Back to Newsletters KEYWORDS= Davrom Consulting Newsletter - Issue # 40 - Dated: 3 Mar 2008 From the desk of David Clark To those who wish to join me in some amusement go to Google and search for "microsoft lawsuit red hat suse" - and you will find pages detailing the latest antics from MS - can you believe it? Yet another tactic to try an gain world dominance and extract the dollars from those who would suffer the most, the end user, over unfounded claims. I have been observing the resistance to the introduction of Vista in the industry so I have touched on some of the problems we have seen to date. I would like to thank the reader for their time in reading this newsletter. David.M.Clark UNIX Quote Linux - why pay, or at least, why pay more? David.M.Clark Outlook IMAP issues with Linux servers As I have discussed in previous articles, IMAP allows you to store your e-mail on the mail server so that you can access your e-mail (and folders) from anywhere (Webmail, mobile phone, laptop, PC). Unlike POP, all of your e-mail is stored in plain text format under your UNIX/Linux user $HOME directory. POP is no longer favoured as your e-mails are stored within your e-mail client and are in danger of being destroyed in the event of a hard disk crash - coupled with the fact you can only get at your e-mail from one single point. For those using MS Outlook there are some added issues when running it with an IMAP based server - moreover a non-MS Exchange server. Outlook was designed to run with MS Exchange and that is that. One main issue customers have found is when deleting e-mail messages the traditional "Deleted Items" folder is not updated or used with IMAP. Upon further investigation this is not an issue with the IMAP server but some underlying coding/technology in Outlook. Items deleted stay deleted so if you are using Outlook with Linux and IMAP, perhaps setting up some rules or manually moving the items to a folder for later manual deletion is advised. Given you are running Linux you could then setup a script to auto-cull the deleted items folders on a regular basis by using the systems cron facility. As Outlook is moving more and more to being MS Exchange compatible only, the better solution is to use another e-mail client that is friendly with all e-mail servers such as Thunderbird, Eudora or Incredimail. I started using Netscape Messenger in 2001 and have since been using the later Thunderbird product in both the Linux and MS environment - it is truly one of the best available. (And it is free). Vista issues The two main issues we have encountered with customers installing Vista into Linux and UNIX environments is the new personal firewall security (User Account Control - Cancel or Allow), and the non-communication with the old LAN Manager (LAN Manager 2) based servers and PCs. The first step is to disable or at least extensively configure the personal firewall to allow communication from other non-Vista network nodes such as Samba servers and Windows XP/2003/98 PCs. Even after doing this you will sometimes find that even though Vista is on the network it becomes inaccessible/invisable after a period of time from other PCs and servers. That is until you tell Vista to go and access something on the other PCs or servers - then it reappears. Still working on the one-ways comms issue here. The main issue for most customers is the ability to access the share folders on other machines and to allow others to access the Vista share folders. This can only be done by editing the Vista security policies (secpol.msc) and changing it from the default NTLVM2 to use "LM and NTLM - use NTLVM2 if needed". Only in this mode can you access the share folders on Vista from the other servers and PCs. If you are running a very old version of Samba (such as those still on OpenServer) you will need to upgrade Samba to a later version otherwise access to Vista will never happen. Market resistance is high and most companies are even reverting their new hardware back to XP or earlier just for ease of use and integration into their existing LAN/WAN. I would welcome any feedback you have found with Vista in your environment. From the Trenches Some comic or not so comic relief from the support days gone by. An I.T. Parable: A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realises he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?" The man below says: "Yes you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field." "You must work in Information Technology" says the balloonist. "I do" replies the man. "How did you know." "Well" says the balloonist, "Everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone." The man below says "You must work in business." "I do" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault." Tech Tip Sending attachments with mutt: Have you ever needed to send a file from the Linux/UNIX command line only to find that it arrives in your mailbox as just jibberish or something you simply can't get at? The command below will send a file as an e-mail attachment using the mutt command: mutt -s"File attached" -a /tmp/budget.doc david@davrom.com This will e-mail the file /tmp/budget.doc to david@davrom.com with the subject "File attached". Don't forget to include the " end to prevent mutt trying to talk to you interactively. Back to Newsletters 
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