Test Layout

Last week I taught a Novell class for what I think is the last time. It was an eDirectory course for some guys in Vancouver. Overall fun class with good students. However, with limited market share and consequently limited training opportunities, I don't think it is worth my while to update my certs to teach the newer content. I remember when...... about 70% of organizations used Novell NetWare file and print services were all that were expected of a server NetWare was more stable than Windows (by a lot) GroupWise had reasonable market share Microsoft was the underdog for server side computing IPX/SPX meant I didn't really need to understand the network configuration Goodbye NetWare, eDirectory, and GroupWise. It was fun while it lasted. SUSE I hardly knew you.

I'm in Vancouver teaching a course this week and have my BlackBerry along for the ride. In downtown Vancouver, data support for an MTS Blackberry is very spotty. What I mean is that it sucks. Right now, my data synchronization for e-mail and even BlackBerry messenger is sporatic at best. Data connectivity is for brief periods of time every hour, two hours, or even four hours. Occasionally, disabling my connections and reenabling them will trigger the data to go on again. Removing and reinstalling the battery sometimes triggers it as well. If I came here often, I'd need to look at a different provider....Or an iPhone.

One of our clients uses a Java-based financial app that loads from a web page. As part of resolving another issue, I removed and reinstalled Java from the workstation. It never occurred to me that I should test the financial app because it had not given me problems in the past when I applied updates. Also, I don't have a logon for that app because it would give me access to the data related to their customers. Anyway, on Monday morning I get a polite call telling me that the app is not working. This app requires the user to accept a certificate from the vendor the first time it is run, and I assumed that the user accidentally said no to accepting it. So, I took remote control and it definitely did not work. The error, complained about security in a roundabout and cryptic way. After some testing and tweaking, no fix. Later when doing some research (ok, Google searches) I found out that this is a bug in the last two releases of Java for apps with certain characteristics. I had insta...

Sometimes we have multiple computers in location that we want direct RDP access to. The simplest solution is to change the port that RDP is listening on. This article has the necessary registry key: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759 Yesterday I did this on our new Windows 2008 e-mail server to allow outside access, but could not connect to the new port number or the old port number. It turns out that Windows Firewall was the culprit. I assumed that the Windows firewall rule would be hooked in to the service executable. However, there is a rule with a hard coded TCP port instead. So, when you change the RDP port number, remember to create a new incoming rule that allows that port.

Over the last few days I've been using Outlook Web access to read e-mail. A lot of the bulk mail messages I get have graphics in them. OWA uses https, be the graphic are using http. So, IE8 gives you a warning asking: Do you want to veiw only the webpage content that was delivered securely? My instinct is to hit the Yes button to show the graphics. However, you need to select No. However, you can disable this warning. The steps are located here: http://blog.httpwatch.com/2009/04/23/fixing-the-ie-8-warning-do-you-want-to-view-only-the-webpage-content-that-was-delivered-securely/

I won't pretend to know the results of all the possible configuration options. However, I think that using links in the file system is a great way to expand space on an existing C: drive. I have one workstation that I do 90% of my work on. This computer has a lot of apps and a ton of data (no lectures about the home server please). My 250GB drive is almost out of space and I'd like to increase performance of my VMs. The MS courses use C:\Program Files\Microsoft Learning for the VMs. I don't have an option to move this. However, I can configure that path as a symbolic link to another location instead. So, my C:\Program Files\Microsoft Learning is now a link to V:\Microsoft Learning. This allows me to put all my VMs on a separate drive. If I get inspired later on, I may split the differencing drives from the base drives for even better disk performance. The MKLink command creates the links.

Two incidents recently drove home the importance of planning disaster recovery for me this week. One was a client. Sadly, the other was our server. First the client. Like many clients, this one is using a USB drive for backup of a computer that does peer-to-peer sharing on the network. All of their accounting data is on this computer as well as other files. After a period of time they stopped doing the backup. You know the excuses, none are good, but all of us start to slack off over time. So, the hard drive in this computer dies, no backup. We got lucky and after I moved the drive to a different computer, it was readable, and we got the data. But it was coming up as a hardware failure in diagnostics. Now for our server. It is located in a basement. The water main in the basement broke and filled the basement with 6 feet of water. We did have a backup, but it was with the server. So, always do an offsite backup. Fortunately for us, all we lost was some configuration documentation and ...