Linux ping is it up?

if test 1 -eq `ping -q -c 1 ip.add.ress | grep "loss" | cut -d " " -f 4`; then echo "online"; else echo "offline"; fi

Updating smb SAMBA on Linux Ubuntu can't print

At a client's, I had a fresh install of Ubuntu and it could print to a network printer. I updated Ubuntu which included a new smbd install. Then I couldn't print. CUPS (http://localhost:631) told me that I have NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL.

What?

OK, ping "computername" comes up an ip address on the Internet. Yuck.

It turns out that the name resolve order changed from LAN (lmhosts? netbios?) to Internet DNS (smb.conf entry was comment out, actually). Solutions: edit /etc/hosts to include the ip/name combination of the hosting computer. Or perhaps change the computername to computername.local

Outlook won't connect if no default gateway on NIC

Outlook won't connect to the Exchange server if you don't have a default gateway on your network card. Why would you have this problem? I didn't have a default gateway because I was temporarily using the PC as dual homed (two network cards). I wanted the default gateway to be set on one card and not the other. Then I repurposed the machine without checking and using the NIC that didn't have the gateway. Outlook balked, and I panicked a slight bit. How is it possible that I have every network (Internet, files, database, etc.) and no Exchange connectivity? Especially since my other box is chugging away perfectly on Exchange. Exchange error messages actually said this, and sure enough, it was correct.