Timberline Employee Blog

For more than two decades I have been convinced that IBM PC clone based personal computers were the most cost effective way to compute. Fifteen years ago I operated a small local BBS on DOS and OS/2 operating systems. On that BBS we featured Fidonet messages and its accompanying Filebone freeware and shareware files.

One day I noticed a set of floppy images in my in folder. I found out that day that Linux was born. I tried it and discarded it. Almost a decade later, I now have Linux on 95% of the servers I build. The turning point for Linux was when easy CDROM based distributions started coming complete with GUI interfaces. GUI, while unnecessary for servers, is entirely necessary for self taught knowledge if only for multiple windows. Multiple windows can be opened and viewed at the same time. A help window and an application window or terminal window open at the same time can do wonders over a plain terminal or DOS window with ‘help’ or ‘man’. Sure you can swap to different screens but reading cryptic help messages and remembering after swapping screens can sometimes be problematic.

About this point I’ve used Macs for school and only very minimally for work. The online community has had a lot of OS Snobs. I never took Apple seriously, guilty of reverse snobbery. As far as I knew the added monetary cost of Mac equipment has either caused these people to be snobs because they spent too much and it had to get out of thier systems -or- they were already rich snobs. Either way, not for me at this time. Most of the applications I could find were all for purchase and expensive.

Windows from the ground up has been great as a single user multitasking operating system. It truly wasn’t good until WFW 3.11 when networking was introduced as part of the Windows package. And it truly hasn’t been great afterwords. Windows 98 is the closest thing to great that Microsoft has had since. I’m basing that in time to install, patch, load helper programs and plug-ins, and secure. Windows ME flopped. Windows XP added a lot of eye candy. Everybody likes eye candy and the Games. Windows XP does do better at the gaming experience except for Dungeon Keeper 2 which must be played on Windows 98 (I’m still looking to see if Leopard and Wine can do it.).

So lets go jump to 2004. Linux is great for file, web, and email servers. If you are not locked into vendor browsers and readers, Linux also makes for a good desktop. Windows XP is great at a user ‘experience’ but is poor on time invested on up-keep.  What is this OSX people have been talking about? Is it really built up on a Linux/Unix type foundation? It sounds interesting. Let me look up online what I can find out… Hmm still too much OS Snobbery clouding out the people who want to help.

Jump back to 2007. Vista. Before Microsoft it was singular. You could only look at one vista. Now Microsoft has pluralized Vista into too many options. The parties involved at Microsoft who pluralized Vista into more than three platforms probably work at Apple or even for somebody that Microsoft stomped upon to get to where it is at. I had a notebook with Vista on it. I returned it to the store I bought it. I have a PC with a free Vista upgrade. The upgrade is still sitting on my desk unopened. Vista has more eye candy and dashboard plug-ins than XP, but nobody can convince me of its main selling point, security. Microsoft as a business is built on upgrading, how do you convince people must upgrade unless what they have is unsecure? The face of computing has evolved since Microsoft incorporated but the business model in this arena has not. Driver support and corporate lock-in aside, ultimately for me it came down to the number of versions of Vista that turned me away. Vista caused me to to not buy a notebook, or rather Vista caused me to return the notebook I purchased. This must cost the manufacturer even more. Not only a lost sale, but a return to process.

What now? I finally need to replace some old equipment. Boot camp? What is Boot camp? This is starting to sound promising in the computing world. There is a notebook designed to run Windows XP and is being actively marketed and it is called Mac.

I picked up a MacBook Pro, upgraded to Leopard (OSX 10.5), ran the Boot Camp install, and installed XP from my own disks. All the necessary XP drivers are included on the Leopard disks. I found out later I needed the non Leopard restore disks to install iLife 08.

I’m quite happy now. Windows XP games and business apps work. My new notebook has Wireless N and bluetooth. If I install VMware Fusion, I can even run Dungeon Keeper 2. If I wanted to, I could even skip boot camp and run everything in VMware Fusion. I have found a lot of freeware ported from the same free software movements that are propelling Linux.

So The SCO Group has filed Chapter 11

Click here to see what your SCO stock is worth now

Does this mean the end of lawsuits against Linux or pieces thereof? I don’t think so. Linux and its licensing system represents a fundamentally different set of thinking from the corporate world. For some Linux is a belief system. Personally I like it and wish more companies supported it for day to day operations in user-land. My server closet is full of Linux in backbone operations.

The suit by SCO against Linux was more of a puppet show run by bigger players than SCO. It was set up in a win-WIN situation for these puppet masters. Win 1, only SCO or Linux is out of the picture. WIN 2, both are out of the picture. Somehow it only polarized the Linux fan base by martyring Linus T. with only minimal overall effect on SCO which was already setup to get itself out of the corporate picture.

Any guesses on the next round?

If your attachments are nearing 10 megabytes or more, then yes they are too big. Many email servers only let messages of 10 megabytes or less through. File encoding also takes up some of this space so I use estimate 7 megabytes is what you’re left with.

One option is to tell Outlook Express to split messages up. There are a few pitfalls here. If the party you are sending to email client cannot recombine the message, you are left with several messages full of junk. If not all the messages come through you are left with junk too.

To automatically split messages:

1. Open Tools/Accounts, select the email account you want to change, and click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Under Sending, click Break apart messages larger than…
4. Enter 7000 kb for the break size. This is slightly less than 7 megabytes and is a good approximate number to keep under the 10 megabyte including encoding limit.
5. Save your changes.

Splitting is automatic. Test by sending yourself a large attachment.

Shoretel 7 now offers wav ringtones on Shoretel IP phones.

It is a bit tricky to implement. First you will need a wav file in an approved format. I used Audacity for the sound manipulation. After you chopped up your sound bite to a small enough clip do the following to make it usable on the Shoretel IP Phones.

1. Select the whole track.
2. Click on Tracks/Stereo to Mono (if you have a stereo track)
3. In the bottom left Project Rate selection box select either 8000 or 16000
4. Now export. Click File / Export As / Wav and give it a name and place to live.

Now take this new wav file over to your shoretel server and find your ftp root directory. Create a folder called ringtones and drop the wav file there.

Important. Check to see you can ftp this back. Open your browse your ftp server and see if you can open this file. In Internet Explorer type ftp://”your server name or ip address” and search for the file you dropped in.

Find an IP phone you want to change and get its mac address. It is likely the first half starts with 001049.  Now back at the ftproot folder create a file called shore_<your mac addess>.txt.  For example, shore_001049012BF4.txt is a valid file name. Inside this file place two lines.

WaveRinger1 L/rg 1.1.1.1/ringtone/customexternal.wav
WaveRinger2 L/r1 1.1.1.1/ringtone/custominternal.wav

Replace 1.1.1.1 with your servers IP address
Replace customexternal.wav with the ringtone filename for outside calls.
Replace custominternal.wav with the ringtone filename for internal calls.

You must also check to see if you can open this file by ftp as well. You may have to go and change permissions to be able to see these files. If you can’t see it, your phone can’t see it either.  This is what was stopping me the first day I tried the ringtones out.

Do not change any other files in this directory. You could make your phone system not work if you change the wrong file here.

Consult your Shoretel 7 Administrator’s Guide lists how to change ringtones for all of your ST530’s, or ST210’s, etc., all at the same time and how you can assign sounds to ringtones 2-4.  Only one set of two ringtones may be downloads to a phone at a time.

Did you need to run the Shoretel version 7 client on Windows 2000? Shoretel has dropped support for Windows 2000 clients while at the same time is not certifying Shoretel versions less than 7 to work with the latest necessary Microsoft server security patches. So if you to were forced to update to version 7 while you still have some Windows 2000 Workstations in use, this trick may help you out.

The Shoretel client upgrade is blocked with a message about NETWORK SERVICE not available. Simply create a user called NETWORK SERVICE and then run the client upgrade again. It worked for me on ST7 v.12.5.8107.0.