- Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Any cups experts onlist?
by David Mehler 05 Oct '21

05 Oct '21

Hello, I'm looking for a cups expert. I'm trying to set up a raspberry pi 3b+ to act as a printserver for my folks. The printers they have are an Epson nx420 all-in-one I think it's a printer/fax/scanner, does photos too, and a Brother hl5240dw laser printer. My goal is to make this pi setup as plug and play as possible i.e they plug in the brother via USB to the pi and the pi in. At that point when they tell me it's plugged in I vpn in to it, because I will have set up a ddns domain which will update with there IP address so for example using openvpn vpn in to homeip.net once there I can go to https://ip-address:631 and set up the epson. To that end I'm trying it here, I've got an HP laserjet 4200 connected directly to my orbi, which cups sees, which is kind of strange, but it does see it. The other printer is connected via USB and it is an HP laserjet p4515 and it's not being seen at all. Any ideas to get these printers to show up or any more suggestions appreciated. Thanks. Dave.

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Cisco NetAcad Labs - Packet Tracer accessibility
by Luke Scholey 30 Sep '21

30 Sep '21

Hello All > > Hope you’re well. > > I’m half way through a degree with the Open University and as part of that I am completing the CCNA course from Cisco. > > This course includes using labs in the network simulator software Packet Tracer. sadly, as far as I can tell, this is a drag-and-drop interface and isn’t usable enough with a screen reader for me to complete the labs independently. > > Does anyone know of a solution or work around to this? Has anyone ever done the CCNA before that can give me any advice? The NetAcad content itself is mostly fine, and in my opinion, works best with NVDA, it’s just the labs that are causing me problems. And of course, what with everything still be in virtual, I don’t think there is a possibility of me being able to physically complete the labs with Cisco equipment and instructors. > > Thanks for any help you can give. > Kind regards > Luke

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FW: Courses / labs
by Kieran Little 28 Sep '21

28 Sep '21

Hi all, My manager has approached me with the opportunity to have a look at different courses to develop my skills and I'm a bit anxious about accessibility issues with what ever I choose. Background, I'm currently working in our security team, mainly responsible for our endpoint protection AV client and application deployments via config manager. I've previously been on an administering sccm training course; I've also done CompTIA security+, and CCNA 1 and 2. One aspect I have always struggled with is labs. With both sccm and CompTIA, the lab environment has been completely unusable, as it is accessing a hyperV host within a browser to start / use various pre-built VM's in various states. With CCNA, I did it in a classroom environment at college where we had access to physical networking equipment. The way I have sort of worked around these in the past is working on the labs with colleagues; with them basically doing all of the work, and I don't get much out of that. Exams are on the table also, however I'm apprehensive as I've been burned too many times by pearson vue completely ignoring / not understanding my extra accommodation requests. Does anyone have any solutions / workarounds? The course I was looking at is CompTIA CySA+, but I'm open to suggestions. Cheers, Kieran. Kieran Little Support Officer Solutions Design Assurance Information Services Northumberland County Council tel: 01670 623699 Mobile: 07966325130 Chat in teams<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=kieran.little@northumberland.g…> Email: kieran.little(a)northumberland.gov.uk<mailto:kieran.little@northumberland.gov.uk> Save Time Do It Online! We have made a few key improvements to our site to make our services easy to access. Now you can do everything from paying your council tax, to reporting a faulty street light online. Go to: www.northumberland.gov.uk and click 'pay, apply or report' to access the relevant forms. This email is intended solely for the individual or individuals to whom it is addressed, and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this email is prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender and delete the email from any computer. All email communication may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with internal policy and relevant legislation. [Northumberland County Council Stay Home]

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Pirated Microsoft Software
by george＠techno-vision.co.uk 27 Sep '21

27 Sep '21

Does anyone have a phone number to make contact with Microsoft's fraud department? The web form they have asks for information which I don't wish to reveal at this point, but suffice to say the problem is within a Government department, and the external contractor is refusing to give passwords, unless paid a four figure sum. George

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Testing cheaper VPS host
by Andrew Hodgson 27 Sep '21

27 Sep '21

Hi, Just migrated to cheaper VPS host as it was a lot cheaper than what I was paying before and the traffic of these lists don't warrant the higher cost anymore. Andrew.

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Poor Man's KNFBReader
by John G. Heim 08 Sep '21

08 Sep '21

I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine. 1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer. 2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/ 3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document. 4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout -- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim(a)math.wisc.edu

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advice wanted: Reliable budget VPS providers? - Mozilla Thunderbird
by Mobeen Iqbal 07 Sep '21

07 Sep '21

Hello Everyone. We could really do with a VPS with root access for a project. Dedicated servers are not a requirement. I've been taking a look and have found that OVH and FastHosts have pretty decent VPS offerings. Hostinger don't seem bad either. The problem I have are the reviews for all of the above companies. OVH has the worst rating on trust pilot. FastHosts seem to be the highest rated out of the lot. Has anyone used the above companies for serious VPS use? If so, how have you found their downtime policy? I need a reliable server that isn't going to go down every 2 minutes. If you haven't used the above companies, are there companies you would recommend? Comments welcome on the quality of experience when contacting support. If I can get a decent VPS for between £4 to £8 a month, I'll be happy. FastHosts's VPS with 2GB of ram and 80GB SSD at £6 sounds very appealing. Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading, Mo.

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advice wanted: Reliable budget VPS providers?
by Mobeen Iqbal 06 Sep '21

06 Sep '21

Hello Everyone. We could really do with a VPS with root access for a project. Dedicated servers are not a requirement. I've been taking a look and have found that OVH and FastHosts have pretty decent VPS offerings. Hostinger don't seem bad either. The problem I have are the reviews for all of the above companies. OVH has the worst rating on trust pilot. FastHosts seem to be the highest rated out of the lot. Has anyone used the above companies for serious VPS use? If so, how have you found their downtime policy? I need a reliable server that isn't going to go down every 2 minutes. If you haven't used the above companies, are there companies you would recommend? Comments welcome on the quality of experience when contacting support. If I can get a decent VPS for between £4 to £8 a month, I'll be happy. FastHosts's VPS with 2GB of ram and 80GB SSD at £6 sounds very appealing. Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading, Mo.

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windows server 2022
by Marvin Hunkin 31 Aug '21

31 Aug '21

Hi. Installed the 64 bit iso under vm ware player 16, and was able to bring up windows narrator and get speech while installing, setting up password, etc. then was then able to install nvda. Thanks. Ps: was just purely testing that process.

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Pearson testing accommodation horror stories
by Samuel Barnes 30 Aug '21

30 Aug '21

Has anyone else had a hellish time with Pearson VUE's ADA accommodations process? It's a nightmare to get through, and most of the time the stuff I am granted doesn't work. ZoomText usually freezes and requires an hour or more of troubleshooting by the proctors at the testing center. For one exam I just zoomed out and squinted for half the test because the screen wouldn't pan with the mouse. Some of my requests are ignored altogether, despite being spelled out in the approved accommodations. Every time I go for an exam, I ask to have the monitor pulled up to the edge of the desk. It's simple, just loosen the power and video cables, and release the kensington lock if it's there. But nobody ever does that. I usually have to hunch over the desk for two hours to see the screen. I've taken several cert exams (2 for A+, 2 for CCNA, Linux Essentials, Security+, and Cisco CyberOps), and only one of them has gone smoothly. For my second CCNA exam, I was scheduled to take the exam at 9:15 AM, and didn't leave until after 5 PM because they weren't prepared for ZoomText. For my A+, I had to file an incident report for both exams because they had similar issues that couldn't be resolved. Last year it took months to run through their little accommodations gauntlet, and once again my monitor request wasn't honored. I can't bring myself to start studying for another cert knowing that futile struggle lies at the end.

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