JRA

Morning all, story time. So, I would count myself among the least imaginative in my solutions to this previously, but the DfE laptops we were given last year we just left "vanilla" and shipped them out as they came. Our own domestic school-owned laptops though, which we gave out at the start of the pandemic, we put Ubuntu on - figured at the very least the lack of familiarity with it would fox the kids and less exposure to malware might be a good 'un. Lockdown ends last term, we get these laptops back, image every type of them with our own Windows image, wahoo lots of free laptops for our school etc. Now we have ANOTHER lockdown, so I send the tech downstairs to image all our laptops with Ubuntu again. All types, even the DfE ones now have Ubuntu on them and we're due to give them out Monday. Friday night (yesterday) I'm just heading out the door and I test one. There's no drivers for the onboard wireless NIC. Cold panic... I have now bought myself a LONG weekend of *something* whereby I've got to set up these laptops *somehow* Ok so to the point of my thread now that's out of the way: What's the least complicated that folks have sent out to kids in this day and age in terms of laptop? Has anyone literally just done local admin account, Sophos, Office, AUP signed, there you go kiddy? I'm probably going to try and stuff that driver in it in the mean time, but twelve years fiddling with Ubuntu has taught me shoe-horning drivers into it that it doesn't want might work for a week or two, until Ubuntu decides it doesn't work anymore, then I've got 50 kids I'm obstructing the learning of and I'm then obviously an inept, lazy criminal in that piece, but as soon as a couple folks (if there is much of an EduGeek weekend shift ofc!) come along and say there's a precedent for just going super basic and simple as above then I'm leaping on it like I'll leap on the Chinese takeaway that's inevitably coming later... I will appreciate massively any reply, even if it's just a virtual hug.

I honestly don't know how you folks do it. I was googling this and that and trying any old garbage for a SOLID afternoon and not even getting close... Thank you both extremely much for all that.

Evening all. I am sure this is dead simple but after honestly trying a while now I have come up very empty. And I'm sure it must be the easiest thing in the world I'm just not succeeding at all at this. I have a .csv file. Example below: Name,Surname,Reg Freddy,Mercury,class1 Elvic,Presley,class2 Cher,Cher,class1 Jerry,Only,class3 I want something to add some text to the beginning and end of column 3/the Reg column, so it then all loos like: Name,Surname,Reg Freddy,Mercury,[email protected] Elvic,Presley,[email protected] Cher,Cher,[email protected] Jerry,Only,[email protected] I got lost after ages of trying to create arrays in powershell. This one is beyond me and it's so simple to run a concatenate and knock some columns up in an actual spreadsheet, I just can't seem to script this in any way shape or form? Anyone feeling kind? :/ Thanks any/everybody.

It worked you're a genius. :)

Hahaha! I absolutely love the idea that somewhere out there in the world someone put down a pint to solve a problem that's been killing me for an afternoon! Thanks so much over there. I'll give it a whirl in a mo. You're a gent also.

Hello everyone who's good with scripts and happy 2021. Trying to do a thing. Not getting very far. I have a .csv with three columns in it. Name, Code and Class Name. What I'd like to do is have something that: 1 - If the third/class column is blank delete the whole row. 2 - If the class column starts with a NUMBER, delete the whole row. 3 - In one column only (third one) replace "/" and ":" and " "(space) characters with underscores. Is such fiddling possible? You have no idea how happy it'll make me if it is. Thanks any and everyone.

Just wanted to check back in as we had (shock horror etc) a SUCCESSFUL video conferenced parents' evening. Went with Google Meet (as we are a Google school.) Firstly thanks to @ShorehamGeek who pretty much steered me to it. Shame we didn't get to chat in the end but you got me on the right path. Next firstly, THESE webcams we found were 'driverless' and just installed when teachers plugged them in. I managed to buy 100 of them from various sources in the time we needed. Sorry if that link's not allowed (eBay.) The basics are HERE regarding what I actually used, although I changed a bit giving each meeting the title of "PARENTS' EVENING" in caps for staff and had to chat with Google beforehand so that they'd make it that parents would have to wait to be invited. I think you can do this by turning off "quick access" as a teacher in the meeting options, but I wanted as few steps as possible. Then made a page on our website and copied out each link from the "master calendar" of that account that governs them and made links for each teacher. The page being sort of a virtual school hall, and each link being a virtual desk in it sorta. That way, booking system stayed the same (don't want to go worritin' the admin staff/parents with too many changes) and you just clicked a name when your appointment arrived, and on the other side as a teacher you could let a meeting overrun a tiny bit if you wanted, or kick out anyone you didn't want there for any reason. Feedback was overwhelmingly good! A few folks unplugged their mics by accident and one MoS went full-on rogue and made their own meeting, and sat there being stood up for 90 mins before realising. Anyways hope that's something of a thing in case anyone's mad desperate at some point. Concludes my story of how I did it at least and it wasn't so bad. Thanks much of course everyone for helping. :)

Sorry, late back to the party but I much prefer Thunderbird for it. Worth a look if Outlook rubs you up the wrong way for SARs.

No closer... I think it was either an AP doing *something* or a Samsung Galaxy which did "a suspicious" (single BAD_ADDRESS shows up then that device claims one of the IPs of the BAD_ADDRESSes and then all was ok.) Hmmmmmmmmm...

I'm very glad you're bored today thank you. Okay, so I changed it to the below: #// Set up hash table and add values $HashTab = $NULL $HashTab = [ordered]@{ "Name" = $ADGroup.Name "Email" = {0} -f $ADGroup.mail But running it I get "The '<' operator is reserved for future use." I'm sure I've pasted it somewhere not quite right in there.

Ah, ok. In that case I may be in a more difficult state. What I've got is a powershell script (VERY generously written by someone here I might add) and it produces a .csv of email groups and their members and the email address of said group, to host on an internal website here. The section that makes the column with the email addresses is this part: But in the php page I literally get the text "mailto:[email protected]" and I'd like something clickable. Is this easy enough done or a bit nuts? Thanks everyone again.

Hi all, As per title really. I don't know how well I'm describing it but, like, you know in html you got "mailto:" and then bam your default mail client is awakened and sends an email to that address? What's "mailto:" in PHP? Thanks any/everyone.

On my end I've (in overview) gone through Google Vault and exported the mailbox (probably got to the stage you've gotten to) and then just gone through them. All of them. And skim-read the lot. In one case skim-read over 20,000 emails. I'll copy the ones that are relevant into another mailbox and then we used to print these. Sometimes hundreds of pages. These then needed sections redacting by the Head's secretary and then we'd plonk the whole phone-directory sized ream of paper right down in front of the enquirer. Nowadays though the admin team have some sort of redacting plugin thing they use. I forget what it is but no printing for me anymore. I *think* I am right in saying though that whatever SAR request you get, you are under no obligation to provide it in any specific format. So the world is your oyster in that respect; whatever ends up being most convenient. I just can't conceive of any better method of doing it. The law obliges us so we have to of course, but there's no search terms I can enter which are "emails a bit like bullying and for this kid" I can only do "firstname surname bullying" and then go from there.

It is true I have been taking payoffs from "big navi" but they told me they'd push me off the edge if I didn't co-operate.

Just got the info - want us to do parents evening appointments over video from teacher PCs. We're a Google school and no Microsoft online anything, and only got 20 days to order in 80-90 webcams and get things ready. Webcams I can get, however the general "wtf" exists around the rest of it. Is anyone else doing this? I'm looking at SchoolCloud perhaps. My tech suggests freebie Zoom works ok for this and for sending invites out ahead of time too but it's not something I know a lot of myself. Anyone got anything they'd recommend or avoid? Thanks everybody.

Okay, progress narrowing it down a bit. It's not that device. Because that's the gateway out of the subnet. Derp. HOWEVER I *HAVE* discovered it's a wireless device. By turning off the SSID that assigns addresses into that subnet, all goes away and all is well; the BAD_ADDRESS-es don't come back in with that off. The sleuthery continues...

Hi all - yes I think from the title we'd all assume rogue DHCP server. And I do also but there is oddness... So, get in and a few folks report they can't log on. Not unusual after half term (cables and mischief) but leads me to check DHCP and I see the scope they're all in has multiple "BAD_ADDRESS" entries in it. It does appear to be limited to this one scope/subnet exclusively. Turn off one of the DHCP servers, delete the BAD_ADDRESS entries, all return in moments. Do the same with the other DHCP server, same thing. So at this point, it's not a problem tied to or from a specific DHCP server. Wiresharking gives me very very little, but maybe something. I run that from one of the DHCP servers with dhcp.option.type == 53 and I keep seeing an IP address that's pinging, but not showing up in DHCP. Wireshark also gives me the MAC address of this device I'm now a little suspicious of. Could be a red herring, could be not. Anyways, go onto my network management VM thing and run the ProCurve Manager suite which lets me find out what port on what switch a device is connected to, and I can search for which MAC address is plugged into any given port on any switch; as in, if the MAC address I type in is plugged into the infrastructure anywhere, this'll sniff it out. Usually, typing in the MAC address will (predictably) bring up a single switch IP, and a single port. However, if I type in THIS MAC address that I have suspicions about, I get a huge list of results that are (quite frankly) bananas. Multiple switch IPs and ports are listed. Core switch and firewall among them. I have no idea what this is telling but I do think this is integral to the problem and at this stage I need a hand. Has anyone got any idea at all how to proceed? Thanks everybody.

Gosh I don't know how you made that but you're a genius. Thank you so much it's perfect!

It is done and I am grateful. Now off to find out who Katy is and why she would need socks...

WINNER! Oh my word now I can finally sleep, wash and function. And also learn my shapes. Thank you thank you. Name charity?

And it's absolutely DOING MY HEAD IN now. Please please don't ask me why but this mad memory crept up on me, and for the past few days I've been desperately trying to find out what this was. I used to love it so much I'd choke on my fish fingers. Of the very little I can remember there were three of them. They were on a space ship. There was a lady called Stella in it and a robot called Hudson. I don't remember what the guy was called. The robot looked a bit like small triangular dalek thing, bit like a tall slice of silver cake that moved around. Was called something like "Working it out Together" maybe? I don't know. And it is driving me mental. Please help. :/ £5 to the charity of your choice if you can get me the name of it and free me from this mania.

Hi all, I've dug the following out and it almost does what I need: #// Start of script #// Get year and month for csv export file $DateTime = Get-Date -f "yyyy-MM" #// Set CSV file name $CSVFile = "C:\directoryemails\adgroups"+$DateTime+".csv" #// Create emy array for CSV data $CSVOutput = @() #// Get all AD groups in the domain $ADGroups = Get-ADGroup -Filter * #// Set progress bar variables $i=0 $tot = $ADGroups.count foreach ($ADGroup in $ADGroups) { #// Set up progress bar $i++ $status = "{0:N0}" -f ($i / $tot * 100) Write-Progress -Activity "Exporting AD Groups" -status "Processing Group $i of $tot : $status% Completed" -PercentComplete ($i / $tot * 100) #// Ensure Members variable is empty $Members = "" #// Get group members which are also groups and add to string $MembersArr = Get-ADGroup -filter {Name -eq $ADGroup.Name} | Get-ADGroupMember | select Name if ($MembersArr) { foreach ($Member in $MembersArr) { $Members = $Members + "," + $Member.Name } $Members = $Members.Substring(1,($Members.Length) -1) } #// Set up hash table and add values $HashTab = $NULL $HashTab = [ordered]@{ "Name" = $ADGroup.Name "Category" = $ADGroup.GroupCategory "Scope" = $ADGroup.GroupScope "Members" = $Members } #// Add hash table to CSV data array $CSVOutput += New-Object PSObject -Property $HashTab } #// Export to CSV files $CSVOutput | Sort-Object Name | Export-Csv $CSVFile -NoTypeInformation #// End of script This will spit out a list of group name, category (security/distribution), scope (local/global) and members. I'd like to make some changes, which would be: - Omit groups with no email address - Add in the group's email address - (Tasty option) append "mailto" (make clickable for the sake of emailing) the email field - (Tasty option) put in a section which will give me the option of removing a group/line from the .csv file should I want. Say if I wanted to make the members invisible. Anyone who knows this wizardry I'll be very grateful for any help. Thanks for reading.

Gosh no I REALLY would rather not and just have a web version, if there is. If there isn't and I've no choice then I've no choice I guess. Meeting due in 2 minutes and really nothing I can do? No web version at all?

Hi everyone, This one has crept up on me and admittedly I know very little about it but been ambushed by excitable folks wanting Microsoft Teams meetings in two minutes and needing to log in. Is there a way to use MS Teams without a Microsoft login? Is there just a web version? Please let me know if so. If not *big gulp here* do I need to go Office 365 somehow to get this working for staff? Dreading the answers tbh but thanks anyone who can help out.

Could be a bit similar to what I'm seeing. A few users randomly a few times a week losing theirs. The issue came in with W10 and didn't affect W7 clients and nothing in the back end changed. At this point thinking it's just down to W10 being dreadful. :/