This is soooo much bullshit!
So I figured I'd lay back a little bit and take a break from all of the studying I need to be doing for NLC and all the hacking that I'm doing on my computer to make it better than it already is when compared to Windows, and play some TFC. So I load up steam and log in and it happily informs me that it can't connect to the network. Slightly irritated, I disable my firewall and give it another shot. Still fails. I put the firewall back up and run through all of my Windows networking and TCP/IP settings. Still nothing. I hit the web. Nothing in support that is relevant.
Relevant given the fact that I put steam on my Win2k3 server simply so I could see if I could log in on that system. And I could. So I think to myself, "what is different between these two systems?" The answer, other than one being XPPro and the other being 2k3Standard is the fact that my personal computer is in the router's DMZ. It's there because I leave my system running, booted into linux on a fairly perpetual basis simply for the fact that I can make SFTP/SCP connections from pretty much anywhere I have my flash drive. I can also log in via SSH and do some remote administration. If the security isn't tight where I'm connecting from, I can launch a VNC server on my home computer and work interactively from wherever. So the reasoning behind my computer being in the DMZ is fairly sound, but what gets me is the fact that it shouldn't matter.
Placing a computer in a router's DMZ exposes it entirely to the internet cloud. It takes all packets that are directed to the computer in the DMZ and forward them to that local IP without doing any filtering of any sort. It's almost like the router doesn't even exist as far as the computer is concerned. This is why I can't figure out for the life of me why it would cause my authentication to fail. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with the fact that running steam through a proxy will cause it's operation to fail due to the VAC (valve anti-cheat) system that they have implemented. Though I can see where this may be logical to them, I don't see the logic behind causing the clients that actually know what they are doing from a networking perspective any more crap than they already get from their ISPs. I'm looking for a workaround for this. But after I get some sleep. My eyes burn... so bad.
Oh yeah. I'm also looking at why after a clean install of windows, my disk table looks like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 2 2709 20472480 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 2710 4594 14250600 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4595 4660 498960 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4 4661 5169 3848040 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda5 2 2709 20472448+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Now... It used to be NTFS on hda1 and no hda4 or 5. It's just... logical to not span windows over 3 partitions unless there is an obvious benefit from this (IE, what I should be doing, and creating a separate storage partition for my user files so I don't lose them if the OS fails and I can't copy from linux).
Now somebody offer me a fucking job!
Relevant given the fact that I put steam on my Win2k3 server simply so I could see if I could log in on that system. And I could. So I think to myself, "what is different between these two systems?" The answer, other than one being XPPro and the other being 2k3Standard is the fact that my personal computer is in the router's DMZ. It's there because I leave my system running, booted into linux on a fairly perpetual basis simply for the fact that I can make SFTP/SCP connections from pretty much anywhere I have my flash drive. I can also log in via SSH and do some remote administration. If the security isn't tight where I'm connecting from, I can launch a VNC server on my home computer and work interactively from wherever. So the reasoning behind my computer being in the DMZ is fairly sound, but what gets me is the fact that it shouldn't matter.
Placing a computer in a router's DMZ exposes it entirely to the internet cloud. It takes all packets that are directed to the computer in the DMZ and forward them to that local IP without doing any filtering of any sort. It's almost like the router doesn't even exist as far as the computer is concerned. This is why I can't figure out for the life of me why it would cause my authentication to fail. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with the fact that running steam through a proxy will cause it's operation to fail due to the VAC (valve anti-cheat) system that they have implemented. Though I can see where this may be logical to them, I don't see the logic behind causing the clients that actually know what they are doing from a networking perspective any more crap than they already get from their ISPs. I'm looking for a workaround for this. But after I get some sleep. My eyes burn... so bad.
Oh yeah. I'm also looking at why after a clean install of windows, my disk table looks like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 2 2709 20472480 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 2710 4594 14250600 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4595 4660 498960 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4 4661 5169 3848040 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda5 2 2709 20472448+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Now... It used to be NTFS on hda1 and no hda4 or 5. It's just... logical to not span windows over 3 partitions unless there is an obvious benefit from this (IE, what I should be doing, and creating a separate storage partition for my user files so I don't lose them if the OS fails and I can't copy from linux).
Now somebody offer me a fucking job!