Steve’s Blog

I receive an email from one of our RightFax functional users today explaining a peculiar issue they were experiencing with the product. It seemed that received faxes of over 30 pages in length were being cut off after the 30th page. After searching the Captaris knowledge base I found that this is a “Feature” in the Brooktrout T1034 series fax boards. Here is their solution:

There is a file BTCall.cfg which is located in the  RightFax\DocTransport\Brooktrout directory when using a Brooktrout TR1034 file which can be edited with notepad and contains a line titled max_pagelist. The max_pagelist specifies the maximum number of pages allowed for storing results during a call, 30 as the default. This limits faxes to 30 pages. You will want to change the value of this line to 1024 and will allow you to receive faxes over 30 pages.

The article didn’t say you needed to restart any services, but I restarted the DocTransport module just to be on the safe side.

Steve Edwards Troubleshooting Captaris, RightFax

We have been running Captaris RightFax for several years now, when I came it was running on a Dell Optiplex GX270. My job was to perform a full upgrade new hardware, new software (from version 9.0 to 9.3), a completely new implementation. Unfortunately everyone who was involved with the original setup has since left so no one know how it’s working.

What they could tell me is that RightFax receives the faxes and then, somehow, they are available for viewing in our EMC Documentum. Nobody knew how this transfer took place. A quick google search for integrating RightFax with Documentum returned thousands of results for sites advertising “integration specialist” consultants who would come out and make these two products interact, for a nominal fee of 80,000 USD.

I couldn’t find anything on the production RightFax server that connected to our Documentum. There were no established connections inbound or out, no shared folders, no scheduled tasks, and nothing configured in RightFax that even made mention of Documentum. The one thing I noticed was that ICF was off on the production server, bad practice I know but at least it was a clue. This meant that there was some sort of inbound connection that was pulling the faxes off of the server at seemingly random intervals.

After much research I managed to find some documentation on our, somewhat old, version of Documentum (5.25). It explained that ApplicationXtender is used to retrieve faxes from the RightFax server.

ApplicationXtender must first be configured for RightFax. Open the configuration dialogue and click on the Fax-In tab. Select RightFax. Click OK. That’s it, ApplicationXtender is now configured to talk to RightFax.

Now in order to connect to import the faxes all you should need to do is right-click on the application name in Applications view of AX, select New Document, and then Fax-in queue. You will be presented with a dialog in which you should enter the name of your server (or IP address) and your RightFax username and password (usually tied in with Windows security).

In our implementation we have the faxes come in to the user AUDIT and then a copy is forwarded to the user RETRIEVAL this way we retain a copy of every fax on RightFax even after they are removed during import.

Unfortunately this was not the end. I still could not connect to RightFax from ApplicationXtender, even with the Windows ICF completely off. I did some digging and found the ports that RightFax RPC and DocTransport run on, and they are: 1052, 1053, 1062, 10520, 10521, 10062, 34987, and 34988. I opened Active Ports to make sure that these were all listening, but found that the Dialogic Syslog Service was being randomly assigned quite a few ports in that range, including 1052. To fix this problem we need to reserve some these ports.

To reserve ports in Windows so that an application has to specifically request them you need to edit a registry key. Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters and edit or create a REG_MULTI_SZ titled ReservedPorts. Enter or append the following lines:

1052-1062
10520-10521
10062-10062
34987-34988

After this restart your server and try to connect from AX. You should be good to go, and it didn’t even cost you $80,000.

Steve Edwards Application Integration, System Upgrades ApplicationXtender, Captaris, Documentum, integration, RightFax, Windows Server 2003

We are in the process of implementing SunGard fsaATLAS, a system which automates and simplifies updating the federal SEVIS database. SEVIS, which stands for Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, is a database used by the Department of Homeland Security to collect and monitor information about exchange and international students. The fsaATLAS system connects directly to SEVIS and can send batch updates, once they’re approved.

Because fsaATLAS has several core components I thought a visualization would help explain how they interact and how the data passes through.

The data that comes in from the Data Integration Tool stays in the Pending CDL Records until it is approved in Campus Data Link at which point it is moved into fsaATLAS Student Data, which is what is uploaded via SEVIS Manager.

fsaATLAS Component Interaction

Steve Edwards Application Integration Banner Integration, fsaATLAS, SunGard

Unlike the upgrade to Confluence which we had weeks to plan out, and scheduled downtime for the transition, we had to virtualize JIRA in a hurry. I came to work on a Monday morning to find JIRA down, and when we brought it back up the hard drives would only mount in read only. Systems took a look at it and determined that the raid controller had gone bad. And so recovering the data from the raid would be more trouble than it’d be worth. Instead, we plugged in a USB drive and recovered our backup from Avamar.

We launched a new SuSE Enterprise Server 10 VM into VMWare ESX, and I copied in the JIRA folder from the Avamar recovery. And changed a few settings, because the directory layout on the server had changed, particularly for Java. JIRA, like Confluence is a Tomcat application and so configuration is more of a pain than it has to be. Finally, we brought up the app, and since the Oracle database was hosted on a different server, JIRA was back online.

Steve Edwards System Upgrades Atlassian, JIRA, virtualization, VMWare ESX

At EMU, within the Division of IT we use Atlassian Confluence, which is a wiki software, for collaboration amongst and between teams. When I got here Confluence was on an older server that was running Solaris 8, one of my first jobs was to upgrade Confluence and move it into Virtualization.

We generally virtualize guest servers into VMWare ESX and this was no different. Due to a number of problems we were experiencing in Confluence at that time we decided to just launch a new SuSE Enterprise Server 10 guest and start from scratch.

I really like Confluence for what it does and how easy it is to manage, my one complaint is that it is a Tomcat application, which makes installing upgrading a pain. So before starting the install I had to go through and edit about 10 different XML configuration files. Then there is the web based install wizard. Finally we did a space by space import of all of the content from the old site, because doing a full site import causes problems in their current release.

One issue I ran into in this process was using the Java keytool to generate an SSL certificate request, mainly because I’d never done it before. Apparently when it asks, “What is your first and last name?” It want’s you to reply with the FQDN of your server. I ended up generating 3 or 4 cert requests before I actually got it right. It was a dumb mistake, but now I know.

We currently use LDAP authentication from Confluence, but I wanted it to be able to access the LDAP group information as well. Should be easy enough to setup, the documentation says you just add this line to atlassian-user.xml: <membershipAttribute>member</membershipAttribute>. This, however, looks for the membership attribute within the group object in the ldap. We define memberships within the user object, and I could not find anything on searching for it that way.

Finally I found a, very poorly written, document from Atlassian explaining my problem. In the comments I found a link to a JIRA ticket explaining how to add an adapter to allow, what they call, Dynamic Groups. By adding these lines I was able to get Confluence to read our group information.

<classes>
    <groupAdaptor>
        com.atlassian.user.impl.ldap.adaptor.LDAPDynamicGroupAdaptor
    </groupAdaptor>
</classes>

We noticed shortly after setting this up that our logs were being filled with error messages, due to an unhandled exception. Anytime a user object, which has no LDAP group memberships, is viewed it throws this error. It seems like it would be easy enough to fix so I opened a JIRA ticket requesting this bug fix, but they closed it saying that the LDAPDynamicGroupAdaptor is not supported software. For now we’re just dealing with the error messages.

Steve Edwards System Upgrades Atlassian, Confluence, virtualization, VMWare ESX

I’ve written a new WordPress theme I call FeX. I posted it on my deviant art page, or you can download it here.

Steve Edwards Web Design design, Wordpress Theme

My latest WordPress theme, Reij (Pronounced: rage), I created while taking low-dose steriods, while Dimly Aware was made while I was on codeine, and awakened I made in between the two persciptions. I have been wanting to make a firey red theme that still maintained a “Web 2.0″ look. The banner might change, I just needed something to be a place holder, so I threw that together in The Gimp in a minute or two.

I think I’ll put some screenshots up since I’m changing themes so frequently.

You can download Reij right here: Download.

Steve Edwards Web Design design, Wordpress Theme

Not just how I’m feeling, with this upper repiratory infection, but the name of my first WordPress theme. I was trying for a Dark / Grayscale “Web 2.0″ style theme. Thus the gradients and hatched background. I’ve been sitting on the couch a lot since I’ve had this lung thing, that the doctors cannot seem to diagnose, so I decided to do a bit of web design.

You can download the theme for yourself right here: Download.

Now I’ve made  an inverted version of this theme called awakened and you can download it here: Download.

Steve Edwards Web Design design, Wordpress Theme

Do you have a Mac? Do you like discount applications? Do you like donating to charity? Well have I found a deal for you… MacHeist.com is giving you 10 applications that would normally total just over three hundred dollars for a mere fifty. Not only that 25% of their prophet is going to the one of eight available charities that you choose.

The included applications are:
• Delicious Library
• FotoMagico
• ShapeShifter
• DEVONthink Personal
• Disco
• RapidWeaver
• iClip 4
• Your Choice of One Pangea Game
• NewsFire
• TextMate

I would definitely pick up a bundle for myself, but it’s a little too close to the Christmas shopping season. I would really like Delicious Library, Disco, RapidWeaver, iClip 4, NewsFire, and TextMate. ShapeShifter might be nice too.

But if you have some money for charity, and would like to get some apps out of it, check it out. The bundles will no longer be available after Sunday.

Steve Edwards Tech News applications, charity, freebies, OS X

Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine bought a new 32″ Westinghouse HDTV from Slickdeals.net. Aside from the great deal on an LCD TV (Only $500) it also had a feature I hadn’t seen before, the ability to switch tuning methods. Now, in the area where we live HD cable isn’t available, so my roommate has an antenna to get a few Hi-Def channels. But this TV was able to find all of the Hi-Def channels that my roommate and I get over a non digital cable subscription, plus more. They seem to be broadcast in between the standard channels. Using the QAM tuning method in this new TV we were able to change the channel in increments of one-tenth of a channel. This is where it gets interesting…

While were looking through to see what new channels this gave us access to we came across a movie playing on about channel 89.x. We stopped there to wait for station identification when the movie started rewinding. It turns out channel 89.x through about 90.x are all lines dedicated to Comcast OnDemand. That means that when you start OnDemand content from you cable box, it requests one of these lines and begins playing on it, unencrypted. So whatever you’re watching someone else on your cable system could be watching with you.

So the next time you think no one knows when you’re watching a dirty movie OnDemand, think again.

Steve Edwards Tech News Comcast, hacking, privacy