11.25.2005

DVD burning with cdrtools / cdrecord and cygwin

 
Good guy Dirk brings a lot of open source and other free tools to the Win32/Windows platforms:
http://www.paehl.com
 
 

Free cookie analyzer

Galleta: from foundstone -
 
converts an IE cookie to a (tab, or other) delimited file.  Good stuff for FREE!
 

11.24.2005

Public/Private key authentication with Putty and OpenSSH

I like Steve Friedl's blog, and I saw an interesting tidbit on this one: http://www.unixwiz.net/archives/2005/11/_secure_linuxun.html

It's great when great minds share information like this freely. It helps all of those searching for solutions to find the answers quickly. His web site is full of good stuff as well: http://www.unixwiz.net/

Thanks Steve!

Technet virtual labs - FREE

TechNet Virtual Labs - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/traincert/virtuallab/default.mspx allow you to test Microsoft's software in a 'sandbox' environment. I haven't tried one yet, but it seems to be a very good idea.

Best of all there's FREE!!!! You people know how I'm a big proponent of Free!

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Outlook Web Access Web Administration

download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4bbe7065-a04e-43ca-8220-859212411e10&displaylang=en

It wouldn't work when I installed it. I had my default web site stopped when I did the install. I started the web site, and installed OWAAdmin again, but still didn't solve the problem. Had to right-click and uninstall the OWAAdmin.MSI file. Then I installed again, and all was well.

Guess what? You don't need to do manual segmentation anymore, you can use this tool.

I keep getting prompted for credentials when I access it, I assume it needs admin rights on the exchange server.

I also had to re-create the client side scripts for .NET:
C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322> aspnet_regiis -c
Start copying the ASP.NET client side script files for this version (1.1.4322.0).
Finished copying the ASP.NET client side script files for this version (1.1.4322.0).

Exchange 2003 OWA customization

Add / remove portions, features of OWA (Outlook Web Access).  Remove calendar, public folders, etc....
How to modify the appearance and the functionality of Outlook Web Access by using the segmentation feature in Exchange 2003
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833340
 
Creating and Deploying Outlook Web Access Themes - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/CreatingOWAThemes/9bb177d9-2bbe-4c01-bb21-2f6ce96089a8.mspx
 
 

Tru64 LPD and EVM - can't shutup LPD

No matter what the EVM configuration files ( /etc/evmdaemon.conf and /etc/evmlogger.conf ) state, if you have the 'activity monitor' set up in evmdaemon.conf, any events that hit EVM will count against the threshold for the activity monitor.  Even if you configure EVM to ignore or otherwise not log certain events, EVM will still trigger this activity monitor.
 
I had a ton of print jobs being printed certain hours of the day.  I wanted to stop the LPD daemon from posting these events (stop it from being chatty), because they were just normal system functions/activity that I don't think should count against the activity monitor, escpecially since I know this server will be busy handling print jobs already.  No matter what I tried, LPD always posted 3 events to EVM for each print job.  It seems no matter what configuration changes you make, you can't tell LPD to shut the hell up.  Even changing /etc/syslog_evm.conf didn't help at all.  Surprise, surprise.  Looks like the LPD daemon is hardcoded to post to EVM ----- which really sucks, you Compaq/DEC/HP engineers!!!:
 
LPD daemon started - Status: 0  PID: 1081011
LPD job submit requested - Status 0  Printer myprintername
LPD job submit completed - Status 0  Printer mypritnername  Job number 0
 
 
When enough of these events happened I would receive the following email message from EVM:
 
SUBJECT: EVM ALERT [600]: EVM daemon: High event activity - exceeds 500 in 10 minutes
============================ EVM Log event ===========================
EVM event name: sys.unix.evm.daemon.event_activity
 
    This high priority event is posted by the Event Manager (EVM)
    daemon when it detects a high number of events occurring over
    several minutes.
 
    Action: Use the event viewer or the evmget(1) command to review the
    event log for the source of the activity.  If the log does not show
    high activity around the time at which this event was posted, it is
    likely that the events were low priority, and hence were not
    logged.  You can monitor low-priority events by running the
    evmwatch(1) command with an appropriate filter, or by temporarily
    reconfiguring the EVM logger to log low-priority events.
 
    Note: You can change the parameters which control the posting of
    this event by modifying the daemon configuration file,
    /etc/evmdaemon.conf.
 
======================================================================
 
Formatted Message:
    EVM daemon: High event activity - exceeds 500 in 10 minutes
 
Event Data Items:
    Event Name        : sys.unix.evm.daemon.event_activity
    Priority          : 600
    PID               : 1048856
    PPID              : 1048577
    Event Id          : 326425
    Member Id         : 2
    Timestamp         : 24-Nov-2005 15:08:06
    Host IP address   : 192.168.1.1
    Cluster IP address: 192.168.1.3
    Host Name         : host.domain.com
    Cluster Name      : cluster
    User Name         : root
    Format            : EVM daemon: High event activity - exceeds $count in
                        $period minutes
    Reference         : cat:evmexp.cat:100
 
Variable Items:
    count (INT32) = 500
    period (INT32) = 10
 
======================================================================
 
 
Script to generate/post EVM events:
num=0
 
while [ $num -lt 500 ]
do
 num=$(expr $num + 1)
 echo $num
 echo 'event { name sys.unix.print.lpd }' | evmpost
done

Script to capture all EVM posts, regardless if they are logged or not:
#!/usr/bin/ksh
file=/usr/users/davidbon/evmwatcher.log
evmwatch -A -f "[priority >= 0]" -t "@priority  @timestamp @@" >> $file
 

11.23.2005

VMWare workstation audio / sound volume level

Hate it when your guest VM changes the volume in the host OS? just follow the steps in the FAQ:
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=853

in workstation 4 and above just add the following line somewhere inside your .vmx config file:
pciSound.enableVolumeControl = "FALSE"

Happiness!

quickly access Microsoft KB article

Here's a quick way to access Microsoft's KB (Knowledge Base) technet articles if you know the Article ID:
 
the url is:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/{ARTICLE#}   where {ARTICLE#} is the article number
 
For instance If you're looking for article 257903, the you can get to it this way: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257903   - Cluster Network Name May Not Come Online with Event ID 1052
 
 

Migrating from single print server to clustered print server

Migration of a single Windows 2000 print server to a Windows 2000 clustered print server.
'printserver1' is the name of the old print server.
 
I ran the Print Migrator wizard to get the printers on the cluster.  My plan:  on the night of the conversion, I would shutdown printserver1 and add a "network name" resource in the cluster configuration for printserver1 so that any clients that didn't run the vbs logon script(see my migration blog article) to change the connections would still be able to print without any noticeable effects.  That was my plan at least.  The following was the Murphy's law version of what happened:
 
After the shutdown of printserver1, tried to bring online the printserver1 'network name' resource.  But, I couldn't bring the printserver1 'network name' resource online.  I kept saying 'failed'.  The following events were posted to the system eventlog.
NOTE: make sure the advanced property, 'affect the group', is turned off, otherwise if you do have problems with the resource coming online, it won't cause the group to fail.  You can always turn that option on once the resource is stable and working. 
 
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ClusSvc
Event Category: Services
Event ID: 1069
Date:  11/23/2005
Time:  2:00:24 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: NODE1
Description:
Cluster resource 'printserver1' failed.
 
*************************************
*************************************
 
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ClusSvc
Event Category: (2053)
Event ID: 1052
Date:  11/23/2005
Time:  2:00:24 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: NODE1
Description:
Cluster Network Name resource 'printserver1' cannot be brought online because the name could not be added to the system.
Data:
0000: 0e 50 00 80               .P.€   
 
 
 
Cluster Network Name May Not Come Online with Event ID 1052 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257903
 
Solution (for me anyway):
delete all dns A and PTR records for printserver1
delete all wins records for printserver1
 
run nbtstat -RR on each node in cluster
then brought printserver1 network name online
 

11.22.2005

Event ID 8 on Windows 2000 cluster

Windows 2000 cluster, running IIS ftp as a cluster resource:
Event log entry almost every 5 seconds, even when no connections are being made to the IIS ftp server:
 
Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSFTPSVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 8
Date:  11/22/2005
Time:  5:55:45 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: NODE1
Description:
FTP Server could not create a client worker thread for user at host 192.168.1.50.  The connection to this user is terminated.  The data is the error.
For additional information specific to this message please visit the Microsoft Online Support site located at:
http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp.
 
Solution:
Put the IP of the cluster (192.168.1.50 in this case) in address restrictions and the event log entry no longer happens, except for when an unauthorized IP tries to connect to the cluster ftp.  You must restart the IIS resource in the cluster to stop the event log from appearing.
 
client behavior:
C:\>ftp cluster
Connected to cluster.domain.com.
530 Connection refused, unknown IP address.
User (cluster.domain.com:(none)):
 
C:\>ftp node1
Connected to node1.domain.com.
Connection closed by remote host.

not quite related to this issue, but has same event log entry:
Event ID 8 When Clients Try to Access IIS FTP Site - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293637

Epic Print Service running on Windows 2000 cluster

The upgrade from EPS version Fall 2004 to Spring 2005 IU2 caused the EPS service name to change from "epicprintservice" to  "EpicPrintService722".  Had to change that in the cluster configuration which requires the resource to be taken offline/ brought online when change is complete.
 
Caveats to running EPS on a windows print cluster:
1.  One locally installed printer must exist on each cluster node/member.  Restart(take offline/bring online in cluadmin) the EPS service if the printer was installed while EPS was running.
2.  Printer Path in the Epic device table needs to be the full unc for the printer.  Using the short name (the printer name by itself) doesn't work if all your printers are defined on the cluster name and not on the nodes directly (which is the way print clustering works).