Installing and running UnixBench will allow you to benchmark your *nix servers against each other in order to find issues in performance and latency.

# yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"
# yum -y install libX11-devel mesa-libGL-devel perl-Time-HiRes

We then fetch and install UnixBench (at the time of writing, the latest version is 5.1.3) :

# wget https://byte-unixbench.googlecode.com/files/UnixBench5.1.3.tgz 
# tar xvfz UnixBench5.1.3.tgz
# cd UnixBench
# ./Run

The ‘Run‘ script will compile everything and launch the tests.

A sample benchmark output will look like this: The higher the final number the better the server.

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: projects2: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 3.2.58-xenU-11-50785a6-x86_64 -- #40 SMP Tue May 6 15:39:12 UTC 2014
   Machine: x86_64 (x86_64)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650L 0 @ 1.80GHz (3600.1 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET
   11:11:52 up 12 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.40, 0.46, 0.23; runlevel 3

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Wed Aug 06 2014 11:11:52 - 11:39:58
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       15348279.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     1568.1 MWIPS (10.3 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                                858.6 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        193338.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           46591.9 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        559840.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              261358.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                  51940.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                               2065.6 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   1423.0 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    178.0 lpm   (60.2 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         255469.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   15348279.8   1315.2
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       1568.1    285.1
Execl Throughput                                 43.0        858.6    199.7
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     193338.8    488.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      46591.9    281.5
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     559840.4    965.2
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     261358.3    210.1
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      51940.6    129.9
Process Creation                                126.0       2065.6    163.9
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       1423.0    335.6
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        178.0    296.7
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     255469.3    170.3
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                         308.9

Here is some code I wrote to add a clickable triangle, and a custom background, to the ewea.org website to highlight the offshore event.

The HTML:

<div id="offshore-morph" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; z-index: 99999;">
<a title="Click to register for EWEA OFFSHORE 2013" href="/offshore2013/registration/?ref=morph">
<img src="http://www.ewea.org/uploads/pics/offshore-2013-morphing-corner.png"></a></div>

And some CSS:

body {background: url(http://ewea.org/uploads/pics/offshore-2013-morphing.jpg) 100% 0 no-repeat #005596; position: relative;}

In C:\Windows there is a system folder called “winsxs” which stores all the installation files used to update and upgrade Windows.

This folder, on my Windows 7 64-bit system, took up 12GB of space on my precious 80GB SSD drive.

Launch the DOS prompt with administrator rights and run the following command to remove all the files.

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded

I learned today, it’s possible to create a symbolic link in Windows! Here’s what you need to do:

1. Run the DOS prompt as Administrator.
2. Use the following command as an example:

   mklink /D "C:\MSOCache" "D:\MSOCache"

3. Without the “/D” it’ll be a symbolic link for a file. To link a directory and all its files, use the “/D” option.
   The first variable will be the actual symbolic link.
   The second variable is where the files will actually reside.

After a local server maintenance, my Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.1.1) stopped connecting to the Exchange Server.
I removed the account to try re-adding the account and doing so lost all my emails, calendar and contacts.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not add my account “wind\jason.bickley”.
I received the error “Could not connect to the server”.

However, when I put in a random intern’s credentials it could connect.
Our I.T. Manager then found the following solution and corrected it in Active Directory.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd439375(EXCHG.80).aspx

“In Exchange Server 2010, you may also experience this issue if the Exchange Servers group does not have the appropriate permission to the mailbox object in Active Directory. The most common cause for this is broken Access Control List (ACL) inheritance in Active Directory.

To check whether inheritance is disabled on the user:

1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. On the menu at the top of the console, click View > Advanced Features.
3. Locate and right-click the mailbox account in the console, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Security tab.
5. Click Advanced.
6. Make sure that the check box for “Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent” is selected.

If the user is a member of certain protected groups such as Domain Administrators, it is normal for this box to be unchecked. If you are experiencing a problem with members of these protected groups you should check the permissions on the AdminSDHolder object.”