I do a lot of scripting for data processing and presentation work.  I used to work in UNIX, primarily using SAS, perl, and various UNIX scripts in born shell.  I now work in a much more limited Windows environment.  I am having trouble getting used to the Window command prompt having a much more limited set of commands. 

I'm migrating all our servers to a new host, which seems like a good opportunity to fix some annoying things.

In particular email: At the moment we're using exim4 and some pop3 server or another and squirrel-mail.

Whenever they ask me to create a new email account, I have to add a new user account for the whole machine. Making an /etc/passwd entry, giving shell access (which I then take away again), making a home directory etc. All just so they can collect email.

This seems inefficent

Survey Says...

Dear Microsoft,

When I fill out your dynamic survey, and in it I specify that I'm not a manager (question #21), that I have nothing to do with corporate policy (question #25) and that my job duties entail IT and software support (question #35), do not then throw management-style idiotspeak at me in a follow-up question.

Also, unexpected job-related happiness including alcohol and boxen.

Beer poll
x-posted to da brog.

Unix reviews. And stuff.

Where's the Start Button?

"We downloaded the file system clean-up program and it won't run!"

Huh? It's not available for general download; it has to be requested for specific purposes. Check the back tickets for these guys and sure enough, their last ticket was handled by a colleague in Bangalore. A quick glance at their system: Solaris. A shudder as I click over to the attached files...

Poll.

x-posted from da brog