Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Configuring Apache2 HTTPd Virtual Host to Work with Windows Server Internet Information Server (IIS) ASP.NET Hosting

Here's the tip I just discovered, compiled and tested on configuring an Apache2 virtual host to interoperate with Microsoft Internet Information Server ASP.NET hosting. My requirements and configuration are as follows:

  1. Operating System : Windows Server 2003
  2. Primary Web server : Apache2 on TCP port 80
  3. Web application server : Windows Server 2003 built-in Internet Information Server on TCP port 8090
The pictures below outline what need to be done.

1. Configure the virtual host name in the 'hosts' file or the DNS



2. Configure the IIS Web site to listen to TCP port 8090















3. Enable the necessary Apache2 modules in the 'httpd.conf' file: mod_rewrite, mod_proxy, and mod_proxy_http (for HTTP interoperability).













4. Configure the Apache2 virtual host settings in the 'httpd-vhosts.conf' file so that (i) name-based virtual hosting is enabled and (ii) all HTTP requests are 'proxied' to the IIS Web site on the same host (127.0.0.1) at the specified TCP port 8090. Note the "P" option for "proxy" and the "L" option which specifies 'no more' rewriting rules.



5. This is what it looks like on Firefox.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Lenovo IdeaPad S10: Fan Blade Interference with Housing and Thermal Issues Solved

Originally posted at http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&thread.id=2846

The fan on my IdeaPad S10 netbook has been unusually / annoyingly loud with grinding noises. It's much louder than the typically loud fan on laptops.

Thanks, Mark_Lenovo at the posts

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=2148#M2148

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=2482#M2482

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=2490#M2490

and berenpx at http://www.s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1397#p10964, for insisting that Fan Blade Interference with the Housing can really be an issue.


Too bad receiving in-warranty services from the contracted / outsourced local Lenovo service center is too complicated, ineffective, and consumes too much of my time. So I finally chose the DIY approach instead. I just cannot tolerate the annoyance from the fan anymore. Local service center said they don't have a replacement fan in stock. I would have to wait for a "few weeks" for them to order from abroad (perhaps, Singapore) and would need to call back and check if they have ones in stock or have used up already. I can also queue up by leaving my only computer (yes, this S10) with them during this wait period.

I opened the S10 last night with the help of the Hardware Maintenance Manual and did the following:

Fan Upgrade

- Disassembled the fan,
- Cleaned it with WD40-like oil,
- Fully filled it with white lithium grease,
- Fixed the blade interference issue by "heightening" the housing with 3 pieces of 0.5-mm thick plastic sheets (I used the "leftover" part of a cellphone SIM card), and
- Sealed the space introduced by the plastice sheet with UHU Plastic Repair Adhesive.I really saw traces of the fan interference: there are a lot of scratches at the inner surface of the fan housing.

Thermal Grease Upgrade

Replaced the cheap "insulation" pads between the (1) Intel 945 northbridge chipset + (2) ATOM CPU and the heat sink with Arctic MX2 thermal grease.

Soft and Quiet Mouse Click Mod

By adding a layer of electrical tape onto the micro swtiches for the two mouse buttons, which are located under the palmrest, as suggested in http://www.s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=577&start=10#p11188

P.S. The technician at the local service center did the fan and thermal grease things for me once last time, as posted earlier; but when I looked at what he did this time, it was not thorough, effective, and neat. I don't think he understood what he was doing.

Thanks much everyone who provided me with all the required information!

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Lenovo IdeaPad S10: Annoying Fan Noise Fix and Heat Conduction Upgrade

Here's a repost of my message on the Lenovo.com board:

I would like to thank Slash (on Lenovo.com board) so much for his messages on this thread: http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=1183#M1183

I decide today (February 28, 2009) to walk into a Lenovo Service Center inside a computer mall in downtown Bangkok because I cannot tolerate the constant grinding noise from my S10 anymore. I bought my S10 in late November 2008 and I started to hear some grinding noise in late December 2008.

I have been using the S10 as my primary computer both for work and for home. At work, this noise has embarrassed me many, many times. At home, I left the S10 with Vista in High Performance mode on overnight so that it can complete the maintenance tasks, e.g., HDD Defrag and Indexing, but the fan noise from high CPU temperature woke me up at 4:45 in the morning!

I learned from Slash's picture http://i41.tinypic.com/25alq3d.jpg that Lenovo chose to use cheap, thick silicone "heat conductor" between the CPU & Chipset to the aluminum (not copper) heat sink. As also suggested by Slash in #108, thick silicone material does more harm than good. It functions as an "insulator" or "heat collector" rather than a "heat conductor."

I also learned from many discussion threads online that many other netbooks, e.g., ASUS EeePC & MSI Wind, also suffer from the "Fan Grinding" noise as well; and that the most promising solution is to disassemble the fan and apply some sewing machine oil at its core, c.f. http://delicious.com/thitiv/ideapad_s10%20fan%20annoyance

I was fortunate enough that the Service Center wasn't crowded when I arrived and that I had a chance to talk to the technician. He seemed to know about the "sewing machine oil" trick so I was happy. I also bought the Arctic MX-2 high performance thermal grease at the computer mall (for approx US$11) and asked the technician to use it to replace the cheap silicone at the heat sink. The reason was that he had to remove the heat sink to access the fan anyway and some heat conductor must be applied back.

After two hours waiting for him to work on my S10, I had a chance to test. The grinding noise was 99% eliminated. I still hear very, very minor grinding noise at times when the fan worked at full speed but it was a lot better. The Arctic MX-2 does the trick! When there is a significant increase in CPU activity and the CPU temperature increase--from say 44C to 47C--the fan runs for only less than 15 seconds to bring the CPU temperature back from 47C to 44C. Heat transfer inside my S10 is significantly better and the fan runs less often now.

My S10 is super silent now and I am very, very happy!

In summary, here are what had been done to my S10:

1. Heat Sink and Fan Removed
2. Sewing Machine Oil applied to the core of the Fan (to fix the grinding noise and improve fan efficiency)
3. Cheap & Thick Silicone "Thermal Conductor" replaced by High Performance Thermal Grease (to improve efficiency of heat conduction)

FYI, I am also using the BIOS Version 56 posted the other day.

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Quote: Science, Equations and Experiment

I got this thought provoking quote from my iGoogle page today:

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

  - Nikola Tesla




Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2 Crashes Thai Language Input in Outlook 2007

It's been more than a year since I last blogged. I've been busy with work and also don't know what to blog. Here comes my new findings:

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2 + Outlook 2007 + Thai Language Input = CRASH

This has also been proven here.

I downloaded the Outlook Connector the other night for improved supports to Windows Live Hotmail -- only to find that whenever I start typing e-mails in Thai, i.e., hit the "language switch" key Outlook simply crashes!

I googled for "outlook 2007 crash language switch" this morning and find someone having the same Outlook Connector insta.led and the same problem as mine. So, Outlook Connector is most likely the cause of trouble.

I uninstalled Outlook Connector this morning and, yes, typing in Thai doesn't crash Outlook 2007 anymore!

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Saturday, September 15, 2007

Windows Vista: Preventing the "Windows has blocked some startup programs" Message

If you are annoyed by Windows Vista's new security feature that blocks startup programs that run in elevated administrator mode and want to authorize some programs to run, take a look at this workaround by Jimmy Brush.

It works perfectly fine for me!

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Friday, January 05, 2007

Blojsom: Configuring a Community Blog with the Internal Aggregator Plugin

I have been having hard time modifying Blojsom's templates to get the Internal Aggregator plug-in to work. I wish there were a concrete example or a tutorial for me to follow. Today I googled again after a desperate fight with Blojsom and fortunately came across Todd Slater's posting.

Mr. Slater posted his working copy of the template files. I downloaded, put it in to the template folder right away. And...it works!

I'll be studying how he wrote the template very soon. But in the mean time, thank you very much Mr. Slater!

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Update: Jan 5, 07

Here's the difference between my asual-entry.vm and Mr. Slater's:

Mine looks like this:

#macro(multiBlogFriendlyPermalink $entry) macro definition at the top of the file.
#macro(multiBlogFriendlyPermalink $entry)
  #set ($categoryForEntry =
    $entry.getBlogCategory().getCategory())
  #if ($categoryForEntry == "/")
    #set($categoryForEntry = "")
  #end
  #set ($entryLink =
    $entry.getMetaData().get(
      "BLOJSOM_PLUGIN_INTERNAL_AGGREGATOR_BLOG_URL")
    $categoryForEntry$entry.getDateAsFormat("yyyy")/
    $entry.getDateAsFormat("MM")/
    $entry.getDateAsFormat("dd")/
    $entry.getPermalink()")
#end

Then
#multiBlogFriendlyPermalink($entry)
#set($permalink = $entryLink)
...
<a href="$entryLink">
...


Mr. Slater chose not to use the macro and his code looks like this:
<a href="$entry.getMetaData().get(
    "BLOJSOM_PLUGIN_INTERNAL_AGGREGATOR_BLOG_URL")
$categoryForEntry$entry.getDateAsFormat("yyyy")/
$entry.getDateAsFormat("MM")/$entry.getDateAsFormat("dd")/
$entry.getPermalink()")">

Mine doesn't work but Mr. Slater's works. So I guess there must be something wrong with this rather complicated use of macro. Perhaps, it is the limitation of Velocity which is the template engine used by Blojsom. It is most likely that the #set assignment breaks when it has a very long right-hand-side argument. I removed calls to the multiBlogFriendlyPermalink macro and now use Mr. Slater's style. It works!


Update: Jan 6, 07

I looked at Mr. Slater's code and saw references to the $categoryForEntry variable. I can't find any #set($categoryForEntry = ...) assignment in his code, which oppose mine being defined in the #macro(multiBlogFriendlyPermalink $entry) macro definition. Therefore, $categoryForEntry must be a predefined variable, I think.

I finally found its definition in Blojsom source folders. $categoryForEntry is defined in plugins/src/org/blojsom/plugin/admin/templates/
admin-macros.vm
and plugins/src/org/blojsom/plugin/
velocity/page-macros.vm
. It is deployed at the same paths inside WEB-INF/lib/blojsom-plugins-templates-2.32.jar.