Some Notes on the Machines

If your firewall lets you bypass data checks by FQDN, this works well; just import this into an alias and use that as the “To” for a rule called ExchangeOnline, for ports 80 and 443:

*.office.com
*.office365.com
*.office.net
*.onmicrosoft.com
*.microsoftonline.com
*.microsoft.com
*.live.com
*.windows.net
*.microsoftonline-p.com
*.microsoftonline-p.net
*.microsoftonlineimages.com
*.msecnd.net
*.msocdn.com
*.glbdns.microsoft.com
*.activedirectory.windowsazure.com
*.verisign.com
*.symcb.com
*.symcd.com
*.omniroot.com
*.geotrust.com
*.entrust.net
*.public-trust.com

The above is condensed from here. It includes only Exchange Online, there are some other items to be added for other Office 365 services including Skype etcetera.

Grub Customizer is a great GUI configurator for GRUB, currently the most common boot loader for ix86 and AMD64 hardware. The Customizer has issues compiling on some setups, especially later versions of gcc. Here’s what I found to do:

1. Download grub-customizer-4.0.6.tar.gz, unpack.
2. ccmake .
3. Resolve any missing libraries et cetera. ccmake . again until nothing missing.
4. Look for these files:
   ./CMakeFiles/grub-customizer.dir/flags.make
./CMakeFiles/grubcfg-proxy.dir/flags.make
5. Add -std=gnu++11 as first item to CXX_FLAGS in both files.
6. cmake .
7. Again resolve any missing libraries et cetera. cmake . again until nothing missing.
8. make
9. sudo make install

Debian Testing is an excellent Linux distro, very up-to-date, and has more packages and supports more architectures than any other. Here are suggestions for desktop setup:

• Google Chrome.

• Pale Moon. This is a repackaging of Firefox which is faster and a bit leaner, still very compatible with everything Firefoxy.

• Java. Try this:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys EEA14886
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

• Compile a new kernel optimized for your hardware, for a jolt of speed:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch08s06.html.en

• Recompile glibc optimized for your hardware, for a big jolt of speed:

http://notes.ponderworthy.com/rebuild-glibc-optimized-for-your-cpu-in-debian-testing-as-a-local-package-version

• Add grub-customizer to change the kernel to load by default, if desired:

Recent versions of ShoreTel Communicator have a lot of trouble handling shared contacts folders as found in Outlook. But there is a fix:

http://www.techygeekshome.co.uk/2014/04/shoretelcontactsv3.html

Steps:

1. The user must be a local admin.
2. The install requires that Communicator and Outlook be not running. There is a click within the setup utility to make sure of this.
3. Click within the installer, to install.
4. Reboot the PC.
5. Log in as the user again. Open ShoreTel Communicator, Tools/Options…, Outlook, Upload Options. See multiple items, all checked. This confirms successful installation.
6. Open Outlook, make sure all ShoreTel plugins are not disabled.
7. Open the Directory tab in Communicator, this is where they will show up; attempt a search on a common first name (e.g., “Joe”), this will prove that it is working.

Some Windows Update issues are permissions problems, which can be fixed using a method involving SUBINACL:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/968003#/en-us/kb/968003

The following in an .htaccess file, will redirect all web-browser clients except the one using IP 111.111.111.111

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^111\.111\.111\.111
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maint.html$ [NC]
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(jpe?g?|png|gif) [NC]
 RewriteRule .* /maint.html [R=302,L]
</IfModule>

Not tested yet, but looks very intriguing:

http://www.profilemigrator.com/e/pm/shop

Here is a good synopsis:

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch08s06.html.en

The following very quick fix:

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/acrobat-failed-launch-30-days.html

often will save the bacon.

A great way to increase! For Windows, CC Proxy is highly recommended:

http://www.youngzsoft.net/ccproxy/proxy-server-download.htm

and for Linux, Polipo, which is in many distros:

http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~jch/software/polipo/