Technology Insights

VNC Fatal server error: could not open default font ‘fixed’

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I needed to use some GUI tools recently for testing hard drives in a large RAID group on a CentOS Linux server that I only have remote access to so I decided to install VNC temporarily. The server has never had a GUI installed so I first installed the Gnome Desktop Environment, then installed VNC, configured VNC, and last attempted to start VNC but I received an error. The error was complaining of the default fonts not being in the proper location however the error output was excellent and allowed me to create a quick symlink to resolve the issue. Below I describe the error in more detail followed by the one command resolution.

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How To Find Ubuntu Version From Ubuntu Linux CLI

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Locating the Ubuntu version is easy regardless of if you need to locate the Ubuntu Linux version from the CLI or via the Ubuntu GUI. I always forget what the CLI command is so this is as much reference for myself as it is sharing with others. Below I describe how to determine Ubuntu version from the Ubuntu Linux CLI and the Ubuntu Linux GUI.

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Create And Mount Amazon AWS EC2 EBS Storage To AWS EC2 Linux Instance

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Amazon’s AWS products are pretty amazing and allow you to scale with ease for short or long term projects. One thing that can be helpful is mounting extra storage to AWS instances so you have the ability to unmount the storage and mount to different instances in the future. The other benefit is the ability to terminate an Amazon AWS instance and keep the Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume to use on another AWS instance at a later date. Use the directions below to create an Amazon EC2 EBS volume, attach the volume to an Amazon AWS instance, format the volume, and then mount the volume to the instance.

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Using RAID On Z68 Motherboard: Asus Z68 Extreme4 Gen3

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I recently got a new desktop computer that has a Asus Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 motherboard in it and wanted to configure RAID 0 on a couple terabyte hard drives to provide better performance and more space to my primary volume. Initially I didn’t see how to configure the RAID as I am used to an external hardware RAID card that has its own BIOS. After a little bit of poking I was able to locate the setting to enable RAID and then configuring it was fairly standard. Below I describe the setting to enable RAID on the Z69 Extreme4 Gen3 mobo and how to configure a new RAID 0 volume once RAID is enabled.

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Cannot Extract .EXE From Zip File On Windows 2003

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Earlier today while working on a client’s server, which happens to be Microsoft Server 2003, I was unable to extract a .exe file from a zip file I had downloaded. After a moment of thinking I remembered that on Windows 2003 Server there is a default security setting that will simply not extract the .exe file. Below there are brief instructions on how to enable extracting a executable or .EXE file from a compressed zip file.