How-To Tutorials - Servers

Generic Virtualization Framework The most straightforward mail handling in qmail is used for what are known as the local domains: those listed in the file. The users for these domains are all the same, and are typically the users defined in control/locals/etc/passwd, though they can be defined in users/assign as well (discussed in the Non-Virtual Non-System Users section). Qmail, however, has another sense in which an email can be local, which is to assign a domain to a user (or, more accurately, to a prefix). This feature is configured with the control/virtualdomains file. Power of the virtualdomains File The virtualdomains file is one of the most powerful, useful, and stunningly simple mechanisms for configuring qmail. Virtual domains and even virtual users can be created, independently of one another, and assigned to controlling users. Virtual domains are fully independent, and as they are assigned to users (or, more accurately, prefixes) they can be in different UNIX protection domains if desired. This file can also define virtual users and similarly assign them to controlling users. This file thus makes it both possible and easy to intercept specific addresses and do something special with them. Perhaps surprisingly for the power this file wields, the control/virtualdomains file is only slightly more complicated than similar control files, such as control/locals. Rather than a list of domains, the virtualdomains file is a list of patterns and their associated prefixes. The entries are of the form: matching-pattern: prefix Only one prefix is associated with each pattern. The matching pattern can be one of the following three things: a domain (that follows the same wildcarding semantics used in the control/rcpthosts file), an email address, or an empty string. The empty string is considered to match anything. An email address matches any message addressed to that email address, and a domain matches any message addressed to a user in that domain. If there are multiple possible matches, the longest match is used. Emails that match patterns listed in the control/virtualdomains file are considered to be local emails, similar to those addressed to domains in the control/locals file. Messages that match patterns in the virtualdomains file must first undergo a simple modification before delivery. While messages are prepared for delivery, if they have an envelope destination address that matches a pattern in the virtualdomains file, that destination address is prepended with the matching pattern's associated prefix. This turns the original local part of the address into an extension of the prepended user. In this way, a domain can be mapped to a user, giving that user full control over the mailboxes (or users) within that domain. The virtualdomains file can also be used to define exceptions to the matching rules, if the prefix is blank. It is important to note that the control/virtualdomains file is considered after the control/locals file, which means that if an email is addressed to a domain listed in locals, the virtualdomains file will not apply. Also, virtualdomains rewriting occurs before the mail is given to qmail-lspawn for delivery. This sounds complex, but is easy to understand with an example. Basic Virtual Domains An example virtualdomains file that demonstrates most of the file's features is as follows: example.com:foo.example.com:foo-bartwo.example.com:bazwaldo@domain.com:quxdomain.com::garply Presuming that the users mentioned i.e. foo, baz, qux, and garply are the only local users on this system; these lines cause the following results:      The first line matches any address ending in @example.com, such as user@example.com. Such a destination address will be rewritten as foo-user@example.com, ensuring that the email's delivery will be controlled by the local user named foo.      Messages addressed to user@something.example.com do not match the first line but do match the second line, and so will be delivered as if they had been addressed to foo-bar-user@something.example.com.      Because the virtualdomains file is used in a longest match wins manner, the third line (not the second) will match messages addressed to user@two.example.com. This destination will be rewritten asbaz-user@two.example.com and baz will control the delivery of such messages.      The fourth line specifies that email addressed to waldo@domain.com will be instead delivered as if it had been addressed to qux-waldo@domain.com. The qux user will control that delivery.      The fifth line specifies that any domain.com email—other than waldo@domain.com—should be treated as if had been listed in the domain.comcontrol/locals file.      Finally, the sixth line specifies that all other email will be rewritten and delivered to the local garply user. For example, email addressed to someone@somewhere.org will be rewritten as garply-someone@somewhere.org and delivery will be attempted locally. In this example, the foo user is essentially in charge of the entirety of the example.com domains. Users that are specific to example.com are defined by creating appropriately named .qmail files in foo's home directory. For example, to establish the standard postmaster@example.com address, foo would create a file named .qmail-postmaster in its home directory, containing the instructions for delivering postmaster's email. The foo user could also establish a address by creating a file named foo@example.com.qmail-foo in his or her home directory. In this way, once the example.com mapping has been established, the foo user can set up and maintain the users in the example.com domain without ever requiring further permission from or contact with the system administrator. It is worth pointing out that precisely who controls what can get more complex if real usernames have extension separator characters (a hyphen, by default) in them. For example, if the address postmaster@example.com is rewritten to be foo-postmaster@example.com, it is typically delivered according to the instructions in ~foo/.qmail-postmaster or, if that file does not exist, ~foo/.qmail-default. However, if there is a user named foo-postmaster, that user will receive email addressed to postmaster@example.com. If a .qmail file (such as ~foo/.qmail-postmaster) cannot be located for a given extension address (such as foo-postmaster@example.com), the alias user's directory is checked for .qmail files. Specifically, .qmail-foo-postmaster, .qmail-foo-default, and .qmail-default. If none of these files exist, the message is considered undeliverable and is bounced. Note that during delivery of such an email, the standard environment variables are defined per the rewritten destination rather than per the original address. For example, if a message addressed to postmaster@example.com is delivered using the example configuration, the affected environment variables will be defined as follows (assuming foo's home directory is /home/foo):   Environment Variable Content for Virtual Domain Delivery Content for Normal Delivery RECIPIENT foo-postmaster@example.com postmaster@example.com USER foo-postmaster postmaster LOCAL foo postmaster HOME /home/foo /home/postmaster HOST example.com example.com HOST2 example example HOST3 example example HOST4 example example EXT postmaster      

The following text (SomeText.txt) file saved at a suitable location on the hard drive is used. This particular text is: Rose is RedChrysanthemum is yellowViolets are violetRose can be PinkHyacinth is whiteDesk jobs are the bestLily is also whiteThe girl is wearing a rose garlandThe boy is handsomePink rose is not redrose garland is made of rosesRoserose is not roseHe rose to powerThe desk is made of rose wood The reason for using the above text is to see how well the Term Extract transformation is able to distinguish words and phrases and find how often they are found in a body of text. The transformation works for text in English and is capable of distinguishing between nouns and other parts of speech. In the following steps we will create a Visual Studio 2005 Business Intelligence project and access some text stored on the hard drive, and apply this transformation and review the results. Creating a Business Intelligence Project In the Visual Studio 2005 IDE, File | New | Project opens the New Project window as shown, where you can highlight the Integration Services Project template in the Business Intelligence page and change its default name to something different. For this tutorial TermExtract has been used as the project name. Text to be accessed shown above is saved to a file, SomeText.txt in the C: drive. In order to access this from the Integration Services we need to create a Package with a data flow task. The source for this data is the SomeText.txt file on the C: drive. Change the name of the default package file name to something different, In this case MineText.dtsx. Click Yes on the Microsoft Visual Studio message box asking whether you want to rename the package. Add a Data Flow Task Drag and drop a Data Flow Task to the Control Flow page as shown in the next figure. The Data Flow Task will access the SomeText.txt using a connection manager, an intermediary between SQL Server Integration Services and the external system. Add a Flat File Source Click on the Data Flow Task page. Drag and drop a Flat File Source from the Data Flow Sources group in the Toolbox and drop it on the Data Flow Page which is open as shown. When the Flat File Source is dropped on the Data Flow Task page you may see this error in the error window as shown. This is nothing to worry about because a connection is not yet established. Add a Connection Manager to Manage Flat File Source Now right click in the Connection Manager's pane as shown to display the pick list of connection managers and choose New Flat File Connection... as shown. This immediately displays the Flat File Connection Manager's editor window as shown. You must provide a name of your choice to the Connection Manager, and a description of your choice. Then you need to use the Browse button to locate the SomeText.txt file on your hard drive. The next figure shows the editor after these choices are made. The rest of the fields such as Locale, Code page, etc were automatically chosen by the program. Now click on the Columns list item in the left of the Editor. The one column that gets populated with the data from the SomeText.txt gets displayed. The program has correctly configured the fields for this text. Click on the OK button on the Editor. This adds a Connection Manager, MyText to the Connection manager's pane in the SSIS designer. With this, the SomeText.txt is available for the other controls that you may add. Add a Term Extraction Transformation The column that was populated in the above will now pass through the Term Extraction Transformation added by dragging and dropping this from the Toolbox on to the Data Flow Page. Click the dangling green line and extend it to touch the Term Extraction Transformation. This is an easy way to establish a connection from the source to a transformation, a destination. Double click the Term Extraction Transformation to open its Editor as shown in the next figure. In the Term Extraction tabbed page you see a single column which is displayed unchecked. Place a check mark for this column as shown in the next figure. When the 'terms' are extracted, the output column will have a 'term' and a 'score' column. The term refers to a noun, a noun phrase, or a noun and a noun phrase. The score represents how many times each term is repeated in the body of the text. Pay attention to the message that says the column can have only values of a certain types and the disabled OK button. The data type of the data going into the Term Extract Transformation can be found by right clicking on the connecting green line and looking at the page that reveals the Meta data list item as shown in the next figure. This is of the data type DT_STR. To rectify this, there are two options, either use one more transformation, the data conversion transformation or use the Advanced Editor of the Flat File Source which can be displayed by right clicking the Flat File source component and choosing the Show Advanced Editor. This option was made to change Str[DT_STR] to Unicode str [DT_WSTR]. The DT_* shows the data type that are supported. The following information about these data types are shown extracted from the Books on line. DT_STR: A null-terminated ANSI/MBCS character string DT_NTEXT: A Unicode character string with a maximum length of 2^30-1 characters DT_WSTR: a null terminated Unicode character string Now when you place a check mark for the Column 0 in the Term Extract Transformation Editor, the OK gets enabled. Click on the Exclusion tab to reveal its page. This page when configured, allows you to exclude (skip) certain terms stored in an OLEDB database. The figure shows the details of editing this page. A Microsoft Access 2003 database called 'SkipTerms' was created and a new table 'SkipTable' was created in this database. It has two columns SkipID (autonumber, Primary Key) and SkipThis (text). A new OLEDB Connection was established along the same lines as the connection manager to the Flat File Source. Of course you need to choose an OLEDB Provider in making this connection. The 'SkipThis' column has just one entry, 'desk'. This noun is found twice in SomeText.txt. The word 'desk' will be skipped in the output column when the Column 0 is processed by this transformation. Click on the Advanced tab to open its page as shown. This is where you choose type of terms, nouns, noun phrases, or both noun and noun phrases. You also select the score which shows how many times (Frequency and Frequency Threshold) the terms appear in the text. As chosen here, the transformation will be looking for noun(s) that gets repeated twice. The case sensitive option can also be chosen but left blank in this exercise. The score type TFIDF is another type of scoring more appropriate for a document collection and not a single document like in this article. You may learn more details on this from this link.  

[Read the first part of this article here] Now you can click on the Preview Data… hyperlink which opens up the Preview Data window as shown in Figure 19. The Select an object to preview field gets populated automatically to run the getData () method. When you click on the Preview button, the grey area is populated by a table showing the retrieved rows of data from the Customers table as shown in Figure 19. Figure 19 Click on the Close button in the above window. In the various tasks of the DataGridView many options are chosen by default. You may also check reordering of the column by placing a check mark in the Edit Column Reordering in Figure 18 which opens Edit Columns window as shown in Figure 20, another useful control to manipulate the columns so that the columns you want to see are the first few columns. Figure 20 You may want to edit the columns and change some of the items such as reordering of the columns, column name, column width, etc. All this can be done from this screen. For this tutorial only the columns width was changed. A label was added and its text was changed to, "Demo 10 Database Customers" as shown in Figure 21. Figure 21     Build the project from the main menu item, Build. Now when the program is run by clicking the Debug --> Start without debugging, or by pressing Ctrl+F5, the program runs and Form1 is displayed as shown in Figure 22. Figure 22 Figure 23 shows the properties of the dataset DsAny that is created when the data source was created. Figure 23   The schema of the above dataset is shown in Figure 24. This gets added to the project files in the Solution Explorer. Figure 24   Using the smart tasks on the CustomerBindingSource you can carry out few of the indicated tasks shown in Figure 25. Figure 25   The properties of the CustomerBindingSource are shown in Figure 26. Figure 26 The CustomerTableAdapter directly connects to the database and it has its own properties window as shown in Figure 27. You will be able to edit queries in the dataset designer, add query, etc using the hyperlinks at the bottom of the properties window. Figure 27 Alternatively you will be able to carry out similar tasks from the smart tasks on the CustomerTableAdapter component in the component tray as shown in Figure 28. In Microsoft applications, you have more than one way of carrying out a task. Figure 28 The Object Browser shown in Figure 29 for this project shows the various data related classes that are used in the application working behind scenes as not a single line of code was explicitly used for this form to display the data. Figure 29  

E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts SBS 2008 includes Exchange 2007, which provides E-mail, Calendar, and Contact functionality. This is available through Outlook, over the Web via Outlook Web Access and on mobile devices. If the user makes a change to one, it will be replicated to Exchange and then to the other locations. How to access from the other locations will be covered later in this article. I'm going to presume that you understand how to send and read email and create and use contacts, but I will share some useful scenarios that many small businesses benefit from, but don't always understand are present in SBS 2008. Some of these will rely on Office 2007 with Outlook, while others can be seen via the web-based interface too. The scenarios are: Viewing your calendar and other people's calendars Scheduling a meeting for multiple people and ensuring their diaries are all free for the time period Telling people when you are going to be away or unavailable Finding emails that have been filed Recovering emails that have been deleted and removed from the deleted items folder All of the actions in this section are carried out on a user's computer, logged in as that user. Only where SBS 2008 is explicitly mentioned, is there an action that is carried out on the server. Outlook 2003 and 2007 connection configuration To configure Microsoft Outlook 2007, you should simply have to open Outlook as it should auto-configure itself. Outlook 2003 will require configuring, but I'm only going cover the important sections here. For full instructions, click on the link How do I use Outlook Anywhere, on the Remote Web Workplace main screen. The links on Remote Web Workplace point to addresses that begin with https://sites/..., which is not accessible from outside the SBS 2008 network. This should be changed to https://remote.yourdomain.co.uk/... as described later in this article. If this has not been done and a user needs access to the information, then they can edit the address in their browser replacing the first part of the URL as described above. If you need to manually configure Outlook, you will need to select the server as an Exchange server. The name of the Microsoft Exchange Server is the name of your SBS 2008 server. In the following screenshot, the name of my SBS 2008 server is davidoverserver and this is entered into the Microsoft Exchange Server section, along with the User Name of the user I am logged in as on their computer. You can either click on Next to finish the settings, or if this is a laptop or a machine that may access SBS 2008 from a remote location, click on More Settings. Click on the Connection tab and then put a check mark in the Connect to my Exchange mailbox using HTTP check box. Finally, click the button Exchange Proxy Settings. Once the proxy settings are open, you will need to type in the remote access URL for your server and also check the Mutually authenticate the session when connecting with SSL, and then enter the name of your remote access server, preceded by msstd:. Clicking on OK will enable you to finish the configuration. Once these changes have been enabled, Outlook will connect to the network without any further action—provided you have an Internet connection, and should work offline until it gets an Internet connection. Calendar management SBS 2008 provides each user a calendar that they can use to manage their diary and which they can choose to share with colleagues if they desire. The level of details shared can be from very basic free and busy time slots through to enabling someone else to have the ability to see and change the diary. This availability of information does concern some users, which is why they can also mark any appointment as private and no details will be shared with others, even if the calendar has been fully shared. Outlook on the desktop enables access to both your and other's calendars, while Outlook and Windows Mobile devices offer much less, if any, access to other people's calendars. I will only describe each task from Outlook in this section, and will provide more information on using Outlook Web Access later in this article. Viewing Calendars Start Outlook from the Start menu. Once Outlook has loaded, click on the Calendar button or go to the Go menu and select Calendar from the menu. You will see your calendar displayed, normally in the Day format with today showing. In the example below, you can see the padlock for the private appointment that others can't see, two normal appointments, and the tentative appointment that is not confirmed at 17:00. To open another person's calendar, click the Open a Shared Calendar link on the lefthand side and then type in the name of the person whose calendar you want to see. If you have permission to view their calendar, you will see both calendars side by side as follows: If you do not have permission and you are running Outlook 2007, you will be prompted to send an email requesting permission. The email will look like this: If the person receiving this email has Outlook 2007, they simply click on Accept to enable you to view the calendar. If you or they have an earlier version of Outlook, then the person whose calendar you want to view will need to carry this task out by hand. To do this, get that individual to open Outlook and then their Calendar and right-click on Calendar under My Calendars and then select Properties from the menu. When the properties appear, go to the Permissions tab and either add the user and assign specific permission, or to make life easier, simply set the default access to reviewer. You can now view both your and other's calendars to identify opportunities to meet. You can open more than one other person's calendar, but things can get confusing with so many open. With Office 2007, you can overlay the calendars by clicking the arrow next to someone's name. For all versions of Outlook, you close a calendar by removing the check mark next to their name in the lefthand navigation pane.

SBS 2008 installation The installation process is split into two sections: Installation of the operating system and other files to the disk Installation of everything that makes it SBS 2008 You cannot separate the two or stop the second half from happening; although, you will be required to provide input to the server at each stage. Operating system installation If you are performing a migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, you must have your USB memory stick with the SBSAnswerFile.xml file loaded onto the root directory. You must also have a network cable plugged into the SBS server, connected to a hub or switch, for the installation to succeed. Migrating to SBS 2008 in a virtual environment If you are installing SBS 2008 into a virtual machine, such as under Hyper-V from Microsoft then you cannot simply plug in a USB memory stick as USB ports are not available within the virtual machine. For the install process to read it, either you must add it as a pass-through hard disk or you can create a Virtual Floppy Disk with the file on it. To add the USB Disk as a hard disk in Hyper-V, mark it as offline in the DISKPART tool and then add it as a drive before starting the virtual machine. For detailed instructions, take a look at http://davidoverton.com/r.ashx?12. If you have a DVD for the system, insert the DVD and boot the system and follow the instructions to boot from a DVD for your system. You will normally have to press a key to start the process. You will see the grey bar progressing across the screen as the DVD is read. If you have a system from a hardware manufacturer then the operating system may already be installed on the hard disk. If this is the case, simply turn on the machine. If your machine will not boot from the DVD and you have a DVD drive on the system, then check the BIOS settings to ensure that the DVD is the first boot drive. You will then be asked to set the Language to install, Time and currency format, and Keyboard or input method to match your needs. If you are migrating, you must ensure that you have installed the USB memory stick before you click on the Install Now button. However, if you are performing a clean installation, then simply press the button. If you wish to carry out a trial installation that gives you 30 days without activating your installation and fixing your hardware to your product key, do not enter a product key into the Product key box. If you are performing your final installation, then enter the key from the SBS 2008 package or the Certificate of Authenticity on the system case if SBS was pre-installed on the server. If you do not enter a product key, you will be prompted to enter the key within 30 days. You can extend the time without a key, but ultimately, you will need to activate SBS 2008 to continue using it. Next, accept the license and click on Next. Select the Custom (advanced) installation option. You should see one or more disks presented to you in a list. There are two schools of thought here on how to configure the first disk. One school has all the data on the first (or primary) partition and the other creates two partitions and splits the data and the operating system. The idea here is that the system partition can be correctly sized and backed up with a different strategy to the data partition. You can also easily move the second partition onto larger disks should there be a need to in the future. There are merits to both arguments, but if you only have a single disk, I would simply select this and install SBS 2008 to this disk without partitioning first. For SBS 2008, this should be absolutely fine as your data needs are not going to grow too rapidly. If you do have significant data requirements with multiple disks, then having the data and system separate does make sense. No hard disks showing If you do not see a hard disk shown in the screen, maybe because you need to load RAID disk drivers, click on the Load Driver button and insert the CD or floppy disk that came with your computer or motherboard. Provided your system supports Windows 2008, this will resolve this problem. Let's have a look at the following screenshot: Click on Next and the actual installation will finally start and take over an hour to complete. You will find yourself watching the progress on a screen similar to the one shown in the following screenshot. There is no interaction to this process, which means it can just be left on its own; however, it is best to check in ever so often to ensure that an error message has not interrupted the installation. The only error I've seen was when there was a read error from my DVD (I had scratched it!). I cleaned the disk and re-started the install again without any issue.