NetAdmin Newsletter
CPTTM Network Admin newsletter issue #21, Alan Au, Editor in Chief
Supervised by Kent Tong

Dear Network Administrators,

This CPTTM NetAdmin newsletter is to bring useful news to you, Network Administrators in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just email me at alan@cpttm.org.mo. Old issues are available here. Also printable version for this newsletter.

Topics in this issue:

Are your OS and applications vulnerable?

Securmania

You may not be aware that your computer has vulnerable applications installed. Here comes a tool that you can perform a check. Go to : http://secunia.com/software_inspector. This website provides online testing against  vulnerable OS and applications and provides the corresponding patching resources.

We had tried it on our servers and found some applications including : Flash, Thunderbird, JRE are not update enough and possess security risk. So, we made use of the patching resources there to upate our servers.

There is also an installable package free for home users. Finally, there is yet a network version which gives you central manageability of software versions and patches at preset time intervals. Certainly, this version costs you something.

--by Alan Au

Ubuntu 7.10 released

UbuntuThe new features of Ubuntu 7.10 includes:

  • Desktop 3D effects
  • Desktop search
  • Fast user switching
  • Fully automatic printer installation
  • Read / Write access of NTFS
  • etc.
See : http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/710rc for details.

Go to : http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ for download and see http://briian.com/?p=3505 for the installation guide.

--by Alan Au

Turn your $60 router into a $600 router 

In the following web page, "Turn your $60 router into a $600 router", the authour teaches you how to enhance the functionality of some models of wireless routers, simply by upgrading the firmware of them and it is free. e.g. The author successfully enhanced a "Linksys WRT54GL Wireless router", including boosting the RF signal strength, configuring QoS rules.
--by Alan Au

Switching from Outlook Express to ThunderbirdThunderbird

Recently, CPTTM has migrated the mail clients of all users from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. The main reason for that is we would like to store users' emails on to a central network stoarge but Outlook Express requires the emails be stored locally while for Thuderbird, emails can be stored in network drive. Besides, Thunderbird has other benifits, like:
  • Built-in RSS reader
  • Spell checking
  • Plenty of add-ons, including calendar, themes, inline browser etc.
Cyberlab has been using Thunderbird for more than 2 years and find it quite good except there are some known flaws:
  • The MIME associations may some time mixed up - one user has met this problem 3 times.
  • The emails index file may needed to be rebuilt - It occurs several times but this is done automatically, just taking your some time.
--by Alan Au

Free Linux workshop (supported by SUSE)

CPTTM is going to host a series of workshops about Linux (supported by SUSE), introudcing its features and advantages. Below are the details:
Linux Training (Supported by SUSE Linux) Date Time
Module 1: Better Linux Desktop 2007/11/07 16:00-18:30
Module 2: Powerful Office Tool on Linux 2007/11/28 16:00-18:30
Module 3: Simple Linux Administration - YAST 2007/12/12 16:00-18:30
Module 4: XEN Virtualization on Linux 2008/01/09 16:00-18:30

You are encourged to join. Seats are limited. Register at your early convenience.

   --by Alan Au

Upcoming courses for network administrators

Course code Title Start date Duration (hours) Fee (MOP) Remarks
CM232.2-12-2007-C CCNP 2 - Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks (BCMSN) 2007/12/29 45  4880
  • This is our second intake of our CCNP course. The first one was very successful.
  • You will have physical access to higher models of Cisco  Switches (35 series) .
CM280.4-11-2007-C MCSE 2003 Certificate Program (Part 4-Planning, Imp. & Maintaining Active Directory) 2007/11/28 30 700 Enjoy up to 75% course fee reimbursement and MOP300 exam subsidy for in-school students.
CM270-11-2007-C Introduction to Installing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (5047A) 2007/11/11 48 2800  
CM206-11-2007-C Cisco Networking Academy Program (Fundamentals of Network Security) 2007/11/14 54 3280  

In addition, there are some courses your kids may enjoy:

Course code Title Start date Duration (hours) Fee (MOP) Remarks
CM275-11-2007-C Computer games DIY for the youth 2007/12/02 32 980 Enjoy up to 75% course fee reimbursement

Feedbacks

Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 28781313 or alan@cpttm.org.mo. We also have two more newsletters: CIO newsletter and Software developer newsletter. If you are interested, you can read them at the following links: CIO newsletter and Software developer newsletter.

Until next time, 

Alan Au

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