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 kent@cpttm.org.mo. Old issues are available here.

Topics in this issue:

• Roaming profiles are good on paper only
• Marketing yourself
• Excellent Linux tips
• Upcoming courses for network administrators

Roaming profiles are good on paper only

After over a year of experiment with roaming profile (Windows), we have decided to ditch it. As you probably know, a roaming profile is stored on a server. When a user logs in, it is downloaded to the client computer. When he logs off, it is copied back to the server. The purpose is to ensure that the user will see the same desktop with the same application settings no matter which computer he uses. 

However, in practice, a profile may contain hundreds of MB of data (e.g., Firefox stores its plugins into the profile). This makes the copying very slow and may take minutes. In addition, sometimes it simply fails to copy the profile and the user will see a newly initialized desktop.

Marketing yourself

As technical people we seldom think about marketing ourselves. However, if we don't market ourselves, how can others know that we can contribute more to the company? Fortunately, it is not difficult to market yourself. Here are some simple things that you can do today:

• Register a (free) blog space and blog about some technical things that you have accomplished or tips you have learned recently, e.g., how to monitor the Internet access traffic, how to test SSL negotations, how to set up the DNS for the SPF (sender policy framework), etc.
• Post the links to your blog entries to facebook.
• Email the links to your colleagues and superiors.
• Submit articles to local newsletters (like this one!).

Excellent Linux tips

If you manage Linux servers, take a look at these excellent tips! I particularly like using outgoing ssh to let outsiders in (so, your firewall is not really as secure as you think!), checking the console in ssh, checking the bios without rebooting.

Upcoming courses for network administrators

Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 88980601 or kent@cpttm.org.mo. We also have 3 more newsletters: CIO newsletter, Software developer newsletter and E-flow newsletter.

Until next time, 

Kent Tong