This is an unusual one. I didn’t think it would be, but based on the lack of Google results for this having happened to other people, I thought it would be an idea to document it. I’m sure it happens a lot more then people realise. The basic gist of the story is that my broadband IP address got black-listed as a SPAM generator, and that meant I could no longer send out email through the broadband mail server. It …
Blog: Hardware
Slave Domain Server Using Plesk
Plesk-based hosting can often suffer from a resilience problem: failure of the DNS for sites it hosts if the server goes down for any reason. Ideally a zone should have a number of domain name servers located in different places. A zone is basically a domain and all its sub-domains. The zone record tells other servers where to find everything for that domain – where the websites are, the main servers etc. Plesk run on a server or virtual server …
Losing my keyboard input
This is something that has been bothering me on the odd occasion for years. It is intermittent, so is something I have been able to live with, but it would be nice to get to the bottom of it. Basically, there is a key combination – somewhere around the “A” on my keyboard, probably involving the control and perhaps the shift keys, and is so easy to accidentally press when not being careful, that locks up all my keyboard input. …
nLite – Windows Installation Customizer
I came across this neat Windows application today. It is basically a tool for creating customised Windows installation disks. I’ve seen similar tools for slip-streaming service packs into disks, but this one goes a step further and makes it dead easy to include drivers and various other Windows tweaks. It is all very straight-forward to use: Point it at the original Windows disk. Tell it what you want to change (point it at service packs, drivers, etc.) Tell it to …
Silencing a DES-1228P Switch
Well, not quite silencing, but they can be made a lot quieter. First a brief introduction. The D-Link DES-1228P network switch is D-Link’s attempt to get into the corporate world. I’ve never much liked D-Link equipment purely because of reliability issues, Netgear being my consumer choice. I gave this one a chance for a client setting up a new office. What makes this switch stand out is that it provides 24 ports of Power Over Ethernet (POE) along with Quality …
Transferring files from a failed laptop – puppy power
I was recently tasked with transferring files from a failed laptop. The laptop kind of worked, but some bad sectors had started to appear in a number of vital system files, so it was very unstable. This was an old WIndows 98 system, and I could not simply plug in a USB drive, because there were no Windows 98 drivers around for the external USB drives that I had. In the end the disk had to be removed, and connected …
Open Source Applications: my missing links
In the Open Source landscape, there are applications to suite every need and to fill every niche. And yet, finding the right application can be a hit-or-miss affair. I find that I can search and search to find the application that I need today, and come up with nothing. Months later I can stumble across the perfect solution, almost by accident. I don’t know how that works, but I suspect it is all down to the keywords I use. I’ll …