How To: Customise Coloured Buttons on MCE remote with XBMC
I’m not sure if this is well known but it took me a while to work it out, so I thought I’d make a post on it. Just in case it may make anyone else’s life a little easier as well as being a future reference to me.
I decided I wanted to change the button functionally on my MCE remote, the remote I have is similar if not the same to the one in the picture. I never really used the coloured buttons but I want to so I thought I’d change their functions. The function being related to x10 devices which I am yet have a mess with as Royal Mail have yet to deliver them, I could rant all day about them I think I’ll move on.
My system is based upon Mythbuntu/Linux so bare that in mind and these are the steps I had to take which may differ but this should give you an idea.
1. Create a file in “~/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/” called remote.xml
2. Insert the following;
<keymap>
<global>
<remote>
<red>Function_Here</red>
<green>Function_Here</green>
<yellow>Function_Here</yellow>
<blue>Function_Here</blue>>
</remote>
</global>
</keymap>
3. Replace Function_Here with an Action within XBMC, a list can be found here.
4. Save and restart XBMC.
Hope this helps, It worked for me so hopefully it’ll work else where.
Exchange 2010 – Automated Signature
I’ve been messing around with my Exchange2010 server today and found a solution to automating signatures; for example adding a disclaimer message or as I’ve seen in some work emails adding marketing messages to the bottom of emails.
In Exchange2010 you can do all this via a Transport Rule, this is new as you can’t do this on Exchange2007 or Exchange2003 as I have seen in a SBS 2003 set-up I manage.
To do this..
1. Open Exchange Management Console and navigate to “Organisation Configuration” > “Hub Transports” > “Transport Rules” > “New Transport Rule” .
2. Give the new rule a name and a commit and click next.
3. Select the condition “send to users that are inside or outside the organisation, or partners” and click next
3.1 May be worth to later create two rules one for sending to inside the organisation and another for sending to outside the organisation.
4. Select the action “Append disclaimer text and fallback to action if unable to apply”.
5. click the blue text “disclaimer text” and edit the field. click next and create the rule.
Test this by sending an email to someone other another address.
You can use the following macros for inserting user specific information to the signature..
Display Name: %DisplayName%%
First Name: %%FirstName%%
Last Name: %%LastName%%
Business Phone: %%Phone%%
Title: %%Title%%
As well as inserting Word formatted HTML..
This all seems a little pointless on my Exchange installation as I only have a few users but I imagine this could save quite a few pennies on storage as it stops the signature from being appended on Outlook and then saved in the sent folder, this frees up space in the mailbox.
I suppose it also centralises management of signatures for when you are adding disclaimer or marketing messages
Error On Migrating A Mailbox To Exchange 2010
After installing Microsoft Exchange 2010 I wanted to move my mailbox from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. Using the wizard in Exchange Console I got this error
Error:
Active Directory operation failed on *DomainController*. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Insufficient access rights to perform the operation.
Active directory response: 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0The user has insufficient access rights.
Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
’*OUStructure*’ | New-MoveRequest -TargetDatabase ‘Mailbox Database nnnnnnnnnn′ -BadItemLimit ‘0′
- I found that this error can be fixed by editing the Advanced Security Settings for the user on the AD.
- Open “Active Directory Users and Computers”
- Click “View > Advanced Features”
- Select the users mailbox properties
- Navigate to “Security Tab > Adanced”
- Select the checkbox “Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent”
- Apply changes
Afterwards the move should go swimmingly, however you may need to remove your move request a try again.
Import SQL File into MySQL
When moving my wordpress over to Windows I spent a little time finding out how to import a SQL dump file in to MYSQL. I didn’t find thing concrete that worked. So I used that feature, Help! and worked it out. Here are the steps I used.
1. Open MySQL Command Line Client and enter your MySQL root password
2. Select a database to import your SQL file too. Replacing “databasename” with your database name.
USE "databasename"
replacing “databasename” with your database name. Replace “C:\sqlfilenamee.sql” with the location of your SQL file.
3. Excute your SQL file by entering the following command
\. "C:\sqlfilenamee.sql"
Hit enter and your SQL file will be imported in to your database. Simples!
Windows Home Server In The Office?
This week a nice big box was waiting for me at home. It was a nice new HP ML115 server but unfortunately its not for me to keep, its for my Dad. For those of you that don’t know I handle the IT for my parents business. Its quite a handy role. I can pretty much do everything remotely, it helps towards refilling my pockets and its getting me quite alot of experience in all sort of areas in IT which I can then use on my placement or when I need to look for a job in 2 years time.
Anyway back to the point. Why the nice shiny server I hear you ask? Well its part of a plan I am putting in place in order to keep everything on the business computers backed up! There is a simple backup system in place but it doesn’t cover everything. Only the important bits. So its Windows Home Server to the rescue. Yep that’s right I’m going to put Windows Home Server on the new machine. Windows Home Server (WHS) is quite handy when it comes to small business’s and/or offices. In this case the backup of networked computers is the main reason WHS is being deployed and here is why…
- Backs up all the computers daily
- Pretty much restore a computer in 10 minutes.
- Restore a whole computer or that file you just deleted
- Doesn’t use up terabytes of data space
Its an all round win. You can aswell, with a bit of a nudge join it to a domain and run services on it like Virtual Machines, DNS, FTP etc etc..
I’m not the only one deploying WHS in a small business. Microsoft even recommends it and are starting to push the idea to small business’s…
No Post, No Video Display – Asus P6T-SE
Yesterday the new machine I built had an Asus P6T-SE motherboard. Once built and switched on we found that the machine would not boot or show any video display. A quick google resolved this to conclude the BIOS needing a new firmware update but how can you update it without video display?
Well it seemed to boot without a DVI cable attached. So remove all video cables including VGA and boot the machine wait 3/5 minutes and attach a VGA cable and the monitor should display the BIOS asking to confirm default settings.
Head over to the ASUS Support Site and download the latest firmware (Version 0403) and burn it to a CD. Don’t forget to unzip it first. Updating the motherboard was straight forward using Asus EZ Flash utility in the BIOS and took a minute or two.
More Info: http://vip.asus.com
