newsreader wrote:

"Martin" <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote in message

[...]

Such is the danger of blind automagical no-warning behind your back
'others know better' updates to help you along with extra 'features'...

Give me *some* credit...  No automagic updates here, but there's always the
possibility that one of the recent patches I manually applied to fix known
Windoze security holes screwed something else up.

(:-))

Perhaps you are clued up then!

Making a few wild guesses...

Only those systems patched? Or the target system? Network protocols or configs changed/reset/defaulted? IE reassumed complete control of all internet settings?

Sorry, no really good guesses from the info available.

Some more data points:
S@h (NT CLI 3.03) has no problem connecting directly with Berkeley if I
remove the proxy info for SETI Queue.

So NAT (ooops, "ICS") works.

SETI Queue shows no evidence of connection attempts from the affected
machines in its logs.

So SetiQueue isn't seeing anything. Has the lan addressing changed? Have you set the appropriate gateway address? Is SetiQueue's queue server mask ok for your address range (not only the http server)? Firewall? Router? Miss-configured lan switch?


[...]

I would be surprised if that was the case.  In any event, it's not something
that would have changed out of the blue.

... What bits have the service packs changed?...



[...]

Identical hardware issues from out of nowhere are unlikely on two systems at
once.  =)

There's got to be a common denominator somewhere....

Exactly... Or rather, very likely...

Compare and contrast and search...

(However, windoze introduces enough randomness and inconsistency to
confound everyone.)

Despite all the anti-MicroSloth hype, I've never had any real issues with
Windoze.  In my experience, a Windoze system configured with the same level
of care necessary to configure a *nix system well is, IMHO, just as
reliable.  The problem is that even a sloppily configured Windoze system can
be made to run even if it can't be made to run well. =>

The 'MicroSloth' stuff works well enough initially if you are happy to work in exactly the way expected of you. However, try to do something slightly different to their 'way of working' and you soon hit time consuming or expensive problems.

(Warning: Rant mode on!)
The early days were good for their hard sell tactics driving down the cost of software. However, all good sense has been lost to hyped feature rich buggy fragile deliberately incompatible stuff that is expensive and horrendously expensive for Total Cost of Ownership. Their more recent EULAs foisted on their victims has killed the last of my sympathy for that crocodile of a company. There is a good argument that they have slowed the advancement of computer science to the detriment of all due to their ferocious marketing and everyones' resultant miss-directed efforts.

And I'm losing about 20% of my internet bandwidth due to MS Blaster pings (92 bytes long), and then the CPU time and log file space to drop them. (That's a lot of blasts per minute (:-((

(Rant off.)

The various OSes have their place. However, dubious monopolistic practices have severely skewed the overall picture.


I spent some good time configuring/securing a recent Windoze installation. Ofcourse, I was forced into using multiple third party software to try to patch over various glaring deficiencies. There is also the problem still of incompatible doc file formats/versions between on site and other companies off site... Users just hit 'save' or 'send', they have no concern about propriatory non-backwards compatible formats...

Linux is expensive in other ways, but in my opinion it is far more elegant and robust a solution that is _useable_.


Meanwhile, good luck in you hunt.

The solution is awaited with interest.


Regards,
Martin