Doesn’t happen to cover the menu-tree maze I got caught in a week or so ago, but still a useful list of keystrokes required to “reach a real human being” on various IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems. Here’s the link:
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bam6rdiey?a=q&qid=8
The other day I moved our EZProxy server application to the HP Proliant box described in an earlier post. EZProxy put such a small load on the machine I began looking for other work it could do…and quickly decided to make it one of my MySQL servers (for things like the campus staff directory, library’s database and e-journal listing services, etc. ).
Didn’t really think about it but MySQL uses port 3306…which is right in the range of “virtual” servers that EZProxy uses. With MySQL running, EZProxy complained about not being able to set up a server on that port.
Solution? Well, being a believer in the efficacy of talking directly to the developer, I sent Chris Zagar (creator of EZProxy) an email and he replied within a couple of hours.
Use the SkipPort directive in ezproxy.cfg (e.g., SkipPort 3306)
Then do a restart on EZProxy. You can use as many SkipPort directives as you need.
Like most of EZProxy, that seemed so logical and so obvious that I felt like an idiot–I surely missed it in the documentation. Knowing what to look for, I did find one mention of SkipPort on the EZProxy site but it is buried down in the release notes. So, I may still be an idiot but at least I wasn’t guilty of being lazy before bugging Chris.
Thanks Chris. Great product and great support.
It’s not really on topic but then again maybe it is. Seems the FEMA website requires use of IE 6 in order to make a web-based request for help. Could they make things more difficult? Are there no Mac or Linux users out there who might need help…or Windows users who abandoned IE long ago? Maybe it’s a product tie-in…or Homeland Security…brought to you by the folks who brought you Internet Security?
Here’s what you see if you follow a couple of links in the process of asking for help:
In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6.
Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register.
Haven’t seen mention of this yet on Mason’s website, but here’s a blurb from Leesburg Today:
Sep 6, 2005 (LT) — After many years of discussing the idea, George Mason University has decided to open a campus in Loudoun to be constructed on 123 acres donated by Greenvest LLC, GMU administrators announced this morning during a press conference held at the county government building.
Editor’s Note: I think they mean Greenvest LC (of Vienna), a large developer…largest land owner in Loudoun County. Greenvest LLC is a firm that does environmental reclamation work.
Attended an interesting presentation today from Marcus Sachs, Director of the SANS Internet Storm Center. He talked about DShield and security threats in general. I was most intrigued by the few minutes he spent on Metasploit — basically a drag & drop approach to black hat hacking… or as the Metasploit project casts it, “An Open-Source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code.”
Came back to the office and had it downloaded and running on my Mac in about two minutes. Scary piece of work. If you remember the buzz that SATAN (Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks) caused about ten years ago, this is similar. Look for Symantec or someone to release a “commercial” version of this as a network security monitor in the near future…
Well, I guess it was as simple as opening the unit’s case, flipping switch #6 to ON and rebooting. That cleaned out the CMOS and NVRAM and after that success. The machine now boots and runs SuSE 9 Enterprise. Did I say as simple as? Actually, quite a few things were tried (switching to Enterprise version, downloading updated drivers from HP.com, switching from grub to lilo, and so on. But the last thing I tried (blowing out the CMOS & NVRAM) seemed to make it reboot reliably.
I’m guessing either HP had some settings in there that worked for their default OS (Windows) but thwarted reliable Linux booting…or I changed something I shouldn’t have touched (also quite possible).
In any case, we now have our proxy server software (EZProxy) running on the new Proliant box. The old Ultra II is standing by (network cable unplugged), ready to leap back into action if we see a hiccup during the next day or so but I think it will run fine. Thankfully, since the new machine has the same name as the old, our SSL certificate works as expected. Hope I remember to update it next March.
There’s still a quirk somewhere that I’ll continue to investigate (seems it won’t boot up if we put the 2nd hard drive in the unit…or maybe it’s when the CD isn’t inserted…or maybe…well, there were just too many variables involved on the last reboot to be able to narrow it down).
With the way power comes & goes around here, we’ll have ample opportunity to test various theories during the coming weeks.
12 hours later…
Put the 2nd SCSI disk back in the server but in slot 4 (instead of slot 2). Showed up and I did a reiserfs on it…all’s well. I’m now able to say HP can make more than printers–but not yet willing to say I’d buy another one of these things. Of course, after spending so much time getting it to work, I probably should buy only these units–I now know so much about them.
The other day I referenced the French site that showed OSX running on an x86 laptop. Mes amis are back in the news today…
The OSx86 Project is reporting that Apple has served a legal notice to MacBidouille, a French news site that posted videos and instructions on running OS X on x86 hardware.
I am about to give up on this box. I think a misplaced sense of gratitude to HP for their work developing DSpace made me do it…and now I know why you should only make rational computer decisions.
I recently ordered a new HP ML350 Proliant server (dual 3.0 Xeon processors) and a copy of Novell’s SuSE 9.3 Linux. My plan was a cool replacement for our aging Sun Ultra II (dual 300Mhz UltraSPARCs) that we use for EZProxy work. The Sun machine is so old (8+ years) that its memory chips are wearing out.
Sad to say, this HP box has been nothing but trouble. The hardware assumes you’re running Windows and some of the assumptions (right down to the BIOS) make running Linux impossible. According to a few pages I googled, it is possible to get SuSE running on this machine but you have to load all sorts of firmware updates and a variety of workaround patches from HP (many of which still carry Compaq names). HP’s website says that the system supports SuSE 9.x (both 32 bit & 64)…yeah, and my watch supports time travel.
I tried a few workarounds. For a time it seemed that the system was just getting confused by the SCSI controller, so I decided to put an IDE drive in the box, do yet another install and thereafter just boot from that. I mean, a proxy server doesn’t use the disk all that much. The install to IDE went well (I booted off the CD to get it started) but when I finished, I belatedly realized that the BIOS does not offer “boot from IDE” as an option. Arghhhhh!
I’ll try again tomorrow and if it still fails, I guess we’ll have a really top-o-the-line Windows server in the office. Perhaps we’re about to deploy a really awesome scanning station for our e-reserves folks…assuming that under Windows this thing will recognize a USB scanner.
More later…
…ok 24 hours later. Today was a bust as well. The machine will install but can not boot unless the initial install CD is present. To rub salt on these wounds, we tried a quick & dirty install 0f Windows 2003 Server…and wouldn’t you know it, it came up & ran great! Of course, it probably took on 3 or 4 worms before we shut it down but who cares, we’re reformatting the disk every 15-30 minutes.
Today I finally realized that the HP website *only* talks about SuSE Enterprise Edition (not Professional) so maybe that’s the problem. I ordered a copy of Enterprise late in the day and when that comes in I’ll give it the final attempt.
Given this blog’s readership I don’t expect an outcome much better than if I put a message in a bottle and set it adrift…but if google caused you stumble across this and you know *anything* at all about SuSE Linux and Proliant ML350 G4 (not the smart array model) servers, please leave a comment…
Lots of O’Reilly titles for free web-based viewing…also a few WORX titles and others. Great site:
Just discovered Wotsit’s Format…a website devoted to information on many file formats. From the introduction:
Welcome to Wotsit’s Format, the complete programmer’s resource on the net. This site contains file format information on hundreds of different file types and all sorts of other useful programming information; algorithms, source code, specifications, etc.
Assuming they know more about file formats than grammar, this is just the sort of site we’ll need to keep track of for future file migration strategies in MARS and follow-on systems. It seems to me some library group should be focusing on this (e.g., set up a clearinghouse operation that gathered information on every known file format in existence). Perhaps some library entity is doing this and I just missed it. I do know the Long Now Foundation is beginning to work on a Wikipedia-like system for this information. A factoid I uncovered in this interesting thread that appeared on the Omidyar Network.
To get an idea of why this is already a problem, take a look at this article “The Fading Memory of the State” by David Talbot (from MIT’s Technology Review).