OverWorked

It's not just 98, ME has gone too. Someone brought their machine running ME to me this week, asking me to add memory. Last night I googled for "windows ME" to find the recommended RAM and saw the article. Can't say I wept at it's passing. I disliked ME more than 98.

I've seen ludicrous prices like £6,000 quoted for an MCSA course. I've got the MCSA, and I think it's worth having (if it's backed up by the experience), but not worth spending much more than the exam fees on. I just bought the MS books, and worked through it at home with virtual servers running in VMWare. I don't know what the uni courses are like. I've already spent five years of my life at uni, and can't justify spending any more time in full-time education. Save yourself the expense of a course. Just study the book for about three months, then try the exam. Make use of MS second shot promotion where possible. It seems to come round every few months.

It seems like it's a problem with our LEA's ISP. No surprise there - we've had this sort of problem before with a few web sites and email servers unreachable. Techs in other schools have stories of strange DNS entries at the ISP. I've checked my proxy configuration in /etc/apt/apt.conf and it's correct. Besides, I can access security.ubuntu.com no problem, so that proves the entry for the proxy server is correct. From a browser on my XP desktop at work, I can access security... but not archive... . I'm writing this from home, where I've just set up Ubuntu LAMP server on a virtual machine, and it accesses the default repositories right out of the box with no reconfiguration. Fortunately, we're getting a new ISP next term, after years of poor service from the current one. @ Pete & Geoff: Sorry for taking your time, and thanks for the information. You've helped me narrow the cause of the fault.

After a few days doing less interesting stuff, I've just got back to this and installed the Ubuntu LAMP server, just like beeswax. http://security.ubuntu.com is easily accessible, and I can update from this no problem. I still can't access anything on http://archive.ubuntu.com, or any of the sub domains, so I've commented out these entries from /etc/apt/sources.list Is the server down at the moment? I've been having this trouble for over a week now.

I wish I'd seen this thread a few months ago, or I'd started it. This is just what I need. I manage a modest web site for our local CAMRA branch, but it's a real pain putting the same heading, menu and footer on each page and managing them. I always wondered how professionals did it. Viewing the code for others' pages just shows the one html file, like the menu had been put there manually. I've just learnt CSS. Looks like it's time to start on PHP, and upgrade the hosting.

@beeswax - I think you're slightly ahead, it's just that I haven't tried the GUI. I've just downloaded the Desktop version of Ubuntu, in case the server (non-GUI) is too much for me to start with. @Geoff - I'm already using putty, it's great. It has several advantages over directly using the console, like copy & paste with the mouse.

I've decided to take the plunge into the murky world of Linux by giving myself a project. I'm going to set up a Linux Intranet server and run a CMS on it. Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake seems to be popular so I've gone with that. I've tried the LAMP server installation, and also the generic server, working through Perfect Setup. Apache is working, as I can browse to the machine and get the default Apache page. Now, how do I get my web site onto the server? Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a ftp server installed, and I'm having real dificulty installing one. I've added more repositories, like this. I keep getting :- root@web1:~# apt-get install proftpd proftpd-common ucf Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done E: Couldn't find package proftpd root@web1:~# I've tried accessing the repositories via a browser. The only one I can see is freecontrib.org. Is this normal? [Whilst typing this I've tried apt-get update. It seems to be getting security.ubuntu.com, but not archive... I did this yesterday and it took 3 hours to complete - is there any way to stop it?] Thanks. I've learnt a lot in the last couple of days doing this, but have hit a wall now. :?

Thanks. I'll look into JSAS, or JOOMLA or e107 with Ubuntu.

Thanks for the quick response, everyone. Will Joomla / CMSMS run on IIS? I'd like to set up a test site for them first. I don't want the learning curve of LAMP.

Hello, Our school needs a web site - I'd like to know what eveyone else does. We something that can be added to easily by staff and students, with areas that can be locked down so only certain people have access to them. It must be easy to use so the staff can edit their areas without coming to me every five minutes. I suppose I'm thinking of some sort of CMS. We're already starting out with Moodle as a seperate project, but I don't think that's suitable for a front-end public-facing site. We won't be hosting it ourselves, so a good host is needed too. Any ideas? Thanks.

Good score. I passed the 70-291 (Server 2003 infrastructure) a few weeks ago and became an MCSA. The pass score was 700, my score was also 700! I think I was more nervous after I'd seen the score!

I've been wanting to allow this for a while, so I've been following this thread. With these applications, is it possile to limit the users they can reset? We need to restrict them to resetting pupils passwords, not other staff's, or, even worse, admin!

Thanks for that - will investigate. It looks ideal for me, but it's on the far side of Leeds. I'm not sure whether it's worht the journey.

I put an Opteron in my home PC, after reading an article in CustomPC about the great value for money they are. Geoffs right - Opterons rock!

I've had D-Link APs for over a year now, and had all the same problems: The access points work fine for a while and then just disconnect. It's impossible to ping them from either the wired or wireless side. The only solution is to reset them. In our case, and I suspect yours too, the problem doesn't lie with the access point (not entirely anyway). It's spanning tree protocol (STP) on the switches that they're connected to. After a while a stray packet will move wirelessly from one AP to another. The switch will see this as a loop in the network and stop all traffic to the offending APs. After Elus1v pointed this out to me, I noticed that it only affected APs connected to the fancy 3com switches. APs conected to the cheap switches that didn't have STP were unaffected. I've disabled STP on the switch's ports the APs are connected to, and now the problem is reduced. AP's now only ned resetting once every couple of weeks, not every couple of hours. There are some more expensive AP's (£200) that are supposed to eliminate this problem. I don't know the details, but they're designed to be used as part of a network. The D-Link ones are only intended to be used alone (eg at home). Does this help? You've described the same symptoms as I had, and STP was the answer for me. I'm now looking at phasing in the better APs.

We did ours a while ago, but aren't due to get the results until late 2006, I think. Most people, except me, were very apprehensive about doing it. They're all convinced that it's a cost-cutting exercise. I don't see how my pay can get any lower, so I'm not worried.

Here's another gotcha for anyones who's stuggling with install:- You have to install the IIScript.msi first. I used this handy tool to edit the GPO to get them to install in the right order, because there's no way of doing it in the GPO editor. Assigned Software Sequence Manager

We had the same problem with Pro/Desktop 8. If you log on as a non-admin, then draw a circle and try to extrude it, an unhelpful error message appears. Apparently it's caused by the .exe not registering correctly when it is installed. It registers itself when the first user uses it. If they're not an admin then it won't work. The answer is to log on as administrator and run this script:- "c:\Program Files\PTC\ProDESKTOP 8.0\Program\ProD.exe" /regserver I can't remember where I got this information from, one of the forums mentioned above probably. I created a user account, made them a member of the domain admins group, and set that as the login script. I then had to go round each of the machines and log on with the new user account. This is after installing the SP2 version via group policy and the supplied msi. We had the same problem with the original version and we hoping that SP2 would fix it. No joy. The helpdesk just recommends disabling the graphics hardware acceleration, but it didn't work for me.

I had similar problems with RIS after upgrading servers from 2000 to 2003 about a year ago. I found the following worked for me:- 1) The RIS server must not be multihomed. I think there's a MS knowledgebase article about it somewhere. 2) The RIS server must also be a DHCP server. It's not enough that there's a DHCP server somewhere else - it has to be the same machine. 3) Make the RIS server your only DHCP server. Disable DHCP on your existing DHCP server. I tried giving my RIS/DHCP server a small range out of my subnet, then excluding this range from my main DHCP server. The problem with this approach is that the RIS/DHCP server fills it range with other clients after while, and can't give out addresses for your RIS clients when you need it to. I gave up with this and made it my only DHCP server. I've never had to do anything with the DHCP scope options. The only ones I have set are 003, 006, 015. I've never touched 60,66,67.

You sound a bit like me. I got a teaching degree in 1997, but teacher training was about the worst experience of my life. I worked for four years after that in an office doing a bit of IT. Studied for a BTEC in Electronic Publishing and the CompTIA A+ at the same time. I had loads of interviews for tech jobs, mainly in schools, but kept getting told that I didn't have enough experience. Then one local school offered to let me work voluntarily and give me a reference. Four weeks later I got a job at another school and I'm still here. Voluntary work (one day a week) worked for me, and I know it's helped some people get jobs in the private sector too.

Just to update:- Since I installed the QCA KS3 ICT testing APS on the same server as Liberum, the problem works the other ay round. Now, if I log on to Liberum with IE, I get asked for credentials by the browser; if I log on with Firefox, I don't. I can't be sure that the QCA DPS is the cause, but it's the only thing I can think of involving a web server - tomcat. Weird. Answers on a postcard please!

If I get that it'll end with divorce. Half Life 2 was bad enough.

Thanks - I may have another go with it one day. It's probably full of fluff by now, though.

I wouldn't say it's rubbish, but it's not great. Mine shows some clients as greyed out and will not install to them. Even after installing AV on them manually the console still won't recognise them. Strangely, it's mainly the PC's which are used by admin staff and are the least locked down. I'd prefer to use msi's so it's good to read that the latest version supports this. It is a pain having use a different method to install sophos av on new clients. I'd like to install it via GP, then manage it vian the Sophos management console. The entering of name and pw each time is also a great pain.

Does anyone know why it doesn't work over Remote Desktop? I didn't try it as the instructions said not to. What happens if you do? I'm just curious.