IT Stuff:
This is the section of my blog that receives the most hits. I've been in IT for the past 15 years or so and on Linux for the same amount of time. I've shifted from Redhat to Ubuntu and plan to stay with Ubuntu.. I love server operating systems, networking and network security. Currently I work for a charitable organization with about 20 hospitals in rural India. Its fun to setup systems that work and are free and relatively stable.
These posts are basically a diary of what I have been doing at work and at play. They serve as an online reference primarily for me as I often revisit my posts when I have forgotten what I did the last time to fix the same problem. I'm glad that it is helping others to fix their problems too. Thanks for the feedback guys!
Some History: It all started when my IT calls increased to more than I could singly manage. It initially started reducing my efficiency at work and then slowly started intruding on my personal time and private life. At some point I realized that I was repeating the same stuff over and over again like an answering machine. Often I'd be microwaving my brain with my Nokia phone for 40 to 50 minutes on end per user, while the user on the other end of the phone kept doing the wrong things or mindlessly saying the right words without understanding or getting any closer to solving their problem. I started off with the email setup instructions and was encouraged when a few users were able to setup their accounts on their own by following the instructions and screenshots on the post. Now I only had to mail new users the link and they could set it up by themselves or with someone's assistance. Soon there were posts on troubleshooting and server setups as well and the list goes on...
Networking Simplified
I work for an organization which is an association of about 20 odd mission hospitals spread out over suburban and rural India. Although our hospitals are spread out more over North, Central and North Eastern India, there are other similar organizations who call me up for consultancy regularly who cover some of the parts left [...]
Getting rid of Tata Photon’s browser start page hijack
I’ve been using the Tata Photon Plus for a while now. In spite of my rant on its TV services some time back, I’ve found its mobile broadband and customer service more or less reliable and polite relative to my long experiences and dealings with Reliance. However, one of their “features” has rubbed me the [...]
Installing the HP 1020,1022 printers on Windows 7
It is annoying when you spend your money on a good quality product expecting it to provide useful service for a long time and your purchase turns its back on you. It is worse if you took good care of it and it is still in working condition and yet you cannot use it. You [...]
Review: HIS/HMS software : JK Technosoft
This review has been updated offline. If you are part of EHA and need access to the review, please leave a comment with your email address. The comment will be deleted and you will be sent a private link to the review.
Using apt-cacher to reduce your bandwidth consumption
We had been managing on an Airtel 512kbps business plan for quite a while. When a new fourth office came up, it became apparent that our connection would no longer serve our purpose. For the fourth office, the Internet was critical and even after going in for a new 1Mbps leased line, our individual bandwidth [...]
Review: D-Link DNS-323 NAS Box
NAS is finally getting cheap enough to fit the budget of big budget home owners and SOHO and SMB’s. With cameras, video recorders, movies and music all going digital, users now have huge amounts of data they want to protect optimally. With increased hard drive space being available at lower costs, redundant backup is slowly [...]
Solved: Attachments sent from Outlook or Entourage show as .dat files
I’ve had this problem reported to me sporadically for quite a while now and I thought it best to do a post on it so that I can point users to this page rather than trying to explain this to an unending list of individual users. Trying a few experiments and deliberately emailing a few [...]
Setting up Thunderbird or Spicebird on many machines
…What added to the frustration, were the attempts of the software developers at the Mozilla foundation at smartening Thunderbird -probably after a beer too many with their dumb and downright stupid wizard that automagically tries to setup your email account for you .
Afrikaans