Problem(?) with Novell WebAccess

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spragers
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Problem(?) with Novell WebAccess

Post by spragers »

Hi,

I had a patron get quite angry at me this past Friday after she lost an email that she had been working on for "a half hour" and this "wasn't the first time" it had happened. Apparently, the same thing happened to her the last time she was here, although I was never told about it, and she "complained to the woman at the desk" and "was told the problem would be fixed."

I won't mention the things I thought about saying to her at the moment :evil: but among them was "if you dislike our FREE service so much, why don't you buy computer and do this at home?" but I digress :)

From our Internet logs, it appears that she was using Novell WebAccess to read her school email, write an email, and insert addresses from her address book. I can email you a copy of her log if you'd like. Apparently when she clicked to send the email, an error message appeared saying "something about security" (her exact words) which she had "never seen before." Needless to say, that helped immensely in figuring out the problem :roll:

Does anyone have an account they can use to test out PWB under Novell WebAccess, typing an email, inserting addresses from an address book, and sending?

Thanks!

Scott
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Post by Scott »

Do you have filtering turned on and if so you didn't happen to have the log access turned on did you? I wonder if the web site was being denied by the filter and the message she received was the denied dialog.

--Scott

spragers
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Post by spragers »

At the end of this message is a copy of the web log. Nothing in our URL.txt file shows up in any of these URLs. (The history file had already been parsed to remove duplicate entries.) She should not have seen any mesages related to our PWB filter, though, because we have

ShowAccessDialog=False

As it would happen, one of our Circ Assistants is a teacher in the local district, so I'll see if she can try using her email account in PWB tonight and we'll see what happens.

Also, this was on our one new station, a P4 Dell running Windows XP.

I just wish patrons paid more attention to error messages :(
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:00 <t> http://www.riponlibrary.org/
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:09 <-> www.beaverdam.k12.wi.us
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:09 <a-> http://www.beaverdam.k12.wi.us/
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:13 <a-> http://www.beaverdam.k12.wi.us/district ... ontact.htm
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:15 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/webacc
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=caption
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=mcblank
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=maindoc
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/webacc
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=caption
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=mcblank
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... e=features
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... =workspace
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=maindoc
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:31 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... e=features
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:32 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=folders
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:32 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:32 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... =workspace
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:32 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=folders
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:32 <t> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:24:42 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... versal&z=1
Internet A 06/20/03 16:25:18 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... versal&z=2
Internet A 06/20/03 16:25:19 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... n=5467z1z0
Internet A 06/20/03 16:25:19 <ad> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... VERSAL&z=2
Internet A 06/20/03 16:26:23 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... versal&z=3
Internet A 06/20/03 16:26:23 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... n=5465z3z0
Internet A 06/20/03 16:26:24 <ad> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... VERSAL&z=3
Internet A 06/20/03 16:26:43 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... merge=send
Internet A 06/20/03 16:50:25 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/webacc
Internet A 06/20/03 16:50:30 <ad> Novell WebAccess
Internet A 06/20/03 16:50:52 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:51:58 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:52:03 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:52:57 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist
Internet A 06/20/03 16:53:00 <a-> https://beaverdam.k12.wi.us/servlet/web ... ge=msglist

spragers
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Post by spragers »

I think I've got it figured out... looks like Novell WebAccess comes with a default session timeout of 20 minutes (thanks Google!). If she sat and typed for 20 minutes on her email (26 minutes actually), her session timed out - and there's nothing we can do about that (fun part will be explaining to her that it was her own fault :o ) - but we will inform her as to the reason, and see if she can change her preferences.

I don't think it was a problem with PWB, because the usage log file shows that the station logged off properly (which usually doesn't happen if PWB crashes).

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Philip - Long Beach NY
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Post by Philip - Long Beach NY »

I won't mention the things I thought about saying to her at the moment but among them was "if you dislike our FREE service so much, why don't you buy computer and do this at home?" but I digress

:P :P LOLOLOLOLOLOLZ

OMG! You and I need to get a beer and swap stories. We get patrons like that all the time. Fortunately for me, all the things that you want to say to them back for being rude, I do say them. The above one has been used quite often I assure you.

And in case your thinking "he's going to get fired one of these days", my director and a few board members have told me, "some of these people are insane, do what you must".

But don't worry I am not that cruel. That woman is lucky she didn't have me to deal with. Hehehe
Complexity is the enemy of security
-- Steve Gibson

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