Thursday, January 29, 2009

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 3

Installing WSUS

Utilizing the Steps in this doc: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C8FA2FD1-72F6-4F19-A1B0-F689DAE14BE6&displaylang=en

1. Installed the sofware requirements
1.a. MS IIS 6.0 (Already installed)
1.b. Update for Background intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) (Already installed)
1.c. MS .NET Framework Version 2.0 (Already installed)
1.d. MS Report View Redistributable (Already installed)
1.c. MS Management Console 3.0 for Windows Server 2003 (KB907265) (Already installed)
2. Install Windows Server update Services 3.0 SP1 Setup
2.a. Mode: Full server installation including Admin Console
2.b. website address http://SERVERNAME:8530 #the installation detected SharePoint already and did not even give me an option to use the default website of port 80
3. Run Windows Server update Services Configuration Wizard.
4. Create and apply the group policy in AD. Makes sure to address the update server with the correct port.

Life is good! The client computers are showing up in the WSUS console. I am grouping 'em by department and creating one group as FIRSTINSTALL. I place one computer from each department in this group and apply the updates there, first. IF no issues I will roll out the updates to the entire enterprise.

Now, I need to spend some time customizing the SharePoint Helpdesk application.

More to come...

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 2

SharePoint services has successfully installed. Walking through the steps to get the Helpdesk Application Template in place.
1. Expand the ApplicationTemplateCore.exe files to the hard drive. Open a command prompt to that location.
2. Run stsadm -o addsolution -filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp
3. Run stsadm -o deploysolution -name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp -allowgacdeployment -local
4. Run stsadm -o copyappbincontent
5. Expand the HelpDesk.exe files to the hard drive. Open a command prompt to that locaiton.
6. Run stsadm -o addsolution - filename HelpDesk.wsp
7. Run stsadm -o deploysolution -name HelpDesk.wsp -allowgacdeployment -local
8. Using the Admin Configuration Site, Navigate to Team Site > Create > New SharePoint Site. Give it a unique name and select the Help Desk application template.

The new helpdesk site is up! No documentation comes with the template itself so I will continue making notes and post links as I find 'em.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

WSUS and SharePoint on the Same Server Part 1

Here are my summary notes on installing Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.01 and Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 on the same server. The server is running Windows 2003 Standard. MS does NOT recommend this configuration but hey, who says I gotta follow the rules ALL the time! I am installing SPS first which will give it port 80, then WSUS will need a custom port when it installs. Reference: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?Linkld=81199 Installation Guide for Windows SharePoint Services.

1. The server has some junk on it so I removed as much as possible including IIS and the application server role. The Machine is fully patched.
2. Added the Application Server Role which includes IIS. Be sure and select ASP.NET on the Application Server Options page.
3. Installed MS .NET Framework 3.5 Redistributable Package (35MB)
4. Installed MS .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Package (52MB)
5. Went to Microsoft Updates and the installed the following: KB951847
6. Using IIS Manager, verified ASP.NET v2.0.50727 is marked allowed.
7. Installed SharePoint Services 3.0 as a stand alone server.
8. Ran the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard.
9. Verfied the localhost site (http://servername) is added to the trusted sites list in IE 7
10. Verfied the Windows SharePoint Services Web Application service is running
11. Installed the SMTP service on IIS
12. Configured the SMTP service
13. Configure Incoming and Outgoing mail service.

So far so good; I have the basic site up and running. Next up: Apply the helpdesk template.

Monday, January 26, 2009

More Bombers Week 3 Pictures

Too much fun, that's all I can say:

Bomber Week 3 Pow Pow Day

A Powder Day! Talk about fun fun fun! We had fresh snow to explore. We continued combining the lessons learned from the first two weeks and applying the techniques in new and exciting terrain. Don't you just love the new snow on the trees?




We had the pleasure of observing the Breck Ski Patrol Avalanche dogs in action:



More fun in the Snow:

International Snow Sculpture Championships

Breckenridge, Colorado. Another great year with superb artistry and imagination. The various teams from around the world start with 12 foot high blocks weighing 20 tons. Even with a week of warm temperatures, the various sculpting teams created incredible works of snow art. Winners were announced on Sunday, January 25th but I don't have a link to the result yet. I liked the Bear and the Elephant sculptures. You can determine the massive size and scale from the various people in the pictures - many are fully 12 feet tall. Enjoy the pics!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Bombers Week 2

Another wonderful day last Saturday at Breckenridge! We explored new terrain on Peak 9 in the morning while continuing to practice our body movements. We added an understanding of 'tipping' our skis, primarily using our legs and ski boots to tip the skis on edge. We further explored differing amounts of tipping and what that does to our turns: small, smedium, medium, and large!



Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Advice for Tough Times...

Found this hanging on a wall at a client site, unattributed... Google search lead to www.tompeters.com and appears to be summary of a presentation from November 2008

1. Excellence. Get on with doing the business you have and see it through brilliantly. Stick to the basics. Keep it simple! the devil is always in the details.
2. Opportunism. There may be a lot of room for it - will pay off through speed off the mark and excellence in execution.
3. Visibility. March toward the sound of the guns. MBWA. People have to see who they are working for and who they are dealing with.
4. Transparency. Be absolutely straight with people, especially those at the front line. People who play the blame game in any way, shape, or form are straight out of here!
5. Demeanor. Banish "gloomy" from your persona, even if it kills you! But remember, "sunny" is pretty stupid, too. Who do you think you are kidding?
6. Paradox. Have a Positive Mental Attitude AND be ready for the worst (this recession might easily go on for 24 months).

Receipt Printers - No Two Alike?

A frustrating day to say the least. Had a POS terminal that would not print receipts. Fixed some windows errors, updated the service pack and various patches, reinstalled the primary application - still no joy. Installed a new printer driver (A generic "Vendor Thermal Printer" driver) and played around with the virtual USB port settings. And then, finally, it started printing! I don't even know what little check box or setting made it work! We compared a second working machine - same HP box, same POSx r500x printer, USB connections, same application, same Epson emulation - yet different drivers and configuration settings!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Thanks, JS, for help in getting the thing working.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Parker in RippARoo Forrest

Another gorgeous ski day at Breckenridge, Colorado. Sunny and warm, light winds, good friends. This is young master Parker, age 8, tearing it up on Peak 9.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Specatular Ski Day at Breckenridge

It doesn't get much better then this: A spectacular day at Breckenridge! Bluebird Skies, warm temps, lite winds, no crowds, fantastic snow! Had to pause and do the sweeping view from the Whale Tail saddle between Peak 7 and Peak 8 - about 12,650 feet. The view pans west over Copper Mountain, Mt. Of the Holy Cross, Vail Pass, and Gore Range, past Peak 7 to overlooking Breckenridge, Keystone, and the continental Divide to the east.

How truly blessed I am to live and experience sights such as this. I spent the morning skiing the T-Bar to Snow Alley to Imperial Chair to Whale's Tail to Peak 7 Y chutes loop.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Bombers Week 1

What a surprise! A sunny day to kick off 2009 bombers at Breckenridge. I have a talented crew of 6-8 year old awesome kids. Week one had the usual hiccups in organization and getting kids into the correct class by ability, age, enthusiasm, etc, but my class did great in going with the flow. After all, that's what skiing is all about.

Overall - a FUN day!



Clip 2

Monday, January 12, 2009

Windows 7 Beta

Loaded up Build 7000 of Windows 7, as downloaded from Tech net. Very fast install. Loaded on both a W2k8 Hyper-V virtual machine and as a dual boot on my Lenovo tablet computer running Vista Business. the look and feel is very much Vista like with regards to the UI. Oh, the required minimum HD space is 16 GB, but the program installed fine in 14GB, the size of my secondary partition.

I must say the OS is very speedy; fast boot up time, fast program start, etc.

I joined the laptop to my work domain and then experienced some interesting quirks with the UAC - the User Access Control. It asks for the Domain Administrator account and password, not my local administrator account and password. Luckily I have it, but that would not be the case with most business users. To install certain programs I have had to log on as the domain administrator to run the setup program (for Office 2007, and Mozilla Firefox, for example). Google Chrome installed just fine; didn't even ASK for elevated privileges. I tried to 'run as administrator".. no joy. Also turned off UAC as well as confirmed that my regular account is a member of the administrators group.

Still no luck.

Oh, really love the Beta fish wallpaper with gradient blue background (water?) very pretty.

More to come!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Breckenridge Ski Day Saturday

A lovely snowy day on the slopes. About 4-5" fell during the morning while we were there. Took a few laps on six chair with nice snow but low visibility and, honestly, a little dust on crust - that is, the snow underneath is very thin and hard packed. Received a few dings on the skis. Also did laps the valley loop - Top of super connect to Boneyard, up E chair, down Peerless or Volunteer, back up the Super Connect chair. I find this path avoids the crowds as best as possible on a busy Saturday.