So we just started using Windows’ Distributed File System (or DFS for short). More specifically, we have been using the DFS Namespaces portion of DFS, which basically allows you to have one virtual share point to one or more underlying physical shares on any arbitrary physical server.
In theory, this level of indirection makes maintenance easier because on the client side you can map a drive letter to the virtual share, allowing you to change the physical share behind the scenes without any configuration changes on the client. For example, you could have a virtual share called \\myADDomain\corp\files that is configured to point to the physical share \\myFileServer\files. On the client, you can map a drive letter (e.g. Z:) to \\myADDomain\corp\files. Behind the scenes, that gets translated to \\myFileServer\files when the client uses the drive letter.
Today a user got the following error when logging into his Windows XP Pro machine: “An error occurred while reconnecting Z: to \\myADDomain\corp\files. Microsoft Windows Network: The system cannot find the file specified. The connection has not been restored.” …Continue reading » Windows DFS Brain Damage
Are you having problems getting Bart’s Boot CD to recognize the Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller network interface card?
I work with some Dell computers (models: Optiplex SX280, Optiplex GX620, Precision 690 and Precision 370) that have this NIC and the current version of Bart’s Boot CD is unable to recognize it. The automatic NIC detection fails with a message to the effect of “could not find any device, you can try manually selecting a driver” (sorry, I can’t remember the exact error). …Continue reading » Bart's Boot CD with Broadcom NetXtreme 57XX Gigabit Controller
In Outlook 2003, I have enabled the setting “show an envelope icon in the notification area”. With this setting enabled, whenever I get a new email, an envelope is displayed in the Windows system tray. I like this feature because it is less obtrusive and distracting than the methods of new email notification (e.g. Desktop Alerts, playing a sound, etc).
The only problem with this setting is that, by default, the envelope icon gets displayed even when the new email is spam (i.e junk email). …Continue reading » How to Hide the Outlook Envelope Icon When You Get Spam
Just for laughs, I recently created a point-to-point VPN (a.k.a. gateway-to-gateway VPN) between my home and the office. At the office, the VPN endpoint is a LinkSys RV042, which, as far as I can tell, runs Freeswan VPN software. At home, the VPN endpoint is a LinkSys WRT54GL, which I hacked to run the OpenWrt linux distribution and OpenSwan VPN software. A future post will detail exactly how I did this but the purpose of this post is to discuss how I got my Windows file shares to work across the VPN. …Continue reading » Accessing Windows Shares Across a VPN
