Riley McArdle

There’s a great post on the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog that explains how the JDBC connection pools for the Oracle eBusiness Suite work, how to configure them, monitor them and troubleshoot problems. There’s also an excellent diagram of the tiered architecture of Oracle eBusiness Suite.

Understanding Oracle JDBC Connections From the eBusiness Middle Tier via Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

VMware has announced an ultra-thin enterprise virtualization solution called VMware ESX Server 3i that fits into 32MB of flash. It can be installed on a USB flash drive or can be integrated right into the server by hardware vendors.

It is remotely managed by VirtualCenter Management Server. New ESX 3i servers are automatically discovered, configured and provisioned. Need more virtualization capacity? Step 1, buy a server with ESX 3i built in. Step 2, plug it in. Step 3, you’re done! This is a revolutionary. VMware continues to show their innovation and dominance in the market by releasing features like this. Microsoft is years behind with their virtualization efforts.

And the best part of this new technology, it will be included in future versions of VMware Infrastructure 3. Which means it will be free for existing customers. You can choose either to install the standard ESX 3 server or the ultra-thin ESX 3i server.

Meet the Next Generation of Virtual Infrastructure Technology via TechGripe
VMware goes flash with 3i via tech.nocr.at

I know I’ve been posting a lot of KiXtart stuff lately, and I don’t mean to have my blog become all about KiXtart but it seems to be a pretty popular topic. I’ve been watching my web stats and have seen a few users come by from searches looking for how to open a browser from KiXtart so I thought I’d post the answer.

Here’s a function to open the default web browser. An optional URL can be specified and it will be opened in the browser.

; Open the default browser
FUNCTION OpenDefaultBrowser (OPTIONAL $URL)
	; Get the command line to start the default browser
	$BrowserCommand = READVALUE ("HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTP\shell\open\command", "")
 
	; Check if there is a %1 in the command
	IF INSTR ($BrowserCommand, "%1")
		; Replace any occurences of %1 with the URL
		$BrowserCommand = JOIN (SPLIT ($BrowserCommand, "%1"), $URL)
	ELSE
		; Append the URL to the end of the command
		$BrowserCommand = "$BrowserCommand $URL"
	ENDIF
 
	; If no URL was specified, remove " -nohome" from the command line
	IF NOT $URL
		$BrowserCommand = JOIN (SPLIT ($BrowserCommand, " -nohome"), "")
	ENDIF
 
	; Open the default browser and return immediately
	RUN $BrowserCommand
ENDFUNCTION

With the above function, if Firefox or Opera or some other browser is installed and set as the default, it will be opened instead of Internet Explorer. If you need to be sure that Internet Explorer is opened, and not some other browser, here’s a function that will open Internet Explorer no matter what.

; Open Internet Explorer
FUNCTION OpenInternetExplorer (OPTIONAL $URL)
	; Get the path to Internet Explorer
	$BrowserCommand = READVALUE ("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\IEXPLORE.EXE", "")
 
	; Append the URL to the end of the command
	$BrowserCommand = "$BrowserCommand $URL"
 
	; Open Internet Explorer and return immediately
	RUN $BrowserCommand
ENDFUNCTION

Here are some examples for using these functions:

; Open the default browser and go to the home page
OpenDefaultBrowser
 
; Open the default browser and go to http://blog.glyff.net/
OpenDefaultBrowser ("http://blog.glyff.net/")
 
; Open Internet Explorer and go to the home page, even if it isn't the default browser
OpenInternetExplorer
 
; Open Internet Explorer and go to http://blog.glyff.net/, even if it isn't the default browser
OpenInternetExplorer ("http://blog.glyff.net/")

At Ergotron, we have a browser based, third party application that works best when the server is added to the Trusted Sites Zone in Internet Explorer. In a perfect world, we could bug the developers to make it run correctly on the principle of least privilege, but that’s not likely to happen.

So, I added code to our log on script, which is written in KiXtart, to add the servers for this application to the Trusted Sites Zone.

Here’s the main function:

; Add a site to the Trusted Sites Zone
FUNCTION AddTrustedSite ($Protocol, $Server, $Domain)
	$DomainsKey = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains"
	$SiteKey = '$DomainsKey\$Domain\$Server\'
	$SiteValue = $Protocol
	$TrustedSitesZone = 2
 
	$Result = WRITEVALUE ($SiteKey, $SiteValue, $TrustedSitesZone, "REG_DWORD")
ENDFUNCTION

I also wanted a way to remove sites from the Trusted Sites Zone as well:

; Delete a site from the Trusted Sites Zone
FUNCTION DeleteTrustedSite ($Protocol, $Server, $Domain)
	$DomainsKey = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains"
	$SiteKey = '$DomainsKey\$Domain\$Server\'
	$SiteValue = $Protocol
 
	$Result = DELVALUE ($SiteKey, $SiteValue)
ENDFUNCTION

Now, to use these functions:

; Add buggy application to the Trusted Sites Zone
AddTrustedSite ("http", "buggyapp", "example.com")
 
; Remove fixed application from the Trusted Sites Zone
DeleteTrustedSite ("http", "fixedapp", "example.com")

The value passed to $Protocol can be “http”, “https”, “file”, “ftp” or “*”. If “*” is used, the site will be trusted when it is accessed using any protocol. If anything other than “https” is specified, you must disable the “Require server verification (https) for sites in this zone” option.

This is how to disable the “Require server verification (https) for sites in this zone” option:

; Do not require https for sites in the Trusted Sites zone
$TrustedSitesFlags = VAL (READVALUE ("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\2\", "Flags"))
$TrustedSitesFlags = $TrustedSitesFlags | 4
$Result = WRITEVALUE ("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\2\", "Flags", $TrustedSitesFlags, "REG_DWORD")

KiXtart is an easy to use scripting language that is ideal for logon scripts. I use KiXtart for the logon script at Ergotron to map network drives and printers, adjust system settings, remove unwanted programs, install standard software and more. Over the last few years, the script has grown to over 1,800 lines but still runs quickly and is fairly easy to maintain.

Periodically, I’ll post about common logon and administrative tasks that I’ve found KiXtart useful for.

Here’s an example of a simple use of KiXtart to map different network drives for different groups of users.

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; Everyone gets a drive mapped to the "Company Documents" share
USE "X:" "\\SERVER\Company Documents"
 
; Only users in the "Finance" group get a drive mapped to the "Finance" share
IF INGROUP ("Finance")
	USE "Y:" "\\SERVER\Finance"
ENDIF

ATA drives that run in PIO mode instead of DMA mode use a lot of CPU any time that data is transferred to or from the drive. This can cause significant performance problems. Common symptoms are slow boot times, erratic or stuttering mouse movement, CD or DVD burning failure, and stuttering while watching DVD movies.

I’ve used this method countless times to re-enable DMA mode on stubborn hard drives and CD-ROM drives:

Getting back to DMA mode in Windows

That post says Windows XP, but the technique is the same for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and probably Windows Server 2008.

Extremely funny and so very, very true…

10 things your IT guy wants you to know

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