Colin's World

Interesting use of OpsMGR

charford — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:48:00 GMT

http://blog.coretech.dk/opsmgr07/opsmgr-2007-r2-scom-coretech-coffee-monitor-management-pack-0001/

This is a really interesting proof of concept that could be built upon for many pratical uses.

RAID

charford — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:32:00 GMT

Food for though...

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3839636

So over the last while, been really wondering about raid, and what the best way is to manage data storage. Disks are getting bigger providing increased capacity. Demand for that data is also occuring at relatively the same rate. Reliability is the same if not worse. Disks speeds are largely not getting that much faster.

RAID was originally invented to deal with this sort of thing. The problem is, that is RAID really the solution anymore or is there a better way to manage disks. I don't have the answer to this, and looking at different vendors and how they are looking at this in their high end devices. NetAPP seems to be making interesting uses of existing concepts to help meet their needs. Their critics would argue that it doesn't provide any real new value....

How to get Acrobat to do previews on x64

charford — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT

For those running x64 editions of windows:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/adobe_pdf_x64_fix/index.html

Outlook Shared Mailbox's Sent Items

charford — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT

One of the most annoying things with delegates, etc. When you send as someone else, the sent items show up in your mailbox instead of in the mailbox of who the sender is.

This fix finally resolves that.

http://exchangeshare.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/shared-mailbox-added-in-outlook-profile-but-where-will-sent-item-be-saved/

Technet Plus Subscription

charford — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:45:00 GMT

If you don't have one, and your an IT Pro Professional.. In addition to getting non time bombed evaluations you get two pro production PSS support cases.

Right now, you can get a discount for the subscription.

Purchase a TechNet Subscription

Then just enter the Promotion Code: TMSAM09

SharePoint Blog EBE Kit & Out of Memory

charford — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:26:00 GMT

So, i was running into issues with SharePoint EBE Blog Template and an error of out of memory.

You might have noticed a:

Failed to render control: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.

Took some time to diagnose, but I noticed that it was where the links section should be. I checked the list, linkbacks sent, and there was none. I went into linkbacks received and there was 138,000 spam linkbacks. Tried to edit the list in access, but ran into issues doing that.

Tried to use Clear SharePoint List Items and that ran into out of memory. Tried to use Tobias Zimmergren's delete EBE comments tool, and also ran into memory issues... Tried to use the SharePoint sp purge list tool and it was working but deleting about 1000 entires in 12 hours... which would take forever to delete...

So, instead I backed up the database, and then made the Linkbacks Received list a template. Deleted the list. Re-created a new list from the template. Wamo, no more issues.

Changed the EBE settings to disable receiving linkbacks received so shouldn't run into it in the future.

DFSR

charford — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:22:00 GMT

So, rebuilding a DFSR server on Server 2008 x64. Logged in with admin priviliges and ran into an issue.. I didn't find anything on it, and didn't really think about it.

if you open up dfsrdiag and run a command like pollad you get the error message:

[ERROR] Failed to connect to WMI services on computer: servername

Operation Failed

So, after doing the standard stuff of making sure wmi was running, firewall wasn't in the way, and searching for the issue... Didn't come up with a solution

Open up wmic and no issue from command prompt and can poll wmi...

Then get the idea, what if it requries cmd to run with "administrator"... sure enough... restart cmd with admin priviliges and it works...

Catch up post

charford — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081029-riaa-defendant-enlists-harvard-law-prof-students.html

http://www.darkreading.com/security/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211201249

http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2008/10/path-forward-on-liquids.html

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3489/135/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081103-canadian-wish-list-for-secret-acta-treaty-long-varied.html

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17462

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/air-force-aims.html

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Anti-piracy-agreement-re-discusses-copyright-infringement-liability--/111859

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/october-29-2008/#clip107587

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz_0mMvqcVw

http://torrentfreak.com/futuramas-anti-piracy-message-just-dont-call-it-stealing-081031/

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-sen-mccain/805401/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL9xwcIDlvw

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081104/iran_impeach_081104/20081104?hub=TopStories&s_name=

SharePoint CSS References

charford — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:01:00 GMT

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/zach/Master%20Page%20Cheat%20Sheet/Forms/ViewAll.aspx

http://www.heathersolomon.com/content/sp07cssreference.htm

Lots of Changes PT2

charford — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:01:00 GMT

If you recall, awhile ago I started writing about how I lost everything when my one home server crashed.

You can view that here: http://intranet/charford/blog/archive/2008/07/15/lots-of-changes-here-.aspx

Now with AD actually working, but WMI toast (although I didn't know it at the time) I was able to advance my clock back to current time... User passwords and computer account passwords were out of date, so had to disjoin and rejoin PC's to the domain... reset passwords...

Now, I have AD up, sorta. My first priority at that point was to get AD replicated to another machine. Fired up virtual server on my workstation and installed Server 2003... joined to domain and DC promo'd it... Looked good, but sysvol was empty... crap. Check back... FRS on the old box wouldn't actually let the DC's replicate with each other...

Manually copied the sysvol around and some other funness that you don't want to ever do again...

While this was going on, convinced the other half that it was time for a new server.... this time around I went with 4 drives in a raid1 and that ran them in 2008 hyperv...

When the new box came in, built up a new 2008 DC and was able to get it to replicate with the temp DC on my workstation... Couldn't get it to replicate with the old PC...

Next up, exchange... Bring up a new 2008 server to run exchange 2007... get that all setup, and then comes the fun of trying to forklift the DB across... get some weird errors, and actually go back to the 2003 box... Start killing off some services and work on getting the information store to mount... kill off wmi and find things work a lot better... i can actually start/stop services... and am able to convince exchange 2003 to mount my database... Quick transfer later and email is moved....

Now, I need to deal with sharepoint (this site) and my file serving.... so bring up another 2008 server... transfer the files, re-install sharepoint and sql, and create a new farm db... now to attach my SQL databases...

Nope, no joy... sql databases are foo bared... logs are corrupt and the datafiles are corrupt... neither sql will mount it...

Create a new db with the same names/files as the old one's... and stop sql.... replace the databases over the old one's and restart sql... now SQL knows about the DB's... and its just a matter of fixing the DB's, which I'm not getting anywhere. Eventually give up, and actually truncate the transaction logs and repair the corruptions... through a script i found on the web, will post a link when I find it...

Add the site back into sharepoint... and wow, there's my site back.....

next up, to make sure not left with one DC... I bring up a new vm on the server and set it up for be DC... make sure replication is going between 3 of the 4 DC's.... then dcpromo out the temp one on my machine, and then the old server...