WD My Book Live and SSDP/UPnP

Sometimes you need a basic NAS.  We didn't want DLNA, we didn't want a Media Server, we didn't need automatic configuration of Network stuff.

So, through the GUI, we turned everything off.  Then a few days later, I'm scanning the network for excessive broadcast traffic and two of my top talkers are the darned WD My Book's.

They were hitting the network every X number of seconds with SSDP packets.  And it wasn't just a little bit, since they were my top talkers.

But, there isn't anything in the GUI about turning it off.

After googling around a bit, I discovered the disablelocalssdp switch in Twonky.... but alas that didn't help because I wasn't even running the Twonky service.

So, the WD runs a Debian Linux and I came across this post:

http://linuxadministration.us/?p=43

This told me where the config file was for Debian..

So, I cat'd the /etc/default/upnp_nas file and alas there was a switch:

UPNPNAS_ENABLED=TRUE

Well, I changed it to UPNPNAS_ENABLED=FALSE

and rebooted the NAS...

No more SSDP packet mess coming off the WD boxes anymore.  Yay!!!

Oh yea, to get into the Linux of the WD Live, go to this page:

http://ip_of_your_nas/UI/ssh

and then enable SSH.  Use PuTTY to ssh into your box and I used VI to edit the config file.

Cheers,
Clyde

XP as a terminal server using RemoteApp for a seemless timesheet

One day, one of our Vice-Presidents gets fed up with Microsoft Access 97 performance over a VPN.  Yea, I know.  Running Access over VPN connections is slooooooow.  But, the timesheet application is written in Access 97 and it connects to all our custom accounting applications which are also written in Access 97.  And the VP needs to be able to complete his timesheet in a reasonable amount of time.  Speed up the story... can't rewrite the application or migrate to Web front end with SQL backend.  So what is a IT Manager to do?

How about dedicating an old workstation to running the Access 97 timesheet application?

Yea, there are ways to allow multiple terminal server sessions on an XP box but I don't really want to break Microsoft licensing.  Oh yea, and I'd like a seemless application rather than a remote desktop that users will have to figure out.

Here's what works for now:

1.  On the old workstation running Windows XP, turn on remote desktop.  Plenty of instructions on web on how to do that.

2.  Install KB961742-v3.  I know it says that it is for Windows 7 XP mode, but hey, it works on a physical box too.

3.  Use this Remote App tool on the XP box to configure the Remote App.  Thanks Kim Knight!

4.  Use that app to also create the rdp file.

Okay it works... but the only problem?  Remote App sessions are set to never terminate by default.  They simply disconnect.  But on XP this is a problem because then no local users can use the machine or the next person to use the RemoteApp has to boot the previous user.

It took a while to find, but Windows Server 2008 has a Group Policy to set a timeout to terminate disconnected sessions.  Well, if you take apart the .admx file, you can pull out the registry setting that needs to be changed.

As a shot, I applied that registry setting to the XP box and Voila!

The registry setting is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services

"MaxDisconnectionTime"=dword:0000ea60

The value is the timeout in seconds * 1000.  Google it and you'll find out more than you need to know.

So now, after 20-40 seconds the XP machine terminates the disconnected session and the machine is back to normal as far as being able to be used by a user on the console or the next Timesheet session.

Now my VPN users can use the seemless timesheet application and the only network traffic over the VPN is the KVM traffic.  So it is nice and speedy.  I only have a handful of people on the VPN at a time, so they'll have to deconflict usage of the timesheet.

Cheers and Good Luck,
Clyde