Why is it that whenever we try to fix something, we always break at least one other? I setup a DMZ on my Netgear FVX538 Firewall at home to put my PS3 into so that I could reduce lag as much as possible by opening the NAT to it. No problem, configured the PS3, configured the DMZ, activated it, checked that web and email incoming were still working. Great.
Errrr, yeah, except that I get to work this morning and the VPN from my desk via the work FVX538 to home isn’t working. I suspect that the VPN requires some WAN-LAN rules setting up so that it knows that the VPN needs routing to the LAN, instead of the DMZ becoming the default. I think I need to open UDP port 500 for the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) traffic and UDP port 1701 for L2TP traffic (not sure if I need that one). Question is, what address do I forward them to? The router itself?
Of course, I could configure this and test it from work, except that my VPN is working and remote access to the router isn’t working either, so it’ll have to wait until tonight.
All this just so I don’t suck quite as much at COD: MW2!
Update 29/04/10 09:52
Not so easy, it seems. Setting up forwarding for the VPN ports gave me a connection which showed as connected at both ends but unable to route any traffic through at all. Traceroute from either end only got as far the local firewall. I have the inbound VPN ports forwarded to the firewall LAN address, maybe it has to be forwarded to somewhere else? For now, I’ll have to undo the DMZ configuration to get my VPN working again for now and play with it some more when I have more time.
My problems with printers over the years have regularly been documented on this blog. Huge, fussy printer drivers and strange operation seem to plague some printers.
At the office we have a Konica Minolta Magicolor 5450 which we use to print small-run sales literature. Ever since we had it it has been a complete lemon. During it’s 12 month warranty, it had a new fuser unit and two complete replacement main PCBs. It has had every firmware and driver upgrade applied and still suffers from random and regular lockups, intermittent fuser errors and bizarre operation. It can take several attempts for jobs to reach it on the network as the first couple of jobs can simply disappear into the ether.
I have complained to Konica but it has fallen on deaf ears. If it wasn’t a £1000 printer it would take a trip out of the office window. It is without doubt the most useless and infuriating piece of hardware I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.
In the last few days I had a problem printing from Publisher 2007 to the mc5450. It started printing a dotted line around most, but not all of the page outline. It’s not a subtle dotted line but a very prominent black dashed line. Upgrading the printer driver appeared to cure it for a while but then it returned. It’s not a crop mark and it doesn’t appear if I print the same document to my local Brother HL-4040CN. I’ve tried resetting the driver back to defaults and switching every crop/bleed setting I can find but it’s still there. It also doesn’t happen on all documents although it did happen on one other but then started printing it correctly again.
I have cured the problem and since I tend to post fixes to these irritations here on A Mind Lost for both my future use when I forget how I did it or for the maybe one other person in the world who might come across the same problem, here it is:
Install the PCL6 driver alongside the default Postscript driver and use it should you have this problem. The fault may reside with Publisher 2007 and not the printer but since I can’t pin down a setting which is causing it I can’t narrow it down any further.
When we relocated to newly refurbished offices in 2005, I had a large server cupboard built into my new office to house the network hardware and servers. The office had air conditioning and the cupboard had a number of vents for airflow. Unfortunately, our array of servers and hardware kick out a substantial amount of heat and the office air-con doesn’t result in sufficient airflow to keep the temperature in the cupboard down. It’s 9:00am at the moment and the outside temperature is about 14 degrees but the cupboard temperature is already 31.2 degrees. I’ve already had to replace two hard drives this year and we have a hot summer predicted in the UK .
The other problem with the server and network hardware is the noise. The network switch has fans which make a ridiculous amount of noise and the server PSU and CPU fans mean that the cupboard doors have to be kept closed.
Now, we are not a large company, about 20 active users at once and apart from our main file server we have an old NT server keeping a legacy SQL server application running and we have an email server and an intranet server. It could be argued that we don’t need our own mail server, particularly now that provider-supplied email services now include more services and options. However, I like the flexibility having our own email server provides.
All of our servers are standard PC kit running Debian (except for the NT server obviously!). Since there is little CPU or graphics load, it is possible to reduce the hardware requirements and be a little greener at the same time.
Continue reading ‘Green IT’
I have a wireless link between two buildings setup with a pair of D-Link DWL-2100AP access points and directional antennas. It works ok except for the usual unexplained losses of signal which always seem to plague my wireless installations. I have to admit, I loathe wireless with a passion. It has never lived up to it’s potential and I even have problems with a small setup at home where the PC and access point are only 12 feet apart!
However, that is not my specific problem here. In March, I lost the link and traced the fault to a failed PSU on one of the 2100AP’s so I swapped it out with a spare and all was well. Last week, nine weeks later, another PSU failed. I’ve replaced it again but since it was the same access point as before I am going to swap it out. If there was a problem with the access point I wouldn’t have thought it would take nine weeks to burn a PSU out?
Anyone else had any problems with recurring failure of D-Link PSUs?
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