Life and Kraya by Stephen Ramsay
Security
Service Alert – Volcanic Ash & Computers
Apr 16th
As I am sure everyone is aware volcanic ash from the volcano in Iceland is causing major air travel disruption at this time as volcanic ash and planes do not mix. Similarly, volcanic ash and computers do not mix. We are seeing fine particulates falling to ground level just now and these combined with the larger particles we expect to see in the near future will cause issues for computers, servers, other electronic equipment and their cooling systems.
The cooling fans in computers work very much like a vacuum and vacuum up dust and everything else in the air around them including the volcanic ash particles. Whilst it is not something to panic over, all computer users should think about takeing the following action particularly if it gets worse:
- Please do what you can to keep rooms in which you are using computers as free from ash as you can.
- Please do not leave the windows open as the room will just fill with these tiny particulates
- Listen to the computers fans. If you notice a change in the tone or noise they make, please call us.
- Look at the air intake grills on the back of the computer, if they begin to clog up, please call us.
If you have any questions please call us. If you what to check what level of ash is falling in your area, place a clean white piece of paper outside and leave it for a few hours, then have a look at what has accumulated on it. There will be some very very fine dust. I don’t know what will happen over the next few days but this may increase.
Please do not try and clean your computers yourself as you may just push the finer particulates deeper into the fan bearings. We have specialist equipment for this kind of job and if necessary can send someone to your office to clean the computers and servers.
Moving mail to Junk email with Kerio
Mar 25th
If some spam does hit your in box please please put it into the “Junk Email” folder (and not a Junk or spam folder) and THEN delete it. This helps the Spam filters learn from your actions. More instructions and guidance below:
Outlook and Webmail users please use the Kerio Outlook connector Tool bar:
Kerio outlook connector tool bar
Simply highlight the message and Click the ’spam’ button as shown above.
If a message has been delivered to your ‘Junk Email’ folder and it is not junk please hit the not spam button as shown below:
Kerio Outlook Connector Tool bar
Thunderbird and other mail applications:
Simply drag the message to the “Junk Email” folder. Be careful though Thunderbird often creates a “Junk” folder of its own and other applications use a spam folder but the only folder that helps to teach the filters is the “Junk Email folder”
Thunderbird:
Thunderbird two junk folders
You also need to be careful with the Thunderbird Junk Button: 
this will often move spam into the Junk and not the “Junk Email” folder, this can be changed in the junk settings tab of mail account properties window. Right click on the mail account name and select properties.
Please also remember to empty your “Junk Email” folder every now and again.
Microsoft Internet Explorer Popularity vote
Mar 1st
Those of you who follow the news may be aware of minor but major changes to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
All Windows 7, Vista and XP users who currently use internet explorer will be offered a choice as part of the deal Microsoft reached with European Commission.
Microsoft IE sits awaiting the worlds judgment, like the American high school cheerleader who’s inexplicable popularity is for the first time being put to the test, as the not so popular kids elect a new leader.
A pop-up window will prompt people to choose and install one of 12 different browsers or let them stick with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Kraya recommends users choose anything but Internet explorer. Users are able to select any browser of their own choosing however we would strongly recommend users pick from our top picks:
Mozilla Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome
Apple Safari http://www.apple.com/safari/
The big question is will the Anti-trust agreement and the fines totaling 1.68bn euros ($2.44bn, £1.5bn) that have been imposed by the EU on Microsoft make any difference? Take a look at the BBC graphic below, IE has a massive dominance in the browser market in the main due to the sheer ambivalence and ignorance of its users, no one (or very few) choose to use IE it was the default, what they had to use and by the point they had learned that there might be a choose out there with had learned IE, so stuck with it not because it was superior but because its what they know.
Browser market share
Firefox has for some time been catching on IE but it still has a long way to go. Its progress has been at lest in part due to its superiority as a browser over IE. However recent updates have left Firefox slower and buggier than ever before. For a browser that has never been advertised in main stream media, unlike Google Chrome, its rise to control a quarter of the browser market has been purely viral.
Google on the other hand has in anticipation of today’s changes embarked on a massive advertising campaign to push Chrome and gain even more control over the Internet, only time will tell just how successful Google ad spending has made it. The question now is will it be money well spent, or will Google find itself the next target of the EU competition and anti-trust regulators?
Only time will tell as is the case of Microsoft, I for one will be eagerly waiting updated browser market share statistics, as I’m sure Mr Gates will be. However I cant help but feel that we have in no way seen the beginning of the end of IE, undoubtedly its share will slip, I just don’t think the EUs Settlement can break what are now years of ingrained habit and apathy.
Further information:
Adobe update – excessive traffic to ardownload.adobe.com
Dec 16th
Adobe has not been without its problems of late, and whilst there have been security issues that could have lead to losses, so far none of our clients have suffered financially from Adobe’s failings. Until now that is.
One of our Clients had their ADSL cut off this week as they had exceeded the usage policy. Why? Adobe Update Manager on one Windows XP PC had decided to download over 70GB of data over the course of a 7 day period. It would appear that it was getting itself in a loop and just kept trying to update continuously, 70GB worth of continuously.
The Adobe website serves the update MSI binary files as content type Text/Plain, the Adobe Update client has a very short timeout and immediately opens another connection to re-start the download. Hence if there is a slow connection or the caching server does not return the whole file in a timely manner the Adobe Update client enters the infinite loop of retries, causing the excessive bandwidth consumption witnessed here.
There are several forum threads including on Adobe’s own site http://forums.adobe.com/thread/392129 all linking this issue to a conflict between and old version of WebMarshall and Adobe updater; however our machines do not use WebMarshall and we do not have it installed anywhere on our networks.
We do however use Squid caching on our CentOS 5 servers. The server in this instance seems to be fulfilling the requests on each occasion in a timely manner – the issue is that each time Adobe updater passes a URL it is different in key areas, which Squid interprets as a separate request. This is not abnormal and we have seen this before when we have tried to configure squid to cache Windows updates. However rather than enter a loop of requests, Windows updates simply fail. Other automatic updaters work well with caching systems and indeed most ISPs are now implementing different forms of web caching on their own networks. Dose this mean the Adobe issue is affecting them in the same way?
The issue seems to only affect PCs (or at least we have seen no affected Mac users as yet), and it also seems to affect most Adobe products.
For now Adobe and the ISPs have remained quiet on the issue, however we have 3 other clients (and my own home ADSL ) who cannot update Adobe at all, access to ardownload.adobe.com appears to have been blocked by the ISP. Quite when the Adobe update issue will be resolved is unknown; however we have also taken the decision to block access to ardownload.adobe.com from all of our networks, for the moment.
Richard, one of our Systems Admin Team has published a more detailed account of the technicalities involved here: http://richard.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/12/16/a-big-adobe-problem/
Day Spa Photos and Video
Nov 5th
When I meet new and existing clients one thing that always gets a Laugh is the Krayatec Day Spa. Everyone not only finds the whole description rather amusing, they love the effects it has on their PC’s.
You can read more about it here http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/ but one thing everyone wants to know is how dirty as the inside of my computer and whats the worst that you have seen. So attached below are some photos and videos, not of the worst we have every seen but of a some examples of an old dirty PC.
You Shouldn’t look if your easily disgusted!
A PC Being cleaned as part of the Krayatec DaySpa http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/
A PC Being cleaned as part of the Krayatec DaySpa http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/
A PC Being cleaned as part of the Krayatec DaySpa http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/
A PC Being cleaned as part of the Krayatec DaySpa http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/
A PC Being cleaned as part of the Krayatec DaySpa http://stephen.blog.kraya.co.uk/2009/03/13/computer-day-spa/
Warning the Videos bellow are worse and sorry about the mobile phone quality
Changing your password in Kerio Mailserver
Jun 16th
Changing your passwords is very easy.
Under your Windows computer press Crtl + Alt + Del and select change password.
To Change your email password, simply log into your Web Mail (call us if you don’t know the address)
Then Select change password from the Settings drop down menu as below
settings menu in kerio webmail
And then enter your old and new passwords in the box below.
kerio password change dialog box
Remember to make it something secure that no one will guess, no kids, partners or team names and no dictionary words. Random Numbers and letters, remember capitals and lower case combinations are best, or try a sentence like “Why can 1 never remember 555″ you can use spaces. Remember the best passwords are not necessarily easy to remember but they can be if your clever about it. Hackers offten use a dictionary or password list attack to crack passwords, this is where a system tires every word in the dictionary or in a common password list, things like Rangers, Rang3rs or Celtic, C3lt1c will be near the top of that list.
Kerio Mailserver Upgrade from 6.6 to 6.7
May 18th
Over the next few weeks Kraya will be upgrading everyone who currently uses Kerio to the latest version of the mail server software. If you have been directed to this blog post, it is probably because your upgrade is happening soon. Please read below to understand how this might affect you.
The latest update to Kerio Mailserver fixes a number of bugs including slow response times when using Outlook and the issues with the Kerio Offline Outlook connector consuming large amounts of RAM. It also fixes an issue with Thunderbird incorrectly mapping default folders such as trash and junk.
More detailed information on all of the changes can be found in the release notes for Kerio Mail server 6.7.0 here. However you should note that this information is aimed at techies not users.
Information for each user base:
Thunderbird and other users using IMAP accounts
- You should notice no changes to your email client. We will be looking at users accounts where duplicate folders have been highlighted to us over the next few weeks to ensure these are removed and mapped correctly.
Web Mail users
- No action is needed, when you next log in you may notice a few minor adjustments to the operations in web mail.
Outlook Users
- A new version of the Kerio Outlook Connector needs to be installed. When you open Outlook for the first time you will be greeted by a message asking you if you want you upgrade now, the answer is YES. The upgrade will take a few minutes and your Outlook will restart. Please take a look at the Screen shot links below for both Windows XP and Vista.
Windows XP Screenshots and Upgrade walk through
Windows VISTA Screenshots and Upgrade walk through
As always if you have any issues or questions please do not hesitate to get in touch.
