Just a quick post to share a fundamental performance increase to any citrix server out there running on local disk. If your disk supports caching, enable it now!

Get a copy of dskcache.exe from here:

run the following command: dskcache.exe +w +p

Enjoy your new disk performance!

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 (RSAT)

Hubby has been home about two weeks now, and its been great!  Although, and I never thought I’d say this, its been kinda hard to get used to being around each other a bit.  I guess that is somewhat expected considering we’ve been apart more of our marriage then we’ve been together.  We’ve done a bit of arguing and getting on each other’s nerves, but nothing an I love you or a kiss didn’t take care of!

He has to report to TPU on Monday, so he’ll actually be working (somewhat).  After that we’ll find out when he actually get flown out to his ship… or if we’re really lucky, we’ll find out he doesn’t!  I’m not getting my hopes up since they’re still out for around 3 months (give or take).  If he stays, we’re gonna start house hunting… or at least apartment hunting!  I can’t wait! If he does get sent out, we’re gonna find a place as soon as he gets back.  I’m really hoping he’ll be here long enough so we can find a place and get BAH, that way we have a home for him to come back to!

I just started my 3rd module in class.  I’ve taken two tests and done fairly well.  I got a 90 on the first, which was over Cisco, the second, which was Windows Server 2003, I made a 82.  We’re working on Windows Server 2003 Infrastructure now, and our test is on Wednesday.  This class is going by so fast!  October is going by extremely fast.  Before long I’ll be reporting to my command.  I’m hoping I’ll get a bit of time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, especially if AJ is still here!  I’m really hoping we don’t end up having to miss all of our first holidays as husband and wife… especially our first anniversary.

Speaking of which, I need  to figure out what I’m gonna get him!  Since the first anniversary is traditionally the paper anniversary, I’m clueless!  I really wanted to get him something to remind him of me, something that included love and protection symbolism, that he could keep close to him at all times. I’m thinking maybe of doing a traditional paper gift, and then another that is more along those lines. Any ideas?!  I’d love to hear them!

Alright, so we have a report server that has a massive SQL database and is running Server 2000 SP4. I honestly don’t know too much about it, because we have a DBA who does pretty much 90% of the maintenance/admin work on this server and the reports have nothing to do with the programs I work with. Anyway, the reports that are run export the SQL data to Excel spreadsheets. Once the report is run, the Excel process is left running. This server is already extremely old and bogged down as is, so having over a hundred instances of Excel running on it wasn’t helping. I wrote a script to check for all processes named “excel” and see how long they have been running, then kill the ones that were running for what seem to be too long of time. I had some issues, because Server 2000 does not have all of the capabilies as 2003, obviously. This script requires that you download pskill, part of the PSTools suite from SysInternals(now Microsoft). Now, while the script requires PSKill, it is able to run on server 2000/2003/2008(and 2000/xp/vista/7), so hopefully it is still useful to someone else out there. The script is below and I tried to make sure it was well-commented to help you out. Feel free to leave any suggestions/questions below. Enjoy.


''''This script requires pskill, part of the PSTools suite from SysInternals(now Microsoft). This script is assuming pskill is in your path for cmd line(generally, c:\windows(winnt on 2000/nt)\system32\)

Option Explicit
Dim strComputer, objWMIService, colProcessList, objProcess, PDate, Days, Hrs, Min, Sec, objSWbemLocator, WshShell
strComputer = "."
Set WshShell = CreateObject("wscript.shell")
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colProcessList = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'Excel.exe'") ' Replace Excel with whatever the process is you're looking for.
Do
If colProcessList.Count = 0 Then ' This kills the script if the process we are looking for is not running.(also ties with last commented line for looping)
Exit Do
Else
For Each objProcess in colProcessList
If objProcess.CreationDate "" Then
PDate = Left(objProcess.CreationDate,14) ' pulls the date process started in format: yyyymmddhhmmss
Days = DateDiff("d",DateSerial(Left(PDate,4),Mid(PDate,5,2),Mid(PDate,7,2)),Date) ' find how many days process has been running
Hrs = Hour(Now) - Mid(PDate,9,2) ' find how many hours process was running, if started same day
Min = Minute(Now) - Mid(PDate,11,2) ' same but for minutes
Sec = Second(Now) - Mid(Pdate,13,2) ' same but for seconds
If Hrs > 6 Then ' This is where you specify how long the process has to have been running in order for it to be killed, so you don't kill active jobs. Change it from "Hrs" to "Min" or "Sec" for minutes or seconds. Change 6 to whatever number of units.(currently set to kill processes over 6 hours old)
WshShell.Run "pskill -t " & objProcess.ProcessId, 0, False
Else
If Days > 0 Then ' This is a failsafe to the previous "If". Since it only detects how many hours process was running, if started same day. This guarantees that it kills anything over a day old.
WshShell.Run "pskill -t " & objProcess.ProcessId, 0, False
End If
End If
End If
Next
WScript.Sleep 1000 ' wait before trying again
Set colProcessList = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'Excel.exe'") ' Recheck for processes ' This makes the script keep looking until there aren't any active processes. i.e. a report is being run now, we will wait until it is done to kill the process and the script.
End If
Loop

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842804

We have a new program in with a new domain. On our other networks, there are seperate logon scripts for pretty much every security group and they all call other scripts. With this network, i wanted to keep things simple, so this script connects to AD and checks their group membership before running the apropriate commands for each group. This particular network does not have any shares yet, and isn’t very complex, but here is the base of it. Let me know if you want to know how to add anything more to it.

Option Explicit
Const ADS_PROPERTY_APPEND = 3 'sets the variable to Append
Const ADS_UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT = 512
Const E_ADS_PROPERTY_NOT_FOUND = &h8000500D
CONST HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
Const ForAppending = 8

Again, let me know if you need help modifying/adding anything for your own use.

**UPDATE(9/25)**

Changed the
WshShell.Exec(“net use…”)
lines to
WshShell.Run “net use…”, 0, False

This allows us(and does it already) to set any outside commands or scripts(in this case mapping drives, but can call bat files or whatever) to run invisibly(the 0), and “False” says to continue with the rest of the script immediately, True would mean to wait for the outside command to complete before continuing. This site has the details.

Run Method(Windows Script Host)

So, in our environment, we have several segregated networks. Each has their own (squid) proxy server and none have previously had issues with automatic updates. All were supposedly set the same way, with the proxy being pushed through group policy. The gpo was set to only push the proxy to normal users and not members of the IT team, mainly because we just don’t like having it. Anyway, there is one network that could not get the microsoft update web page to load. When we looked at the proxy, it looked as though it was redirecting the page to a null site. The reason it was only affecting the one network was: The other networks have the ability to bypass the proxy if the page didn’t load and it wasn’t listed as blocked, whereas this particular network was forced to have all traffice through the proxy. The key to making it work was one simple command:

proxycfg -p :

Anyway, i know this is a simple little post, but hope it helps someone.

UPDATE (9/17):

For Vista/Server 2008 use this command:

netsh winhttp set proxy [myproxy]:[myport]

Alright, I haven’t posted in a while, but I also haven’t had any new issues develop that I felt would be helpful or insightful to any of you out there. But today, I did have to write a script to find out if a file had been copied from the directory it was supposed to be in to any other place in the domain. At first, I thought they were crazy, but I turned to my good friend VBScript and got the job done. There are several pieces to this script, each very useful in it’s own right. First, it connects to the domain controller and finds out what domain you are in(handy if you work on several domains and don’t want to fiddle to make it work different places), then it makes a .txt file with every computer account in the domain on a line. The next step is pinging each of the machines listed to see if they are are available. Then, it connects and scans the C drive (via c$) for the file name recursively scans hidden folders and files as well. Then, it finds any shared folders on the system(say a server, where shares are not on C:) and scans them recursively. It reports if the file was found on the system or not and if it was, the exact location on the machine. Anyway, let me know if you have any questions on how to get this working for different scenarios or need to just make certain snippets work.

***Updated 8/7/09 with revisions to make script shorter, more efficient and work better with regular expression/pattern searching***

''Script to find all machines in AD, search C drive of all machines for a pattern in the filename, then search any shared folders for the file and reports
'' whether it was found and whether the machines are reachable by ping.
'' Side Note -- Can not scan shares on Windows 2000 or older, it will simply skip those shares. It will still scan C drive on Windows 2000, not NT

'Write to Not Found Log, if not found.
If isFound = False Then
objLogFile1.WriteLine Now & "No File matching the pattern (" & objRegEx.Pattern & ") was found on " & strComputer(i)
End If
Loop
objLogFile1.Close
objLogFile2.Close
WScript.Echo "Done scanning, LogFiles are located at:" & vbCrLf & strFound & vbCrLf & strNotFound & vbCrLf & "Click OK to finish"


Hope this helps someone out there.

Essa situação é comun em ambientes de rede, principalmente quando existem servidores e filiais em lugares distintos. Para transferir um arquivo de um determinado servidor para outro servidor ou até mesmo para um computador local, você deve ter conhecimento do endereço do computador ou servidor remoto e utilizar uma conexão de área de trabalho remoto. Vamos supor a seguinte situação: Você precisa acessar um servidor em outro prédio ou local, transferir um determinado arquivo para o servidor da sua empresa, a maneira mais fácil é fazer uma conexão de área de trabalho remoto da sua própria máquina para o servidor em outra localidade, ou fazer a conexão do próprio servidor local,lembrando que deve ser de conhecimento as senhas de acesso aos servidores tais como os seu endereços. Vamos ao que interessa:

1º Conectar-se ao servidor remoto, essa conexão pode ser feita pela CONEXÃO DE ÁREA DE TRABALHO REMOTA

2º Após digitar o endereço de destino do servidor remoto, fazer o logon no servidor e localizar o arquivo de interesse no Windows Explorer.

3º No Windows Explorer do servidor remoto localize o arquivo e clique com o botão direito do mouse e selecione COPIAR.

4º Em seguida clique em FERRAMENTAS na barra de menu e selecione MAPEAR UNIDADE DE REDE.

5º Uma caixa com unidade e campo para digitar será aberto, selecione uma unidade de letra que não esteja em uso e no campo DIGITE \\endereço do servidor local \ nome da pasta com compartilahamento do servidor local, e clique em concluir.

Exemplo: \\125.1.1.5\pastateste

6º O procedimento irá concluir com êxito caso você tenha digitado corretamente o endereço do servidor local e o nome da pasta com compartilhamento. Sendo assim, basta ir até o servidor local ou acessar o mesmo da sua própria máquina e abrir a pasta compartilhada e clicar com o botão direito do mouse e selecionar COLAR.

SEGUNDA OPÇÃO: Mapear da maquina local pelo windows explorer a pasta compartilhada do computador remoto, e realizar o procedimento de copiar e colar os arquivos de interesse.

Agora você já pode transferir arquivos de servidor remoto para servidor local de maneira simples, lembrando que os dois servidores devem estar configurados para possibilitar tal operação.

Alright, so we had some training that needed the latest Java(6u14) to work.  I extracted the .msi and pushed it out by GPO by doing the following:

Download the version you want from: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Install Java to the machine you are using.  Once done, go to

C:\documents and settings\<your username>\application data\sun\java\jre<version> folder.

In this folder, there is an msi and a file called data1.cab.  Copy this to a file share accessible by the clients.

Go to GPMC and add  a new GPO, go to Computer Settings>Software Settings>Software Installation>Right click and add new.  Put in the UNC to the msi file(the cab must be in the same directory as the msi btw).  Then set any permissions you want by going to the properties after it is added.

This is the basic way to get Java to install via GPO.  We had one issue, where the training application needed users to have admin rights to the Java folder for the training to run.  Here is what I did for that.

First, make sure you have PSExec installed on the machine you ware working on.

Run a command psexec \\<remote machine name> echo y| cacls “c:\program files\java” /g “<domain>\domain users”:f

This grants any domain users on the machine have /f(full access) to the java folder.  The echo y| is piped in because, cacls command doesnt have a switch to automatically answer y/n to confirm.  this pipes in the y after you run the command.

There is a great program out there for modifying settings in MSI files.  It’s called orca.  you can get it here. Once installed you can do a ctrl+f to find settings and change them.  Some googling may be needed to find what values things need to be set to, but this is one that I do with Java to make it not prompt users for updates constantly.

In orcca, open the jre<version> msi and go to Property table(left column) and find AutoUpdateCheck in the right side.  Change the value to 0(zero).  Then save the msi.  For more options, you can find info on sun’s website and just by looking through the msi in orca.  A lot of the options are selfexplanatory, but there is the ability to go way more in depth than I currently know how, as well.

Well, it seems not everything was working quite as planned after my last post.  Here are some other processes to help get WSUS up and going, though.

First if you are getting either of these error codes:

both the 0×80190194 and 0×80244019 error codes are the same as HTTP status 404(resource not found).

Check your selfupdate folder and make sure everything is in place.  Then check IIS MIME type settings.  It won’t serve up types it doesn’t know.  Here are the MIME types required for WSUS to operate:

.cab – application/octet-stream
.msp – application/octet-stream
.msi – application/octet-stream
.psf – application/octet-stream

One other thing to check if you are getting the error that “SelfUpdate is Not Working” (I dont remember the code, working from notes/memory here).  Check your registry:

Make sure the value for PortNumber under the “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup” key is set to the correct port (the one your WSUS site is on, 80, 8350, etc)

I checked, and the value of PortNumber on my WSUS server was 8530. Well, the WSUS (default as well) website is on port 80, so I changed the PortNumber value to 80 (decimal) and restarted IIS. This didn’t seem to clear anything up (I still saw the errors in the logs), but subsequently this past weekend I bounced the server due to some Windows Updates, and I have yet to see any problems so far after the reboot.

One other issue I have seen is Event ID 506 From Windows Server Update Services.  It means clients are unable to connect to the selfupdate folder.  This error comes from selfupdate not being able to get connections on 127.0.0.1:80.  WSUS checks this port to make sure selfupdate is working, so, go to IIS and make sure that it is available.  Also, under the default site in IIS, make sure The selfupdate folder is set for Anonymous logon.  Also, make sure you uncheck require secure authentication on the default site(just selfupdate folder) unless you have WSUS configured for SSL.

This step is crucial and I have had to do it on 3 WSUS servers so far.

1. Open a command window.
2. Type cscript <WSUSInstallDir>\setup\InstallSelfupdateOnPort80.vbs

This makes sure that selfupdate is on the default site.  I have to do this if there is already a site running on default site or sharepoint, so remember this.

I am sorry this was such a sloppy post, but honestly, his is one area where I wanted to post, but just didnt keep enough notes to know exactly what it was that I did to resolve my issues.  Anyway, hopefully some of this jumble helps.

The need for this came about recently at my new job.  The place has no patch management software in place and is incredibly far behind and failing compliance in their security audits.  I threw in a WSUS server, thinking it would be fairly easy since I had done it before in new environments without ever having a hitch.  Well, let me tell you, this was no picnic.  There were previously 4 seperate WSUS servers for different OUs… Stupid.  Anyway, it took me some time to remove the GPOs and remnants of the ols SUS servers.  They hadn’t been used in over 4 years and none of the current staff knew they ever existed anyway.

I cleaned everything up(or so I thought), and installed WSUS clean on our utility server(running Server 03).  synchronized with Microsoft and approved all critical updates.  I put in a GPO on the domain linked to the OUs containing anything that wasn’t a server, since I wasn’t up for going through checking server updates and they don’t have a test environment.  (There are well over 100 servers here, I don’t want to patch them all with a faulty patch and lose my job in less than a month)… Aanyway, only about 20/500 PCs joined, I tried everything from PSEXECing gpupdate /force, remotely installing the newest windows update client, and a couple other things.  nothing was working.  I went over the Group Policies dozens of times.  Why wasn’t it working?  I still have yet to figure it out, but I do have a workaround.

The settings for the clients that I wanted were as follows:

WSUS Server http://wsus:8530

Download and install every thrusday at 11pm

The registry keys for these settings are at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

This is what I put in the .bat file:


reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v WUServer /t reg_sz /d "http://wsus:8350" /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v WUStatusServer /t reg_sz /d "http://wsus:8350" /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v UseWUServer /t reg_dword /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v AUOptions /t reg_dword /d 4 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v NoAutoUpdate /t reg_dword /d 0 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v ScheduledInstallDay /t reg_dword /d 5 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v ScheduledInstallTime /t reg_dword /d 23 /f

I set the script to run at Computer startup via GPO, and voila, They are all joining.  Now I need to figure out the cause of all my pain.  Here are a couple more resources that may help with other questions.  Leave a comment if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer it.

MS-DOS “REG” command help

Automatic Updates Registry Values

En esta oportunidad vamos a realizar una conexión  remota, tanto del sistema operativo como el de un DBMS, todo estoy montado en una maquina virtual (VirtualBox).

Para empezar debemos de tener instalado una maquina virtual, en este caso tengo un Windows Server 2003. Para tener una red entre el servidor y la maquina fisica realizamos los siguientes pasos:

Paso #1: le damos clic sobre nuestro servidor, posteriormente nos vamos a icono de configuración.

Una vez estando alli nos vamos hacia el dispositivo de red.

Como podemos darnos cuenta, tenemos predeterminada una red NAT, en el caso de nosotros vamos a querer una red tipo Bridged para realizar una conexión entre el servidor y la maquina física y nuestro adpatador va a ser la tarjeta inalambrica, la configuracipón nos quedo asi:

Una vez realizado esto, ya tenemos una red.

Ahora bien el siguinte paso vamos a  realizar la configuración de Remota del sistema operativo.

Como paso #1:  vamos a ir a las propiedades del sistema operativo.

Paso #2: nos vamos a la pestaña de Remote una vez que estemos alli vamos seleccionamos las dos opciones que estan alli, una donde acepta conexiones remotas y la otra el asistente de conexiones remotas.

Una vez selecionadas las dos opciones nos aparecera el siguiente mensaje:

Paso #3: Ahora bien, nos vamos a Control Panel / Firewall, nos aparecera esta ventana.

Damos clic sobre ON, con esto activamos el Firewall que trae por defecto el sistema operativo.

Paso #4: Nos dirijimos a la pestaña de Exception una vez estando alli vamos a darle clic sobre Remote Desktop

Paso #6: Luego le damos clic sobre el botón de Editar, esto es para corroborar el puerto que tiene que ser usado. y luego le damos clic sobre Change scope en donde tiene que estar activada la opcion, cualquier computador conectarse.

Una vez realizado esto, aceptamos todo y cerramos.

Paso #7: En este paso vamos a probar si nuestra configuracion funciona adecuadamente. Ejecutamos la Conexion a Escritorio remoto.

Nos aparecera una ventana como esta:

Paso #8: damos clic sobre opiones, una vez estando alli escribimos la IP del servidor que en mi caso es la 192.168.1.15, el nombre del usuario, y le damos conectar.

Despues de eso nos aparecera una venta como esta, en donde el sistema operativo físico no puedo comprar la identidad de este equipo, a pesar de eso le damos que continue

Paso #9:  Si nos aparece una venta como esta, esto quiere decir que el acceso a escritorio remoto funciona correctamente.

Paso #10: Despues de eso ingresamos el password del usuario.

En hora buena, nuestro escritorio remoto funciona correctamente

Ahora vamos a configurar la conexion remota para MySQL

Paso #1: Vamos a liberar el puerto que usara MySQL, dicho puerto es el 3306, para realizar esto, nos vamos a Control Panel/Firewall una vez estando alli vamos agregar un nuevo puerto.

Paso #2: Ingresamos a la consula de MySQL como root

Paso #3: Creamos un nuevo usuario como aparece en imagen.

Paso #4: Le proporcionamos todos los permisos.

Paso #5: Actualizamos los permisos.

Con lo que llevamos hasta el momento, la configuracion de MySQL para conexiones remotas lo hemos concluido, ahora el siguiente paso es probar si funciona dicha configuración.

Paso #6:  Abrimos el administrador de MySQL en la computadora fisica, en donde tenemos instalado Windows Vista.

Paso #7: Ingresamos los datos del servidor como los del usuario para realizar la conexión.

Una vez realizado el paso anterior si todo esta bien realizado nos debera de salir una venta como esta.

En hora buena ya tenemos una conexión remota con MySQL en otro computador!!

Ahora ya podemos administrar la base de datos desde otro sistema.

Espero que les sirva, Saludos. =)