powert

Thanks for all the suggestions folks - I'd say that if you forgive the patronising demeanour of 'Deanuk', there are all some really useful ideas. So thanks very much for that!

Hi all, We've been having a bit of trouble with some Iranian hackers (calling themselves the Iran Security Team) hitting our school's webserver repeatedly. When it started, they were just dumping phoney 'index.html' and 'index.php' files to the root folder of our website (luckily our ACTUAL index page runs within a nested folder, so there was no interruption). Then they stepped it up and left hacking tools embedded in web pages. Now they've left files which open web pages requiring a password - having done some research it seems hackers can use a loophole in IIS which means that a site requiring password authentication can be used to step up privillages...so now they're getting WRITE privileges and managed to delete a whole bunch of important files! So it's getting worse! We deleted all their files (after gathering as much info as we could from them) and ran a system update on the server. Loads of security updates got patched, but they still hit us again. I've run the update service once more and there was one more patch, but that's it. I don't have faith that this single patch will save the day, so does anyone have any suggestions? We are running IIS 6 on Server 2003. All of the erroneous files were created by the IIS Anonymous User Account (IUSR_*serverName*) - so I suspect it's something to do with tying that down. I determined this by right-clicking the phoney files - the Security tab showed permissions set for IUSR_*serverName*...however this account does not show for any of our legitimate files... Is it something to do with the Anonymous IIS Account? Am I barking up the wrong tree? ...suggestions are much appreciated! Many thanks, Tom

Hi, I've been away from work all weekend. Just came in this morning to see you post - I checked the php.ini file and for some reason the php_mysqli.dll extension was repeated twice (once commented, once uncommented) - so I have removed the commented one and made sure that the dll file is uncommented...I am very pleased to say it works!! So thanks so much for your continued assistance with this. One funny thing is that if I put the php.ini file back how it was (i.e. with two instances of php_mysqli.dll, both commented and uncommented) it still works? Very strange... Either way mySql is up and running and I've you to thank sir. ...Thanks!

Hey, thanks for helping out with this. I do have the php_mysql.dll extension uncommented in the PHP.ini file. Looking through the logs, I'm fairly sure it's mySql that's the issue. If I load phpMyAdmin (our SQL monitoring software) I get the following error message: "phpMyAdmin - Error. Cannot load mysql extension. Please check you PHP configuration". My phpinfo() output does not have a section on mysql. It must have done at some point because up until now I was running all sorts of SQL commands (successfully). No joy as yet I'm afraid! So far I've clocked up 20+ hours in 3 days trying to fix this!

Thanks buddy - I've managed to look at the log file now. It is vast. Scrolling down to whereabouts I think it all started going wrong, it seems I'm seeing a lot of "PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect()" error messages - which is a point because the4 majority of our website is using PHP to talk MySQL. So perhaps the SQL server needs a reboot too? I'm thinking SQL could be involved in this horrid scenario somewhere along the line!

Thanks for such a quick reply! Yes the simple PHP page works - the phpinfo() command pumps out all the appropriate PHP information, which must mean PHP is up and running. But our main school website (http://www.lytchett.org.uk) is still falling over. I'm trying to look at the log file now, but it's >900MB so it's a tad slow!

Hi there, I've been trying to make LDAP work with PHP on our Windows Server 2003 web server - to do so I was instructed (by online instructions) to make a tiny change in the PHP.ini file, which I did. I was then advised to reboot the server, which I also did....here the problem arises: Since rebooting the server, no PHP pages are loading. I can access HTML pages alright, but if there is any heavy use of PHP, it throws a HTTP 500 error. I say HEAVY use of PHP because a simple test.php file (saved to the same folder as the other pages which will not load) will work just fine - thought it only contains the <?php phpnifo() ?> command and a simple 'echo HELLO WORLD'. So I undid the change I made to the PHP.ini and re-reboot the server, but still no luck. I even rolled back the system to a couple of days before I started playing around (using our BackupExec software)...BackupExec wanted me to reboot the server in order for the restore to take effect, so I did....but still no PHP! The common theme here seems to be rebooting the server - is there something which needs to be kicked off upon rebooting? I've checked the running services and everythink seems hunky dorey. Apache Tomcat is running automatically (which it MUST be because my simple PHP test page worked okay)....just nothing useful!! Does anybody have any suggestions? Pretty please?

Message to 'meastaugh1' - thanks for your ideas. You'll have to forgive my ignorance (I'm not too hot on the ins and outs of all the Sharepoint features), but what did you create a list of? I had considered using a list (shared documents style) of Excel spreadsheets, is that a way to go? I really appreciate your contributions - thanks!

Hi thanks for getting back to me so quickly! The pupils will be entering textual information regarding their strengths in a specific sport and grading their performance using a 4A, 3B, 5C style grading system. There's not a great deal of info for the pupil to enter really. A graph would be great, but it's not a necessity - they just need to be able to see the performance grade and track it over a 3 year period (merely seeing the saved records will suffice). The pupils could put false data in, but as they are self-assessing themselves, it's down to them to grade their own performance - I'm sure the teacher will tell them they've been too generous! On which note, yes the PE teacher will need to check it (at least reivew it once a new record/s has been added). There is no need to include facilites for mobile interaction - just to integrate a solution within our VLE, which is a Sharepoint services 2003 VLE. Thanks.

Hi all - this is my first post in a forum so please excuse my amateur approach, but I need help! A teacher has asked me (as the IT Technician) to create an online database of some sort, which will allow students who study years 7-9 Physical Education to update self-assessed records of their personal sporting achievments. Ideally he would like it to be as easy as possible for the kids to use, as they will need to add data a few times a year over the course of a couple of years. We also need to ensure that the students cannot see/edit each others data (which rules out a collabarative spreadsheet). We are running a Sharepoint (services 2003) VLE and it would be really handy to develop a solution in conjunction with this, as it would integrate AD logins etc. and make authentication a whole lot easier. In a perfect world, a student would login to the VLE, go to a form, enter their data, click submit and it would be added on to their individual record (which only they and their teacher could see). The teacher would then recieve an automated alert telling them who has/hasn't completed their records and he/see could also see a summary of all records. I'd really appreciate some help/ideas with this! Can it be done? Thanks, Tom

I have solved the problem....for anybody else who encounters this, here is how to solve it... - For each created site, there is a 'delete.aspx' page (which is automatically generated) which allows you to delete the site and all contents via sharepoint. The URL is of the following format: business_economics/gcse/_layouts/deleteweb.aspx - (where 'business_economics' is the subject parent folder and 'GCSE' is the child) I simply went to delete an existing page, copied the URL of the deleteweb.aspx and replaced the subject with the one that I actually wanted to delete....PROBLEM SOLVED!

Hi. We have a Sharepoint site used as a VLE in our school. I was in the process of creating a new site on the VLE which involved deleting an old site. The problem is that I (foolishly) tried deleting the old site through Windows Explorer (as opposed to using the GUI of the VLE). All this seems to have done is delete the contents of the folders, not the folders themselves. As a result, you can still navigate to a 'default.aspx' page through the VLE and it returns a 'page not found error'. I have tried everything to delete the remaining folders but they refuse to go - I get the following error messages: "\\*server*\*folderLocation* refers to a location that is unavailable" "Cannot read file from source or disk" ....or it will say 'deleting' but not do anything at all. It is my understanding that sharepoint stores most content in a database form, and that the content of the database may well have been deleted - windows is just confused because I did it from the back end! Any help would be greatly appreciated!