Aloha terminal says make fileserver

[pappdaddy]

Hi, I just took over at a new night club and they use aloha. I have very little experience with this system. When I boot one of my three terminals it can not find the file server. It prompts me to make a new file server. proceeded by a screen to enter my password. I have no idea what the password is? Can anyone give me advice on how to get this terminal up and running?

 

[SwampGas]

If this is the only terminal giving you this message, then that terminal alone is not connecting to the network with all other terminals. Do a quick check of all Ethernet cables.

If you need to put the terminal in standalone (redundancy), add the two number together and the sum will equal the password. This is only a short term fix as all sales will be stored on the terminal by itself, and credit cards will be forced (Debit cards will not be accepted -If you use a pinpad device).



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MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[pappdaddy]

Thank you for your response> I will double check all cables today. I would like to get it conected to the network again.
What to numbers am I adding together?

 

[posknowitall]

Don't put it into standalone if this is the only terminal that displays that message. Turns into a bigger mess than finding your bad connection!

 

[SwampGas]

Turns into a bigger mess? How so?

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MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[RosemarysBaby]

As an owner and very suspicious of everyone, consider this scenario.

Owner may be a little absentee after many years of "hands on" ownership. Store manager figures that if he unplugs 1 terminal from the network, that 1 terminal will "Make Fileserver". So he makes it a fileserver and is real careful not to put credit charges through. Of course this scenario wouldn't print to any remotes on the network so he basically could configure a stand alone term for a while. With some knowledge and configuring he could set up his own little biz on the owner's dime.

I know that make fileservers have a limited life and that there are debouts and other trails but you get where this is going.

If the server is working and only 1 term can't find server, why in the world would you want to make fileserver as knowitall said?

 

[SwampGas]

The moment you do a fileserver recovery, all transactions and data from this one standalone terminal will be merged back, and you'll be able to bust your thief for the shortage no later than the next day. If you don't watch the reports closely and daily, then you are losing money everyday.


Why would you make a single terminal fileserver? Only reason I could think of is you are a small mom-and-pop place that only has one or two terminals, and usually any downtime may be very hard to deal with, and the type of support you are subscribed to (If any) may not be the best. Or, this particular terminal is located far enough away from another terminal that running temporarily in standalone is acceptable in order to take care of the guests as best as possible.

Otherwise, there is no way that this would be acceptable or needed. -We have designed alerts if a terminal goes offline for a period greater than 5 minutes that my helpdesk and I are alerted and we can be pro-active in resolving problems at a location usually before the location even knows they have an issue.

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MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[alexander00pr]

You can install 2 cheap routers (1 transparent bridged between the private aloha subnet and 1 for Broadband network connectivity) and enable SNMP on top of it. With a good network monitoring software you can monitor the state of a device in a network (I use a software called DUDE).

With DUDE and other network monitor software you can monitor computer, VOIP telephone, etc. I monitor all my network with it. Basically you setup the remote device ip address into the software and email smtp server.

If you had multiple location you can run an EOIP tunnel that would extend the ethernet network to your remote stores and that would bring you and encrypted private network that you can browse every device from any stores. Then you can monitor, launch antivirus, run policy, backup, print, share. This EOIP private connection can run in any DSL or cable modem service. EOIP tunnel can be configured with cheap routers like Linksys WRT54g or more advanced one like mikrotik.


Mega

I wonder if you had a solution (Not Radiant command center) that can read aloha debout and using for remote alert?


DUDE Software

http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude.php

 

[SwampGas]

Yes. I actually have several alerts that we have created in-house to monitor many different conditions, even things like PCI configuration errors, and if EDC has offline gift cards that need to be processed.

For a standalone issue, there are two things:

1.
The terminal is on the network but IBER(qs) isn't running.

2.
The terminal is not connected to the network.

This can be observed by reading and accessing the downtime.ini from each terminal.

By reading the downtime.ini from each terminal you can see who is the master terminal, and if a terminal doesn't agree with the consensus, then you can say it is on the network but in redundancy. If the downtime.ini is not accessible, then you can say the terminal is definitely not connected to the network. You can retrieve the total number of terminals from the BOH environment variable NUMTERMS to allow your app to know how many terminals to loop for.

From this you can have your custom app create an alert, desktop message, etc. For simple scripting, you can even use a free command line emailer like BLAT to send you an email if a certain condition is met.

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MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[pappdaddy]

thanks all for your responses I've found the problem. evedently someone had completely removed the ethernet cable and after some tinkering I was able to get it connected back to the network.

 

[RosemarysBaby]

Yes, you're both correct and I don't want to make an issue out of this but again, you let me manage a store (not a mom & pop) but a 2- 3 mil/yr. 8 terms with at least 2 terms located near each other at the bar or to go station. I guarantee I can have my own little biz on the side and be able to clean up afterwards, that the average absentee owner would have no idea what was going on.

This is why when I hire managers, I don't want them with too much computer knowledge. The creative ways people come up with to steal never surprises me.

 

[SwampGas]

Rosemary,

I agree with you. We have 500 locations that each do over 2.6 mill a year. The POS is a great tool, but it's the managers, DM's and regional VP's that have to keep everything in check. -And then we have to keep them in check.

There's always a way to steal. Not saying there isn't.


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MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[alohaakamai3]

Though I see the problem has been resolved, I too have actively embraced the process of NOT telling customers how to put the system into redundant mode for reasons that having noting to do with theft (I make them tell me the numbers, then give them the password).

Clients- and in particular their staff- just want to put their orders in on a busy night, they could care less about the consequences (and often in times it's some random bartender or server that eventually is told how to do this). Additionally, they also mistakenly see it as fix.

Merging logs was an occasional pain in the azz for sure, but more often it was a panicked phone call from a customers days later because the owner finally came in an realized they had no credit cards/or are missing money from the bank (they were spooling- a liability I don't like to be involved with unless I have to), or they had no sales data (cuz it resided on the master) and had to have payroll down in two hours.

Thus what was probably an unplugged cable and 5 minute phone fix turned into a customer-created emergency and an hour or two in support to get everything back to normal.

I've given people who've worked for us in the past pretty straight-forward instructions- don't tell them how to put it into redundant mode, and tell customers who do know how to put it into redundant mode that it's not really a "fix" and it's in their best interest to call support, as annoying as it may be.

Sometimes should just wear protective helmets at all times