Monitoring a Lenovo ThinkServer, with Help from Cygwin

The box is running Windows 2008 Server Foundation, which is a bare bone of Windows server software. But it works for a small business that has software that only runs on Windows.

The Lenove ThinkServer 100 series support an Intel SATA RAID controller. To monitor the RAID system, one may install the Intel Storage Management Console as described in this manual on page 10.

But there is a problem. Windows 2008 Server Foundation does not come with a mail server. The Storage Management Console is only capable of sending out notification of any issue in the storage system via plain vanilla SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), with no support for a smart-host kind of configuration.

Here is where Cygwin and its arsenal of software carried over from the UNIX/Linux world can help. I did not start out knowing what to do exactly. But simple Google search of Cygwin SMTP proxy turns up a lot of reading material. By the way, Cygwin should be on every Windows machine, just for packages like grep, openssh and rsync that comes with it if nothing else.

Following this article about running exim on Ubuntu to send email via Gmail, I have been able to get it up and running in short order. Installing exim is not very difficult. As of this writing, Cygwin comes with exim version 4.76-1. After installation, one runs exim-config to configure it.

There are things that need to be further configured. The line below to add the local network for mail relay:

hostlist   relay_from_hosts = 127.0.0.1 : 192.168.1.0/24

 To route mail not for local domains via Gmail:

begin routers
send_via_gmail:
        driver = manualroute
        domains = ! +local_domains
        transport = gmail_smtp
        route_list = * smtp.gmail.com

 To configure the Gmail SMTP service:

begin transports
gmail_smtp:
        driver = smtp
        port = 587
        hosts_require_auth = $host_address
        hosts_require_tls = $host_address

 Gmail SMTP server requires user authentication:

begin authenticators
gmail_login:
        driver = plaintext
        public_name = LOGIN
        client_send = : your-account@gmail.com : your-account-password

That's it! After that, start the exim service using net start exim. From the Intel Storage Management Console, one may then configure it to use the local server as the SMTP server to send out email when issues occur.

HP Quality Center

So, I guess they call this software Quality Center -- I just am not sure how they do that with a straight face.

Let me see:

• It is a web-based application, yet Only Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 are supported.
• And, I am supposed to figure out what the !@#$% CAPICOM.DLL is and how to get it installed?

Impressions of Barnes and Nobel Nook Tablet

I saw a co-worker carrying his Barnes and Noble Nook Color around a lot, so I asked him about it. He said that he was pleased with it. So when the Nook Tablet came out, I compared it with the Amazon Kindle Fire and decided that the Nook Tablet has a better package over all: more RAM (1GB vs. 512MB), more flash storage (16GB vs. 8GB), and the Nook has a microSD slot that the Fire does not. So when B&N offered me a $25 discount as a former Borders' customer, I got one for my daughter.

But now I am starting to have second thoughts. The Nook feels nice when used for reading books purchased from Barnes and Nobel, but that seems to be the only thing it is good for. Since we have not had time to watch videos on it yet, I can't really say much about that except that video streaming from the same providers, Hulu and Netflix, should not differ much from using the same apps on a similar Android tablet.

The main problem is that, the Nook limits user storage to 1GB out of the 16GB in total, which means in practical terms, one can not install much of anything on it. I did install the Amazon App Store on it via side-loading. Now it refuses to install Kindle for Android.

Looks like it's time to root the device -- I was going to wait until the device is out of warranty. I understand that B&N is competing with Amazon. But limiting what the device does for its customers is not the right way to do it.