Tag Archives: Microsoft

RD Web and RD Gateway through Ubuntu

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So I finally got our RD Web and RD Gateway servers running at school, which is great as we can have remote desktop and remote application access back to the school network without the need to muck around configuring VPN tunnels for people. The RD Gateway neatly bundles all the RDP traffic up inside a HTTPS / SSL / TLS tunnel for us.

I am not going to go into the details of that install as there are plenty of good resources out there like https://hotstickybun.com/nordvpn-for-kodi for example; and it drove me round the bend a bit! Anyway, it all works now 😉

Accessing from home on my Windows 7 machine worked a treat, as did accessing them from my Android phone using the Microsoft RDP App. I haven’t tried OSX or iOS as I don’t have access to those devices; but I am sure that Microsoft’s RDP Client for OSX will deliver.

So then I tried to connect to the RD Session Host through my Ubuntu machine…

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iSAMS to Moodle Course Enrolment – Part 2

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This is the second post about setting up iSAMS and Moodle to perform course and user course enrolment synchronisation. Here are links to the other sections:

  1. Prerequisites and Assumptions
  2. Part 1 – Setting up your MSSQL Server
  3. Part 2 – Set up Apache to connect to MS SQL Server
  4. Part 3 – Setting up Moodle

Set up Apache to connect to MS SQL Server

We now need to configure our LAMP / Moodle server to be able to talk to MSSQL so that we can retrieve the data we prepared in our new database in the previous post. Again you will need to have already set up your LAMP / Moodle server by this point. Please either set it up as per the official Moodle documentation or as per my previous post; then come back here.

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iSAMS to Moodle Course Enrolment – Part 1

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I have begun looking at using Moodle at my school and how we can integrate it into our existing databases so to remove as much administrative burden as possible. I have used Moodle on and off for many years now and one of the first things I always do is set it up to use LDAP Authentication for its log-ons. This makes it really easy to allow users to use their Active Directory log-ons to access your Moodle install. I will not go in to details of that here as it is already well documented over on the Moodle Docs site.

However, one thing that had always proved harder for me with Moodle was the integration of course / class enrolments with the MIS that the school was using. Previously that has normally been Capita SIMS. Capita’s licensing meant I was not allowed to play around in the database back-end of that system to try and create a streamlined process. My current school however uses iSAMS for its MIS system and with this system all custom reporting is done through Microsoft’s SSRS. The upshot of this is that you have full access to the MSSQL database back-end of your MIS and you can begin to manipulate the data using the tools that Microsoft provide you with MSSQL. With this in mind I began looking at the Moodle External Database Enrolment Module to see if we could get a live link between our Moodle install and the course enrolment data already being held and maintained in our school MIS, iSAMS.
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Windows Clients not authenticating to NPS / RADIUS Server

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I have been in the process of setting up a BYOD solution at my school for the past few months (more on this to follow!) and have set-up a NPS / RADIUS Server as the core authentication server for this solution. All was going well and the launch was publicised to everyone for the start of the January term.

I returned after the Christmas break to perform some final tests and document the system ready to let our students start connecting their own devices; when I found that Apple and Android devices would connect fine but I could not get any Windows laptops to connect at all!
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WSUS Website Verifications are not accurate

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For quite some time now I have been seeing scores of the following errors filling up my WSUS Server’s Event Viewer;

  • 12052 – The DSS Authentication Web Service is not working.
  • 12042 – The SimpleAuth Web Service is not working.
  • 12022 – The Client Web Service is not working.
  • 12032 – The Server Synchronization Web Service is not working.
  • 12012 – The API Remoting Web Service is not working.
  • 12002 – The Reporting Web Service is not working.
  • 13042 – Self-update is not working.

However, WSUS was receiving updates from Microsoft and all of my clients were getting updates from my server, so I did not let it bother me too much! Today I was setting up monitoring for all services and roles on this server and so decided I wanted to clear these errors up for good.

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