Over the break I have made considerable progress on creating a new 10 Gigabit fiber backbone with 1 gigabit end ports that will eventually upgrade and replace the districts original network.  The new switches are all Catalyst 3560E switches which have slots for two 10 gigabit conections and have 48 end ports at 1000 mbps each.  The school districts network currently utilizes a gigabit backbone between buildings using 1000LX fiber modules for all building except for the high school which utizlies 1000SX multimode fiber.  All of the end ports are 100 mbps except for a few at Millkin.  The older switches are all Catalyst 3500 XL or 3550’s which have recently hit their end of life at Cisco.  The end of life does not mean the older switches will stop working but rather they will no longer be supported by Cisco.

Phase I - Physically Install all new switches and test fiber connection at 10 gigabit  (completed)

(3560E installed with 10 Gigabit Backbone Connection working)

This phase was pretty straight forward, simply install all of the switches and test each fiber module to see if all is working.  The districts fiber connections are well labeled so this process went smoothly without much of a hitch.  The only minor problem I encountered was with the distance between the MS and Sourthwest Elementary using a 10,000mbps LX fiber module.  It seems that the 10,000 mbps LX module cannot travel quite as long a distance as the 1000 mbps LX module.  To solve this at the unit office I had to repeat the signal from the Unit Office with another 10,000mbps LX fiber module which essentially cuts the total distance between the the Core Switch and the elementary school in half.

Phase II - Configure Switches at the HS and Middle School to work on exisiting backbone bringing all server connections up to 1 gigabith (complete)

In order to configure the new switches I reformatted and old Dell Lattitude LX Pentium 3 Based laptop and installed Puppy Linux.  The reasons I choose this laptop is because it was the only laptop I could find with a serial connection built in (did not have a serial/USB adapter).  Since the machine was dated and only had 128 megs of Ram I choose Puppy Linux which works great and makes a perfect fast booting system that can be used to program the switches from console mode.  In fact I highly recommend anyone with an dated system to give Puppy Linux a try, you may be surprised on how well the machine performs with this ultra lightweight form of Linux (free).

Here is a photo of old Dell Lattitude LX machine dedicated to configuring Cisco equipment.  Although this photo shows me using cutecom I ended up using the lightweight picoman to make the serial conneciton with the cisco devices.  I recommend picoman since its default settings are 9600 Baud 8 bits Parity which are what are needed for Cisco devices (And Sun Sparc Servers).

-Photo Of GHS-3560E new Gigabit Switch working at the HS

Phase III - Configure all Switches at all Buildings and integrade VLAN with new core 3560XL. (not complete)

With the switches configured and in place at the HS and MS I plan to bring the rest of the new switches online in the next couple of weeks.

Phase IV -  Begin to remove 3550 and 3500 XL switches ( not to start for another year since all switches and fiber modules are working fine)

With the switches fully configured at HS and MS the main district servers are now each utilizing a gigabit connection (10 times the bandwidth they had previously).

Servers now operating with network connectons at 1gbps | 1000mbps
Ichat/Jabber Server (GHS)
GCSDblogs.org (GHS)
Destiny Server /Library Catalog System (GHS)
Gcsdpodcast.org - Podcast Producer Server (GHS)
Kerio Mail Server (GMS)
Main Web Server www.dist228.org (GMS)

Ifconfig output on Ichat Server showing connection at 1000 mpbs

I have ordered PCI-X gigabit based NIC cards so that soon HServer01 (DNS, DHCP), Hserver02 (DNS, DHCP), Skywarddb (Multiple Functions), Citix01 will soon be able to take advantage of the increase in bandwidth.

With the addition of a few more online calendars sing-up links and with more on the way, additional room was needed on the Staff Portal page.  I originally created this site with a simple three column layout but have switched to a 4 column layout to see how it works.  The original layout was a standard 800 width, as most computers now have either wide screen monitors or monitors with resolution much higher than 1024 x 768, I decided increasing the overall width to 1024 made sense.

The entire idea behind the webpage was to create a place where the most frequently accessed online resources could be located centrally in a one stop shop kind of a deal.  Simple is the keyword, just a quick loading page that contains most relevant links for staff members.  With just one click most users can access any links or forms that they will need throughout the day.  Unfortunately it may be time to re-evaluate some of links on the page and perhaps streamline it so only links that are actively used remain.

Additionally I have changed the portal URL to http://www.dist228.org/staffportal from http://www.dist228.org/hs/staffportal/staffportal.html.  I have decided to leave both links active but will slowly switch users to the newer more streamlined link.

At the highschool I recently repaired a Varitronics ProImage poster maker.  This machine simply scans in a regular sized document and enlarges it to create a poster.  The machine is over 10 years old and had recently began having difficulty feeding paper and jamming frequently.  Since the machine is older I looked into purchasing a new machine and was not happy to hear 3,500-5,000 dollars for an estimate.

Original Varitronics | Proimage

After cleaning the machine and looking at it I noticed that the rubber platen that runs the length of the machine had worn thin where the thermal heads rest.  Since the macine works by activating heat on a special thermal based paper I figured that the this rubber platen must remain smooth so that paper when heated will not stick to it.  A long story short all this printer needed to be repaired was new rubber platen,  after calling a few vendors that offered repair services I finally found one who would sell me the part for 90$.  It seems that there a few sites that offer repair services for this printer,  after seeing how incredibly easy this repair is I would recommend cleaning and repairing yourself.

Installed new Rubber Platen -  never clean this platen with alchohol or other solvents since this piece must remain perfectly smooth for the printer to operate.

At the HS, the two computer labs have utilized a online calendar system to reserve the computer labs.  This system has worked so well that I decided to extend this concept to all computer labs in the district.  The setup for each Calendar based web page is not overly difficult, to start download the latest version of Calendarix from their website (free) http://www.calendarix.com/index.php. 

Each Calendar utilizes its own sql database and runs on php based code.  To install, a new database for each calendar must be created on the server and then a sql script must be run to format the database.  Once this is done all just copy the php files to a new directory (for each calendar you want to create) on the Apache webserver, and edit  two configuration files matching each directory to the corresponding sql database.  Also you must be sure to specify a user with admin rights to the sql database.  I did this from the command line using the the command GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON calendar.* to “user”@”localhost”, this can also be done easily from phpmyadmin.

I considered doing a similar idea with the web based version of ICal that comes packaged with server 10.5 but found Calendarix to be more user friendly and easier to maintain.   I have placed links to all of the computer lab signup using the Calendarix php scripts on the staff portal site.

In an attempt to make each page easily recognizable I have been adjusting the CSS stylesheets for each calendar to give it a unique look and feel.  I have started this process with the Southwest Elementary Computer sign up page giving it a blue based theme.  My plan is to continue and give each a school a unique color scheme.  Overall Calendarix has proven to be a useful tool, that has is not overly difficult to install and with an excellent starting price at free.

Although I am not really familiar with working on household appliances I decided to give it a try when the dishwasher at my residence decided to stop working the other day.  The dishwasher is a Maytag Quiet Series 300 and was just a little over a year old.  The problem began when some of the lights on the front of the unit stopped responding to input.  Strangely the Heavy Wash, the Lock (Dry button) would still respond but unfortunately the start and delay buttons would not respond and thus the machine would not start.

After reading a few forums on the web it turns out this problem is fairly common with this model with either the ribbon cable failing with a short, or the control board itself has a short.

In my case the control board had failed.  This part can be found online for about 70$.  (Control Board)

To gain access to the control board you will need a star shaped screw driver and a socket wrench.  Removing the door is pretty straight forward with about 12 star shaped screws holding it in place.

Here is the control Panel.  Keys for successful removal: Unhook Power (flip breaker) and make sure the ribbon cable is securely attached.  The ribbon cable will fit into the housing and the plastic case can be moved to lock it into place.

Replacement Control Board.

Working Machine.  The good news is that this easy repair was successful, my only concern is that this unit will give out again after another year and a half.  It appears that perhaps there is a design flaw in the device in which steam from the drying process can work itself into the control panel and short it out.  I wonder if perhaps you sealed the control panel box with Silicon if it would increase the longevity of the machine.

The LaserJet 2600n is one of the more affordable color LaserJet printers in HP’s lineup but with the price savings you lose some of the options you find on the higher end models.  The LaserJet 2600n comes with 32 megs of RAM but has no expansion slots to increase memory,  if you are using the machine in a high output lab environment you may find the printer is pretty slow processing print jobs.

This printer also seems to have a defect with its Fuser as I have had to replace the fuser unit twice in under 2 years. To replace the unit takes considerably more work than in older HP models such as the LaserJet 4100, 4200, or 4050.

To replace the Fuser must first remove the Right hand Side Panel (if looking at it’s front).

With the Side Panel Removed Take unhook the cable that connects the top control panel to the side.  Also remove all of the Toner cartridges.

Now Begin unscrewing and unsnapping the top panel off the printer, this can be kind of tricky as one of the plastic top panes can be tough to unsnap.

With the side panel and top panels removed you can now replace the fuser.  Make sure to remove the bottom screws that hold the fuser to the top pane, also remember to reconnect all of the wired connections to the fuser.  Make sure not to unscrew any of the screws that actually part of the fuser unit,  this can be kind of tricky as it is somewhat hard to see what screws actually connect to the control board.

here is a photo of the damaged fuser, notice the burnt image on the fuser medium.

The total process took me about 30-45 minutes to complete, and the printer works like new.  Overall the process is probably still cost effective since you can find fuser’s for this model under 90$.

It seems that some of the older HP printers do not like to work well with Mac OX 10.5.  Often when users print large color documents to the LaserJet 4600 or a LaserJet 4200 the printer malfunctions and reports a service error message.  Unfortunately the only way to fix the service error is to restart the machine.  It seems like this issue is probably a software driver issue but since I am already using the newest drivers available I have turned to maxing out the memory in each machine.  I am also using the latest JetDirect and device firmware so adding memory is about the only option left.

Looking through a box of old ram and doing a little trial and error I eventually found enough working RAM to max the 4600 out at 224 megs.  Although this has not stopped all the service errors it has reduced the frequency of this problem substantially.

At the High School we have one lab of PC’s that run Vista.  After updating the default profile to include some new printers and drivers I was made aware that most users where being logged in with a Temp profile which is deleted on logout.  It turns out that if you delete the users from the c:\USERS directory in Vista, registry entries still exist for all of the unique logins for that machine.  If a user returns to this machine Vista will get confused as there is not a directory on the hard drive for this user but instead there exists a user entry in the registry refering to one.  This problem does not seem to affect administrator accounts or accounts that are part of the local admin’s group.

The easiest fix I could find is to login to each machine as Admin,  then delete the Profile list registry entries which are located at Local Machine | Software | Microsoft | Windows NT | Current | ProfileList

Here I just deleted all of the entries except for the top three which refer to the system accounts. This problem only seems to appear on Vista based machines,  deleting Users profiles on XP does not seem to cause this glitch.

Recently I replaced two failed harddrives, one in a EMac the other in a Imac.  I was suprised by the difference in time and difficulty between the two models from apple. The first drive I replaced was in an older G4 800 Mhz EMac,  this machine had a failed 40 gig maxtor drive.   Looking around my office I found a good IDE 250 gig drive and decided to replace the drive with this one.

Removing the casing off of the EMac is easy enough although the machine is heavy so it can be kind of ackward pulling the plastic shell away from the compter.

Now comes the interesting part,  it quickly becomes apparent that the Apple engineers were not considering hard drive replacment to be a routine maintenance or a quick job.  After placing the machine on its front and still no visible sign of the Harddrive anywhere it became apparent that you have to remove close to 20 screws, in a variety of lengths and sizes to access the part.

Notice that the Hard Drive is not visible anywhere on the machine, instead it is buried on the back side.  To access the Hard Drive it necessary to remove the system fan, move the heat sink, remove all screws holding the logic board in place, and then pull out a metal casing with the Hard Drive inside.

With the system fan removed you can now see where the hard drive is located, if you look behind the heatsink you will see a rectangular metal box that houses the hard drive.  Unfortunately to remove this housing you must detach all surrounding screws and move the logic board out of the way.

With the logic board loose and the hard drive housing pulled out you have just enough slack to pull out the molex power connector to the Hard Drive.

After putting the machine back together the entire process is 30-45 minutes (not including the re-imaging process which is another hour).   With over 100 of these machines in the school district it is still feasible to replace the Hard Drives but it is probably a job best left done during the summer hours.

The Newer IMac G5 on the other hand is engineered to make replacing the hard drive a breeze.  Simply loosen three screws on the bottom and pull the casing off the machine.

The hard drive is immediately accessible being held down by a total of five screws.  The only tricky part is that these srews are not phillips but are instead start shaped.  Using a small allen wrench set I was able to remove the screws and replace the drive.  Total time 5-10 minutes.  As I continue to work on lots of different apple models I find it interesting how they seem to go back and forth in terms of design for system maintenance and repair.  For example the ibook G4 takes 45-1 hour to replace the harddrive where as the newer MacBook takes only around 5-10 minutes.

Recently I have been investigating setting up a more advanced Wordpress Installation that will allow all High School Students access to their own individual blogs.  The open source Wordpress has a package called Wordpress MU (Multi-User) which when setup could enable all students to setup their own blog easily.

Harvard Law School is running Wordpress MU and gives away free webspace / blogs to all.   Take a look at how they have this setup http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ .

Here is a screen shot of the website,  notice that students can simply sign up and Wordpress MU will auto setup the rest.

I would like to clone this basic idea and create a webpage here at gcsdblog.org and give it a url entitled students.  The setup would then add the students last name and graduation year to the new URL, such as John Smith 2012 would be set to http://gcsdblogs.org/students/2012/smith.

I think it would be interesting to allow students to create and manage their own blogs which could then become kind of their own personal portfolio of student work / accomplishments.