Using Open Office has saved our company thousands in licensing fees. Everyone in our organization uses it and we have yet to run into a compatibility issue when sending files to our clients. Sometimes we’ve found that the spell check doesn’t install properly initially and it is necessary to manually set it up. You’ll need to install the dictionaries and ensure spell check is enabled.

Here’s what we did to get it going. Note: You will need to be connected to the Internet so the dictionaries can download.

1. Go to File -> Wizards -> Select your language -> Click the “Start dicOOo” button.
2. Now follow the prompts until it asks you to restart Open Office
3. Once restarted go to Tools -> Options -> Language Settings
4. Under Writing Aids verify/modify the settings and click OK.
5. Under Languages verify/modify the settings and click ok.

You should be good to go. I had to modify mine in one more spot because my Locale is different (long story).

1. Under Format -> Character -> Font the “Language” setting should match what you set in your Language Settings -> Languages

Now any new document you start will have spell check enabled.

We referenced this forum post, spell checker in openoffice.org, to get us started on the right path.

Download a copy and give it a try! OpenOffice.org

Hope this helps!

Here’s an interesting one we came across yesterday. When the client(s) printed to the HP 6110 it printed the page as a mirror image. The printer was attached to a XP Pro machine on the network. Yes, the mirror image check box was NOT checked in the properties. It took awhile on the first workstation to figure out but here’s what we did to solve the problem.

Delete the printer on the workstation the printer is attached to and search the registry for 6100. In our case there was two separate keys for the hp6110 we had to delete.  Make sure the key is specific to the HP printer. Now reboot the workstation. Once it has rebooted, you can then re-install the printer.

You are not done yet because that did not fix the issue on the network workstations. We had to repeat the same process on each network workstation. Delete the printer, scour the registry, reboot, and re-install. Why did it start doing that? We don’t know. Something corrupted the driver apparently. Why HP doesn’t remove the registry entries either is unfathomable. In our case we had to remove the entries to get the mirror image printing to stop. Deleting the printer and re-installing did not work for us.

Hope this helps you out.

Interlink Advantage Network Services

In writing a technical summary of a customers network in Open Office 2.4 it became necessary to add a page between two existing pages. The document was already nine pages long and I needed to add a page between page three and four. Unlike some others in the office I am NOT a word processing power user and therefore had to Google to find the answer.

Click in the top of the page you want to be below the new page.

hit <ctrl><enter>

You now have a new page. It was that simple to add a new page in Open Office 2.4. No need to enter a manual page break or import into draw. <ctrl><enter> is all you need to add a new page.

By the way did you know Open Office is free? as in beer? YES! There’s no need to spend the $300 for the other office program. Open Office will handle Word and Excel files no problem. Did you know you can edit and create .doc and .xls files in Open Office? Open Office has come a long ways the last couple years and really you could run your office with Open Office and save the money on the purchase and yearly license for every workstation in your office.

If your using MS Office I challenge you to give Open Office a try. You’ll find that Open Office will handle your day to day office documentation without the need to pay thousands in licensing fee’s. If nothing else it’s a sound business decision that free’s up monetary resources for business growth.

We installed a remote backup server running Debian Linux in a client’s home. The backup server is also a firewall to protect the home’s Personal Computers. The home network also had a Twonky MediaServer to manage the components of a home theater.

Due to the way the home is wired (and other reasons) the Denon receiver sits outside the firewall in a DMZ behind the internet modem on a separate LAN. This caused the Twonky MediaServer to not be able to connect to the Denon receiver without opening some ports on the firewall. We typically run a closed outbound policy and open ports as needed.

We spent some time trying to research what ports the Denon was using. Unfortunately documentation was lacking so we had to resort to the old fashioned method. Here was the steps we took and the results.

The DMZ network where the Denon resides is on the 192.168.0.0/24 network.

First step was to port scan the network with nmap to find any responding IP’s. The Denon as you can see was kind enough to identify itself.

firewall:/$ nmap -sP 192.168.0.0/24
Results:
Host 192.168.0.102 appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00 (Denon)

We found the Denon so let’s see what ports are open.

firewall:/$ nmap 192.168.0.102
Starting Nmap ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2009-01-19 16:19 PST
Interesting ports on 192.168.0.102:
Not shown: 1673 closed ports

PORT     STATE SERVICE
23/tcp   open  telnet
80/tcp   open  http
443/tcp  open  https
5000/tcp open  UPnP
5001/tcp open  commplex-link
6666/tcp open  irc-serv
8080/tcp open  http-proxy
MAC Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00 (Denon)

Ahh, looks like UPnP, so open it up and test connectivity.

firewall:/# telnet 192.168.0.102 5000
Trying 192.168.0.102…
Connected to 192.168.0.102.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
HDMODE ANALOG

We install a lot of outdoor cams for various reasons. Security cameras for construction sites, Several ski resort outdoor camera solutions, and in store security camera systems to name a few.  One of the fun things we’ve done here was a job to play a multi-media loop in a ski lodge. The resort wanted pictures, videos, and live shots from the camera on the hill.

We found an easy solution to playing the live video in mplayer. We used an Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy install on a laptop to drive the presentation that was programmed in python.

mplayer -fps 25 -demuxer lavf -user <cam username> -passwd <cam password> http://<cam ip or dns name>/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?0.mjpg

This will connect to web based video cams; axis and stardot netcams have been tested.

If you have any questions regarding outdoor cameras for your business or location please call us at 509-465-1234 or visit our main site at http://www.interlinkadvantage.com/all_weather_security_cameras.php

Backing up data is critical to the success of your business. Whether you are an Ubuntu Linux shop or a windows shop. You must implement a sound backup strategy to ensure your business doesn’t suffer serious hardship if not outright failure. Consider the following scenario.

You open your office in the morning, grab a cup of joe, and sit down to get the day started. You open up your vertical market app to discover you have no client data. “What the heck??” your sales and billing data is gone as well. You search through the filesystem, in every app you can think of, and your data is gone. No problem I’ll retrieve it from the tape backup. You pop in the first tape only to discover the tape is unreadable. “No problem” you think and slap in the previous days tape. Same story different tape. As you work through your 14 day rotation of tapes you discover that your backups have been corrupted for months.

Can you survive the above scenario? Is it a little extreme or fear mongering? It is extreme but it’s real. A disgruntled employee erased a local businesses data AND the backups were unrecoverable. The odd thing of the story is that this business owner had a backup strategy. A lot don’t. Can your business survive the loss of the server or workstation housing the data your busines depends on to survive? How much is your business worth? $100,000, $400,000, millions? Can you afford NOT to have a backup strategy?

Whew, that was harsh but the fact is a proper backup strategy will potentially save your business some day. “So what do you recommend?” Glad you asked! Let’s look at two methods of backing up.

Tape Drive backup:

Historically tape backups have been the preferred method. Unfortunately it’s also proven to be error prone and without properly testing your backup strategy you won’t know until it’s too late that your data is unrecoverable. Ok, let’s look at the cost of tape drives and tapes.

EXABYTE 119.00500 Black 1.6TB Internal Ultra2 SCSI LVD Interface VXA-2 Tape Drive - 1100.00.
A 80/160GB tape is $60.00 x 7 - 420.00. Really you need 10 - 14 but we’ll just go with a minimum.
SCSI Card- $150.00. (Chances are good your server did not come with one.)

$1670.00

That’s average for the hardware. Depending on how much your time is worth you now have to design and implement your backup strategy. Full back up one day and incremental the other six? Full backup every day? We recommend at least one full a week. Ok, so now you’ve designed your strategy it’s time to implement it. Who rotates the tapes manually everyday? Who takes the others offsite? Who tracks what tape is tonights backup? etc… There is considerable planning and effort necessary to implement a proper tape backup strategy. You must factor in the human element as well. Someone must rotate the tape everyday. Someone must take tapes offsite. Invariably a step in the process gets missed with dire ramifications.

Let’s look at our other option.

Remote Data Backup:

Remotely backing up your data to disc is becoming more popular as bandwidth increases for business Internet connections. In our typical set up we backup data from a windows server via rsync or a network share to a Linux server acting as a firewall/fileserver. Then upload the data to a backup server. After the first initial full backup the backed up data is only files that have changed. This all happens at night, automatically without human intervention. You have a daily, weekly, and monthly snapshot of your data. The beauty of this solution is it’s simplicity and the fact it just works. No tapes to rotate, no tapes to test and ensure they aren’t at the end of their life cycle, no tape drives to fail. Once a remote backup to disc solution is set up it just works. Plain and simple. Your employees or your time is free to conduct your business. No need to worry “will the tapes contain data?”.

So how do you get your data. In our set up we provide you an account to access the data. Quite simple. You can access your data with an Internet connection if you need to 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world. Coupled with our server maintenance program we’ll monitor the backup daily and inform you of any problems. Additionally it can be setup to email you notifications of the status of the nightly backup. Great! So how much you ask. Please visit our remote backup solutions page for pricing.

You save that initial outlay of $2000 for hardware, the cost for proper backup software, the cost to have someone install and configure everything, and the employee costs associated with the strategy. That’s a big factor to consider when implementing a backup solution. Is it worth the $2-3000 to get it running and will it pay for itself. Remember that hardware doesn’t last forever so you’ll want to factor in replacement costs as well over the lifetime of your solution. Tapes only have so many hours available so plan on replacing them every other year or so.

We do not believe that the tape back up is the best way to go for most business at present. We have seen too many tapes brought into the shop with unrecoverable data. Granted it’s not “normal” for tapes to fail but it does happen. Many times it is a drive failure, a software failure or a configuration issue. Tape drives are not as transparent (easy to verify) that things are going according to plan and many do-it-yourselfers wind up with backups that were not as complete as they thought they were.

Backups matter if it’s your business data that’s unrecoverable which is why we prefer the remote backup, also known as a disk-to-disk solution. Your data is far safer and easier to access with that method. We’ve never had to tell a remote backup customer “sorry, no data….”