Gareth Howell

Lotus Foundations includes a DNS server. By default this provides name resolution only for the local (trusted) network. You can set it to resolve for the external network as well, or you can set it to be "Dynamic". This latter option allows the server to cope with a changing external IP address: e.g. when the server is on an ADSL circuit with a dynamic IP address. When enabled, the zone files are shared with Net Integration's own dynamic DNS system at avivanet.com. All one has to do as add the avivanet servers as NS records in the domain's registration.

I have enabled this dynamic option as Astrium is on such an ADSL circuit. Since I have done this I have had DNS resolution issues: but only from Mac clients!

Using Ethereal, I can see that there is a delay when a Mac sends the DNS request. The Mac sends IPV4 and IPV6 requests. For some reason, the Mac fails to respond to the first reply from the DNS server, though Ethereal decodes it correctly on the same box. It repeats the request after about 15 seconds and is OK after that. This happens for all DNS lookups as far as I can see.

I've tried resetting the Mac settings (it happens on two Macs).

Very strange

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Gareth Howell 5 January 2009 18:17:40

The last part before I can decommission the LBAGlobal domain is to ensure the web sites that are currently hosted on that domain's servers (including this blog) are accessible on the Lotus Foundations Server. Not easy...

LFS runs an apache server on ports 80 and 443. Domino's HTTP server is still there but only on HTTPS on 4443 (you use this to access DWA). 4443 is not a port that is assigned for HTTP or HTTPS: it comes up as being assigned for "pharos". I haven't tried changing this in the server document but I imagine LFS's autonomic healing would detect and correct this.

Not too sure how to get around this right now.

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Gareth Howell 5 January 2009 17:27:06

In a previous post I detailed the efforts I went through to try and integrate a Lotus Foundations Start Domino server into an existing Domino domain. I lost the will to live before I got it to work propoerly and had to admit defeat. I should have listened to the various commentators who told me to do just that.

However it should be possible to migrate users from an existing Domino domain to a Foundations domain; shouldn't it?

I want to do this as part of an infrastructure upgrade. We currently host our Domino server on an external server and I'd like to move the users and the plethora of databases and websites to the newly installed Foundations server that serves as the firewall/file server etc in our office.

The existing domain is called "LBAGlobal", the new one is called "elastictime" and the Foundations server is called astrium/elastictime

So far, progress has been mixed. I have been able to:

• cross certify and connect the two domains
• set up cross domain administration
• create replicas of the databases in the elastictime domain and have them replicated correctly
• make a few minor adjustments to astrium's configuration (e.g. have 2 mailboxes rather than one, add support for the additional domains)

Where I have had a problem is getting SMTP mail routing to work.

Like many companies, we have multiple email domains and we need to send and receive email on all of them. Getting Foundations to support additional domains isn't entirely obvious. The Knowledge Base simply says "create the necessary DNS records) Huh?

I worked out through trial and error that you have to create Virtual Domains for the additional email domains. This is done by creating Virtual Webservers in Webconfig. This is fine as far as it goes, but I now have  a more deep rooted problem: how to migrate the users.

I can't simply add them as users to Foundations because that will cause a new ID file to be created. That's no good because the public/private key will change and encrypted messages will no longer be accessible. What I have done is to

• add them as users, with their various email addresses as aliases;
• wait for the Person document to be created and then;
• replace that with the one from LBAGlobal's directory (suitably amended to reflect the position and name of the mail file).

I'm not conviced this is best practice, but it seems to have worked.

Once the users are all on the elastictime domain, I'll recertify them with the /elastictime certifier.

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Gareth Howell 31 December 2008 12:44:02

Up the road from where I live, there is a farm. Nothing special about that, after all I do live in the country. This one is different though, or I suspect it is anyway.

The farm is bordered on one side by the A1, on another by a river and has roads running round the other two. I walk along these latter two boundaries regularly and I've noticed something rather odd.

All but one of the access points is firmly blocked by strong barriers and very hefty chains and locks. The only path has been blocked. Nothing too extraordinary in this I suppose, but on the edge I think.  Most farms around here are pretty open. The level of access control is more of the bailer twine sort. The really interesting feature is the main access gate.

There is a large fenced concrete apron off the main road with a very sophisticated barrier and access control system. We're talking sliding steel gates, keypad entry, floodlights and a gatehouse. Not the sort of thing you get on your typical farm around these parts. From the gate leads a very well maintained concrete road with separate concrete path. Along the road is at least one intermediate building, sort of like a sentry box??

Until today, I hadn't seen any life on the farm, but during the 2-3 minutes it took me to walk past the main entrance, five cars entered and one left.

Nothing suspicious really, but it's definitely got my interest piqued. I wonder what's going on behind those gates?

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Gareth Howell 16 December 2008 17:21:19

I have blogged about my problems with MobileMe before, here and here. After a period of comparative stability, the problems have returned.

Once again, the problem lies with the Address Book. Multiple contact entries appearing, causing the size of the Address Book to grow, and a new one: a constant overwrite of one of the Address Books.

I have a MacMini and a PowerBook. Both are connected to MobileMe, as is an iPod Touch. The problem is on the PowerBook.

Every time sync runs, I get a warning dialog as follows.



I have tried the following to resolve this:

Accept the changes - no effect
Reset the sync information on this computer and overwrite from MobileMe - no effect
Delete the local Address Book (~/Libraray/Application Support/Address Book) - no effect after the initial sync
Restore from a backup of Address Book on another machine - no effect

Not sure what to do next.

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Gareth Howell 16 December 2008 10:47:02

I've been using Foldershare for some time now to sync folders between a couple of Windows laptops and a couple of Macs in various combinations of folders. All was sweet, until this morning.

Last night, and to very little warning as far as I am concerned, Microsoft (the new owners of Foldershare) launched Windows Live Sync as an "upgrade" to Foldershare. All I knew was that foldershare had stopped working, though it didn't tell me this on the Windows PCs. Luckily the Mac did warn me (sic).

I had to download new clients and log in again: only I can't. The Windows client fails every time and the Mac client says it is too old and needs to be upgraded.

A thread here tells all. Apparently they have found a bug in the Mac client.

As you can imagine, the support forum is a bit busy at the moment.

Doesn't this company ever learn its own lessons about how to deploy new software to a mature community? Haven't they screwed this process up enough times that somebody finally puts in place decent testing and release procedures?

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Gareth Howell 12 December 2008 10:39:27

I have been using Twitter for some time now as a means of keeping in touch with a wider circle of friends and acquaintances, but I've decided to cut back a bit.

The area I have cut back on is the subscriptions to news feeds. The reasoning is as follows.

We live in a time that seems obsessed with keeping up to date with what's going on. We can see this in the (apparent) demand for 24 hour rolling bollocks on Sky, CNN, BBC World etc. The effect of this can also be seen on the same channels: the almost unavoidable pressure to create news or at least fabricate pseudo news at those times when nothing is really going on.

This is a phenomenon that used to be restricted to the so-called "silly season" in the summer when political and business leaders went off on their holidays and bored newspaper journalists and editors dragged up all sorts of spurious news items to fill their papers. With 24 hour rolling bollocks we now see this occurring every day, in fact several times a day.

Inevitably, this over saturation of "news" has an impact on the recipient. At one level they develop a pathology that requires them to keep up with the news and in extreme cases to become involved in the news (see for example what happened after the death of the Princess of Wales). At another level, the recipient loses the ability to discriminate between what is real news and what is bollocks.

Immediate news sounds attractive, and in some cases it is: e.g. football scores or traffic news. In just about every other case though it is actually a disadvantage. It removes the chance for the reporter to do the things reporters are supposed to do: seek confirmation, filter out obvious untruths and misleading information and to present thoughtful news items.  The latter is probably best illustrated by the BBC's "From Our Own Correspondent" which gives in-country BBC reporters the chance to present a more thoughtful piece on what is happening in the country rather than having to react to the demands of a news editor in London. Other examples can be found in the weekly press magazines.

Twitter is an amazing vehicle for communications, but I seriously question its utility as a news distribution mechanism. Doing a search for #mumbai on tweetscan illustrates the point perfectly. Was there any real benefit gained from being able to "see" what somebody "thought" was going on in Mumbai? There was some useful information but much of it was ill-informed speculation and at the time it was impossible to decide what was real and what was bollocks.

For these reasons I have decided to cut back my exposure to daily news and instead restrict myself to delayed news reportage. I'm not sure what I will look at yet: Time, Newsweek... But no more news feeds on Twitter (apart from BBC Test Match Special of course.

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Gareth Howell 9 December 2008 16:55:38

There have been rumours afoot that the BBC was considering closing down its Long Wave transmitter on 198 kHz. This carries Radio 4 most of the time. A trailer for a documentary to be broadcast this evening may have saved it.

The documentary is about the UK's permanent nuclear deterrent using Trident missiles aboard submarines. The programme goes through the detail of how a launch would be approved and then executed (sic).

Apparently, one of the shipboard checks is to see whether Radio 4 is still on the air! I assume this would have to be a check on 198 kHz. Therefore one assumes that this more or less guarantees the continuation of Radio 4 on LW.

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Gareth Howell 2 December 2008 10:32:38

Lots of commentators are comparing times now with times past: mainly the last period of economic uncertainty. Well I'd like to make a comparison as well: with the time when gigs never started on time!

There was some dissatisfaction last night that Stackridge started their set late (9:15 rather than 8:30). Some people even asked for their money back!

I remember (sure sign of an old codger) when bands never started on time. Back in the late 60's and 70's it was not unusual for a start to be delayed by an hour or so because the lead guitarist was too drunk or high to play. I seem to recall Free being 2 hours late for a gig one night. Nobody seemed to mind that I remember. It gave more time for drinking, smoking, snogging, (possibly even fighting a couple of times).

I guess it was very much a sign of the nineties and noughties that things had to start on time: people's time was more pressurised and even leisure activities were timed.

I think it's a good sign if this phase is dying. What does it matter if the band starts late? OK, you catch a later train home or in extremis miss the encore.

Chill, man.

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Gareth Howell 29 November 2008 20:12:26

Lots of commentators are comparing times now with times past: mainly the last preiod of econimic uncertainty. Wee I'd like to make a comparison as well: with the time when gigs never started on time!

There was some disatisfaction last night that Stackridge started their set late (9:15 rather than 8:30). Some people even asked for their money back!

I remember (sure sign of an old codger) when bands never started on time. Back in the late 60's and 70's it was not unusual for a start to be delayed by an hour or so because the lead guitarist was too drunk or high to play. I seem to recall Free being 2 hours late for a gig one night. Nobody seemd to mind that I remember. It gave more time for drinking, smoking, (possibly even fighting a couple of times).

I guess it was very much a sign of the nineties and noghties that things had to start on time: people's time was more pressurised and even leisure activities were timed.

I thuink it's a good sign if this culture is dying. What does it matter if the band starts late? OK, you catch a alater train home or in extremis  iss the encore.

Chill, man.

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Gareth Howell 29 November 2008 20:12:26