Web Site”) and open its properties.

3. Select the “Directory Security” tab and then click on “Server Certificates”. The “Web Server Certificates Wizard” will now be displayed, click Next.
4. On the “Server Certificate” dialogue box (below), select “Create a new certificate”, click Next.

5. In the “Delayed or Immediate Request” dialogue box (below), we will select “Prepare the request now, but send it later”, this is because we will be sending the certificate request to a third-party to process, i bought SSL from http://www.rapidsslonline.com/, click Next.

6. We are now presented with the “Name and Security Settings” dialogue box (below). Give our new certificate a name and also select the level of security we would like to use (it is not recommended that you go over 1024 as this will have an adverse effect on your server performance), click Next.

7. In the “Organization Information” dialogue box (below), we will enter the name of our organization. This should be as you want it to appear on any legal documents as this is the name that will appear in your certificate. The organizational unit can be a location, department or business unit within your company.

8. In the “Your Site’s Common Name” dialogue box (below), we must enter the FQDN of our web server.

9. You are now presented with the “Geographical Information” dialogue box (below). It is important to make sure you enter the State in full, for example “FLORDIA” not just “FL”. Abbreviating State names will be rejected at the end of the Certificate Wizard.


10. The last step is to specify the location of the Certificate Request File, remember where and what you called this as you will need to copy the data from this file to send to the SSL certificate authority.

11. The “Request File Summary” will now appear (below). Make sure everything is OK and then click Next to process the request.

We have now created a “CSR”; this will be used during SSL Enrollment process at http://www.rapidsslonline.com/

Now go to http://www.rapidsslonline.com/ and complete SSL enrollment process, your certificate will be delivered to you shortly after completion of your order. Usually it takes 10 – 15 min. to complete and get certificate from this guys. This guys really rocks!

PHASE – II Completing SSL Installation
We have now received our certificate from Rapidsslonline.com and we’re now going to setup OWA so it requires the use of SSL.
1. Open Start >> Programs >> Administrative Tools >> Internet Services Manager
2. Open the Properties for the Web Site that is hosting OWA (normally the Default Web Site).

3. Select the “Directory Security” tab and then click on the “Server Certificates” button.
4. You will now be presented with the “Pending Certificate Request” dialogue box (below), select “Process the pending request and install the certificate”, click Next.

5. The “Process a Pending Request” dialogue box will appear (below), navigate to the Certificate that you received from the certificate authority, click Next.

6. You will now be presented with the “Certificate Summary” (below), if everything on this screen looks OK, click Next. We have now installed the SSL certificate into our web site, the next step is to enable SSL for OWA – this is a pretty simple task.

Enabling SSL on OWA virtual directory
1. Using the Internet Services Manager, open the properties for the “Exchange” virtual directory.
2. Select the “Directory Security” tab and the click on the “Edit” button in the Secure Communication section.
3. In the “Secure Communications” dialogue box (yet again below), check the box “Require Secure Channel (SSL)”, you could also check the box “Require 128-bit encryption”, if you do check the 128-bit checkbox, any browsers that do not support 128-bit encryption will be unable to connect to OWA.

One final step that you may need to take is to ensure that your Firewall is configured to allow HTTPS (port 443 by default) to pass through.

To create mySQL Database and User

1. Login into your mysql server as root

2. To Create Database
CREATE DATABASE DBNAME;
where DBNAME is replaced with actual Database Name you want to create

3. To Create mySQL User and Grant access to Database
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DBNAME.* TO ‘DBUSER’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘PASSWORD’;
where DBNAME needs to be replaced with actual Database Name on which you want to grant access, Database must exists.
DBUSER needs to be replaced with Database username which you want to create and grant permission
PASSWORD needs to be replaced with password of your choice

Note:
Under GRANT statement replace localhost with ‘%’ if you want to allow access to your DBUSER from any host.

You are done!

=============================================================

If you are getting below error when connecting from mysql client or PHPError: Client does not support authentication protocol

1. Login into your mysql server as root

2. Run below two queries
SET PASSWORD FOR ‘DBUSER’@'localhost’ = OLD_PASSWORD(‘passwd’);
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
where DBUSER needs to be replaced with actual Database User
passwd needs to be replaced with password of your choice

Windows Server 2003 includes new version 5.2 of the Remote Desktop Protocol, among the most significant capabilities direct console session. Most people are aware of two remote desktop (RDP) connections for server administration purposes but they don’t know about the secret ‘third’ RDP connection. This third connection is known as RDP Console Session.

How can I login to RDP console session?

1. Go to Start > Run
2. Type: mstsc /console
3. Remote Desktop Connection will start. Type the computer name or IP address of the computer you want to connect to in the Computer box.
4. Configure any other desired options, and then click Connect.

Notes
• To open a command prompt, click Start, point to All programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command prompt.
• To view the complete syntax for this command, at a command prompt,
type: mstsc /?

Benefits of RDP Console Session:

- Remotely working with applications installation or troubleshooting which have problem with virtual rdp connection.
- Allows you to login and end user sessions when your both RDP connections are busy.

IIS / PHP / FastCGI
Improve your PHP performance by X4 to X8

Tested on:
Windows 2003 Standard Server (32-bit)
IIS6 + PHP 4.4.6

FastCGI
The FastCGI interface combines the best aspects of CGI and vendor APIs. Like CGI, FastCGI applications run in separate, isolated processes. FastCGI’s advantages include:
Performance. FastCGI processes are persistent-they are reused to handle multiple requests. This solves the CGI performance problem of creating new processes for each request.
Simplicity, with easy migration from CGI. The FastCGI application library (described on page 9) simplifies the migration of existing CGI applications. Applications built with the application library can also run as CGI programs, for backward compatibility with old Web servers.
Language independence. Like CGI, FastCGI applications can be written in any language, not just languages supported by the vendor API.
Process isolation. A buggy FastCGI application cannot crash or corrupt the core server or other applications. A malicious FastCGI application cannot steal any secrets (such as session keys for encryption) from the Web server.
Non-proprietary. FastCGI is supported in all of Open Market’s server products, and support is under development for other Web servers, including the freely available Apache and NCSA servers, as well as commercial servers from Microsoft and Netscape.
Architecture independence. The FastCGI interface is not tied to a particular server architecture. Any Web server can implement the FastCGI interface. Also, FastCGI does not impose any architecture on the application: applications can be single or multi-threaded, regardless of the threading architecture of the Web server.
Support for distributed computing. FastCGI provides the ability to run applications remotely, which is useful for distributing load and managing external Web sites.

How it works:
It’s fairly simple and straight forward.

1. IIS loads the FastCGI Process Manager (ISAPI) on startup
2. The FastCGI Process Manager initializes itself, creating multiple FastCGI processes (php.exe’s in the Task Manager) and waits for a new connection from the Web server.
3. When a client request comes in, the FastCGI Process Manager selects and opens a connection to a FastCGI process. The server sends the CGI environment variable information and standard input over to the FastCGI process.
4. Then the FastCGI process completes its processing and sends the standard output and error information back to the server over the same connection.
5. When the FastCGI process closes the connection, the request is complete. The FastCGI process then waits for another connection from the FastCGI Process Manager running in IIS. In normal CGI, php.exe would be terminated at this point.

PHP reloads settings from php.ini and all extensions everytime it executes. FastCGI dramatically saves lot of time by using PHP process which is already loaded. As an pluses, persistent database connections also work.

Quick Installation on IIS6

1. Make sure you have PHP 4.3.x or later installed. Earlier versions of PHP require extra work to get FastCGI working. We assume that your PHP installation path is C:\PHP\

2. Download ISAPI http://www.caraveo.com/fastcgi/fastcgi-0.6.zip and unpack ZIP to c:\PHP\isapi_fcgi.dll

3. Copy and paste below content into text file and then rename text file as fastcgi.regNote:You might want to change the AppPath of the sample.

================copy from here===================

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FASTCGI]
“StartServers”=dword:00000005
“IncrementServers”=dword:00000002
“MaxServers”=dword:00000019
“Timeout”=dword:00000258

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FASTCGI\.php]
“AppPath”=”c:\\php\\php.exe”"BindPath”=”php-fcgi”

================copy from here===================

4. Add the application mappings extensions you want to be sent to the fastcgi dll using the IIS configuration screens. To do so:
a. From the Internet Service Manager (MMC), select the Web site or the starting point directory of an application.
b. Open the directory’s property sheets (by right clicking and selecting properties), and then click the Home Directory, Virtual Directory, or Directory tab.
c. Click the Configuration button, and then click the App Mappings tab.
d. Click Add, set the file extension to .php, and in the Executable box, type: c:\php\isapi_fcgi.dll, and check the Check that file exists checkbox and save the mapping.
e. Do the same for similar extensions such as .php3 or .phtml.
f. Then save all changes and restart the web-server.

5. To test whether FastCGI is running, check $_SERVER['FCGI_SERVER_VERSION']. It should hold something like “2.2.2 0.5.2 beta”.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastCGI
http://www.fastcgi.com/
http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/fastcgi-php
http://www.fastcgi.com/devkit/doc/fastcgi-whitepaper/fastcgi.htm

BGInfo is tiny program which creates Wallpaper displaying current System Information. It is very useful utilities when you are managing too many servers or workstations over KVM or through remote desktop. This is fully-configurable program automatically generates desktop backgrounds that include important information about the system including IP addresses, computer name, logged on user, network adapters, and more.

You can place utility into System startup. Utility does not consume resources or interfer with any other application.

Works on 95/NT/XP/2000/2003. Above all it is Free.

Screenshot # 1

Screenshot # 2

For more information:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Miscellaneous/BgInfo.mspx