Thursday, 20 January 2005

I think I've had a win (it's always nice to end the week on a high note). I cracked the shits and plugged my laptop in place of the Windows Terminal Server (my laptop also has the Firewall-1 GUI software installed) and with the firewall policy unloaded (via the console) I was able to make a connection to the management server. I then edited the object for the firewall, told it to reget the topology (taking into account the change of interface names) saved it, pushed the policy and lo and behold, I could SSH to the management server.

That said, I now cannot make an RDP connection to the terminal server, so I'm not sure if Windows freaked out over a duplicate IP address and took itself off the network, or if I plugged the cable back into the wrong interface. I'll look at that on Monday.

So given yesterday's attempt failed dismally, I tried the procedure outlined in a different document. This procedure seemed a bit more holus bolus in its approach to what needed to be copied (i.e. you pretty much copy all the files from the server you're migrating, delete a few and hope for the best).

Similiarly poor results. I don't even get anything in the logs this time, which makes it all the more vexing. Using tcpdump and fw monitor shows SYN packets entering the firewall and nothing coming out.

I'm starting to run out of ideas. There's only so much you can do with Firewall-1 from the command line. Hopefully the client's support contract renewal will have been processed by Check Point by Monday...

Heh, this is funny. One of the other guys noticed that my voicemail light was on on my phone. I haven't been told how to drive my voicemail, or that I indeed had voicemail. He dialled it up to retrieve the messages, and in the meantime I had to help relocate my manager's desk, so I just left the handset on my desk while it played through all the messages. About 45 minutes later, I picked up it to see where it's at. It's at message 63 from June 30 (presumably last year).

I suspect my predecessor didn't know he had voicemail either...

As I'm only intending to study part-time this year, I'm not eligible for a carpark. This is a PITA because as a part-time student, working full-time, the one thing I don't want to be spending more time than necessary is finding a carpark. I just want to get in, park, attend my classes and get out again.

I was going to try and get creative and enrol as a full-time student and then drop half the subjects before the census date, but it's just not worth the hassle. I'm still dubious about how I'm going to go doing this full-time work/part-time study thing anyway.