IFOST: Documents and White Papers

Course Notes

• Some notes on HP Service Manager (SM7, SM9.2, SM9.3) which I wrote for students on my Service Manager courses.
• After installing HP DataProtector, what must I do? What are some guidelines for when to set up media pools? How do I use subversion with DataProtector? Where should I put my DataProtector cell manager? How do I use SSH to install Unix systems? What do I want to have around before a disaster? How do I backup servers behind a firewall in a DMZ? (Jan 25th 2012) [PDF -- 557k]
• I like Ubuntu. It's not supported as a platform for HP's DataProtector product (at least not in version 6.2). So I went ahead and got it working anyway (for 6.1). (24th April 2009) [shell script -- 2k]
• A diagram showing the schema & structure of MYOB exported datafiles which was generated by a program I wrote to explore some artificial intelligence techniques I've been thinking about.
• A very short (one afternoon) course on Expect. This is just a collection of slides with no extra notes. [PDF]

Guides and Essays

• Very beginner's document on getting a graphical HP-UX session running, displaying to a MS-Windows PC. It's probably correct for Solaris and other proprietary unixes.

Ancient Stuff

• A very large survey of the usage of different kinds of email server software in the .com.au domain around July 2001. Spoiler: sendmail was popular once, and Linux was already dominant. [TXT]
• A short piece written to review some of the statistics from the Attrition Mirror. It has a quick initial analysis of the relative security of the various operating systems. I intend to expand it to a more complete version soon. [PDF]
• How prescient was Greg? Answer: not particularly Here's a Geek's Eye View of the changes ahead in the IT server market (written in September 2001). [PDF]
• Our submission to the House of Representative's enquiry into broadband wireless. [PDF]
  Here is an interesting email exchange about the implications of it. [TXT]
• Some useful notes to hand out just after a Linux course. These were written for students on HP's Introduction to Linux Administration course. [PDF]
• How do I replace a disk that has failed under Linux? [PDF]
• In 2007 I wrote a course on Architecting Linux-based solutions for HP-UX Architects. It's a bit out of date in places and I don't think I was as coherent as I should have been.
• We reverse-engineered a hardware repair manual for HP's cell-based machines, including the Superdome, rp8400 and rp7420 series servers. This document is guaranteed free of HP intellectual property. Contact us if you want to use it. [PDF -- 24.1Mb]
• The steps involved in making HP Network Node Manager (NNM) display on a MS-Windows system without paying for expensive X-server software.
• sendmail was one of the most important pieces of mail-routing software for the internet for a long time. It is obscure and hard to understand. Many sites have legacy sendmail installation set up by administrators long since left. We run courses on understanding sendmail. The student notes and overheads are here: [PDF -- Notes 589k] [PDF -- Notes 589k]
• How can I get HP Software Operations (HP Openview Operations) into a useful state quickly? What off-the-shelf notification options are there? How do I get around the painful one administrator limit (i.e. make another opc_adm)? What about colour-blind operators? What database work should I be doing on the openvieworacle database instance? How do I load a MIB file in easily? (August 23rd 2007) [PDF -- 152k]
• How do you do a manual backup of the HP Media Operations (MOPS) database? (November 6th 2007) [PDF -- 116k]