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Over the past couple of days I’ve been battling away trying to get the Win32 Bacula agent to back up my Windows Server 2008 System State  and Exchange Server 2007 Information Store Databases.

Bacula currently doesn’t support VSS backups of a 64-Bit version of Windows Server 2008, so there’s a number of hoops you have to jump through to get even a semi-reliable System State & Exchange backup.  For an Exchange backup we use the NTBACKUP binaries from Windows Server 2003 64-bit and for the System State we use the Windows Server 2008 wbadmin tools.

For both jobs we’ll use a couple of “Client Run Before Job” commands to trigger client-side scripts to run the client-side backup jobs…

(continue reading…)

The following was filmed yesterday at Apples WWDC conference.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuTtrkVtns]

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuTtrkVtns

At last! iD is producing a game engine than can handle outdoor areas and is actually LIT for a change!

This is just a quick test post written using the new Windows Live Writer beta.

As I’m writing this, I’m looking at a WYSIWYG view of pretty much what my post will look like on the site – Complete with CSS styles etc applied.

Seems pretty funky and so far is much nicer to use than the Wordpress built-in editor.

This morning I realised my Outlook PST files had not been backed up since I upgraded to Outlook/Office 2007.  It seems that the backup addin stops working after an upgrade.

A quick Google search led me to this information:

Here’s how to get the free Personal Folders Backup tool from Microsoft installed and working in Outlook 2007:

1. Download the pfbackup.exe file.
2. Use WinZip or a similar file extraction tool to extract the files in pfbackup.exe, launcher.exe and pfbackup.msi.
3. Double-click pfbackup.msi and follow the prompts to install it.
4. In Outlook 2007, choose Tools | Trust Center and choose Add-ins from the navigation list on the left. At the bottom of the Add-ins screen, under Manage, select COM Add-ins and click Go.
5. On the COM Add-ins dialog, click Add and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\ADDINS folder. Select outbak.dll and click OK. When you return to the COM Add-ins dialog, you should see a new entry, Outlook Backup Addin, with its check box checked.
6. Click OK to close the COM Add-ins dialog.

Once you have the add-in installed, you should be able to choose File | Backup on Outlook 2007’s main menu and set your backup options.

It’s worth adding that if you’ve already got the addin installed, at step 3 you should run pfbackup.msi to uninstall the addin first and then re-run the installer to install it again.

Just a few quick notes on how I got a CentOS v4.4 Xen dom0 to boot inside a VMWare Server VM…

yum install bridge-utils SDL

rpm -ivh xen-3.0.4.1-1.i386.rpm kernel-xen-2.6.16.33-3.0.4.1.i386.rpm

vi /etc/yum.conf
Add:
exclude=xen xen-kernel xen-devel kernel

mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled

mkinitrd -f -v --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod --preload=mptbase --preload=mptscsih --preload=mptfc --preload=mptspi /boot/initrd-2.6.16.33-xen_3.0.4.1.img 2.6.16.33-xen_3.0.4.1

vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Add:
  title Xen v3.0
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel /xen-3.0.gz noreboot dom0_mem=128000
  module /vmlinuz-2.6-xen root=/dev/VolGroup00/root
  module /initrd-2.6-xen.img

Reboot!

I’ve just upgraded to Outlook 2007 and while I mostly like the new interface, I’ve come across something that bugs me…

In previous Outlook versions, I’ve always modified the toolbar to add a button for “Next Item in Conversation Topic”. This option allows you to easily follow threads on mailing lists or private email conversations.

This option still exists in Outlook 2007, but you can no longer customise the new “Ribbon” interface – You can only modify the “Quick Access Toolbar”.

On to my annoyance… If you add a command to the QAT that doesnt have a default icon associated with it you get a green disc icon instead – An icon that as far as I can see, you cant change! (If someone knows different – Let me know!)

If you happen to want to add more buttons to the toolbar, you’d better hope they’ve all got icons associated or you’ll just have a toolbar full of green blobs!

Looks like Happy Beggar might have a half-decent solution to the Xbox 360/WMV Transcoding problem: Encode360

I’ll probably give this a go at some point, but I doubt its going to replace Xbox Media Centre sat on my old Xbox…

The Clicker: Dear Microsoft, “help me help you.” – Engadget

Earlier this week Microsoft rolled out their highly-anticipated Xbox 360 update. The update was chock full of bug fixes and new features. However, to me, one of the most exciting new features was their long-overdue update to the 360’s UPnP client. That’s right; they finally added the ability to stream video from your computer to the 360. While it’s technically always been possible to stream (using the 360’s Media Center Extender technology), the new update gives the masses who aren’t yet using a Media Center box a quick and easy way to stream video to the television. Or does it?

On the surface it’s quite an exciting turn of events. However, as many now know all too well, there’s just one problem: it only supports WMV. There’s no DivX support. There’s no H.264 support. There’s just WMV. Now, I’m sure that there are many purists out there reading this right now who are flat-out appalled by this decision. The anti-Microsoft crowd (you know the type — they’re the ones who think it’s still clever to say Micro$oft) are quick to malign anything not open source and/or anything Microsoft. Frankly, I’m not one of those people. I respect Microsoft’s decision to not pay licensing fees to each of the different codec companies. In the end, the decision keeps the price of the unit down. However, there is one HUGE caveat:

Microsoft, you have got to make it easier to transcode into WMV.

James Senior has updated his Microsoft TechNet blog with captures of the Windows Vista sounds we can expect to here…

Click here…

I’ve been having problems signing into my profile in MSN/Live Messenger on my home pc for the last week or so.  Leelas profile worked fine, but for some reason when I tried i’d get the rotating pawn icon and there it would stay…

I subscribed to Ed Botts blog in Bloglines this morning and came across a post he made where he was having a similar problem.

Yesterday, I sent a note to support and got the suggested fix within a few hours. Open Regedit and delete the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger\Policies

After doing that, I was able to sign in again. If you’re having this problem, maybe the same fix will work for you.

The fix worked for me!