The Screaming Viking

Printers are the bane of my existence.  When I started off here, everyone was printing directly to the printers via bonjour…I think I’ve chronicled here before about the problems that caused.  I’ve resolved that issue by setting up  a print server and routing users through that.  A centralized print server is a path I’d have gone down sooner or later even if things worked decently the way they were setup…the problems I was seeing accelerated that process.  I had one printer that would randomly drop off the network.  I wasn’t able to ping it until it was manually restarted.  For this machine it wasn’t as simple as pulling out a modular print server.  The NIC was built into a larger logic board.  The vendor came up and replaced that.  It was work I could have done, but the replacement piece was actually here quicker with him driving it up.  Also, those printers are on a program where we pay per print…so they handle all the parts and labor.

After those issues were resolved, I had two printers that would jam constantly.  I was pretty sure one was because of the feed rollers for tray 2…but the other one I was not sure about at all.  I emailed the xerox guys in minot about each of them.  He was able to overnight the feed rollers.  For the other he advised me to clean things up but it was probably the fuser that was causing the jam.

The new rollers came when they were suppose to, they installed very easily and things seem to be rolling correctly again.  The secretary printed out some information page on the other one and it showed jams constantly at the fuser.  I replaced that and things seem to be working there as well…  Now I’ve got a color balance issue with one of the printers, and I’ve got no idea where to even start with that.  I went through their color caliburation setup…and that didn’t bring things even close to where they are suppose to be.  I’ll think of something I’m sure.

Having to order every part I need for these things is certainly a draw back of living in this part of the world.  The guy did not have the parts on hand in minot either, so anyplace short of GF, Bismarck or Fargo and I’d have to order things just the same.  I wouldn’t even bet on Bismarck having these parts in stock.  I could keep one of each on hand for each model of printer…but then if one dies and I toss it I’ve wasted money.  The best thing to do, I think, is to consolidate down to one model printer for everyone.  That’s going to take a few years but I should be able to do that….or get it down to a couple models at least.

We did get a new copy machine in that I hooked up to the network, that was a far more expensive machine as far as hardware cost was concerned, but our price per page is significantly cheaper than the rest.  I’ve strongly encouraged all users to print to that machine when possible.  It’s also handy when they would print something and make copies.

I need to start changing the culture of the school…which is going to be quite hard.  I need to help people understand that not everything needs to be printed.  Things can be kept on their laptops…in their email…etc.  Maybe students can hand some assignments in electronically.  That is the way of the future…but it’s going to take some time to get there.  I don’t think the obstacle right now is technology…it’s changing the mentality of the instructors.  We’ll see how it goes, I’ve got 25 years to work on it.

Disclaimer:  I’m by no means and expert on ruckus or networking in general…in fact general knowledge of networking protocols and topology is the biggest weakness in my technical background.  Having said that…below talks a bit about my experience and should be taken as the words of a guy still learning.

One of the my initial priorities at the school was setting up an “enterprise quality” wireless solution.  The previous guy had ordered laptops for all the teachers and with the consumer class wireless they were running it was a pain to have the users even try to get a wireless connection.  Each access point (AP) would be broadcasting a different wireless network…it was a bit of a mess.  I will say though that it was cheap, quick and got the job done.  I wanted to replace this asap…ideally, I wanted the wireless installed before the user’s had laptops (which is the way it worked out due to another issue that I will go in to later).  Part of the reason for that was to head off the questions and complaints about getting a weak signal and the other part was so I didn’t have to setup the machines for the wireless that was there, then go back and touch every machine again for the new install. Read the rest of this entry »

At the school the desktops in the labs are not too bad, but one of the big things that is holding the school back from embracing some of the neat technology coming down the pipe is our lack of an enterprise class wireless solution.  When I came into this job they had ordered laptops to be given out to all the teachers.  This is a good idea, but the next logical step is obviously a wireless infrastructure to make these devices truly mobile.

I priced out various wireless options, received some feedback from my peers and decided I would recommend Rukus wireless.  This has been deployed to various schools in the area and so far the people have been satisfied with it.  I compared their price to cisco gear and it was a bit cheaper…that coupled with the feedback I’d received from other people that have used Rukus heavily influenced my decision.  There is a reseller in the area that came to the school and conducted some tests for me to decide where to place the access points for the most comprehensive coverage.  They worked up a quote for me that was pretty on par with what another school had advised me their cost was.  I presented this information to my boss along with my “pitch” for why we should get this stuff.   Read the rest of this entry »

I carved out some time last night to setup the home network a little more to my liking.  I wanted to take the linksys wrt54g out of the equation as far as dhcp and dns are concerned.  A port failed on the router not too long ago, so I’m not sure exactly how much life is left in the old hog.  It seems like I’ve had this thing forever, I bought it not too long after the hacked firmware came out for it and it was demonstrated just what this little device was capable of.  I’m not even sure how long ago that was…I think I was in fargo at the time, I’m not sure.  6ish years ago?  I have been thinking for awhile that I should off load all of that on to the firewall and let this little device just handle wireless AP duties.

When I first setup the smoothwall it was pretty simple to get the DHCP server working fine, the problem is the internal DNS.  The smoothwall does not update it’s hosts file from the dhcp.leases file…or something like that.  There is another tab that lets you set static DNS assignments.  I added a host to this tab, saved everything out…nothing.  My internal linux server would not resolve the name.  Everything external worked fine…it was just the internal crap.  I jacked into the smoothwall host and that machine resolved the host I added without problems.  Back to the linux server..nslookup {hostname}, boom digs it out fine.  Ping {hostname} fail…wtf?  The host I added was a linux box so I tried to ssh in to it via host name…nothing.  Ssh via IP works fine…this is weird.  I’ve mentioned before if there is one part of my game that needs help the most in my daily work it’s the networking side…I just don’t know as much about it as I would like to. Read the rest of this entry »