Monday, July 21, 2008

IE bug or feature?

I have recently noticed the following behavior testing IE. Here is an explanation on what is happening

Steps
1. Start IE and look at the task manager to see how much memory is being used.
(Observation): iexplore.exe starts with some memory X MB.
2. Start a new window by clicking File-->New Window check the memory.
(Observation): The iexplore.exe process increases by 2-3 MB in memory usage total X+2MB
3. Now Start IE by double clicking the shortcut or the iexplore.exe directly.
(Observation): You will find a new iexplore.exe process running with X MB
4. Repeat step 3 multiple times.
(Observation): New iexplore.exe processes start with X MB of memory.

Now for the Bug or Feature discussion.
Advantages
Lets look at what we can achieve with this behavior.
When started using step 3 above each iexplore.exe has its own session. So you can have multiple sessions from a server with different useraccounts.
Ex: You can login as different users and check / complete your tasks in google.com all simultaneosly.
Disadvantages
Every time you start iexplore.exe the starting memory usage (X MB) is close to 10x more than opening a new window using step 2. Image why the computer is all slow all of a sudden if you are browing online.

Conclusion
Using firefox you share a session always across multiple browser windows does not depend on how you open a new browser window/tab. Now its upto you to decide whether this is a feature that MS gives its users or is it a bug they have been ignoring to fix.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Windows LPR on Unix

Solaris
From your Solaris system, do this (assumes printer IP is 192.168.1.99):

# lpadmin -p hp3200m -s 192.168.1.99 -I any

Type the following to set the default printer (assuming the printer is hp3200m):

# lpadmin -d hp3200m

You need to be sure that print services are started (/usr/lib/lpsched or the equivalent command using Service Management Facility [SMF] in the Solaris 10 OS).

BigAdmin

Linux
#lpadmin -p LinuxPrinterName -E -v lpd://IP_ADDRESS/WindowsPrinterName

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

AT related

Users can schedule jobs to be run at a future time using the at command and the usage is simple refer "man at". Now once the job is scheduled you can look at the jobs in the at queue using at -l or atq commands.

Once you get the queue to see what is present in the at job look in /var/spool/cron/atjobs/< job name>