VMWare: “Failed to create named-pipe directory” error

Have you ever received the Failed to create named-pipe directory error message via the vmware-mui error log files, and not able to access the VMWare Management Interface? If so, here’s the fix. Continue reading VMWare: “Failed to create named-pipe directory” error

Stepping Into Samba

A few friends of mine stare at me blankly when I mention Samba and SMB. In fact, sometimes they think it’s the same thing, when in fact, it’s not. I’ll talk about the differences between the two and walk you through setting up Samba networked shares. This will give you a nice introduction to Samba and also Linux, if you are not familiar with that, also.

The real question here isn’t why SMB, or why Samba for that matter? Well, first off, after I explain to you what SMB is and then explain what Samba is, you’ll see that this question I just asked was mildly stupid. The actual question here is “Why create network shares in the first place?”. This is a very basic, honest question, but it tends to turn a few heads. I’ll give you a scenario. You have 5 computers in the house; your laptop, your desktop, the kids have two computers, and your wife has her school laptop. So, your wife has school work and her latest favorite songs on her laptop, the kids have theirs, and you have all your applications and whatnot all on your laptop and desktop. What might seem like not that much data, turns into gigs of data. You have tons of music, school reports and research, ISOs and applications, Development related stuff, pictures from the past four years. You notice you are running out of space on your kid’s computers and you wife’s laptop is running a little sluggish. Now, this is probably highly due to the games and occasional pop ups that are clicked, but hey, why take up space on the systems, when everything can be centralized? Yes, that’s the word - Centralized. Continue reading Stepping Into Samba

Changing Vongo’s default directory for storing movies

Vongo is Starz’ approach to a “movies-on-demand” type of service. I currently use it and I love it. The only thing I think would make it better is, well, the obvious - more movies! Overall, I really like Vongo and I’ll tell you why. First off, it allows you to download and watch movies at the same time; this is amazing due to the fact that a 1.3GB movie can take quite awhile to download, even on a high-speed internet connection. Another thing I just love about Vongo is that it is on-demand and only costs $9.95 a month; this is a deal if you watch movies a lot. I’m not much of a T.V. person, but I do love watching movies. As there are many other cool things about Vongo, there is one thing that I though would come built into the settings, but isn’t; where to store your movie files. Let’s find out how to fix this small, but annoying problem. Continue reading Changing Vongo’s default directory for storing movies