Dave McComb's Blog

CNET has an interesting article about Hyperic going open source. The Hyperic HQ software monitors what’s happening on company networks and reports events to administrators. This is the type of software that no one who is managing servers should be without, and now the solution is completely open source. Hyperic HQ allows you to:

• Auto-Discover all your software and hardware inventory
• Monitor every layer of your infrastructure
• Control servers and services remotely
• Track configuration, log, and security events
• Optimize your operations with a web-based multi-user portal
• Improve alerts through policy-driven definitions and automatic recovery

Other competing open source solutions include:

• OpenNMS
• Nagios
• Big Brother

Hyperic looks like the most advanced of these solutions, but I’ll be checking them out and updating this review with my findings.

Are the latest four Microsoft security patches not installing for you?  Is KB917537 one of the fixes? Well, it seems that this patch will not install unless you shut down the IIS Admin service and its dependent services manually (thanks Microsoft!).  My suggestion is to uncheck this patch from the list of four new security fixes and install the other three first.  Reboot if necessary after they have installed. Stop the IIS Admin Service and all its dependent services. Install KB917537 and reboot.  Now you’re all set!

Microsoft just released a neat little utility called Private Folder 1.0. It’s unsupported and will only run on “genuine” Windows XP.  What it does is give you a new folder called “My Private Folder” that is password protected to prevent anyone who may be sharing your computer from accessing the files in that folder.  From their web site:

Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 is a useful tool for you to protect your private data when your friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account. With this tool, you will get one password protected folder called ‘My Private Folder’ in your account to save your personal files. Download and have your private folder today!

No word on what encryption it uses or what happens if you forget the password.  Download it today and give it a try!