EduGeek North West Christmas Gathering

Yesterday was the Christmas Gathering for EduGeek members in the North West... organised by Dos_Box himself!

We had hoped for a larger turnout, however only 4 of us made an appearance. Despite this pitiful showing, a good time was had by all with drinking and a nice curry.

Nagios Update

OK... Chris pointed out that I am a numpty... spotting that I hadn't installed a VRML plugin into my browser. Plugin installed, I can now view the 3D status map... not that it's very exciting!

I have also just found out why my icons were missing. For some reason they weren't in the website folder! This is very strange because I remember putting them there and I have even changed the permissions on them. :-S All fixed now though :-D

I spent an hour or two today splitting my config files into template-based versions. This was easy enough to do but it was very time consuming - I'm monitoring a lot of services and hosts! What this should mean, is that I can more easily add new hosts and service checks to existing hosts.

All that remains is to complete the NRPE_NT installation on the remaining servers and possibly passive SNMP trap checks for devices like the SAN and Citrix which don't respond to SNMP get commands.

Oh yeah... I need to fix the mail on that box so that it emails me properly ;-)

VPNs and Nagios

This last week, I have mostly been playing with the new VPN that CLEO have set up for me. After much argument, trying to tell them that the ACLs were wrong, they finally caved and admitted it!

Since then I have been playing with my Nagios box in the evenings - sad I know...

I have uninstalled the installation of Nagios that I installed using the package in Debian Unstable in favour of compiling it myself. I found that the installation structions documented this quite well and barring a couple of minor problems it went on painlessly. I only need to fix the icons for the hosts and the 3D status map now.

I have re-installed all my old config files successfully too and can now process 'external commands' successfully (the main reason for switching to the compiled version).

Tonight's forray into Nagios has involved the setup of NRPE_NT. This involves installing a service on my Windows Servers so that plugins can be run when the check_nrpe plugin on the Nagios box polls them. This has allowed me to monitor disk usage, memory usage and CPU utilisation... items that should prove quite handy!

My next task will involve the installation of NRPE_NT onto the remaining 11 boxes, fixing the problems with images and splitting my config files into neat little template-based ones ;-) Maybe a job for the weekend?

I'll also post something about my trip to Edinburgh soon :-D

Ross Noble in Manchester

At the weekend I went to see Ross Noble at the Opera House in Manchester. We had rather good seats, 3 rows from the front of the circle, which allowed us to see all the hilarity unfold. Right from the outset, you could tell we were in for a treat... a short animation with dancing characters asking people not to make a noise and ensure that their telephones were switched off.

Mr Noble started by heckling the late comers and it just got funnier and funnier from there on. Skits about 'Cheeky Cheeky Muslims' (involving pearly-queen dancing), arse-faced children being bummed in the face by baboons and much more besides had us all in stitches!

For anybody who has the opportunity to see Ross Noble live, you MUST go. I cannot recommend it enough!

Where did I go?

Thanks to Chris for pointing out that my blog vanished!

Something bizzare appears to have happened to my Blogspot space... a quick republish and all was well. That will teach me for neglecting my blog I guess. :-D

It just gets better!

OK... when I just think I'm starting to make some inroads into my HUGE workload, the next problem crops up. The stoopid standalone licenses for Sibelius were registered by phone on Friday and I today enterred the magic numebrs into the machines... first machine i get to says "invalid registration code" - I tried every possible permeatation of spaces to no avail! The idiots at Sibelius have given me the wrong code!

Next up... the 30 wireless laptops have stopped talking to the network. I take all 28 out of the trolley (2 are dumped elsewhere at the moment) and find that the WPA authentication on ALL of them is buggered! I restarted the Bluesocket controller to see in a vain attempt to get it working again... fat chance! I knew that these things were going to make my life hell!

Then... the deputy head announces the latest SIMS upgrade. Of course I have to install this since the stoopid county support team installed SIMS on a partition that is too small. This upgrade should have been a simple 5-10 minute job. I was quite impressed that I got it installed in under 1 hour and I only had to run SOLUS 5 times and DBUPGRADE 3 times (with the /nobackup switch)!!!

Anyway... tomorrow is another day and I'll have to see what I can think of with the wireless. Here's hoping that it all magically starts working ;-)

Those Bloody Macs

OK... after weeks of trying to sort out the 11 new iMacs for the Music Department, I finally got them into a state where I was pretty much happy with them.

I have an image with the basic software on (albeit with incorrect permissions on ONE file for some dodgy old piece of software). The macs are connected to an OS X server for locking them down with Open Directory and they authenticate against my Active Directory network. Not bad considering I'd never really touched a Mac a couple of months ago.

Anyway... back to these iMacs... I decided to take the plunge this afternoon and take them over to the room where they are to live. This would also entail moving some PCs out the way... into the room next door.

I slowly went around the room unplugging and removing the PCs and pulling the iMacs out of their boxes and associated swathes of packaging! After plugging the things in I set off NetRestore loading the image onto them and when this was finished I renamed them and sorted out the OD and AD authentication.

So from 2pm I plodded through this and by 5.10pm I had fully installed 7 iMacs and the eighth was still loading the image. In the meantime, the two music teachers had been wandering back and forth through the room... . Obviously it's my fault that it's taken me 8 weeks to get these things into a workable state without their stoopid Sibelius software which I haven't had time to sort out the new network licenses for after they puchased a load of dumb-ass standalone ones... each requiring an activation key that you have to telephone for.

So tomorrow I will have to install the remaining three Macs (which are already built and what-have-you) plus plug in all the PCs which I have abandoned in the other Music room. These will also need to be rebuilt because the music-types aren't happy with what software is installed! Then of course there is the other work for me to fit in around them!

I've finally got around to the VLANs

For ages now I have been putting off the setup of the VLANs on my switches for the implementation of my Bluesocket wireless network. With only a skeleton staff in School at the moment, the time has finally come and with the installation of some new switches imminent, now seemed like as good a time as any.

I decided that to configure the switches I would use my shiny iBook G4 which I got a while ago with the idea that some of the network managlement tasks would be easier using the BSD-based OS X. Before I could begin, I downloaded and installed the drivers for my 'Prolific' USB-serial adapter. I then found out how to communicate with the switches... you simply open a terminal window and type:

screen tty.usbserial 9600

The tty.usbserial is my iBook's device name for the serial adapter. IMHO this is a lot less hassle than using HyperTerminal in Windows.

Anyway... starting at the outer-most switches in the areas of the School that are currently not being used, I have been reconfiguring the switches (remembering to give my 'data' VLAN an IP address for later configuration) and labeling the up. At the same time I have also been tidying some of the cabs, using different coloured patch leads for uplinks, wireless links, telephony links and 'regular' ports. I've even got some new cable management bars to help things along!

Once all this is done I will move the Bluesocket controller into the server room (I'm pretty happy with most of the config now) and start mounting the APs and, if all goes to plan, they will all connect to the controller automagically.

Today I have been mostly... installing Sophos

For several months now, one of my servers has been a little overloaded. It is a dual Opteron 248 with 4GB RAM but it has been performing the following roles:

• Exchange 2003 Server (for 1100+ users)
• WSUS Server
• Sophos Enterprise Manager and Library Server
• Print Server (including Print Manager Plus)
• Retrospect backup

As you can imagine, it didn't like doing all this (especially the huge email database combined with the two instances of MSDE for WSUS and Sophos). I decided that the easiest thing to move was Sophos and the re-homing coincided nicely with the release of the latest release of the admin software. Having downloaded the package from the Sophos website, I unpacked the files and set about installing it my second DC. All was going very well until the installer tried to set up MSDE. No matter what I tried I could not get MSDE to install... even when I tried to install it from the redistributable fresh from MS. It was most odd; the MSI installer crept along until a couple of blocks from the end and then sort or re-wound with no explanation other than a message in the event log saying that the MSI installation had failed! After this had annoyed me for nearly an hour, I decided to approach the problem from a different angle... enter SQL Server 2005 Express. I installed this and then just told the Sophos installer to use this instance rather than installing MSDE... easy as! After then going through all the EM Library options, I left the server downloading the Sophos AV packages for 2000/XP, OS X and Linux over lunch and upon my return all was well. The new version of the EM Console works well and all the installations went flawlessly. I was particularly impressed by the new policy-based system. Time will tell how well this continues to work and I must admit not all of my machines were on.

I officially HATE SIMS .Net!!!

Up until now, I haven't really had too many problems with SIMS - not as many as most. Admittedly, there is the usual voodoo that needs to be done to the file permissions to let it run and auto update using SOLUS... plus the strange problems that FMS seems to throw up but all these things are easily overcome.

yesterday, however, all hell broke loose. I don't usually do the updates to SIMS; leaving it to the deputy head instead... he seems to like doing it so why upset him? ;-) When the download of the new packages with SOLUS 2 went tits up it became my problem though. This was approach. 11am.

I eventually re-downloaded the packages only to find that there wasn't sufficient space on the disk partition to perform the DBUPGRADE backup... this is due to the cr@p way that our local SIMS support people installed it and is worthy of a rant in itself. After removing everything I possibly could plus compressing lesser used files I managed to have 1.84GB free... still not enough it turned out (despite the fact that the database is only 1.73GB!).

By this point it was 5.35pm and I decided enough was enough and I went home.

This morning I waited for 45mins for the support desk to open, only to be told to re-download the packages another couple of times only to prove that there wasn't enough space to do the upgrade. The support guy then told me about the '/nobackup' switch which allowed me to run the database upgrade... this eventually finished at about 1.30pm.

After the database upgrade, I then had to download the packages AGAIN and after another 45 mins the setup started to run and eventually ended successfully.

At this point I then had to go around 13 workstations to make sure that they all upgraded properly and that the permissions mentioned above were OK. Obviously they weren't and some of the machines required intervention... it was 3.40pm by the time I had all the machines finished.

All in all, it took about 13 hours of my time to do this upgrade. Ridiculous!!!

On the upside, the new GUI looks quite nice and the front-office staff like the new easy-access icons that happen to give them access directly to the areas that they use most often.

I am dreading the time when I move the database files in a couple of weeks though. I'm definitely not going to pay the local support guys £70-odd per hour to do it for me though until I know it's going to be too difficult!!!

YAY! MCE Works Again

For a while now, I've been struggling with Windows XP MCE... in particular I couldn't watch a handful of channels (including Channel 4 and E4 which I watch a lot!).

After copious Internet scouring, I came to the conclusion that it was something to do with the dual Black Gold Digital TV Tuners that I use. I think it was a recent MS update that mangled it.

Anyway, I eventually found an update to the drivers... from v5.11 to v5.17 (although I had to get the updated drivers from the Evesham website rather than GDI's). After much wire fiddling, re-scanning, registry hacking (deleting the bit to do with the tuners) and more re-scanning, it all now works.

It was a little late to record the new series of Lost, although I've managed to watch all the episodes so not too much 'lost' but better late than never I suppose.

I can now thoroughly recommend these cards again - the picture quality is great! MCE is now great again! I can now automagically sync the recorded programmes with my Creative Zen Portable Media Center! 'YAY' all round!!!

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter Multiplayer

Right... I just got off my first go on the Internet multiplayer game of Ghost Recon. It's pretty good, even if I'm not!

Most people appear to play on the 'Domination' style of game. This involves wandering around the map to out-number the opponents in different zones. As a bonus, you re-spawn when you (inevitably in my case) get killed.

I think that I will be enjoying the nultiplayer for some time ;-)

Yesterday, I was playing the multiplayer on my brother's XBOX360. Although the games have the same title, they are quite different. The attitude of the XBOX Live players is different too, taking a less strategic approach to gaming. Just an observation - not a bad thing because sometimes people sniping you from on top of some remote building just pisses you off!

MMC In Vista

I was having a quick look at the MMC in Vista earlier and it came to my attention that EVERYTHING is done using a MMC of one form or another. This could prove promising for further customisation and locking down systems at a later date. Even your standard folder explorer is a MMC! I think that the MMC writers at MS were probably the second highest earnest after the Wizard writers ;-)

Along with this new MMC-centred view, a load of new and glammed-up MMC snapins have been added. Performance Monitor and Task Manager have been combined to form the shiny new Performance Diagnostics - by far and away my favourite new MMC. This also includes clever graphs about reliability and all sorts. Well worth a look... even if it doesn't help to explain the constant hard disk reading and the 68% memory usage when idle!

I have yet to check out the new GPMC and other gubbins (such as the printer stuff) - I need to be connected to a domain for these features but they should be good if the local tools are anything to go off.

Maybe I'll get chance soon ;-)

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

I'm not a big gamer but, since I acquired my new machine, I have been eager to see what the stupidly big graphics card can do. I decided to buy the latest in the Ghost Recon range of games and try my hand at killing some rebels.

I installed the game and though... why not try it at full res with all the trimmings? I do have a Pentium-D 3GHz with 2GB RAM along with the nVidia GeForce 7800GTX (256MB) after all. It didn't like this and locked up on me :-( So since then I have been playing it at a lowly 1024x768 without issue ;-)

I must admit, a lot of thought has gone into the game graphics and it looks really good. The controls took a little getting used to and I don't think I've ever played a game like this before where you can't jump. I do like the way you control your team members though and they generally do what you ask of them - only occasionally getting in your way and they usually stand where they tell them too.

I'm still rubbish at playing these games so I haven't attmpted the multiplayer yet - a little more practice first methinks. When I do, I'm sure it will be good and I'll update all you keen blog watchers ;-)

More on the woes of wireless in Vista

OK... so I managed to blag a different NIC off a teacher - a Liksys WPC54G Wireless-G adapter which uses a Broadcom 802.11g chipset. Again, I could not connect to the AP successfully - no matter what combination of encryption I tried.

This led me to have the genius idea to upgrade the firmware in the AP. I flashed the AP (not by revealing myself to it!) and I found that I could connect if I set the AP to use no security. Things were looking up... or at least they were until I re-enabled the encryption and it all went tits up again.

So, at the moment, I must conclude the wireless still sucks in Vista and I will be continuing to use a wired connection... an unsecured network is not an option in this area!

On the plus side, the paging problem doesn't seem as bad as it was and I know that TFTPD32 runs in Vista! ;-)

Stay tuned for more!

More on Vista

I've been playing with Vista a little more today. Today's topics will be the 'Windows Sidebar' and WiFi.

The Sidebar is not automatically enabled in build 5381 so I had to have a hunt through the annoying wizardy-things. I eventually found it lurking in the depths of the Control Panel. Anyway I enabled it and immediately decided that suing the 'always on top' option was out of the question on a 4:3 screen. Secondly, I'm left thinking, "what is the point?"

There is a big analogue clock which looks very pretty but you may as well use the (easier to read) digital clock in the taskbar. An RSS reader could be handy, except you only get two lines of each feed item and the text is tiny too. A PostIt Note-type pad could prove handy for jotting things down and there is a CPU/memory usage 'gadget' that showed me how hard my machine is working just typing this!

Onto the disaster that is wireless networking. Until I have a different NIC available, I cannot promise that part of the problems aren't due to the D-Link DWL-G650+ cardbus adapter that I am trying to use. My AP is a 3COM 8250 which has had no problems with MacOS X, Windows XP or Windows Mobile.

After trying every type of encrypted and unencrypted connection, I couldn't get a connection between the laptop and network. When a connection was made, no IP address could be gathered. Most bizzarre!

As an aside, something else that I have noticed, is that the laptop is CONSTANTLY reading from the hard disk. This certainly does not bode well and I'm not even sure why it is happening - it's not as if it needs to be paging!

More to come soon ;-)

A few pictures from today

I took a few pictures around the house today.

I began with the pond. I was looking for frogs and newts but they had decided to hide so I had to settle for the fish. The first one is some odd fish and there appears to be lots of them. I haven't got a clue what they are.



There are also some goldfish.



I then decided that it was about time to take a couple of pics of the new lambs. These Hebredian sheep rarely have more than one lamb at once and are supposedly bad parents. You can imagine our surprise to find twins. Pretty cute eh?



Finally, I checked out Tom's chicks. These were a little more tricky to get a decent picture of, due to the chicken wire, but I managed to get a couple of half-decent ones.

The Vista trial begins!

Firstly, a big thanks to Nick Umney of Microsoft UK for kindly getting me an invite onto the Windows Vista Beta 2 program.

I downloaded the DVD ISO of the x86 version of Vista (Build 5381) last night... it only took three and a half hours on my cable connection! I then installed it on a HP nc8000 laptop this morning.

The install was very easy, asking only for a couple of details and then going off and doing its stuff. After about 1 hour I had a laptop running Vista! I then just had to tweak the display settings because they were in 8bit mode for some bizzarre reason and install a driver for the cardbus.

So after a day of on and off usage, I've not found Vista to be nippy by any means but it's not as slow as I thought it may have been. I've also noticed that the MS 'Wizard Designers' have been earning their money. EVERYTHING has a wizard and it is VERY annoying. You also have to confirm stuff all the time - "Do you want to do this?" "Are you sure you want to do this?"

I'll update the blog more as I get increasingly pissed off or find nifty little features. I'll also mention how to make WiFi work when I figure it out properly - it hates me at the moment!

Rebbit!

I've been meaning to post this pic for a while. I was really impressed by it!

The image has not been editted in any way. All I have done is 'processed' the RAW image into a JPEG and shrunk it down to display on the web.

I hope you like it ;-)

The Towers of London Gig - Tuesday 02/05/06

Last Tuesday I went to see The Towers of London at 53 Degrees in Preston with Pete.

We started off the evening in Greyfriars with a few pints of reasonably priced beer and a reasonably priced meal. This was then followed by another reasonably priced beer in The Ship.

When we arrived at 53 Degrees, the first support had almost finished... the music from these guys (Gundown Sunday) was rather good although the female singer wasn't all that great. The second support (Hooker) was much better with their punky, rocky, style.

Following Hooker was the main act. The Towers of London permormed admirably and a great time was had by all.

As for the venue itself, upstairs in 53 Degrees, it was pretty good. There wasn't too many people there and the smallish room meant the atmosphere was good... we were also able to stand right up front to see all the action ;-)

There's was also a handy chap in the gents, dispensing soap and handing out towels... quite odd really. He also had a large selection of cheap fragrances and gave me a couple of lolly pops to take away with me :-D

Bank holiday weekend...

So it's nearly 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Bank Holiday Monday. It's great not having to work, although waking up to discover that you broke the boiler the previous day when you touched it causing the control panel to drop off and the bleed valve for the heating circuit to empty water everywhere outside! After downloading the installation instructions and discovering how to refill the heating system up to the requisite temperature for the thing to work again, I was able to have a shower!

I've been on my third walk in three days. Each one was just around the block (approx. 70mins) taking in the sites of the prom and coming back past the golf course. Today, I may have even got some good pics of waves crashing against the sea wall... I'll check those out in a minute (see below for one of the better shots from today). Even though I wasn't down by the water I still got a little wet from the spray!

Other than my walks, it's been pretty quiet. I've now got a fully functional Zen Portable Media Center which is working great. I'm starting to get into podcasts and I think that they could be useful for keeping abreast of new technology. There's also the commandn.tv video podcast with the very hot presenter ;-)

My parents have gone away again... Switzerland this time... so we'll see what state the house is in when I pop back there tomorrow. I will be in Preston to watch The Towers of London at 53 Degrees with Pete. Should be good!

The EduGeek Conference North 2006

OK... I got back this morning from my outing to Rochdale for the much talked about EduGeek Conference North 2006. So what was it like? I'll start at the beginning...

On Tuesday afternoon I finished work at 4pm as usual, grabbing a couple of terminals and some CDs as I walked out the door - these would later allow me to do my talk. I sat in the car, fired up TomTom and stuck in the address for Rochdale CLC and off I went.

The journey was going great - not too much traffic, used the correct lanes on the motorway, etc. - and here I was in sunny Rochdale. The lovely woman in TomTom then politely asked me to turn left, then right and then turn around - all within the space of about 3 seconds! At this point I knew that I was going to end up VERY lost.

I soon gave up and after 2 phone calls, lots of directions and a couple of laps of the block I eventually arrived at the CLC. Upon my arrival I found out that one of the PCs for my talk (a 'RM One') contains some wonderful new Intel network card which does not have drivers for Server 2003! This meant a VERY QUICK re-think! VMWare to the rescue again!

So I left Server 2003 installing as Tony turned up (8 hours after he was expected!). We then made our merry way to the Moorcock Inn. Upon our arrival, Tony announced that he had not booked a room! Russ and I explained that when we both told him to 'book the room,' what we actually meant was 'pick up the phone, ring the hotel and book your room NOW!'
Anyway, I very kindly allowed him to use the spare bed in my twin room... how generous am I?

So, Tuesday evening we had a lovely meal at the Moorcock and a few beers before Beeswax, Nathan and Mark left us.

Wednesday morning we were up nice and early and downstairs for breakfast at 7am. A very nice breakfast in fact - full english! Then off to the CLC for just after 8am to continue with the set up and welcome people. Of course a lot of people were late due to problems finding the place! Other than that all the talks went well (mine ran smoothly!) and reviews, etc. can be found at www.edugeek.net and www.edugeekconference.net. The food was good and people were able to do lots of networking - plus everybody went away with a prize (even if it was just a Netgear wifi sniffer). The biggest problem of the day was when I went to get a cup of water and crashed the water cooler! A swift powercycle seemed to fix it though ;-)

Following the conference, we all (well some of us) piled down to a local curry house and had a great meal. A great time was had by all and Oliis very kindly took care of the bill. Russ and I then went back to the Moorcock and had many more beverages.

A good night's sleep followed and another great breakfast before Russ and I popped back to the CLC to help Beeswax with the tidying up.

All in all I had a very good time and had a good chat with a few people and learnt a bit too. Now I just need to fill in the expense form for the hotel.

Time for an update

I thought, since it's my birthday, it would be a good time to update my neglected blog!

A lot has happened since the last post. Not least, the replacement of my old system for a new Dell Dimension 9100. I know I hat Dells but this was too good to miss for the money - Pentium-D 3GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard disk and nVidia GeForce 9700 GTX!!!

The new machine works brilliantly and Doom 3 looks fantastic on it! I'm also able to run several virtual machines simultaneously too using VMWare.

I have also upgraded and added to my camera equipment. I now have an awesome Canon 75-300mm lens with an image stabiliser. This has allowed me to take some brilliant wildlife pictures (which I will soon post). Another upgrade is the Speedlite 420ex flash. This flash is great and has lots of switches, lights, tilting and swivelling bits, etc. I'll no doubt never use it to its full capacity but it should allow me to take some great pictures since it works with the camera to work out the flash timing.

I'll post more soon about what's been going on - along with the pictures of the frogs!!!