At my current place of employment I administer a medium size windows 2003 domain.  Most of my work is done remotely and I'm not really involved with the day to day client problems that occur.  I generally just help out with domain wide problems and installing new hardware or software.  I got a system down for setting up new printers remotely and it was working exceedingly well until about a month ago.

Let the Problems Begin

It was a normal day and got a call saying there was a new printer plugged in in the server room and it needed to be setup and deployed across the domain.  I proceeded to remote in and create a reservation in DHCP, create a TCP/IP port and then add the printer to the print server.  All went well until the last step.  The print spooler would crash and burn and the printer would not be working.  This particular printer was an HP LJ 2035n.  We currently had three of these printers on the domain working flawlessly.  Adding a forth printer really caused problems.

The Solution ?

I cleaned the spooler on the printer server using a program from M$ called cleanspl.exe and proceeded to reinstall all the drivers and printers.  The intention was to clean out the corrupted driver and then everything would be okay.   Well I successfully got the spooler to stop crashing on the server and was able to add the printer to the network and all was good?

Problem 2

I got a call saying the printer problem was not fixed and the spooler was crashing on the clients now.

Solution 2

So I suggested running cleanspl.exe on all the computers and they asked that I do that so I did.   I thought I got the problem completely fixed at this point.  I wasn't able to get around to all the computer and someone were not at the school so I left instruction with a capable person on how to run cleanspl.exe.

Problem 3

I get a call a couple days later saying that some people still can't print and are getting the spooler crashed error.

Solution 3

I seeked help from the professionals and they suggested cleaning the spooler manually because M$ program doesn't work that great.  My thought was big surprise.  I proceeded to clean out the spooler manually on the server.  Then I wrote a script that manually would clean the spooler on startup for all the other computers.  I added a run once feature by checking for a file to indicate that the spooler had already been clean the script creates when it cleans the spooler.  I tested the script on handful of computers and they were able to print just fine.

Problem 4???  Really???

I got a call saying that some of the teachers were still unable to print and that this is getting frustrating and they want it fixed now.  At this point I was out of things to try.  I was watching an error log of one of the computer they were getting the spooler error on and noticed a small difference in the error.  Forgive me but I hadn't been reading the actual error message every time I just saw in the log and knew what it was.  This time I noticed it said  requed.  I posed the question have you been clicking "Ok" on the error messages?  The answer I got was "no".  Click "Ok" on the error messages and reboot.  The error messages didn't come up again.  At this point I had told them at least five times that the errors saying the spooler crashed are from the previous time the computer was on and they have the time actually indicating when the spooler crashed.   They proceded to tell me that they saw the time and it from Thursday of last week.

Solution 4

[conversation form]
Me: Try printing something real quick
Them: Okay.....
Them: It worked!!!
Me: Have you actually tried printing anything ever or just the saw the error and assumed that it wouldn't print?
Them: We just saw the error.
Me: (Not in to the phone) WHAT THE CRAP!!!!
Them:  Well I'll give you a call if we have any more problems, Thanks!!! , Bye.

A Message to ALL

Before you say you printer is messed up, won't print, and contact someone to help you fix it......Actually try printing.

Lessons Learned

Regardless of what someone tells you when troubleshooting a problem never ever assume they know what they are talking about.  I've had this problem before there but kinda of assumed that when they said there printers won't print that they actually tried printing.

I may be a little slow finding somethings but for all you others out there that haven't heard of Google Web Toolkit check it out. GWT allows web developers to write rich UI applications in pure Java and then compile them to Javascript for the web.  Google provides a very nice tutorial that walks developers through writing a stock watcher application. GWT comes complete with it's own Eclipse plugin and Google Apps integration.  After just finishing a Java class for my associates degree I was able to follow the tutorial with ease.

I have been incredibly busy the past several months with school and work. I highly recommend not trying to complete 20 credit hours in a semester and working at the same time. It will really take it out of you. During this time I have been taking a java class for my major and for the first formal approach to object oriented programming I must say I am impressed and am looking forward to the following semester of advanced data structures.

Ubuntu 9.04 is releasing soon. To be honest I have been running windows lately because of software I need for classes is meant for windows and I have not had the time to get it working on linux and my Ubuntu box decided to start lagging to the point of not being able to use it ever since I installed Google desktop. I haven't had time to fix it so I have temporally been using XP.

I am glad to be taking part in the suspend resume test for Ubuntu as this had been a huge problem in the past.

Eucalyptus caught my eye for cloud computing because I have always been interested in super computing and clusters.

The improvements to display preferences seem to be a nice addition so long as it works well. Normally I use the Nvidia control panel anyways but having a built in one that works excites me.

Over all I am excited for the next release of Ubuntu and  will hopefully be able to upgrade next weekend.

I was recently given a Cisco Catalyst 6500.  The obvious question is "what the heck do I need a Catalyst 6500 for?"  To be honest I still haven't figured that one out but I have one.  I received the catalyst from my school that originally got it from a local power plant that was getting rid of it.  The catalyst only had two supervisor modules and no switch modules so it was essential a very heavy box that could not do anything.  I shopped around on ebay and snatched up a 48 port switching module for only $10 ($23 w/ shipping).  Due to my inpatients I didn't want to wait and try to find a power cable so I cracked open one of the power supplies to hard wire one in.  I could quickly tell this was not going to be easy so I went the the simplest and possibly most dangerous route possible.

I took a computer power cable snipped the end that plugs in to the computer and hard wire it to the plug.  Do note I just wrapped the wires around the prongs and they are not secured in anyway.

I fire it up and the switch module works great.  One of the supervisors can't find it's IOS but the other one boots up fine and it works perfect.

I now have the biggest, heaviest, and most dangerously wired 48 port switch ever.  Unfortunately it won't be making it to many LAN parties.

Yesterday was the one month point from when I paused using Ubuntu and started using Fedora.  In all honesty I have come to notice that on a day to day basis the only things I use on my workstation are ssh/scp, Firefox, rdesktop, and vi.  It became clear rather quickly that adjusting would not be as hard as I thought.  I have chosen to revert back to Ubuntu.  Following will be the goods and the bads of both fedora and ubuntu.

Fedora
Pros:

After I installed proprietary video drivers AWM actually worked.  The use of appelets quickly turned into hell on earth but that is not fedoras problem.  To be honest I kinda like the OS-X feel with the dock.

The boot loader control panel under system >> administration >> boot loader was a nice little tool I am not used to having.

The firewall control panel under  system >> administration >> firewall was also a change for me.  I generally use iptables in the command line or install firestarter.  Having a pre installed firewall gui configuration tool was useful from time to time.

Cons:

No package for nvidia proprietary drivers that I could find worked. Had to download install from nvidia and compile own kernel module.  Just a little bit of a pain.

For some reason 1 of my 2 22in.  wides creen monitors is blurry from time to time with no real explanation.  This never happened in ubuntu.  I did find out that only using one monitor reduced blurryness but did not completely eliminate it.

I'm sure this is true on more than just fedora but common commands are not accessible without typing /sbin/[command].  This seems like a very small thing but I don't always rememeber to try and type /sbin/ in front of a command that it says doesn't exist.  Therefore I get angry that I can't find the command and waste time looking for it.  I know there is a way to set enviromet paths but I have never really gotten around to learning how to do this because I have never needed it.

Ubuntu

Pros:

Restricted driver utility works great for wifi and video card drivers.  It makes life much easier not having to compile your own kernel modules and all the other tedious tasks involved with having to install drivers manually.

Neither monitor is blurry.

Sudo is configured by default for the user that installs the system.  Even though configuring sudo is not hard by any means it is convient to have it already done for you.

Cons:

Lacks some of the advanced control panels such as boot loader, selinux, and firewall by default.

AWM does not work at all.

Final Thoughts

Ubuntu is geared towards ease of initial setup and completeing everyday tasks.  Anything above and beoynd what a normal user would do on a day to day basis is going to require command line knowledge.   At the same time Fedora seems to be the exact opisite.  Everyday tasks are still easy and more advanced tasks such as managing firewall and security through selinux are also easier.  Initial setup on the other hand requires a little bit more work.  Even though I plan on rebooting back into ubuntu when I finish typing this if I was forced to use fedor I would not have a problem doing so. On top of that anything is better than Microsoft Vista.