Mystic Slayer's Bloggie

Well finally I had the time to make a clean install for Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

It took me 1,5 half hour to be up and running again... that means Install Windows 7, full updates, Office 2007 Ultimate and MSN to work with.
Well that wasn't to hard, except for the Realtek RTL8111 drivers for my LAN. The drivers supplied by Microsoft Update ruined the LAN connection, so I had to download new drivers from Realtek by itself.

After that I was happy that I finally installed it

Update: 10/15/2009 12:16 AM

So the first important things I've noticed is:

Now let's keep playing with Windows 7.

Owwh yeah my system configuration:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940
Mainboard: Gigagyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H RF3
Memory: OCZ DDR2-800 Reaper 4x2GB CL4 OCZ2RPR800C44GK
Graphics cards: 2xSapphire 4850 1GB
Disk config: 3x320gb RAID 5 for OS
Disk config 2: 3x1TB RAID 5 for DATA
Sound: Soundblaster 2 Audigy 24bit Advanced
Screens: 2x IIyama 26"

I used to host my own sites, but since KPN disconnected every port I'd used I had to get some Hosting party to host my sites and email.

Damnit, there goes my own stuff..

A strange thing happend last day is that for some reason my Web Server went down in action... I couldn't explain why it happend, but I managed to gave it a rebirth of the server.

After 30 days without reboot, wow :-S It went down, and yet I cannot figure out why. Nothing changed, and I saw my logfiles and even there it didn't show anything. So, what happened then? I don't know.

Well alot of database administrators forget to truncate their database daily before backing the database up. Well I don’t understand why they are forgetting it. Because it’s a simple procedure you can add before you backup the database. Today I received a database of 5 gigabytes and with a log file of yes you don’t how of 21 gigabytes. So I was using the standard features of SQL Server 2000, but this tool does not his work with the normal truncating options of the database.

After a good search I found out it isn’t that much fun to truncate the database with a procedure. After a search on google it was easy to find the simplest script for database maintenance. I used this script and it really did work. Below you can find out yourself:

 
 
SET NOCOUNT ON 
 
DECLARE @LogicalFileName sysname, @MaxMinutes INT, @NewSize INT 
 
-- *** MAKE SURE TO CHANGE THE NEXT 4 LINES WITH YOUR CRITERIA. 
 
*** USE [DATABASE] -- This is the name of the database -- for which the log will be shrunk.
SELECT @LogicalFileName = 'LOGFILENAME', -- Use sp_helpfile to identify the logical file -- name that you want to shrink.
@MaxMinutes = 10, -- Limit on time allowed to wrap log.
@NewSize = 10 -- in MB -- Setup / initialize
DECLARE @OriginalSize INT 
 
SELECT @OriginalSize = SIZE -- in 8K pages FROM sysfiles WHERE name = @LogicalFileName 
 
SELECT 'Original Size of ' + DB_NAME() + ' LOG is ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(30),@OriginalSize) + ' 8K pages or ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(30),(@OriginalSize*8/1024)) + 'MB' FROM sysfiles WHERE name = @LogicalFileName 
 
CREATE TABLE DummyTrans (DummyColumn CHAR (8000) not null) -- Wrap log and truncate it. 
 
DECLARE @Counter INT, @StartTime DATETIME, @TruncLog VARCHAR(255) 
 
SELECT @StartTime = GETDATE(), @TruncLog = 'BACKUP LOG ['+ DB_NAME() + '] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY' -- Try an initial shrink. 
 
DBCC SHRINKFILE (@LogicalFileName, @NewSize) EXEC (@TruncLog) -- Wrap the log if necessary. 
 
WHILE @MaxMinutes > DATEDIFF (mi, @StartTime, GETDATE()) -- time has not expired
AND @OriginalSize = (SELECT SIZE FROM sysfiles WHERE name = @LogicalFileName) -- the log has not shrunk
AND (@OriginalSize * 8 /1024) > @NewSize -- The value passed in for new size is smaller than the current size. 
 
BEGIN -- Outer loop. 
 
SELECT @Counter = 0 WHILE ((@Counter > @OriginalSize / 16) AND (@Counter > 50000))
BEGIN -- update
INSERT DummyTrans VALUES ('Fill Log') -- Because it is a char field it inserts 8000 bytes.
DELETE DummyTrans SELECT @Counter = @Counter + 1 END -- update
EXEC (@TruncLog) -- See if a trunc of the log shrinks it.
END -- outer loop
SELECT 'Final Size of ' + DB_NAME() + ' LOG is ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(30),SIZE) + ' 8K pages or ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(30),(SIZE*8/1024)) + 'MB' FROM sysfiles WHERE name = @LogicalFileName
DROP TABLE DummyTrans PRINT '*** Perform a full database backup ***'
SET NOCOUNT OFF
 

Voila, fill in the database name and the logfile name and you’re done. Run the script within query analyser or other usefull tool. I used this script with SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. This script can also be used with SQL Server 7. So with the major databases of Microsoft you can use this script. Have fun!!