September 2011 - Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Telephony systems
by Andrew Hodgson 14 Nov '12

14 Nov '12

Hi all, Our current Call Manager 4.x servers are creaking under their age, and we are looking at replacing this either with a new Cisco telephony system or a completely new system altogether. The system has to use IP as the connection to the handsets, as we don't want to add in more cables. Has anyone any experience in deploying a new Call manager setup, or a similar telephony system, and how was the accessibility? Thanks. Andrew.

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let's talk Backup Exec
by Ryan Shugart 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

Hey everyone: I just got a promotion at work, and with the goodness of a promotion comes more responsibilities. I'm now in charge of our backup infrastructure. We run Backup Exec 12.5, and have 16 or so media servers in various branch offices around the world. While Backup Exec used to be very accessible, over the last two versions accessibility seems to have gone into something of a decline, I already use scripts just to read the main table of jobs, and might need more just to get around the scheduling window so I can actually schedule a job. I'd consider the rest of the program accessible but clunky, tabbing doesn't always bring you where you think it will, on some screens tab order seems to be dynamic. Backup Exec also has an odd way of bringing up alert windows and grabbing your focus, even when you tell it specifically not to. While clunkyness is OK on one server, when you have fifteen individual servers to manage and no way to do it in a centralized fashion clunkyness is less acceptable. This is also less than a quarter of my new responsibilities as well. The current admin has the remote desktop console setup with all the Backup Exec servers in his favorites, stays logged into each server with a Backup Exec window open, and flicks from screen to screen and can easily glance at the output from each job. For us screen reader users, that doesn't work well. I've already got e-mail alerts set up and am using some Outlook rules to sort failure jobs out from successes, but was wondering if there's anything else I can be doing? I'd think people in really large environments with hundreds of media servers aren't logging into each server on a daily basis, so there has to be better ways to handle this. Any ideas? Thanks. Ryan

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How to perform fully unattended Windows 7 installation
by Mgr. Janusz Chmiel 09 Nov '11

09 Nov '11

Good morning, I would like to inform You about excellent program, which is able to modifi Windows7 CD so it can be used for performing fully unattended installation. The name of The program for creating fully unattended bootable Windows 7 iso images is RT 7 Lite This program can be really used for creating fully unattended Windows 7 installations. Drivers can be integrated while using this program. I AM recommending all visually impaired users to use latest awailable Supernova screen reader for using this program. Because Supernova is able to automatically report The name of editable fields while using RT 7 Lit. The program is even offering The feature to copy customized Windows7 installation to USB flashdisk and program is making this flashdisk bootable, It can even format this flash drive. The created flash disk can be used even for performing fully unattended installations if user is running Windows XP and user is running The installer inside this operating system with his favourite screen reader. Bootable flashdisk and bootable DVD can be ofcourse used also for performing unattended installation if harddrive is empty and user is booting from The bootable DVD or USB flashdisk. The disadvantage of this procedure is, that some older computers are requiring user to load some harddrive drivers, so for example, i have been able to perform unattended installation of Windows 7 Ultimate edition only, if i have been executed The installer from running Windows XP. After reboot, installer worked fully automatically. The issue is, that eventhough Windows7 is containing many sound drivers, in some cases, one integrated sound chip can be recognized by using two drivers and The sound chip is not working properly, so NVDA or other screen readers can not be used. I have been using IBM Thinkpat model 2668 for this test. Te name of integrated sound cart is Soundmax integrated digital audio. I had to please my sighted mother to choose The right sound cart, drivers are included for this sound chip in The WIndows7, but user must choose The right detected cart. If somebody of us would like to perform fully unattended installation of Windows 2000, 2003, XP, I AM strongly recommending YOu to use The excellent program Windows Unattended CD creator. Do not be afraid, eventhough it is signed as A BETA application, is working excellently. Please also do not forget, that installer of WIndows XP is automatically browsing The floppy drives for finding The diskette with file winnt.sif extension. If installer will find The required file, installer can work in The fully unattended mode by using original not customized WIndows XP installation CD. Ofcourse, winnt.sif must contain required lines of text to instruct The installer how to work in fully unattended mode. The only issue is, that user can not automatically install required drivers, because installer anticipants, that The driver folder $OEM$ will be located on The installation media. So installing drivers can be performed only, if user will use customized WIndows XP media. There is also Nlite application, which is integrating The drivers to The .cab files. -- Mgr. Janusz Chmiel

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Windows 8
by chris hallsworth 21 Sep '11

21 Sep '11

Hello all. Has anyone tried the Windows 8 Developer Preview, released last week? What do you all think of it? I am trying it in a VMware virtual machine and it's pretty good. NVDA is already working well for the most part. I hear System Access and even Window-Eyes does as well. But not JAWS, at least the 13.0 public beta. Not tried JAWS 12.0 yet but I hear it can realy screw up. I look forward to your thoughts. -- Chris Hallsworth Sent from Thunderbird

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OSX 10.6 server
by David Mehler 20 Sep '11

20 Sep '11

Hello, Is anyone running an OSX 10.6 server? If so, are you running an ssh server on it? I've been asked to set up mail services on one, but have never worked with OSX before, I know it's BSD-based at least in it's unixishness I doubt that's a word and the software such as the MTA I do know, but have never been on a box. If anyone has one I'd like to discuss getting a look around via ssh. Related, but I think I know about this question, does anyone have access to VNC? Thanks. Dave.

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OSX 10.6 server
by David Mehler 20 Sep '11

20 Sep '11

Hello, Is anyone running an OSX 10.6 server? If so, are you running an ssh server on it? I've been asked to set up mail services on one, but have never worked with OSX before, I know it's BSD-based at least in it's unixishness I doubt that's a word and the software such as the MTA I do know, but have never been on a box. If anyone has one I'd like to discuss getting a look around via ssh. Related, but I think I know about this question, does anyone have access to VNC? Thanks. Dave.

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Newbie question about reverse DNS and getting outgoing mail accepted from a small virtual private server
by Brent Harding 12 Sep '11

12 Sep '11

Hi there. I've been on here awhile just listening to learn different things. It's also part of why I took the good deal I found on this Virtual Private Server that I used to host my small little blog, to give me the freedom to configure what I chose for what I wanted to experiment with. The promo even came with Direct Admin included, so for $1 extra on their already low price I just added one more IP to get rid of the errors that it needs two for the DNS. My small Wordpress blog runs fine on this virtualized server as I would expect it too, it doesn't know the difference and has all it needs. I never worried about the fact that mail I'd send, even from the web interface logging in with an account I created always hit the bit bucket if I sent to most places, but did seem to work back to my address or if I set my usual address as the destination of a forwarder. I may have to now change to using the domain for my email because this account I've had for so long was only a secondary on a dialup account my parents have, but they are likely getting rid of it to get some kind of wireless instead, so the fun of updating all the sites I know I'm on has to begin some time while I can still get Email at the old address. If mail was sent to an account on my domain I did get it, just not anything I sent out from it, even with the web interface. I checked where whois thought the IP of my VPS pointed, and it shows nothing, so the reverse DNS is blank, which very well could be my problem. I will have to submit a support ticket to the provider to hopefully change it, but I'm confused what to have them set it to. If the hostname of the VPS is server.mydomain.com, mydomain.com being the domain I really have, will having them set it to that be good enough to have mail likely accepted, assuming the IP didn't end up in a blacklist that silently discards everything it sees from it? This isn't just one site that doesn't like my test mails, often subscribe requests to try to migrate list subscriptions over and just getting no confirmation, but most places, so that's why I suspect something like this. Thanks.

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Win 7 Disk management
by Barry Toner 10 Sep '11

10 Sep '11

Hi, Are any of you folks that are using a Screen reader bothering with this? I've a Disk that I need to create a volume on. According to, http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Create-and-format-a-hard-d… You click on the unallocated space in the graphical view. I've been all over the place. I can see the Disk I want but when i right click it's all Striped, Spanned, change to Dynamic, change from GDI, MBR, Properties etc. Nowhere is this Create Simple Volume Wizard coming up. NB. This is a Data disk who was Imaged as a test, then who's Volume was deleted. If you're not using the Native utility for this what are you using under Windows 7? Regards, Barry.

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Win 7 Disk management
by Barry Toner 10 Sep '11

10 Sep '11

Hi, Are any of you folks that are using a Screen reader bothering with this? I've a Disk that I need to create a volume on. According to, http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Create-and-format-a-hard-d… You click on the unallocated space in the graphical view. I've been all over the place. I can see the Disk I want but when i right click it's all Striped, Spanned, change to Dynamic, change from GDI, MBR, Properties etc. Nowhere is this Create Simple Volume Wizard coming up. NB. This is a Data disk who was Imaged as a test, then who's Volume was deleted. If you're not using the Native utility for this what are you using under Windows 7? Regards, Barry.

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windows or or bart's pe with sound and screen reader support
by Kathryn Jedynak 01 Sep '11

01 Sep '11

Hello Everyone: Has anyone tried implementing sound and screen reader support into either the open source bart's pe or the windows pe? Kathryn

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