I have just added a new page to the Support section under Remote Desktops (it is a pull down menu in the Support section), entitled, “Using Windows Remote Desktop Connection” that shows how to connect to one of our shell servers graphically using the remote desktop protocol connection software that is packaged with every Windows system.

     Using Remote Desktop to connect will provide a graphical login allowing you access to a remote desktop and graphical applications but it will not provide sound or remote printing.  X2Go provides these as well as a much higher performance encrypted session.

     Using Remote Desktop does not require the installation of any additional software on a Windows system and thus is well suited to situations where you don’t own or have the necessary privileges to install software on a Windows system, or where you just need to get started fast.

      The denial of service attack ended before we were able to determine the source or nature.  It was odd in that it neither saturated bandwidth or CPU according to the router statistics but still slowed things down.  I’m working on configuring more detailed logging to hopefully gain a better understanding if it reoccurs.

     Things are slow right now because someone has launched a denial of service attack on our site which is sucking up a lot of bandwidth and router CPU.  We are working with our co-location provider to block it.

     The “eskimo.com” shell server is restored.  I’m on my way back to the office.

     The eskimo.com shell server is down again.  This time it’s not entirely crashed but in a state where the kernel is getting CPU and it responds to pings but user space programs are not.  This is an old 4.1.4 SunOS bug that happens only on multiple CPU machines.

     I will be out of here for a while between post office run and a run down to the co-location facility.  If I don’t answer please leave a message and I will call you upon my return.

Centos7 is back up.

     CutyCapt is installed on all the shell servers except ‘eskimo.com’.  Note that on the Redhat based systems it is uppercase C’s, but on the Debian based machines, it is all lower case.

     Centos7 is down, well it is out of space on a partition preventing logins. I am working to resolve.

     The eskimo.com server crashed again so I’ve got to make another trip to the co-lo.

     The old SunOS 4.1.4 shell server, eskimo.com, is up.  It will be even slower than normal as I am writing backups.  That machine hasn’t been backed up since 2013 owing to the fact that any updates for SunOS have long since been discontinued so it is essentially static.  User data is stored on an entirely separate server that is backed up weekly.  None the less I like to back it up once in a while just to make sure there are no unreadable sectors on the disk and nothing has gotten badly corrupted.

     The scheduled maintenance has been completed.  All servers are back up except for ‘eskimo.com‘ shell server.  I am headed off to the co-location facility to address that.