NSIS: Open Source Installer for Windows

Since I crossed over to the Ubuntu side, I’ve fallen in love with the debian repo system. However, I still need to create Windows installers, primitive and sad as they now feel

I’ve been using the Visual Studio Setup & Deployment projects for ages. They’re pretty damn inflexible, but solid, and the integration into the build is a lovely thing. Great for in-house deployment. However, they’re seriously limited, and you can only build them using the dev environment, albeit from the command line, which means you need to install Visual Studio on the build server.

A solid open source msi creator would be awesome. I think I’m at the point where I’d be willing to put in the time to learn something a little arcane, if it gives me more control. The tool for the job looks like NSIS. There’s even a gui for it.

Making Mantis on Ubuntu talk to SQL Server

I had occasion recently to move a working Mantis installation from Windows+IIS to Linux+Apache2.

The linux box is a Ubunty Jaunty (9.04) server.

I was happy with the slightly old version of Mantis from the standard repositories (1.1.6), as this is newer than the version running on Windows anyway.

So installation was done like this:

sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install mantis

I did mysql and mantis as separate steps, because mysql really needs to be installed and running before you start installing mantis.

So, easy.

Except, the Windows Mantis was on SQL Server. There’s no straightforward way to move the Mantis database from SqlServer to MySql.

What is possible is to leave the database in SQL Server, and point the linux & Apache Mantis at it. This was a fine solution in my situation, given there were SQL Server boxen around for other reasons at any rate.

So how do you do it? Tricky, but not bad if you know what to do. I wont try to explain it here, but this guy gives you all the gory details (major league hat tip here!):

http://grover.open2space.com/node/245

Fabulous PC Repair Flowcharts

Power Supply Failure Diagram

http://www.fonerbooks.com/pcrepair.htm

Unbelievably detailed PC hardware troubleshooting flowcharts, brilliant. The more tightly we network ourselves, the more our culture is defined by the heights that all the monomaniacs can reach.