Open Source - Seymour Digital Consulting, LLC

A friend of mine, was recently having some trouble finding a wireless signal at an airport, and asked what tools were available for his Vista laptop.

Since he travels frequently, I suggested that the next time he had real Ethernet connection to download NetStumbler, to help him locate wireless Access Points (APs).

He did, but was unable to get it to work on his Vista machine.

At the time, NetStumbler had always enjoyed a good reputation for be a great free utility, and a ‘Must have application’ for any techies involved with wireless networking, so I was a little surprised to hear there were issues.

Wanting to help my friend out, and felling bad about giving him a poor recommendation, I did some searching, and found MetaGeek’s inSSIDer.

inSSIDer is a free Open Source software utility, that also supports an array of additional paid products that could be an inexpensive alternative to commercial products such as Fluke Networks’ AirMagnet.

After inSSIDer installed and launched, the first thing that one notices, especially coming from NetStumbler environment, is that the graphs are in color, which is invaluable when trying to figure out multiple sources of signals.

This is not to say that color is the best part of inSSIDer, but it also uses the native Wi-Fi API to group ‘clients’ by MAC Address, SSID, Channel, RSSI as well as “Time Last Seen”. Since inSSIDer also supports GPS devices, this can very extremely valuable when mapping a wireless network environment.

Bottom line –

If you are looking for a very useful wireless network discovery tool that is free, then I would suggest that you look no further then inSSIDer.

inSSIDer was also the 2008 winner of InfoWorld’s “Best of Open Source“.

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The following steps have been written for a remote shared hosting environment, and have been used in a DNN 5.0.1 to 5.1.1 upgrade.

Backup your website files;
Backup your database file;
Download the lasted package;
1. Most folks use the “Update” package, but others seem to prefer the “Install”
Backup and then Verify/Modify your web.config (Step not need in DNN version 4.6.2 and above)
1. Database connection strings in <connectionStrings> section
  1. Data Source=(your server name);Initial Catalog=(your db name);user id=(your db user);password=(your db password);” providerName=”System.Data.SqlClient”/>
2. Database connection strings in <appSettings> section
  1. Data Source=(your server name);Initial Catalog=(your db name);user id=(your db user);password=(your db password);”/>
Backup and Modify <add key=”AutoUpgrade” value=”false” /> in web.config from true to false;
1. Change this to prevent accidental upgrade from an outside source during your Upgrade file transfer [Reference Link]
Add the a file named “App_Offline.htm” to your root directory;
1. By adding this file, it will take your site off line. [Reference Link]
Replace/Move the Unzipped files into the active site;
1. Some Hosting environments allow one to Upload a Zip file and then Unzip to over write the existing files.
2. Manually replace files/directories.
  1. Unzip the Update/Install package on your Local Hard drive
  2. Use something like FileZilla to view and move files and directories
  3. This can take 45-60 minutes
  4. Allows one to get a better understanding of the internal “plumbing” of DNN
Backup and Modify <add key=”AutoUpgrade” value=”true” /> in web.config from false to true;
Rename or Delete “App_Offline.htm” to your root directory;
1. One can just add the “.bak” extension and leave the file in place for future use.
  1. Example: “App_Offline.htm.bak”
Browse to
1. During this process, all new web.config changes are added [Reference Link]
The Upgrade window should appear, and give a progress status line for each item or event that is happen.
1. This takes approximately 5-10 minutes.
Your done!
1. Total time: 60-75 minutes

Additional Resources:

DotNetNuke – “Chat About It” Forum – “Upgrade Steps”

– There are additional links within this thread

Mitchel Seller “DNN Saint” – Main Website

– This site has a TON of great DNN related info!

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