Technology
IPFire Initial Setup
Sep 1st
Recently, I’ve changed my router setup to IPFire. Overall its a pretty good software router minus a few shortcomings.
Overall the installation is pretty painless. Download the ISO from their website and follow the onscreen instructions.
Keep in mind about the network colors during the setup.
Red = Internet
Green = Local LAN
Blue = Wireless
Orage = DMZ
I am sure later on you can go through and change the settings through the command line later should you need to change them, but for me they are hidden away pretty well. Also changing the configuration in one place might not be enough. I recommend to set up the zones correctly the first time during the install to save a lot of unnecessary pain.
Then open up a web browser and go to https://<router IP address>:444 Which will bring you to the login prompt. Enter in the password that you registered during the setup process. I’ll post more information about specific configurations as I come across it.
Note: For those using a PPPoE connection with static IPs, the system isn’t able to recognize it at this time. The solution is to setup the PPPoE connection as usual. Once connected, manually enter the link https://<router IP address>:444/cgi-bin/aliases.cgi From here you can enter in all of your additional static IP address, then from the firewall tab setup your port forwarding.
IPFire Aliasing Setup
Userenv and Outlook Connection Error
Nov 19th
There was a problem with a client PC today using Windows XP and Office 2007.
Outlook 2007 was reporting the Exchange server as Offline and would not reconnect to the Exchange server. Looking through the Eventlog, there was a Userenv error of 1517. This probably had a part in causing the system to not connect correctly to the Exchange server.
If you have a system that is experiencing a Userenv 1517 error:
Windows saved user <user name> registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user’s registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.
The resolution I found for this was to:
- Open the “Active Directory Users and Computers”
- Locate the “Computer” object and reset it.
- Remove the PC from the domain.
- Add the PC back into the domain.
This seemed to fix the Userenv error.
Once this was fixed, there was still the Outlook Connection Error on the same account with different PCs. With the following error:
Cannot open your default email-folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folder with your offline folder files.
The steps I took to resolve this were:
- Deleting the account from the Control Panel > Mail area .
- Open the folder where the OST/PST files are stored and remove all files but the PSTs. (You can move the OST file to another location if you do not want to delete it quite yet).
- I am not sure if this helped but I also ran the command “outlook.exe /cleanprofile” (For 2007)
- Then I opened the dysfunctional account in the Webmail system.
- (The trickiest part?) Refresh the webmail and let it talk to the Exchange server for a bit. In my case it was about 5 minutes. Right after logging into webmail and then trying to run Outlook again still generated the same error.
- After waiting for a short while, restarting Outlook worked again and the user could access mail again.
Why I had to log into webmail and wait I really don’t know. But it seemed to fix whatever connection/sync problems the user was having.
Hope this helps anyone that might encounter the same problem.
wubi for the Ubuntu curious Windows user
Oct 5th
wubi is an open source software overlay for ubuntu. It allows you to test out Ubuntu without having to leave your Windows environment to see what everyone is talking about. I think its a great way to let casual users test out the OS without having to commit a whole lot of time to get it running. Just start, click, add a bit of information, then wait. Come back and you have a fully running ubuntu system for you. If you want to recomment it to friends burn them a CD or tell them to get it from the wubi installer site.
Windows Server 2008 ‘The Last 32-bit Operating System’
Jun 16th
Apparently Windows Server 2008 will be the last Microsoft server to support 32bit architecture. And thank goodness too. Hopefully this will finally force developers of software to start making more 64bit drivers and applications in general. I have tried both the Windows XP 64bit and Windows Vista 64bit only to wind up with grief because some application I used to use, or some piece of hardware (printers!) did not have the 64 bit driver. How annoying is that. And the best part of it was, that I read somewhere sorry don’t remember the link, but vendors said that Windows XP 64bit wasn’t “official” in their eyes and thus did not merit developing drivers for it. What lies… sigh. Anyways, you can read more about it here.
15 Geekiest Vacations
Jun 15th
From museums to an odyssey to bars and wars, there is everything here for the Geek (nerd?) in you to do when you want to go on a vacation. Unfortunately, the best thing that I could think of doing would be going to the beach but thats me. Probably closest to number 2. Anyways, take a look here its a fun read.
Internet falters after 500 tonnes of underwater fibre-optic cable stolen
May 30th
The Internet connections around Japan have been faltering as of late. With the recent earthquake in Taiwan that happened just after last Christmas slowing all of the connections. Another problem has taken its place as thieves try to make off with underwater fibre-optic cable. More can be read here on this link.
Intel Intros 3-Series Chipsets with FSB1333 and DDR3
May 21st
Tom’s Hardware Guide just came out with an article today that talks about the new ICH9 chipsets that will be coming out from Intel in the next few months. Overall, the article looks really good, and shows that the new chipset is quite fast. Even with minor tweaking they were able to clock the FSB up to 1900Mhz with no problem. Wow is that fast. I’m still here with my DDR-400 system chugging along and I thought that was reasonably fast. Looks like I might have to wait and see what happens here, especially when AMD brings out their quad-core systems and see which one stacks up better. My setup here needs another server soon though… Intel and AMD need to hurry up with these so the prices on the current things available can drop faster for me to buy!
Japan Wants to go Opensource
May 21st
The Japanese government wants to go open source, as a way to rely less on a single vendor IT software infrastructure. And plenty of vendors are lining up to help make this happen.
Japanese MAGLEV Train
May 21st
Wow, this is fast. If you forward to about 5 minutes into the video you can see the good part where the train wooshes by and also listen to the cool sound that it makes as well. The max this train gets in the video I can see is 500km/h, but apparently it can top out at 512km/h. But when you’re traveling that fast, who cares about the other 12km/h?
Seriously, what self-respecting IT admin would believe this?
May 21st
Current Mood:
Alarmed
Oh my, they did it again!!! Microsoft is out and about again to start bashing on Linux. Here ala this image:
The website goes on to talk about vendors that switched to/use Windows server in their operating environments. And then also the “facts” on why Windows server should be your choice for a server OS. For me, I suppose that I *must* get it that way I can spend thousands of dollars on an OS that hogs so much resources, I need to get a new computer to support it, and then again more money and resources for it as well. The only good thing might be the Active Directory support, but there are other ways around that as well. LDAP and the sort. I hope the person in the stock photo got paid a lot to have his picture put next to that text.
Oh and I know how to answer their question as well:
“Why do companies that try Linux switch back to Windows server?”
The answer is, because the company hired some person who they thought were supposed to know about computers because they seemed old and mature on the outside, rather than hiring a young person who might be suspiciously too calm for what the job requires. So, instead of hiring someone with knowledge and skill they hire someone with the minimum amount of capacity and knowledge to be able to outsource this work to someone who prefers Windows server, because they can then outsource that work to someone else and so on. I mean that graphical manual to tell me how to add a user to my AD domain controller is so important. Without it I would be lost…. mmm… LOST, only three more days or so. But that is another topic.
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