robk

Shutting down workstations/putting network printers into standby etc makes good eco frendly sense, but attempting to shut down the entire infrastructure is only likely to lead to problems. If you use something like a scheduled task to shut down the workstations, you can then use WOL to turn everything back on from the server ready for registration the following morning. RobK

Looking at that board, all of the leakage current for all of the machines is being measured by that one RCD. This lead to nothing but problems with us. Leaking CRT monitors, power supplies and simple filtered sockets all add up to a large background level of earth leakage. Anything slightly off will push it over the edge. We ended up fitting RCDs per bank of sockets, but its not a cheap fix. Problem is, turning off banks of machines will drop the "background" level, and hide the issue! Try unplugging a system (at the wall) one at a time, see if it stays on over night? RobK

Serco would not support my SQL, I suspect it would not even run.

Happy Birthday!

Anyone else suprised/worried about the discussion of the old fujitsu firewall rules in the network security talk? I hate to think whats been open to the world on ports I thought were firewalled! (Though I do apply the usual disable anything you don`t need on an externally facing server, how often is something missed.) RobK

How about a logon script that copies the desktop image from a server to a known location on the workstation (set this in GPO). Then have a rotor script runing on the server to change the messages. That way you will change the desktop as they log on, and in a computer room will probably end up with most of the messages... The other way (which I haven`t tried) would be a active desktop background, with a refreshing webpage? RobK

Are you looking to implement a Wpad file, or change the one you already have? I am guessing you are looking to detect the current ip address of the machine, and base the proxy settings on that? Posting your current wpad file may well give a solution. Robk

Not directly what you are looking for, but Get_iplayer get_iplayer | Linuxcentre lets you download anything from the iplayer streams, and you can do it in bulk, e.g. download all the weather forcasts for the last 7 days. Its a bit command liney. but it seems to work. RobK

Do you have any redirection of start menu/application data etc? I have seen that cause this type of simptom, if the server starts to slow down, it can take all the clients with it. Robk

That script seems a bit over complicated, but should work. I am guessing you are double clicking the script? for debuging if you do the following you should be able to see the error message (or other output). open a command prompt (start/run/type cmd) cd to the directory the script is in enter cscript You should be able to see whats going on. Robk

I have a bit of scripting that creates home directories from ou`s and moves old homedirectories if the user does not exist. How are your homedirectories organised? Robk

I think, in the new release due 15th Dec, there is a feature to freeze headings. This may help a bit! RobK

Ah thanks for that, Tony, if you can get it to work then the story I heard about problems with embc services being affected my well be miss informed.... If you would like me to try out any docs I hope to be trialing a UTM in the next week or so. Robk

Does anyone have running a smoothwall box working with EMBC as the upstream proxy? I am about to fit a smoothwall UTM, to replace our existing on site proxy, and several internal firewalls (for wireless etc), after a chat with the ever helpful Gavin from Smoothwall I think is should work, but, I was wondering if anyone had this up and running! We don`t want to get rid of our on site filtering, as we don`t trust embc too much! However, I don`t want to go too much off the standard network build. Anyone done anything simalar? Thanks RobK

Depending on how your data is formatted in excel, and how much database know how you have, it is possible to do this, however, I would suggest that unless you are looking at lots of data, say a one off migration (thats where I learned the hard way.....) it is too easy to trash the database, and need to start again. If you do this during attendance data entry you could break that as well. I would stick to eportal/facility entry. If you are going to go bulk data import, take a backup and do it out of hours. be prepared to check the system for "side effects" of your data import before leaving the system for the next day. You can check this on a standalone copy of facility, but even this does not prove 100% your data import. Sorry if this sounds very negative, but I write with personal experience.... RobK

That is the unit I was talking about. openxtra can no longer supply the unit, they say they can`t get stock. I gave my usual supplier the details for NTS Telecom, but they seem to be unable to get NTS telecom to supply goods or return calls! Hence looking for a different solution. Robk

I am in the process of setting up a number of internal systems which rely on being able to send SMS messages via our BT lines, ideally from email alerts. These systems include System monitoring, staff alerts for Behaviour support etc. We were going to use a z-text modem from NTS telecom, but no one seems to be able to supply that item anymore. I understand that something simalar is possible with Asterisk but have not started to test this. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Note I need to avoid solutions that send via a mobile phone, as I need to avoid extra mobile phone contracts or top ups. Land line sms will get charged to the school phone bill, which is already being paid..... Thanks RobK

Right, so it gets through most of the setup and then bombs out. Not the problem I was hitting. Have you tried building a fresh ris image from the xp cd, and adding the drivers one by one? Time consuming, but the only way we fixed our issue. The other suggestion would be have you asked Stone? I understood they had a pritty good tech support dept. RobK

does setup start, or does ris stop before the copy files section? We had problems with a old version of a realtek nic driver crashing some intel chipset based core duo systems........ Please be specific as to where its stopping. Robk

We are rolling out a os X 10.5.2 mac image using apple netrestore. We can get the machines to name themselves correctly, but now trying to join ad and od via a script. However we are hitting lots of errors in both sets of bindings, and wondered if things had changed. Everything works fine in the GUI, so I know its the script, which seems to be the one that google finds on this subject, so I will avoid quoting here. Does anyone have a known working script for this that I could pinch? Thanks RobK

If its a procurve switch you could enable port mirroring on the router port and a pc connected to a monitoring port. This would allow the pc to see all the traffic going to and from the router (think hub v switch on those two ports). Running wire shark on the pc at the times you are getting hammered would show you the source and destination of all the packets. Lots of data, but it would be there. RobK

I think Gatt is wanting to use the second servers as hot standby servers, the only way I can think of is to set up a second site in sites and services for DR. Machines should connect to servers in their site be preference. However, I wouldn`t do that. By load balancing things across the two servers you are ensuring replication etc is working, and in the event of a server fail, assuming both dc`s are global catalogues and handle DNS (as Per FN-Greatermanchester) the other server should pick up the load. Assuming the second servers are in a different location, and have resilient network links should be a good solution. You still need backups, build details etc in case things go really wrong with AD (as the problems would replicate between the servers!). RobK

We use a 100 series for our eportal server. Ended up using the procedure netman mentioned. HP.... Only some of their tech support guys know about this as well. RobK

Wow, loads of smileys. Nice one ZH