Yesterday I spend the whole night tinkering around with my system to ensure my new sound blaster card works with ubuntu. The problem  is I 'm getting static sound in my machine although the sound card works perfectly well in WIndows. While browsing to various forum I discovered that this sound blaster card is known for having compatibility issues with most Linux distro. Many have suggested to initiate the card in windows first, before installing it in ubuntu, reason given was the firmware of the card can only  be initialised on a Windows operating system before running it on Linux. That is really peculiar, anyway is worth a try  to see if it works. Unfortunately it doesn't, some forums states that the sound blaster is not supported with ALSA drivers, instead they suggested using OSS drivers. So I switched to  the latter, although the hissing sound dissappear but now I have a bigger problem; "There is totally no sound". The site did mention that in some cases the OSS driver might failed to work properly with the card. Hence, I have no other option but to revert the sound driver to ALSA. I reboot my machine and to my surprise I was able to get a clear audio sound. I have traced my troubleshooting steps and conclude it below for future references.

Step 1 : Try initialising the card by installing it on windows operating system.

WE ARE BACK!

After some time offline, finally our site is back. God willing, we've solved one of our greatest problems with Drupal at that was the Warning: MySQL server has gone away query: issue. You know.... that very annoying blue or white page filled with gibberish about error with MYSQL and then some.

At first I thought that Drupal couldn't handle more than say 8 modules before doing is error page on me, but then I found out from the Drupal forums itself that it was due to the short connection time to the MYSQL database that causes this issue. Here's the solution from Ilia Penchev, member at Drupal.org:

I am posting here the 2 possible solutions for anybody who has the same problem, I hope this will be of help to somebody :

1. Quick approach (not recommended since it will leave you with no module update information)
Just go to Admin -> Site Building -> Modules and disable the 'Update status' module. Voala :) No more nasty MySQL warnings and error messages.

Anyway you will be left without actual information on any new updates or new major versions for your Drupal and modules.

2. The real fix (requires hacking of 2 Drupal core files)
Here is the real solution, it will require you to get hands dirty, but will fix your problem.

First make a backup of these two files - just download them to some directory so you have them just in case:
includes/database.mysql.inc
includes/database.mysqli.inc

Last week we assisted Empirical Systems (M) Sdn Bhd in training the Computer Lab teachers from every school in Shah Alam area. It was a packed 3 days of training. Fortunately for us, all the teachers who attended were already quite well versed with IT.

Front, from left: Huzaini, Helmi, Rodwan, Shahar, Farihin (Trainer), Fadzli, Sivam, Sahrul, CIk Intan, Puan Norhani. Back, from left: Khairul, Janikah, Azizan, Yusoff, Wong, Riduan.

What if your wireless signal is weak, and you wish to expand the signal range across other rooms in the premise, this is when an access point will come in handy. A high end wireless router with a "n range" with 3 antennas is considered suffice for small office (SOHO) and  everage home users, but it wont be enough if you wish to share the bandwith across 100 users. This is why we proposed our client to settle with an AP for each training room in his office. Shown below is a layout of what we'll be implementing soon for our client.

A power switch is broken in the front panel casing, the client immediately inform us to get a new casing to be replace urgently as the machine is being use at the reception counter of a hospital. Here are some photos  taken during the transfer process.