Back to Newsletters DAVROM CONSULTING Newsletter - Issue # 07 - Dated: Mon Feb 4 13:01:30 EST 2002 From the desk of David Clark Goodbye January, hello Christmas 2002... well it seems that way to me. There were a few customers who suffered our usual summer thunderstorm issues with respect to power spikes and so forth. Most UPSs will protect your systems from power spikes but sometimes even the UPS gets taken out by a spike.... which means you need a surge protector in front of the UPS, which is in front of everything else. DAVROM is now running its own web server (SCO OSR 5 box) so when you visit our website it is directly to us here in our network. I am just using a dedicated IP address with a 56K dialup and it works well (then again, UNIX always does). If you are looking for something similar for your own business please let us know. Another year lays ahead of us and we look forward to working with you as the I.T industry moves on into the future. I would like to thank the reader for their time in reading this newsletter. David.M.Clark In praise of ASCII text - Part II The title may sound a little strange but some of you have heard me banter this one around before. How often have you had to retrieve old information only to find that your latest word processor, spreadsheet or database program either mangles the file format on conversion or can't retrieve the old file at all? (I went through this coming from UNIX WordPerfect to 'whatever' today.) Despite the fact that I have written documents in SUN's StarOffice or MS Word, I still save the document as ASCII text as well. Yes I lose the nice pictures and tables I may have inserted, but when I am looking for the crucial bit of text or paragraph (or phone number, or e-mail address etc) I am not caught out. I can still use the standard 'cat', 'more', 'grep', 'awk' and 'vi' commands to get at the information. For the Windows lovers out there, you can use: edit, Notepad, WordPad or any other favourite text editor. I have been to countless sites where their old database files can no longer be accessed - if only someone had dumped the databases out to some kind of text file with each record broken up into fields with a "," or "|" symbol between each field - For example: Bloggs|Fred|53 Long Valley Way|Peoplesville|4109|Qld|Australia|500.00|50.00 of Bloggs,Fred,53 Long Valley Way,Peoplesville,4109,Qld,Australia,500.00,50.00 This kind of text data can be imported into something like StarOffice Spreadsheets or MS Excel (to name two). Some databases allow you to print out to files instead of physical printers and this alone can be your records in ASCII format for future reference. I still have files (text files, contacts, e-mail, technical docs) going back to as early as 1982 on file in my UNIX $HOME directory simply because I always dumped my old files to ASCII. DAVROM uses a HTML/text based invoicing system that stores the information as ASCII text which is manipulated by UNIX shell scripts. The text records can in turn be displayed as HTML files that allow us to view the stored information. (We have setup databases this way as well - simple HTML forms that input the "text" information which in turn are generated into HTML based databases from flat ASCII text files) - at no cost for software applications etc - UNIX shell and HTML, it's that simple. Save it as ASCII text, it compresses down well and will be accessible tomorrow. Caldera Volution Seminar The New Microsoft Alternative Designed For Your Business The businesses that best survive tough times are those that are most careful with their IT investments. With budget a foremost concern, Caldera offers your business the opportunity to maintain easily-managed and secure systems, that deliver competitive advantage. Caldera offers you powerful choices. A choice of UNIX or Linux systems or both. Systems that are designed with your business goals and budget in mind. 2002 is the year when businesses must carefully weigh up the various alternatives. Come along to our FREE seminars and find out why the award winning Volution from Caldera is the system that can help your business survive tough times. Caldera Volution Messaging Server is a secure, robust, and easy-to-use messaging server delivering superior application compatibility (including Microsoft) for small-to-medium sized businesses Caldera Volution Manager is a secure, web-based, systems management solution that reduces the cost of deploying and managing established versions of Linux and Caldera/SCO UNIX The FREE seminars start at 8.30am for 9.00am and finish at 11.00am Brisbane Tuesday 19th February Sydney Wednesday 20th February Melbourne Thursday 21st February Auckland Tuesday 26th February Wellington Wednesday 27th February Don't miss this opportunity - register today at: http://www.au.caldera.com/registration or E-mail: anz_info@caldera.com or call + 61 2 9455 0500 Caldera delivers powerful choices. Choices of operating and server systems, and management tools, that deliver the momentum and cost-effectiveness of Linux with the scalability and dependability of UNIX. Systems that are compatible with today's leading offerings, yet significantly reduce ownership costs. Attend our FREE seminars and make the right choice for you and your customers. You can also download the PDF copy of the brochure at: http://www.davrom.com/caldera/anz_vms_roadshow_invite.pdf Tech Tip .forward - e-mail power to the users. Have you ever had a situation where you need to login to a different UNIX server(s) to read e-mail stored there. If the server is setup to resolve e-mail addresses then you can use the power of the .forward file to route any e-mails to one central address. Simply create a .forward file in the $HOME directory of the user on the respective server with the entry: john.bloggs@bloggs.com.au where "john.bloggs@bloggs.com.au" is the e-mail address where you wish the e-mail to be forwarded to. This simple but effective step removes the need to check other servers for e-mail. If the server is in the same network then you can simply use an entry like: johnb@wumpus which will forward to the johnb user on the server wumpus. The .forward file can also be used to execute programs such as "vacation" which I use regularly to let people know I am not in the office. Consider the following: david, "|/usr/bin/vacation david" this will send the contents of the $HOME/.vacation.msg file to anyone who sends an e-mail to "david" - the e-mail is piped to the "vacation" command which processes the e-mail. Remember to make your .foward file read-only by the login user. (Those who are using MMDF will need to use the .maildelivery file instead which bears a similar format.) Back to Newsletters 
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