Hi all,

I've got a few blogs lined up for you but thought I would make it clear that the comments on this blog are moderated for approval, so spam won't get through (you know the ones with links to sites selling you things).

I know this blog doesn't have the biggest readership in the world but I really hope that some of you gain from reading some of the posts.

Of course feel free to post comments but spammers will not get through.
Kind Regards
Dale Scriven (MBCS,MCDST,MCP,A+, DSE Assessor, ITIL V3 F)

Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Device

Hello again, just thought I’d post about this little utility I came across, openDNS is a web site that hosts DNS servers. The beauty of this is that you can point your computers or router to the opendns server and you have an imediate surf control type affair on your network. openDNS by default blocks many adult sites and phishing sites so if you dont want anyone on your network looking at naughty things then this is the free way to do it. You can also sign up with them which will give you even more control over your DNS quieries. There default free DNS servers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 or you can go to opendns.com for more details!

Hi all,

 

Just a little update to say i’ve got the child domain working now, what was wrong was the fact that the child domains DC isnt a new fresh install and infact had just been dcpromo’d to a DC. As the dns server was set as the DC of scrivnet.co.uk then this ment there was some hooky host (A) records still around after the promotion, so once I had deleted those records and performed an "ipconfig /registerdns" on the new child DC all was well again.

 

in fact now im installing WSUS 3 sp1 onto the child dc with the intention of making it act as a downstream server so it gets all its updates from my scrivnet.co.uk DC. I shall update you on that soonest. I’ll post something useful in a bit.

Hi all,

Last night I tried setting up a child domain called sales.scrivnet.co.uk didn't exactly go as planned. I expected to see a new zone auto magically set up for me in my original scrivnet dc pointing to the new sales dc. But that didn't seem to work, so I created a new zone on my scrivnet dc and pointed it to the new sales dc.

One other odd thing is that I thought it might set up dns on the sales dc as well but it didn't, but then when I noticed that it didn't I assumed it would use the scrivnet dc\dns server but it didn't seem to do that either.

I suspect I've fubarred something up so I'll have another go tonight!
Kind Regards
Dale Scriven (MBCS,MCDST,MCP,A+, DSE Assessor, ITIL V3 F)

Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Device

Hi all,

 

Still studying DNS for my 291 and there is ALOT to learn, so when I actually have a decent grasp on the more advanced topics I shall write another couple of tutorials.

I thought I’d write a little about some other things I’ve been playing with, I’ve been having a think about using skype occasionally primarily for a mate of mine once we start chatting it can go on for quite some time. I’ve ordered myself an inexpensive headset to get started with was about £15 from ebuyer just so I can test the system out. I quite like the thought of free conference calls.

Today I’ve started playing with apache as well, I’ve tried a couple of different base distros but settled on ubuntu server, due to its low overhead and having apache2 installed by default during the set up. I think that its quite an important thing to learn because even in an Active Directory environment there is a good chance that at least one web server will be hosted on apache due to their robust nature both security and uptime wise.

 

Think I might have posted this before but its worth another visit its hilarious LINK

Hi all,

Just a quick little review on some cd burning software I’ve been using for quite some time now, best of all its free. cdburner xp is a great little application that presents an interface to you the same as the other big names did 2 or three years ago. The interface is set out with an explorer view so you can drag and drop files to the cd burning area, you can also make and burn iso’s which is great for the linux distros etc.

Check it out!

http://cdburnerxp.se/

Well I had some worrying few moments last night. My main studying pc orginally just had a 40g ide drive with xp home on it. When I added a Sata drive over a year ago I put vista ultimate on that. My pc has been crashing occasionally recently but I didnt think too much of it, but last night it failed and wouldnt boot. So luckily I found out it was the IDE drive which really doesnt get much use these days apart from games that I used to play on it, so its no great loss.

However my ide drive was the boot and system drive, so all of a sudden I had a perfectly working vista OS but with no where to boot from. which would have been a real pain if I had to reinstall vista again completely just to get the boot loader on there.

 

But after a bit of thinking I downloaded gparted found here which is a bootable linux distro that is completely designed for partition editing. So luckily I was able to mark the sata primary partition as a boot partition. Then a reboot into the vista dvd and going to the repair options and selecting repair startup problems soon got vista going again.

 

Before I used gparted the vista disk could not see the vista installation even though it had no problem browsing the entire disk, I am impressed with the repair options you get with vista bar the fact it relies on the bcd to tell it where the installations are.

 

Anyway situation averted and we have a happy and working pc again!

Hi all,

I think I’ve been a little late joining the party of this one but I’ve just discovered what a great tool vmware server is. I installed it on my pc at work so I can play with opensuse 11. Historically I’ve always used virtual pc but feel so far that vmware is a better tool, and at the moment is running opensuse 11 perfectly which is something virtual pc can’t. In fact I’ve never had any luck with any linux os with a gui on virtual pc. Whether that’s an oddity or by design is anyone’s guess.

One thing you can do with vmware is run the server and host the virtual os’s on one pc and run and view them from another with vmware player, think remote desktop.

So far I’m very impressed with opensuse 11 it seems a very capable os’s and also has lots of server ability as well. I’ve only really got a fundamental understanding of linux I can only really set it up and use samba and that’s about it.
I thought I’d better make an effort to learn about it as we have loads of linux servers and as they have the ability now to join a domain it really is a tech you can now not ignore.

I think that in an ad environment they would make a good cheap file and print server which would save about 200-300 quid plus a few cals depending on the access model you are going for.

 

FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server – Home

 

cool little os for turning a spare pc into a nas device.

Hi all,

Right I'm down to business now with studying the 291 and will make a concerted effort to learn it…. Just not today.

Last night I was working until about 1am at the local government elections. Can't say it was actually working too much as all I had to do was set up a small network with a server and be on hand in case it fell over. Then I had to take it all apart and bus it back to work that evening. I must say that watching the whole vote counting process was very interesting and of course being in camera shot of the media too.

So right now I think the lack of sleep is starting to catch up with me.

We are getting reasonably close to deploying vmware. My boss was quite keen on citirx's xen but that does not support netware which was a problem.

So I have been thinking that maybe a vmware cert if such a thing exists would be a good idea.

I've also applied for a professional membership to the bcs (british computer society) I've been accepted so just need to wait for the paperwork to see what that has to offer.

I'll write more over the weekend when I start to study.