Access to Gale Databases--SOLVED

[Karen G. Schneider]

First, a big round of applause to Web4Lib'er and all-around great guy, Jerry
Kuntz, who gave me the right URLs (some of which I would not have guessed,
nay, not in a month of Sundays).  Andrew Mutch had wondered if stripping the
URLs down (e.g. to galegroup.com) would have been better; the answer is, no,
didn't work that way.  A feather in her cap to our web designer, Mary Beth
Nafis, who pointed out that traceroute would be a useful troubleshooting
tool.  It did indeed suggest than an ip in the chain was the problem.  I had
run a little Unix tool called host to dig up the hostnames for the ip
addresses  (wonder why Gale gave me howling.galenet.com?  that was no help)
but overlooked traceroute.

Second, the problem with the access list in Explorer's proxy exception table
actually appears to be related to policy editor, not the Mutchomatic, at
least not for Explorer.  IE5.01 has a (seemingly infinite...) entry box for
exceptions to the proxy server.  The policy file I'm using did not have a
maximum text length stated for the proxy exceptions, so I inferred that the
text length was the default for the keyname EDITTEXT--but I could not find
documentation for the length of this field in the several guides I looked in
quickly.  (Numeric, yes; it's 9999.)  I tried overriding whatever this
default is with the MAXLEN keyword; policy editor didn't report an error,
and I did get a long box, but when the policy was actually applied, the
entries were truncated to that mystical default value.  So--I unset the
policy for proxy settings, temporarily disabled the policy settings that hid
and prevented changes to the Internet Tools and the Connection tabs, added
the proxy exceptions directly into Explorer (I initially had trouble because
I'm working with two computers side by side--I kept trying to copy from one
computer and paste into the other), rebooted, tested, rebooted again,
retested--and all is well.

It's a kludge, and has to be done on a per-client basis (though I would bet
that the IE installation kit would provide a way around this), but it's only
temporary--I'll have that proxy server running Real Soon Now (yeah, right).
There are probably other things I could have done, or should have known; the
important thing is that on Monday night my boss will have Something Very
Nice To Show The Trustees, and it will appear (after months of
behind-the-scenes toiling) that we have actually earned our keep in this
department.  Whew.  (Oh wait--slap my wrists for forgetting this part--and
public service will have been improved, as well.)  That ol' Web4Lib!  (A big
thanks to Roy and everyone else who keeps this list running!)

Karen G. Schneider kgs at bluehighways.com
Assistant Director of Technology
Shenendehowa Public Library, Clifton Park, NY
http://www.shenpublib.org