altecsole

I'm trying to setup an iTouch to access YouTube videos via our Forefront TMG. I can browse YouTube, but I can't view any videos. I get an message saying "You are not authorised to open this file". Looking in the Forefront logs there are anonymous requests being blocked to googlevideo.com, youtube.com and ytimg.com. Allowing anonymous requests to these sites result in a different message; "The server is not correctly configured". I don't want to allow anonymous request to YouTube, as we currently block it for pupils. This request has come from a media teacher who has some County supplied iTouch devices for exploring their use in education. Any advice gratefully received.

Okay, to use these scripts you need to setup your tables in mysql and also install the mysql odbc drivers on your workstations. The odbc drivers are in msi format, so we deploy via Group Policy. These logon and logoff scripts are written for Windows XP 32-bit, they should work on 32-bit Vista and Windows 7, but will need tweaking for 64-bit versions of these OS. The scripts are specific to our domain; you will need to manually edit them to use the details for your network, in particular the name of your mysql server, the database and table names and the user name and password that will be used to read and update the mysql tables. This system for recording logon and logoff events was developed over a period of time and you'd probably want to change how it's done. You might want a single database with a couple of tables, for exammple, instead of seperate databases. I'm not saying this is the only way, or even the best way, I just know it works for us. Current Logons These are stored in a database called 'network' in a table called 'logon'. This table has two columns called 'computer' and 'user'; both of these have the datatype 'text'. The current logons table has the user added to it at logon, and deleted from it at logoff. This gives us an easy way to check for currently logged on users. Logon History These are stored in a database called 'logonrecord' in a table called 'history'. This table has five columns ('computer'(text), 'user'(text), 'action'(text), 'date'(date), 'time'(time)). Logon and logoff events are written to this database enabling us to have an accurate record of when users logged on and off computers. Logons/logoff scripts There are two scripts; one for logon and one for logoff. We have these set via group policy. This allows us to easily update the scripts if required. AddLogon4.vbs Runs at logon. Adds current logged on user to database (removing any previous entry). Adds logon event to logon history database. DelLogon.vbs Runs at logoff. Deletes current logged on user from database. Adds logoff event to logon history database. Query scripts We have two command line batch files that call vbscripts to query the databases for logon information. The advantage of using this method is that you can update the versions of your vbscript without affecting how users run it and also you can specify the use of cscript when running your vbscript file. The wildcard character when searching for users or computers is the percentage sign (%) loggedonv4.vbs - called by a cmd line file (loggedon.cmd - cscript loggedonv4.vbs %1) takes two arguments; /c for computer or /u for user. Eg.. loggedon /c:it6-02 for who's logged on to a single computer, or /c:it6-% to see who's logged on to all the computers in IT6. Same for users; loggedon /u:05amy_jones to see what computer/s Amy is logged on to, or /u:05% to see where all of Year12 are logged on. logonhistoryv3.vbs - called by a cmd line file (logonhistory.cmd - cscript logonhistoryv3.vbs %1 %2) this uses /c and /u in the same wasy as loggedon.vbs, but also includes the date to check using the /d switch. Example, logonhistory /c:it6-25 /d:2010-12-16. Note: the date format must be YYYY-MM-DD. To use today's date you can use /d:today For querying history for a range of dates we use a webpage written in php, as this uses a date picker to make things easier for our less technically minded users. LoggedOnTidy.vbs Sometimes computers get turned off without the user logging off, or the network goes down for some reason. This can leave orphaned entries in the current logged on users table. To fix this I run this vbscript as a scheduled task ever three hours. It firstly checks if computers are on by using ping, if they're not then the user can be deleted from the databae. If the computer is on, the script checks the computer registry for the locally logged on user (if any), compares this to entries in the database and deletes any that aren't valid. Results are written to a text file (called LoggedOnEvents.txt) so you can keep an eye on things. DelLogonv4.vbs AddLogonv4.vbs LoggedOnTidy2.vbs LogonHistoryv3.vbs Loggedonv4.vbs

We do something similar, but we write logon and logoff entries to a couple of mysql databases. This enables us to check who's currently logged on, and also look at logon history.

Download and run something like RegShot, make the change and then take a second snapshot to see what file or reg setting has been changed. You should then be able to run a startup script to update the file or registry on the network machines.

For the user report you need to include the domain name in the username, ie domainname\username. To see what is being logged do some browsing from a test machine, make a note of it's IP address and then query the web logs for that client IP for the last 5 minutes (for example). You can then see everything that's being logged against that IP and this will help you to understand how the logging works.

We just converted to an Academy and chose a product called PS Financials to replace FMS. We also took on payroll using SAGE Payroll.

Glad you got it sorted; could you be generous and thank my original post?

You could deploy the msi and then have a startup script that copies a modified ini file. Alternativly, you could create your own msi with a modified ini file already in it (that's what I did). Have a look at Advanced Installer; the free version is great for making basic msi files.

Any idea if Virgin (who use the T-Mobile network) customers will get access via the Orange network?

We have IIS setup to provide WebDAV access to home folders for staff and students. Windows built in WebDAV is pants, so we use recommend BitKinex

We use Backup Exec 2010. The individual email restore ability is very useful.

I have both and I prefer the XBox for gaming. That's because there are more games available for it and I like the controller better.

We use a vbscript that sets the wallpaper at logon using BGInfo (called from netlogon share); we have a different colour for each year group. We also also use it to pop the username and computer name on the screen; this helps with fault reporting. The script is modified for special events, so we've had backgrounds for World Book Day and different ones at Christmas.

Our ICT department would like to purchase four netbooks. They've decided on the Toshiba NB300 (but I'm sure they could be persuaded otherwise). They need to order them by Friday 26th March. Thanks

A server reboot fixed this for us. Now the ipsCA cert is recognised by IE with the latest updates installed. We're still waiting for other browsers to update. As we only use the cert for webmail this isn't really a problem for us; we just put an explanation about the warning on our homepage.

Thanks for replying. We're looking at approx 1600 users with mailbox quotas of 200 MB each. I'm thinking the best option might be to have 2 mailbox servers in the DAG, with a single server as the client access and hub transport. I know this doesn't offer true fault tolerance, but I'm guessing the hardware requirement for the client access and hub transport server would be fairly low? Also, the data on this server would be quite small (in comparison to the mailbox servers) and so a disaster recovery would be easier?

Thanks Domino. I fear this is going to involve a fair wedge of cash!

Hello and thanks for reading. We currently run Exchange 2007 on Server 2008. My boss is concerned that the Exchange server isn't fault tolerant and has asked me to look into costs for a better solution. Having done some research it seems that Exchange 2010 Database Availability Groups (DAGs) are the way to go. However, cost is an issue. We don't have a SAN, or any virtualization, so I'm just thinking about having two servers in the DAG. Our main concern is the amount of downtime in the event of a server failure. Looking at documentation on the web it seems that this is okay, but will need a minimum of three servers; two in the DAG and one for the heartbeat. I've seen two possible setups; one where the servers in the DAG just run the mailbox role and the client access and hub transport roles are on a separate server. Also, I've seen a scenario where the mailbox, client access and hub transport are on both servers in the DAG and some form of network load balancer is used to direct client access (either ISA 2006, or some other hardware or software solution). With both of these scenarios there still seems to be a single point of failure (client access server or network load balancer). I've had a look at HPs Exchange 2010 Sizer software, which can be used to get a costing for Exchange. Using their tool I'm getting a quote of £28k, which is way too much. Has anyone setup Exchange 2010 DAGs? I know I need Server 2008 Enterprise for the OS, but Exchange 2010 standard edition will be fine for our needs (don't need more than 5 databases). I'm looking at DAS (we can't afford a SAN at the moment) and I'm after the most cost effective solution. Many thanks if you've read this far. If you have, perhaps you could offer some advice? Any, and all, would be much appreciated.

We set this in group policy for all our computers: Comp Config -> Admin Templates -> Windows Components/Terminal Services -> Allow users to connect remotely using Terminal Services -> Enabled

Agreed, 360 is much too noisy. My PS3 is nearly silent and perfect for watching DVDs on. Why anyone would watch a film on the 360 is beyond me; how do they hear anything over the fan noise? Still love my 360 for gaming though.

I've got a 360 and a PS3. I can understand your excellent reasons for wanting a PS3, but I think games are a shade better on the 360 with a bigger selection. Plus, I prefer the 360 controller. Fifa 10 on PS3 is fantastic though!

I had the same problem with our ipsCA certificate for our mail server. I've raised a support ticket with them, but not heard anything yet.

You can do it in vbscript: Option Explicit Dim objFSO Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Wscript.Echo objFSO.GetFileVersion("c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe")

Yes, that's what I did. I liked the idea of LDAP as you can specify the OU that you authenticate users against.

Yes, I did try these combinations, but it still wouldn't work. It seems that the authentication method used isn't compatible with AD LDAP.