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Showing posts from 2005

Implementing a Better File Search Strategy under Windows Server 2003 at Low Cost

Why do we need a better one? Are you kidding... Hands up anyone who believes that you can successfully locate files using the Microsoft Search tool, every time without problems... Hands up anyone who believes that the amount of time it takes the Microsoft Search tool to locate a file is acceptable. I'm sure nobody has their hands up. Why are we all raving about Google Desktop? If you haven't checked out Google Desktop - Enterprise Edition , you should make the effort and download it. It's free and it is very very good. This little tool indexes every file on your computer, your instant messages and your email. It even does Lotus Notes and Gmail. There are also lots of add-ons available for free, or at low cost. This tool will change the way you think about Microsoft Built-in Windows search tool. Google desktop is so good that you can locate deleted and changed documents and look at their cached contents. Google desktop can do some really cool network things, includi

Scheduling Cleanup Jobs for your Server

One of the things we learnt on the bootcamp was how to set up cleanup jobs on the Domino server. Yes... I know I should have known how to do this before, but for some reason I didn't - possibly not having done a full blown admin course since R4 has something to do with it. Cleanup Jobs Explained UPDALL :Updates the Full Text Indexes on your databases. This should run nightly. UPDALL -R : Same as Updall, but rebuilds the indexes. This job should be run weekly or less. COMPACT -B :This version of Compact (note the B is case sensitive) will actually recover space on your domino server. Leave the B off, and you don't recover any space. This should be run weekly or less freqently. FIXUP : This repairs damaged databases. This should be run weekly. How to make these Jobs Start Automatically at Specific Times Since you want these jobs to run without interfering with eachother, and preferably away from the backup job, you should adjust your times accordingly. Open your Server's Ad

Domino Administration Bootcamp

Over the last three days, I've attended "The View" Domino Administration Boot Camp. It was quite an intense bunch of sessions and my head is still reeling from all the possibilities. One really strange thing was that most of the good things in domino have caveats of some form or other. My notes are full of writings which say "Implement this..." and then they're crossed out saying "Don't bother - it affects xxxxx". I spoke to a few other people at the bootcamp and they said the same thing. On the whole though, I found a lot of things there to increase my preference for Domino over Exchange. (not that I really needed any) and got a lot of general and specific tips. Over the coming months, I hope to go through these things one by one and implement them (and discuss them here) but for now, I've got sooo much email waiting.

A Breakthrough in AntiSpam for Lotus Domino (and probably other Systems)

It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch software vendors can be with their software. They spend a lot of time and money promoting what is essentially crap software, and then when something really spectacular comes along, they forget to do any marketing. Ok, this generalisation seems to apply to a lot of things, not just computing, but for now, lets look at a recent example. Symantec MailSecurity for Domino We have been using Symantec MailSecurity for Domino for some time and while it has been working for us, the maintenance on this product is a lot of work. For a start, there was no such thing as an automated update, you had to manually add in blocks for everything you could think of. In my case I did a few things; Firstly, to prevent false positives; Created a whitelist which included the domain names of most of our frequent business partners (obviously something that needs to be updated occasionally) Created a whitelist keyword which meant that the use of a specific word in the

The Perils of Home Computing (What you need to do to make your computer more secure)

I can't remember a day in the last three years when I wasn't asked at least one security related question. Security has become the biggest problem in the computing world and it's only going to get worse. This blog entry is aimed at the "average" home-PC user, and will hopefully help you to secure your own computer. Why is this relevant to me - I haven't got anything on my PC that I want to keep or hide? Yep, that's the biggest excuse I hear for having no security on your home PC. Let's bust this myth right now. If your computer is unprotected, people can take things off it (like credit card details) but people can also put things onto it - like child pornography. There are numerous cases of trojan programs installing child-porn websites on unprotected computers. People have gone to jail for this... People have died for this. Don't let it happen to you. Have a look at these articles. " The Giant Wooden Horse Did it " - The Register "

Creating a Domino Navigation System - Part 2

Last time we got the views, forms, framesets etc up and running. This time we're going to look at execution. Create a VB Script Library called NAVScripts The first thing we need to do is add the RunShellExecute API to our Project. In the Declarations section of your application, add the following; Declare Function GetDesktopWindow Lib "user32" () As Long Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( Byval hwnd As Long , Byval lpOperation As String , Byval lpFile As String , Byval lpParameters As String , Byval lpDirectory As String , Byval nShowCmd As Long ) As Long Note that the there are only two lines here (The second group has a few word-wraps in it). Next, add the following code, which makes it a little easier to use the shellexecute function. It also allows us to pass multiple things to it separated by double hashes ## (this is useful if you want to specify a specific action, as specified in the comments a

Creating a Domino Navigation System - Part 1

Introduction In this tutorial, I'll be attempting to show you one way that you could make a menu/navigation system for your company (I'm hesitating to use the word portal ), without resorting to either Workplace or WebSphere. I think we're all familiar with the welcome screen, which is nice for individual users, but really isnt much good for a corporation, especially not one with lots of databases. I originally built a navigation system for my company using Navigators, they were the only things available at the time. This resolved some problems I had with the workspace, namely how to put new databases on the desktop, and control where they went. Unfortunately, the problem with this approach is that when you want to make changes, you have to do so using designer. I wanted to come up with a more flexible navigator which would allow things to be easily moved around. Note that the proposed navigator is a Notes-based, rather than web-based system. The Basic Building Blocks I'

Copyright and Other Disclaimers (Important)

I'm not a "legal" person, and I know that most people don't bother reading legal things, so I'm writing this in plain English. Ideally that shouldn't affect the legal potency of this work... Ownership of Material Technically I am the owner of all material posted on this blog, however I grant everyone the right to use it in any way they want to (except to bring legal action, abuse or other horrible stuff down onto me). It would be nice if you were to acknowledge the source, but I know that in the connected world, this isn't always possible, so I won't hold you to it. You can copy it, send it around, change words (on your copy, not on mine) etc... Insulting Statements etc. I will be trying hard not to insult people or companies or make libellous statements, but sometimes you do these things without thinking. If I offend anyone, please let me know (I think there's some sort of email link on this blog somewhere), and I will remove the offending ent

Welcome (Introduction to the Blog)

Hi, and welcome to my Computing and Lotus Domino blog... I was originally going to mix computing family and movies all into my other blog, but then I thought about the audience... If you want to read about one topic, you don't want other topics interfering. The main things that will be on this blog will be; General Articles on Computing Future Directions, Home PC Security etc. I don't expect anything here to be life-changing, but I'll try to pitch this at a consistent level. Real-life Computing problems and Answers I'm an IT Manager and have a lot to do with LANs, Security etc). I'll talk about my problems with Systems Implementation, Management issues etc. Lotus Domino /Lotus Notes (and maybe Workplace) I have a long association with this product, and there already a lot of sites out there that are either too light, or too technical, I'm going to try to walk a middle road. I will try to keep these things separate and will usually attempt to describe the topic n