Eric

To test the DNS server on your WS1000 (your description implies that you may have one), you should run dig, pointed directly at the WS1000 address as DNS server (e.g. dig www.bbc.co.uk @10.97.90.2), but supply different DNS names to look up each time. Not only that, but you really need to be sure that noone else in the school has looked up those addresses through the WS1000. This is because, if the WS1000 is a fully-recursive resolver, it will cache successful lookup results locally for the duration of the time-to-live which the owner of that DNS name has chosen - and this is often set up to seven days ahead. What I'm really saying is that using dig against the WS1000 may produce spurious results. However I think that the clue to your problem may be in your footnote. It's quite possible that the WS1000 is doing a reverse lookup on client IP addresses when it receives an HTTP request. For example, it could be doing this so that you could partition the internet access which different PCs receive, based on a PC's name or domain. Clearly, not being able to resolve the reverse lookup could have deleterious effects. Since this post is a few days old, maybe you've found that this is the solution already?

Are you sure that these will be a problem? You might see "a lot" of broadcasts using a network monitor, but it's unlikely that these would add up to a level which would have much impact on your inter-site link, either in bps or in packets-per-second terms. Unless your link is low bandwidth, of course ...

Sorry - I've just looked and of course I can't see it now. I must say that the animated ads are also pretty annoying, but agree that flashing is worst!

I run Adblock Plus but always dutifully turn it off when I see the request on Edugeek's pages. But there's a Misco flashing ad at the moment which could persuade me to change my mind! I do understand that it's hard to get advertising networks to abide by local quality standards. I hope that you can fix this one.

OK, I've just downloaded the manual and had a quick look. Page 78 says that you need a null modem cable - this is the "moral equivalent of an ethernet cross-over cable" that you mention. You should be able to buy one, or an adaptor, from Maplins. Page 79 says that you need to set your terminal emulation program to: ‰ Baud rate: 9600 ‰ Data bits: 8 ‰ Parity: None ‰ Stop bits: 1 ‰ Flow control: None IIRC this is the default for Hyperterm, though maybe you would need to turn flow control off. These days I tend to use putty.exe (http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe) as my terminal emulator, as well as for ssh. You are correct - pressing Enter can "wake up" a serial connection. This is sometimes because the device can do auto-baud-rate recognition, based on the bit pattern of an ASCII Enter sequence, but I should stick to 9600 initially nonetheless. Good luck!

I think that NTFS doesn't distinguish between names with different case when performing operations such as open or rename. Your script lacks double-quotes, which you will need when dealing with filenames containing spaces. I've edited it below to add them (un-tested.) Actually, I've just realised that this could be a unicode problem. Try replacing the the tr line with lc="$(echo "$x" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`)"One simple way to get a better idea of what is going on would be to add "echo " at the start of the line which does the move, like this: echo mv -i "$x" "$lc"This would show you what the commands were going to be, without executing them. #!/bin/bash for x in `ls` do if [ ! -f "$x" ]; then continue fi lc="$(`echo "$x" | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`)" if [ "$lc" != "$x" ]; then mv -i "$x" "$lc" fi done

Pete, thank you for the heads up about ABTutor - I'll go and give it a try. Update: AFAICS ABTutor isn't free, but Italc looks as if it could do the business. I did - bother. I'm going to add my own suggestion for trying (some) things out in a sandbox. I've just got a shiny new Vmware setup and I'm backing up VMs with Veeam. The more expensive version of Veeam has a facility for restoring a bunch of VMs inside a sandbox built out of Vmware virtual switches and a "double-NATing router," which runs as yet another VM. The special router means that the sandboxed hosts have access to e.g. the internet and any other production hosts that they need, but they don't interfere with the rest of the production hosts. Since I don't have the expensive Veeam , I'm going to try doing this by hand, then I might try automating it using Poweshell, which I understand integrates well with Veeam.

Pete, that sounds interesting. Please would you explain this process in more detail? I'd like to add it to my armoury. Personally I've never been able to login a classroom all at once, but it sounds as if you can do it. And the vnc script is interesting too ...

Hightower, It looks as if you can deploy SIMS using GPO and .msi. Please can you tell us how you do this? Supplementary question: are you able to update SIMS and FMS without allowing SIMS users to run with local admin privileges? I'm absolutely sick of dealing with the consequences of this setup. Many thanks for your input.

This is only a suggestion. Sometimes web servers are set up so that they will try to do a reverse, then a forward, DNS lookup on the client (your log in time.) If you don't have DNS set up to support this, then the delay can be as long as you describe.

Microsoft used to recommend using .local as the TLD for an AD implementation. But this interferes with Apple's Rendezvous service. I'm going to be building a new AD soon. What alternatives to .local do people recommend, please?

This has worked for me in the past (using LGfL.) I then installed an unused (fairly old, low-spec) windows box at the host site for use with MS Terminal Services, via an mstsc short-cut on the desktop of the remote user. Of course the windows box didn't need a screen, keyboard or mouse. Doing this avoids the problems of accessing a database over a slow link. In particular, I would expect using Samba to be completely broken, due to locking issues.

As you may have gathered, we have a SENCO who we want to do some updating, but we don't feel that they are necessarily competent enough to let loose on the whole database. It seems that we may have to think again. Thank you everyone for your input.

@philneal We could arrange for someone else with admin access to add a student to the group.

Please can someone tell me if we could set up our SENCO so that they can only affect SIMS records (mainly assessment data) for pupils under their care? Thanks!

Geoff, I hope that you'll pick up on this reply to a two-years-old thread ... I've think that I've always understood the part of the swing migration process which you describe, but Jeff Middleton (of SBSmigration.com) also says that he can repeat the migration time and time again in practice, including file migration, until he is satisfied it all goes right, then do the migration for real (and still have the capability to roll-back.) Please can you shed some light on how this part is done?

Those precise IPs are a /30 (255.255.255.252). I used GeekTools Aggis Interface to check this out. I thought that the command line aggis tool allowed you to input a range (e.g. 96.25.99.224 - 96.25.99.227), but I can't see how to do this on the Geektools web page. Nor can I find the source code for aggis.c - it's always been elusive. Warning: it used to be that only two addresses in a /30 were usable, but that generally isn't the case now.

I got a quick PM from CPLTD (thanks!) I've sent email in reply, but I don't know if CPLTD got it. If you're there, please can you PM me again? Thanks!

Our server room has an Expelair fan on an outside wall and a (fire standards appropriate) vent in the door into the sub-basement of the building. The fan pulls air through the room to the outside, when the room becomes warm. We've found that we can get far too much "human detritus" (hair and skin!) coming in from the school, and we can get too much outside dust coming in when the fan is idling. So I think I want some suitable filter material to go in front of both the fan and the door vent. I've ordered something from Ace Filtration, but they have been absolutely useless delivering it to me. Maybe this is because the order is low £value, but I've lost faith in them now. If anyone can suggest a suitable supplier/material that would be great!