@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

We also have a call into our Security/Fire Alarm company on the costs of a replacement alarm system is and if it can work over cellular. We will then see which will have the best ROI depending on years of service.

It's highly unlikely that you need to replace the alarm system, as most commercial security systems can be expanded with different modules. Moving from POTS to IP or cellular is very common.

It's also very possible that your alarm system will not work over your AT&T ATA (POTS emulation). Some alarm systems don't use the same signaling as a modem or fax would.

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

Our POTS line pricing was bumped again

Everything that involves POTS will increase in price exponentially as the companies are trying to get rid of their copper installations.

That will include ATAs as well as they will become more and more legacy, less and less common and more expensive to support.

So I believe the best option is to move away completely from POTS to something current as soon as possible - instead of trying to limp along another year.

Zoho has a new-ish package for families called Zillum.

There are three package sizes (up to 3, 5 and 10 accounts) each with a different amount of storage.

Price turns out to be about $2/user/month - it's not free but with Zoho you're not the product. And it's lower than comparable Zoho business package.

I signed up for the family but haven't rolled it out yet. But it works pretty much exactly as the business apps.

I got a couple of domains setup (you can have multiple) so they can have both serious email addresses ([email protected]) and throwaway type accounts ([email protected]).

Zillum consists of:

• Zoho Mail - 25GB mail storage per account, calendars etc
• Zoho Workdrive - 0.5TB / 1TB / 2TB of total team storage
• Zoho Cliq - Slack like team chat
• Zoho Vault - Zoho's team oriented password manager
• Zoho Office - Zoho's office apps

Here's more info and pricing:
https://www.zoho.com/zillum

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

@Pete-S said in POTS line replacement:

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

We also have a call into our Security/Fire Alarm company on the costs of a replacement alarm system is and if it can work over cellular. We will then see which will have the best ROI depending on years of service.

It's highly unlikely that you need to replace the alarm system, as most commercial security systems can be expanded with different modules. Moving from POTS to IP or cellular is very common.

It's also very possible that your alarm system will not work over your AT&T ATA (POTS emulation). Some alarm systems don't use the same signaling as a modem or fax would.

I found the manual online and this is the section describing the transmitter itself.

"Digital Alarm Communicator/Transmitter
Two modular phone jacks allow easy connection to telephone lines. Modular jacks are labeled PH1 for Primary Phone Line and PH2 for
Secondary Phone Line. Two telephone line active red LEDs are provided as well as a green Kissoff LED. The integral digital communicator provides the following functions:
• Line Seizure: takes control of the phone lines disconnecting any premises phones
• Off/On Hook: performs on and off-hook status to the phone lines
• Listen for dial tone: 440 Hz tone typical in most networks
• Dialing the Central Station(s) number: default is Touch-Tone, programmable to rotary
• For tone burst or touchtone type formats: discern proper Ack and Kissoff tone(s). The frequency and time duration of the tone(s)
varies with the transmission format. The control panel will adjust accordingly.
• Communicate in the following formats:
Ademco Contact ID
SIA-DCS-8
SIA-DCS-20"

With regards to signaling, this is the only thing that stuck out to me.

It has for sure more capability than your typical ATA. For instance I've never seen line seizure, off/on hook and rotary dialing. It's likely that they use a specific codec optimized for tones and not talk as well.

With features like that I think it looks like they have been targeting alarm systems and other odd devices. I think there is a very good chance that it will work without problems. If you need it.

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.

You can convince people with incentives, but not with reasoning and logic.

For example by offering them to send documents through email (free) and through fax (surcharge per page).

It's the same as what the operators are doing to you. They are giving you an incentive to move away from POTS by increasing the cost.

Would you look at options if the cost didn't go up?

@scottalanmiller said in How to Backup Patterson Dental EagleSoft Software:

This is a perfect example of how backup software cannot be universally application aware and why IT must always understand how the applications work under the hood to safely take backups.

Yeah, good example!

@gjacobse said in PS ISE: Unsaved Projects:

As for setting up a Git Server? Yea,.. I don't know anything about those - or if one would be permitted in our environment.

You can use free git "servers" in the cloud, like gitlab.com and github.com, so no need to host your own. Your code doesn't become public because you store it there.

However you must also install git on your local machine where you are editing the scripts. So that might be a problem for you if you have restricted access over your workstation.

Git has limitations that adds a lot of complexity in some scenarios.

You should expect 3 years from batteries in standard cheap budget UPSes.

That's the service life of universal lead-acid battery technology.

But if you have a larger UPS (like a 3 phase) where the batteries are specifically made for UPS use, you should expect 10 years of service. It's usually in the specs for the batteries you buy. Some batteries have a 20 year service life.

@Johann said in DIY router build:

I think I should specified that my current router died a few days ago and that's one of the reasons I wanted to start with a DIY router. Because a few people said that I should not tinker on my network edge, I went ahead and bought a ASUS WiFi 6 Router (RT-AX3000) on Amazon. At the same time, others said that a DIY option can be around or a little more than a COTS router, so it's worth it to just go that route and dump the COTS router.

No, you need a working internet connection first to build anything. Any router would get that job done though.

Pros in general prefer a standard router/firewall with no wifi and then one or several access points to provide wifi. For example Edgerouter ER-X and any access point (if you need wifi).

In your case with that small space I'd probably just buy a $50 wifi router and be done with it. No point in buying a more expensive wifi router - better to buy the pro stuff in that case.

So I'd just cancel the amazon order and order a cheaper wifi router instead or go the pro route.

@Johann said in DIY router build:

@Pete-S - Are you referring to something like this?
https://metebalci.com/blog/home-lab-server-2022/
If so, this may be a bit much for me personally. The cost isn't a big issue even though this is expensive, but rather having to build an entire separate PC tower unit is likely not an option for me currently. My studio is less than 160 sq ft, so space is very limited here. Also, a server like in the link above would very likely consume a ton of wattage and my building only allows a certain amount of total wattage from each studio. This server would eat too much power unfortunately. But I can definitely return to this after I have moved into a new place (or ideally, have purchased an apartment/house). OR if you have a low wattage idea, then, nevermind what I typed above.

No, something like this:

Any Intel NUC. They're small and all models are low power. You just need to put in enough memory and SSD to run some virtual machines. 32GB RAM will do it.

@Johann said in DIY router build:

Can you tell me more about the Intel NUC option, please? I'd just need a case, memory and SSD, yes? Any good sample builds that come to mind?

There is nothing to build. It's often sold as a barebone, meaning you buy whatever memory you need and whatever SSD you want, plug it in and you're good to go. Youtube is your friend for stuff like that.

@Dashrender said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:

@Pete-S said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:

@scottalanmiller said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:

First the command itself, showing gmail settings here by default but obviously fill in with your own details:

Does it work? I thought gmail required OAuth nowadays and you couldn't use plain username & password for authentication anymore.

gmail still allows the creation of app passwords.

OK, then it works for now I guess.

I always cringe when I see MSPs that set up their clients MFPs and other devices using random gmail accounts.

IMHO it's unprofessional and much better to use a real transactional email service for these kinds of applications.

@scottalanmiller said in Save shell session to disk?:

@JaredBusch said in Save shell session to disk?:

It almost never happens that I know ahead of time, and I do not like to launch screen for no reason.

That totally gets me, too.

That's why you should launch ssh like this:
ssh [email protected] -t screen -RR

If you don't have a session going it will create one.
If you had a session going but it was interrupted, it will reconnect to it automatically.

And it's completely transparent from the users point of view. No need to run any screen commands or keyboard shortcuts.

Especially good in these situations:

• a laptop that you close the lid on
• flaky internet connection
• desktop PC in a country with unreliable power grid
• when running a process that takes a long time, like copying files

I also came across Teleport which is especially intended as a jump server.

I've seen it before but never had closer look.

@scottalanmiller said in ps2 to usb adapters:

If I really think about is, most keyboards prior to PS/2 were using more traditional serial adapters. Which were digital. Duh.

Actually the first IBM PCs used the same type of electrical interface but a different connector, a 5 pin DIN.

The mouse was a real 9-pin serial DSUB at first though. If my memory is correct LOL

@JaredBusch said in UFW or IPTABLES:

@Pete-S said in UFW or IPTABLES:

So I think the current recommendation is to either stick to ufw or firewall-cmd or just use nft directly.

I try to. This was the first time I've had a need to go outside the box of ufw or firewall-cmd to use direct iptables in years.

Looks like you have to add it in ufw config file etc/ufw/before.rules since there is no command for it.

*nat
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [0:0]
-A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 5443
COMMIT

https://www.arubacloud.com/tutorial/how-to-manage-and-forward-ports-with-ufw-on-ubuntu-18-04.aspx

With firewalld you can do:

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-masquerade
firewall-cmd --zone=public--add-forward-port=port=443:proto=tcp:toport=5443

https://linoxide.com/how-to-configure-firewall-with-firewalld/

I don't know if Mikrotik is in stock for you, but they have routers in the same low price range as Ubiquiti.

We've been looking at the more advanced powerful models but haven't actually done any testing yet.

It seems that their models run RouterOS and have all features unlocked regardless of the cost of the unit. They do have a couple of different generations of Router OS though.

@AdamF said in Alternative to never in stock Ubiquiti EdgeMax line:

@scottalanmiller Any recommendations for your new "go to" product(s) for this? MicroTik? Pfsense/Netgate? Something else?

Pfsense, opnsense, vyos and other x86 firewalls are not in the same price range as a cheap edgerouter - when you factor in needed hardware.

You're in the $200-or-more range for these options with the lowest grade hardware. $1000 and up, if you want rackmount enterprise grade hardware.

I've used this kind of Supermicro hardware for pfsense on many occasions. It uses Intel's low power CPUs, so TDP like 15-20W. Easily mounted in a network rack next to switches, patch panels and whatnot.

@Dashrender said in Another new server question:

@siringo
Bay1 and 2 show SSD, Bays 3-5 show HDD, are you sure those are Solid State Drives?? I mean I see the QLC (I assume quad level cells), but it's worth confirming!

It's SSD because it says SSD on the same line

It's actually these: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1223-thinksystem-5210-entry-6gb-sata-qlc-ssds

Micron 5210 SSD drives with Lenovo stickers and maybe firmware adjustment for Lenovo.

@gjacobse

OK, I checked now and the GX420T and GX430T is the same printer but with different dpi print heads.

If you can tell the application that prints to print differently depending on which printer you are printing to, everything will be fine.

If you can't, you have to replace those two GX430T printers with GX420T models.

Or put another way - if you want to have printers that are drop-in replacements for each other, you need to buy just GX420T printers (or other 203 dpi models).