Some very usefull python: Zipping a file

zip = zipfile.ZipFile('/afile.zip', 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
zipdir('/adirectory/', zip)
zip.close()

I couldn't get this to work unless I specified zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED of course after reading I found out the default is zipfile.ZIP_STORED. If you don't specify ZIP_DEFLATED it creates a zip file that has 0% compression (basically just stores it) go figure :-)

Another thing I kept banging my head against was how to hide a dos popup window from a py2exe created file. A combination of
os.popen("xcopy /Y /F " + ServerPath + " c:\\").read()

PLUS in the setup file for py2exe change setup(console=['whatever.pyw']) to setup(windows=['whatever.pyw'])

Cool stuff this python

Jarnal is a great program for writing on PDF's (it also does a ton of other really nifty things for note taking etc...) I suggested a batch file that makes it pretty easy to annotate PDF's http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal.htm

Haven't posted anything for a while but I have been messing with some interesting things. Been working on creating a portal site using metadot http://www.metadot.com/ I had the hardest time getting LDAP authentication to work but here is a quick tutorial on what finally made it go.

Metadot: Setup LDAP authentication for active directory on server 2003

Under manage/config/

Click enable for LDAP registration

Click Modify under registration params

LDAP server should be your LDAP server, either name or IP

BASE DN:
This is where the LDAP searches will begin

In my environment it is

OU=National Users,DC=nffc,DC=local

One way you can find this out is by using a program called OldCmp http://www.joeware.net/win/free/tools/oldcmp.htm

Run this command oldcmp -report -age 1 -users (This generates a report of users passwords that are older then 1 day)

Open this report and look at your users, it should help in figuring out what your base DN is.

Next you need the user unique identifier, this was confusing for a bit, but this is the filed that LDAP is going to look up against. (Which is also why you can assign it a label in case your want to compare on something different then email address)

A couple of 'User unique identifier in LDAP directory options' are: Mail, userPrincipalName or CN more info http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Logon/LDAP_attributes_active_directory.htm

Mail ---> The users email address
userPrincipalName ---> The users logon on name i.e. jschmoe@mydomain.local
CN ---> The users name i.e. joe schmoe

I configured it to use LDAP for authentication only so I have not messed with profile management yet.

The last hoop to configure is click the radial button to select DN: (you have to do this for active directory)

Now you need to supply a user that can do LDAP lookups. After you create this user you can use OldCmp to find out its DN

An example DN is cn=metadot,ou=service accounts,ou=national users,dc=nffc,dc=local
and then of course set the password.