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09 05 2008

Windows Home Server Power Pack 1: Database Backup Shelved

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Beta Testing, Bugs, Windows Home Server

A post from Microsoft today over on the Windows Home Server forums confirmed that a key feature of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1, scheduled to be released in the first half of 2008, has now been cut from the pack.

Users have been eagerly awaiting new Home Server Backup capabilities in the forthcoming update, which as previously featured here at WGS, include the ability to perform a full backup of your home server, including your shared folders and your backup database.

Unfortunately, due to interplay issues with the Windows Home Server Connector install, and to prevent the risk of users encountering a corrupted backup database, the ability to create a backup of your backup database has now been removed from the latest builds. The good news is that shared folder backup is unaffected.

Windows Home Server Product Planner, Todd Headrick, admitted “A feature isn’t a feature until it ships. And sometimes marketing gets things wrong … by pre-announcing stuff at CES that ends up getting cut before it ships.” The plan is to look at re-introducing this feature in a future release of Windows Home Server.

Whilst the news is disappointing (I’ve been aware of this for some time, but as you know, I’m under a Microsoft NDA), if there’s a risk of backup databases being corrupted, the right decision is to pull the feature now before release.

You can follow the discussion over at the Windows Home Server forums.

2 Comments »

08 05 2008

How To: Install Forum Software phpBB 3 on Windows Home Server

Posted by: Drashna in Windows Home Server, how-to, news

This week, we have shown you how to install your own blog on Windows Home Server, powered by Wordpress, as well as your own wiki, both of which you can do once you have installed PHP for IIS. Now we are going to to show you how to install your very own personal forum, so you can go and create your own Windows Home Server community that kicks We Got Served’s ass! :) The forum software we are going to use is phpBB - it is very well established and works very well.

What you will need

PHP installed on IIS
Remote access to the server
phpBB 3.x
ImageMagick - image manipulation, for attachments.

What to do

Before you do anything else, make sure php is already installed. If it isn’t, click the link above and go ahead and do that first.

First of all, you are going to want to download phpBB and Image Magic and put them on a network share. Then you are going to either use Remote Desktop Connection or Advanced Admin Console to gain access to the server.

Install phpBB

First things first, install ImageMagick. This program will be used by phpBB in the background to render thumbnails while keeping them fairly decent quality. After that is done, open up the phpbb zip file and extract the phpbb3 folder to “C:\inetpub\”. It should look something like this:

Now, right click on the phpbb3 folder and select “Properties”. Find and open the security tab. Click the “Advanced” button. Now, click the “Add…” button. Add the user “IUSR_SERVER”, replacing “SERVER” with whatever you named your server. For instance, I named my server “UMMON”, so I added “IUSR_UMMON”. Now give that user Full Control. Enable “Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects”, and click okay.

This will reset permissions on the files, and will revert back to being unchecked when it is done.

Now find “Administative Tools” and open “Internet Information Services.” Under your computer’s name there is three entries. Open “Websites”, and then find “Default Web Site.” Right click on it and open the “New” group and select “Virtural Directory.” Not Virtual Directory from file. Now give the alias “phpbb3″ or whatever you want. This will be the path to your phpBB installation. Click “Next” and set the path to “C:\inetpub\phpbb3″. Click “Next”. It will give you options for the new virtual directory. Tell it to “Read”, and “Run scripts”. Now you are done setting up the web service side of it.

Now we just need configure the database.

Configure Database

Go the the start menu, and run “MySQL Command Line Client”. This will immediately ask you to enter a password. Enter the password you used when setting up MySQL. Now you need to create the database that phpBB3 is going to use. We’re going to the name “phpbb3″ for the database. Feel free to change the name to whatever you want. It should look like this:

mysql> create database phpbb3;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

Now that we have created the database, we need to create a user specifically for phpBB because using the root account is very unsafe and recommended that you never do it. So we are going to create the username and give it permission to use the new database. The username we are going to use is “phpbb3admin” and the password “phpbb3password”. It should look like this:

mysql> use phpbb3;
Database changed
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON phpbb3.* to phpbb3admin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'phpbb3password';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

Now you have the database and the info you need. Again, you will need to remember this or write it down.

Configure phpBB3

Now navigate to your forum. It should look something like: “https://yourserver.homeserver.com/phpbb3/” and you should see a page like this:

Click The install tab at the top to start the installation. It will give you another welcome screen and go ahead and proceed to the next step. This page will list a number of requirements for phpBB3. Everything except some of the database should be green. As long as “MySQL” or “MySQL with MySQLi Extension” are available, you will be fine. Now click “Start Install” and you should see a page like this:

Enter in all the information that you see up there, except for what you have changed. Click “Proceed to Next Step”. It should tell you it was successful. Good. Now continue to the next step. It will ask you for Adminstrator details. Go ahead and set those how you want and then “Proceed to next step”. And again, and again. This time, most of the settings here should not need to be configured. phpBB does a pretty good job of detecting these settings. Proceed, and proceed again. Now you should see this:

Now go back to “c:\inetpub\phpbb3″ and delete the “install” directory, or else you won’t be able to You are now done. Go ahead and log in and play around with your new forum!

Stay tuned for more later, and head over to the forum for questions or if you have ideas for more php packages!

4 Comments »

07 05 2008

Use Windows Home Server to Back Up NTFS Compressed Files?

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Bugs, Windows Home Server

The Windows Home Server Team today published information and a fix for a recently discovered bug which causes NTFS Compressed files on a home computer to be incorrectly backed up on Windows Home Server.

On a home computer, you can compress some files by using NTFS compression through advanced attributes settings. In some cases, these files may not be backed up correctly by Windows Home Server. If you try to restore a compressed file from a Windows Home Server backup, the file may be corrupted.

In short, you’ll probably know if you’re using NTFS compression. By default, a compressed file or folder is displayed in Windows Explorer with a blue font in place of the standard black font. If you are, it’s likely that those file backups you have will be damaged and will not restore correctly. The good news is, a fix is available today.

The fix will be made available via Windows Update in the future, but for now, if you’re using NTFS compression, or if you just want to play safe, first visit the Microsoft Knowledge Base article regarding the issue, and then head over to the Microsoft Download Center to get the update.

The update is for the Windows Home Server Connector, and will need to be installed on each of your home computers. Given that your previous backups may be damaged by this bug, it’s worth running an immediate Manual Backup as soon as the fix is installed on each of your home computers.

More Infomation: WHS Team Blog | Microsoft Knowledge Base | Microsoft Download Center

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07 05 2008

Tranquil PC Launch French Retail Site

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Hardware, Windows Home Server

Tranquil PC are today launching a new online site at www.tranquilpc.fr offering a full range of PCs and of course, their range of Harmony Home Servers to the French public.

The site is being operated in partnership with French firm, Springeo SA and will offer both sales and ongoing support to French consumers.

So, if you’re a Francophone….

HOME SERVER INFORMATION
Une solution simple et sure pour stocker et partager les documents, photos, vidéos et fichiers musicaux de la famille :

More Info: www.tranquilpc.fr

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07 05 2008

How-To: Install MediaWiki on Windows Home Server

Posted by: Drashna in Windows Home Server, how-to

A while ago, we showed you how to install PHP on your Home Server, and recently we showed you how to install WordPress on your server. Now, we are going show you how to install MediaWiki onto your server for you very own Wiki pages. MediaWiki is the software that powers sites like Wikipedia and our very own Wiki, so the software is very solid, and works great. And here is how you install it on your server:

What you will need

What to do

First thing’s first, if you haven’t already installed PHP of IIS, you will need to do that FIRST. After that is doen, you are going to want to download MediaWiki and put it on a network share. Then you are going to either use Remote Desktop Connection or Advanced Admin Console to gain access to the server.

Install MediaWiki

Open up the phpbb tar.gz file and extract the MediaWiki files to “C:\inetpub\wiki”. It should look something like this:

Now, right click on the wiki folder and select “Properties”. Find and open the security tab. Click the “Advanced” button. Now, click the “Add…” button. Add the user “IUSR_SERVER”, replacing “SERVER” with whatever you named your server. For instance, I named my server “UMMON”, so I added “IUSR_UMMON”. Now give that user Full Control. Enable “Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects”, and click okay.

This will reset permissions on the files, and will revert back to being unchecked when it is done.

Now find “Administrative Tools” and open “Internet Information Services.” Under your computer’s name there is three entries. Open “Websites”, and then find “Default Web Site.” Right click on it and open the “New” group and select “Virtual Directory.” Not Virtual Directory from file. Now give the alias “wiki” or whatever you want. This will be the path to your MediaWiki installation. Click “Next” and set the path to “C:\inetpub\wiki”. Click “Next”. It will give you options for the new virtual directory. Tell it to “Read”, and “Run scripts”. Now you are done setting up the web service side of it.

Now we just need configure the database.

Configure Database

Unlike a number of other packages, MediaWiki can not only create the database if you have root access, which we do because it is our server. But it will create a new MySQL account that it will use after installation instead of using the root account. Not only is this awesome, it makes installation that much easier and convenient.

Configure Media

Now navigate to your wiki. It should look something like: “https://yourserver.homeserver.com/wiki/” and you should see a page like this:

Click the “set up the wiki” link to configure it. It will give you a list of information. It won’t find “Turck MMCache, eAccelerator, APC or XCache, because we don’t have those installed, nor GNU diff3. These are not really necessary and I find them to be more of an annoyance than anything else.

Feel free to name your wiki pretty much anything you want. As for the copyright/license, be careful what you chose. I chose none, because I’m not too concerned about theft of data. Most of my wiki ends up on the WGS Wiki anyways. The Admin username is defaulted to “WikiSysop” but again, feel free to use whatever name you choose. This is the main account on the wiki and likely yours.

Now to database config. We are going to use MySQL so make sure that is what is selected. Leave the database host name alone. Changing this will likely make it not work. Set the database name, username and password to whatever your heart desires. Now, select the “Use superuser account.” Use “root” for the superuser name, and the password you specified when you first installed MySQL with. Now click “Install MediaWiki!” It will either tell you it was successful, or take you back to configure everything properly.

Now go to “C:\inetpub\wiki\config\” and copy “LocalSettings.php” to “C:\inetpub\wiki” and you are done and have your very own Wiki! For more, head over to the We Got Served Wiki.

Stay tuned for more PHP software packages next time!

Comments 1 Comment »

06 05 2008

How-To: Install WordPress on Windows Home Server

Posted by: Drashna in Windows Home Server, how-to

A while back, we showed you how to Install PHP on IIS on your Windows Home Server. Thanks to feedback from the community, it has been cleaned up, cleared up, and refined - the section on how to install MySQL has been expanded to include details and brief descriptions. What we didn’t show you in that tutorial was how to install pre-made php software packages. There are many free packages that you can use, and that are very feature rich and useful for any number of different purposes. We have a few tutorials ready for you on how to install these packages and the first up is blogging software, WordPress due to its popularity and demand. We Got Served runs on Wordpress (although not on Windows Home Server) and is a simple but powerful solution for anyone who wants to start a blog. Here we go:

What you will need

Remote access to the server
WordPress 2.5.1 or whatever the lastest version is
MySQL - The database. You will want to get the “Essential Package”

What to do

First thing’s first, and you will need to download WordPress and MySQL and put them on a network share. Then you are going to either use Remote Desktop Connection or Advanced Admin Console to gain access to the server.

Install WordPress

After the database is installed, we are going to extract all the WordPress files to “c:\inetpub\blog\”. Feel free to change blog to anything else, but it is easier to name it something obvious. It should look something like this:

You may notice the “wp-config.php” files. All the important database information is in there in plain text, including the password. This is why I recommend installing to the system drive rather than leaving it on the shares. It may be a bit paranoid, but do you want somebody getting access to your database?

After extracting the files, right click on the “blog” directly, and select “Properties”. Find the “Security” tab and click the “Advanced” button. Add the user “IUSR_SERVER”, replacing “SERVER” with whatever you named your server. For instance, I named my server “UMMON”, so I added “IUSR_UMMON”. Now give that user Full Control. Enable “Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects”, and click okay.

This will reset permissions on the files, and will revert back to being unchecked when it is done.

Now find “Administrative Tools” and open “Internet Information Services.” Under your computer’s name there is three entries. Open “Websites”, and then find “Default Web Site.” Right click on it and open the “New” group and select “Virtual Directory.” Not Virtual Directory from file. Now give the alias “blog” or whatever you want. This will be the path to your WordPress installation. Click “Next” and set the path to “C:\inetpub\blog” or whatever you named the directory. Click “Next”. It will give you options for the new virtual directory. Tell it to “Read”, and “Run scripts”.

Now you are done setting up the web service side of things.

Now you need to create the database.

Configure Database

If you haven’t installed MySQL yet, head over here first. Go the the start menu, and run “MySQL Command Line Client”. This will immediately ask you to enter a password. Enter the password you used when setting up MySQL. Now you need to create the database that WordPress is going to use. We’re going to use the name “wordpress” for the database. Feel free to change the name to whatever you want. It should look like this:

mysql> create database wordpress;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

Now that we have created the database, we need to create a user specifically for WordPress because using the root account is very unsafe and we recommended that you never do it. So we are going to create the username and give it permission to use the new database. The username we are going to use is “wpadmin” and the password “wppassword”. It should look like this:

mysql> use wordpress;
Database changed
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* to wpadmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'wppassword';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

Now you have the database and the info you need. Again, you will need to remember this or write it down.

Configure WordPress

Now navigate to your blog. It should look something like: “https://yourserver.homeserver.com/blog/” and you should see a page like this:

Just follow the screens until you get to the database configuration page. Use “wordpress” for the database name, “wpadmin” for the username and “wppassword” for the password. Don’t change the database host, but feel free to change the table prefix if you so desire, or if you are hosting more than one wordpress installation on the database. Just input the information that you want for the rest of it, and you’re done. Seriously, that is it. Just log into the site with the password it supplies and change whatever you want. You are a happy owner of a WordPress Blog.

Oh, the password is randomly generated, and that was the password for a testblog site I made just for this tutorial. So I know it does work. And for those wondering, that was a test install, not my main.

Done

Now you are done. Log on and blog away! For more, head over to the We Got Served Wiki.

Stay tuned for more PHP software packages!

Comments 1 Comment »

05 05 2008

Add-In: GridJunction Seeking Beta Testers

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Add-ins, Beta Testing, Windows Home Server

Alexander Kent has launched a website for his new add-in, GridJunction, which allows you to monitor and manage Uninterruptible Power Supplies directly from the Windows Home Server console.

A beta test will shortly be launched, and Alexander is looking for high quality, committed testers to put the product through its paces.

If you’re interested in applying, head on over to the GridJunction website.

Discuss: GridJunction Forum

No Comments »

05 05 2008

Review: F-Secure Home Server Security (Beta)

Posted by: Andrew Carr in Software, Windows Home Server

Up until now in the world of the Windows Home Server, when it comes to anti-virus products there really has only been one choice - Avast! windows Home Server Edition. Now there’s a bit of competition with the recent release of the F-Secure Home Server Security beta.

When I was planning this article I thought I would be able to make a list of features and compare and contrast each product. However on downloading and installing F-Secure Home Server Security I found that the two products are really aimed at two different markets. I would classify Avast! as being aimed at WHS owners who want anti-virus protection for their server but also have a bunch of networked home PC’s to manage and want to be able to do that from one location. F-Secure Home Security, on the other hand, gives peace of mind to WHS owners who maybe have one or two PCs and are happy with the preinstalled anti-virus that was bought with the PC, (Which drains a subscription out of their bank balance every 12 months), but also want protection for their Windows Home Server.

Now I have to admit when Terry asked me to do a write up of F-Secure Home Server Security, my heart sank a little. First up I had to uninstall avast! from my WHS, would this be a problem? Although I had no reason to think that it would be, but then I had to uninstall avast! from the 7 PC’s/Laptops on my home network, what a pain! So it took me a day or two to gird my loins for that task. As you can see from the following screen shots the avast! uninstall from the WHS went without a hitch using the console to uninstall the avast! Add-In.

Open up the Windows Home Server console and uninstall avast!

Yes I do mean uninstall..

Wait for it….

Success!

After a reboot there was no obvious trace of avast! on the WHS.

Now I assumed, (and one should never make assumptions) that F-Secure Home Server Security was a complete package of WHS and client anti-virus protection in the avast! genre. So with this misconception in mind I went ahead and uninstalled avast! However after installing F-Secure I realised that it only protected your home server, so had to reinstall avast! on the home computers. More on this later.

The process for installing F-Secure is the same as all WHS Add-ins. Copy the installation file to the Add-ins folder in your Home Server’s Software share, navigate via the WHS console to Windows Home Server Settings. Open Add-ins and then select the available Add-ins tab. Click on the F-Secure Home Server Security Beta Install button and let Windows Home Server do the rest.

The F-Secure setup begins.

Now agree to sign your life and first born child away!!

Then enter the subscription key sent to you via email when you signed up for the beta.

Now wait for installation

And celebrate with a successful installation!

After restarting the console, progress to setting a few options.

The startup wizard quickly sets up a full scan and enables a weekly scan every Friday.

Phew, my WHS is now protected!

The F-Secure WHS Console tab allows access to various functions within F-Secure.

Virus & Spyware protection:

Automatic updates:

My subscription. The beta comes with a six month subscription:

Scanning

After installation the initial scan undertakes a full of the WHS although using the Scan Now button enable a choice of scans:

After a scan:

After the scan is complete, information showing the type of threat present on the WHS is shown along with a recommendation as to what to do next - in this instance automatic cleaning of the item of malware.

After a thoroughh clean and disinfect of the home server, a report can be viewed.

This gives more information on the nature of the threat and about the scan undertaken:

Configuration

As I mentioned earlier, F-Secure is a server only package and does not manage other PCs on a home network. As such, it is aimed at the less experienced WHS owner wanting an set and forget anti-virus/spyware suite. And as such there is not much need to go fiddling under the hood. However F-Secure has many configuration options and these are all accessible from the console.

These include;

Real-Time Scanning: Each bit of data pulled from the home server is scrutinised for viruses or spyware. I didn’t notice any particular access lag during this process, but if you had a problem you can easily turn it off.

Scheduled scans can be set:

Specific files can be scanned or excluded as well as configuring what F-Secure should do once it finds a virus or spyware:

Automatic updates of virus and spyware signatures is very important to maintain an up to date system:

Any files that are placed in quarantine can be viewed safely before a decision to clean:

Help is available but buried away within the quarantine section. The most obvious place for this would be to access it via the main F-Secure console screen. The help is fairly generic and equally applies for all F-secure products and not specifically to WHS. For example, the user is told to check the status icon in the task bar to determine if F-Secure is functioning properly, yet as F-secure resides on the server the user is not going to see any icon in the system tray unless the WHS Connector icon shows an alert. Now this is a beta product and this should hopefully be resolved by release.

So all in all F-Secure Home Server Security is easy to install and manage via the WHS Console. You can install and forget it or tweak it a little if you so desire.

For me personally, avast! WHS Edition has the edge as I want to manage anti-virus protection for all the PC’s on my network via the WHS Console as well as be alerted when there are issues.

As for how well the system does at picking up viruses and spyware, let’s say there were no surprises on my WHS. It picked up one piece of Malware, although it was difficult to determine exactly where this was located - I could not find any way of viewing previous reports after another scan had taken place.

So in summary, F-Secure is a standard anti virus and spyware package but with nothing innovative or creative in the way it is implemented for Windows Home Server beyond the capability to manage it via the Console. It’s spyware tracking gives it a small edge over avast!, however, you really shouldn’t be browsing the internet with your home server, so this functionality seems a little extraneous. With the option to manage anti-virus protection on all of your computers from within the WHS Console, avast! remains the one to beat.

Comments 1 Comment »

04 05 2008

Email Subscription Maintenance

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Site Updates

Did you know you can subscribe to email updates from WGS? Rather than checking out the site each day, over 1000 people have a daily digest of posts emailed directly to their inbox. If you want to join them, subscribe here.

Another 3500 people subscribe to our RSS feed, so they can view the latest news from We Got Served in their favourite feed reader. If you want to join them, click here.

Over the weekend, we’re doing a little work on improving our email subscription engine (moving everyone on to one system). Some of you may receive an email asking you to re-validate your subscription - if you get this email, it’s courtesy of us, and we’d be grateful if you could re-validate. If you do not, your subscription will be disabled shortly, but you can resubscribe at any time.

Thanks everyone!

Related Posts

Tags: email, Site Updates, subscription

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03 05 2008

Add-In Update: Windows Home Server Disk Management v1.0.7.3

Posted by: Terry Walsh in Add-ins, Windows Home Server

A minor bug fix update has been released for Windows Home Server Disk Management.

1.0.7.3 - Update
Fixed: Resolved issue with enumeration of drive paths on non-English versions of WHS
Fixed: Disk location columns are no longer empty on refresh
Fixed: Storage pool usage bar is now recalculated after all disk data is pulled

More Info: Download | Discuss