Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet 644
Lund, Sweden refuses to work around a Vista bug, so people who live there must choose between Vista and internet access. It's nice to see the right people being held accountable for a change.
Tests? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no sympathy for Lundis Energi (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice bit of flamebait there.
Yeah, I know it's
Once everybody gets that out of their system, IMHO Lundis Energi is really being a bunch of assholes, and I have no sympathy for them, as it makes them seem like a company run by a bunch of 15-year-olds who've just discovered Ubuntu.
They find a bug (or rather, the users did) in newly-released software that doesn't play nice with their Linux-based server. Rather than you know, cooporate with Microsoft to help diagnose the problem, they're essentially saying to their users "We think you're a bunch of losers (LUSERS HAHA!!1!), so ya'll use the OS we want and tell you to use! If you don't like it, kiss our asses! And Micro$oft can kiss our ass too until they fix the bug!"
Because, after all, bugs never, ever happen on any software ever, and developers psychically know what exactly a bug does without any reporting by end-users whatsoever.
Now if they have a policy of "NOT Windows Vista compatible right now" clearly stated to their users, then that's understandable. But eventually, most folks will move to Vista (like it or not), so this bug needs to be squashed on whomever's end.
I'll end my rant with this:
how in the hell is Lundis Energi so sure it's not a bug on their software?
(sarcasm) Oh right, it's Microsoft, so it MUST be them. (/sarcasm)
Reminds me another bug.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do tech support and when Internet Explorer 7 came out we noticed that it didn't really get along with the NAT routers we send out to our customers (they sometimes need to do a very very small amount of configuring), I'm not entirely certain of what the problem is but there is no problem with IE5/6, FF, Safari, Opera or even links, but IE7 is a no-go. It took the manufacturer a good three months to come up with a new firmware that addressed the problem, and until then we had to teach hundreds/thousands of customers how to use telnet (and how to install it if they were running Vista, the telnet client is disabled by default). Good times...
Oh well, at least it's not Windows 9x, I have to give MS some credit for eventually killing off all support for that branch as our superiors decided that since MS no longer supported 95/98/ME in any way then neither should we. :-)
/Mikael
No problem here with current dhcpd (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't Microsoft with the bug... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad news guys; Microsoft isn't the one with a bug causing the problem. Poor implementation yes, bug no.
For some bizarre reason Vista expects the address returned from the DHCP server to be broadcast, instead of sent via unicast packet. This is permitted in the specs and supporting the broadcast flag on the server is suggested. ("SHOULD", not "MUST" in the spec.).
When researching this I found 2 network types which required this, Infinibad and 1394 (Firewire). It looks to me like Microsoft picked the one which would (theoretically atleast) work on all network types, instead of only on a few.
Of course, this is a typical bad decision as it means that responses from a DHCP server with a lot of Vista clients will flood the network with broadcast responses, but hey, they arent know for making good decisions.
Cisco supported the DHCP broadcast flag for awhile (Score:2, Interesting)
Cisco's IOS has had the option of turning on the DHCP broadcast flag on its router client since v12.2 and I'm guessing (can't find a specific reference) that the Cisco IOS DHCP Server probably has also supported it since then... so it's been supported by the major network router manufacturer for many many years.
The D-Links and the Linksys' (yeah, I know they're Cisco now) routers don't support it either, so it isn't just Linux DHCP servers
Re:Vista DHCP client and Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How's this funny again? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're fooling yourself if you think that any version of Windows is more user-friendly than Ubuntu.
Re:router (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were paying attention, you'd know that MS did follow the standards. The problem started when MS implemented an option component of the DHCP standard and didn't design in a fallback to the mandatory components (not conservative in what you send.) The problem was then complete when the Linux-side DHCP server refused to respond to packets with the optional flag set instead of doing its best to respond in the way it understood (not liberal in what you accept.)
Had either side followed this golden rule in network protocol implementation then things would have simply worked.
Re:router (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:router (Score:3, Interesting)
The problems I know of with Microsoft's implementations of DHCP are:
option prxy code 252 = text;
option prxy "http://proxy.server.invalid/proxy.pac\n";
Without the trailing \n (or \r), Windows doesn't fetch the autoconfiguration script -- it's like it doesn't understand null-terminated strings.
This can be a real problem if a non-transparent proxy servder has to be used.
However, these seem all to be present in both Vista, XP and W2k, so they shouldn't be the issue here. Anyone know what the incompatibility is?
Regards,
--
*Art
Re:router (Score:1, Interesting)
From what I can tell, this is misinformation. What happens is that Lund has TWO DHCP servers, and Vista, as a "security feature", shuts down an interface if more than one DHCP server replies to its request.
Re:router (Score:3, Interesting)
We set it up like this because we had collision problems due to using very old, non switching hubs and being right on the limit of how many hubs (4 in a row) and users we could have. So it made sense to drop a linux router in the middle of the network and only allow traffic through the router that actually needed to get to the other side. The only upstream connection however was on one side of the router, this was also another linux router doing NAT translation. We could have used hubs with more ports but that would have pushed us over the 100m limit between any two hubs.
This network is actually still in place as it would cost quite alot to upgrade all the hubs to proper switches and they are also awkwardly placed in terms of access. It is certainly not an ideal network but we did build it unpaid 10 years ago with no real funding.
The idea was to enable an entire council estate (American translation = Housing Project) to have a cheap shared internet connection. Please bare in mind that this was in the days when the best home connection available was an ISDN line and the alternative was modem, phoneline and paying per minute you were connected. Back then we had over 100 people sharing the ISDN line for £5 per month each. Sure during peak times it was slow, but it was better than anything else available for the cost. And as it was always on if you did want to download anything huge you could just wait until 4am.
That network is still in place as some people still use it but now they share an ADSL line instead. It is still very low bandwidth but for people on a low income who are not likely to use it heavily anyway it is perfect.
Re:The only thing that could make this better (Score:2, Interesting)
Very interesting how the ISP is blamed (Score:4, Interesting)
And how often do I hear about the superiority of Windoze. When some WiFi card does not work under Linux: Linux is not fit for the general desktop. If some WiFi card does not work under Vista: The stupid manufacturer was not able to deliver proper drivers on time.
I begin to think the only reason that Windoze works at all is because everybody bends over for M$ and paves their path.
Sorry, but even if those voices, which say the ISP could have acted on behalf of their customers, are right, and they are, I still deem them hypocrites.
Re:Oh no, there's more. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Well, I can't log into work because the VPN software isn't compatible with Vista. I can't do anything with it because it tells me I'm not the administrator. But I AM the administrator! It's MY COMPUTER! And it keeps telling me I'm not authorized to do things. It's also taking some time to get used to because they changed where things are and I have to go hunting around for things I used to be able to do."
"Dad, why don't you try out Ubuntu?"
"Nah - I don't want to spend all that time trying to figure out something new."
"Dad - you're already spending time trying to figure out something new, and it's broken to boot."
"Linux is too confusing. I'll just wait til they fix Vista."
Damn. I think people don't listen to themselves sometimes. They get it into their heads that something is going to be hard, and so they won't ever try it out, even when it wouldn't be any harder than what they're doing now. Maybe it's the "Devil You Know" aspect, but I somehow doubt it.