June 2010 - 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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Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
by John G. Heim 02 Sep '10

02 Sep '10

This is a frequently asked question on linux lists. It usually generates quite a bit of debate because the military doesn't usually tell people what they can do so you can only speculate on what it would take to destroy the data so that even the military can't recover it. Certainly, if you destroy the platter physically by doing something like hitting it with a hammer, that should do it. But most people believe that just wiping the disk a dozen or so times will do it. You can do that with the dd command lie this: Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda Thats if your disk is a sata drive. For IDE drives, the command would be: Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/had Those commands write random digits over the entire drive, wiping out the boot sector, partition table, and all data. You would have to do that several times because the read/write heads might not line up exactly right to destroy every single bit if you do it just once. -----Original Message----- .From: "Ibraam Wahib"<ibraam.wahib(a)gmail.com> .Sent: 5/17/10 4:38:19 AM .To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] data format. . .hello friends: .need quick help please, .how can I format a hard disk which can not be recovered forever by any means? )data destroyed( .the hard was have windows format then formatted and now have Linux, I need to delete all partitions and delete any data to be unusable anymore even via military means. .can we do this? .for further information contact me off list. .thanks .ibraam ._______________________________________________ .Blind-sysadmins mailing list .Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org .http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins .

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u3 smart drive
by David Mehler 11 Jul '10

11 Jul '10

Hello, I've got a new sandisk u3 smart flash drive. I'm trying to install u3 compatible programs on it, but they're not installing. When i initially plugged in the drive u3 was not on there, i had to download the u3 software, run it and now it's showing up. This drive also came with password encryption, which i'm also not seeing. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks. Dave.

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Re: [Blind-sysadmins] I.t. Professionals
by John G. Heim 27 Jun '10

27 Jun '10

Yeah, you make a good point. One of the first things somebody said to me after we'd settled on the name, International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists, was, "Why are you limiting it to just visually impaired people?" Well, I guess mostly because it didn't occur to me to include people with other disabilities. Doh! But I decided it was better this way because blind people have such specific needs when it comes to dealing with computers. You can't be all things to all people. But I would be willing to work with someone starting a more encompassing group. The final point I should make is that IAVIT is not a civil rights group. Legally, we're not set up that way and I personally have no interest in suing anybody. I want to work with companies to create technical solutions to access problems.I see IAVIT more like the W3C than like the NFB. Not that there is anything wrong with the NFB's approach. In fact, part of the reason I think IAVIT doesn't have to sue anybody is that there are already plenty of other groups doing that kind of thing. -----Original Message----- .From: "Sean Murphy"<mhysnm1964(a)gmail.com> .Sent: 6/26/10 5:24:14 AM .To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] I.t. Professionals . .John, .I am aware of that project and I am on the list. . .I want to focus on finding those peole people from any disability to develop .contacts to identify their problems and in turn get more people who have .disabilities employed into large I.T. companies. . .Sean .----- Original Message ----- .From: "John G. Heim" <jheim(a)math.wisc.edu> .To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 11:32 PM .Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] I.t. Professionals . . .> I'm trying to start an organization called the International Association .> of Visually Impaired Technologists. We have a web site at .> http://www.iavit.org and we are already incorporated as a non-profit. We .> do not have tax exempt status from the IRS yet. That will probably not be .> coming through until the fall. .> .> We have a wiki set up and our webmaster is going to be configuring the .> security pretty soon and then we'll be trying to get people to write up .> documentation for techniques to use if you're blind. And we are trying to .> set up some teams to work with manufacturers to make their products more .> accessible. If you have any interest in that project let me know because .> not too much interest has been shown in that direction. We'd like to .> contact Cisco, VMWare, and some of the BIOS companies to see if we can get .> them to design in features to make it easier for blind technologists to .> use their products. .> .> ----- Original Message ----- .> From: "Sean Murphy" <mhysnm1964(a)gmail.com> .> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .> Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 8:35 PM .> Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] I.t. Professionals .> .> .>> All. .>> .>> I am seeking for people in any country who are I.T professionals or wish .>> to join the ranks to get in contact with myself. .>> .>> The goal here is to establish a network of people to identify common .>> barriers and how we can help others to get into the I.t. industry or .>> advance in their current. [Message truncated. Tap Edit->Mark for Download to get remaining portion.]

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ebay
by Ben Mustill-Rose 26 Jun '10

26 Jun '10

Hello all. I know this isn't exactly sys admin related but I'm posting it here since I'm guessing that some of you may have done this before and also because people on this list are very knoligeable. I'm getting tired of posting to other lists / forums where a topic gets hyjacked completely by someone who clearly can't help me with my question but still sees fit to ask something that could easily be googled. Anyway, rant over, here we go. I do a fair bit of selling on ebay - mainly hardware that I don't need anymore with the odd computer every now and again that I've made out of parts that I have. I'm wanting to become more active on ebay which has made me think a bit more about the look of my listings. In other words, I'm wanting to make my descriptions more ahem...pretty. At the moment, I write the description with a little bit of html for new lines and paragraphs but that's about all. I've been told that this looks unprofessional in comparison to other peoples descriptions and I'm worried that this will effect the price that my items sell for. I'm wondering how other blind people who list on ebay make there auctions look visually appealing? For a computer for example, I usually have a quick spec at the top, then a bunch of stuff about why people should buy from me instead of someone else, then a couple of suggested uses for the box along with a more extencive spec. At the bottom I have all my terms. Is there a program or website that has some templates where I can copy & paste all the stuff in that will make my descriptions look better than they do at the moment? Again, I'm sorry for bringing this question to the list, but I've consistantly got really helpfull answers from people on here when I've had questions. Any pointers at all would be very welcome. Chears, Ben.

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I.t. Professionals
by Sean Murphy 26 Jun '10

26 Jun '10

All. I am seeking for people in any country who are I.T professionals or wish to join the ranks to get in contact with myself. The goal here is to establish a network of people to identify common barriers and how we can help others to get into the I.t. industry or advance in their current career. Such as barriers in certifications. Access to books. Employer programs to employ disable people. Development of resources outlining accessibility of products. Etc. This is not focusing on the Blind but all disable people. In the world wide networking industry, the large networking vendors/providers relise there is a shortage of people with talent in this area. If this is the case here, then where else in I.t. So at this stage I am collecting resource material, contacts from other disability groups and names to bounce ideas off. To try and get more disable people employed. Sean

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gdm3 startup sound
by John G. Heim 23 Jun '10

23 Jun '10

Anybody know how to make gdm3 make some kind of sound when it starts? Previous versions of gdm would beep when the login sscreen appeared. YYou could also make it play a sound file like the ubuntu drums when gdm started up. But I configured gdm3 the same way as I did my previous gdm version and it won't play the sound file. You used to be able to get it to play a sound file by editing /etc/gdm/gdm.conf and adding these lines to the [greeter] section: SoundOnLogin=true SoundOnLoginFile=/etc/gdm/welcome.wav

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unformat partation?
by Ibraam Wahib 19 Jun '10

19 Jun '10

hello my friends: I'm in a great problem, I've computer office, we put all data on a hard disk, and we not take back-up from some times, after restore windows from ghost on C partition, D )all data( become unreadable, each time click give me format the disk yes/no... even on dos not read it. please which tool can I use to not format fix file system or at least copy data to another disk.. its sata hard disk D size is 100 gb.. please help me as quick as possible.. thanks very much.. ibraam

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let's talk Backup Exec
by Ryan Shugart 15 Jun '10

15 Jun '10

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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