Computer Pooh

It is earth day, and I am sure there will be plenty of blogs and companies out there who will focus on how to reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and the like. So I thought I would be a little different today.

I am suggesting that all you geeks out there put your computer and your large brain to work and actually help our fellow man. You can do this by actually having some fun yourself and improving your vocabulary. Yes, in addition to feeling good about yourself for helping someone else, you are also helping yourself.

Go on over to FreeRice and fill up as many bowls as you can by guessing. . .I mean choosing the correct word. If you find that you have been extra blessed this year, or just have some spare money sitting around, give sponsorship a try.

There are many people throughout the world who exist on a bowl of rice a day. Take this even further and try this for a week yourself.

Today I needed to help one of my users get data from our customer management db on a unix box to an excel doc she could then browse and send on to the customer. Here are the steps involved, which I found on my own (again…right now the small victories count)
1. log into Manager and 4bl
2. Type RUN”QUERY” and hit enter
3. Enter MANAGR or the db name and volume
4. type in CLEAR FIND SHIP-TO FOR ALL and hit enter
5. type in SORT CUST-NUM,BRANCH
6. type in FILE filename (where “filename” is the new name for your file.)
7. type in the following and hit enter
EXPORT CUST-NAME,NAME,SHIP-NAME,SHIP-ADDR(1),SHIP-ADDR(2),SHIP-CITY,SHIP-STATE,SHIP-ZIP
8. Exit the program

To copy to a floppy:
1. Put a floppy disk in the Manager Server
2. In Manager, hit CTRL T to get a QNX prompt
3. type in cp /4BL/filename /dos/a/filename.txt (use your filename)

Then just open the file in Excel on your desktop to edit out the customer names you do not need.

It has been a long week, yet I believe a productive one. This week marks my 3 month anniversary at the new company. Therefore, a review was setup. On that very same day, I decided to add some Windows network monitoring components to our main server, and uninstall every other Windows component. Yes, disaster ensued.

It will be a long time before I forget the sheer terror. . .yes that is the word I have been searching for all week. . I felt pure. . full-blown terror as soon as I realized what I had done. . .uninstalled IIS from an Exchange Server. I knew immediately that I was in really deep do-do. . .and had no idea what to do.

To make a long story short. . .a friend walked me through it. What had to be done was that IIS had to be completely removed and then reinstalled. After that, we found that the Exchange Routing Engine Service would not start, so a reinstall of Exchange and the most recent service pack was necessary (based on KB323672). After an intense 3 hours, all was back to normal for the most part.

I learned much from this experience. . .
1. Good friends really are there for you at all times, and it is our job to do all we can to keep them.
2. Most testing and “playing” with servers should really not be done on production boxes.
3. Most mistakes can be recovered from.
4. Good bosses, like good friends are really hard to find. Once you find one that gets it, do all you can to keep them happy with you and your work.

Follow-up Issues

I now get the following error on my Exchange Server:
MS ExchangeMTA
Event ID 9318
An RPC communications error occurred. Unable to bind over RPC. Locality Table (LTAB) indes: 233, Windows 2000/MTA error code: 9297. Comms error 9297, Bind error 9297, Remote Server Name S4IMAGE [MAIN BASE 1 500%10] (14)

Exchange Distribution Lists
To allow employees to send to the global distribution list here, the steps are as follows (and I figured this out all on my own):

Under the domain, go to the Distribution lists and look for the one called All S4 employees. Right click and go to properties. On the Exchange General tab at the bottom there is setting about Message Restrictions where you can allow all or some or none to send from the list.

Blackberry Fun
It seems that since the patches for DST have been implemented, folks here can’t send email via their BlackBerries.

From different postings on the web, it seems that the besadmin account has to have “send as” permissions in order for users to send via their mobile devices, so we added that in for my account and that did the trick. I am now able to send via my Blackberry, wooohooo. It is a good thing to go home with today. . . I will take even the tiny victories at this point!

Things to take from this:
1. Try to find fixes myself, it was a simple Google search that brought this solution.
2. Go with my gut and what makes sense when seeking solutions.

Happy Friday!

Switches

Today we decided to upgrade all of our switches here at S4. We have one HP PC 4000 series and two HP PC 2800 series.

We had to setup our PCs as TFTP servers first, then copied the old config files
(put 192.168.my.ip CONFIG annettecfg) then followed the instructions to download a new OS through the Telnet session to the switch. We have much to figure out yet, but it is amazing how
things start to make sense once the pegs begin to line up.

Also, the date was way off when telneting in, so I changed the Time Sync to SNTP, Unicast, 129.6.15.28, server version 3, 720 second intervals, and manual IP Config.

Blackberry Item

I did also find the other day that in order to synchronize calendar items in the Blackberrys here, we have to go into the calendar, click on the scroll button, go down to the second-to-last item on the menu there and choose “Options.” The last item there is “Wireless Synchronization:” and that must say “Yes.”

As we switch over to a BES, there are lots of questions right now about how to do things on the Blackberrys.

Move Icons
To move icons on the screen around, click on the button to get numbers and the scroll button at the same time to get a menu to move or hide or show all. Once you have chosen to move the icon, scroll to where you want, and click the scroll button again to release the icon. You can use this same menu to hide certain icons as well.

Add Bluetooth Device
Go into the Options menu and look for “Blackberry.” Choose that, and once in the menu, push in the scrolling button to get a menu, and from there you simply choose to “Add a device.” NOTE: You will have to have the bluetooth device on and in range of the Blackberry.

Email Quickie

Want to keep this tip from Lifehacker.com handy, so up it goes:
1. Use Alt + Tab to switch to Outlook
2. To get to the mail folder, click Ctrl + Shift + M to open a new message, or just Ctrl + N if
already in your in folder.
3. Type in your information or part and hit Ctrl + K.
4. Tab through
5. Spell check by using F7
6. To send, Ctrl + Enter

Plans. . .

General George S. Patton said. . .
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect
plan executed next week.”

A good thing for a perfectionist like myself to keep in mind. The plan doesn’t have to be perfect, and I don’t need to know every nuance of a situation before I begin workng on something. I just need to make a plan that is reasonable and then execute it well.

Switches

We are trying to upgrade our network, at least for the graphics department, so I am looking into switch options. It seems we have a GB connection from the graphics server to our switch there, and have cat6 cables running from the switch to each MAC with GB NICs. But you probably already guessed it, our switch is only 10/100!! Who the heck thought that was a good idea? I guess the good news is that a managed switch from HP is only about $350 which is probably in our budget.

I have been reading about the differences between a managed and an unmanaged switch. It seems that the managed switch just has an interface that allows you to setup features and to well. . .manage the connections. An unmanaged switch is a device that automatically detects and directs traffic.

Changes

I don’t know where else to keep changes I make to the servers, so I am going to do so here. I need to speed up the connection between our 2003 server and the macs in graphics, so I made a change to the local security settings:

Local Security Settings -> Security Options -> Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always).

Double-click on it and set to “Disabled”. Then close the app and reboot the server.

DNSLint

I used this today for the first time on the main server. I have a log file that was generated that I need to go over, but here is what I ran:

dnslint /d (ipnumber of chi server) /s (AD server number)