On a roll…

Well what with my recent success in exams, I decided its about time i sat my CCNA. I was working with Cisco routers and switches for about two years in the last place and it really would be a waste of knowledge not to sit this exam before I forget it all.

Man I didnt realise how much i had forgotten until i managed to get my hands on a copy of packet tracer! Packet tracer is like a work bench where you can setup virtual servers, clients, printers switches routers… even wireless routers and test connectivity between the devices. The icing on the cake no less, is that you have an individual IOS and and terminal session on each device mimiking near exactly the actual routers connectivity.

For exam questions, exam prep and the best IT forums I’ve ever come accross, i give you Sadikhov

On a side note, who ever invented subnetting, bit pinching and network address shortening… I’d kick you in the face for making me do maths.

How do i find out whats holding my file open?

Had this asked of me recently,

A database administrator couldn’t remount an oracle database as the file was in use, resulting in my HR department feeling all cold and lonely outside of their application! There was no reference of the file in use in task manager and no implication as to what file was using it.

To find out what had the file open i used an application from Sysinternals called process explorer. You can use procexp.exe to find open files. Launch Procexp.exe and click find > Find Handle or DLL.

Enter the filename in the search box and wait for it to show you what has the file open! then simply kill the process using it. If its a system process, you can expect an error or a lovely blue screen for your hassle, But on the reboot you should be grand