@KyleBrandt: Sorry, didnt see your questions, went home. We're pushing our norwegian ISP to peer with a Swedish one at a internet exchange point (oslo), they just have to carry the VLAN to each other

@KyleBrandt: We tried the route of having the norwegian ISP re-sell Swedish connections, but the tax/cross-country fees makes it quadruple the cost

morning

good morning

Morning

mornin

Is it me, or is SF kinda stingy with it's votes? I'm not complaining; just an observation I've made.

hello, I'm being asked to "password protect" a shared folder. Users are not what they want. The two alternatives I've come up with are either use a RAR or otherwise protected compressed file, or use a TrueCrypt file that should be mounted then by each user, but these two will not allow to mount it read/write

Another option that comes to mind is to forbid a certain folder to use "save credentials" on machines

Or use ACL's with users/groups, like the rest of the world

(and ignore what they dont want)

I agree, using the access protections built in to whatever product you're using is almost always the right answer.

I also agree and have made my case

Have you asked the users why they don't want username/password protected shares, while password protected files are fine?

let's see if they buy

I'm of the opinion that while we are here to provide services to end-users, and should always gather their requirements first (as opposed to telling them their requirements at deployment time), we must also never do something The Wrong Way.

I've sold ACLs as "the server already knows your password (because you logged-on with it) and that's how it determines if you have access to that folder".

Assuming you have some kind of centralized auth system that will pass it around, like AD.

Nowdays, that is probably a pretty good assumption, but still.

Even it it doesn't already 'know' your password, putting ACLs on the share will still be less intrusive for them anyway.

@packs Yup, we kept getting requests for "Password Protected" shares (we're an AD shop) and I was trying to explain why the shares are already password protected.

I had to cut some corners in the details to make it more palatable.

@jscott Oh sure. At this point, we don't know what Vinko's environment is, so I was trying to generalize your statement a little. Sorry if I came across as disputing.

Not at all :)

I'm also trying to convince a toddler to eat her breakfast. I'll let you decide which one takes more concentration, and which one is more fun to think about :)

anyway, off to the office. Good luck Vinko

is precisely why licensing questions should be closed out on SF

@GregD Is there a canonical licensing question to close-as-dupe?

Oh, I see.... Too Localized... That's the preferred nomenclature..

Would it be worth it to put some licensing info into a question, information that is truly accurate?

@jscott Not that I'm aware of. I really feel as if most of these licensing questions should be closed.

@Dan That's the issue Dan. I don't believe any of us are licensing experts. I really only trust my vendor to provide that information and sometimes they've been wrong.

But the comment on that questions that Windows XP includes a device CAL is just plain wrong.

Personally, I don't understand a lot of MS licensing myself, but what really gets me is why it has to be that way in the first place.

@Dan Follow the money

It actually gets a little bit easier for enterprise customers

As I commented in the question...

MS licensing is arbitrary and depends on the customer.

@BartSilverstrim I agree. However the desktop versions of Windows have never included CALs

They have leeway in how they issue things and their primary concern is keeping their product out there. So if you're buying a lot, they will dither on what you "need" to stay legal.

There was some kind of licensing we were told XP had for accessing servers at one time.

Something related to terminal services...don't recall what it was.

Windows XP Pro has the flag set that allows you to logon to domains.

I thought it changed a few years later.

XP pro has always been able to log into domains (?)

Yep

Windows XP Home couldn't O_o

Unless you hacked it a bit

Oh, you mean the artificial restrictions based on "licensing" for the registry.

Precisely

@GregD Which causes all kinds of problems when departments purchase the cheapest kit they can find, and then expect it to work on the enterprise network.

I remember when I first found out about NT Server and Workstation having no really technical difference than a bit in the registry.

But Carlos' comment proved my point about why these types of questions should be closed

I was so mad...

It was a big reason I tried Linux in college.

@BartSilverstrim I've been working with Windows for over 15 years. I've just accepted the licensing headaches

I was always more touchy about limitations artificially restricting how things worked rather than technical limitations. Linux distros didn't care if you were running a web server, file server or using it to watch TV via tuner card. At the same time. Microsoft wanted you to pay them more. Irritating.

Which was a shame since I really liked NT at the time.

I lol'd at "I really liked NT at the time" :)

Hey, moved from WfWG 3.11 to WinNT! It was really something for a geek.

I know, I know,

Now now .... just because one of the OSes was for little girls and the other was for real men there is no reason to be biased or make fun... best tool for the job!

In retrospect, things that we appreciate seem so.... strange.

There is no reason a geek should have to wear a helmet to keep his head from exploding when dealing with MS licensing simply because each phone call to someone shows how arbitrary it is.

OS/2 was for real men

OS/2 was a red-headed stepchild tossed to the wolves despite a rabid fanbase that wanted to open source it. If they allowed it it would still be limping along like the Amiga.

@GregD W3.11 didn't even ship with TCP/IP! Isn't that manly?

Oh, the joys of Trumpet...

and the points scored for telling a connection speed of the modem by ear. "You idiot! That wasn't even a modem...it's a FAX connection!"

@KyleBrandt In reference to us, the OSes, or both?

@jscott: I don't follow ...

There are some things I miss though. Like not having to have a 20 meg @!#% printer driver.

I just though it was interesting, look how big they are!

The dinosaurs...

Got it.

@jscott Sure that's manly. Know what's even more manly? Rebooting a 15 year old computer with OS/2 still on it for use as an ACD.

@jscott: Actually it is th extinction ...

@GregD Godspeed. I'm not sure what sort of black magic you practice for something like that.

Running Linux in the late 90's was like being the detective in a neverending murder mystery.

Thought I just read of a new Amiga system coming out? From...a-eon, was it?

Amigas just won't die. I never got to play with one, though. Or NEXTStep. :-(

unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html -- 40 years :-P

I had some interaction with OS/2. Had an install issue, though. Didn't like the a20 gate on a keyboard, as I recall, but it was a long time ago.

@jscott You don't. I replaced it last year with a Cisco VOIP install. Good god, I would break out in cold sweats any time I had to reboot that machine.

@BartSilverstrim The Amiga was years ahead of its time, and only failed because of a complete failure on the part of Marketing!

I've read that quite a bit. Have a book at home on Commodore I've not read yet. On the "to-read" queue.

Giant poster of that history: levenez.com/unix

@packs Same with Novell. They had a far superior directory service over MS. For me it boiled down to marketing

@jscott: I personally will probably always think unix based stuff is just a better idea. Doesn't mean that there is always a better unix based option for what you are trying to accomplish, but I like the theory

I've found it relatively safe to blame marketing for most technology failures. Except for the Newton of course.

Novell had crap clients though. We had a ton of trouble with Windows running the Novell client years ago. Liked the server concept as they implemented it.

@BartSilverstrim Ah. The Novell Windows client WAS CRAP

Unix-like solutions were, and in many cases are, fantastic. Because they're simple in model.

I still wonder if that wasn't on purpose

In my opinion anything that requires a GINA change starts out at a big disadvantage

Windows devs seem to like thinking they know the perfect wheel and go about reinventing the damn thing each time.

Who names anything GINA?

Just wait until it gets virtualized

C'mon...do I really need your fancy print driver that pops some damn notification on THE SERVER up whenever a remote client prints?! @#%!!

@GregD The same people who created a product named Critical Update Notification Tool

Don't Anybody Muck with My Information Technology.

@jscott Nice. I laugh like a little school girl when someones says Gina

I was disappointed when I learned about pGina. They really missed a great marketing tool on that one.

sigh dammit apparently if you operate a Macbook Pro in clamshell mode it hoses Skype's ability to see your video camera unless I reboot.

clamshell mode?

@BartSilverstrim You are clearly failing to Think Different.

Don't you have a cliff to jump off, @Packs? :-p

@Kylebrandt: yes, it's in their knowledge base. Operate the MacBook Pro with the lid closed.

I prefer: "It just works."

As in barely.

@jscott (tm)

I kid, I kid.

@BartSilverstrim: Ah yes, clearly we needed a word for that

Riddle me this. Why must I install ports to get wget?

You snicker at this...but after dealing with so many driver issues and compatibility issues and custom versions of OEM Windows, using the Mac has been, in comparison, a godsend.

@KyleBrandt Pictures Bart with his head sandwiched in between a MBP for skyping.

I haven't used wget on mine. Haven't needed it.

HA HA HA very funny GregD. Jokes on you since my video doesn't work. :-p

I used to use the whole add-on system for making OS X more linux-y with tools. Got fed up with update headaches.

New approach-virtualized Linux inside the Macbook :-)

Mac has does have a good model, they control the software and the hardware. When Windows tests stuff they probably need warehouses of PCs, Mac just does it on a table in the cafeteria. Also they keep in *nix based so they don't do too much crazy hacks just to only suit their configuration

@BartSilverstrim Same here. Eventually I just switched back to Linux and used the mac for email/calendaring.

I wasn't too impressed with the "Clamshell mode" either as a moniker, I think it was a term picked up by the userbase.

Apple has a couple terms for it in-house I believe.

Either way, I did it because there's a bug that causes it to occasionally hang with my external display in extended desktop display mode.

I just picked up a Dell mini 10v and a copy of Snow Leopard. It was an interesting experience getting that working together.

So, who has run Apache on Android?

@GregD Or toilet seats

or maybe it's related to the whole gina conversation

So I run it with the lid closed at home with my larger display. Hasn't hung since.

Clams, GINAs, ummmm.....

TOILETS!?

Apparently there is no more GINA anyway.

From Wiki: In Windows Vista, GINA has been entirely replaced by Credential Providers, which allow for significantly increased flexibility in supporting multiple credential collection methods. To support the use of multiple GINA models, a complex chaining method used to be required and custom GINAs often did not work with fast user switching.

GINA libraries do not work with Windows Vista and later Windows versions. One difference, however, is that GINA could completely replace the Windows logon user interface; Credential Providers cannot.

@BartSilverstrim Oh, so they renamed it and changed the API.

No, they just rewrote it because they figured out the headaches terminal services had with their "multiuser operating system"

phaw

We used terminals on win2k. Weird weird problems cropped up.

We nearly tested out pGINA too. Figured they'd scrap the model so pGINA would be worthless, although I think the project went abandonware.

@MuraliSuriar: Hi Murali, always wanted to let you know I have found your networking answers helpful! (Probably other stuff too)

Heh.

Good to know.

I've been fairly slack about visiting the site for a while, to be honest.

People get busy, and breaks are good as well

It's weird that the first time I've been here in a month or two is when I'm off work for Christmas. :)

Now if only I could cut and paste with Finder...

@BartSilverstrim That scares me more than anything. Investing time and money in a potential technology only to have it disappear

Or if integrating OS X with an AD environment worked properly...AAAAGH

So, next question - is this chat available via XMPP/IRC ?

Wasn't that a feature req or something?

Bart: Finder infuriates me. Just in general.

@MuraliSuriar: I don't think it really is, but someone might have done a IRC API or something...

OS X is a mixed bag. What it's good at, I think it's great with. What it lacks is a headache.

That sounds familiar

@BartSilverstrim I totally feel you. Myself and about 5 others spent a couple of months trying to figure out the right way, and we finally got fed up and let the project go for a while so we could do meaningful work :)

I'll keep this MBP for the normal 2-3 year hardware refresh cycle, but after that I'm going to flip to a thinkpad with ubuntu

@packs: assuming you mean the integration thing, we're having...problems.

@MuraliSuriar I'm ditching my MBP for Windows 7 gasp

@MuraliSuriar: @Zypher has a touchscreen thinkpad with Ubuntu on it

@BartSilverstrim I can imagine. Are you trying the schema extensions or the magic triangle?

Macbooks doing home directory syncing. Not working well. Haven't found solutions to keep from errors cropping up.

@GregD: I've got a Windows 7 laptop, but it's just for gaming.

I believe they went with magic triangle.

For serious work, I need a working terminal. :)

Windows seven is a different brand of pissing me off.

Windows pays my bills

So I've learned to love it over the years

Windows 7 needs a 'games mode', where it's effectively just a bootloader for Steam. :)

Yeah, but windows paying bills is like selling antidotes for periodically poisoning the town's water supply. It's just...well..sorta wrong.

@GregD: Thats odd, for most Windows sends the bills, not pays them

I recently dumped my MB for a Windows 7 thinkpad. I've actually been happier with it, even if I do use putty like none other.

@MuraliSuriar Speaking of that, Steam is having some killer sales right now

@GregD: indeed. Picked up the SquareEnix holiday pack yesterday.

I'll stick with my MBP...I've used several laptops, used many installations of Windows and frankly OS X ticks me off the least.

In all fairness to Windows, until the whole cloud/webapps thing came along, it was the best option for managing a large desktop installation.

AD + GP + Exchange + Outlook + Office... well configured, it was really easy to manage.

Even if it required too much mouse-clicking. :P

Windows has a lot of great enterprisey features and management (although to be fair it's also lacking some tools that should be built in). And I hate outlook. Bloated monster. Macs are not easily manageable.

But I don't give a damn about enterprise management when I go home :-)

@BartSilverstrim Between AD, Exchange, and Cost not-Apple won out. Otherwise I probably would have remained.

Well and the fact that Apple dropped x-serve

I use Linux on my workstation, Mac for personal use, and Windows to get even with people.

If I could I'd use Linux even more for everyone, but users freak the @#% out if it doesn't look like something they have at home.

Ooooh.

trac.digitalfruition.com/soxmpp

XMPP bridge

/me will have to play with that later.

Apple is focusing on media and home markets, not business. Probably because it's a lost battle to take on Windows head-on. They're being more devious with infiltration of iPods, iPads and iPhones.

@BartSilverstrim They only lost the battle because they didn't try.

I think more Macs will slip in as they release management tools, eventually, for their iThings into businesses. Apple has no interest in things like enterprise email and such right now.

I'm thinking the Motorola -> Intel followed by 10.6 killed a lot of their xservs.

They focus on strengths, I think. User interaction, user interface, tight integration of their software with hardware...can't do that jumping into the enterprise.

We had a bunch of G5 xservs sprinkled liberally across campus, but they almost all got replaced with linux on dell or linux vms once PPC support ws dropped

xServes weren't profitable enough most likely. People were using them for what...mainly managing Macs? Can do that with a couple mac minis, as horrible as it sounds.

@BartSilverstrim Better not ask about that sort of filth on SF.

A few of the ones I know of were full blown OpenDirectory systems (some with a 100+ systems), but bunches were general purpose departmental servers.

File sharing, web hosting, etc

Of course not. I'd be moved to SU within minutes.

I don't think that Apple really want to get into 'big enterprise'. At the moment they make oodles of money from the consumer market, and their support organisation is optimised for that.

:)

That said, it'll be interesting to see how corporate IT policies change over time.

They are focusing on home, yes. And they're smart about it. Apple would take a huge pounding trying to get into the enterprise, and that wouldn't be good for their upscale image.

e.g. I know some startups who don't care if you use personal equipment, as long as you keep everything company related in gmail/google apps or the MS equivalent.

Better now to get them in the home, so more users whine they want to use Macs in the workplace.

Which many companies are starting to do.

@MuraliSuriar: Our people get whatever they want

At which point they need to GET INTEGRATION AND MANAGEMENT OF MACS IN AD ENVIRONMENTS WORKING DAMMIT

There is a big barrier to entry though.

Kyle: that only works because you have a highly technical userbase, who you can trust to run their own tin to a large extent.

Home directory sync is a nightmare so far.

@BartSilverstrim that's so not in their interest.

@MuraliSuriar: That is true, for the most part if they asked us for Desktop help we might throw stuff at them :-P

We've found no good way for students to use macbooks in a mixed environment yet.

@MuraliSuriar: But we do use Google Apps for email and generally a lot of our devs are on Windows

@BartSilverstrim mmm. Our place is a mix of mac, windows and linux.

Corp IT are superb.

How do you take user home directories stored on a Windows-based NAS in an AD environment and have students use Macbooks to work using AD for authentication without killing the network, with their files stored on the NAS so we can back up their stuff?

I always checked that I don't have to run Windows on my workstation in interviews

@BartSilverstrim no idea. The infrastructure is optimised around Linux, as far as I can tell.

If we use home sync, apps run faster, but now we get sync errors and long loooong login and logoff times that students abhor.

Netapp filers for homedirectories, so you can export them as CIFS or NFS.

@BartSilverstrim: Mac AD auth causes network problems?

If we just mount the home directory, it kills wireless network and you have issues with large files being manipulated over the network.

When I started my job at 2Checkout.com, I built my own workstation on Slackware Linux.

@BartSilverstrim: How is that different with Windows?

I'm not sure what is causing the network slowness.

@kylebrandt: Students don't have profiles.

That's back when all the call center staff used k12ltsp.

@BartSilverstrim Finder utterly sucks.

@kylebrandt: The home directories don't get synced, they're essentially mounted, but we haven't seen the same issues there (although netowork burps can cause Office to go nuts.)

Anything network related and things slow to an absolute crawl.

I've got my music collection on a NAS, and everytime itunes launches, it takes about 30 minutes before I can do anything, because 60 tracks have bad metadata that iTunes doesn't like.

itunes--

OS X saves the "profile" (home directory, since UNIX has a more sane model in my opinion that happens to cause this side effect) in the user's home directory, so if home dir syncing is on it is copying their home directory back and forth each time.

@BartSilverstrim: Personally I would say wireless is just a bonus for the most part. So you can browse the web during boring ass meetings. Working with files over a share should probably be wired

We've been told "Have students use a thumb drive for their home dir." A) ever have students keep track of something not a cell phone? B) How do we back up their files?

@Kylebrandt: we're working in k12. The laptops were part of a way to get labs without labs.

@K

bah

@KyleBrandt wireless everywhere is awesome

makes people massively more productive.

If I could afford it I'd say wire each of the desks to a nice gig cisco switch and have'm plug in.

Heck, I'd have the PC wired into the desk. But we don't have the staff or funds and my starship left me behind.

@BartSilverstrim even with the crazy edu discounts all the vendors do?

@MuraliSuriar: I am just don't know much about wireless other than it takes a good investment if you want to use it seriously

@muralisuriar: yes, even with the discounts.

:(

Our wireless isn't cheap. Cisco stuff.

@BartSilverstrim Yup, not cheap. We moved to Cisco from Meru. Not cheap at all.

@BartSilverstrim: So is the bandwidth saturated ?

@BartSilverstrim I've never done wireless rollouts myself; I'd like to do some just to play.

@jscott It will last for a long time, but very not cheap.

My previous place used Aruba, I believe.

And then there's the technical hurdles...each CoW (Computers on Wheels...our computer carts) are something like 20 to 25 laptops in a room.

If you get kids editing powerpoints in home directories over wireless with 20 laptops at once...

and Office is NOT happy if it loses connectivity for a moment.

@BartSilverstrim Don't you mean downloading porn?

No, the filter stops that.

@BartSilverstrim: So with windows you can use offline files?

@BartSilverstrim Do you put APs on the carts or only on ceilings/walls?

When that's working right.

APs are in ceiling.

@BartSilverstrim why did you go with Mac laptops, out of interest?

Windows we're not using the offline files, but the workstations are mostly wired.

presumably cheap window boxes would have been able to have roaming home directories fairly easily?

Ah, we drop an 1142 on each cart. Helps a bit with the density of the mobile labs. But that does require the teacher to remember to plug in the cart power/network.

Macs-A) multimedia editing better. B) hardware lasted longer before showing age. B) exposure to something other than Windows.

We'd been using some Macs in the IT department...both of us...and liked using them a lot. But when you start using them as the kids (mis)use them and need to get management working for people who don't want to deal with things like remembering their passwords...

We also lower the Roaming Aggressiveness (in Intel wifi driver) on the cart notebooks to "convince" them to stay with "their" cart AP, rather than the building APs.

The Macs were also more resistant to malware, which for us was nice.

All valid reasons.

Must be a nightmare to administer though.

And for troubleshooting it was usually easier, as the hardware/software integration was nice.

That's our problem, @muralisuriar.

Our IT guys seem to try and use puppet for everything.

Which works, by and large.

Again, I think we cheat by having a highly technical userbase, and having all apps in the cloud.

We also have for people that insisted on Windows laptops Lenovos (these are all out of an old Classrooms for the Future grant, so it was part of the bidding contract stuff).

And the Lenovos...oh lord.

Hardware issues?

Some people shouldn't be allowed to design hardware.

:)

Laptop won't connect. Domain not found.

@MuraliSuriar We are also a big puppet shop, and have started integrating Macs into the environment. It looks like we should be able to do everything we want.

Go look. The light indicator says wifi isn't on.

I quite like my T410; runs Linux out of the box without any issues at all.

Look in Windows. Driver says it's on.

Open properties, says it can't see anything.

@BartSilverstrim: Well I guess step one would be to identify the problem. Are you getting the throughput you should? If yes then maybe people need to be on different APs on different channels or something like that. If you are not , then you need to look at why

There's a @#$% hidden switch in the front corner to turn on the wifi card that the driver said WAS ON.

@BartSilverstrim I've found that I usually have to ditch the proprietary wifi drivers, etc. from laptop manufacturers

@BartSilverstrim I believe that Google's corp IT do external presentations on 'best practices for corp IT using the cloud' or something along those lines.

According to the consultants we brought in there aren't errors on the Cisco AP's or the controller, but we were most likely saturating the NAS at one point. Bought a new NAS to help.

They may even have ended up on the GoogleTechTalks channel.

I'll drop some people a note next week when I'm back in the office, see if there's anything publicly available.

Yeah, @GregD, that was the second issue. Intel PROset hijacks Windows wireless, and if it's in control, they can't autoconnect to the wireless network as configured in AD.

I'm describing the sync problems second-hand now since someone else is in charge of CFF stuff...

but there are issues that continue to plague us and soon user revolt will ensue.

I'm allergic to axes and torches.

We need a way to get Macs to work with AD (authentication seems to work for the most part) so that kids can use Windows and Macs with access to their home directories on a Windows-based NAS, without huge login/logoff times, or huge network congestion in either syncing or just trying to edit files.

Well you aren't alone with wireless woes Bart. Big tech conferences have a hard time getting it right too. Some (TechCrunch or Disrupt) have ditched wireless altogether

@BartSilverstrim You aren't using roaming profiles are you?

No.

Profiles (in windows) were dumped after the four thousandth corrupted profile from students flicking off machines mid-logoff.

Presumably roaming profiles don't work with Mac endpoints?

Oh - yeah, that'll do it. :/

@MuraliSuriar I don't think they do

No, Mac's will attempt syncing "home directories" if that feature is on so they can edit files locally then sync changes back to the home server.

Are you using Radius?

So then you flood the network at logon and logoff times instead of steadily saturating it as you work.

No, Just AD.

I'm almost tempted to just drill it into their heads how to mount their home directories by hand and manually save stuff to the home directory space on the server if they want to keep things.

@BartSilverstrim Don't install the PROset software, Intel provides INF-only driver.

@jscott our cff person has been disabling it when doing installs.

I think one time he uninstalled it and the wireless just stopped working.