Roaming Computing System (Windows Edition) 3.1 - Accidental Administrator's Guide

Server Problems

The most common complaint with the server is the assumption that email isn't going in or out. You can leave the server logged in running one or more of these commands to show incoming and outgoing mail:

tail -f /var/log/syslog
tail -f /var/log/mail.log

If the server crashes it will leave complex messages on the screen. usually you can restart the server with ctrl+alt+del. Try this but if it fails to get the server to respond, by saying it is shutting down, then power cycle it. The messages on the screen will be available in the logs (/var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages) for whomever wants to look.

Backup

The server backs up to a directly connected USB-attached hard disk. You connect the disk and leave it over-night, replacing it with another disk the next day. The backup runs at 04:00. You do not need to issue any commands, everything is automatic. If there were any errors they are written to a log file (/var/log/backup-<date>-<time>) [though they should be emailed to the administrator].

The disk uses a Unix filesystem (ext3) so cannot be read on Microsoft Windows systems without an add-on which don't currently provide. The data is saved directly to the disk, it is not zipped up. Note that the backup will grow over time. You can read it on any Linux system or on Windows [TODO: details will be added here as to how to access them using Windows].

If you connect the disk to the server you can read it by issuing the command, whilst root: mount /media/backup. The disk's contents will then be available in the /media/backup directory.

If you connect the disk to a Linux workstation its contents will appear on the desktop.

When you are looking at the backup disk, the following directories containg the following files:

home/<your organisation name> - the organisation's shared S:. Permissions are such that you can read these files.
home/<person's name> - each person's H:. Permissions are set so only the owner can read them unless you override those permissions.

Manual Updates

Typicallly updates are managed through WPKG but if you want to update the system manually some of the software applications make this really easy. If there is any risk of breaking the system they will be described here.

OpenOffice

Over-ride the installation directory with %PROGRAMFILES%\openoffice\

Firefox

Login to a workstation as administrator
From within Firefox choose Help → Check for Updates
If it says, for example, "Updates Available - An update for Firefox is available: Firefox 2.0.0.6" you can choose "Download & Install Now >>"

Thunderbird

Login to a workstation as administrator
From within Thunderbird choose Help → Check for Updates
If it says, for example, "Updates Available - An update for Thunderbird is available: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6" you can choose "Download & Install Now >>"

Quickbooks

You should run the Quickbooks updater manually once a month.

F-Prot

F-Prot updates itself automatically anyway.

Java Runtime Environment

Control Panel → Java → Update → Update Now. It will then be the default in Firefox.
We don't recommend this but only because it creates an additional installation and so uses up an additional 70MB
[In OpenOffice, it isn't selected, does that mean anything?]