Windows 10 Enterprise Eval - gotchas

After an annoying turn of events where my Windows 10 Enterprise USB drive failed, attempts to install Win10 onto a computer failed miserably. I turned to the net and managed to get my hands on Microsoft's Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation. I have an enterprise key so I thought - cool! Here's the opportunity to get it going and to then upgrade the license later. Full install, patched etc and all is swell. Except when I try to upgrade.

I straight up tried changing the licence key only to get a variety of errors, most of which are pertaining to the activation system being unavailable. The I try this: https://winaero.com/blog/upgrade-windows-10-evaluation-to-full-version-easily/ but it doesn't work either.

Next I'll try this: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/174594-upgrading-windows-10-enterprise-90-evaluation-full.html

And if all else fails, in goes the bootable USB I've now created. If only I'd had this in the first instance I would not be writing this note to myself (and to you).

If only I'd found this: https://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-enterprise-without-reinstalling-windows/ first! I might have been able to dodge much of the problem in the initial stages. Learn from my pain :-)

Mint 18.2 Review

Linux Mint 18.2 in the wild!

I’ve just upgraded to Mint 18.2 from 18.1 being the (sort of) early adopter that I am. Realistically there was no good reason to do this - 18.1 was running well and doing everything I need, except to get any new bits and pieces that come with .2. There are some nice new desktop pics (quite beautiful ones actually), but not much I can see that is really different. It's still running Cinnamon, so there haven't been any gigantic changes in the UI in a while. I’m running it on a Lenovo M series desktop that I’ve had for some years and it’s a beast of a machine so any performance upticks in the new version aren’t really noticeable. Here are the release notes : http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3289 and they're worth a quick perusal.

I did find that my desktop icons all disappeared. As a result I experienced sadness :-(

Fortunately I found the solution. The nemo-desktop application is no longer running. I found it (/usr/bin/nemo.desktop), ran it and voila - icons are back! I’ve added it to the startup applications and that fixes that.

I really enjoy the ease of the upgrade process - it’s fast and straightforward using the excellent Mint Update Manager. The download was around 400MB but the mirrors are all quick and it was quite painless. A fast reboot and I was back in business. I also took the opportunity to upgrade the Nvidia drivers I have (for my whiz bang graphics adaptor) and after another restart I was done. As a result, my primary work computer was fully upgraded and operational in about 20 minutes - much better than the Windows 10 computers I've just got that need a 4GB upgrade out of the box (!)

Mint 18.2 “Sonya” new stuff:

• LTS release so supported until 2021
• Cinnamon 3.4 apparently has many new icon management features (I’ll have to try this out now I’ve got icons back!)
• Plugins for Cinnamon run in their own process
• Add-ons called “spices” have been added - check them out on the Cinnamon Spices website here: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/
• Various app upgrades including xed, update manager, xviewer, xreader and LightDM - the new login manager.
• Ships with Linux Kernel 4.8.0-53

Get it via Update Manager or from the Linux Mint website: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

OTRS Upgrade Notes

First things first, we need to download the latest and that’s usually from the public FTP site on OTRS’ site. Here is a good place to start: https://www.otrs.com/download-open-source-help-desk-software-otrs-free/ I always grab the source .tar.gz file and usually with this command:

# wget -c http://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/otrs-5.0.13.tar.gz (for the latest one anyway – which at time of writing I 5.0.13)

The upgrade direction is here: http://otrs.github.io/doc/manual/admin/5.0/en/html/upgrading.html and I want this to be my summarized version of this for ease of use both for myself and for you, gentle reader.

I have a script that starts off the upgrade process with some of the basic stuff (note – run this as root):

#!/bin/bash

service cron stop

service apache2 stop

service postfix stop

NOW=`date +%F`

mkdir /root/backup/$NOW

BDIR=/root/backup/$NOW

cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config.pm $BDIR

cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/GenericAgent.pm $BDIR

cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/Files/ZZZAuto.pm $BDIR

cp -R /opt/otrs/var/ $BDIR

/opt/otrs/scripts/backup.pl -d $BDIR

Now what this does is to stop the services in Step 1 of the upgrade documentation.

Then we set the “date” variable and create a backup folder for it and instantiate a variable to make the script shorter – the “BDIR” variable.

Now I simply step through the guide and backup what I need to in Step 2 and then run a full backup into the backup directory with the backup.pl -d $BDIR command.

Now it’s time for the command line work to begin. I typically download the source file into an OTRS folder in my root home directory (yes I do this all as root) so I will run:

# tar -zxf otrs-5.0.13.tar.gz

Once the tarball is extracted I copy the resultant directory to the /opt/ folder:

# cp -R otrs-5.0.13 /opt/

In the directory are all the other OTRS installs I’ve done but haven’t cleaned up. An ls of the /opt/ directory usually looks like this:

root@otrs:/opt# ls

otrs        otrs-4.0.11  otrs-5.0.1   otrs-5.0.13

otrs-4.0.1  otrs-4.0.7   otrs-5.0.10  otrs-5.0.5

root@otrs:/opt#

The bolded otrs is a logical link. I delete that:

# rm otrs

And create a new one:

# ln -s /opt/otrs-5.0.13 otrs

We need to copy stuff back now and I have a bit of a script that will do it:

#!/bin/bash

BDIR=/root/backup/`date +%F`

cp -R $BDIR/Config.pm /opt/otrs/Kernel/

cp -R $BDIR/ZZZAuto.pm /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/Files/

It copies back the files we need to and moves us through Step 4.

Now to set permissions on the new OTRS directory:

# /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.SetPermissions.pl –web-group=www-data (for Ubuntu)

And this sorts out the permissions. I also find it very useful to change the ownership of files at a more macro level too, so I will also run:

# chown -R otrs:www-data /opt/otrs*

# chmod -R g+w /opt/otrs*

This has solved some issues in the past and seems like a handy thing to do.

Step 4 is finished and Step 5 has us checking Perl modules out:

# /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl

We can skip to Step 7 now and we have to change to the OTRS user:

# su otrs

As OTRS, Step 7 gets us to refresh the config cache and then delete the other caches:

$ /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Console.pl Maint::Config::Rebuild

$ /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Console.pl Maint::Cache::Delete

Annoyingly we have to change back to root and restart services. I just CTRL-D out of otrs and then run:

# services apache2 start

# services cron start

# services postfix start

And then su back to OTRS

# su otrs

$

Step 12 – restart the OTRS Daemon (as otrs – don’t forget!)

$ /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Daemon.pl start

And then Step 13 which updates cron for the OTRS user:

$ cd /opt/otrs/var/cron

$ for foo in *.dist; do cp $foo `basename $foo .dist`; done

$ /opt/otrs/bin/Cron.sh start

And that’s it for the command line stuff.

Log into the website and go to Admin and then Package Manager. I usually find that at least three packages need to be either re-installed or updated. While these are not right, the website will run terribly slowly. Fixing the problem here will give you back some performance and set it on the right track.

That’s pretty much it. Done!

OTRS 5 Review and Thoughts

Recently I upgraded our several years old OTRS install to version 5. The upgrade procedure is exactly like all the others have been. It was straightforward and I actually found that the documentation was better this time around than it has been in the past. After backing up, upgrading and testing, I like, mostly, what I see. There are a couple of things that are a bit annoying though.

When closing a ticket, the previous version would automatically put in subject in the closure note. Likewise, in the Owner Update note it doesn't do it either. So each time, I have to update it. Not a problem if you're only getting a few notes every now and then, but we are changing and closing tickets in some large numbers at times.

Also, I have about 50 statistics generated monthly via a script I run. The syntax for doing this.

From: /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.GenerateStats.pl -n number -blah blah etc

To: /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Console.pl Maint::Stats::Generate --number number etc

(from: https://otrs.github.io/doc/manual/admin/stable/en/html/statistics-module.html#stats-managing-the-module)

I like the speed of the updated system and the cosmetic changes are nice too. The menus have changed slightly and they are more dynamic with drop downs. The layout is a bit nicer too but generally the speed of the system is better.

Upgrade to version 5 if you have the chance - seems to be a winner!

OTRS 5 Review

I've been using OTRS for about 10 years now, starting when I was doing desktop / server support at uni. Since then it's changed a lot in the way it looks, but fundamentally it has remained the same. The great things about OTRS are:

• creating / modifying / updating and closing tickets is easy
• the interface is relatively straightforward
• creation of tickets from emails is easy
• reporting is straightforward
• open source and robust

Since the early versions it's ticked all these boxes and I was very interested to see what OTRS 5 was going to bring. The interface is still the same, updated here and there with a prettier graph showing closed / opened tickets but generally the same. Fonts are still nice and readable and its good for what it does.

We use it for our clients that have a maintenance agreement with us. We have them create tickets that we then update and put minutes against. OTRS has never had a parts component and we have always used a secondary system for that. It does a good job too of keeping tickets together - I can't recommend using the master/slave system enough. Merging tickets has always worked flawlessly too.

The upgrade process is well documented and relatively straightforward. Just be aware of what user you are accessing the system as when you're doing it - sometimes you need to be root and other times it's important to be the OTRS user. All in all, it took about 45 minutes with backups, testing and checking before I let the boys go wild on it.

So while the interface is prettier there are a couple of things that annoy me right off the bat. When I add a note I now have to put something in the title - before it would simply put "Note" in there. Likewise for closing a ticket or changing ownership - this one extra step is annoying because I do it so frequently. Also, we have queues that are underneath a top level queue and that needs to be manually expanded out each time now instead of it sitting out like it always has. Minor annoyances it's true, but annoyances nonetheless.

I suspect most of the changes in the system are in the back end and I'm noticing that it is running more smoothly. We are using a fairly archaic IBM server to host it on an Ubuntu Linux Server platform with about 10K tickets give or take. MySQL is our database of choice and the backups run at around 1 GB in size. Thus far it has all been good. I'm looking forward to seeing how it travels over the next few weeks. I have noticed that the iPhone package is no longer supported - apparently the interface scales with the mobile platform - we will test this further. 

Enjoy :-)

Upgrading DragonFlyBSD

I always forget how to do this, so I'm documenting it here. The DragonFlyBSD website is quite good and this all comes from www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/newhandbook/Upgrading

Firstly, make sure the Makefile is present:

# cd /usr
# make src-create

and wait while it does it's thing.

Then we need to get the new source to build it:

# cd /usr/src
# git checkout DragonFlyBSD_RELEASE_3_8 (which is the current one)

To find out what the current one is:

# cd /usr/srv
# git pull
# git branch -r

Then the build and upgrade process:

# cd /usr/src
# make buildworld
# make buildkernel
# make installkernel
# make install world
# make upgrade
# reboot

And it should all be done.

SSD's - a new lease on life for older hardware

Solid State Disks have been on the market for a while now and the prices are coming down per gigabyte which is starting to bring them into the realm of affordability. While recently searching to upgrade the disk in my Dell Inspiron 1102 net book I was offered a 128GB SSD. I didn't really think much of what it would do in the computer until I'd installed it. Once I got the thing imaged and transferred across into the net book I was pleasantly surprised by both the performance boost and also the boost in battery life. I was amazed actually. It was a much better machine than it had ever been, running Windows 7 quite well and most basic Office Apps.

I've procured a second SSD for a venerable Lenovo R500. The specs on this notebook are pretty reasonable, but with a 6 cell battery it's lifespan wasn't great. An upgrade to a 9 cell battery gave it a boost but not a huge one. Installing an SSD made a significant difference. 6 hours of battery life is easily achievable while using the net or office productivity applications. Speed hasn't really been such an issue with this particular laptop but now it's even better.

For high end gaming rigs SSDs are the norm and even in servers now we're seeing them more often. I've changed the set up in my desktop PC - boot from an SSD, with a 2TB SATA disk for data. As the price for SSDs continues to drop they are definitely worth considering for even lower end applications. My two older laptops now are going to be useful for longer and perform better than they ever have before. Consider it for your older SATA capable notebooks!

Upgrading OTRS 3.1 to 3.2.1

After noting that our OTRS (www.otrs.org) was complaining about a major release update pending I took the plunge this morning and set about upgrading it. Initially I ran through the normal upgrade procedure and couldn't log on. Oops. Maybe I need to pay more attention here? Turns out there are quite a few caveats about this upgrade, and I'm hoping that what I note here will assist you - especially the database upgrade stuff. That was a bit of a surprise!

Initially I ran my normal otrs_pre_upgrade.sh script which stops services and backs everything up. That script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
service cron stop
service apache2 stop
NOW=`date +%F`mkdir /root/backup/$NOW
BDIR=/root/backup/$NOW
cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config.pm $BDIR
cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/GenericAgent.pm $BDIR
cp -R /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/Files/ZZZAuto.pm $BDIR
cp -R /opt/otrs/var/ $BDIR
/opt/otrs/scripts/backup.pl -d $BDIR

Usually I then ln -s otrs-new otrs and run my upgrade script - but something failed along the way. Here is what I found:

Firstly, there are a lot more PERL modules required in 3.2 - these three caught me out:

• YAML::XS
• DBD::ODBC
• JSON::XS

I added them using aptitude - my OTRS install is on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (www.ubuntu.com) - easy enough to do and then checked the modules again. If you are following the UPGRADING documentation, you should run:

• /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl

This will tell you what modules you require. I didn't bother with the Oracle or PostgreSQL modules as I'm not using those databases, nor am I interested in the Encode::HanExtra (no Chinese characters). 

Secondly there are database changes to be made. MySQL uses INNODB as the default storage engine. I've never even thought about this before - OTRS had always just run happily without asking me fancy questions about this sort of thing. Now in 9 of the UPGRADING document I had to apply database changes, including changing the default storage engine from INNODB to MyISAM.

Fortunately I stumbled across some nice scripts to do this at Techusers.net - here they are tailored to suit OTRS:

Step 1. Get all the table names from OTRS (you'll have to put in your password and you might have to change root to something more site applicable):

mysql -u root -p -e "SHOW TABLES IN otrs;" | tail -n +2 | xargs -I '{}' echo "ALTER TABLE {} ENGINE=INNODB;" > alter_table.sql

Step 2. Updating all the tables in one go (same as above - password + username update)

perl -p -i -e 's/(search_[a-z_]+ ENGINE=)INNODB/\1MYISAM/g' alter_table.sql 

Step 3. Applying the change to your SQL Database:

mysql -u root -p otrs < alter_table.sql 

Much thanks and kudos to the writers at www.techusers.net - this saved me from doing each table by hand! The search_profile table refused to change from INNODB to MyISAM but when I checked the dbupgrade scripts, this particular table isn't mentioned. It did not seem to affect the overall upgrade.

The rest of the upgrade went fairly smoothly. It's important to note, however, that you must go to Admin -> Packages -> Update Online Repository and then upgrade your packages to get better speed from your OTRS install. I found that after I did this, I restarted the apache service (service apache2 restart) and OTRS began humming along quite nicely. I'm still exploring the new features. Enjoy