Clone and Compress LVM Volume to Disk Image

If you need to backup an LVM volume, you can do so by first turning off the virtual machine that is using the volume, and then you can use the dd and gzip utilities to create a copy of the volume to an .img file and compress the image file.  This compressed image file can then be transferred remotely over SSH or HTTP (for fastest results) to another server where it can be restored.

Need More Storage Space for the Backup Image (Optional)?

If you don't have enough storage space on the root LVM volume the main system uses on the host server to handle saving the backup image file to, you can always create a new LVM and then mount it on the host LVM file system to save it there.

These steps are optional:

1.  Create new hard drive in your vm pool using virt-manager and name it temp_storage – you don't need to setup the OS or continue creating the virtual machine

2.  Format and mount this new LVM volume (update vms with your pool's actual name – on my server, it is named vms):

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vms-temp_storage
mount /dev/mapper/vms-temp_storage /mnt/store

Copy and Compress the LVM

Use the below commands to copy your LVM volume to an img file.  Update the names and the paths as needed.

dd if=/dev/vms/name_of_lvm of=/mnt/store/name_of_lvm.img bs=8M status=progress
gzip name_of_lvm.img -1

Uncompressing and Restoring the LVM

Just decompress the image file and then use the dd command to restore the image to the LVM volume created on the target or restore server.

gunzip name_of_lvm.img.gz
dd if=name_of_lvm.img of=/dev/vms/restore-lvm-name bs=8M status=progress

And you're done 🙂

Set Max File Size System Wide – All Users – Ubuntu

Sometimes, a game server process can crash continually until it is manually restarted.  When this happens, the log file it creates fills up with the same error until the ENTIRE server runs out of disk space.  To prevent that from happening, limit the maximum size a file can grow to by adding the following line to the end of the /etc/profile file to apply it to all users.

ulimit -f 52428800

The above numeric value is kilobytes.  It is set to 50GB in the command above.

Restart the server for it to take effect.

Destroy Windows Spying

Destroy Windows Spying is a great little utility that stops Microsoft from collecting some telemetry without your permission on Windows 7 and Windows 10.  It is an open source project hosted on GitHub.

Download and use Destroy Windows Spying for both Windows 7 and Windows 10. 

After you run Destroy Windows Spying, Skype may not work due to an overly aggressive hosts file entry.   To fix it, remove the following entry from the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file:

client-s.gateway.messenger.live.com

Invalid resx File in C# .NET Solution on Windows XP Only

If a c# application you've developed that targets the .NET Framework version 4.0 crashes on Windows XP but does NOT crash on Windows Vista through Windows 10, it is most likely due to an embedded resource issue (in one of the .resx files in the solution).  Upon opening the solution of my problematic program in Visual Studio 2010 on Windows XP, I received an error similar to the following:

Invalid resx file. Command completed successfully. Could not load type...

I fixed the issue by deleting one of my icon (.ico) files from the solution that was 256 x 256 pixels and replaced it with the same icon with a size of 255 x 255 pixels.  While a 256 x 256 pixel icon file is perfectly valid in newer versions of Windows, the maximum size of an .ico file can only be 255 x 255 on Windows XP x86 SP3.  I still target XP machines since I have a Netbook with it that will always be running XP.

Creating a SFX Installation Wizard with WinRar that Can Modify Registry Settings

WinRar's "SFX options…" dialog does not contain any information or guides that help you modify registry settings after the files for your installation have been extracted.  This is a hinderance, but it is extremely possible to modify registry settings by running a batch file after the installation has been completed.  First, make sure the .bat file is included with the rest of your installation files that you selected before making the SFX archive.  In the "Advanced SFX options" window, click on the Setup tab.  Under "Run after extraction", type in just the name of the .bat file you're going to be running.

The Batch File Itself:

This template batch file checks to see if the operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit.  This is an important distincting as it will affect how you setup keys for each type of operating system.  64-bit system keys are usually placed in the Wow6432Node key, so it is important to make this distinction so that your registry settings will work properly.  This batch file called "Program Registry Adder 1.0" provides examples on how to add and modify registry keys depending on the operating system type.

Download Program Registry Adder 1.0

Adding Keys with a .bat (batch) File:

To add specific keys, you use the following parameters:

REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\My Proggy\" /f /v "InstallDir" /t REG_SZ /d "%PPROG%

The first parameter specifies which hive and key should be created.  The /f flag forces the addition.  The /v flag is the name of the key that should be created.  The /t flag specifies what type of Registry key should be created.  The example uses REG_SZ, which is just a string.  The possible types are:

Check out more information here.

The /d flag contains the value of the key.

Conclusion

Using both a self extracting installation wizard and a batch file for registry key settings makes for the perfect free to use professional looking installation script. You can always run the batch file silently by removing all pause statements in the script. 

Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 :: Keep Num Lock On at Startup

Despite what Microsoft claims, I've seen some computers not revert back to their last set num lock setting when Windows was last shut down.  Granted, this could be caused by Enterprise configurations.Here's a simple batch file that should keep Num Lock always ON when a user logs in.  It may or may not need to be run with administrator privileges based on your enterprise configuration.  I've had several users complain about the fact that Num Lock is turned off when they turn on their computers in the morning.  As a result, this batch file allows you to enable the setting that keeps num lock enabled after a user logs in with minimal effort.  I'm still under the impression that this is more work than the user simply pressing the num lock key to turn it back on.

REGEDIT4
@ECHO OFF
CLS
REGEDIT.EXE /S "%~f0"
EXIT

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\]
"InitialKeyboardIndicators"="2"