This named.conf config entry proved most useful. I’ve posted it here so that everytime I need to do this, I don’t start from scratch trying to figure it out again - three times now! Hopefully other people will find it useful.

logging {
  channel simple_log {
    file "/var/log/named/bind.log" versions 3 size 5m;
    severity info;
    print-time yes;
    print-severity yes;
    print-category yes;
  };
  category queries {
    simple_log;
  };
};

The last few weeks have seen Rentokil move into their new offices and I’ve been heavily involved in the process of moving people, their PCs and their data from the Garland Road and Felcourt sites to City Place. All the staff that are moving at this time have now moved and the next task is to migrate all the servers from the data cente at Garland Road to our new one at City Place.

We’ve all been working flat out to get a million-and-one things done and it definately shows – so far (excluding glitches to be expected) it has gone very well and I’m really proud of my work that’s gone into it.

I personally feel that it’s unlikely we’ll move on the 10th April as planned, the timescales are all just a bit to tight for comfort at the moment, but I may be proved wrong.

Currently, we’re building all the new servers required for general network stuff and file and print. Hit a bit of a stalling point until we have a list of departments requiring new file servers.

Rentokil currently use an external company to run their search facility across our many web sites. However the Google Mini works out as a much cheaper option and allows us to run everything in house.

And it looks rather cool too

I posted my CV on JobSite a few months after I graduated last year. I spent some time working for myself (t/a Hey Presto! Internet Services) and for 4D Internet but quickly decided working from my bedroom all day, every day, wasn’t good. I tried a few agencies locally for IT jobs but nothing much seemed to be available, or those that I did find I could’ve done 5 years ago without A-Levels or a degree, which wouldn’t have been very taxing.

Eventually an agency in town approached me with a research job based locally. Their description of it though sounded very dull and I decided not to pursue this. Although I did find out what the company was and discovered they had a very large IT department. So I sent my CV off to them on the off-change they had something else available.

Then about a week later another agency called to say they had a job for a local company they were trying to fill and my CV fitted the job locally. When the chap described the job, it began to sound familiar and when he told me the company name, turns out it was the same one the previous agency had already spoken to me about. This time though, the description I got was much more interesting, involving research of new technologies and development of all kinds of things, hardware and software. So, I had a telephone interview a few days later which mainly involved some questions about various technologies and nothing much I hadn’t dealt with before.

Apparently I did quite well in the phone interview (found out later I actually got every question right which no-one had done before :p) so was invited to a proper interview the next Monday. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they offered me the job there and then, to start the next week. Over the last 12 months I’ve been involved in a huge variety of projects, just some of them listed below:

• Common Authentication – a method of allowing customers to login to Rentokil Initial web sites and services with just one set of credentials
• SMS Gateway – development of a set of applications and scripts to send SMS messages via a GSM modem from a variety of sources.
• VMWare – server virtualisation – pretty much all new servers are virtual now and gradually moving all physical machines over too
• Reverse Proxy – proxy server for incoming web site requests and redirection to appropriate servers.
• SSL VPN – a technology to allow users to access resources on Rentokil’s internal network securely.
• RINX / RINA – Rentokil Initial’s own flavour of Linux. Most other projects are based on this in one way or another.

… and loads more. I’ll probably re-visit this post in the next week or so when I’ve got more thoughts

[EDIT]

As promised – some more updates. Other things I’ve been involved with:

• Exchange and Blackberries – deployment of internal Exchange system and susequent research into out-sourced solutions
• Citrix – deployment of applications using a Citrix Farm and an SSL VPN
• Various technologies for WebDev – including PHP development, LDAP, SOAP and other odds and sods

[/EDIT]

It’s nothing particularly exciting, but since trips out are rather rare for members of SysMan and TechDev I felt it was worth a mention

My job for the day was to install a reverse proxy server running Rentokil’s own flavour of Linux and pound. This is to act as a middle-man between requests from the outside world and the in-house web booking engine (an IIS-hosted web site). The reverse proxy was sited in the DMZ, so access to it from the outside is strictly limited (just to port 80 at the moment). It then sanatizes requests (blocking anything deemed “bad”) and passes them to the back end server in the protected network. It basically adds a safety layer to prevent having to expose an IIS box directly to the world.

Surprisingly this all went rather well, other than a mis-configuration of the default gateway, the pound and firewall settings were all correct first time. Which was rather pleasing.

I went to the offices with the web development manager from the office here. Whilst I was sorting out the reverse proxy he was meeting with two prospective web hosting companies, along with various members of Initial’s IT team, to discuss the outsourcing of the hosting of Initial’s web site when they are sold off. The site’s currently hosted in-house here at Garland Road, but obviously this couldn’t continue once they were no longer part of the group.

One of the companies was 4D Internet, who I worked for between graduating in summer 2004 and starting at Rentokil in the December. The decision is very close at the moment as to who gets the contract, but 4D may have the winning proposal with their flexibility and management offerings. Without wanting to jinx anything, I’ll say no more until the decision is made :p

I’ve setup a wiki so everyone can discuss: http://www.andrewtaylor.me.uk/cityplace/

Edit: You can also view a real-time version here: http://cam.andrewtaylor.me.uk/ (subject to the ADSL connection working!)

This was a link I helped to install, so luckily we managed to scrape together enough information to resolve the issue by routing their traffic elsewhere.

And the ISDN link to Cheshunt failed – again, BT’s fault. At least it was only two red lights today.