Once installer, as a non-root user you can just:

mkdir mnt
sshfs username@server.domain.com:/path mnt

Then you can access it, copy files etc (both directions) as if it were a local directory

ls mnt

When finished this disconnects it:

fusermount -u mnt

Found at http://home.prea.net/hacking/X2200/NFS

Now… what to spend this month’s $1.50 revenue on?!

I’ve just reinstalled a fresh copy of Vista on my T61 (luckily on a new larger disk, so I still have the old install).  Two days ago, all I’d have to do now was download and run ThinkVantage System Update, which would find and install all the individual bits of software, drivers etc that make the Thinkpad offering so great.

Now to have the full “ThinkVantage experience”, I’d have to trawl through the lenovo support site, download and individually install over 20 separate components. Many of them insist on a reboot, so this would take a very long time.

Lenovo recently asked on their blog which of the ThinkVantage utilities they should concentrate development on moving forward. Lenovo: if you kill ThinkVantage System Update:

1. You may as well not bother developing ANY of the other ThinkVantage applications any more
2. I may as well buy a Dell at half the price

I don’t have the time to find and install all these individual components now, never mind regularly reading your support website to manually determine if I need to upgrade them.

Because I have work to do, without ThinkVantage System Update I’ll be running a standard install of Vista.  Just like I’d be running on any of your competitors laptops.

I’m not the only one to be disappointed by this:

• http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=367950
• http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=Special_Interest_Utilities&thread.id=4397
• http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=74929

Update (1st June 2009): After listening to the mountains of complaining customers, Lenovo has reinstated system update.

clocksource/0: Time went backwards: ret=18f26176a5 delta=-8292949932632971 shadow=18e9e0b4b9 offset=880c4ce

This message wasn’t “harmless” – it caused TCP connections to break, so ssh was practically unusable.

The immediate solution: using the XenCenter console, forcefully reboot the affected VM. That’s “force shutdown”, followed by “start”. I tried the simple “reboot” option, but it wouldn’t shut down (probably because it was confused over the time). VMs are now back up and there’s no sign of time going backwards.

It seems this was triggered by suspending & resuming machines running the Debian Lenny kernel. Other VMs which are still running the 2.6.18 based XenSource kernels survived suspend/resume ok.

The actual cause is documented here, here, here & here. I think I’ll be following that advice and decoupling my VM clocks from the host (using NTP to keep them all in sync the old-fashioned way).

Upgrading the userland is identical to a physical server – instructions are contained within the Debian Lenny release notes.

To use the Debian packaged 2.6.26 kernel, several minor changes have to be made as per this form post:

1. Install the linux-image-2.6-xen-686 package (which depends on the latest xen kernel)
2. Re-order the kernels in /boot/grub/menu.lst so the Debian 2.6.26 kernel is the first (and therefore the default)
3. Add “console=hvc0″ to the end of the 2.6.26 kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, so it reads “kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-xen-686 root=/dev/xvda1 ro console=hvc0“
4. edit /etc/inittab, find the line that looks like “1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1″ and add another line: “0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 hvc0″

Then reboot the system, it should boot the new kernel.

Xensource doesn’t display the grub menu, it just seems to boot straight into the default option (even though I have “timeout 10″ specified in the config).  There must be a secret keypress or something to make it show the menu, but I don’t know what it is because the last step just worked for me!

Edit: Theoretically you shouldn’t need to use the -xen kernel variant, as the -686-bigmem kernel also supports running paravirtualised in domU.  With Xensource 5.0 this boots fine, but Xensource’s xen-tools refuse to start so XenCenter reports the status as “unknown”.  With the -xen kernel xen-tools start fine.

There’s a simple GUI to kick a backup off (backup and restore center), but unfortunately it’s rather restrictive.  It only lets you backup to a directly attached hard disk (e.g. USB) or to DVDs.  Fortunately the underlying engine DOES support backing up to a network file share.

To kick off a one-off backup, start an elevated command prompt (Start menu, Accessories, right click “command prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”) and type the following:

wbadmin start backup -allCritical -backupTarget:\\SERVER\SHARE -include:C: -vssFull

replacing \\SERVER\SHARE with the path to your network share location.  It’ll ask if you’re sure and then display its backup progress.  When it’s finished you should see it’s created a folder called WindowsImageBackup\MachineName on your backup share.  If you dig under this folder you can find it stores the entire backup in a .vhd file (virtual hard disk, also used by Microsoft’s virtualisation products).

You can schedule backups to run regularly using the task scheduler to call the command above, and adding “-quiet” to stop it prompting.  There’s a full guide to scheduling complete pc backups here.

EDIT: Apparently this is all fixed in Windows 7.

Being a Windows Mobile handset, it came loaded with all the expected Microsoft applications… except one! It seems Orange have decided to remove the MSN Messenger client, presumably because they’re worried it’ll dent their extremely profitable SMS revenue. And Microsoft no longer makes the client available for download (”ask your operator for MSN access”).

After several hours of trawling through forums, I found the nice chaps at xda-developers have many builds of the mobile msn client available for download (although you need to register to get access). Most are for the full PocketPC (PDA) OS, but the file attached to post #202 works on SmartPhones like the i200.

As expected, Pocket Outlook’s Microsoft Exchange synchronisation works seamlessly, so I now have real-time push email, contacts and calendar sync. And it’s actually usable as a phone too!

ScottGu wrote his LINQ tutorials based on the Beta2 release of .NET 3.5. Between Beta2 and the final RTM, Microsoft renamed several methods:

• Add is now InsertOnSubmit
• AddAll is now InsertAllOnSubmit
• Remove is now DeleteOnSubmit
• RemoveAll is now DeleteAllOnSubmit

So when I followed Scott’s 3rd tutorial, I thought the methods were missing.

Of course, if you know where to look, this is all documented in the Linq to SQL Beta2 to RTM breaking changes document. But that doesn’t help the huge number of online tutorials already published with the Beta2 naming convention.

I had to dig through quite a bit of microsoft deployment guide, but I found the answer: it is possible.

Open up a command prompt (”run as administrator” if you’re running vista), change directory to the CLIENT folder of the FCS CD and type:

clientsetup.exe /NOMOM

It should install totally silently, then you’ll see the icon in the system tray telling you it needs an update already. Open internet explorer, visit Microsoft Update and install the critical update available for forefront.

When it’s all installed and updated, the forefront system tray icon should turn into a green tick.