Tue Apr 29 14:05:02 PDT 2003 Over the weekend, one of the users that I support had problems sending email. Actually, several of my XP users have had some intermittant problems with outlook over the last several months. The problems can be generally categorized as follows: -can't vpn in when at work -we now require this on our wireless network at work -it seems that the latest service pack is required -when vpn'd in at work, can't communicate with Intranet hosts -can't send e-mail -can't get e-mail -outlook reports that "the connection has timed out" -I get duplicate name on the network when the system boots -The machine is slow -This is too generic. I need details I have experienced none of these problems using linux. So, for the next week, I'm going to use XP and see if I can experience any of these problems. I booted XP with a wireless connection and tried to VPN in. Although the vpn connected fine, I couldn't communicate with any Intranet hosts by NAME. -the vpn chooses the DNS server based on the domain, so I had to make sure that the domain issues by dhcp on the wireless network was different from the domain issued by the DNS server. I configured outlook for my e-mail and corporate directory settings, and immediately found a bug. I'm one of these people who doesn't want outlook to remember my password because I'm worried about losing my laptop. So the bug is that when I launch outlook and click on the mail server, a modal dialog box for the password shows up. Unfortunately, if I try to maneuver my mouse to that dialog box, the outlook main window jumps to the foreground. The only way to bring the box back to the foreground seems to be to alt-tab it there. If you enter an incorrect password or if the connection to the server has been waiting too long, this same behaviour happens. The problem is that the main outlook window just sits there with an hour glass.... Very annoying. So, I do like the hardware profiles, however.... My laptop has a built-in wireless card, and if both interfaces come up, I have no way of telling which interface packets are going out on.... The solution was to create two profiles, "Wired" and "Wireless". Pretty good. Ok, stupid outlook is capitalizing the first character of lines. There is no way to suppress this. I know I should get out of the habit of putting hard returns in my e-mail, but I like doing that. I'm comfortable with it. I want outlook to capitalize the first letters of sentences, but NOT simply new lines.... If its a newline with no period at the end of the previous line, I DON'T want it capitalized. BCC is a nightmare.... Disable word as your editor, then you can enable the BCC, then enable Word as your editor.... no way to enable it when word is your editor. Fricking stupid. I have configured two e-mail accounts - my work one and my home wone. Each has a different out-going e-mail server. outlook seems to get confused about which outbound e-mail server to use. For example, right now I am viewing the mail.unixpeople.com Inbox. When I click on "new" and put in "kim@unixpeople.com", and click send, it sends through the mail.eng.collation.net mail server. Ahhh, it seems that when you compose, it ALWAYS chooses your default mail account.... You have to click on "Accounts" and choose a different one if you want. Ok, now its throwing relay access denied errors..... When I compiled postscript, I told it not to offer "LOGIN" authentication because its deprecated, but it seems like outlook can't deal with PLAIN or CRAM-MD5...... Yep, outlook can't deal with AUTH PLAIN. What a total annoyance. Wed Apr 30 13:48:05 PDT 2003 Found a couple of tools that make the environment usable for me: They are Microsoft Powertoys - specifically "Tweak UI" which lets me change the mouse behaviour to "focus follows mouse", and the multiple desktops software. Thu May 1 08:08:29 PDT 2003 Found a software behavior that makes XP unusable at my house. I have 802.11b wireless, and I often sit in front of the TV while working. My access point is upstairs in my office, and my link quality is very poor. This works fine in Linux - when the link drops momentarily, all the linux programs simply use TCP retrys until the link comes back. This also tends to happen at work when I roam from desk to a conference room. In XP, as soon as the link drops, all the running network programs abort. This is unusable because my VPN drops and all my putty sessions drop. One of my co-workers sent me this link: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/mfcf/computing-environments/wireless/xp.html Disabling the zeroconf doesn't fix it, but it makes it a little better. Fri May 2 13:04:19 PDT 2003 Ok, today's hurdle is with outlook. I really need it to show me all header fields, and it doesn't seem to offer me this option. Also, stupid outlook insists on capitalizing the first character on each new line.... This is extremely annoying. Fri May 9 15:54:40 PDT 2003 So, this week it was back to linux for me. Today, my CEO came to me saying he couldn't connect to our wirless network. I bring my laptop to his location and boot linux and it connects fine. I reboot my laptop into XP and it connects fine. I fire up the vpn on my windows laptop and it connects fine, but I can't communicate to any internal hosts - what the fuck? I try pinging by IP address and it works, but by name - no love. Well, since I can connect to the wireless network, I should at least see if I can get that working on the CEO's laptop so it looks like I'm making some progress. I take his machine, and re-enter the wep key - and it works! where the fuck did the wep key go? He has been using his machine to connect to the wireless network for the last 6 months, and its been working fine? Where did it go? Whats going on? So, then he fires up his vpn, and I cringe, but miraculously everything is good! Why is it working for him but not for me??? So, I start trying to troubleshoot my machine. I bring up a command prompt ipconfig /all It says the dns servers are 192.168.1.21 and 192.168.1.34 Those are the CORRECT dns servers for when the VPN is connected. nslookup says the server is 192.168.1.34. Thats fine. I type in bacteria.lab.collation.net. The response is 10.10.10.10 Thats good I quit out of nslookup I type ping 10.10.10.10 all 4 pings get replies 100% success ping bacteria.lab.collation.net fuck. It works now.... it didn't 60 seconds ago. I'm going to restart the vpn and see if it works ok, disconnected restart the dos prompt ipconfig reports the dns servers are now 66.28.0.61 and 45 thats good - those are cogent servers Just tried ping bacteria.lab.collation.net and it still resolves the IP.... its caching.... Where the hell is it caching? I do ipconfig /flushdns It says it successfully flushed the cache fuck, it STILL resolves thats impossible how is that happening? ipconfig/flushdns should empty the cache if it doesn't, its broken hmmmm, nslookup does not resolve it ipconfig/displaydns Its got all sorts of shit in thhe cache There I just flushed the DNS cache again It fucking lies! It says it flushed the cache, so I do the display and it no longer shows up but when I do ping bacteria.lab.collation.net it finds the fucking thing again This is just so wrong. I can't use this operating system.How can anyone use it? How? Its totally non-deterministic! Why does it do this? Where is it getting this info? Why won't it flush? There! I've changed nothing and it can no longer find the address! If you wait a randomly long period of time, eventually the cache times out. It seems that flushdns only "schedules" a flush but it really doesn't do it. Of course, /displaydns SHOWs that the flush has completed. This OS is toally unusable.