SPAUG Newsletter 0900

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Notes from the President by Jim Dinkey



• Back up your e-mail files, too by John Buck



• From Other Publications by John Buck



• New Address for SPAUG Website by Kendric Smith



• Using "Open with" to select which program opens a file by John Buck

Notes from the President

by Jim Dinkey

It's election time again and at the last Planning Meeting we collaborated to set forth the following suggested slate:

• President – Jim Dinkey
• Vice President – Open (Speakers)
• Treasurer – Walt Varner

That completes the legally required officers. Proposed appointed officers are:

• Newsletter Editor – John Buck
• Newsletter Co-Editor – Mildred Kohn
• Webmaster – Stan Hutchings
• Webmaster Emeritus – Kendric Smith
• Random Access Reporter – Open
• Speaker Reporter – Open
• Publicity – Marvin Kraft
• Membership Chair – Bev Altman

As is usual, any organization such as ours is totally dependent upon volunteerism. If we don't volunteer to keep the organization going, it will cease to provide you with the speakers and tours that the general membership seems to like so much. Wherever you see an "Open" above, plan on contributing. Please!

Further, the request for members to start the process for a speaker seems to be paying off. Several of the recent speakers are a result of an initial contact from a member, and then the contact is taken over by me for scheduling and the mechanics of the contact. So it is only one initial contact by you.

The above URL is a site that will probe your machine for possible ways of others violating your machine through ports that are unprotected. While the always-on interfaces like DSL and Cable Modem are primarily vulnerable, the vulnerability of the dial-up attached machines is also present. So go to the above site and let it probe your machine and then follow the directions to close down the vulnerabilities.

Recently I finished my own music CD wherein artists of the 50s and 60s captured on rehearsal tapes, were converted to digital from 1950-vintage tapes. I was surprised that the tapes were still readable after all of that time. The process of making the stick-on CD labels is a routine procedure and the paper inserts are not difficult. Now about the ability to get them onto the market – that is a challenge. Go to http://www.ispchannel.com/~dinkey for snippets of music.

From the NT newsletter: TECH BRIEFING:

The following list is a smorgasbord of functions that you ought to be doing in the administration of your own personal computers. This is a full description of the functions that I performed as a professional System Administrator.

Your System Admin Checklists

Many of us are the Systems Manager, Network Admin, Security Admin, Database Admin, Telecommunications Admin, Email Administrator, sometimes Webmaster but senility is setting in and we can't remember them all. :-))

Recently, a thread on the NTSYSADMIN list server was started about what a System Admin really needed to do. Some people threw out a few items, others took their résumés and did a cut & paste. Out of the 40 postings or so, I grabbed all the items that seemed not duplicated and plugged them into one list, for daily, (nightly) weekly, monthly and 'incidental' activities. I'm not claiming it is complete, but it's at least a good start. Items are not in order of importance, and of course the activities are determined by the size of your site. You can add the items that are relevant to your own job. Here goes, and hope it helps!

Daily:

• Check event log of every server, fix/try to fix as needed. Creating new directories, shares, and security groups, new accounts, disabling/deleting old accounts, managing account policies. Make sure backup runs and verify the files.
• Plugging Security holes.
• Exchange Management including DL's, users, etc. Train the training people, helpdesk people, and end users. Answer all important emails from CFO/CEO/IT-MIS Director. Glance over DSU/TSU, switches, hubs, make sure everything is green.
• Check router logs.
• Check firewall logs.
• Various calls to MS Support for things that really aren't your fault.
• Check for free space on all servers, for file pollution and quotas.
• Ensure that all server services are running.
• Ensure that antivirus definitions are up-to-date.
• Run defrag and chkdsk on all drives.
• Monitor WINS replication.
• Monitor directory replication.
• Maintain performance baseline data.
• Monitor network traffic with sniffer or NETMON to keep performance up.
• Keep Service Pack and Hotfixes current as per company policy.
• Monitor Web traffic for indications of attacks.
• Install software for users.
• Monitor user email for corporate policy violations.
• Check Print Queues.
• Keep a log of everything you have fixed or performed maintenance on.
• Make sure all apps are shared.
• Permissions and filesystem management.
• Check for bad system and ini files on database server (Btrieve).
• Make sure load on database server is acceptable and ghosted users
• are cleared as well as multiple logons.

Nightly:

• Backups
• (Next Applies to Terminal Server admins only)
• Reboot each Citrix server.
• Delete all autocreated printers stuck.
• Clear out rogue local profiles.
• Backups

Weekly:

• Clean Servers, check for .tmp files, jetdb files, etc.
• Implement any new policy, permission, logon script, or scheduled script modifications.
• Research, Research, Research.
• Change any active monitoring & alerting (third party tools) as needed.
• Update Website, External and Intranet, send website log reports.
• Check PerfMon, NetMon, (or 3rd party tools) for OK baselines.
• Reboot Servers if needed.
• Keep up-to-date on IT news regarding my networks.
• Evaluate software for System Admin purposes.
• Try to get some MCSE study time in.
• Performance Monitoring/Capacity Planning- Budgeting for the future.
• Uptime/Downtime reports.
• Auditing network for unauthorized changes, ideally both from the inside but also outside-in.
• Plan for W2K migration.

Monthly:

• Rebuild Databases as needed.
• Gather statistics on Webservers. Send to CEO/CIO/CTO/CFO (Whomever).
• Clean exchange mailboxes.
• Change Service Account Passwords (not doing this is russian roulette).
• Convincing your boss that most of this stuff _needs_ to be done.
• Extended testing backups with restores.
• Maintaining applicable Service Level Agreements.
• Set System and Application priorities: If more than one thing is broken, what needs to be fixed first.
• Managing off-site storage of backup tapes, whether you take them home or a service picks them up.
• IT System vulnerability analysis: like "This mail server uses this mail router- what's the impact if one or both are down (if mail server is down mail router will store inbound mail and may run out of disk space).
• Periodically reviewing all of the above, is documentation up to date? Has the Disaster Recovery Plan been updated to reflect changes in the environment?
• Periodically reviewing workload. Are some things no longer done?
• Periodically review company technical environment. How can it be improved?

Initial or Occasionally.

• Disaster Recovery to alternate site, in case of emergency.
• Configure and maintain DNS - Internal and External, DHCP, WINS, TCP/IP, etc.
• Document the full network.
• Rebuild corrupt servers.
• Test the Restore Procedure.
• Reconfigure domain structure... again.
• Get a performance baseline for things like %Processor Time, Pagefiling, Disk Queues.
• Initial checklist should include status of administrative and service passwords, status of the backups, check out DHCP scope(s), WINS, DNS, remove unnecessary protocols.
• And then of course: drink lots of coffee, post dilberts all over your cubicle, surf the web, smoke cigars out back, walk around the office looking busy, make personal phone calls, look for better work on company time, download MP3s and other stuff that slows down the T's – you know … stuff like that. <grin>

Choosing Media (that will work) for a CD Burner

During the time of my attempting to figure out how to make my music CDs, I used to go down to the local store and try to figure out what would work in my HP 8200 disk writer.

There were two problems: There wasn't much of a specification about what to use and there was no indication what the color of the media was as it was all boxed up and there was no description on the packaging. Why do I care about color? See the article following referred to me by Jim Bailey. Go to the URL for lots of answers – this being only the first one.

Subject: [7-1] What kinds of CD media are there?

http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq07.html#[7-1]

The basic building blocks of CD-R media are cyanine dye, which is cyan blue in color, and phthalocyanine dye, which is more or less colorless. The reflective layer is either a silvery alloy, the exact composition of which is proprietary, or 24K gold.

There are gold/gold, green/gold, silver/blue, and silver/silver CD-Rs. The apparent color is determined by the color of the reflective layer (gold or silver) and the color of the dye (cyan or colorless). For example, green/gold discs combine a gold reflective layer with a cyan-colored dye, resulting in a gold appearance on the label side and a green appearance on the writing side.

Many people have jumped to the conclusion that "silver" discs are made of silver, and have attempted to speculate on the relative reflectivity and lifespan of the media based on that assumption. Until an industry representative issues a statement concerning the actual composition, it would be unwise to assume that the reflective layer has any specific formulation.

Taiyo Yuden produced the original gold/green CDs, which were used during the development of CD-R standards. Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals invented the process for gold/gold CDs. Silver/blue CD-Rs, manufactured with a process patented by Verbatim, first became widely available in 1996. According to the Ricoh web site, the silver/silver "Platinum" discs, based on "advanced phthalocyanine dye", were introduced by them in 1997. They didn't really appear on the market until mid-1998 though.

The reason why there are multiple formulations is that the materials and process for each are patented. If a new vendor wants to get into the CD-R market, they have to come up with a new combination of materials that conforms to the Orange Book specifications.

Some CDs have an extra coating (e.g. Kodak's "Infoguard") that makes the CD more scratch-resistant, but doesn't affect the way information is stored. The top (label) side of the CD is the part to be most concerned about, since that's where the data lives, and it's easy to damage on a CD-R. Applying a full circular CD label will help prevent scratches.

http://www.mitsuigold.com/ has some info on MTC media. You can visit http://www.ricohcorp.com/press/platinum2.htm for a press release concerning Ricoh's "platinum" media.

An EMedia Professional article discussing the composition of the newer discs is online at http://www.emediapro.net/EM1998/starrett10.html.

CD-RW discs have an entirely different composition. The data side (opposite the label side) is a dark silvery gray that is difficult to describe.

Back up your e-mail files, too

by John Buck

Your e-mail messages and addresses are data, just as much as the data in the .doc, .txt, and other files you're aware of creating. When you back up your data files, you should be sure to also back up your e-mail data files.

After a recent hard drive reformat and reload, I found I didn't have my e-mail messages or address book information. Before the reformat/reload, I'd backed up my entire system to CDs. My problem now was where to find the information I needed and figure out how to get it back into usable form.

You can get some help from the Internet if you ask the right questions and visit enough sites. Microsoft's Knowledge Base has some information that may be useful. Netscape probably has similarly useful info, but they're beyond the scope of this article.

E-mail message folder files

Since I'd already started using OE5, I figured I could get some clues simply by searching for related things that already existed on my PC. I found that my message folders seemed to be in files with extension ".dbx", in the "Windows\Application\Identities\…" folder. I understand other MS e-mail arrangements may use files with other extensions, so you'll have to check what's right for you. Of course they may be stored in other folders, too.

I restored all my .dbx files to my "test, scratch, play" folder, so I'd have them in usable form without possibly causing a problem by overwriting existing files. Now I had to figure out what to do with these files. I chose "Import…" as the most appropriate-seeming choice offered by OE5's File menu, selected "Messages…" and made appropriate choices in the menus that followed. Initially, I tested with one, and then a few, files, to reduce the likelihood of doing something I didn't want to do. When I saw that there seemed to be no problems, I went ahead and imported all my .dbx files.

One thing I noticed was that imported messages didn't seem to overwrite existing messages having the same properties (name, create date, etc.), but simply created an additional copy. That's good, although I'm having to go through my folders and delete the duplicates, but that's better than not having info I want.

E-mail address data

Restoring my OE5 address information wasn't quite as straightforward as restoring my messages and message folders.

I found my address information was stored in a single ".wab" file that is also in a "Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\…" subdirectory.

Importing my .wab file restored my Main Identity's Contacts addresses, but didn't restore my address folders. I found that my new OE5 information was stored in a file named "default.wab". I renamed that file to something else and renamed my restored backup .wab file "default.wab", and that seemed to solve the problem. There's probably some way to specify what file to use for my address book storage, but I didn't go looking for it.

From Other Publications

by John Buck

Get your Busy Signals back

Tired of hearing PacBell advertising its 95-cent automatic-dialing service when the number you've dialed is busy? Tim Graham, TechWeek magazine's Editor in Chief, did an editorial about this in his September 4, 2000, issue. In summary, he said to call Pac Bell and ask to have the service disabled. To read his editorial online, go to http://www.techweek.com/articles/9-4-00/source.htm.

Mac-to-PC Conversion

If you're facing having to convert MAC files to PC format, an August 21, 2000 TechWeek article provides info and reviews of software that can do the job—primarily the program Conversion Plus. To read this article online, go to http://www.techweek.com/articles/8-21-00/beta.htm.

Most-Popular Websites

From Consumer Reports' October 2000 issue (page 10), I learned about www.top9.com, a site that lists other sites in various categories by their popularity, as determined by the number of hits they get during some period of time. Consumer Reports' main focus was on www.top9.com/lockin.html, which reports on sites that make it difficult for you to leave. Something else to check out at www.top9.com is their report on pop-up windows.

Is Windows Me for you?

If you're not yet tired of reading or hearing about Microsoft's Windows Me, here are a couple more places with information or comment.

Consumer Reports' October 2000 issue (page 65) gives their take on Microsoft's Windows Me, for a broad audience.

Digital Duo is a Public TV program about personal computers and related products and services. Go here for their commentary on Microsoft's product migration: http://www.digitalduo.com/309_dig.html. The program appears locally on KQED, Ch9 at 2pm Fridays and Midnight on Monday mornings.

New Address for SPAUG Website

by Kendric Smith

You have probably been aware that, over the years, SPAUG has had a lot of trouble with the Listserv (spaug-list) at MediaCity. Then MediaCity was bought by ISPchannel, and more recently, AT&T has bought ISPchannel. They plan to concentrate on cable, and are de-emphasizing modem connections and Listservs. It sounded as if we were headed for a lot more problems. I contacted one of the original guys at MediaCity (he now has a new company), and he arranged for SPAUG to obtain a Domain Name at his cost ($15 per yr), and for a free hosting of our web site, free Listserv, and free e-mail address at another Internet Service Provider.

Therefore, with the approval of the SPAUG Board, I have transferred our files to the new service, and set up the new SPAUG-List, and e-mail address.

SPAUG's New Website is:

http://www.pa-spaug.org

The New E-Mail Address FOR SPAUG'S Webmasters is:

Let me know if you have any questions or problems with the new service.

Kendric

Using "Open with" to select which program opens a file

by John Buck

To select or change which program opens a file—
1. In Windows Explorer, single-click on the file you want to open.
2. Press Shift while you right-click on the selected file name, or press Shift while you click on File in the menu bar.
3. Select "Open with…" in the pop-up window.
4. In the "Open With" window, select the program you want to use.
5. If you will always want to use this combination of program and file type, place a check mark in the "Always use …" checkbox. (You can repeat this procedure when you want to change the selection.)