₦airaland Forum

Depends on the level of cooperation you have with your ISP. Most times its practically non-existent. More importantly, the stress and complexity of migration depends on the amount of mailboxes involved.

On top of my head, I think the initial steps to be taken should be as follows:

1. Plan and deploy your exchange 2003 server

2. Archive users mailbox contents from the ISP into .pst files. (You can do this easily with outlook)

3. Create new mailboxes for each user on the exchange server.

4. Use exmerge to copy the contents of the archived mailboxes for each user into the newly created mailboxes on the local exchange server.

5. Change MX records for your mail domain (wherever this is being hosted) to give priority to your local exchange server. You should still leave MX record entry for the ISP mail server to ensure that mails are still queued at the ISP before you finally switch over to your local exchange server.


The importance of proper planning and deployment of exchange server cannot be underemphasised. Ensure spam filtering, security against undesired mail relays, IP address filtering etc have all been put in place before switching over to your exchange box. 

Regards

-Still havent completed the visio drawings. My exams should be over by thursday and i can give it the full attention it deserves-

@Onicastro

No ill feelings and no offence meant. Regards

When lifting technical procedures or solutions from other sites, always ensure to give credit by properly citing your source(s).  Cutting and pasting bits from other sources in an attempt to be seem as originating a solution is distasteful.  It's indeed more honorable to provide a link to a solution written by someone else than reinventing the wheel.


I believe the thread originator and us all can draw on the solution as proferred from the complete procedures here:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=414


NOTE where the document author clearly indicated as below

Please do not post these instructions on any other site. I put a lot of time into getting these to work properly. Link to this article instead using this URL: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=414


Also note clearly that this would only work for the sata controllers that were indicated as supported in the solution document, the thread author should check which sata controller comes with his laptop and might need to make adjustments to the procedures as appropriate to get this to work for him if his laptop comes with a different sata controller other than the ones listed.

Regards

Ralvy:
It's amazing that people on the forum know me to an extent that they know what I can & cannot do or say.
Well , sorry paribus - I was just joking

^@Poster:
Accept my apologies please, I didn't know Linux Screenshots are not allowed . . .Thats Fine, Let me post some Microjunk Screenshots. . .

Hey Ralvy. I'm not taking it personal and definitely don't know you that much. Internet anonymity dictates that people's character are profiled by the posts or comments they make. From a personal perception there are serious and reasonable posters, not so serious ones and downright jokers on this forum. I was only going by your previous posts and comments in the computer section which personally I adjugded as purposeful, solution-centric and devoid of sheer braggado. My highlighting of that particular post was to emphasize what seems to be a u-turn from your norm. By no means do i intend to restrict you within the boundaries of 'reasonable' posts, that is strictly your prerogative. Feel free to take the liberty.

I don't wish to be misunderstood, the screenshots posted here are visually nice and I'm sure they serve their purpose for their respective creators. I am only trying to underline the essence of the thread as being to compare desktops screenshots regardless of the platforms under which they were created. I'm sure Linux users can definitely post their 'superior' desktops as much as they please without shovelling the 'linux is good, MS is evil' gospel down our throats.

The anonymous stuff - was that a subtle attempt at traffic generation for NCF. How can you be anonymous on a forum you moderate and possible own 

MS OS don't generally allow kickstarting the setup process for a lower edition OS from within a higher level OS. Like trying to install XP from within Vista, or 2000 professional from within XP, NT4 workstation from within 2000 professional etc. This would most likely generate a warning message "The current operating system is higher than the version of the operating system you are trying to install" - not in exact words. At this stage, you can no longer proceed with the installation process.

Also the F6 process is quite picky as to the location where it seeks the mass storage drivers, it always indicate that it is searching the floppy disk drive and there is no guarantee that it would look at an attached flash drive location (as this would most likely be assigned drive letters other than A, if it ignores the flash drive, be ready to use a usb floppy drive unless you have slipstreamed the drivers onto an xp cd image for which you won't need to use the F6 prompt anyway. Regards

I'm not a guru but if you are booting from a Windows XP installation CD to format your SATA hard disk, then you'll need to press F6 when prompted to install additional storage device drivers. Without doing this, the text based portion of the Windows XP setup process do not load SATA hard disk drivers and thus would tell you that it could not detect any storage devices required for the installation to proceed.

You would normally have the driver for your SATA hard disk copied onto a floppy or USB or slipstreamed into your windows xp installation image. Regards

richardz:
Am fully employed to Isocare West Africa (Nig) Ltd as a Computer Engineer cause of the thin clients and I went for 2 weeks training in moscow, Australia. Thin Client is an HP product. Call me on phone if you will need my help in repairing that of urs that is faulty, 08087456421.

If I was your employer, you'll risk getting the boot immediately. To think i invested so much sending you on specialised thin clients training as far as moscow and australia and you don't know what a thin client is !!!!

Thin Client is an HP Product as much as memory is a Dell product and CPU is an IBM product. Need i say more.  Says so much about Isocare techies (if there's any company such as this in the first place). Stop exposing your ignorance this way. Regards.

urihsab:
@rhyme2_all for a fee of =N= 5,000 i will migrate your cybercafe from windows to linux. it is a lot safer than windows, especially on a server level. user management is so much more conducive and efficient. when i'm done, the only person who will be able to install any further programs on any of your cafe's computers is u, the technician.
this reformatting they are asking u to do today, next week u will find yourself doing it again.

On what basis do  you say user management is so much conducive and efficient. Isn't that relative to user's competence and know how. Most tasks are easy - but only for those who knows how !.  And who says 'the only person who will be able to install any further programs on any of your cafe's computers is u, the technician.' is only possible within linux domains. Serious businesses have been locking down their desktop for years with group and security policies on MS networks.

Better preach a well planned deployment from the onset (regardless of deployed OS) than saying a platform move would solve all security problems. The problem most cyber cafe have is that they rush deployment and are duly satisfied once client workstations are able to browse without giving adequate consideration to network security. It's got nothing to do with what OS was deployed but everything to do with how it was deployed. Regards

I've checked the TK3670CE. Seems the Win CE is loaded in flash memory.  You'll have to check the hardware manual (presuming you have one) on the procedures to write a new OS to the flash if a straight install is not possible.  Does it give you any flash config option (in the absence of the win CE OS) when booted up?

Also the unit has USB drives. It's worth a try to connect an external CD-ROM drive and with the source files for Win CE Net 5.0 , reinstall this OS. If unable to boot from the Win CE disk, you can boot off a Bart PE or Win PE disk and grab the CE source files from a usb-hdd or network location.  See if an installation can go through either of these ways.

I checked the termtek site and it doesn't say much under the support section. Might need to contact them directly if no joy. Regards

Sorry. Been very busy preparing for exams. Would send you the .vsd file now and the updated ones shortly. Hopefully before friday. Regards

Some guys might tell you that a packet capture on your wifi-nic using ethereal or wireshark on your workstation might reveal the possible address range of the connected wifi ap. I don't know about this but i'll tell you i don't encourage sniffing down OPN (other people's network).

Hope this doesn't turn out to be yet another MS bashing thread. While i'm no big fan of MS, 3D desktop extrusion doesn't exactly make a killer OS.  Whatever happened to function over form?  I love my plain ol' bland desktop anyday. No fancy pictures and all that stuffs - never had time for such.

Ralvy:
I'll be back for yo mamas ass!

Also check this Thread!

Quite unlike you !!!


I believe the thread author didn't mean my MS vs. your Linux desktops.

What sort of thin clients are these?

I'm guessing they are mobile devices as you indicated they have Windows CE on them. Also what sort of thin client software is used to make the terminal service connectivity - is it plain old TS client or a Citrix ICA client? You'll need to provide more info about the hardware specs of these devices as this would largely dictate how the reloading would be done. Do they have wired or wireless NICs, USBs. And how were they operating in their normal environment.  State the specifics. Regards

1st visio posted. Building Interconnectivity Layout. I'll expand this into more level details if i have the info requested earlier in my last post. I had to convert this to pdf as the .vsd file size exceed the file upload limit. I'll email the visio file to you if you provide your email. Regards

This is certainly not priviledged information that you need to call a special number or email for. This can be easily done with a features  that comes free free with Internet connection sharing (ICS) in windows 2000, XP or vista. Or RRAS if you are using Win 2000 or 2003 server.

If i could recall, steps on how to do this has been posted on a previous thread before, I think by Ralvy or Maleeq. If anybody really requires a detailed steps and procedures, just indicate and it will be posted here for free. Regards

Try PartitionMagic. This should resize your existing partition to claim space free unpartitioned space from a disk drive with hardly any issues and the process is not data destructive. I believe there are several other similar utilities available. Regards

A missing NTLDR (the windows NT-based OS bootstrap loader) doesn't necessarily mean that the whole information on the hard drive has been corrupted.

Most likely your NT or XP system partition files has been damaged in one way or the other and you might need to repair windows or worst case scenario, reinstall. You get the option to repair the existing (and damaged) windows installation (at the text based portion of setup)  if you initiate a new install process of the OS.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, but there are Microsoft KB articles that explains this effectively. So take time to go through them. I've posted some links below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318728

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397

Regards

The information is still scanty but i can manage to knock off some high level visio diagrams for you. This would be mostly be building to building topology and depiction of some use-case scenarios. Please note that i indicate they would be mostly high level due to the info available. I'll post this later tonite or by tommorrow.

To go further, you'll need to provide number of floors in each building, users distribution per floor level, organisation departments and  approximate sizes of the buildings involved. With sizes i mean length and breadth measurements, and possibly also distance between floors. And any more indepth info like information access patterns in the organisation, who needs access to what, which department or location needs to have access to what sort of information (if such information boundaries do exist in the organisation),  Also the company's budgeting estimates might be helpful on recommending network equipment or solutions.  Please bear in mind that i'm not looking at being part of your project or expecting anything from this. Why am i doing this, you might ask. Simple. I crunch visios for breakfast  .

Regards

Is this an academic or business proposal?

Give more details on the requirements and i might be able to help depending on the time frame. Bear in mind that the key to a successful networking proposal lies in killer visio diagrams of your design together with a critical evaluation of your chosen topology, equipment etc. And then again, a site survey is quite important too. Regards

@poster

i think you should state your ideal budget and what sort of programs you'll be running on regular basis. The spec you listed is not entirely useless as it should suffice if all you're doing is word processing, reading pdf files and surfing the web. However the experience might not be very good if you have to watch a dvd movie as the memory would be quite low for this. Same for running any graphic intensive application such as corel draw. For the price, i don't know for sure if the price's good for the specs, someone knowledgeable on the current compuvilla prices would be able to comment on this.

If you can afford a higher spec, it is ideal to go for this as laptop prices are getting cheaper these days and with some additional tens of thousands to the stated price, i'm sure you'll be able to get a much more higher spec but having said that, it would still depend on your computing needs.

anusule:
wtf? 28GB laptop
what do you want to use 28GB for?

why not 28gb - i've got a 20gb 1.2 compaq evo 410c 768ram, runs win2k3 server and use it to virtualize two CAG cluster on my citrix farm. I've got a 2nd one of the same specs that runs my Citrix web interface server. The storage suits me just fine. Storage size, processor speed, memory sizes are all a matter of budget and needs. I'm not going out there to grab a 180gb sata external hdd just because that's the in-thing. However i would do if i should need more space. Regards

A Linux machine! because a 486 is a terrible thing to waste!
(By jjs@wintermute.ucr.edu, Joe Sloan)

@v/admiral

I can't help but make a comment to your post. I neither have the desire to join the armed forces now, later nor directly know anyone who's interested. But your response to the original post is commendable. Quoting gbolio4 "most people these days just open their mouths - in this case their 'fingers' - and say or type anything that wants to come out. "  - this captures my outlook especially where people just feel they ought to write just anything in response to a serious post. Seeing people respond with one-liners such as 'lol' 'lmao' ' ' and some other out-of place responses, it can't help but cross my mind - 'why do they bother in the first place"

It is obvious from your post that you are well informed about the topic on which you chose to post and the level of details and organisation of your response shows your efforts in getting your point across. Kudos to you. I believe this would not be far from a true reflection of how you do things in everyday life. To a very large extent, the way people write in their posts says a lot about them.

@hbrednic - in response to "your write up is nice,but you get time oooh"

isn't what is worth doing at all worth doing well?  To me it's time well spent and i believe the poster would be better informed with v/admiral's post. Regards

Might as well ask how a fish relates to a bicycle!.

Jokes aside, folks should learn to put some seriousness to their posts here, asking a serious question (i'm presuming it's a serious enquiry) in such a casual manner is bound to get unserious responses.  I don't know if it's me but the wordings bear too much semblance to something off an sms message.

I'm sure it would not have taken much additional effort to have typed:

Can someone kindly tell me or enlighten me on the relationship between computers (or computing) and the legal profession.   - See it didn't take that long to type it properly.

I'm working on a research proposal that seeks to investigate the relationship between computers and the legal profession, can someone offer any suggestions.

.
.
.

It could go on and on.


I hope you get the right responses to your enquiry. Or better still rephrase your post.

Regards

@bisifunke

I think you'll need to provide more information on your access scenario. When you said 'from outside your network', possible presumptions are that you are trying to access the ftp server over a public network, or remotely VPNed into your network. You might want to be more specific in terms of:

What sort of ftp client are you using for this remote access. If it complains of permission, my thinking is that you do have phyiscal access remotely but not able to authenticate properly to the ftp server.

if your network have an edge firewall or router, you might want to check that ftp ports (20 and 21) are opened on the firewall or allowed on the router access list.  A simple telnet to the ftp server ip addy on the ftp port should verify the end-to-end access status from the remote network. Even though the appropriate ports might be open from your firewall end, some ISP might still block this from the remote end so your telnet test should validate this.

If you are using secure ftp, then you'll want to check that port 22 is open on your firewall.

However if there are no ports issues, then you'll want to look into the IIS permissions granted to your ftp root and the lower level folders (if any). if anonymous user is disabled, that means you're left with integrated windows authentication, basic authentication, digest authentication and .NET passport authentication. Which one do you have enabled for your ftp root. Disabling anonymous user authentication and absence of folders restrictions does not entirely mean that the remote user would be granted access. Access needs to explicitly granted at the NTFS level especially as shared folders in win2k3 do not grant 'everyone' full control by default any longer. Also you'll need to check that no IP address and domain name restrictions are defined in IIS.

It would be helpful if you can post screenshots of your ftp client and the errors together with your IIS settings (with your ip and user details blanked out of course). Regards

I think the question that should be asked of the user in the first place (more in line with what TomX said) is:

"most people that I give access to, to use my computer"  How are these people given access to your computer?

1. Granting them access to your desktop while you are logged on with your user name (which possibly have admin priviledges)?

2. Granting them access to log on to the computer with the default username (which possibly has no password) and having access to the same desktop and files you would normally have access to? (same as above)

3. Granting them access to log on with a different user name (but still a priviledged user - possibly admin) that have enough permissions to read/modify/delete your files?


Granting access based on the scenario in 1. and 2. is not advised and the ideal way is to either enable the guest account on your computer or create a different user account for each one of your friend that you would normally want to give access to your computer. With an individual user account for each of your friend, you have much more control over who have access to what and more important, you are able to rely on an audit trail to see who has done what (should you need to). Having said this, and with each friend given a dedicated user account (with name and password), you best bet in securing your files and folders is to use native windows NTFS permissions of windows (assuming that your the partitions on your computer are formatted as NTFS) on such files and folders. Also ensure that the user accounts created are given no extra priviledges beyond those of a normal 'user' which is the default for newly created accounts.

If you have an understanding of the above, then do feedback so that a more elaborate description can be given on how to achieve these. Regards

Proudly Akokite - Engineering '95

Ivvie:
Windows 98 2nd Edition is better than XP. XP is based on Windows 2000 NT technology and multimedia biased. I am yet to find a major corporation running on XP. It's Windows 2000. This is due to stability and security. Exxon partly runs on Windows 98 Corporate and recently switched to Windows 2000.

Ivvie:
The stable of all is Windows 2000. It's only slower than XP. That is why companies still stick to it. Sure enough, it's coming of age but it's the ideal IT OS.

@Ivie
Are you basing your observation on Exxon IT infrastructure alone?. Most forward thinking organisations have moved on from Windows 2000 ages ago. The few organisations still out there on windows 2000 are most likely not hanging on to it because of stability - but rather costs and feasibility of migration.  For companies with a user base running into thousands or tens of thousands, upgrading to XP is a major expenditure that goes beyond just buying licenses and scheduling deployment. Application compatibility needs to be thoroughly tested, staff needs to be trained, tech support needs to be available etc.

I've supported Windows NT4, 2000 for many years and i'll say their stability are nowhere compared to that of Windows XP. While i can't comment much on Vista at the moment having not used it long enough to make any meaningful tech observations, i'll surely say Windows 2000 is definitely not the best Windows OS out there. Regards

@Obalende

Obviously having been in the UK for 4 years, you must have had some significant experience to leave you with this impression. It would be great if you are able to share some of these experience while seeking to know how it's like compared with other places. I am here myself on pg studies and yet to make up my mind on if i want to settle here on a long term basis. Regards

Good day to all the folks in the house. It's been a while and good to be back here.

@kidonig
I'm hoping you might be able to draw a thing or two from my personal experience. At the time i'd wanted to put in my application i was faced with the same predicament as yours,  Whether to apply alone in the first instance or with my dependents at the same time. My situation was quite challenging then and needed critical consideration as my depenedents included wife and kid. And to make matters worse, term start time coincided with my yearly house rent which would mean having to shell out some odd 800k for this if my dependants would stay behind. Wife had quit her job the previous year for full time homemaking (another challenge on intent to return). Anyway cutting the long story short, after much deliberation, i decided to bite the bullet and put in a family application for all of us. Personally for me, i couldn't stand being away from my wife and kid for that long and even with them being able to visit regularly won't do especially as i needed that bonding with my kid at his formative stage. Long distance phone calls won't help much for us at that stage. It was either we were all granted together or in the worst case refused and stay put in nigeria. I wrote a personal statement to buttress the reasons why i needed my family there with me during my studies and the rest is now history.

My case might have been an exception rather than the rule and I just might have been downright lucky. I'll say as others have advised earlier, it might make more sense to apply for yours first and let your dependent join you later. However narration of my experience is just to highlight the fact that you'll really have to assess your situation critically in determining what's appropriate for you. You might want to bear in mind the followiing:

How long you've been married.

Your employment situation in Nigeria.

If you're self sponsored or being sponsored (personally i think it's more difficult to make a case for a sponsor paying for both yourself and dependent).

The strength of your evidence of intent to return. In my own case, the evidence had to cover myself and dependents as well.  (however if i could recall, i think in one of the immigration documents i'd perused some time ago, refusal cannot be made solely on the basis of the applicant not being able to provide evidence of intention to return after course of study as students are now allowed to stay back a year - or now two with psw after studies.).

If your wife would join you later, bear in mind that she would still have to satisfy the same conditions of intent to return, adequate accomodation, financial capabilities etc, same as you would have to do when putting in a joint application. I think the differentiating factor is the evidence of the amount of funds needed which would be greater in case of a joint application.



I think the mistake some regular travellers (even with current visitor's visa) make with student visa application is in getting complacent about performing appropriate due diligence with their application and  donning the attitude of "I've been to the UK several times, that should be good enough for the bhc guys". Prepare your application like you've never been issued a visa before and your previous visa(s) might favourably complement your current application. Just my personal take. Regards

I beg your pardon, but creating a central database for local governments in nigeria takes much much more than what your demo portrays. I think the what should be asked of the poster is to get an insight into the purpose(s) the central database would seek to meet. The following approach can guide the user into making a more directed enquiries related to his initial question:


What is the scope of local governments that will participate in such 'central database project'. All local goverment within a specific city, all LGs within a state, all LGs within a region (South South for instance) or all LGs across the nation (my knowleldge of the last count was 774 - don't know if this is still valid). The scope would determine the complexity and feasibility of your deployment.

Secondly, what sort of information would be held in such central database and how dynamic would this information be. Considering the normal functions of a LG to include generating internal revenue, registration or births and deaths, children immunisation, LG workers information, LG project information etc, you would need to get a definitive listing of the type of information that would be (or is viable) to store in such 'central database'.

How would this information be accessed. Would this be made available to anyone that needs access on a pro bono basis, to pre-registered users or to workers of the LGs alone. Would a fee be charged. Would there be certain sensitive information that would need an added identity verification before access can be granted. These are just few access scenarios and you might be able to ask much more in this regards.

What infrastructure would be needed to support such central database and what are the reliability expectations  - in the minimum, you would be looking at a database server (or servers), a front end web server or servers), and direcctory infrastructure server. These would make up the server infrastructure. Then you would have to consider the network infrastructure - switches, routers, vsat to connect the different LG sites (if dispersed) that would participate in such project. Storage infrastructuure - SAN, NAS to handle storage provisioning and access if you 'central database' would eventually be holding a tremendous amount of data. In terms of reliability or disaster recoverability, you would consider deploying a database cluster, a load balanced front end web server to ensure that your infrastructure can easily and quickly recover from critical system failures with little impact to users.


This is not an attempt to give you a full fledge requirements proposition but just a gudiance on the kind of questions you should  be asking. What i've mentioned so far is not an exhaustive list of requirements but a start in the right direction. I've embarked on something similar for a state government in the south south some years back, the requirements analysis alone took between 4-6 months of meeting with the various stakeholders, looking at existing processes, future processes etc. in the end the political will to complete the project wasn't readily forthcoming and had to be abandoned at mid-implementation stage. 

Besides my love for ensuring ICT projects are started on the right note, it's good to stress that the way you ask questions determines who answers your questions and the sort of answers you get.  I won't necessarily give you a contact number for further communications or pretend to have a demo to fulfil your requirements (which is definitely not clear at this stage)  but i'm willing to help provide guidance (to the best of my ability) right here on nairaland pages (and maybe beyond where necessary) as to how you might get off on this project. Regards

I've been into Citrix Support for quite a while and i've always wondered about the depth of penetration of Citrix products in corporate Nigeria. If you support Citrix, use it in your workplace, could you kindly share some experience with your Citrix Infrastructure.

I'm basically interested in existing deployments of Metaframe server, Presentation Server, Secure Gateway, Citriix Access Gateway, Password Manager, WANScaler, NetScaler just to mention a few - in Nigeria. If you support it, what has been the benefits and challenges, if you use it, how has it fared with work productivity and what challenges do you face. Are there any support, deployment, maintenance, design/architecture/integration issues you need help with. I'm keen to link up with the Citrix community in Nigeria - if any. Regards

mayayi:
@ Paribus
Please,kindly answer my question because i am planning to re apply by mid of Nov.


T hanks in advance.

Apologies for the delayed response. School has been really engaging with barely little time left for anything else. My earlier explanation was only to emphasise that there's nothing against being self-sponsored as long as the source of funds is proven. However switching from being sponsored to self-sponsorship might be dependent on the time that has elapsed between your last refusal and your intended next application.

The way i'm inclined to look at this is that if not much time has elapsed during this period (say less than a year) and if your previous financial circumstances (job, salary, income from assets etc) record that you have with BHC is not radically different from the current, then it might be difficult to explain the 'sudden change in income' to be able to switch from being sponsored to self sponsored. But if as mentioned earlier, the sudden change can be clearly justified without ambiguities, then i suppose you should be able to change to self sponsorship. Also i noticed that you mentioned only your 'savings and dom account', is it a typo that you omitted the current account? I believe most transactions that you would normally have (salary, cheque payment etc) would normally go into a current account before same are transferred to savings or dom. You might want to look into this.

Also i don't know really know about being able to use your in-law and passing off as uncle, i think most important is that you are able to clearly establish the relationship between you and your sponsor, their current financial circumstances (the student questionnaire asks it all really) and their reason/motivation for seeking to invest so much (yes, the average amount paid by international students for studies in the UK is regarded as being a significant amount) of their income in your education. I'm not sure if the sponsor's travel history holds any weight with regards to your application - could be, i don't know for sure.

And lastly - but really important, try not to narrow the information you are gathering by requesting answers from only an individual as you've done (except such is really knowledeable on this affairs which i'm not), there are some more knowledgeable guys  on immigration issues here. They might be willing to provide more useful insight than i can or better still give you the answers you seek if the single individual to whom it has been earlier posed does not come online soon enough. MrPataki, Akolawole, VOR, Vicjustice, LondonCool, Funkybaby, Salsera, ,  just to name the ones that always comes to mind. Regards

Travelling in this context not necessarily to escaping hardship or economic migration - but to get exposed to other places and people beyond one's immediate vicinity.