Month: February 2005

Publishing a TCP/IP Printer behind ISA Server

Publishing a TCP/IP Printer behind ISA Server

This procedure works but I needed some additional steps to make it work since I use a QMS printer.

  1. QMS printers use port 35 rather than 9100. The documentation is sparse in this area but I think this is right.
  2. I could not make the printer work with the Crown printer port installation so I added a TCP/IP port using the M$ wizard and customized it to use port 35 rather than 9100. Then I told the driver to use the tcp/ip port I just created.

Since both of my son’s PC sit outside the ISA firewall this should allow him to handle his own printing needs. Since I do not need internet access to the printer, the dsl router/firewall will continue to block port 35.

Enforcing shutdowns for my son

This has proved quite a fun challenge. My son has a problem playing video games late at night. We have asked nicely multiple times but it has not worked. I tried using AD to enforce it but that didn’t work since he doesn’t care about the server or the internet. My next tactic was to automatically shut the PC down using a scheduled task. That worked up till he figured out that he could play longer if he switched to a new time zone. My new trick is to change his timezone back to EST every ten minutes using:

Control.exe TIMEDATE.CPL,,/Z Eastern Standard Time

I doubt this will be the final solution but I can’t wait to hear his voice when his PC starts shutting down on him after he knows he has just changed it to GMT.

Upgraded template

I cannot leave some things alone. Today I went ahead and created a new template based on the default theme. It was easier than figuring out how to convert my old template into a theme. Here was my process:

  1. Copied the default theme directory into a new directory called mytheme
  2. Copied my header image into the images directory into the new theme directory and renamed it personalheader.jpg.
  3. Modified the header.php file to remove the comments around the statement that adds the personalheader.jpg to the css and changed the image position to bottom.
  4. Modified the style.css to change the h1 element to use a smaller font, remove the center text alignment, and move it lower in the box(i.e. add more padding).
  5. Finally I cludged a margin for h1 element by adding a   to the blog title. I tried changing the css to get this effect but my changes moved the background image and not the h1 element.

Upgrading to WordPress 1.5

Well, I finally got around to upgrading to 1.5. Despite my misgivings I used cPanel to upgrade. Everything kind of worked. The site works with the default themes but my initial efforts to transform my old template to a new theme was a total bust(i.e. blank screen). So for the time being I am going to use the default 1.5 theme until I can get around to figuring out what I want to do with the old template/css.

Oops! Caught by the Junk Mail Filter

Yesterday I got wound up in what I thought was a small task. I found a perl script that checks whether a web site is up. If the check returns an error message, it sends you an email. I thought that this might be a better way to alert me when one of my sites is down. I can schedule it to run daily. Everything worked fine except that I was not getting my email. I fiddled and fiddled with it. I downloaded blat thinking I was having a perl SMTP problem but blat exhibited the same problem. I had about given up on it when I checked my Junk Mail folder in Outlook today. I found my emails. The Junk Mail filter had determined that the email address was a junk mail sender.

A good use for Sharepoint companyweb

Yesterday I stored a QuickBooks backup for our Habitat affiliate on my internal companyweb website. I then went into the office and downloaded the file using the secure version of the website that is accessible from the internet. I restored the company file, made my changes, backed up the company file, and uploaded the file to the secure site. I have been making a lot of changes so I can finalize my monthly reports. The changes to the QuickBooks reports are interesting but I digress. I have been able to get more work done by working from home. I thought about using a USB flash drive but Yahoo Briefcase was pretty easy. The drawbacks is that Yahoo Briefcase is not as secure as my website and it has an upload limit. Now to check out webfolder encryption.

phpWebSite/Mysql problem

One of my websites had a corrupt database two days ago. When I went to cPanel to check and repair it, the process never completed. I ended up submitting a trouble ticket to
bluehost.com. They replied in a couple of hours and offered to restore the database from the weekly backup. I told them to go ahead and restore while I downloaded the backup. The site is fairly static for the last couple of weeks so I am sure I did not lose any data. The site is back up but I need to do some investigation work on why mysql got corrupted in the first place. I have occasionally had this problem with this site but I always was able to fix the problem using the repair facility. I think I will expedite the move to phpWebSite 10.0.

RE: Announcing WordPress 1.5

(This is my favorite part of what I do.) To the 12,126 of you who have already downloaded WordPress 1.5, congrats for being on the ball. We had a “soft launch” on Monday the 14th while we worked out some infrastructure issues and we’re now very ready to announce WordPress 1.5 to the world. This release is named “Strayhorn” in honor of Billy Strayhorn the pianist and sublime composer who worked closely with Duke Ellington and wrote tunes like “Take the A Train” and “Lush Life.” We thought he was perfect to represent the power and elegance of this release, which has been under intense development and testing the past few months.

If you’re ready to get right to the meat, go download WordPress and don’t forget to read the installation or upgrade instructions. If you’d like to know more about the release, please make yourself comfortable and read on, we’ve got a lot to share.

[Via WordPress Development Blog]

Soon I wil be upgrading this site. From the upgrade instructions I should probably upgrade manually rather than through cPanel.
Continue reading “RE: Announcing WordPress 1.5”

DynDNS Updater – Kana Solution

Kana Solution

I installed this program on my workstation and got it to check my Netgear router status page for the current IP I have been assigned. So far, so good!

How to publish http://Companyweb to the Internet by using ISA Server 2000 on a server that is running Windows Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition

How to publish http://Companyweb to the Internet by using ISA Server 2000 on a server that is running Windows Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition

SUMMARY

This article describes how to publish the company’s internal Web site (http://Companyweb) to the Internet by using Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000 on a server that is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition, so that external clients can access http://Companyweb directly by using https://FQDN:444, where FQDN is the fully qualified domain name of the server that is running Windows Small Business Server 2003. Alternatively, external clients can access http://Companyweb from the Remote Web Workplace feature on the SBS 2003 server by using https://FQDN/remote.

I finally got around to doing this today. The instructions worked for me. Remember to open the port on the hardware firewall and forward that port to the server.

Saving Toner and money

I just bought another toner cyan cartridge for my color laser for $140 less a $20 rebate. I think I need a magenta cartridge, too. I do not know why it took me so long to think of this but I changed the default options for the printer to print using black and white. When I want to print in color I can change the option to print in color.

Fixed my Blackberry SMTP problem

After upgrading to the latest version of the Blackberry OS I was testing out several features and I found I could not send email from my Blackberry. It said my service was blocked. I do not send email from my Blackberry very often but I would like that option to work if I needed to use it so I called T-Mobile support yesterday. They recommended that I modify my installation since I should be using the webclient access rather than the enterprise access. That fixed other problems I was seeing. When she asked me to go into the service book and remove the desktop CMIME that fixed the service blocked problem.

Oops! I do know enough about Active Directory to turn off my son’s PC at 11pm

Okay, here’s the problem. My son likes to play games on PC to excess. I asked him several times to restrict his game playing since he was avoiding homework and the late nights are disrupting his sleep time. He got a detention for falling asleep in French. He gave me his word that he would fix his problem. I reminded him that if he could not exhibit the discipline required to fix this problem that I would help him. Since he is running W2K and is using a login for our local SBS network I could enforce logoff times for school nights. He thinks he is pretty smart about computers but he did not see that one coming. Heh! Heh! My son has always been pretty smart about the boundaries I set up for him and my willingness to enforce boundaries. Now we can move on to other problems.

EFS on SBS2K3 & WinXP

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start playing around with the encrypting file system(EFS) that Microsoft provides with W2K and WinXP. I am not sure whether I got the idea from Susan Bradley post, < a xhref=”The Case of the Stolen ….well anything!“. She wrote her post in response to an article she had recently read a Microsoft article on encryption, The Case of the Stolen Laptop: Mitigating the Threats of Equipment Theft — TechNet Column – Security Management – February 2005. Until I started playing with EFS I avoided it like the plague because I did not see a business use for me and the risks from a mistake could be severe. When I finally realized that it is probably the best and easiest strategy for protecting sensitive data for both laptops and desktops. I finally bought in. The desktop benefits eluded me for a long time. The additional benefits from encryption to enhance the security around current access is subtle but straight forward. Even more subtle is the long term benefit from avoiding future unintended access when you want to dispose/reuse a disk drive or if the equipment is stolen. Now that I had settled in my mind that it was a good practice, I had to figure out how to get from here to there.

After my initial testing I was pretty happy with the results. Encryption and decryption was transparent. About a week later I decided I should backup the file recovery certificate and file recovery agent certificate and that’s when I found a couple of problems. The recovery agent could not be backed up properly. Things had gotten mucked up when I had said no to installing the certificate services during the SBS2K3. Since I am paranoid about really making a mess with encryption:

  1. I decrypted all my folders and files.
  2. Installed certificate services.
  3. Installed a new certificate for the Administrator and the recovery agent for the domain.
  4. Installed a new certificate for my workstation.
  5. Deleted the old certificates for the administrator and my workstation.
  6. Rebooted.

I found that I needed EFSinfo.exe to verify the EFS setup so I installed the WinXP support tools. Everything seems to be working and I have backups of the recovery certificates. Nothing has really changed when you look or use the encrypted folders and files in Explorer. You need EFSinfo to see the changes but I now have a warm, fuzzy feeling I can recover files in case of a disaster.

Poor Man’s Installatin(cont.)

Today I tried to store Knoppix image using the 2.6.9 kernel and it said /dev/hda1 was not mounted. I also found out that the k3b utility I was using to burn cd’s would hang when using the 2.6.9 kernel and not when using the 2.4.27 kernel It would be nice to run 2.6 but 2.4 works. So I have a 2.4 poor man’s install with a persistent home that works. K3B is clunky in 2.4.27 but it does work. I read that a new Knoppix version is coming out in a month so I am done. I played a litttle bit with Helix. It uses Knoppix 3.4 as its base and adds some forensic and disaster recovery software. Helix might be a useful tool to have in the bag.

Poor Man’s Installation of Knoppix 3.7 and CD-ROM problems

I was reading my email yesterday and I saw a review of Knoppix hacks. One of the hacks was the Poor Man’s Installation of Knoppix. I decided to give it a try. With a little more research I found a little more detailed version of the hack that was titled, Poor Man’s installation. Now my situation is slightly complicated due to an old CD-ROM that is used for booting. I have a much newer DVD/CD-RW writer but it is not used for booting. A couple of months ago I found out that my old CD-ROM drive locks up the Knoppix boot process when DMA gets enabled and boot process tries to access it. Knoppix automagically enables DMA on it so I had to use a cheatcode to disable the DMA. This was an unsatisfactory solution since it disabled DMA on all drives and this resulted in quite a performance hit. The other problem is that the CD-ROM does not like all CD-RW disks. My Ubuntu disk worked. My Knoppix 3.7 did not work.

By accident I left the Knoppix 3.7 CD-RW in the CD-RW reader and the CDR version of Knoppix 3.6 in the CD-ROM reader. When I booted and something interesting happened. It booted from the CDR(Knoppix 3.6) and then mounted Knoppix 3.7 on the CD-RW since it found it first. My CD-RW likes DMA so instead of locking up it proceeded to continue with the boot process off of the CD-RW(Knoppix 3.7). This worked because I was booting using the 2.4 kernel. It kind of worked with the 2.6 kernel but there were problems. After storing a Knoppix image(2.4) on /dev/hda1 I found that I could boot without specifying a “fromhd=” cheatcode! In fact I recommend this. In my setup Knoppix scans my hardrives first so the boot delay is pretty minimal. If you specify the wrong location it will dump you down into a restricted kernel and stop the boot process. Now the kernel used to boot with and the kernel image on the disk must use the same Linux kernel version for this to work.

Okay, one problem was solved. The next problem was creating a CDR version of the boot disk for my funky CD-ROM reader. For some reason I created a bad CDR version using CD Creator under XP. So I went into Knoppix and created a CDR version there. To give it the best chance at working, I restricted the write speed down to 4x and told it to verify. It took a long time to copy and verify but it works. Now I can boot the 2.6 kernel cleanly from the CDR. So now I am in the process of going back and re-creating the persistent home and a kernel 2.6 image.

The main reason I am going through this process is so that I can use Ethereal, Nessus, and QTparted in Linux. I still have this desire to see which ports are used by America’s Army and which ports are getting through my ISA firewall. Sometime in the future I will probably check out Linux virus checking. I actually learned some useful information about burning and reading CDR disks. If I can boot it using my funky CDR reader, I suspect the CD is bootable on most PCs.

Review: RSS Bandit v1.3.x (Wolverine) Beta Installer Available

We are now feature complete for the next release of RSS Bandit. Interested users can download it at http://rssbandit.sourceforge.net/. All bugs specific to the previous alpha release have been fixed. The next steps for us are finish working on documentation, translations and fixing any bugs that are reported during the beta with the intention of shipping a final release in the next two weeks. (1 comments)

[Via SourceForge.net: SF.net Project News: RSS Bandit]

Okay, I am a fan of RSS Bandit so this review is a little biased. This is my primary RSS reader and I started using it early last year so I have some experience with it. It basically has all the features all the other readers have and a few extra features that I use regularly. I think it started out looking a lot like SharpReader but it appears to diverged and added more features that I like. Since it is a SourceForge project I consider that a plus. In this new release the features I have started using are:

  1. Newspaper view is a handy way to skim the headlines. This view has improved from the alpha release to include all feeds in a category. The format of the newspaper view is visually appealing without much overhead. I have actually started reading Boing Boing since the newspaper view has made it so convient.
  2. I like the option to “Mark All Items as Read on Exiting a Feed”.

Those two features have made my RSS reading a lot more efficient. Some old features I like that may or may not appear in other readers.

  1. Interface to w.bloggar
  2. Subscribe in default aggregator option in IE
  3. Tabbed views

Dr Dave’s Blog » Introducing Spam Karma

Dr Dave’s Blog » Introducing Spam Karma

Spam Karma works by running every new comment through a battery of filters and checks. Each of which increase or decrease the comment’s Karma’ value. Depending on the final score, the comment is either:

  • Approved
  • Discarded silently as spam (no email is sent to you, unless you specifically require it, but a digest is sent to you every X spams deleted).
  • Placed in Moderation mode. With the possibility for the commenter to auto-moderate his own comment by proving he’s not a spammer (by filling a Captcha or checking a confirmation email).
  • This whole process insures (by order of priority):
    1. No deleted false positive (bad bad bad).
    2. Extremely few moderated false positives (annoying): uses Captcha and email auto-moderation to keep these at a minimum.
    3. No published spam.
    4. very little spam held in moderation (must be destroyed directly: really annoying to have to moderate it).

Further more, Spam Karma works in an intelligent way to automatically update its filtering database and grow stronger with each spam it catches…

In short: blocks spam with no unnecessary annoyance, for you or your visitors. The way it should be.

I decided to give this comment spam killer for WordPress after Kitten’s latest version decided to stop working. So far so good! 🙂

RE: Notepad++ v2.7 released

Notepad++ is a free (under the GPL license) source code editor which supports several programming languages under Windows environment. It’s also a lightweight replacement of Notepad.

The version 2.7 contains several new features and fixed bugs,

[Via SourceForge.net: Front page news]

This looked like an easy thing to test so I downloaded it to compare it to my current favorite, Jedit. I have to say that I was impressed with the speed it loads. The interface is nice and clean. It has tabs, syntax highlighting and folding. In general it is pretty slick and faster than Jedit. I think I will give this guy an extended tryout.

RE: OS 4.0 Released for 7100t

T-Mobile users with the 7100t can upgrade their handhelds from 3.8 to 4.0.

Click Here To Upgrade

[Via Blackberry Cool]

I took a trip on the wild side and upgraded my Blackberry to 4.0. It works but…I am having problems sending emails. I don’t use this feature but in testing it I found out that it does not work I tried resending the service book but it does not appear as a message so I am not sure it was sent. I also had to re-enter my speed dials and the info in Berry411. I guess I will have to call support to get the email sending workiing. I know they have changed stuff but they did not change anything I am enterested in. My #1 feature I would like is being able to read html email.