Getting SmoothWall School Guardian to unblock sites / synch setup

[dhicks]

Hello All,

 

Does anyone know how I can get SmoothWall (School Guardian) to unblock eBay? I can add eBay.co.uk to the "Custom allowed content" list, which lets me in to eBay's front page, but no images are shown as those are downloaded from another domain. I can't find any way in School Guardian's GUI of seeing / editing any of the sites listed in the "online auctions" catagory, but SmoothWall is blocking them, therefore they must be listed somewhere.

 

When I've got the configuration of this gateway server working okay, I'd like to set up another instance of SmoothWall on our second ADSL connection. How do I go about getting settings from one SmoothWall instance to replicate acrross to another on a regular basis, say every hour or so?

 

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David Hicks

[ChrisH]

Replication is easy to set up. I did it to get the settings across to a new install. All you do is specify a master and a slave and import the encryption key. System > Maintenance > Replication.

[RinSewand]

and remember to enable SSL (though there's a handy * for that to remind you).

[dhicks]

System > Maintenance > Replication.

 

Oh yea. Now, that's easy :-)

 

Right, so does anyone know how I can get School Guardian to unblock eBay? I'm staring at the SmoothWall GUI thinking "I'm missing something obvious...", but I can't see where I can edit any existing lists of blocked sites, or even list what those blocked sites are.

 

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David Hicks

[rob_f]

The easiest way is to not block "Online Auctions". Does that work for you?

[tom_newton]

OR get nile to work out all the different ebay domains and put together a list or regex... Nile? Where are ye?

[dhicks]

The easiest way is to not block "Online Auctions". Does that work for you?

 

Hmm. No, doesn't seem to. I've gone to Guardian -> Filtering -> Policy and chosen the "Default AUP" group (still at it's default priority of number 5), unticked the "online auctions" catagory, hit the "Apply changes" button, but eBay is still blocked. The block page reports eBay.co.uk as being blocked because it belongs to the category "Online Auctions", so something's going wrong there somewhere :-( Do I need to restart something, or edit a different policy?

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

Do I need to restart something, or edit a different policy?

 

After a look through some logs, I've added ebay.co.uk, ebay.com and ebaystatic.com to the "Custom Allowed Content" policy and now I can get to eBay.

 

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David Hicks

[tom_newton]

Mighta been hiding in one of your other policies?

 

Odd. Anyway - glad it is sorted... was going to go poke nile with a sharp stick but someone collared me on the way

[dhicks]

Mighta been hiding in one of your other policies?

 

Ah, there it is - "Online auctions" is blocked by the default "adverts" policy, too.

 

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David Hicks

[nile_c]

Hello!

 

I would work with the principle of 'Allow'-ing as little as possible.

The following domains should suffice for eBay UK:

 

ebayrtm.com

ebay.co.uk

paypal.com

ebaystatic.com

 

Do you require the foreign varieties also?

[dhicks]

I would work with the principle of 'Allow'-ing as little as possible.

 

Indeed. Thanks for those domain names, most handy.

 

Do you require the foreign varieties also?

 

No, thanks.

 

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David Hicks

[Willott]

When I've got the configuration of this gateway server working okay, I'd like to set up another instance of SmoothWall on our second ADSL connection.

 

Quick question for the Smoothwall guys - where does licensing stand on this, are you allowed as standard to have multiple instances running in active mode, or is it only active with passive for failover? If we're allowed multiple actives, I may bring up a second one with slightly different configuration for external parties.

 

Cheers

[tom_newton]

@Willot - a second box is fine, as long as it is for the same users - eg. a load balanced or failover box, or one to handle reporting.

If a second box is to be used for a totally different set of users, or would increase your total number of concurrent users by a significant fraction, then we ask that you licence for the right user numbers. Generally, though, we have some flexibility, we're not in business to penalise our customers for the way they work. If you are in any doubt about what you need, call your friendly account manager (or me/rob).

 

Hope that helps,

 

Tom