on the job

My daily work log

WebTester Update

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As posted previously, I have been working on porting my WebTester program from ASP to PHP. New features include:

  • Ability to randomize questions
  • Integrated HTML Editor (no more manual coding)
  • ‘Enter’ key selects Next instead of Previous
  • Ported from ASP to PHP (so it can be hosted on a Mac/Linux/Windows box, instead of limited to Windows/IIS)
  • Generates math equations on the fly, by converting LaTeX math code into a graphic, such as:
  • General UI enhancements

To give it a spin, try out the test server. Here are the addresses:

Take a test: http://webtester.epplersoft.com
Administration: http://webtester.epplersoft.com/admin

The username/password combination to use is: demo/demo

This is not the final, so bugs may exist that have already been fixed. To generate math while creating a test, use the following format:

[tex]a^2 + b^2 = c^2[/tex]

The above will generate this image:

To create your own equations, you can try out a program called MathType by Design Science. I will also list other LaTeX generating programs as I find them.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment.

WebTester

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Recently I’ve been working on porting my WebTester project from ASP to PHP. While doing this I have also been adding new features and fixing bugs as I come across them. New items include:

  • Ability to randomize questions
  • Integrated HTML Editor (no more manual coding)
  • ‘Enter’ key selects Next instead of Previous
  • Ported from ASP to PHP (so it can be hosted on a Mac/Linux/Windows box, instead of limited to Windows/IIS)
  • Each admin user will only see tests created by that user (except for a super-admin)

It should be finished soon and will be used by Delta County Schools.

Full Screen and tsclient

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When using tsclient, a remote desktop/terminal services/vnc client, if you connect in full screen mode to a server it can be difficult to disconnect or switch to another application because there is no ‘control bar’ at the top.

To toggle full screen mode, use the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Enter.

PPTP and L2TP Ports

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Today I was setting up a VPN server and had to figure out what ports and protocols to enable on our Cisco PIX 515E firewall. Here they are:

PPTP:
To allow PPTP tunnel maintenance traffic, open TCP 1723.
To allow PPTP tunneled data to pass through router, open Protocol ID 47.

L2TP over IPSec
To allow Internet Key Exchange (IKE), open UDP 500.
To allow IPSec Network Address Translation (NAT-T) open UDP 4500.
To allow L2TP traffic, open UDP 1701.

Here’s the Cisco access list: (gre=Protocol ID 47, pptp=1723, isakmp=500)

access-list OUTSIDE permit gre any host OUTSIDEIP
access-list OUTSIDE permit tcp any host OUTSIDEIP eq pptp
access-list OUTSIDE permit udp any host OUTSIDEIP eq 1701
access-list OUTSIDE permit udp any host OUTSIDEIP eq 4500
access-list OUTSIDE permit udp any host OUTSIDEIP eq isakmp

(edited to update UDP port 5500 to 4500 as noted in the comments)

IIS Error – The requested resource is in use

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We use a program called SolarWinds to monitor our network usage and statistics. But lately, I’ve been getting “The requested resource is in use” while trying to view our network monitoring and statistics page. Not a very helpful message, thanks Microsoft…

This is on a Windows 2003 Server, so it uses IIS (Internet Information Server) and ASP (Active Server Pages) for its graphing and network overview features.

To fix this error, I just made a backup of the server’s configuration, uninstalled IIS, and then reinstalled. That fixed IIS, but SolarWinds couldn’t connect to the database anymore. I re-ran the configuration wizard that comes with SolarWinds, and everything came back.

I’m glad all of my pages are hosted with Apache on CentOS 4.

Graphite iMac Stuck in Target Mode

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I ran into a problem today where a graphite iMac was stuck in target mode. Resetting the PRAM did nothing, doing the normal NetBoot shortcut (holding down ‘N’ at startup) did nothing, so I was stuck – for a moment.

To fix this problem, I booted into Open Firmware (using Command+Option+O+F). Then entering these commands allowed the machine to boot from the network:

setenv boot-device enet:10.0.0.2
mac-boot

Of course, substitute “10.0.0.2” for your NetBoot server – if you’ve got one. Thanks to Mike Bombich’s Netbooting Across Subnets page for the help.

Easy file sharing on Mac OS X

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“SharePoints is an application or a preference pane that makes it easy to add and delete share points like in the old Finder. In Mac OS X, by default, you are limited to sharing only what is in your public folder in your home directory. This program makes it easy to share any folder.
In addition SharePoints also brings back users and groups management to Mac OS X as well as easy configuration of AppleFileServer (AFS) and Samba (SMB) Server properties.”

Download SharePoints

Tasks for October 7th

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  • Compacted our DMS Image to fit on older iMacs with 6GB hard drives
  • Found SharePoints program to create custom shares on Mac OS X
  • Determined NWEA will not work on Win98 machines with our setup
  • Added NWEA loadset to Crawford command file
  • Created a Radmind Installer Package for our network imaging process
  • Help Jensen fix an iMac that was stuck in target mode