Thunderstone Search Appliance Manual

Support Connection

  Provides an interface to manage support connections to Thunderstone.

The appliance is able to establish a tech support connection to Thunderstone over the internet. This is especially useful for appliances that are not normally visible from the internet. The appliance establishes an encrypted outbound connection to Thunderstone's server (see below) that then allows Thunderstone tech support staff to access the appliance over the encrypted channel.

When starting a connection the user's email address or an existing Thunderstone support ticket number is requested so that the connection can be associated with an existing ticket or a new one created for the given email address. When creating a new ticket also provide a description of why, using the provided form.

Once established a support connection will stay on unless terminated by the appliance admin or Thunderstone. An established connection will be automatically reestablished after a reboot of the appliance.

For the support connection to work the appliance must be able to reach slot.thunderstone.com on port 443 and one of either port 20000 or 80. Note that support connections via port 80 are encrypted despite the common usage of port 80 for unencrypted HTTP.

Note that Thunderstone is not able to initiate a support connection. It must be initiated by an appliance administrator.

If the regular admin interface is not available for some reason the support connection may also be managed using the webmin interface at https://YOUR_APPLIANCE:999/ .