April 24, 2008

Save XP!

From TechNewsWorld we have yet another field report from the battle to save, or kill depending on where you work, Windows XP: Technology News: Operating Systems: Ballmer: XP’s Demise Negotiable. Personally, I’d love to see XP’s availability extended one more time. However, I’m not sure Microsoft can stomach the implied admission that Vista is a near total failure.

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Posted by eric at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2008

More Fun With SharePoint and InfoPath

SharePoint IconI’ve been spending a lot more time this week in SharePoint than I have doing anything with InfoPath but that’s about to change as one of our ongoing InfoPath projects is about to come home to roost on my desk. (Actually it’s already there, I just haven’t done anything with it.)

Once again I find a timely post. This time from itaysk we have InfoPath - Get the current user without writing code - itaysk. Here’s yet more handy information on how to import information that originates in AD from web services mediated by SharePoint into InfoPath forms.

It’s interesting to note that comment after comment, dozens of them, lament that not everything works even when the author’s steps are followed exactly. More worrying is the fact that many respondents are describing quite distinct failure cases. It feels like a sign that InfoPath and Forms Service may be way too sensitive to small differences in the configuration of their local environments. Are these products to complex for their own good or viability?

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Posted by eric at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2008

How to Annoy an Introvert

I ran across this article (TidBITS Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts) by Joe Kissel on TidBITS yesterday. It’s a thoughtful piece on why some of us seem to resist some of the recent trends in communications and collaboration technology. Being quite the introvert myself — I’m about as far over on the I side of the I-E axis on MBTI as you get — I found many of my own feelings about things like IM clients and telephones echoed in the article. I’m perhaps not as adverse to some of these modes of interaction as the author. My fascination with the technology tends to trump my discomfort with its implications. However, I very much understand where he’s coming from.

The thesis of the article is that many of the recent innovations in computer moderated communications could not be better contrived to annoy, bebother and otherwise cause suffering to your garden variety introvert temperament. If so, this is important to consider.

The odds are that at least 25% of your coworkers would fall somewhere on the introvert end of the personality range. My own guess is that many high-tech companies may well have a higher than average weight of introverts. This makes the article of even greater relevance. There’s much more in it than just why instant message programs irritate introverts. There’re some good thoughts on much more general communications issues between introverts and the people with which they work — while trying to hide in their caves.

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Posted by eric at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2008

EOL for Vista?

Vista IconI’ve been following the travails of Microsoft’s hangfire OS, Vista for some time. Not sure why this interests me so much. Perhaps I’m just hoping that it will go away before we’re forced to shift from XP at the office. With this in mind, I find my heart lifted by stories that have emerged over the last week (e.g., Gates hints at Vista ‘successor’> that raise my hopes that Vista may end up going into EOL before XP. That this is a good thing is of course predicated on the assumption that whatever follows Vista can’t be worse. I’m not sure just how good that assumption is.

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Posted by eric at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2007

Vista Avoision

Vista IconWhen I recently purchased a new Dell tower, I carefully selected from amongst their product lines that were still shipping with Windows XP/Pro, not Vista. I had thought my self a bit of a luddite at the time but a spate of recent articles indicates that the general feeling toward Vista is far worse than I had thought. I am it seems, not alone. Examples:

And there’re more. Most of today’s articles are running with the XP service life extension news but the upshot is that Vista is hardly wowing the masses. While several business are sited by MS as having rapidly adopted Vista, I know of none personally. Every contact I have in the IT world appears to be happy to stay with XP for the foreseeable future.

For myself, it seems a pretty simple decision. It appears to me that Microsoft is offering me an expensive new system that consumes lots more resources while providing at best a very marginal improvement on the reasonably solid performance offered by XP. Just how do I come out ahead by making the “upgrade”? I simply don’t see it.

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Posted by eric at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

Outlook: Another Pet Annoyance

Is it possible that Microsoft Outlook is the single most irritating entity since the inception of the IRS? No, probably not, but there are times when it really does seem that way.

In fairness, things have been running smoothly for my local group of thirty or so users for quite some time. In the last few days, however, there have been several failures. One user’s copy keeps loosing its address cache for no easily discernable reason. Another’s is refusing to automatically send and receive; has to be kicked off manually for now. A third user’s is exiting with a nasty message about a problem in ntdll.dll.

So suddenly we’re up to a 10% failure rate. Worse, Outlook never seems to have any normal failure mode. Each time it’s some problem from beyond the obscure. I’ll no doubt have to spend a couple of hours with each user’s machine only to end up purging and recreating the local profile; the only really reliable fix short of completely re-imaging the subject machine. I got better things to do.

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Posted by eric at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2007

Trying out Panoramio

Panoramio LogoHaving seen all of the little Panoramio droppings cropping up in Google earth, I looked into it, set up an account and gave it a try. It&rsqou;s yet another tag based photo sharing site a la Flickr. It has the added wrinkle of associating geographical data with images, hence the appearance of little markers in Google earth.

The servers seem a little challenged at times and I’ve run across a couple of embarrassing database errors but I’m assuming that these are growing pains. Aside from the addition of geographic data, I can’t seen any earth shaking reason to recommend this site over others.

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Posted by eric at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2006

Getting the Dell Laptop to Suspend/Hibernate Again

Another peculiarity of our errant Dell laptop was that it at some point had decided that it was no longer interested in suspending or hibernating. As I was fiddling with it to get it to join the household domain, I figure I might as well take the opportunity — it’s primarily the wife’s machine and I don't ordinarily make much use of it — to see if I could find out why. I suspected crufty old software.

And I was right. A careful look at the messages that cropped up while attempting to put the system in standby revealed a complaint about plug-and-play messages and the keyboard driver. Specifically “The device driver for the keyboard device is preventing the machine from entering sleep mode. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver”. Well for Pete’s sake! What could be more basic than the keyboard driver. None the less, that&rsqou;s where the trouble surfaced… but not where it originated. The real culprit was an ancient version of Adobe Type Manager that rode in on some other aged Adobe install set.

I never would have found this but for this helpful little support article on Microsoft’s site. Every now and then, one's got to give them a little credit yeah?

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Posted by eric at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Last Stray Sheep in the Fold

As I mentioned in a previous post, the FreeBSD/Samba based household domain controller that I’d set up earlier this year works fine but for one stubborn Dell laptop that refused to join the domain. It kept claiming that it couldn’t find the DC (though it could always do so when using public services on the same server). I finally located the problem today.

The name of my pain is the Norton security suite. It has its own firewall which was really doing the blocking while I kept trying to configure the Windows firewall to allow the required traffic. Once I told Norton to go take a hike — I uninstalled the whole suite as I’ve never liked the Norton utilities — everything went off like clockwork. The laptop joined the domain without any need for manual intervention on the server side.

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Posted by eric at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2006

Off-line Files and the Profiles Share

Going through the event long on one of the clients of my FreeBSD/Samba domain controller, I noticed several warnings in the Userenv category. Event ID: 1525 — “Windows has detected that Offline Caching is enabled on the Roaming Profile share – to avoid potential profile corruption, Offline Caching must be disabled on shares where roaming user profiles are stored.”

A quick hunt through the smb.conf man page leads to the section on the csc policy setting. The Samba client-side caching policy, or csc policy, needs to be set to "disable" on a roaming profile share. Added line "csc policy = disable" to [Profiles] section of smb.conf and restarted Samba. This clears up the warnings. A small point but I like clean logs.

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Posted by eric at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2006

Advertising the WINS Service

Thus far, the household Samba DC appears to be functioning quite well. I’ve been able to add member machines without trouble, providing I manually create the machines’ POSIX accounts in advance, and domain log in works without a hitch. I have had difficulty with one laptop running Windows XP/Pro. When I try to get it to join the domain, it claims to be unable to find the DC. Odd, because when I attempt to use services on the DC from that laptop as a non-domain member; mapping drives, locating printers and what not, it works fine.

Reviewing what the client knew about the DC, via ipconfig /all amongst other sources, I noticed that there was no default WINS server. That’s probably because I didn’t include any such definition in the DHCP configuration files. And that is most likely because there’s nothing in the ISC dhcpd configuration that uses the term WINS. What it’s really called is the NetBIOS name server. So, I’ve added the following couple of lines to the local subnet section in /usr/local/etc/dhcpd.conf.

option netbios-name-servers 192.168.0.5;
option netbios-node-type 8;

Haven’t had a chance to try out the stubborn laptop again to see if will now join the domain. One step at a time.

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Posted by eric at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2006

Samba Workgroup to Domain Controller: Step 6

So, on with the attempt to convert the local Samba file server into a domain controller. Looking things over, it appears I’ve got several local accounts that should be represented in the LDAP database and a few groups and at least on user that should have matching entries in the FreeBSD files. First to bring some of the local accounts into the Samba password back end:

  1. Copy /etc/passwd to a temporary file, migrage.passwd, and eliminate therefrom all of the service accounts that shouldn’t be migrated.
  2. Round smbldap-migrate-unix-accounts -P migrate.passwd -v -a
  3. Update the users’ passwords using smbldap-passwd username
  4. Move all of the newly added users into the Domain Users group, and myself into the Domain Admins as well.
    smbldap-groupmod does not appear to be doing the trick; claims that it can’t find the group but smbldap-groupshow can. Perhaps I need the matching entries in /etc/group. Used a direct interface to the LDAP database to add the memberUids. I have added these /etc/group entries but have not yet had time to try smbldap-groupmod again.

Now for the problem of being able to join the domain. I suspect that it’s because there’s no user entry in /etc/passwd to match the machine trust account in the LDAP database. Added a “mintaka$” account to /etc/passwd with uid matching that defined by Samba. Attempt to join the domain and... Great joy! “Welcome to the SPOOBLES domain!” I’m in and what’s more, it looks like my Domain Admins group is functioning correctly.

Did forget to create directories for the roaming profiles which created a bit of a bump when I first logged in but that was quickly fixed by creating a directory for each user under /u1/Profiles, changing the owner and group, and bashing the file mode to 700.

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Posted by eric at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2005

Samba Workgroup to Domain Controller: Step 5

Windows Error
My problems yesterday were indeed related to having failed to properly configure the smbldap-tools properly. Lesson: read the instructions for components on which you depend. Query: does this mean that I have to read the documentation for the two dozen or so ports that the smbldap-tools port dragged in during the build? Don’t hold your breath.

Two configuration files, both of which are found in /usr/local/etc/smbldap-tools/ on FreeBSD, must be updated to get smbldap-tools going. The simplest is the smbldap_bind.conf. As my LDAP server is local and no special authentication techniques are employed, my version of this file ended up pretty simple:


############################
# Credential Configuration #
############################
slaveDN="cn=Manager,dc=spoobles,dc=net"
slavePw="NoneOYourBeezwax"
masterDN="cn=Manager,dc=spoobles,dc=net"
masterPw="ThisNeether"

The other file, smbldap.conf provides the rest of the information that smbldap-tools requires to work in the local environment. It specifies where within the LDAP database information about users, groups and machines is kept. The name of the domain and the NetBIOS name of the DC etc. are also found here. In my case, it ends up looking like this:


############################################################
# General Configuration
############################################################
SID="S-1-5-21-2535314322-2390073379-3082194414"
sambaDomain="SPOOBLES"


############################################################
# LDAP Configuration
############################################################
slaveLDAP="127.0.0.1"
slavePort="389"
masterLDAP="127.0.0.1"
masterPort="389"
ldapTLS="0"
verify="none"
suffix="dc=spoobles,dc=net"
usersdn="ou=NTUsers,${suffix}"
computersdn="ou=NTComputers,${suffix}"
groupsdn="ou=NTGroups,${suffix}"
idmapdn="ou=NTIdmap,${suffix}"
sambaUnixIdPooldn="sambaDomainName=SPOOBLES,${suffix}"


# Default scope Used
scope="sub"


# Unix password encryption (CRYPT, MD5, SMD5, SSHA, SHA, CLEARTEXT)
hash_encrypt="SSHA"


# if hash_encrypt is set to CRYPT, you may set a salt format.
# default is "%s", but many systems will generate MD5 hashed
# passwords if you use "$1$%.8s". This parameter is optional!
crypt_salt_format="%s"


############################################################
# Unix Accounts Configuration
############################################################
userLoginShell="/bin/csh"
userHome="/u1/home/%U"
userHomeDirectoryMode="700"
userGecos="System User"
defaultUserGid="513"
defaultComputerGid="515"
skeletonDir="/etc/skel"
defaultMaxPasswordAge="45"


############################################################
# SAMBA Configuration
############################################################
userSmbHome="\\ALNITAK\%U"
userProfile="\\ALNITAK\Profiles\%U"
userHomeDrive="H:"
userScript="logon.bat"
mailDomain="spoobles.net"


############################################################
# SMBLDAP-TOOLS Configuration (default are ok for a RedHat)
############################################################
with_smbpasswd="0"
smbpasswd="/usr/bin/smbpasswd"
with_slappasswd="0"
slappasswd="/usr/sbin/slappasswd"

The SID comes from the wreckage of my last attempt to set up the DC and was generated by Samba. By the way, the FreeBSD port installs these configuration files with the mode 444; a bad plan particularly for smbldap_bind.conf which contains your LDAP Administrator password. Make sure to bash the mode to 440 or 400 before you move on.

After updating the configuration files, the next step was to use smbldap-tools to generate an LDIF file to prime the DC’s password database, import the results into LDAP and finally make sure that there’s a valid root password in the database:


# /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-populate -u 15000 -g 15000 -l 65534 -e smbLDAPBoot2.ldif
# /usr/local/bin/ldapadd -v -f smbLDAPBoot2.ldif -x -D 'cn=Manager,dc=spoobles,dc=net' –W
# /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-passwd

After updating smb.conf to reflect my change of heart with respect to where the DC database will live — I’ve eliminated the Orion OU — and we’re ready to test… and fail. When I try to add a member computer I’m told that it can’t find the account. Somebody is creating the machine account in the correct location in the LDAP database but apparently that’s not all that’s required. More research later.

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Posted by eric at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2005

Samba Workgroup to Domain Controller: Step 4

After cobbling together an initial LDAP database to support a Samba DC, the next step is to build a new smb.conf to tell Samba to start acting like a domain controller. The following is what I came up with, based heavily on example 2.3.8 in “The Official Samba-3 HOW TO and Reference Guide”.


# Alnitak's SMB configuration file.
#
# 05-12-28 ECS: Complete rework to make Alnitak an NT4.0/Win2K DC.
# 05-06-10 ECS: Added support for wifi subnet.
# 02-08-20 ECS: Cobled together initial version from smb.conf.default and old
# smb.conf from earlier incarnation of alnitak.
#
[global]
workgroup = ORION
server string = Gateway G6-400
netbios name = ALNITAK
hosts allow = 192.168.0.
passdb backend = ldapsam:ldap://localhost
username map = /usr/local/etc/samba/users.map
printcap name = cups
printing = cups
add user script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-useradd -m '%m'
delete user script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-userdel '%u'
add group script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-groupadd -p '%g'
delete group script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-groupdel '%g'
add user to group script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-groupmod -m '%u' '%g'
delete user from group script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-groupmod -x '%u' '%g'
set primary group script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-usermod -g '%g' '%u'
add machine script = /usr/local/sbin/smbldap-useradd -w '%u'
logon script = scripts\login.bat
logon path = \\%L\Profiles\%U
logon drive = H:
logon home = \\%L\%U
domain logons = Yes
os level = 35
preferred master = Yes
domain master = Yes
ldap suffix = o=Orion,dc=spoobles,dc=net
ldap machine suffix = ou=Machines
ldap user suffix = ou=People
ldap group suffix = ou=Groups
ldap idmap suffix = ou=Idmap
ldap admin dn = cn=Manager,dc=spoobles,dc=net
ldap ssl = no
ldap passwd sync = Yes
idmap uid = 15000-20000
idmap gid = 15000-20000


[homes]
comment = Home Directories
valid users = %S
read only = No
browseable = No
hide dot files = Yes


[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
printer admin = root, eric
create mask = 0600
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
browseable = No


[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers Share
path = /usr/local/etc/samba/drivers
write list = root, eric
printer admin = root, eric


[netlogon]
comment = Network Logon Service
path = /usr/local/etc/samba/netlogon
admin users = root, eric
guest ok = Yes
browseable = No


[Profiles]
comment = Roaming Profile Share
path = /u1/Profiles
read only = No
profile acls = Yes


[edata]
comment = Eric's data volume
path = /u0/edata
browseable = Yes
writeable = Yes


[ldata]
comment = Laura's data volume
path = /u1/ldata
browseable = Yes
writeable = Yes


[shared]
comment = Shared data valume
path = /u1/shared
browseable = Yes
writeable = Yes

One small detail, making samba aware of the LDAP Manager’s password — this is accomplished using the smbpasswd -w secret command — and it looked like I was ready to shift to the new configuration.

This done, and Samba restarted, and I get a bunch of start up errors. It looks, based on the reply I got when I used smbpasswd –w, that I should be specifying the complete DN of the LDAP Manager in the ldap admin dn tag and not just a name relative to the suffix as shown in the example.

I note that another object has been created in the LDAP database, a sambaDomain object with the sambaDomainName of ORION. This object also contains initial uid and gids but they’re not the ones I selected, curious.

At the end of the day, things aren’t quite happy yet. There’s no user yet defined that will have the authority to add machines to the domain and the smbldap-useradd script is complaining about not being able to find the start uid setting. I keep getting an error code:

Could not find base dn, to get next uidNumber at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/ 5.8.6/smbldap_tools.pm line 995.

It looks like I’ve skipped a step, using smbldap-populate to build the initial LDAP database. It also looks like I’ve got another pair of configuration files to update in /usr/local/etc/smbldap-tools/, smbldap.conf and smbldap_bind.conf. Out of time tonight so this’ll have to wait for another day.

Back to the old configuration for now.

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Posted by eric at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2005

Samba Workgroup to Domain Controller: Step 3

After step 2, reconfiguring LDAP to support Samba as a password database, the next step is to create the basic LDAP objects to contain and provide access to the domain database. I’ve stepped of the script provided by “The Official Samba-3 HOW TO and Reference Guide” (pp. 33-35) at this point. The easiest way to do this is to create a single ou, People, to contain information about users, groups and machines. I would prefer to break these up. Machines aren’t people, yet, and their data should not be stored under the People ou. A basic LDAP framework is already in place so the LDIF file to add support objects for the domain database looks like this.


# Orion, spoobles.net
dn: o=Orion,dc=spoobles,dc=net
objectClass: top
objectClass: organization
o: Orion


# People, Orion, spoobles.net
dn: ou=People,o=Orion,dc=spoobles,dc=net
ou: People
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit


# Groups, Orion, spoobles.net
dn: ou=Groups,o=Orion,dc=spoobles,c=net
ou: Groups
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit


# Machines, Orion, spoobles.net
dn: ou=Machines,o=Orion,dc=spoobles,dc=net
ou: Machines
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit


# admin, People, Orion, spoobles.net
dn: cn=admin,ou=People,o=Orion,dc=spoobles,dc=net
cn: admin
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalRole
objectClass: simpleSecurityObject
userPassword: {SSHA}IWUoHr/G6Nn0CgBHrpIDGrQ5U+ql/4Ov

All this went fine after I spent some minutes recalling just which of the myriad available authentication options to ldapadd I wanted to use. I only use this command about once a year. Pretty much all other interactions I have with LDAP are through higher level tools.

Update: Never can remember without some tedious hunting through notes how to generate an OpenLDAP hash password which you need to do for the initial LDIF update file. Quite simple really so I’ll record it here so I have someplace I know I can find it again. To generate a hash for a password, use the slappasswd utility, the details of which can be found here, that’s installed with the OpenLDAP port. To generate a hash for the password “Woozle” on FreeBSD: /usr/local/sbin/slappasswd -v -s Woozle -h '{SSHA}'.

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Posted by eric at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2005

Samba Workgroup to Domain Controller, Step 2

The first step in converting the relatively simple local Samba server into a domain controller went reasonably smoothly. The smbldap-tools port installed cleanly, once the openssl port had been forced up to the latest version. Only worrisome thing is that something in the port itself or one it depends on is using the SSLeay package which is somewhat superannuated to say the least.

The next job is to get the OpenLDAP server ready to handle data for Samba. This involves installing Samba’s LDAP schema. All required schemata but Samba’s are already present in OpenLDAP’s schema directory, though only core.schema is presently included. So:

  1. Copy in the samba.schema from /usr/local/share/examples/samba/LDAP and then add the following include statements in slapd.conf after the include for core.schema:

    include /usr/local/etc/openldap/schema/cosine.schema
    include /usr/local/etc/openldap/schema/inetorgperson.schema
    include /usr/local/etc/openldap/schema/nis.schema
    include /usr/local/etc/openldap/schema/samba.schema
  2. Amend the list of indexes that slapd should maintain by adding the following below the objectClass eq index which is the only one maintained by default.

    index cn pres,sub,eq
    index sn pres,sub,eq
    index uid pres,sub,eq
    index displayName pres,sub,eq
    index uidNumber eq
    index gidNumber eq
    index memberUid eq
    index sambaSID eq
    index sambaPrimaryGroupSID eq
    index sambaDomainName eq
    index default sub
  3. Shutdown and restart slapd. All appears to be well. On to step three, though perhaps a little later as the weather is looking nice out side right now and I think the offspring could use a good run ‘round the green.

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Posted by eric at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2005

Knitting A Home Domain Controller

Have decided, for reasons unlikely to be clear even to myself, to try to beef up the local Samba server, whose present ambitions extend no further than being the local workgroup’s master browser, into a domain controller. There are several machines about the house and single sign on would be a help. Who knows, putting the user profiles up on the server mightn’t be a bad plan either.

I suppose that I could make life a bit easier on myself and use Samba’s tdbsam password back end but who knows, tomorrow I might feel like setting up a BDC and that would require LDAP. So, step one is to prepare the local LDAP server to be a domain password database.

“The Official Samba-3 HOW TO and Reference Guide” gives what look like fairly complete instructions for this task (see pp. 33-38). Unfortunately it appears that, starting as I am with the FreeBSD port and not the Linux tarball, I’m almost immediately off on the wrong foot. I need the Idealx scripts to act as middleware between Samba and LDAP. They’re supposed to be in someplace like /usr/share/doc/packages/sambaXXXXXX/examples/LDAP/smbldap-tools/ but they’re not. The nearest analog on FreeBSD is /usr/local/share/examples/samba/LDAP. While this directory contains the samba LDAP schema, no scripts are evident.

It appears I need a separate port, smbldap-tools. About as far as I’m likely to get tonight is the installation of this port. It’s one of those installs which is like tugging on a loose thread on a sweater; you often end up getting more than you expect. It looks like this install might easily bring in a dozen other ports along for the ride.

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Posted by eric at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

What Were They Thinking?

In the continuing story of Sony cutting its own nose off to spite its face, we have the Washington Post weighing in with this: Study of Sony Anti-Piracy Software Triggers Uproar

This is right up there with Ebay buying Skype in order to turn it into a pipeline for telemarketers. You just have to wonder what sort of bubble these people live in when they come up with boneheaded plays like this one.

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Posted by eric at 05:16 PM

September 14, 2005

Eeeewwww Ick!

According to this article in The Register:

However it’s eBay’s initial explanation of how it intends to use Skype that will give even VoIP’s most passionate advocates the willies. eBay hopes to monetize the user based by selling their account details to junk callers, at $2 to $12 per lead. Whether Skype users even get the chance to opt-out from this new form of “voice spam” remains to be seen, but eBay’s Whitman could have chosen a better example of ‘synergy’.

Filed under Software and .

Posted by eric at 11:40 AM

July 14, 2005

Who's Cicero and Why Is He Clogging Up My Computer?

Remove CiceroUIWndFrame to avoid crashes

Windows, while being shutdown after yet another hung Outlook session, reported that it was having trouble getting rid of the CiceroUIWndFrame. So who’s Cicero, aside from a famed first century B.C. orator and political casualty? Apparently, in the Windows universe, Cicero is part of the speach and handwriting recognition system in MS Office. Also apparently, I’m far from the only one to run into trouble with it (as can be seen).

I’ve been suffering many hung Outlook sessions while using wireless lately. I’ll get rid of the handwriting and speach stuff as I’m not very likely to use it. I doubt this’ll fix all my troubles, they’ve appeared too many and too varied to be easily blamed on one little piece of ancillary software.

For what it’s worth, I find Outlook much more reliable when I work “offline” over wireless connection periodically send/receiving to stay in sync.

Filed under Software and .

Posted by eric at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

Notes on MSN Desktop Search

MSN ToolbarPart of today’s work was to asses the MSN Desktop Search tool as a potential alternative to Google Desktop. We’re hoping to use some desktop search engine or another as a solution for users who need to hunt through vast e-mail archives and while Google Desktop works fine by itself, it apparently does not get on well with the Aventail client which we kinda need to have installed on all our laptops.

Installation

Microsoft’s entry into the desktop search engine arena is bundled with the MSN toolbar. This can be obtained at http://toolbar.msn.com/. Download and installation proceeded cleanly, so far as I can tell. (For what it’s worth, I’m using Windows XP SP2, IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519, and Outlook 10.6515.6714.) The installer demands that both IE and Outlook be closed before it will finish the job.

Initial Impressions

Noted that, when hosted by a laptop, the index daemon is happy to index newly added files while on battery power but will not run a full index pass unless some settings are updated. Watching the index in operation, the daemon seems to be pretty good at stepping aside of other processes’ way.

I had a collection of .pst files under My Documents but they were not indexed in the initial pass. They were not opened within Outlook.

What’s Included

The MSN Desktop Search package adds search tool bars to: IE, Windows Explorer, Outlook and the taskbar. All of the old MSN toolbar features are included such as pop-up blocking for IE. One additional new feature is tabbed browsing for IE, about time too.

Searching

Very simple, just enter search keywords in any of the MSN Desktop Search toolbars and hit “Enter”. A results box will pop up listing hits. This list can be filtered by type of resource: e-mail, document, IM chat etc. The search engine retains a list of recent search strings from which you can select and repeat common searches. When the search field on the taskbar is used, a pop-up list of documents that satisfy the search criteria typed thus far is dynamically updated with nearly every keystroke. Pretty slick.

If you leave the factory settings in place, the MSN Desktop Search engine will build an index that includes your Outlook, or Outlook Express, e-mail and everything under “My Documents”. Additional directories may be added, or selectively excluded, using a fairly easy to set up “Custom folders and e-mail locations” wizard in the “Desktop Search Options…” panel.

Indexing E-mail

As with Google Desktop, e-mail archives that are not currently opened in the mail client will not be indexed. Indeed, for any e-mail to be indexed, the mail client must be opened while the index is built. If an e-mail archive is opened after MSN Desktop Search is installed, it appears that Outlook must be shutdown and restarted or you have to diddle Desktop Search’s settings to force the archive to be indexed. Sadly, if once you get Desktop Search to build indices for archived e-mail files and you then close those files from within Outlook, the search engine will clear the associated index entries in pretty short order. The archive files must remain opened within the mail client to remain in the index.

Overall, the desktop search engine and tools included in the latest MSN tool bar seem to be worthy competitors to Google Desktop. More to our own point, I encountered no compatibility problems with any of the other software on my laptop.

Filed under Software, , .

Posted by eric at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2005

Pick a Printer, Any Printer

Acrobat IconRan into a bit of odd behavior from version 6.0 of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader today (reportedly the same thing can happen under 7.0 but as I haven’t upgraded yet, I can’t say I’ve seen it.) Despite the fact that I have some 13 printers defined on my Windows XP box, when I tried to print a PDF the reader advised me “You need to install a printer…”, very strange indeed.

I was able to go into print set up and choose an alternate printer but still received the same nonsensical diagnostic when I tried print or preview. A little hunting around in the great font of racial memory that is the web, I ran across a few others who have encountered this conundrum. The fix? [Reported here] Set some other printer as your default printer and try again. Magic! It works. I’m not sure I could write this bug if I tried.

So far as I can tell, the problem will come up when you print a document in domain A on printer 1 then move your lap top to domain B where printer 1 is not defined. The reader appears to remember the last print device you used instead of always offering the default printer first. If that last printer used can’t be found in your current domain, you loose.

Filed under Software.

Posted by eric at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2005

First Maya Animation

Maya Planets ImageWell I'm not gonna post it cause it'd be bloody huge in any format worth looking at. This evening I finished going through the first tutorial in "Introducing Maya 6" that actually results in an animation. Being a bit of a purist I had to go and ensure that my planets shared correct relative scale. Couldn't go all the way though. The sun is half the size it should be with respect to the other planets. The sizes of the orbits while relatively correct are ridiculously compressed with respect to the planets' diameters. However, this makes sense from an artistic standpoint. If you didn't compress the orbits, then the animation would look like a high speed version of the real solar system; where everything looks like a dot unless you have a big hunk of telescope handy. That wouldn't make for a very visually interesting animation now would it?

In any case, I'm finding the Maya interface quite usable and its modeling tools pretty straight forward thus far. It helps, I suppose, to have constructed no few models by hand in the old days where one did everything in C and kept model, world, and eye spaces in one's head.

The astute observer will no doubt see that I've not shelled out for the compete or unlimited edition of Maya. I'm afraid that I'll have this will have to develop into a somewhat more all consuming hobby before I drop that much cash on the software.

Posted by eric at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2005

Unca Ewic Not Smiling Anymore

DownTheLink.gifWell, this has been a bit of a frustrating evening. On occasion I've downloaded movies from Movielink, without any mishaps I might add. I like their model. No subscriptions; monthly fees that simply go to waste if I'm too busy to watch anything for a while (which has been known to happen). With Movielink you pay as you go just like renting from the local video store only it's often cheaper and you don't have to make the trip.

This evening I was looking forward to watching the original version of the "Italian Job" with Michael Caine, Noel Coward, and (of all people) Benny Hill. Imagine my befuddlement when it turned out that an unavoidable part of renting the downloads was to automatically update the version of their client on my PC, which had been working just fine thank you very much, with the latest version. The only difficulty is that the new client crashes my Windows XP box, 100% repeatability. No blue screen, no "This program has encountered a problem", just an instant system reset. Even better, once the reboot has completed and I log in again, the first thing the Movielink client tries to do is restart the interrupted download and down we go again. The only remedy is to be very quick on the draw with the task manager and kill the Movielink client's process before it can commit whatever fatal mistake it's making.

All very sad (and I was really looking forward to the film too). I'll have to see if there's another non-subscription, legal movie download service. I mean for Pete's sake, I already pay monthly fees to my POTS 'phone company, my cellular 'phone company, my satellite service provider, and my DSL provider. I don't need anybody else dipping their hand in my cookie jar every month whether I needed them or not.

P.S. For those actually wondering what the blot is at the beginning of this post, it's my unpracticed attempt to depict the Movielink logo going down the drain. Good thing I'm not a graphic artist for a living.

Posted by eric at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2005

Another Microsoft Moment

Ran into a problem with MS-Publisher that I've seen before; one of my jobs with the local Sierra Club group's executive committee is to issue the occasional flurry of snail-mail reminder cards about upcoming meetings and events. Because it's a convenient editor for such things as quarter sheet cards, I've used Publisher to produce them. The trouble crops up when I try to merge the address list and Publisher document into a PDF. For who knows what reason, Publisher insists on spawning a job for every two front-and-back pages. In this case, that would result in the PDF printer spinning some 300 files! Imagine the look I'd get from the clerk at my local Kinko's if I showed up with 300 PDFs to print and cut.

I hunted diligently through Publisher's options dialogs and help files for any information about this problem or a way to control the batch size, no luck. Taking my problem to that font of all knowledge I found a site which provided the fix. In summary, it is this:

  1. Start regedit.
  2. Navigate down to Publisher’s keys: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Publisher\Printing
  3. Add a key, string value, that doesn’t even exist yet: NumberOfRecordsPerBatch.
  4. Double click on the new key and set its value to something huge like 99999.

Does the trick. Got one large PDF. Very simple no? Sheesh.

Posted by eric at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)