How to perform clean Windows 7 Upgrade

How to perform a clean Windows 7 Upgrade.

1. Purchase Windows 7 Upgrade in the retail package. Your existing computer must have Windows XP or Vista on it.
2. Backup your data to an external harddrive, to a flashdrive, to a dvd, to a NAS, to the cloud, etc.
3. Put Windows 7 Upgrade disc in the computer. Use the 64-bit disc if your computer hardware supports 64-bit.
4. Perform clean install where you format the harddrive. DO NOT CLICK UPGRADE.
5. Follow through the install. When it asks for a license key, DO NOT ENTER THE LICENSE KEY. Click skip.
6. Finish with the install and you should be at the Windows 7 desktop.
7. Go to Computer then your optical drive, D: or whatever it is.
8. Run the Windows 7 Upgrade install. This time select Upgrade.
9. If it asks for a license code, provide the code.
10. Complete the install.
11. Check if your computer is activated by right clicking on Computer and selecting Properties. It should say activated. If not, activate the computer and if necessary enter the key.
12. Your computer has Windows 7 cleanly installed without any junk or old files from the previous OS.

Compiling echoping 6.0.2 on CentOS/RHEL 5

Here is the commandline options I used to compile echoping 6.0.2 from source:

./configure --with-ssl=/usr/lib/openssl --without-libidn

Asterisk installation notes

Here are some generic installation notes for building and installing Asterisk in gnu/Linux. Should work for any distribution. I've tested them with CentOS 5.X.

Install missing development packages, then perform the following inside asterisk source directory:

contrib/scripts/install_prereq install
./configure

use ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/asterisk-1.x.xx.x to install to your own location

make menuselect

de-select unnecessary addons and features.

make

run contrib/scripts/get_mp3_source.sh to add mp3 support (install subversion first)

make config
make install-logrotate
make install

If running asterisk on a VPS, you may need to edit the safe_asterisk file and comment out the line where it says TTY=9 in order to get asterisk to run via initscripts.

To add asterisk messages to the daily e-mail report via logwatch:

http://www.mcbsys.com/techblog/2012/02/monitor-asterisk-with-logwatch/

Installing ConfigServer Firewall (CSF)

http://configserver.com/cp/csf.html

If you get the following error during installation:

Checking Perl modules...
Can't locate LWP/UserAgent.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/csf /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8 .) at (eval 19) line 2.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 19) line 2.

Then you need to install perl-libwww-perl package (as well as its prerequisites).

yum install perl-Compress-Zlib perl-HTML-Tagset perl-URI perl-HTML-Parser perl-libwww-perl

OpenVZ VPS CentOS Linux setup notes

OpenVZ VPS running CentOS Linux, setup notes:

To change the timezone:

[root@voyager asterisk-1.8.18.0]# date
Sat Nov 17 06:12:49 MSK 2012

[root@voyager etc]# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST /etc/localtime

[root@voyager etc]# date
Fri Nov 16 22:13:52 EST 2012

Make sure to restart your VPS and also check the syslog daemon that it has its time properly. I noticed I had to restart the syslog daemon service to get the date and time updated.

service syslog restart