Mark Hayden's Weblog : Weblog

Thursday March 09, 2006

Developing Video teaches in Flash I am exploring the technology needed to enable us to have an alternative method of teaching our Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting class.

With the increased amount of Sun Employees working from home, and the geographical diveristy we have in our groups, it's something we need to do.

I like to learn to do new things with my computers, when I work from home, it's not unusual to see me with a Windows machine, Solaris Laptop and Mac Mini running at the same time. Each has it's key role to play.

I'm looking at converting some teaches we have on video to display in the browser, whilst I'd like to do this on the Mac, it looks like there is a wider choice of Flash development packages for Windows machines. I do like Dreamweaver a lot, but the latest version is outside of our budget constraints.

So we are looking at SwishZone, we have successfully tested a video streamed over the SunRay server, optimised at 200kbs to limit any stuttering. We did find a fantastic Flash converter that compressed the video very well, however, it was about 10 times the cost of SwishZone Video 2, and did not include the playback controls that Video 2 can include easily.

So, if I'm allowed to, I will look to post our example here when it is done. Please not it will not include any Troubleshooting teaches, rather some outtakes from a recent class.

And as ever, if someone has any better suggestions for Flash development I'm open to suggesgtions !

( Mar 09 2006, 06:12:21 AM PST ) Permalink

Friday March 03, 2006

Long time no update, caught out by the CTO ! I've been away from this blog for some time, but blogging here about the Troubleshooting work I do at Sun.

Today I met with our Sun Services CTO to discuss more about Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting [SGRT] , and he reminded me I had n't updated my blog in some time.

The reason was simple, I started the group blog before group blogs were really possible, and myself and my colleagues responsible for co-ordinating and managing the SGRT program at Sun were happily blogging away together, and I had almost forgotten about this blog.

Last time I was here, I was having trouble with my hosting company and needed some SQL advice from the experts out there, I got some good pointers, as well as a new and more reliable host.

What's interesting is comparing support received from hosting companies, as someone who has spent 17 years working for Computer Manufacturers, and all in Support, I'm interested in observing the support experience.

I am fortunate that my host, is highly available for a small company and has excellent customer care skills. So I expect to blog less about my Hosting issues runing the Mustang Club of Great Britain's website and more about the other topics I'm interested in.

As a recent convert to the Mac, I am looking to develop some remote learning modules using Flash to help me meet a need for distance learning of our trouble shooting class. And yes I was a convert due to the ipod halo effect.

So I may even get a chance to post the results of our technical investigations to get a presentation to include slideware and moving video and sound. Although you'll only see the test versions, as the production ones will contain I.P from Kepner-Tregoe . So if you have a suggestion of a product that could do this easily, please let me know, currently the only product that springs to mind is Macromedia Flash.

( Mar 03 2006, 06:12:01 AM PST ) Permalink

Friday April 08, 2005

So I got a Mac mini..... cool About 21 years ago, I first saw an Apple Mac. Some friends had an Apple II, but the Mac was really cool. It's graphical interface and mouse control were really innovative as far as I was concerned.

With the recent launch of the Mac Mini, I was tempted to get one but would it be fast enough with only 256MB memory, and would I be able to use it after many years using Windows products and Solaris.

Using a Mac to me, was just like riding a bike, however, what was clearly evident to me, is how much less Mac resources and sites there are on the internet.
For example, if I wanted a free GUI Windows FTP program I go to www.download.com and choose from a long list. I try the same for the Mac and fine one, but it's no longer available as the website it points to is gone. The other programs I try just don't have the same functionality as the programs I am used to.

Having said that, I do really like it, it's probably going to be my main web development machine, if I can find a good FTP client......

So if you know of a good Mac FTP Client with a nice GUI, drop me a note. ( Apr 08 2005, 03:44:21 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [4]

Wednesday April 06, 2005

Web hosting & MySQL Since the last update I've been away on business at CEC and a few weeks later on vacation to the California. I now realise that my blog has not been updated in a while.

The issues I had with MySQL are a thing of the past, as I have a new hosting company that assisted in the restoration of the SQL Dump, and the forum I run on behalf of the 'Mustang Owners Club of Great Britain' is now running on a new server, hosted by nethosted , the forum can be found at www.mocgb.net .

I now know more about MySQL and webservers than I ever wanted to, but I know I don't know nearly enough, hence why I needed a professional hosting company still.

( Apr 06 2005, 05:44:31 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Tuesday February 15, 2005

MySQL progress ... somewhat
Progress has been made somewhat in backing up my message forum in preperation to move it to a new server.
The largest table called 'post' still refuses to be backed up by phpMyadmin and such other mySql programs like SQLyog are reporting errors when trying to back it up. I believe that it is either too large or some time out is occurring. Within phpMyadmin, the table times out almost immediately, not giving the file dialog box. Effectively it fails to start even collating the table data for transfer. Other smaller tables work fine.

I can do a complete SQLdump, but as the 'from' server is a shared hosting platform with no SSH or telnet access, the Control Panel limits what I can do.
Next on the agenda is how can I extract a specific table from a complete dump and import it via phpMyadmin control panel.
My hosting company are not responding to any phone calls or emails, so no joy trying to ask for help.

Any ideas welcomed !
( Feb 15 2005, 12:55:54 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Saturday February 12, 2005

MySQL and VBulletin Forums I run a message forum on a shared server hosted by a company here in the UK. I am considering consolidating a number of websites I manage for the car club onto one server from the two I currently use.

In order to prepare for such an event, I thought I would try backing up and restoring the MySQL database and determine any problems I may encounter.

It did not turn out to be that easy, I still don't have the data off, despite a lot of help from a few friends and colleagues.
There are a lot of great looking MySQL interface programs that look like they would extract the data and send it to the new database. At the moment, just getting them logged in is proving too big a step.

I have some more pointers, which may overcome this. However, in the meantime, if anyone has some guidance or advice on how to move an mySQL database of around 33MB I would be happy to hear from you.

( Feb 12 2005, 02:34:28 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday February 11, 2005

Solaris 10 X86 Fat 32 Shared Partition
Following on from my need to add a shared partition between Solaris 10 and XP Pro. With the help of a few engineers here, I have the disk mounted , and here was how it was done .....

Using FDISK pointing at p0 to determine which partition your PC Filesystem is located :

My partition was maked as 3.Ensure you are logged in as root.
Mount the pcfs # mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p3 /mnt # cd /mnt
In order to mount this when the system reboots, modify the vfstab
and add the following line in.

/dev/dsk/c0d0p3 - /fatdisk pcfs - yes -

So my lesson learned is here so that the next time my Toshiba Hard drive fails on this laptop, I can follow this procedure withhout having to refer to my esteemed colleagues !

Roll on the weekend.
( Feb 11 2005, 09:12:10 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Mounting a Fat32 Disk in Solaris 10 X86
Following on from my need to add a shared partition between Solaris 10 and XP Pro. With the help of a few engineers here, I have the disk mounted , and here was how it was done .....

Using FDISK pointing at p0 to determine which partition your PC Filesystem is located :

In my case it looked like this :

Cylinders Partition Status Type Start End Length % ========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== === 1 IFS: NTFS 0 19379 19380 50 2 Active Solaris2 19380 31570 12191 31 3 Ext Win95 31571 38758 7188 19
My partition is maked as 3.Ensure you are logged in as root.
Mount the pcfs # mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p3 /mnt # cd /mnt
In order to mount this when the system reboots, modify the vfstab
and add the following line in.

/dev/dsk/c0d0p3 - /fatdisk pcfs - yes -

So my lesson learned is here so that the next time my Toshiba Hard drive fails on this laptop, I can follow this procedure withhout having to refer to my esteemed colleagues !

Roll on the weekend.
( Feb 11 2005, 08:23:41 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday February 10, 2005

Solaris 10 X86 FAT32 Challenge So the Tecra S1 has been reinstalled and is operational. I was warned of a potential bug if I format the remaining disk space in XP to allow both Solaris and XP to share a FAT 32 partition.

As a Unix user with limited exposure to Solaris Administration, I have to rely on a little assistance in that I often ask the engineers here to point me in the right direction to achieve a technical action. In this case, I need to understand how to I can format the remaining partition data in FAT32 from within Solaris 10 x86. In XP I can achieve this immediately, but I'm keen to learn how to do this in Solaris.

Also, anyone have any idea how to get the battery meter installed in the taskbar of a Toshiba Tecra S1 ?
( Feb 10 2005, 08:05:43 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Wednesday February 02, 2005

Solaris 10 x86 on Tecra S1 Installed Solaris 10 x86 on my Toshiba Tecra S1 today. Found that I needed to boot with kadb which switches the Power Management off, allowing the install to complete.

I need to reinstall the OS again though, as I did n't get the partition values quite right. The laptop has a dual boot config, but I really need a third partition in FAT32 that XP and Solaris can share for datafiles I wish to use in Star Office on both Operating Systems.
Installation was quite simple (with help from an engineer or two) for a Windows user trying to explore other Operating Systems !
( Feb 02 2005, 01:57:48 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Welcome So I've decided to join the blogging world. Although I have been contributing to TroubleshootingatSun for a while.

I'll be posting about what I think is cool in the world of troubleshooting, my other websites and the technical challenges in running them and other pieces of news that capture my interest.
Mark
( Feb 02 2005, 01:50:44 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]