/bin/tim

Although I outsource our email to a hosted Exchange server I needed to set up a server to manage web server email confirmations.  I hadn’t;t used this particular server software before but it was pretty simple and was sending email pretty soon, but none was returning and just producing delayed sending messages.

At first I thought it was the DNS, but that looked all ok.  To double check I used the DNS name with a Telnet session so I had manual control over the process and could see any error messages directly from the SMTP server in real time.  I used the excellent Putty as my terminal (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.htmlsoftware) as Telnet is n longer included by default in Vista and Windows Server 2008.

If you ever need to do a similar check on an SMTP server then here’s the sequence:

1. Start Putty
2. Enter DNS name (or IP Address)
3. Select Port 25 (or other if non standard)
4. Ensure you have selected the Telnet protocol (not SSH)
5. The terminal sessions should then open in a window
6. hit return
7. Type HELO
8. The server should respond with a 250 message (text may vary)
9. Type MAIL FROM: yourname@yourdomain.com (this address does not matter too much, but you should use a valid external email address)
10. The server should respond with a 250 message (text may vary)
11. Type RCPT TO: emailaddress@smtpserver.com  (replace email address with valid account on SMTP server)
12. The server should respond with a 250 message (text may vary)
13. Type DATA (hit return)
14. Type SUBJECT: Test Message (replace test Message with whatever you want)
15. Hit Return key twice
16. Type some email body text until finished
17. Type . (period - this tells server you are done) and hit Return
18. The server should respond with a 250 message (text may vary)
19. You’re done now you could repeat the process or type QUIT to leave.

Now that message should appear in the inbox of the target email address you specified in the RCPT TO: line.

However for me the message appeared then disappeared … into an unknown black hole… so the investigation continues.

There’s a lot of fuss about travellers fingerprints being taken at the new Terminal 5, which worried me a bit as well, until I discovered the reason for it.  The proposed system would take a fingerprint at check-in and compare it to one at boarding to make sure the same person was getting on the flight, like an electronic boarding card.

Somehow it got mixed up with keeping peoples fingerprints on file somewhere, when in fact they promised to destroy the data after 24 hours (assuming they can be believed).  However this confusion could have been avoided if they just used the fingerprint as a numeric hash and checked that.  That way no fingerprint data would ever be stored but there would be a unique hash that would ensure the passenger hadn’t changed before boarding.

On the face of it,  using the Internet to choose and book a hospital consultant appointment seems a fantastic idea.  But as with most government projects,  defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory. 

It seemed so simple,  I need to see an ophthalmic consultant to check my eyes are ok after laser surgery.  So I received a letter through the post with a reference and password to use the optimistically named ‘Choose and Book’ service run by the NHS.  Sounded too good to be true, so I went to the web page where I had to enter my reference, birth year and password.  Bingo! it quickly pulled back the details of the appointment and asked me to click to go on to book a time.  I excitedly clicked the link, expecting to see a calendar of available dates and hoping to do one or at most two more clicks to choose and confirm.

How wrong I was,  I was actually then taken to the complicated home page of the hospital concerned, and after a couple of moments hunting round finding what to do next I saw the ‘Choose and Book’ link. OK so it was a bit manual and not integrated and added an extra step, but I was still optimistic.  Slowly, so slowly the link stuttered into life and low and behold I was back at the original login page …. strange … oh well a bit more manual work,  I suppose they are being thorough, so I entered the details again, but was greeted with an error … ‘unable to log you in at this time’.  The site suggested I go back to the original link and start again.

Annoyed, I did so, and went through the whole process again, to get the same error. Finally I gave in and called the phone booking system.  They checked and the error wasn’t that I couldn’t log in, rather there were no available appointments, but it reports the login failure instead.  So I ended up wasting time on a system that is poorly designed and implemented.

Not only that, but they can’t take user feedback unless its from a GP surgery, who surprisingly don’t use the same system ….

Whilst purchasing a MyBook at PC World today I noticed they were selling the excellent Devolo Powerline AV200 Starter Pack (2 adapters) for £99, abot £20-30 cheaper than online.  For the uninitiated, the PowerLine standard allows devices which look like normalhouse plugs but with an Rj45 Ethernet connector to join your various devices using your home electrical wiring as network cable.  This means that you can dynamically run networks in your house without network cabling.  It also gets by any limitations of wireless signal loss through walls.

Although its slower than Cat-6 cabling your house for gigabit bandwidth, its very much easier to implement because you just plug the connectors in to a normal plug socket.  Up to 255 Powerline plugs can be supported on one electrical main.  You can plug any Ethernet device into a Powerline plug, even a switch or hub, or as I do, my ADSL connection.  even if you share your power supply cabling (shared house/flat) it still works as you can encrypt the data between your plugs.  One interesting option is the wireless LAN  extender which allows you to add a wirless access point at a distant point in your house using the mains cabling, and it works very well.

Hint: if you are starting out you need at least two plugs, so get a starter kit