maniac

R.M.B, that's precisely my view of the 'banning culture' in my school, so I'm glad you posted that. I also liken it to the use of textbooks in class, if a kid was caught vandalising a textbook, you wouldn't ban them from using textbooks that would be silly, you'd issue a punishment of some sort. I think the same should be done for mis-use of ICT, banning students from using it (in my opinion) achieves nothing, and just gives the student even more excuses for doing nothing in class. I've just got to get that message through to the right people. I think the main problem we have is there's no policy on this, so staff issue bans very hap-hazardly and freely at the moment, and we have no choise but to follow their requests. This should be changing as I have a meeting planned with the head teacher, deputy head, head of ICT and myself to discuss the issues I raised with them last week. A white list is still a posibility, but my main worry with this is we could in-advertantly create more work for ourselves rather than cutting down on the silly requests we get. I think the banning option is so well established in my school however, that getting rid of it completely is probably a non-starter, that's why I'm interested in the use of whitelists. Thanks for the input guys, anyone else feel free to post opinions, all are gratefully received. Mike.

The official answer on this is no as Backupexec 12 is the first backup solution that is certified for windows server 2008. I'm sure however there's someone who's tried it who can give an idea of problems you might encounter if you were to use it on 2008, not that I would recommend it however, as you more than likely wouldn't have any support for it from symantec if anything went wrong! Mike.

As far as I know you can change the HKEY_CURRENT_USER part of the registry with a logon script, but not the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and other parts normally, unless the user running the script has the rights to do this. W With a machine startup script you can change any part of the registry using a script, as the script is run under the system account (same account that most windows services run under) which has rights to do this. I think I'm correct on this anyway. Mike.

3SP, who produce SSL explorer no longer update the 'community' edition as it's called, I think they had too many problems with people using their code for commercial gain, so they've now gone commercial themselves, and have recently re-launched their website removing all traces of the previous free product You can buy an 'enterprise license' from them to use the latest version, but I expect their pricing has sky-rocketed since I last looked (you have to register on their website to get prices now ) Another brilliant opensource product gone commercial, shame! Mike.

As its slow to initially load, but is then quick I would look at how your PHP sessions are handled. I think joomla uses sessions which are valid for a short while, which is why the first page you visit is slow (it could be trying to create the session and failing?) then loading subsequent pages is fast. Does that sound plausable to anyone who understands sessions a bit more than me?? Mike.

As DMcCoy has posted above, if it's fast browsing it on the server, then it's almost definitely not PHP and probably not apache holding things up. If it's also the same speed when you browse it from within the same LAN, then I think you can illiminate the server causing your problems all together. You then need to look at the next link in the chain. Where does it go next when you view it from outside? If it's an ISA box or simelar then this would be my next port of call to troubleshoot this problem. Mike.

Are you sure it's PHP execution time holding up proceedings? It seems like it may be something else to me, as when I've viewed your site once each subsequent refresh is very fast, but it would be re-generating the page each time I press refresh, so if it were a PHP problem I'd expect it to take ages every time. I would possibly look at your apache configuration, and how the server is configured, as it could be the webserver delaying things, and not PHP. Just out of interest if you load the page on the server itself after clearing your cache, is it the same speed as viewing it externally?? Mike. Edit: you might like to try inserting some code in your template to time PHP execution. Back up your template first of course! Then put this at the top of the main template PHP code. $time_start = microtime(true); <<<>> Put this at the end after everything else (inside the PHP identifier of course) $time_end = microtime(true); $time = $time_end - $time_start; echo "Page generated in $time seconds\n"; It should give you a time that PHP took to generate the page right at the bottom of every page. I would have used the code boxes, but they seem to have disappeared! Mike.

The school I'm in has a big banning culture, which is a pain in the backside for staff, as one member of staff will ban them, and another member will want them to use the internet for something in another class, which causes headaches for us as we're stuck in the middle of it all! I've suggested an in between ground of setting up a whitelist of approved websites, so insted of banning them outright, they can still actually use the internet in a limited capacity. Do any of you use an internet 'whitelist' insted of banning students access out righ? Does this cause any problems for you, like the amount of time it takes to construct it, and the administration of it? If you do use one, how many websites do you have on it, and is it actually a worthwhile exercise to set it up? We use websense for our filtering, so I know it's technically possible. Also on the same theme, if you do ban students, what constitutes a bannable offence in your school?? Many thanks Mike.

Funny this question should crop up, we're also looking at the same brand at the moment, seems good value for money. Incidently, do most people lease or buy photocopiers?? Mike.

At my last school I served E-Portal out to the internet through an apache reverse proxy, which was secure to the end user, and on the normal 8080 port from the reverse proxy server to E-portal its self. this worked well, and also meant our e-portal server wasn't directly exposed to the outside world, and I could also serve out other applications on different servers through the same reverse proxy, which cut down on the number of ports that we had directed into the school network. Worked like a charm! It also meant I could pull the plug on all external services very easily if we suspected there was a breach of security or simelar. In the end we had E-Portal, Outlook web access and Moodle all served to the outside world through the same server by the time I left. Mike.

Hello and welcome! You've found a great resource and community here, so take a seat and make yourself at home Mike.

Been there a few times! Amazing how it only takes seconds for a problem you already know about to be reported, but it takes weeks for that problem you really need to know about to get through to you! Mike

I'm pleased most reponses are pro-HTTPS, as I was fully intending to use it anyway, but I wanted to pose the open question to see what other peoples opinions were. The risks with passwords will always exist I think, the weakest link is any security chain is always the user! This will be combatted by educating users in good password parctise, turning off the ability to save passwords in web browsers for staff, we will enforce strong passwords when we go live with whatever learning platform we choose, and also they will be forced changed every xx number of days I think, annoying maybe, but necessary - I think so. Are there any learning platforms on the market that offer authentication other than just a simple password, particulalry for staff and admin accounts? I will be posing the question to the different companies when we approach them to offer us a solution anyway, as with the potential for attendance, assesment data and other information to be contained within the system, I think it could be good to consider security other than just passwords. Mike.

Do others consider it necessary to serve their learning platform to the outside world over a secure connection, or is this really a bit overkill for the type of service it is? I launched the process of our school choosing a learning platform to our subject leaders today, and immediatly got a barrage of questions I hadn't really prepared for, security of it was one of them! So what do others do, HTTPS or not? Mike.

We had a quantum LTO3 Tape changer at my last school, and it was exceedingly reliable! Not sure on their single drives thou, as I've never had one. I can give good marks to their support as well, as we had a problem setting our tape changer up, and they were very helpful over the phone I seem to recall. Mike.

This is my opinion on choosing a RAID system for your servers, RAID1 (Mirrored drives) is fine for protecting the integrity of your data. All RAID5 does is distribute the data between more disks allowing greater capacities, it does not offer more protection against failure, as only 1 disc is allowed to fail in a RAID5 array for the data to still remain intact, if 2 disks fail at the same time then you loose the array integrity and are also looking at a very expensive data recovery bill. With RAID1 we have the same level of protection, as 1 disk can fail and the data is still intact, and if by pure bad luck both happen to go at the same time, then the bill to recover the data is going to be decidedly less than re-buiding a RAID5 array would be, and you'll also have 2 totally seperate copies of it for them to look at! RAID5 in a way actually puts more risk into the equation, because there are more disks involved there is statistically a higher chance of failure. In my opinion RAID5 is pretty much redundant unless you need a single volume that is bigger than 500GB. For years and years it was the only way of creating large single volumes by combining the capacities of several disks together, mainly because until fairly recently you were limited to relatively small SCSI disks as the only real choice for servers. Now we have high capacity high speed SATAII drives, a simple RAID1 mirror offers the same level of protection in terms of drive failures allowed, we can achieve the capacities we need to, and you get faster disk access too. You can apply the age old principle, Keep It Simple Stupid! (Not intended as an insult by the way!) If you can achive the storage capacity you require using just a single drive, then a RAID1 mirror is the best choice in my opinion. If you need bigger, than RAID5 is still good, and if you want more protection, look at RAID6 (allows for 2 drive failures) Introducing 'hot spares' into your array (A disk that will instantly 'jump in' if a drive fails) or a combination of the two. Mike. EDIT: The reason I wrote this is because in the first post you said you were worried because Server 4 was only RAID1, but I don't see this as being a problem for you, and my explanation turned into a lecture! Sorry I don't mean to lecture anyone, I'm sure most people already know the differences, but there does seem to be some confusion surrounding RAID sometimes, and I've either helped, or made it worse, not sure which yet! Should not type on forum after coming back from pub, should not type on forum after coming back from pub . . . . .

I would throughly recommend speaking to Dell or HP, both will sell you a complete Small Business server with everything pre-installed ready to go, and also offer a good support package that the business can call on in the future where necessary for even the smallest problems. That's what I've done for 2 local businesses who have approched me in the past. True it won't be the cheapest way of doing it, but if like myself you are doing this as an extra to your main job, the last thing you really want to do is have to provide support for the system, as that's what could end up happeneing if you piece it all together and set it up for them. I've learnt that one from past experience, it's not a good feeling when the manager of a local business rings you up at 8:00 am becuase their system's not working, but of course you're at your main job during the day so you can't really help until the end of the day, by which time they've lost an entire business day so they're not too happy. I always buy a complete package from Dell for people now, I do the initial setup at home, set it up for them in their business at a weekend so it's all working and is all documented, then hand it over to them and let them use Dell for any further support they might need in the future, this works well in my experience. Might sound petty, but that person who's currently your best friend because you might be helping them out, can turn into your worst nightmare if things go wrong with a system you've setup for them. Never under-estimate the importance of buying them a good support package as part of the deal! Mike.

Under the license granted to retailers for the sale of alcohol, it is against the law to sell alcohol to an adult if you know it is going to be passed onto a person underage. More information here - Youth Information UK Licensing Laws explained Mike

You should find most payroll departments will put the sunday as your last day anyway. I recently changed jobs and handed my notice in with the Friday specified as my last day of employment, but on my P45, they had put the Sunday down ayway. Continuous service affects your pension entitlement, your holiday entitlement and other things like the payout you would receive if you were made redudant. Mike.

As you probably know RIS has officially been replaced by WDS in windows Server 2003 SP2, but WDS does still support RIS if it was already installed! We upgraded our RIS server to SP2 in my last school, and it carried on working with no problems at all I seem to remember. To get RIS support under SP2, you must first install Windows 2k3 with SP1, then setup RIS, then upgrade the server to SP2. You will find it installs WDS, but still keeps RIS support under it. If you install SP2 first, I'm pretty sure you can't then install RIS as Microsoft really want you to use WDS, so the RIS option disappears under SP2 unless it was already installed first! Mike.

You could use XCACLS.VBS http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825751 with the relevant switches to grant the administrator full rights to everything in the documents and settings folder before you run Delprof. It works really well that script, and is dead handy for modifying folder and file rights on local machines at machine startup. Saved me hours of work when you build a machine image, then realise some horrible piece of software needs write access to an obscure folder somewhere to work properly! Mike.

I would love to upgrade this year, but we're an RM CC3 school, so kinda tied into using server 2k3 and still have server 2k on some of our boxes, although I'm going to be getting rid of those ones soon as they are getting on a bit hardware wise now. Hopefully if all goes to plan this coming year, we will be loosing RM at the end of next year, providing I can put together a viable alturnative that the school like in time for next july, which will be based around Server 2k8 for my servers, and Vista on at least some of the workstations. Mike.

Word of warning on tablet PCs, they are OK funtionality wise, but in my experience, they are not the best choice for praticality in a school because; a) the pens go missing far too frequently if you use them as tablets, so you need deep pockets to keep buying spares. Even though they only cost about £10 each, it soon adds up when you're buying multiples of them. b) if you use the clip on keyboards, they get damaged very easily, or if the tablet PC you choose has a ruberised keyboard, kids pick the keys out meaning expensive repairs. It does depend on the school of course, that is my schools experience with tablet PCs and we won't be buying any more. We have over 100 of them and they are geting old now, we struggle to keep them all working. Obviously if your students are a little more sensible that ours, they might work in your environment. Mike.

Check the BIOS boot order, as sometimes it doesn't appear as an option on the F12 boot menu, but if you look at the boot order, the device is listed. Our HP tablets for instance pick up a USB memory stick as a Hard drive, the only way we can boot from USB on them is by changing the boot order in the BIOS so it boots the USB one before the system one, so yours might be the same for CD-ROM drives? Mike.

Run the add new hardware wizard in control panel, it should pick the device up again. Also it should re-install on a re-boot automatically as well if that fails. EDIT: Apologies, I may be wrong on this, just tried it with mine and it didn't work, although I'm sure it used to! You may have to open up the case and unplug and re-plug in the wire for it. Mike.