IFTTT update: Three new Triggers for the IFTTT Channel

There’s a whole lot more you can do with the newly improved IFTTT Channel! You can now follow specific peoples’ Shared Recipes, keep track of our latest Featured Recipes, and have IFTTT recommend a new Recipe just for you each day.

Give the new Recipes a try and let us know what you think.

"Device eth0 does not seem to be present" after cloning / editing network adaptor on CentOS virtual machine

After cloning a machine or editing network adaptors you may find that eth0 can not be started.
This is usually down to the operating system remembering the old network adaptor and not knowing about the new one.

You need to edit the following file to show the correct network adaptors and MAC addresses.

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

The file will look like this.
# PCI device 0x15ad:0x07b0 (vmxnet3)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*",
ATTR{address}=="00:50:56:ae:00:1a",
ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

# PCI device 0x15ad:0x07b0 (vmxnet3)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*",
ATTR{address}=="00:50:56:ae:00:1b",
ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

Check that there are the correct amount to correspond to the number of network adaptors and that the adaptor name and MAC address is correct.

Once you have made your changes you need to reload udev by running this command
start_udev

You should now be able to restart your network services
service network restart

IFTTT update: Power-up the LinkedIn Channel

The LinkedIn Channel just got a whole lot more powerful. With four new Triggers and one new Action, use LinkedIn Recipes to take your professional networking to the next level.

Any new connection

Any connection adds a new position

New job suggestion

New job opening at a company you follow

Invite to connect on LinkedIn

P.S. We increased the number of email addresses you can send to in your Gmail Recipes to five. Just separate each address with a comma and you’re good to go.

Dedicated & VPS Server Provider

Having written about hosting, server configurations and issues I have run into I though I would write a quick post about my server provider Hetzner.

If you are in the market looking for a new server provider for either a virtual server or dedicated server then give these guys a try.

I have been using both their dedicated and virtual servers for a long time and never had an issues with service or support.

They offer hardware support only so you need to know what you are doing with server configuration but if you can live with that then Hetzner have some really great servers at very low prices. I have yet to find a provider able to offer the same specification servers at a lower price.

The network connectivity is brilliant and practically everything is automated (reverse dns, additional IPs) so no waiting in long queues to get something changed.

Windows software RAID recovery

Array health states

RAID volumes can be in one of four states:

• Healthy - the default. Everything is fine.
• Rebuild - the system is rebuilding the array, and is thus at risk of data loss until the array has completely rebuilt. This will occur when the array is initially built, and while recovering from a failure.
• Failed RAID - redundancy has failed, but the array is recoverable. You will need to replace the failed disk, or reactivate a disk with errors, to rebuild the array.
• Failed - the array has failed. No rebuilding is possible and you have lost all data on the array. Replace the failed hardware and recover the data from backups.

Recovery procedure

There are generally only two states you will find a machine in when a RAID error has occurred: a completely failed disk, or a disk with errors. In the case of errors being detected, the mirror will still be marked as healthy, but due to the errors Windows will treat the array as At Risk. In either case, you must replace the sub-optimal disk.

1. Log into the machine and enter the Disk Management console.
2. Right-click on the failed disk and select Remove Mirror (RAID-1 only).
3. Select and remove the failed disk from the array.
4. Enter the Computer Management console and open the Windows Device Manager. Uninstall the disk that has failed.
5. Physically remove the disk and replace it with an equivalent model.
6. Enter the Disk Management console and Scan for changes. Roll 1d6 for a Detect Disk skill check, you need at least a 3 to pass. If you fail, you'll need to reboot the machine in order for it to pick up the hardware change.
7. Right-click and Remove the old (ghost) disk from the Disk Management console if it is still visible. The disk will be marked with a Missing label.
8. Important: you must zero out the first sector of the new disk once the hardware has been picked up by the operating system. Windows will not install its bootloader onto the disk if it finds old GRUB installations or other random data on there. Do this even for arrays that you are not going to boot from. Grab a copy of Boot Sector Explorer (BSE), and use it to write the zero file (512 bytes of 0x00) to the new disk. Dismiss any Invalid boot sector warnings by clicking the Yes button on the warning dialogues. Still using BSE, verify that the first sector of this disk is completely zeroed out.
9. Click Rescan disks from the Action menu in the Disk Management console to refresh the operating system's cached perspective of your disks. The disk you zeroed out earlier should now be marked as Unknown and Not initialized. By closing and re-opening the Disk Management console, you should be able to trigger a disk initialisation wizard. Dismiss the wizard.
10. Still using the Disk Management console, right-click on the new disk and select Initialize disk. Convert the disk to a Dynamic Disk.
11. Recreate the array if you had removed it earlier (applies to RAID-1). Add the new disk into the array.
12. (Boot arrays only) Using BSE, verify that the MBR has been correctly initialised with NT bootloader code. You are looking for the strings Invalid partition table and Missing operating system. Compare the MBRs of both disks; there will be a 32-bit disk signature field that differs, but not much else.
13. Open C:\boot.ini in Notepad and ensure it reads like the following:

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003 Standard" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003 secondary plex" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut

14. Wait for the array to rebuild. Server 2003's I/O scheduler isn't as clever as what you get with Linux — performance will be reduced until you reach full redundancy.

IFTTT update: New congressional vote Triggers in The New York Times Channel

Keep tabs on the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives with two new congressional vote Triggers, now part of The New York Times Channel.

US shutdown Google rankings

Anyone know how the US shutdown will affect Google search rankings of sites such as Nasa as it is effectively a 301 redirect and should be removed from Google's index?

 www.nasa.gov/

Wordpress Web Designers

<rant>
I am a little fed up and annoyed at "website design agencies" putting down template Wordpress sites.

I have heard it many times whereby they trash a customised template on a Wordpress site in order to "big up" their own sorry looking system.

The fact that they will also be modifying existing templates that they have done before is never mentioned.

Give the little guys who build amazing Wordpress websites a shot especially as many of them make amazing websites for their clients at a fraction of the cost of a custom solution.
</rant>

Google Web Designer Tool

It looks like Google has just released a new web designer tool.

The screenshots look pretty amazing and it looks loaded with options.

Check it out at http://www.google.com/webdesigner/

I'm off to download it now and have a tinker!

iMessage no longer working after iOS7 update.

If like me you have upgraded to iOS7 you may find that iMessage is no longer sending & receiving messages.

There is however a simple "fix" for this which is to reset your network settings.

This will reset your mobile data settings and also clear any WiFi network saved settings that you have. The mobile settings will automatically be assigned again but you will need to reconnect your WiFi networks.

To reset the network settings follow this simple guide.

1. Settings
2. General
3. Reset (it is at the bottom of the list)
4. Reset Network Settings

Your device will now reboot and then iMessage will then work again!