Saving YouTube Videos

YouTube doesn't offer a way for you to easily download videos from the site, but there are other webssites where you can paste the URL of the video you wish to download and then download it from those sites.

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Setting Up Samba on A DocuSP Solaris 10 System

I needed to set up file sharing access to a Xerox DocuSP system running the Solaris 10 operating system, which was controlling a Xerox DocuColor 250 device. Xerox recommends using Samba, which is already on the Solaris system to share a directory to Windows systems. Since I encountered some problems setting up the system using the instructions Xerox provided, I've written my own instructions in case I have to repeat the process again or should anyone else also need to implement the same file sharing.

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[/os/unix/solaris] permanent link

Using Google's Cache

If you encounter a "file not found", "internal server error", "cannot find server or DNS Error" when trying to access a webpage, you may still be able to access the webpage by viewing a saved copy of it in Google's Cache or at the Internet Archive, aka Wayback Machine.

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Adding Printer from Command Line

I was logged into a system using an ordinary user account under Windows XP and needed to create a new printer port so that I could print to an HP printer, which was on the network to which I was connected. The user account doesn't have access to add network printers, but I had a lot of applications open with ongoing work and didn't want to have to save and close everything I was working on, log off, login as the administrator, log off, log back in under the user account and reopen all the applications and files, especially since I only had a few minutes to get a document printed prior to a meeting.

Fortunately, I was able to find information on how to easily resolve my problem at Command Line Printer Control in Windows 2000 / XP. All I had to do to add a printer from the administrator account while still remaining logged into my user account was the following:

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\WINDOWS\system32.
2. Right-click on cmd.exe while holding down a shift key, then select Run as.
3. Select "The following user", put in the userid for the administrator account for the system, e.g. SystemName\administrator, for user name and its password, then click on OK.
4. At the command prompt window that opens, enter the following command:
   
   RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /il

That will run the Add Printer Wizard from the administrator account, allowing you to add a printer port.

Note: The capitalization of PrintUIEntry is important. If you don't use PrintUIEntry, but, instead used printUIEntry, you would get the error message below:

Error in printui.dll
Missing entry:printUIEntry

The /il parameter is also case sensitive.

References:

1. Command Line Printer Control in Windows 2000 / XP
   Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages

[/os/windows/printers] permanent link

Updating Plushelp Information in TinyMUSH

If you have updated the plushelp.txt file in TinyMUSH, you can make the information available within the MUSH by taking the following steps:

1. After editing the plushelp.txt file, within the directory where the plushelp file is located, issue the following command to rebuild the plushelp index file:
   
   ./mkindx plushelp.txt plushelp.indx
   
   Alternatively, you could run ../Index to rebuild all index files.
2. Within the MUSH, issue the command @readcache

References:

1. TinyMUSH 3: The Home Page
   sourceforge.net
2. MUSH
   Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. root/releases/1.50/11/README
   PennMUSH

[/gaming/tinymush] permanent link

Checking User VPN Connections on SBS 2003

If you need to check on who is logged into a Windows Small Business (SBS) 2003 server via a VPN connection you can do so by using Routing and Remote Access under Start then Administrative Tools.

For analyzing the log files for information on VPN logins through the SBS 2003 server, Microsoft offers the iasparse tool, which can be found on Disc # 2 of the installation CDs. But the shareware tool, IAS Log Viewer, is better at displaying the data in a more manageable fashion.

[ More Info ]

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Why Do I See a Lot of Strange Symbols When I Compose an Email Message

If you are seeing a lot of unexpected symbols when you are composing an email message in Outlook 2003, such as the ones shown below, then you may have accidentally turned on the display of nonprinting characters.

You may be seeing ¶ symbols at the end of each paragraph. Those are called "para symbols" or "pilcrow signs". You may also see symbols. Those downwards arrows that turn a 90-degree corner leftwards indicate line breaks or carriage returns in your text. These carriage return arrows should appear wherever you've hit the return key when composing a message. You will also see small raised dots between words, i.e. "He took his vorpal sword". The character simply means that there is a space there.

If Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Word to edit your email messages, those characters are embedded in your documents, but are normally invisible to you. Displaying them can help some users when formatting their documents.

You can toggle their display on or off by clicking on the ¶ symbol that you should see in the toolbar menu at the top of your message composition window. You can also toggle the display of these characters on or off by hitting the Ctrl, Shift, and "8" keys, i.e. Ctrl then asterisk, simultaneously. And, if those characters have suddenly appeared in your documents when you don't want them there, it is likely because you inadvertently hit the Ctrl key while hitting Shift+8 to get an asterisk symbol.

References:

1. What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean?
   Frequently Asked Questions - Microsoft Word MVP FAQ Site
   Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill and Dave Rado
2. Turning Display of Paragraph Markers On and Off in Microsoft Word
   MoonPoint Support
3. List of XML and HTML character entity references
   Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/os/windows/office/outlook] permanent link

Upgrading TinyMUSH 3.0 to 3.1

I upgraded TinyMUSH roleplaying software from version 3.0 to version 3.1.

[ More Info ]

[/gaming/tinymush] permanent link

Finding a String with a Recursive Grep

If you need to find a specific string in all files of a particular type in the current directory and all directories beneath it, you can use a command similar to the following:

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep "noindex" {} /dev/null \;

In this case I want to find all of the PHP files where I have included the string "noindex" in a META tag.

References:

1. Greg Hinkel's UNIX Tip of the Week for March 3, 1996

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Correcting Poor Print Quality on an HP Business Inkjet 2800 Printer

A user of an HP Business Inkjet 2800 printer was having problems with poor print quality for printouts. Characters were smudged or there were gaps in printing. I've posted tips from the HP Business Inkjet 2800 series Toolbox for alleviating the problem.

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[/hardware/printer/hp] permanent link

Excluding the Quarantine Directory from a ClamWin scan

Unless you tell it to exclude it's own quarantine directory, ClamWin will scan that directory when you perform a scan of the entire hard disk or any directory that contains the quarantine directory beneath it. When it encounters already quarantined items, ClamWin will put a numerical value at the end as an extension, e.g. "000". A subsequent scan will repeat the process, so a file may then get the extension "000.000".

I don't want ClamWin to scan its own quarantine directory and report infections for items it quarantined during previous scans. To avoid that result, you can take the following steps (instructions written for ClamWin 0.90, but should apply to other versions as well):

1. Open ClamWin.
2. Click on Tools and select Preferences.
3. Click on the Advanced tab.
4. Put --exclude-dir=".clamwin\\quarantine" in the Additional Clamscan Command Line Parameters field. Note: you must use two backslashes after "clamwin", because ClamWin treats the entry as a regular expression. In a regular expression, a backslash, "\", has special significance, so you need to "escape" that special significance by putting another backslash in front of any backslash you need to use.

If you wish to exclude multiple directories, you can use multiple --exclude-dir commands separated by spaces, e.g. --exclude-dir=".clamwin\\quarantine" --exclude-dir="BitDefender8\\Quarantine".

To exclude individual files, you can use the exclude command, e.g. exclude="test.exe".

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