Crumpled Thoughts

Who knew Adobe had such a sense of humor? I was browsing trough OpenType fonts at www.adobe.com/type and came across this jewel. Not sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to use it, but you never know

Today I had to set up a Treo 650 to access a user’s Exchange mailbox over the web. I did not imagine it would be as difficult as it turned out to be.

At this site we run a Linux router/firewall that handles all traffic coming into, and leaving the network. We use Apache’s mod_proxy to proxy web connections from the internet to IIS servers on the private network. Having had more than a couple 36+ hour days cleaning up viruses due to exploited IIS servers, I feel much more comfortable having Apache handle the web requests.

One of the “Gotcha’s” to using mod_proxy is that you have to disable “Integrated Windows Authentication” on any sites you proxy with Apache. Apache doesn’t understand the headers involved. No big deal, because these requests are typically coming from the internet over SSL.

I started the setup at about 12:00 noon today. The first thing I did was add the following bits of code to the Apache configuration file to Proxy the ActiveSync connections:

#ActiveSync
ProxyPass /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync https://webmail.example.com/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync
ProxyPassReverse /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync https://webmail.example.com/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync

I then put the appropriate settings into the Treo, and tested connectivity. This is where things started to piss me off.

The software on the Treo has terrible, non-intuitive error codes. The documentation is even worse. This is what I discovered (over about 4 hours of trying to get it to work):

• For the ProxyPass directives to work, you can not use Integrated Windows Authentication on the IIS site.
• For the Treo VersaMail app to use Exchange ActiveSync it must use kerberos authentication, which requires enabling Integrated Windows Authentication.
• Palm’s software engineers don’t really give a shit whether the error message you get is in any way helpful, just as long as you understand it’s not working.

So the thing that sucks about this is that we run “stuff” on the gateway which requires us to use Apache on Linux. It provides remote access for employees through a web interface, and dynamically modifies iptables firewall rules when folks need access.

This was my fix, which I think is as good of a fix as is possible.

• Exported the IIS web site that handled OWA, OMA, and ActiveSync to a file.
• Created a new web site from the exported file.
• Changed the TCP ports for HTTP and HTTPS to obscure, high ports.
• Modified the document root on the IIS site, as all the magic happens in Virtual Directories.
• Requested/Installed a new SSL certificate from an internal enterprise CA with a common name matching the internet FQDN.
• Enabled “Integrated Windows Authentication” on the “Exchange” virtual directory in this new web site.
• Forwarded the obscure, high SSL port from the firewall into the Exchange server.

Now the Treo works… just had to set the obscure high port in the advanced settings on the Treo. I didn’t want to go down the forwarded port road, because it seems like a compromise in security. All too often I see people bypass security measures in order to get things to work, and I hate it. This seems like a small compromise I’ll have to settle for.

Got a better solution? Let me know.

-Chris

It’s Sunday night and we’re back in Boise. McCall was really nice, even though it was a bit chilly at times. Paula & Kairi went up to McCall with Paula’s parents last Monday… and I joined them Wednesday afternoon. I took three days of vacation from work and it felt really nice. My boss insisted that I leave my cell phone and laptop in Boise to make sure I had a true vacation. Last year at this time I kept my laptop on a constant VPN connection to the office to monitor email and stay in touch. This year I cheated once and checked my email Thursday night.

It’s funny… I need an internet connection to stay sane. If I’m without internet access it feels like being without electricity. I use the internet for everything. I haven’t opened a phone book in probably 4 years, when my cable internet access was down and I needed the number to call the cable company. I order pizza online, bank online, shop online, pay bills online, get movies, books, and software online. For better or worse I need internet access, and it has to be fast.

I saw a job posting for an IT position at the Tamarack Resort in Donnelly Idaho and just about sent a resume over. Then I thought about how internet access in Donnelly would probably be. I’m thinking slow, with frequent outages. I couldn’t handle that. It would kill me.

So, we’re back in Boise. As much as I’m not looking forward to going in to the office in the morning, it was great to get home to my cable modem. Downloaded a movie to watch tonight… transferred a full DVD in 4 hours. If you haven’t seen Failure to Launch, I recommend it. It wasn’t the typical Matthew McConaughey chick flick. It got terrible reviews, but I really enjoyed it.

Anyhow… I guess I’m rambling at this point, better go unpack

Yesterday we took out the bikes and ATV to Bear Basin to hit the trails. We had a really good time. Kairi got to ride on the ATV with Grandpa (very slowly).

We’ve been spending this week relaxing in McCall. Today we went to Zims hot springs in New Meadows, and afterward went and checked out the ‘Last Chance’ campground off of Highway 55, between New Meadows and McCall. I took this picture of Kairi smiling.

Today everyone has been going on and on about the potential evil activities which will undoubtably occur today. TODAY IS NOT 6/6/6. Today is 6/6/2006. Get your head out of the book of Revelations long enough to realize today is just another day.

Anyone who tells you that today is 6/6/6 is a liar, and you can tell them I told you that. It was that kind of thinking that got us in to the whole Y2K mess.

Discuss.