Lock down shared computers using Steady State

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Have you ever needed to lock down a computer for public or shared multiple user use? Have you Ever needed to lock down computers in a non server non centralized environment? I was recently tasked with locking computers down for public use in computer labs at a conference.

It is a challenge to know what users may or may not have changed after using a shared computer. My users needed permission to make changes to the hard drive and or applications during computer use. However I did not want these changes to be permanent.

Some of the problems I have seen from users of shared computers are: spy ware, viruses, the windows theme completely changed, downloaded programs installed, a corrupt OS and more. It takes time to reload an OS or re-image a machine. No one wants to spend time reloading or re-imaging multiple computers if they don’t have to. I discovered a free utility from Microsoft that was exactly what I needed for locking these computers down. It is called Steady State.

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Can’t email remote domain from Exchange

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Have you ever had email from one specific domain bounce back from Exchange with status code of: #550 4.4.7 QUEUE.Expired; message expired ##? I ran into this problem. It turned out the mail server on that domain was blocking email coming from our Exchange 2007 mail server. Here is what I did to narrow down the issue.

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Backup your SugarCRM

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The backup tool in SugarCRM does not work at all when in a shared server environment.

I have a better way to backup your SugarCRM that works. To restore your SugarCRM you need to restore the database first and then restore your SugarCRM files. Here is how it works:

First you need to export your full database. (I use MySQL) You do this from PhpMyAdmin. In order to reach it you have to log in your Cpanel, go to MySql databases and click on the link to PhpMyAdmin.

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Install SugarCRM on a shared server

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I am going to give detailed instructions on installing SugarCRM in a shared server environment. For this article we will be using Sugar Community Edition. Note: some things may differ depending on your shared server environment.

My environment consists of:

  • Platform: Linux
  • Web Server: Apache
  • Database: MySQL
  • Language: PHP

First go to http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/download/sugar-suite.html to download the latest release of SugarCRM.

Create your MYSQL database. We will call our database sugar1.

Create or choose a domain name that will be used to access your SugarCRM once it is installed. We will pretend our domain name is www.sugar1.com .

Copy the SugarCRM files that you just downloaded from your computer onto your web server via FTP. Be sure to copy these files in the root directory for www.sugar1.com .

Check and set platform requirements and configurations before installing. My platform and configuration was already set to go. You can see what these are here: http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki/index.php?title=Platform_Requirements_and_Configurations .

Now you can install SugarCRM using the sugar setup wizard. To access this type this URL in a web browser: www.sugar1.com/install.php . You will then see the setup wizard pictured below.

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Sugar CRM savePath error during install

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I ran into the following problem when installing Sugar CRM Community Edition 5.0.0f on a shared hosting server:

Session Save Path Setting The session.save_path setting in your php configuration file (php.ini) is not set or is set to a folder which did not exist. You might need to set the save_path setting in php.ini or verify that the folder sets in save_path exist.

Note: Your php configuration file (php.ini) is located at: (The error should tell you right here where it is located on your server)

To solve this issue I had to

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Welcome!

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Welcome to my first blog site. I will be updating this site soon! I will be exploring topics on Open-Source and Microsoft products. I hope some of the blogs I post will help other IT professionals that may be running into the same issues I have had.