cisco console cables for synaccess nc08

I inherited a Synaccess NC-08 serial console switch. It's rack mountable, although only front mount. I did take the time a while back to drill new mounts so it would be rear mount.

It came, I suppose, with a number of RJ-45 to DE-9 (DB9) Female adapters (see npman.pdf page 47). This is convenient as I plug this adapter into a serial console connector on a switch, and can use the existing patch cabling to color code and work the connection back to the rack the console switch is in. Unfortunately, Cisco had the same bright idea. I tried connecting their two RJ45-DE9 adapters together with a male-male gender changer but that didn't work. I then tried putting a null modem cable in there as well, but that didn't work either.

Giving up, I emailed synaccess support hoping they'd have an easy answer so I wouldn't have to think about it. They called me back -right- away. I was shocked. I spent a lot of time trying to explain what I was trying to do though. The idea that I'd hook a switch to a serial device seemed to confuse them. I wonder what their normal customers use these for. They're cheap I suppose, but I don't figure they make a good scrambled egg or anything. They had no answer (about the cable, it's possible it makes a scrambled egg still).



So I stared at the two pinouts for a while and drew up my own cable. Cisco seemed to ignore DCD in their console cable, so I did here hoping it would work. In the past I've seen DCD tied to DSR and I didn't want to have to be splicing wires. I also dropped the second ground on the cisco side, figuring the two would be tied together in the cisco connector and that I didn't have to worry too much about electrical physics in this small little cable. And aha! it works. Now if I could just buy six of these instead of having to make them.

Cisco to Synaccess rj45 adapter cable pinouts (for the search engines)
1 CTS : RTS 2
2 DTR : DSR 1
3 TXD : RXD 5
4 GND : GND 3
5 GND X DCD 6
6 RXD : TXD 4
7 DSR : DTR 8
8 RTS : CTS 7

hosting multiple domains with exchange

This was tough to find a concrete answer for. I don't know why I didn't just try it, although I was getting there. Once DNS (MX records) are all set up, and my smtp gateway was configured to forward a new domain, I was having trouble convincing exchange to use the new domain. There were plenty of examples where you add the domain to the default recipient policy in ESM. In course of doing this though, it was made clear to me by a popup that exchange wanted to give every user an email at this new domain if I checked the check box to enable it. I left the box empty, manually added an email at the new domain in ADUC, but got relay errors. I figured I could use a new recipient policy and a group with an ldap search filter to apply the new domains to those users who worked with that project, but I really only wanted one or two emails and they'd be special aliases anyways so I didn't want to have another group kicking around.

I started to try this yesterday, but confirmation this morning when I did some more reading here that you can add recipient policies and apply no filter. This appears to have the correct effect of allowing me to use the domain, but recipient update services doesn't try to do anything automatically on me.

It's funny that I keep posting about exchange. I've been working with a lot of other cool software, but most of that makes sense as I learn it. It's only been exchange where I've said "what the fuck?" and felt the frustration that leads to a post, hoping to shorten someone else's googling.