Larry Brouwer

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Archives for May 2010

Troubleshooting SmarterMail incoming SMTP requests

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Today, I discovered that SmarterMail isn’t receiving emails from other hosts outside my local network. I first logged on to SmarterMail as admin. Nothing apparently wrong with the mail system. I next opened up a Command Prompt and tried to telnet to mail.larrybrouwer.com 25 and it worked fine. Next, I logged on to a remote server and again attempted to telnet to the smtp service. This time, nothing happened.

My thoughts then turned to firewall issues. So I checked to make sure that the firewall wasn’t blocking port 25. It isn’t, but just to make sure, I disabled the firewall and again tried to telnet into the email server on port 25. I’m still not able to log in.

I next suspected my D-Link DIR-655 router as the problem. I logged into the router and checked the Virtual Server settings. The the router settings look fine. I then remapped port 25 to port 80 just to see if I can get through to the web server. Re-mapping didn’t work. Now I’m really puzzled.

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Moving WordPress hosts from dev to prod for Clearlake Auto Service

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This afternoon, I’m working on moving the development instance for a client from my test server to his host provider, cBeyond. The first thing I did was to back up his existing site with FileZilla to my local hard drive. I then went into phpMyAdmin on his host site and backed up his existing WordPress database instance.

I then went into MySQL Workbench on my development server and exported the WordPress Schema. I then imported the database Schema into the host provider using phpMyAdmin. Next, I used FileZilla to upload all the WordPress site files from my development server to the cBeyond host server. This took about 15 minutes to complete.

I then logged back into phpMyAdmin, and ran the following sql query:

select * from wp_options

I then edited the results for option_name = ‘home’ to ‘http://www.clearlakeautoservice.com’. I also edited the results for option_name = ‘siteurl’ to same.

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Sql Server Administration for HCMGA (cont.)

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This morning, I’m continuing to work with the HCMGA database. I need to get a maintenance plan implemented to keep the database tuned up. The Performance purge job ran well into the night, and when I logged in to the server this morning, the memory was maxed out, and performance in the application was very sluggish. So I rebooted the box and it’s working better now.

Next, I wanted to see if I could shrink down the 50GB Performance.mdf file. I opened SSMS and executed the following query:

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Implementing 301 Redirects from my old blog site

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Ok, so, I have two (2) blogs going right now. My first one is a BlogEngine.Net site which I called my TechNotes. It is located at https://www.larrybrouwer.com:81. My current blog is a WordPress site located at https://www.larrybrouwer.com. This is a problem because the search engines are spidering both, and there are now duplicate entries. Worse yet, the old site is getting priority, so visitors are being directed to my old TechNotes blog instead of my most current one.

What I need to do, is to implement a re-direct solution to retire the old blog gracefully and allow the search engines to be aware of the change.

After some Googling on “301 Redirects IIS7”, and reading a few articles on the subject, I decided to give it a try. I logged into my web server and opened up the IIS Manager Console. I then opened up my web site and first went into HTTP Redirect. This has some promise, but it only allows for wholesale redirects of the entire website to another location. What I need, at least initially, is the ability to redirect individual posts (or pages) of my old blog to my new one.

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D-Link DIR-655 Issues

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This morning started out with not being able to check my emails on my local web server. I also wasn’t able to browse to my web site either. I quickly determined that my D-Link DIR-655 (hardware version: A3) router was at fault. After logging into the router, and opening the Advanced menu, I discovered that none of my Virtual Servers were configured. They had all somehow vanished!

I’ve been having troubles with this router for some time now, and it appears to only be getting worse (I’ve posted on this before here). I’ve recently upgraded the firmware as well to version 1.33NA. I went out to the D-Link support forums and found DIR-655 Virtual Server/Port Forwarding Config doesn’t stay. This post says that you have to enable SecureSpot, reboot, change the virtual servers, reboot, disable SecureSpot, reboot in order to keep the virtual settings.

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SmarterMail Security Lockdown Procedures

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I spent most of the afternoon tracking down a problem with my web server. Performance came to a standstill. So I went into Task manager and found the MailService.exe process was maxing out resources. I rebooted, and found that it would gradually start taking more and more resources until the system became virtually unusable. Within 20 minutes after a reboot of the system, it would be hogging most of the memory, and max out the CPU to 100%. I also looked through the event Application logs. Searched for ‘mail’. Found errors “System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type ‘System.OutOfMemoryException’ was thrown.”.

I then Googled on ‘mailservice.exe memory System.OutOfMemoryException’ and found this post on SmarterTools Forums – MailService.exe memory reporting issue in 6.5. Many users seem to be experiencing this problem. A second post from the SmarterTools Forums – HELP! SmarterMail.exe keeps failing every few hours also indicates that this is a Microsoft .Net issue. They refer to the prior post stating the fix is to re-install Microsoft .Net. I’ve already attempted this procedure before. See my prior post 2010-04-23 Notes for the day.

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Windows System and SqlServer Administration for HCMGA

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This morning, I decided to have a look at the Harris County Master Gardeners web server to see if everything is ok. I noticed that the hard disk space is dwindling down. So did a search for large files to see what I could find. To perform a search, I Clicked Start | Search | For Files or Folders… . I then clicked advanced search and put *.* in the Name, selected Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow), selected Size (KB) is greater than 10000. I also added Size, Path, Attributes, Date accessed, Date created, Date modified to the results window.

So the biggest file by far is performance.mdf (45GB)! Yikes! It’s now on to finally setting up a maintenance plan for the SqlServer database.

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Working on my WordPress Web Site

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I was able to spend some time continuing to add plugins and expand my personal web site this evening. I first installed the All in One SEO Pack plugin, and configured the basic fields necessary to boost my site’s presence on the web.

Also added WP Mail SMTP plugin. This is necessary for me to send out emails from the feedback form.

Also installed Simple Tags plugin. This plugin should assist me with adding tags.

Other plugins installed: Akismet, Fast and Secure Contact Form, Hello Dolly, SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

Also worked on the Clear Lake Auto Service web site. Getting it ready to move in tomorrow.

Solving Windows 7 Performance Issues

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This morning, I got a call from a friend of mine who was having some terrible performance issues with her new Dell Latitude E6500 laptop running Windows 7 Professional. I had some extra time, so I offered to drop by and have a look.

I did the usual things like run msconfig.exe, and disabled as many startup programs and services as I could without interfering with anything. This may have helped some, but not much. The machine would boot up fine, but then hang out for a considerable amount of time after logging in but before it would be fully loaded.

I went into Norton Security Suite, and found that she had configured her machine to run backups to a non-existent USB drive. I disabled the backup feature of the software since she really didn’t understand how it could have been activated in the first place. I also went into the Task Scheduling and disabled all of the PC Tune-up settings. I rebooted, and this time the machine completed the startup process much faster. But I wasn’t finished just yet!

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Installing WordPress on my web server

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I spent most of the day installing and configuring WordPress for my personal web site. The site that I’m currently posting this blog entry. I’ve decided that BlogEngine.Net, while a nice blog server, it isn’t best suited for my needs. I need something really lightweight as my web server is not exactly a speedy machine.

This will be a brief summary of my steps from my feeble memory! What I’ve done so far…

Logged into IIS7 Manager Console and used the Web Platform Installer to install WordPress. I installed it several times to different locations before I got it just the way I wanted it. I also installed the latest MySQL Workbench 5.2 beta. This will come in most handy.

I also installed a WordPress instance to begin developing a new web site for Clear Lake Auto Service, a client of mine who really wants to get a new design.

I installed the Arjuna Theme, and began some minor customizations. I read through some of the WordPress online documentation as well to start getting an understanding of the design as I’m sure I’ll want to customize it.

I installed several Plugins. First, the Fast and Secure Contact Form, and second was the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam.

I added several pages and customized how the home page works (as a static page). I added several users, my page categories, and began moving the posts over from my Technotes Blog.

One key point I wanted to make note of is that upon first installing WordPress, delete the original page that is listed. Then re-create a new page to show your blogs. This will prevent a problem with duplicate ‘Home’ pages showing if you wish to implement a static home page some time later. I learned this the hard way!

That’s all I can remember for now…