Real World Computing

I am a big fan of remote desktop and use it for all sorts of things with notable examples being; Starting large downloads (eg: Domino 8) from Home to my work PC Running MS Project on our Presentations Equipment even though it isn't loaded there. Getting better speed in Lotus Notes when I'm using the system remotely. It was only a matter of time before I tried to get it working on the BlackBerry. I investigated a couple of companies but they weren't very helpful and I had problems getting their software to work. I specifically wanted Remote Desktop, not VNC - as remote desktop is built-in to Windows. Eventually I found a company called Idokorro and their software worked first time. What's great about this software is that given that our Blackberry Enterprise Server is inside our Corporate Firewall I can access my desktop PC without having to use VPN and without weakening our firewall. One note: On the standard BlackBerry Enterprise Server settings I got the following ...

A bit about our Off-site Server Project The aim of this project was always to have an off-site server that was capable of providing us with alternative facilities in the event of a disaster. My employers were on Domino before I started working here (7 years ago) and many of our oldest databases are in relatively "untouched" form. One of the biggest challenges of our off-site server project was always going to be the detection and removal of server-name hard-coding. Discovering all those server names was a tedious business which I won't go into here. This blog entry will provide you with one bit of code we used to replace a single-line server name. We used several different methods but this method is interesting in that it provides an alternative when the server is local. Getting the Server Name itself Generally, getting the server name in a late-domino server is quite easy. There's an @function (@ServerName) for it from R6 onwards, and prior to that it was acce...

We migrated our off-site server back on-site last Friday night and once again we were thrown by this setting. For this reason, I'll explain it a little. The Symptoms The most obvious symptoms of this value being incorrectly set are; a. Mail routes internally happily. b. Inbound internet mail is working fine c. Outbound internet mail is not working d. Other externally visible services generated by the server (eg: http) are visible on web. Some of the Domino server console error messages you may see if this is wrongly configured include; DNS Not Implemented Messages about Relaying being Denied or Relay Hosts No messages transferred to xxxxx via SMTP: SMTP Protocol Returned a Transient Error Where is it? The setting in question lives in the Server Configuration documents on the Router/SMTP and then Basics tabs. The actual name of the setting is: " Relay Host for messages leaving the Local Internet Domain ". What should it be set to? This depends mightily on your configurat...

I wasn't terribly excited about the prospect of getting a Blackberry server especially at this technically "crowded" time of my life but now I'm fairly convinced about the technology. Before I join the converted and start spouting the virtues of the blackberry system, I first want to go over some of the bad bits - chances are I'm not likely to look back at them. The Bad Bits The Telstra people who sold us the system told us that you could use any pc running the Lotus Notes Client - this is wrong... Beware: The Blackberry Enterprise Server is expensive, though not necessarily in terms of the Blackberry software. In order to run Blackberry Enterprise Server (for Notes/Domino) you will need; A reasonably powerful PC or Server, they recommended 4GHz but realistically it can be a little lower in spec. Lotus Domino Enterprise server - yup - now that is a serious extra expense if you don't want it running on your production server A fair amount of hard drive space....

My blogging has slowed down considerably lately due to an office move which used up most of my time. There were two aspects of the move; 1. The move itself Whereby all equipment had to be disconnected and packed up then unpacked/reconnected at the new site. There was a lot of planning and testing involved with this. 2. A Temporary Domino Server Switch In some ways, this was more work than the move. Management decided that they wanted our systems to remain running throughout the move. We used the server setup for the "temporarily abandoned" clustering project to set up a new offsite domino server. We did a lot of testing of applications and needed to make a few changes to some of our applications. I'm happy to say that the off site server worked well and kept our systems running throughout the move. I'll provide more detail on changes made and difficulties encountered in later posts.

I've just edited and anonymised my last post in case I can't control myself here... If you haven't read it, you should read that one before this one. We've had no SMTP inbound mail since lunchtime yesterday. We contacted our ISP (PT) but they weren't interested in the problem. They told me to reboot the Domino server.... No thanks. Internal mail is working fine. I tried using a VB Application to send SMTP mail to the server's internal IP Address. It worked fine - proving that if mail were reaching the server it would process it. All indications were that there was a duplicate IP on the internet - but that couldn't be right - we got that problem fixed yesterday... After hours of wasted IT time, we finally discovered the truth. Our ISP (PT) who duplicated our IP Address yesterday had removed the address as requested. They then put the address back into their system and allocated it to a new customer. I can't think of a closing statement that wont get m...

[This post was edited to provide anonymity to the ISP - Not that they deserve it] Our current internet service provider, (I'll call them PT to anonymise them in case this blog takes too much of an annoyed tone) is a medium sized provider in Australia. When I say current, I don't mean that we plan to change... heck, we only change ISP's once, but have had five ISPs. We made a switch from Ozemail shortly after they were taken over by a less service-conscious entity (can't remember who). From there, we moved to Davnet, who were taken over by NTT Australia, who were taken over by PT. All of the service we've received since the initial switch to Davnet has been top-quality. Until, of course, we get to PT. In our early days of PT service, we were affected by an unplanned outage that lasted approximately 2 days. It was (and still is) the biggest total outage in my computing history. Even worse, they didn't seem to be in control of the situation but were at the ...