I had to get a fax out to the Social Security Administration. They had expired my PIN which I need to enter W2/W3 data online. The screen told me to re-register but wouldn't let me do it. I finally called the SSA and Gloria said I needed to send her a fax asking for the PIN on company stationary. I decided this was as good a time as any to check out the Shared Fax feature of SBS. There is very little to configure on the server and Harry's book says all that is needed. It is a different story on the W2K and Windows XP clients.

1. The shared fax driver is installed from the client disk on W2K so everything is cool as long as you have your outlook contacts. This is where I found out that I needed to go into Outlook 2002 and right click on the public contact list and select Properties. Go to the Outlook Address Book tab and make sure there is check mark to show this folder as an e-mail address folder. To view the queue you need to go the Shared Fax console which is located under Programs-Microsoft Shared Fax Client.
2. The Microsoft Shared Fax Client is not installed on Windows XP since you should use the fax client provided by XP. So if you have the fax client already installed, all you need to do is search the Active directory for printers that start with the word “shared” and then double click on it to connect. This creates a shared fax object in the Printers and Faxes screen. To check the fax queue and archive you can double click on this object. To view old faxes along with the new faxes you need to move the files over to the server if you want everyone to view them. You should put them in the sent items directory for “All Users”. I thought the import feature in the XP fax console would do the job but it does not move the files to the server.

I hadn't see this problem before but it was interesting. I was trying to send myself the SBS2K Server Status report once a day at 700 AM. I tested it but nothing happened. Fortunately I had configured my default SMTP server to send me an email id if it failed to deliver. In a couple of minutes I got a message saying that I was not a valid email address. The exact same address I used in Exchange to send me the failed to deliver message did not work in Healthmon. I tried a couple of variations without success. After a little research I found a related article that complained about DNS problems in associated with this message. I finally decided to add a MX record for wehuberconsultingllc.local and it worked.

The plan was simple. Create a new email account in Outlook that would connect to mail.legacyfarmltd.com to send the message with SMTP. The first couple of tests worked like a charm. Then I sent a reply to a person on earthlink.net and got the:

“550 Relaying Denied. Not A Local Domain: earthlink.net. If you are a customer, download messages via POP, and try again.”

Further research at Interland was not encouraging. I tried a couple of things but finally gave up and sent it via Yahoo.

Today I have playing around with the SMTP on the SBS2K server. I was a little disappointed with the queueing that occurred last Friday. I was leaving town for a day and sent a quick message to tell someone I wouldn't be here. When I returned on Saturday the message was still queued. Now that's not much help. It has taken me some time to decipher what the configuration settings actually do but to suffice to say everything is queued. The default setting is send mail every two hours. I spent a lot of time looking at DNS MX records before I decided that it was not part of my answer. Most of the writers assume you have a static IP address and the problem is that other mail systems cannot find your mail server. My final idea is to change the SMTP virtual server configuration from “forward” to “use DNS” and see what happens. I used the synchronize button to force it to run at a non-scheduled time. Everything worked. Now I am researching the best way to force a return address of legacyfarmltd.com rather than wehuberconsultingllc.com. Its mainly cosmetic but I think it will be easier to segregate my mail. I still have the Healthmon bugs on my to do list.

Yesterday I told you about what I learned during the Small Business Server 2000 installation. Today I am going to tell you all of the wonderful problems I found during initial configuration and operation. My plan was to follow the example laid out in Harry Brelsford's fine book, Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices, and tweak it with info gathered from the SBS2K group on Yahoo. Here is what I learned.

1. To get my Windows XP client to work I had to clean out the hosts file. Since I reused my server name but used a new private address it was not finding the server.
2. To get my Windows 98 client to login into the exchange messenger server I had to add the DNS server to its network configuration.
3. I had to modify ISA to allow web proxy to work properly with http. I had to open the filter to any client request rather than the internet user group. This allowed Netscape and Quicken 2002 to work. I later found out that this affected Internet Explorer under Windows XP. Somehow the ISA configuration got screwed up and it went back to the default condition. The first place I noticed the problem was while using Internet Explorer under Windows XP. The browser would go to sleep on the second or third page. My W2K clients were fine. It took me a while because I thought it was a XP client problem.
4. Although a lot of people have reported problems with XP as a client(SBS2K group), I have not had their problems.
5. I continue to have several problems with Healthmon, Service Status screen, and performance monitoring. Several errors appear in the application log as coming from Perflib with event id of 1010 and 1008. I think W2K has a problem generating performance info from the processor and memory performance objects. I gather M$ knows about the problem and are working on it.
6. I installed HFNetChkLT from www.shavlik.com to check on patch status. I had to update to MDAC 2.7 to get it to work. When I ran a scan on the server it pointed out that SQL2000 SP2 had not been applied as I thought. I assumed that since SP2 was on the SBS2K service pack disk it was applied like the other service packs. I applied the service pack and it cleaned up a few more application log errors and took me back to MDAC 2.6.
7. I had to install a Time Sync packet filter in ISA so the server would sync up the time.
8. I had to use HELLO versus EHELLO to retrieve email from AT&T Worldnet. I am dumping all the mail into one mailbox. The preferred method is to let Exchange manage the mail addresses but I had other problems I needed to work on.
9. I fixed the DNS forwarders twice. I started getting event id 506 so I had to configure a second time. I don't know how it got removed.

Okay, I'm late. I found some new bugs that stopped me from updating this blog. I'll get to the bugs and how I fixed them later. Today my subject is hardware issues.

I picked up my server, Toshiba Magnia 500D, awhile back off of Ubid. I had been running W2K Advanced Server for about a year without any major issues. It came with a 10 GB IDE drive and I added memory to take it up to 576 MB. The major change I wanted to make was to add a mirrored drive array(i.e. RAID 1). So I picked up a used Promise RAID card off of Ebay and two new IBM 75 GB drives off of Ubid. Both drives were dead on arrival so I sent them to IBM for replacements. I got the drives back at the beginning of December and found a convienent time to install about a week later. Since I had problems with the original drives I decided to use the drives with my existing configuration for at least a week to make sure the drives worked. I partitioned the drives using W2K. The first partition was going to be home to SBS2K and the second partition was going to contain the user data. I copied the SBS2K installation cdroms 2, 3 and 4 out to the second partition thinking I would save some time.

On December 28 I started the SBS2K installation. I booted from the first cdrom, loaded the Promise RAID driver, and tried to install to the first partition on the drive array. The first part of SBS2K is a standard Windows 200 Server installation and it refused to even format the drive array. I tried to work some magic but nothing worked. So I read the manual it said you must install the operating system on the exisiting IDE controller first. This complicated things a bit. Some of the things I found out were:

1. You needed to delete the drive array configuration while both drives are connected to the raid controller. Otherwise when you connect the drive with the newly installed system back to the drive array, the drive array will try restore the array and write over your newly installed system.
2. You must connect something to the IDE controller or you will not boot.
3. Windows 2000  will correctly rebuild the HCL when you move the drive from the IDE to the RAID controller if you remembered to install the driver before you moved the drive.
4. Windows 2000 server installation can re-partition and format the drive when it is on the IDE even if it does not like the existing drive info.

So the final procedure I used was:

1. Set Bios to boot from cdrom. Delete existing drive array. Move drive 1 from the RAID array to the IDE controller. Partition and format the drive. Install Windows 2000 Server and set Bios to boot from C drive.
2. Install missing drivers for the modem and Promise controller.
3. Move drive 1 back to the RAID controller and reconnect the original IDE drive. Set bios to boot from SCSI. Let the RAID software synchronize the contents of drive 1 to drive 2. Come back in an hour.
4. Let Windows 2000 boot and rebuild the HCL. Create F drive(i.e. user data) and format. Come back in an hour.
5. Copy to contents of installation cd 2, 3, and 4 to an installation folder on the F drive.
6. Continue with the SBS2K installation. Customize the installation to install SQL server, Messenger server, and to use the F drive for shared user and company folders.

Tommorrow I will talk about customizing and debugging SBS2K and the clients.

Over the next couple of days I hope to catch up on the progress with my Small Business Server 2000(i.e. SBS2K) project. Today I will briefly bore you with the details of juggling a server installation during the Christmas holidays. The primary objectives of the installation was:

1. E-mail server(aka Exchange 20000
2. Firewall(M$ ISA server)
3. Shared files on a mirrored drive

Microsoft has put together a very compelling package of value and performance with the SBS2K package. Although I am intrigued with the Linux offerings I think the SBS2K package is a better package for a small business than the other products and the package I would be most comfortable recommending to clients. The combination of proven robust products by one company with Microsoft's continued support and development makes it a tough product to beat.

Tommorrow I will continue the story by talking about the hardware changes and all of the wonderful bios trivia I have learned.

A great essay by Tim O'Reilly on piracy. Read it. He clearly knows what he's talking about. [Scripting News]

Here is the summary. Click on the link above to read his explanations. I think he is on target. If you want a comprehensive explanation of the issues you should check out the Free Expression Policy Project and their public policy report, “THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE AND USEFUL ARTS”: WHY COPYRIGHT TODAY THREATENS INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM“.

Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

Lesson 2: Piracy is progressive taxation

Lesson 3: Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.

Lesson 4: Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.

Lesson 5: File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.

Ogden Nash. “Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.” [Quotes of the Day]

Yesterday I used the recommendations in this articleto re-configure Dreamweaver.
I was chasing a different problem when I found this article. It is a great article
for Dreamweaver users who desire an easier way to create valid xhtml 1.0 compliant
web pages. I believe specific browser issues can be minimized by making all
pages at least html 4.01 compliant but that is easier said than done. I set
off on this escapade when I tried to fix the templates for this site to be 4.01
compliant. The problems were primarily self-inflicted. Some of the postings
I had cut and pasted from different applications were giving me problems. I
am not sure why I ended up at the alistapart site except that I was trying to
figure out the differences between “strong”and “bold”, “EM”
and “italic”, and the correct use of special characters.