sidewinder

Yeah, my mum is welsh and often makes them, they are really really nice

It would be a waste of the server to use 2 as print servers, unless you have 100's of printers We have 80 odd network printers and one server copes fine with it. The same server also runs Sophos and acts as an IAS server and no slowdown whatsoever

Well if it has, it must have changed to a very old version! Ive been working with similar apps for 3 years and never have I seen one look like that

The difference in switch fabric shocks me. We were told that the Extreme offered an amazing amount for the money. Stupidly we believed the people selling it to us Personally, I wanted to go with HP from the start. The 7i was purchased against my wishes. And it may turn out to be an expensive mistake What is also annoying is that with the HP you can fill different modules with different connectors, whereas we are stuck with 28 MTRJ ports and media converters everywhere Edit: Just found the old quote. We paid nearly 13k for the Extreme The other quote was for a 5406zl with 3 modules and 16 mini GBIC modules for just under 9k. I take it we would have been better off with that

We currently have an Extreme Summit 7i, which has 32 ports, 28 MTRJ, 4 GBIC We got it less than a year ago and back then we only used 16 ports of it. Now, thanks to new servers, new buildings and extra links to cabinets, we only have 2 ports left The problem with this switch is, whilst its very good, it has no expansion options whatsoever. Nothing. And it cost over £10k so we really cant get rid of it If we bought a new switch, would it be enough to just trunk say 4 ports together to connect the 2? Or would that cause a noticable slowdown? If we were to buy anything it would probably be a 24port Gigabit copper switch so I could use that for the servers, and dedicate the Extreme to serving fibre links Im also worried though that unless we pay a lot of money again for that, it would be far slower than the Extreme, therefore slowing the network overall

I dont see much benefit even for my personal use, Im quite happy to stick to 4:3. I want widescreen in a TV but for a monitor 4:3 is fine Would much prefer not to use them in classrooms. Thankfully all the 150 odd PC's we bought (Dell's) over the summer have 4:3 screens

Thanks Geoff Now you've said that, I do remember having to deal with LPD when I had a 3 port print server a while back We do have OSX clients but they only print to a handful of printers in the Art department so I will disable mDNS on most of them

Ive been going through our 80+ network printers, some of which were configured 4 or 5 years ago, and trying to turn off any unused protocols, enable passwords on them etc. Ive been turning off the obvious ones that we dont use, like IPX, Appletalk, Rendevous, DLC/LLC, but there are others Im not really sure about. I suspect we dont need them at all but just want to check here first LPD Printing? mDNS? (is this an Apple thing?) 9100 Printing? SLP Config?

It did use to be possible to register a different MAC address with many ipconfig/release and renew commands but it wasnt something you would want to do a lot. It probably is still possible to change as you obviously have to consider people who buy a new PC But officially they say only 1 PC can be connected so people dont just swap the cables and wonder why it suddenly doesnt work I would guess

I currently do a full backup straight to tape each friday and have a rotation of 6 LTO-3 tapes Differential backups are done every day to disk It works well but I would like to be able to backup to disk first, just so I could have the last weeks worth there for quick restore without having to trudge all the way to the fire safe (which is kept in another building) every time someone loses a file (which happens quite often) Problem Ive got is that to do proper Disk to disk to tape with Backup Exec, you need at least version 10 I think. Im stuck with 9.1 as we cant afford to upgrade. I did try in the past to just backup the backup files to tape but reimporting them into backup exec was a nightmare when we needed to restore something

lol to be fair the head is the one staff member I wouldnt charge...any favours I can do him would surely do me no harm As for teachers, I dont ask for payment but 99% of the time I get a bit of cash, wine or chocolate for doing it. Not going to be declaring any of that!

Here, we have always said when it comes to teacher laptops, they can either have them on the domain and can use offline files at home but NOT use the internet at home or have them standalone and not use the internet here This has always worked fine, as proxy settings have stopped them connecting at home, and you need to be on the domain for the wireless to work, so even if they ignore us, they're unlikely to succeed Now though, the NM has decided that teachers should be allowed to use their networked laptops on the internet at home (they obviously do tend to ask for this when we give them a networked laptop, normally they dont mind too much when we say no) I (and im sure all of you can too) see the obvious security issues this creates, but she does not, so I need some well thought out arguments to change her mind. The obvious one to me is that even if virus protection is updated, there is still a lot more risks with completely unfiltered internet at home compared with filtered internet at school. If for whatever reason Sophos fails to update, a teacher could easily connect an infected laptop to the network after visiting some dodgy sites at home and be unaware that anything is wrong. We do have software that does screen captures of any sites like that and will upload them to the server when the laptop is connected, but a virus could easily spread far quicker than we would be aware of what the teacher had been doing Can anyone word the obvious risks a bit better than I can?

Server fans will be quieter in a cooler environment, they will be louder in a classroom as they have to work harder to keep components cool Are you sure there is nowhere else to put it? Havent you got a cupboard with a cabinet in it? A classroom is absolutly the last place I would put a server, for more reasons than just heat

Right, that seems to have worked, I can get to the login screen anyway Unfortunatly (or maybe fortunatly) they have obviously finally decided to change the sysman password from the default But its connecting to the server so it should be ok Thanks for that

Thanks dreddmetal I think the problem is that our new server does have 2005 installed, we just havent been switched over yet. So whenever Solus tries to update FMS it always tries to do 6.91 The CD Ive got to install from (Spring 2005) has 6.78 on it so an update is needed to get it to 6.85. I suppose the only thing I can try is install off the CD, copy over files from a 6.85 workstation, and then change any .ini file I can find to the non existant server. In theory that should work.....?

OK some more info From looking around it seems like somehow 6.91 has been installed on this workstation, while the bursar and everyone else that uses it are on 6.85 Why does this one update but not theirs? I want to keep it at 6.85. Ive tried copying over the finance directory from the bursars machine which I know is working fine, but now fmsload.exe doesnt do anything except flash a screen up and then close Also, by looking at some of the .ini files on the bursars machine, it appears her FMS installation is still pointing to our old server which was removed a few months ago. She obviously is working on the new server's DB but I assume its still looking to the old server for updates So SHOULD we be on 6.91? We are still on SQL Server 2000 for SIMS and SQLAnywhere for FMS. Does 6.91 change any of that? Does it still run on SQLAnywhere? Sorry for all the questions, as you can Im thouroghly confused. I will contact the LEA SIMS team but they normally arent very much help

As usual I have run into problems installing this horrible, horrible program I though I had worked out all the little tweaks and bodges to get it to work but evidently not I followed the same installation procedure as normal, but now when I start FMS and it does an update, it starts a manual setup program asking for where to put the files, which I have NEVER seen before. I chose to put the files in the current C:\Program Files\SIMS\Finance folder as that seemed most sensible. After a reboot, I go to start FMS again and it asks for an FMSconnect.ini, in the same way SIMS asks for a connect.ini. Problem is we dont have one on our server at all! Ive never needed one for an FMS installtion before, I pointed to the right path for the DB during the install as usual, so why is it asking? Is it possible to make one? If its anything like the connect.ini its only one line with the server name and database name on it. But would this be liable to mess things up?

Thanks so much for this, I was losing my patience with the SMART way, it was so needlessly overcomplicated. The reg file seems to work a treat, thanks

Ok bumlardy, to compare, we have: 1700 students 800 PC's (about 60/40 desktops to laptops) 8 servers 60 IWB's However we dont have Exchange, Sharepoint etc and we are only minimally responsible for SIMS. Phone system is handled by a seperate company And we have 3 full time staff and 2 part time staff So i would say you're probably doing too much work for 1 person But if you're happy with it then cool!

Should you be paid more than what though? You could be already earning £30k and which case the answer is no Whats your salary?

Its a good point We dont go overboard with ours. We wipe them but not to like military standards or anything At the end of the day the main thing we are worried about is someone using the whole PC with our schools agreement OS on. There is a minute chance some data could be recovered off the HD's but as no profiles are cached and as far as I know no SIMS data is stored locally, I cant see theres too much to worry about Im sure someone will now come and state that we're not following the DPA correctly and that I should be shot at dawn for it but oh well

I was going to request one of them after seeing a previous post by you about them. We've now run out of money till April so looks like thats on hold for a while Unless you fancy lending me yours for a while

I previously had Visio diagrams of every cab but that got too long winded so Ive gone your route and have done it in Excel. Ive got a seperate sheet for each cab. Im also going to duplicate that info on floorplans in Visio when I have them finished, as they will be far easier to work with if a copy is stuck in the relavent cab. Dunno about tracing points to each switch port. I can see the advantages but things are just moved about far too much here for that to be feasible

I personally dont let it bother me, I always remember that 90% of the time, the 'massive crisis' that is occuring at work means nothing at the end of the day. Not to say I dont take my job seriously, because I do, but I always stay quite light hearted and I dont let ranting teachers etc get me down. Im also one of those people who make sure to leave their work at work. Well not strictly true as I am on Edugeek in my own time talking about work but you know what I mean When I am out of the office door, everything is out of my mind till the next morning, theres no point at all in ruining your evening worrying about things

Mine is a ridiculous 2 months as well I dont think theyve done it so much to make it difficult for me though, more that they realise it would take time to train a successor and they dont want me p1ssing off with tonnes of details that only I know My predecessor had the same notice period but it didnt stop him finding a new job. I think if I was able to find someone to replace me (probably the guy that works with me now) they would be a bit more flexible wih me