West Ham started brightly... http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/ en-us Mon, 5 Jan 2009 18:17:40 +0100 Mon, 5 Jan 2009 18:17:40 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009181740GHOPG4.htm Lotus Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009181740GHOPG4.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009181740GHOPG4.htm
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 ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/05012009181740GHOPG4.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009181740GHOPG4.htm?opendocument&comments Mon, 5 Jan 2009 17:27:06 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009172706GHONGH.htm Lotus Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009172706GHONGH.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009172706GHONGH.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/05012009172706GHONGH.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/05012009172706GHONGH.htm?opendocument&comments Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:44:02 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/31122008124402GHOGXK.htm Lotus Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/31122008124402GHOGXK.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/31122008124402GHOGXK.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/31122008124402GHOGXK.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/31122008124402GHOGXK.htm?opendocument&comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:21:19 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008172119GHONCW.htm Miscellaneous Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008172119GHONCW.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008172119GHONCW.htm
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? ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/16122008172119GHONCW.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008172119GHONCW.htm?opendocument&comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:47:02 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008104701GHOENG.htm Mac Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008104701GHOENG.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008104701GHOENG.htm 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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/16122008104701GHOENG.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/16122008104701GHOENG.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:39:27 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/12122008103926GHOEHR.htm "Grumpy Old Man" Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/12122008103926GHOEHR.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/12122008103926GHOEHR.htm
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? ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/12122008103926GHOEHR.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/12122008103926GHOEHR.htm?opendocument&comments Tue, 9 Dec 2008 16:55:38 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/09122008165537GHOMUU.htm Social Networking Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/09122008165537GHOMUU.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/09122008165537GHOMUU.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/09122008165537GHOMUU.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/09122008165537GHOMUU.htm?opendocument&comments Tue, 2 Dec 2008 10:32:38 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/02122008103238GHOEDG.htm Miscellaneous Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/02122008103238GHOEDG.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/02122008103238GHOEDG.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/02122008103238GHOEDG.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/02122008103238GHOEDG.htm?opendocument&comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:12:26 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm Out and About Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/30112008201226GHORPT.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm?opendocument&comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:12:26 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm
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. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/30112008201226GHORPT.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008201226GHORPT.htm?opendocument&comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:56:59 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm here, here and here and apart from some disappointment with the second, each one has been better than the last.

The latest was at the 100 Club last night, and it was definitely the best so far. James hit those high notes, tracks off the new CD were played, Eddie the new drummer was brilliant and of course Glenn held it all together on keyboards. Crun seemed to have a permanent smirk on his face and the lady violinists were excellent. Rachel got a show stopping round of applause for her solo on Syracuse the Elephant.

The band seemed to be really enjoying themselves throughout. A great night out for the Rhubarb Thashers. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/30112008195657GHORE7.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm?opendocument&comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:56:59 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm
The latest was at the 100 Club last night, and it was definitely the best so far. James hit those high notes, tracks off the new CD were played, the new drummer was brilliant and of course Glen held it all together on keyboards. Crun seemed to have a premanent smirk on his face and the lady violinists were excellent. got a show stopping round of applause for her solo on Syracuse the Elephont.

The band seemed to be really enjoying themselves throuhgout. A great night out for the Rhubarb Thashers.
]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/30112008195657GHORE7.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/30112008195657GHORE7.htm?opendocument&comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:57:27 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/25112008165727GHOMVY.htm Lotus "Lotus Foundations" Nitix Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/25112008165727GHOMVY.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/25112008165727GHOMVY.htm
As a step towards having the LFS box in my Home Office use our existing domain of Domino servers, I have been playing with a test environment.

The environment is two VMware VMs (expanded to three as indicated later).

The first (aria9.elastictime.local)  is a straight install of Lotus Foundations Start with a single network adapter connected to a Host only network (192.168.111.0/24) and one disk.
The second (domino1.elastictime.local) is a Windows 2000 Server with a Domino 8.0.1 server installed, plus clients.

I took the following steps on the LFS box (with snapshots along the way)

1. Installed the lfstartentry-domino-1.0 package to create a Domino server called aria9/elastictime in the domain elastictime.
2. let the server run for a while and then disabled it
3. Took a copy of the notesdata directory to my local machine.

I took the following steps on the Windows server

1. configured Domino1 as a first server in a new organisation (/elastictime) and new domain (elastictime) and with system/elastictime as administrator.
2. registered aria9/elastictime as a new Domino server.
3. let the server run for a while and then stopped it so I could take copies of the relevant files (names.nsf, admin4.nsf, certlog.nsf, aria9.id (the id of the newly registered server) and cert.id

Back on the LFS box I then replaced the relevant files with those copied from Domino1 (with aria9.id renamed to server.id) and restarted the LFS Domino server
The server started but of course it wasn't properly configured.

Luckily I had taken snapshots throughout, so I went back to the snapshot taken just before I copied the files off of Domino1 and carried on as follows:

1. Stopped the LFS VM
2. Cloned Domino1 to create a new fresh Windows 2000 box with unconfigured Domino server
3. renamed the box as aria9 and configured the Domino server as aria9/elastictime as you would if you were simply adding a new server to a domain.
4. I then went through the server document for aria9/elastictime and mirrored the settings from those set in the LFS's Domino server (mainly changing some of the ports)
5. I then copied the files off of the newly configured Domino server and put them on the LFS box.

This time, the LFS Domino server started OK and seemed to be working OK (as seen from the Domino Administration client).

However:

• SMTP mail sent to aria9 on port 25 (which is the Postfix SMTP relay) was not forwarded to the Domino server on port 26 (which is what I changed the Domino server's SMTP listener to run on)
• The only status messages that appeared on the LFS Status screen is that the Lotus Foundations Start 1.0 is running and that the Domino server is listening on port 1352. None of the other status lines that generally appear are there.
• Adding new users does not cause new Domino accounts to be created.

Obviously there is something wrong.

There is precious little in any of the LFS log files and the Domino server thinks all is hunky-dory, so I'll have to do some digging.

Watch this space: unless somebody has a bright idea. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/25112008165727GHOMVY.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/25112008165727GHOMVY.htm?opendocument&comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:42:31 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008114231GHOFR5.htm Society Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008114231GHOFR5.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008114231GHOFR5.htm piece on the BBC website reporting that the Home Office has decide to arm all frontline police officers with Taser stun guns: that's 30,000.

This is an interesting development in the gradual process of change that has been going on in UK policing over the past 10-15 years.

A lot of people outside of the UK still have an image of the police in this country dressed in smart uniforms and wearing pointed hats. To a certain extent this is still a reality in Central London (mainly the touristy bits), but for most of the rest of us, this image disappeared some time ago under the massive threats that the Police claim to be facing. I say "claim" because I'm not sure the actual evidence backs up the assertions used to justify the changes.

Thus, most police officers now wear combat style clothing with unobtrusive Kevlar body armour beneath the obligatory NATO style woollie pullie. They also carry extending batons and pepper spray. I appreciate that to our US cousins this will seem like going around naked, but it's quite a change for us; particularly as I am not convinced the actual level of threat has increased proportionately. It is true that the public perception of crime has altered dramatically and that many believe we live in a violent, drug crazed society where every teenager is only a knife blade's width from being a mass murderer, but that doesn't make it true.

On the whole, I don't believe the requirements of policing have changed a great deal if you live outside of a city centre or sink estate. Until very recently I was a Scout Leader in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire. Letchworth is a very nice place to live but it does have its troubled areas and troubled residents. I don't know where it sits on any scale of reportable offences, but I do know that a couple of districts sit quite high on the scale of social deprivation.

Despite this, we have a thriving Scouting community that is generally over subscribed. I used regularly to meet and get to know young people who lived in the (so-called) less desirable parts of town and generally found them to be just like any other pre-teen or teenager I have ever met: including myself back in the 60's. They're battling an internal challenge of hormones and external pressures to conform. Most of them cope admirably. Get them away from the dubious delights offered by a small group of their peers and even the most challenged and hardened of them soon revert to be social animals that actually just want to have some fun, blow off steam and do something that interests them. With the right environment, they even enjoy learning new skills and trying new challenges. Not exactly the vision painted by the Daily Mail's of this world.

So, what has this all to do with arming the Police? Not a lot I guess. I started this piece wondering what my reaction and position was to this event, but I've got a bit sidetracked on to one of my hobby horses: how the media paints a very distorted view of young people today.

As to the Tasers, I have no objection in principle. The Police do have a lot of pressures on them to "clean up" the streets and if this gives them another, comparatively benign, tool to add to their belt, then I am happy; provided they know how to, and more importantly, when to, use it. The Law of Unintended Consequences tells us that every complex action causes effects we didn't foresee and probably didn't want. In this case I wouldn't want to see reports in the media that Tasers were being used routinely to subdue groups of teenagers who just needed to be talked to rather than shouted at. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/24112008114231GHOFR5.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008114231GHOFR5.htm?opendocument&comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:01:34 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008100133GHODS3.htm Out and About Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008100133GHODS3.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008100133GHODS3.htm
The purpose of the visit was to see Billy Bragg at the Royal & Derngate Theatre in the centre of town. The theatre is very impressive and is actually two separate auditoria: The Royal and The Derngate. We were in the Derngate.

Supporting Billy was a singer songwriter called Otis Gibbs; of whom I hadn't heard before. He was a very amiable guy from Indiana who sings an compelling mix of folk and political music: not unlike Billy in that sense then; though perhaps it is more appropriate to compare him to Phil Ochs. Good songs, including the wonderful "One Day our Whispers [will be louder than your screams]" really got people in the mood. He's supporting Billy on all his UK tour I think.

Billy was, well, Billy. An excellent mix of songs (electric and acoustic), banter and politics. There's always at least one heckler in Billy's audiences. I've even wondered if they are planted. Whatever, Billy loves to bring them down.

A lot of people talk about the process of "centering", i.e. finding a stable position that minimises internal tensions. Some people achieve this through religion and prayer, some through drugs. I achieve it by regular doses of Billy Bragg; whether on paper (Billy's autobiography is excellent) CD or live. Live is always going to be best because it is raw.

A great evening, spoiled only by the inability to find decent beer in the centre of Northampton. I forgot to look in the Good Beer Guide, so we had to wander for a while in the freezing cold before finally admitting defeat and drinking wine instead. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/24112008100133GHODS3.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/24112008100133GHODS3.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:50:14 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008135014GHOJ8X.htm Lotus "Lotus Foundations" Nitix Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008135014GHOJ8X.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008135014GHOJ8X.htm
So, my plan is as follows:

• Install a production LFS (on third party hardware) initially without Domino but acting as our main Internet gateway
• Test the process of adding a LFS Domino server into an existing domain and then add the LFS into our existing domain (I know it's not supported in this release)

I've done step one now, and I learned a number of useful lessons as a result. There's no substitute for doing it for real to get the full picture.

We are a virtual company and work from our homes but with our Domino servers in a collocation centre. So I have installed LFS as the Internet gateway in my home on a Dell Dimension XPS box with two 120GB drives, two Ethernet adapters and 2GB RAM. Prior to installing LFS, my home network comprised a cable connection to Virgin Media with a dynamic IP address, a Zyxel Zywall-1 router/firewall and a mix of wired and wireless devices on the inside. The LFS has replaced the Zywall.

As you would expect of LFS, installation was easy and quick. The only stumbling block was the cable interface. The cable circuit is terminated with a cable modem that is configured with my account details. This then presents an Ethernet connection. Physical connectivity was no problem, but I did have some problems getting a correct IP address for the external interface eth1.

LFS initially installs with a single Ethernet interface, eth0. This is expected to be the internal network and is trusted. Plugging the cable modem in prompted LFS to recognise and add eth1. Initially it also was trusted (probably not a good default behaviour IMHO) but it was configured with a self assigned IP address in the 10.x range, so there was no exposure. Setting eth1 to be untrusted caused the firewall to be enabled.

To get a proper IP address on eth1 I had to cycle the power on the cable modem a couple of times. This could be a source of problems. Also there is no provision to configure the cable modem (unlike configuring ADSL connections). This configuration is not explicitly documented in the Nitix KB or the LFS WiKi. so I might add a new scenario.

The next problem is that my IP address is dynamic. The Zywall was set to update an entry on www.dydns.com, but initially I could see no equivalent on LFS. Eventually I had to RTFM and found that Net Integration run their own dynamic DNS service. So I configured the domain to use Net Integration's dynamic DNS name servers and set LFS's DNS to "dynamic". It just worked!

Lastly, I noticed a significant degradation in DNS resolution times after I replaced the Zywall with LFS. This was probably because although eth1 was using DHCP, it didn't seem to take any notice of the name servers that Virgin gave it. Searching through the Knowledge Base I found that I could tell Weaver (LFS's control program) to use a forwarder. Performance is now back to normal.

I have only one outstanding issue and that relates to using LFS as a transparent web proxy.

According to the manual, the proxy is disabled unless a size is configured for the size of the web cache. I set up the cache, but then I lost access to the internet, instead getting (misleading) error messages stating

In fact the proxy is denying internet access (as is proven by the source of the error message, port 4284).

I haven't found anything to explain this behaviour so I've logged a support call. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/21112008135014GHOJ8X.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008135014GHOJ8X.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:19:39 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008121937GHOGGC.htm This Site Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008121937GHOGGC.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008121937GHOGGC.htm

I eventually got to look at this today.
Looking at the Domino Log (i.e. the HTTP log) on the server I could see that there were errors.



The error is at the end, but what caused it is in the previous line, which is a redirection.

My blog is accessed as http://blog.garethhowell.com but is actually on a Domino server called Domino1/LBAGlobal (http://domino1.lincolnburnett.com) in the subdirectory "/blogs".

The DNS for garethhowell.com has a CNAME for "blog" that maps to domino1.lincolnburnett.com and the Domino Directory on Domino1 contains a Web Site document for blog.garethhowell.com.

Some time ago, I decided to hide the internal path by adding a redirection rule to the site so that all blog content appeared as being under the root of blog.garethhowell.com. It was this that was causing the problem.

When you post a comment, the full URL that is passed to the HTTP server contains a return parameter with the URL of the page to display after the POST has been processed. This return parameter contained the full internal path to the page (i.e. /blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/...) and this was being handled incorrectly because the HTTP server tried to server blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/... rather than blog.garethhowell.com/dx/...

To solve the problem I had to make two changes and then one more.

I reverted the Configuration of the Bog so that it knew it was in a subdirectory, and
I changed the redirection so it used the full path to the blog

This means that the internal path is now visible again, but it did cure the posting problem. Unfortunately it also introduced a side effect.
Anybody who has a permanent link to one of my blog entries is likely to have it in the form http://blog.garethhowell.com/dx/... This goes for web crawlers as well. With the changes, this form no longer resolved, so I had to add an extra substitution rule to the we site that mapped anything of the form "/dx/" to "/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/".

It all appears to work now. but I'd like some testing please, so feel free to comment either against this message or one of the previous two test messages. I'll keep an eye on the log for a few days to see if Technorati et al cope with it.

I'll leave the site on the default theme for now. Changing this actually didn't need to occur, but I quite like it. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/21112008121937GHOGGC.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008121937GHOGGC.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:09:53 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008120951GHOGA8.htm This Site Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008120951GHOGA8.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008120951GHOGA8.htm this ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/21112008120951GHOGA8.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008120951GHOGA8.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:12:29 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008111224GHOF6B.htm This Site Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008111224GHOF6B.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008111224GHOF6B.htm As a start, I have reverted to a plain vanilla Domino Blog look and feel.
I'll probably restore the previous look and feel but I may not. ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/21112008111224GHOF6B.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008111224GHOF6B.htm?opendocument&comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:06:24 +0100 http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008100620GHODV3.htm This Site Gareth Howell http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008100620GHODV3.htm?opendocument&comments http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008100620GHODV3.htm I really must work out what causes this. I will try and have a look this weekend.

Gareth ]]> http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dxcomments/21112008100620GHODV3.htm http://blog.garethhowell.com/blogs/ghowell.nsf/dx/21112008100620GHODV3.htm?opendocument&comments