SYSMGR

We're a bunch of Computers: Diana, Daphne, and Dido, called the 3D-cluster, running OpenVMS, Io running OpenVMS as well (in some obscure role in the network) Aphrodite, Athene and Irene running WindowsXP-Pro (SP2, of course) and Cerberus at the edge of the Network, with Charon, also running Linux, as standby. SYSMGR takes care of us.

Wednesday, June 21

20-Jun-2006

Holiday preparations
Well, not reallym because these issues were theoughtr oif months ago but there never was a great need to execute them. Now I had some time - and reason: temperatures rise above actually acceptable values, and to be sure all keeps running (and no data is lost) I hade to take some action.
No more disks nearby
The only disk in the nearby BA356 cabinets was DCK100, here the user directories are located on USER: - a logical referring to DKC100:[USER.]. This whole directory tree has been copied to DKA102, that is controlled by the HSZ50. Next, USER has been redefined to refer to this new location and access was tested. Once that proved Ok, the old disk was dismounted and taken off-line. So, expcept for the local, built-in disk in Diana (that contains the pagefiles) all disks are now serverd by the HSZ50 - and located in an area that is not heated up that much if the sun burns op the roof.
SSH enabled
SSH has been set up on Diana weeks ago, now the point has come to enable that from outside. With some trouble, Cerberos has been configured to use SSH in stead of Telnet. First tested it using the ISP login and that works!

Wednesday, June 14

14-Jun-2006

Webserver woes
On the job, we have created an addition on our web-application: to upload and show, on request, all kinds of data that is normally not accessable by a terminal session: PDF-files, Word or EXcel documents, still images, vieo and audio files - whatever. The upload program - the first .EXE we run in a CGI environment - uses Mark Daniel's cgilib library to get most data, including the file to upload. It works great, in a SWS environment.
Because SWS's MOD_AUTH_OPENVMS module cannot handle mixed-case passwords (a known issue in SWS 1.3, but, as I found out, still existing in 2.1) so some customer's use OSU, so we need to check OSU's abilities as well.
After a lot of attempts, it was determined we would need to make a lot of changes in ALL software used, to make the upload program work. Furthermore we have ouir doubts that files over 4K can be displayed the way we do on SWS.
So finally, it was decided, for this part, OSU will not be supported. Those users that use OSU, WASD would be an alternative - but it is to be tested first.
More phishing attempts
that appear to be sent from E-bay and Pay-pal, but actually referring to other sites. Data will be posted on www.grootersnet.nl/security (it still needs to be set up at the time this entry is written, so if the link appears broken, you know why that is).
Web abuse attempts
have been found as well - data will be posted on the same location.

12-Jun-2006

Patches and other configuration issues
Got the latest ECO's and installed them - and that required a reboot. Took the opportunity to adapt SMTP.CONFIG to block *.hotmail.com (except for the few known persons using that account) because of the numbers of spam messages received from this account - like Gmail (by Google) and Yahoo. All .biz accounts are blocked as well, but still too much come through. Quite a lot of these adresses cannot be translated into a domain - an issue I could block but that would mean that some valid domains won't get through. Of course that could be solved by locating these translation within the local DNS but some use a number of mail servers and without the IP addresses of all of them, I still can loose messages. So I left it for now.