Month: August 2007

Coupla Things – PowerShell and MD5 sums for MS’s MOSS 2007 VPC files

1) PowerShell

If you are involved in Systems Maintenance and the systems are Windows-based (pref. OS: Windows Server 2003+), you owe it to yourself to check out Microsoft Windows PowerShell. This is a .NET 2.0 shell, yes, but architected from the ground up to enable automation, and it enables all sorts of WMI-interfaces and reflection and so on. Very neat stuff. Go look, go play, go have fun. It’s free, as long as you don’t mind installing .NET 2.0. Also, if you like what you can do at the command line, but are more comfortable with GUI, check out the free project/software PowerGUI, which uses PowerShell’s objects’ reflection to provide a very flexible, extensible PowerShell GUI. You can even easily extend the interface with plugins and tied actions (written in PowerShell) and can easily share those with the import/export functionality.

2) Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

I have finally made time to download this thing (over a couple of hours). It comes in 6 rar parts of 700 MB (the last part is more like 516 MB). I have said before that MS is great at providing downloads and crap at providing things that UNIXers and Crypto nuts have provided for years: Checksums. Why are these helpful? a) You can tell whether anyone’s fiddled with the bits since the original provider uploaded them or b) You can tell whether the bits you were intended to download are the ones you got. This kind of thing is helpful in determining, as in this case, whether you need to re-download the whole 6 part 2 hour festival or just one part. I have downloaded the parts. I am about to uncompress them, and when I do, if successful, I will post the checksums here for each part:

WIN03_MOSS_V1.part01.exe – Size: 734,003,200 bytes – MD5 Sum: 68b5470c605320228f588abe13af4e62
WIN03_MOSS_V1.part02.rar – Size: 734,003,200 bytes – MD5 Sum: 5a309da7ab473921a808298ff293b7fe
WIN03_MOSS_V1.part03.rar – Size: 734,003,200 bytes – MD5 Sum: ddd98c59425b704c37fc43bacacdc418
WIN03_MOSS_V1.part04.rar – Size: 734,003,200 bytes – MD5 Sum: 5549c847e02481ff3eebab2a43f9df3e
WIN03_MOSS_V1.part05.rar – Size: 734,003,200 bytes – MD5 Sum: e423cddc6064aa95624b398ecfeebcfb
WIN03_MOSS_V1.part06.rar – Size: 624,600,967 bytes – MD5 Sum: 64c0d290a32e8f445a3f8992d64198a0

Running the exe and answering the EULA in the affirmative yielded the following four files (unpacking took about 30 minutes on my 2.0 GHz non-hyper threaded Centrino with 2 GB of RAM):

Distributable VHD Image EULA.doc – 101,376 bytes – MD5 Sum: 9a5d93625bd1b42a9e7b65c7e52c8bea
ReadMe.htm – 37,435 bytes – MD5 Sum: 44196d20e67c174cd809734aa79eefe4
WIN03_MOSS.vhd – 10,968,818,688 bytes – MD5 Sum: 6ec5e3d177b1682c28815fd6a2f0e401
WIN03_MOSS.vmc – 14,516 bytes – MD5 Sum: c15ba5b037ceec9d1a4efdce44a99193

Now, these MD5 sums are only what I’m calculating on my end. I can’t guarantee to you that the files are not messed with. I can only tell you that it’s a reasonable certainty that if your MD5 sums match mine, you and I are looking at the same sets of files.

Anyhow, with all that, the files seem to be working properly with Virtual Server (though I must admit I’m new to Virtual Server 2005).

A good MD5 summing utility for Windows GUI (that lets you set a Send To target) is Nullriver’s winmd5sum. It takes a lot less time to sum a small file than a big one. The 10 GB vhd took about 5 minutes.

Internet Literacy 301: NAVTEQ and you

I decided that since I’m not solely a SharePoint Guy anymore, I’d add other geeky articles I write (usually for private audiences) here as well.

Here’s one about the mapping data source that provides most of the mapping data you see on Google Maps and GPSes and so on:

NAVTEQ is the mapping data company that supplies most of the major mapping companies and utilities with that data. They provide the address resolution (geocoding), the squiggly lines that map to our real world roads and highways and a lot of Point of Interest data like gas stations, hotels, hospitals, police stations, etc. Anything that later ends up on your view of Google or Yahoo Maps or your GPS in your car or that you walk around with, whatever.

So if you notice a mapping error (not necessarily a directions error), but something like a missing street or the wrong way one way or a missing hotel from the Points of Interest, or that the address you just typed in is on the wrong end of the street, or whatever, NAVTEQ is the folks you need to notify.

Last time i did this (when NAVTEQ was showing a schoolyard as a street and thus GPS devices were directing presumably lost motorists to drive through it), NAVTEQ’s form was clunky and difficult to use, no tracking information or updates were available to you when you submitted a change request, and it kinda sucked. Still, they did eventually get the update out to Google Maps, and I presume to many of the GPS software/devices folks use (they issue updates as frequently as quarterly, but it depends on the vendors who use their data).

Anyhow, now they have a newfangled form that’s integrated into their mapping data and if you enter changes, it provides you a tracking number, and you can tie an e-mail address to the report so you can get updates.

So here’s where to go if you want to enter any updates (don’t fret, it’s mostly a form, and you can attach a document or picture to help with the issue)