Rene's ICT Notepad

Cannot publish to Blogspot from IE9

2011-07-19T00:18:00.000+02:00

Yes, it’s been a while since I last posted here. My previous post – yes, the one about formatting large disks for FAT32 – was the first post in ages. At least, the first post in the IE9-age. I soon discovered that I was not even able to publish from IE9…

Pressing F12 to enable developer mode and then switching back to IE9 Compatibility View delivered the workaround for the short term. I can publish now. Anyone a clue about the real resolution for this problem? (And, no, I am not interested in tips like “use Chrome or Firefox”…)

As soon as I have the fix, I’ll post it here.

Regards, Rene

Update: been googling for this issue and there are so many people with this same problem, telling and blogging about this, even with recent post timestamps!; from what I read, it seems that this issue is the result of a fight two giants and it will not soon be fixed. So, please take my last line above exactly as I say it: "as soon as I have the fix, I'll post it"... And I think the fix will not soon be found.

Testing Blogsy for iPad

2011-07-18T23:41:00.001+02:00

Earlier today, I was complaining about not being able to publish to Blogger from IE9. One minute later, I said to myself: who wants to publish from IE9 anyway? Much easier to use a (blog) writing tool, as there are many out there.

On my Windows 7 notebook, I am using Windows Live Writer, and I must say that it's a pretty fine tool to use. For the iPad, I've been googling a bit and finally came up with Blogsy. This is my first post on iPad at all and this one is made with Blogsy. First impression is real good, I must say. It's really optimized for iPad with lots of neat iPad-related features. But, now that iPad operates quite different from a Windows-machine, I now have to spend some time to learn how to do some "normal" things in Blogsy (like, linking to other pages, for instance... :-))

Till next time, regards, Rene

Format large disks for FAT32

2011-07-14T22:30:00.007+02:00

The long-story-short: for formatting large disks for the FAT32 file system, use Fat32Format from this place.

The long-story-long:

This week, I bought an AirPort Extreme Basestation (which up till now is a bit of a disappointment, I must say) and one of the goals was: to connect a large USB disk to the AirPort and then share this disk for the Verhagen's Home Environment.

After connecting the disk to the AirPort, it gets recognized immediately by the AirPort and the option for sharing the disk is offered. However, in my Windows 7 notebook, the disk does not show up in the network environment. After consulting the log in the AirPort, it turns out that the disk does not show up because the file system on this large disk is NTFS (of course). However, NTFS is not supported on the AirPort, we need to change it to FAT32.

After googling a bit on how to format a (large) disk for FAT32, I ended up on the Softpedia-page that the upper link points to. Great tool, formatted 750GB in under one minute... Great!

Tools - Unlocker, by Cedrick Collomb

2008-12-03T11:05:00.001+01:00

Ever had this annoying message given by Windows? "Cannot delete folder: it is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again".

Solution: use Unlocker, by Cedrick Collomb. Super tool for unlocking files, processes, determining who or what has files open etc. Of course, there are other tools which perform some of Unlocker's functions as well, but Unlocker does this in a very neat way.

Regards, Rene

Software - Cisco VPN Client update v5.0.03.0530 available

2008-06-14T21:59:00.001+02:00

Hi there,

Just discovered that Cisco released an updated version of their VPN Client. As I am running Windows Vista Business Edition on my notebook, and the previous client had a lot of (performance) issues, I was really pleased to read about the new version.

Major "plus" about the new version: it is much faster in connecting to the remote VPN server (PIX / ASA / Concentrator). Where in the past making a connection took really about 20-30 seconds (and then sometimes would end in a "Failed to enable virtual adapter" error message), all of the connections work correct now and establishing a new VPN connection now only takes about 5 seconds or so.

Regards, Rene

Tools - Uptime.exe

2008-06-03T13:38:00.001+02:00

From Microsoft's Knowledge Base, article number 232243:

SUMMARY

A new tool, Uptime.exe, is available for displaying system availability. Uptime.exe can be used to display the current uptime of the local or remote system. Optionally, it can also scan the Event log for key system events such as system restart or computers that are not responding (hanging). Where possible, it also calculates system availability. It is primarily intended for Windows NT Server 4.0 Service Pack 4 or later, though it operates in limited fashion on earlier versions.

MORE INFORMATION

Uptime.exe is a standalone program. To install the tool, simply copy the file into your Windows NT directory. You may then run the tool at a command prompt.

Despite the fact that this tool was originally written for WinNT4 SP4, it is still very handy! You can download it at the article page, mentioned at the top.

Regards, Rene

Lessons Learned - Cisco ASA 5510 and TCP request discarded

2008-06-02T16:47:00.001+02:00

Hi there,

Some weeks ago, I mentioned having had some trouble trying to figure out why a Cisco ASA would allow traffic TO the interface (ie, for using SSH) and not THROUGH the interface (to reach a server on the LAN, from the outside). I also mentioned the solution there: when permitting traffic through the outside-interface, always mention "interface" in the static-statement instead of the IP-address.

Today, I ran into this problem again. But, slightly different this time (of course). The previous time, we were dealing with a single public IP address setup in a SOHO office. So, the customer had only one public IP address. My conclusion after troubleshooting that setup was, that you cannot use the exact public IP but have to use the "interface"-keyword instead.

This time, this customer does really have a business internet setup, with a routed subnet on the outside. Because I have multiple static's in this config, I decided to use the real public IP address in the static-statement, for reasons of clarity and readability. But that DOES NOT WORK.

Remember this: when using a Cisco ASA firewall, and using port forwarding to configure inbound traffic, ALWAYS (always!!) use the "interface"-keyword in the static-statement. So, something like:

static (inside,outside) tcp interface [port] [private IP] [port]

That works!

Regards, Rene

Laughing Matters - Annoying software...

2008-05-23T07:37:00.001+02:00

Everyone knows all about it: annoying software. Annoying behaviour, irritating interface, updates three times a week, software that you just did not ask for... Read all about the joys of software we really do not need at http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000001048,39419834,00.htm.

Especially brilliant is their quote on Norton Antivirus:

It's a little unfair to pick on Norton Antivirus and make it carry the sins of half the desktop malware industry — but only a little unfair. If ever a class of software deserved to be cast into the lower reaches of Hell and run on Satan's own desktop, it is this. Performance- sapping, space-hogging, noisy, irritating and prone to inducing just as many problems as they purport to solve, these horrible, ineffective, expensive lumps of digital thuggery keep entire platoons of support engineers in business and home users in tears. We know. We get the phone calls.

Also read the truth about Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and a lot of others...

Regards, Rene

Problem mapping LPT1 as a non-Administrator

2008-05-23T07:30:00.001+02:00

Last week, really spent some good time troubleshooting why LPT1 could not be mapped to a network printer queue. In this case, a user could use "net use lpt1 \\server1\printershare1" on this local machine, but not on the terminal server. Login script was fine, everything went fine, except for mapping the LPT1-port.

Turned out that the user had Administrative rights on the local machine, and was just a "Domain user" on the terminal server. (Whether this is good or bad is out of scope for this post... :-))

Did some googling, and first came up with this one: "Unable to Map (Net Use) LPT1 in Windows XP". After reading some more, it turned out that M$ itself has a knowledge base article on this: "Non-administrators cannot remap an LPT port to a network printer".

Different from what Microsoft says, I have found this issue only to occur for LPT1; other local ports can be mapped to network shares without a problem...

Regards, Rene

Tools - CurrPorts

2008-04-25T12:10:00.001+02:00

CurrPorts is a nifty tool, that allows you to see which applications or services are listening on (occupying) what TCP or UDP ports. Also includes the option to kill processes etc. Download it here @ NirSoft.

Today, I was trying to get the excellent Kiwi Syslog Daemon working on a server, but although the program said the service was started, nothing would appear on-screen or in the logs. It appeared the UDP 514 port was already occupied by another syslog service (from Eicon's DIVA monitor, in this case), so Kiwi's Syslog Service could not start. Thanks to CurrPorts, this could be detected quite easily.

Regards, Rene

Laughing Matters - XADM: Directory Won't Start if System Date Later Than 2038

2008-04-24T12:19:00.001+02:00

In this knowledge base article, Microsoft confirms a problem in Exchange 4.0 or 5.0. Event IDs 1121 and 5000 are logged when starting the Exchange server, which indicate that the Information Store service is not reachable (or not started).

Cause: The Directory service will not start if the system date is later than January 17, 2038.

There's no need to upgrade, however, because Microsoft is researching this problem and will post new information in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available... :-)

Regards, Rene

Lessons Learned - Cisco ASA 5505 and TCP request discarded

2008-04-22T06:26:00.001+02:00

Hi there,

Last week, we set up a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall in one of our customers' LAN. It should replace the ISA 2000 firewall over there, because we need to create a site-to-site tunnel to a PIX 515E on a remote location.

All went fine with this ASA 5505, except that it would not pass any traffic from the internet to the LAN. From the inside out, all was OK. From the outside in, nothing would pass the firewall. The relevant config lines were as follows:

static (inside,outside) tcp w.x.y.z 25 10.10.10.10 25 netmask 255.255.255.255
access-list outside01 permit tcp any host w.x.y.z eq 25
access-group outside01 in interface outside

So, here we redirect all SMTP traffic on public interface with IP w.x.y.z to private host 10.10.10.10.

Nothing much would happen. Internally, the SMTP host was listening, of course. From outside, the interface with IP w.x.y.z was pingable, of course. From the outside, configuring the ASA with SSH or HTTPS went fine. (So, traffic TO the interface went fine, traffic THROUGH the interface not.)

Spent some hours troubleshooting. Changed config, used a different port on the ASA for the public, checked syslog, did this and that. Found nothing.

Finally, started syslogging on the debug level ("logging trap debug"). Now we saw syslog entries as follows:

TCP request discarded from a.b.c.d./1025 to outside: w.x.y.z./25

Where "a.b.c.d" was the IP address the SMTP request was coming from. So, this meant traffic was arriving at the interface, but was discarded there. Googled with that and found this post at Blindhog.net. The exact problem we had was mentioned there!

Problem was explained and solved quite easily:

In configs with a single public IP address, use "interface' instead of the public IP in the static-statement

So, we changed the static to read as follows:

static (inside,outside) tcp interface 25 10.10.10.10 25 netmask 255.255.255.255

All worked fine!

If anyone runs into this situation, this is your solution. Thanks, Blindhog.net!

Regards, Rene

SSO for OWA 2007

2008-04-17T20:40:00.001+02:00

Did some changes today to an existing Lotus Domino 6.x environment, in which user use iNotes (Domino Web Access) for accessing e-mail and calendar. This all worked fine, but as we are migrating from Domino/Notes to Exchange/Outlook, some modifications needed to be made to the web setup.

We used a WebSphere plug-in from IBM, to automatically authenticate Windows users to the Domino-environment. This is done by using a ISAPI filter from IBM, configured in an IIS-website, with which incoming requests on - say - port 80 in IIS are re-routed to - again, say - port 81 on the Domino webserver. The ISAPI filter passes the username from the Windows environment to the Domino server, and thus authenticates the user there. Requirement is that the fully-distinguished Windows username (DOMAIN\Username) is known in the Domino-environment. By adding this fully-distinguished Windows username to the user's Domino full name, all this got to work.

Very nice!

But, as I said, we're migrating from Domino to Exchange. And this means we're moving away from iNotes (Domino Web Access) to OWA (Outlook Web Access). Also for that, we would like to have some kind of Single Sign-on (SSO) for OWA. I did some quick googling for that, but cannot find something quickly.

So, does anyone know of a method of automatically authenticating Windows users to the web environment in Outlook Web Access? If so, let me know. (I told you how to do SSO to Domino, now tell me how to SSO to OWA :-) :-)).

Regards, Rene

Testing Windows Live Writer

2008-04-17T17:54:00.001+02:00

A few days ago, I mentioned testing blog.gears. Although this worked nice, I cannot get it back to work again. Probably, blog.gears is just a "coding example", but I am just guessing.

So, did a little more searching for an offline blogger client for windows, and Google came up with Windows Live Writer.

Looks nice, interface-wise... Works like a charm!

Regards, Rene

Great tip for Dutch readers: onlinespamfilter.nl

2008-04-15T21:22:00.001+02:00

Hi there,

A great tip for Dutch readers: if your company is experiencing uncurable spam problems, try Onlinespamfilter.nl.

Making onlinespamfilter.nl work is very simple:

Have Jasper Toonen @ Onlinespamfilter.nl create a 30-day trial account for you; this will involve telling him at which IP address the scanned mail should be delivered; most of the times, this will be the public IP address of your private mail server on the LAN;
Remove any existing MX-records from your domain;
Add two MX-records for the scanning servers at onlinespamfilter.nl;
C'est ca!

Additional changes can be made to your firewall or mail server, but basically this is all that is required.

The result of all this is a practically spam-free and virus-free mail flow! Really, almost no spam is coming thru. And although onlinespamfilter.nl's services are mainly to prevent spam for your domains, they do provide virus-scanning as well. (As Jasper says: spam filtering is a lot harder to do than virus scanning is; and, hey... as we're already scanning your mail for spam, let's also do virus scanning, while we're at it...).

Check it out!

Regards,
Rene

Another test, this time using blog.gears

2008-04-15T20:59:00.001+02:00

How does this look?

Just learned about Google Gears and blog.gears. Have been interested in an off-line blogger editor, and maybe this is the one I need.

Anyway, let's have a look...

Regards,
Rene

Windows Live Messenger

2006-08-18T17:52:00.000+02:00

Instant Messaging, ik kan niet meer zonder. Hoewel ik nog niet heel erg aan de 'skype' ben, kan ik IM niet meer missen. Eerst een tijdje MSN gebruikt, later overgestapt op Trillian (door een tip van een vriend).

Trillian heb ik ook tijden naar volle tevredenheid gebruikt, vooral vanwege:
* uitstekende logmogelijkheden;
* mogelijkheid om iemand te zien uitloggen (en niet alleen inloggen)
* mogelijkheid om per event zelf te bepalen of en wat voor audio signaal er gegeven wordt

Al met al een superhandige tool, ware het niet dat-ie zolang ik 'm gebruik één groot manco had: hij wilde vaak niet goed aanmelden. Ik ben gewoon om mijn notebook te hibernate-n (dus niet echt uitzetten, maar in slaapstand te zetten). Bij het her-opstarten komt alle software goed op, behalve Trillian. Zelf disconnecten en reconnecten is dan de oplossing, maar daar kom ik op een gemiddelde werkdag pas na anderhalf uur achter. Anderhalf uur niet bereikbaar geweest voor collega's... Op zich vind ik dat niet echt heel erg, maar omdat ik het wel erg vind als zij niet on-line zijn, moet ik solidair zijn en mezelf on-line melden zodra ik on-line ben. Het begon me dus goed te vervelen dat Trillian dat zo slecht deed...

Daarom deze week maar weer terug naar het MSN-kamp, maar dan gelijk naar Live Messenger. Als dat dan toch het nieuwe platform moet worden, laat ik dan maar gelijk aan het nieuwste van het nieuwste ruiken. Dus, Windows Live Messenger gedownload en aan de slag ermee... De ervaringen zijn tot nu toe positief (kan nu ook winks versturen, fwiw), maar ik had niet anders verwacht. Als echt de halve wereld aan het MSN-en is (laten we het zo maar even noemen), dan zal Microsoft daar best een lekkere tool voor gemaakt hebben.

Het enige wat mij direct irriteerde was de vrij royale advertentieruimte onderin het Contacts-scherm. Dat moest weg, vond ik. Daarom gezocht naar een soort ad-remover voor Windows Live Messenger. En omdat ik natuurlijk niet de eerste ben die zich daaraan ergert, is zo'n ding (ad-remover) er natuurlijk gewoon. En hij remove-t niet alleen ad's, maar zet nog veel meer dingen aan of uit (totaal maar liefst 70 features!), gebaseerd op hoe jij het wenst in te stellen.

De ad-remover voor WLM heet A-Patch en hier te vinden: A-Patch for Windows Live Messenger & MSN Messenger.

Veel plezier ermee!

Later!

Testing Performancing

2006-08-15T14:24:00.000+02:00

Funny Microsoft Q Articles From The Knowledge Base

2006-02-06T12:45:00.000+01:00

Een bak vol Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles, hier en daar echt hilarisch... ;-)

Wat te denken van de volgende citaten (van Microsoft zelf!):
* "The problem here is that the file formats used by Office applications are extremely complex, and not too logical either."
* "Network adapter does not work when unplugged." (Duhh!)
* Problem: "Repeating ALT+TAB, ALT+ENTER, or ALT+ESC Corrupts Display". Resolution: "Do not press ALT+TAB, ALT+ENTER, or ALT+ESC repeatedly....".

Lachen, toch?

Firewall.cx - Excellent networking tutorials

2006-01-09T15:28:00.000+01:00

The Networking-section of <Firewall.cx containts an excellent set of tutorials on various networking technologies. Am checking out their explanation on VLANs and it really provides a lot of insight.

They claim to be "recommended by the CISCO NETWORK ACADEMY" and I think I can see why...

Place to go, I would say!

Printing to LPD Printer Is Slow or Fails with Windows

2005-10-26T11:56:00.000+02:00

Experienced a nasty printing problem, which was caused by a number of ingredients that together will make it very odd that someone else will ever experience this problem, but anyway: here's the story...

At a customer's site, we implemented new industrial labelprinters (Zebra's, very fine machines). Per label printing went fine to these printers, but printing a higher number of labels (> 10) showed a strange phenomenon: a number of labels printed fine, the system waited for a couple of minutes, then some labels again, then some minutes waiting again and so on... Very strange, but more important: very irritating!

Other relevant infrastructure components: SAP R3 on Windows 2000 Server, printing to LPR-printers on the 2000-box, which in turn delivers the label on a print server (running Teklynx Sentinel S4 Print Pack for adding barcode functionality etc.). On this print server, the label processing is carried out and at last the label is delivered to the labelprinter. Quite a number of places where things could go wrong...

We determined that the problem had to be somewhere in SAP or the SAP-server, because during such a "wait time" (number of minutes waiting in between printing a bunch of labels) other applications were able to print. Having said that, we measured the wait time in between label printing, and that was about four minutes (this is important!)...

So, as Google is your friend, we asked Google where this four minute timeout was coming from, and it lead us to this page: Printing to LPD Printer Is Slow or Fails with Windows. This page shines a little light into this problem and also suggest reading this page: Updated TCP/IP printing options for Windows NT 4.0 SP3.

What was the case? I mentioned that our SAP R/3 is running on Windows 2000 Server. That is true, but, this server started its life being a Windows NT SP3 Server. In NT4/SP3, an old version of the LPR protocol was implemented: "Per RFC 1122, each port must not be reused for four minutes (2 * Maximum Segment Lifetime as defined in RFC 1122)." This four minute timeout was needed because only 11 TCP-ports could be used for printing (TCP 721-731). With RFC 1179, this limitation was overcome by using the high ports for printing (> 1024). As this server had been NT4/SP3 in the past, the LPR-ports had been created under the old LPR-regime.

We solved this by the solution that is mentioned in Q179156: deleting and recreating the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\LPDSVC\lpr-regkey and adding the REG_DWORD "UseNonRFCSourcePorts". By doing that, we continue to use the old LPR-ports, but instruct them to use the high-ports instead of the old low ports in the range 721-731.

As I said in the beginning: it sounds quite rare that someone will ever experience this problem again, but hey... maybe you do and you find this post helpful ;-)

Shutdown.exe

2005-10-20T10:05:00.000+02:00

For scheduled reboots of Windows 2000/2003 systems, I was always using a version of SHUTDOWN.EXE (by Stephen L. Bryant from Microsoft) that did this job very well. However, I also tried using this one to do a scheduled shutdown, and that did not work well: Windows did shut down but the machine did not.

A colleague of mine found this one, which does this job quite well.

For those of you curious why anyone in his right mind would want to do a scheduled shutdown, here's the reason why: we are running VMware Workstation and one of the VMs is a Windows 2000 Server. We need to backup both the host server and the Windows 2000 Server VM, but we do not have enough licenses for the Windows Remote Agent of VERITAS BackupExec. So, the nicest option of course would have been to purchase another license of the Remote Agent, but instead we shutdown this machine just before the backup runs so that we can backup the VM as a regular file.

Tweakers.net - Nieuws [ 'VPN-wachtwoorden van Cisco makkelijk te decoderen' ]

2005-10-19T11:18:00.000+02:00

http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/39432/?highlight=cisco+vpn (Dutch only)

Reden te meer om bij VPN-verbindingen twee-laags authenticatie te gebruiken. In de woorden van RSA: something you have and something you know. Toegepast op dit Cisco VPN-concept: something you have = je connectieprofiel, something you know = extra authenticatie op bijvoorbeeld RADIUS-server.

How Do You Restart Notes/Domino 6.x After It Hangs?

2005-10-18T22:35:00.000+02:00

This night, I had been waiting 45 minutes for a Domino server to shutdown, but it just wouldn't... I was wondering if there might be a utility KillDomino (just as we have KillNotes), and although I found out that KillDomino indeed exists, I couldn't find it (tip: search for KillDomino and follow the links to what you find... ;-))

However, there is something way easier than KillDomino: nsd -kill. Check it out!

Activated the Word Verification Option

2005-10-12T12:34:00.000+02:00

Just a few minutes ago, I found out that both this blog and my other personal blog have been hijacked by the "spam commenters". Therefore, the Word Verification Option has been activated, to keep the bad guys out...

Running VMWare workstation VM's as a service

2005-10-12T11:53:00.000+02:00

http://www.freelists.org/archives/thin/06-2004/msg01039.html

Quote: "If you're a VMware enthusiast, you've probably on more than one occasion wanted to log off from your computer while leaving your virtual machines (VMs) running."

I know that GSX Server can do this by default, but it is very handy to add thit functionality to Workstation as well. In our case, Workstation is running on our Management Server. Many times a day we log on to the Management Server using a console session over RDP, and always we have to remember to not log off from this session but to disconnect it instead. When running Workstation VMs as a service, this is no longer needed.

Handy...

VMware job finished...

2005-10-05T14:48:00.000+02:00

Although the physical-to-virtual conversion has been finished for a weeks and the server that I was converted is already running as a virtual server for the same amount of time, I recently saw that I had finished my report here (the log that I started somewhere in august...). Time to do that now!

Basically, it all went very quick starting from where we left off in the log from August 24. I stopped that report telling that we were restoring the image from the second drive in the VM to the first one. We had to use Ghost 8 for that, however, because the previous version just quit restoring the image somewhere along the way. After restoring the image, we were ready to start the server.

And it worked very well from the very first time! Although I do suspect that the Dutch saying "more luck than wisdom" goes here, I am extremely content with how easy this conversion went. It really is a matter of creating the image, creating the new VM and restoring the image to the VM. We were having some trouble of getting the image created and restored, having some trouble accessing the network using Bart's Network Boot Disk, but all that trouble was not directly related to the P2V that we were doing.

One reason that I think that our conversion was quite problem-free, was that we used IDE-disks in the VM. The source server already had IDE-drivers on board (for the CDROM), to after restoring the image to the VM and starting Windows, all the correct drivers were already available. Am I right in assuming this?

Currently, I am working on backing up this machine. I think the best and brightest way of having this machine backed up (in our situation) is to just install the BackupExec Remote Agent for Windows in the VM, but we do not have enough licenses for that. So for the moment, I am considering to just backup this machine using file backup. I have to automatically shutdown and restart the machine, but I do not think that will be much of a problem.

So, let me just finish this report by saying this was a very nice project to do, in which much knowledge was gained...

KPN - UMTS/Wi-Fi coverage checker

2005-09-06T13:53:00.000+02:00

Nice website, displaying UMTS coverage from KPN in the Netherlands. Displays GSM/GPRS coverage as well (of course!), but also lists WiFi hotspots from both KPN and other providers (per country!). Very nice...

Bart's Network Boot Disk & VMware

2005-08-24T14:42:00.000+02:00

Today I started working on my first P2V-project, using VMware. The goal is to transform a Windows 2000 Server into a physical server running in a VMware Virtual Machine (P2V = Physical To Virtual). The server that we need to transform is needed in a branch office, while we - at Head Office - still need data and applications that still exist on the server. Also, I do not want to burden a specific server in this customer's LAN with the applications of the server that's leaving the office, so virtualizing it seems like a good option to me.

I came across a document on the VMware-website, Converting Image Files into Virtual Machine Disks, which mentions a very simple procedure how this should be done. It should go as follows:

Image the existing server
Install VMware on the host server and create a new, empty virtual machine
Restore the image into the newly created virtual machine
Done!

Sounds fairly simple to me!

The document on the VMware-website discusses two ways of imaging the server, one of which is using Bart's Network Boot Disk. Bart's disk works really really fantastic!! I just downloaded the Auto-create-version after which creating the boot disk was just a matter of typing one command on a command prompt and the disk was ready!

After booting from the disk and starting GHOST.EXE to dump my image from the source server to the destination machine, I ran into two things:
1. Destination image files cannot be larger than 2GB, and
2. We experienced quite poor performance creating the image

The first problem is a very logical one: as Bart's Network Boot Disk is a Windows98-disk, there is the FAT-limitation of 2GB. No problem for Ghost, just split the image in separate file and you're done. The second problem is discussed in the FAQ on Bart's Network Boot Disk webpage, and has to do with using TCP/IP and copying large files from a DOS-based machine to a Windows 2000-based machine. Bart offers a link to a Microsoft-page discussing this issue, and this issue can be resolved by altering the TCPWindowSize on the destination server. I decided not go changing such basic parameters and just used IPX/SPX to get the image created. I was quite amazed to see the image getting created twice as fast as when using TCP/IP. So, two problems solved.

So, after booting the source server with Bart's disk, I was reading to start the imaging. I was surprised to see the image procedure crash at some 7.5Gb (where my source server has about 14Gb space in use). I restarted Ghost to start the image again, and now it crashed at 4.something Gb. What was happening? Maybe there was something wrong between Ghost and the RAID controller? After checking Symantec's website, I learned that GHOST and RAID are not compatible. Symantec does explicitly NOT support using Ghost with RAID-machines. However, they do offer some options. One of them was trying to run the image again with DOS ASPI drivers loaded. I tried that, and succeeded. So after loading ASPI2DOS, ASPI4DOS, ASPI8DOS and ASPI8U2, Ghost would image my interne source server disk to the destination server.

One day later...
OK, after creating an image from the source server I was ready to restore it to the VMware host machine.
I had created a virtual boot floppy file (using WinImage) and configured a new VM to boot from this floppy file. All went went, so after booting I ended up with an empty VM, a DOS-prompt and a connection to the server where the image was put upon (I will call it the "image server" from now on). Nothing would stop me from logging on to the image server and start GHOST to restore the image to the VM's virtual local disk. However, I have come across some problems and finally found a workaround, of which I am not very proud...

I tried the following:
* Boot VM to DOS, access the image server over TCP/IP, start Ghost and restore the image --> was quite slow, just 90Mb/min.
* Boot VM to DOS, access the image server over IPX/SPX (recalling the above mentioned performance issue when connecting to a Windows 2000 Server from DOS), start Ghost and restore the image --> even slower, only 60Mb/min

I also tried the following: as my VMware-server and the image server are physically the same machine, I tried copying the image files from the image server to another server I had around, and tried to restore the images from there. Same problem, still too slow.

Next try was to try to restore the images from the local disk of the image server (as the VMware-server and the image server were the same server). But, in that scenario, I had to find a way to access the server's local disks from within the virtual machine. I tried NTFSDOS from SysInternals, and was able to "see" and access the server local disks from within the VM. There were two options now:
* just boot the VM, start Ghost and restore the image; did not work, Ghost would complain the image file was not a valid Ghost image file (which it was!)
* create a second local disk in the VM, boot the VM, access the local disk from within the VM, copy image files to the VM and then try to use Ghost; this also did not work, because the files could be copied reliably.

There obviously was a problem with NTFSDOS, which prevented the VM from reading and/or copying file from the local disk.

So.... I was quite running out of options. A colleague of mine came up with the idea of booting the VM with a WinPE-CD (because NTFS-support is fine in XP) to see if we would be able to access the local disks and copy the files from there (to the second local disk in the VM). This did work well and as we speak the server is restoring the image to the first local VM disk.

To be continued...

Converting Windows XP client from Novell to Microsoft

2005-06-30T14:42:00.000+02:00

Yesterday and today, I spent quite some time on a client that in the past logged in to a NetWare NDS environment and that should be changed to no longer log into NDS but to Active Directory instead. In itself not quite a difficult job: remove the Novell Client32, install Client for Microsoft Networks and that should be it. This is true, just to a certain level, I discovered...

Spent really quite some time trying to find out why Group Policies were not applied and software was not distributed. Event IDs 1030 and 1058 were logged at the client site, indicating that some part of the SYSVOL-folder on the DC could not be read. First, I learned that there is a hotfix for that as mentioned in Microsoft KBA 810907, but after applying that one my problem remained.

Further googling brought me to Microsoft KBA 314494 and that one did the trick. What had happened?

As I said, this client used to login to an NDS-environment using Client32. Client32 has lots of performance issues, especially in multi-redirector situations (a redirector is used to connect to a certain server environment; multi-redirector means that the client connects both to Novell and Microsoft (or other) servers). There is a Novell TID on how to improve performance in such situations and of the tips they do is to explicitly DISABLE the DFS Client in Windows 2000/XP by modifying the DisableDFS registry key (in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MUP, to be exact).

Exactly that reproduces the problem that I had, as follows: the SYSVOL-folder on a domain controller is replicated automatically to other DCs using DFS. Clients need a DFS Client in order to be able to reach the SYSVOL-share on the DC. By disabling the DFS Client in Windows in order to improve performance to the NDS environment, this new problem was introduced.

So, what is all boils down to is that when you ever need to connect your existing Novell client to an Active Directory environment, first check the DisableDFS regkey and make sure it is set to 0.

How to open WINMAIL.DAT?

2005-06-30T13:55:00.000+02:00

We all know that certain Outlook-versions tend to send a file WINMAIL.DAT along with the e-mail message, and that this DAT-file contains a formatted version of the e-mail itself. We also know that this is caused by a setting telling Outlook whether or not to use RTF for sending mail (see Microsoft's Knowledge Base Article 138053 for more). To this point, nothing new...

But, what I always thought was that the WINMAIL.DAT file only contained a formatted version of the e-mail, and only that. What I did not know was that WINMAIL.DAT could also contain attachments that were sent in the original e-mail. Question is: how to extract attachments contained within the DAT-file?

I googled for that and came up with an interesting (command-line) utility called WMDecode. WMDecode runs in a folder and extracts attachments from files that you drop in the same folder. Very handy!!

Added Atom RSS Feed

2005-06-18T22:48:00.000+02:00

For those of you that really would like to get updated on every item and every burp that I produce ;-) I have added an Atom RSS Feed today. In the sidebar on the right, right next to the Blogger logo, there is the Atom logo with a shortcut to the feed's link. Have fun with that...

I have to admit that I am not really into RSS, I just checked it out yesterday (after receiving a request for that from Ron Onrust (see a post on Ron somewhere in the very first posts in my ICT-blog)). Today I downloaded my first RSS Reader, SharpReader, and I have to get into RSS'ing a little more. Anyway, have fun...

Re: PSTray

2005-06-17T09:32:00.000+02:00

PSTray (see post below) is absolutely a nice tool (to hide icons from the system tray that you do not want there), but I have to admit that I overlooked Windows XP's own feature to do exactly that... ;-)=(

I always thought that "hide unused icons from the system tray" (as the feature is called in WinXP) made decisions on whether or not to show a certain icon, based on Windows' own logic. A collegue of mine attended me to the fact that there is a "Customize..." button there, to exactly do what PSTray also does: explicitly tell icons to be there or not, and as such have absolute control over the icons that you do (not) want to appear.

OK, oversight on my part, but you're never too old to learn (as we say in Holland)...

PS Tray Factory - system tray icons management utility

2005-06-09T22:06:00.000+02:00

When looking at Steve Miller's site (see post below, about ShareWatch), I got the idea that putting an idea on Steve's wishlist might not be such a good idea (he is too busy working on new and other projects, so there's practically no time left for updating the existing modules). So I forgot about that.

Instead, I found a tool that enables you to control the system tray, to hide icons that you do not want to see etc. PSTray is what it's called and I have started to evaluate it today...

ShareWatch, by Steve Miller

2005-06-09T08:13:00.000+02:00

ShareWatch allows you to see who is connected to a computer and what files they are accessing. Have you ever wondered why your hard drive or modem is active, but you aren't doing anything to cause it to be active? It is possible a remote user is accessing your computer. Have you ever had a file locked but you don't know why? ShareWatch can tell you if a network user is using the file and allows you to disconnect them so that you can edit/delete the file. Have you ever wanted to shutdown a computer, but don't want to drop people using the computer. ShareWatch will show you all resources in use by remote users.

PS:
More nifty tools by Steve Miller on his homepage at http://www.stevemiller.net/apps.
I found Steve's pages when looking for a tool that would allow me to assign a _global_ hotkey in Windows for using PasteSpecial. PasteSpecial is a very very handy option and depending on the application I use it a lot, but unfortunately it has no default hotkey assigned (like Ctrl+V for Paste (or PasteNormal). With Steve's PureText tool you can (I wish Steve had left the tray icon out, but that's a minor problem and I think I can put that on the wishlist).
There are also some handy tools in his Win32 Command Line Toolbox, such as "global": global performs a command on the current directory and all subdirectories below. Might come in handy some time...

How do I control how Internet Explorer opens a document from the internet or an intranet?

2005-05-31T14:20:00.000+02:00

Je kent het wel: je opent een Office-document (of eigenlijk: wat voor bestand dan ook) in IE en vervolgens gebeurt er iets wat je eigenlijk niet wilt: ofwel opent een Word-document in IE terwijl je eigenlijk Word wilde openen of juist andersom enz enz...

Dit gedrag heeft alles te maken met de registry values "Confirm open after download" en "Browse in same window" settings voor de betreffende file extension. De eerste regelt het al of niet vragen van IE of je het bestand wilt openen of opslaan, de tweede bepaalt of het bestand in IE moet worden geopend of in de native application.

Voor een uitleg hoe dit met Word in z'n werk gaat, zie
How do I control how Internet Explorer opens a document from the internet or an intranet? Voor een REG-file die de settings voor alle Office-programma's zodanig zet dat ze altijd in hun native application openen, zie Office Documents opening in IE.

Na nog wat verder uitzoekwerk, blijkt het volgende: in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT wordt per bestandstype bijgehouden wat ermee moet gebeuren wanneer een dergelijk bestand in de browser wordt geopend. Zo is er een key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.8 (de 8 heeft te maken met de Office-versie, er is bijv. ook Word.Document.6 voor oudere Office-versies; hoe dat precies zit staat hier), waarin het gedrag voor .DOC-bestanden wordt geregeld. Per registry key zijn er twee REG_DWORDs die van belang zijn, te weten:
EditFlags, deze komt overeen met "Confirm Open After Download", en
BrowserFlags, deze komt overeen met "Browse In Same Window".

Door deze vlaggen een bepaalde waarde te geven, kan het gewenste resultaat worden bereikt. Een en ander werkt als volgt:
REG_DWORD BrowserFlags:
* value 0x00000000 = bestand in browser openen
* value 0x00000008 = bestand in applicatie openen
REG_DWORD EditFlags:
* value 0x00000000 = vraag om Openen/Opslaan
* value 0x00010000 = vraag niet om Openen/Opslaan, open rechtstreeks

Microsoft KBA's hierover: BrowserFlags en EditFlags.

By the way, dit lost een probleem op wat al langer op mijn eigen systeem speelde. Bij het downloaden van .ZIP-files, heeft mijn IE ooit besloten dat die .ZIP-files gelijk maar geopend moesten worden. Dus geen vraag waar het bestand op te slaan, direct openen. Reuze irritant. Is door bovenstaande ook opgelost ;-)

Change the default telnet client

2005-05-26T14:18:00.000+02:00

Enable handling of telnet://hostname:port/ URLs on the command line. With this feature, you can now set PuTTY as the default handler for Telnet URLs. If you run the Registry Editor and set the value in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\telnet\shell\open\command to be "\path\to\putty.exe %1" (with the full pathname of your PuTTY executable), you should find that clicking on telnet links in your web browser now runs PuTTY.

After a new DHCP server is authorized, the original DHCP server becomes unauthorized and cannot be authorized again in Windows 2000 Server

2005-05-17T10:51:00.000+02:00

After a new DHCP server is authorized, the original DHCP server becomes unauthorized and cannot be authorized again in Windows 2000 Server

Useful IBM Links

2005-04-13T09:31:00.000+02:00

Using Notes/Domino SMTP with a DMZ, part 1
Using Notes/Domino SMTP with a DMZ, part 2
Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino, part 1
Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino, part 2

Process Explorer (SysInternals Freeware)

2005-04-12T12:17:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

XS4ALL Internet Diensten | EuPod

2005-04-01T10:45:00.000+02:00

Er zijn bepaalde 1-april-grappen waar je al dagen van te voren naar uitkijkt. Zo heeft het Jeugdjournaal meestal goeie grappen, maar ook die van Internet Provider XS4ALL mogen er zijn.

Voor een historisch overzicht van publieke 1-april grappen, zie de Wikipedia. Om bij de ICT te blijven, dit was ooit ook een hele mooie... (waar ik zelf trouwens met open ogen ingetrapt ben; ahum...).

IBM - Supported Configurations of Notes and Domino 6.x

2005-03-30T14:04:00.000+02:00

Ben bezig met een migratie van Domino en Notes 5.x naar 6.5.3. Door de omstandigheden gedwongen zal het een gefaseerde migratie worden, waarbij eerste "dringende" clients van 5 naar 6 zullen worden gemigreerd, in een later stadium de server van 5 naar 6 en tenslotte de overige clients van 5 naar 6.

Bij IBM een mooi documentje gevonden over de verschillende configuraties met (verschillende) versies die ge-support worden, met zelfs informatie per database template erbij.

DrTCP by Broadbandreports.com

2005-03-29T16:53:00.000+02:00

DrTCP is een tool om de MTUSize van network adapters aan te passen. Een dergelijke tool wordt ook wel vaak meegeleverd bij diverse VPN-apparatuur en routers, maar dan zijn het vaak vendor-specifieke tools. Deze is generiek en werkt prima.

Afgelopen weken toevallig tweemaal tegen een probleem aangelopen, wat te maken had met MTU-size en/of black hole routers. Wist nooit wat een black hole router was, maar heb er wel behoorlijk last van gehad ;-) Zie een Microsoft KBA over Black Hole Router Issues voor meer info.

Black Hole Routers en (een te grote) MTU-size verhouden zich dus een-op-een tot elkaar, vandaar dat het kunnen wijzigen van de MTU-size veel problemen kan oplossen cq. informatie kan geven hoe een probleem op te lossen. De MTU-size geldt per netwerkadapter of device en kan in het Windows-register worden gewijzigd. Een tool daarvoor is natuurlijk wel handiger en die heb ik uiteindelijk gevonden in de bovengenoemde DrTCP.

Trouwens, Cisco adviseert deze tool ook. En als Cisco het zegt... ;-)

En: ook nog wat uitleg over deze tool.

LimitLogin from Microsoft

2005-03-28T18:42:00.000+02:00

We are happy to announce the availability of LimitLogin v1.0, an
application that adds the ability to limit concurrent interactive user
logons in an Active Directory domain. It can also keep track of all
logins information in Active Directory domains (without necessarily
enforcing logons quotas).

The challenge of limiting concurrent logons in a distributed
environment is huge, and although LimitLogin is not a "bullet proof"
solution to all the aspects of this challenge, many customers might
still find this tool helpful, as this capability has been highly
requested by different customers (banks, ISPs, libraries etc) in
numerous RFPs etc.

LimitLogin capabilities include:
- Limiting the number of logins per user from any machine in the
domain, including Terminal Server sessions.
- Displaying the logins information of any user in the domain
according to a specific criterion (e.g. all the logged-on sessions to
a specific client machine or Domain Controller, or all the machines a
certain user is currently logged on to).
- Easy management and configuration by integrating to the Active
Directory MMC snap-ins.
- Ability to delete and log off user session remotely straight from
the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in.
- Generating Login information reports in CSV (Excel) and XML formats.
Please keep in mind that this tool is Not Supported (similar to a
resource kit or support tool).

The public download location is http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d/0/fd05def7-68a1-4f71-8546-25c359cc0842/limitlogin.exe

Cool Solutions's IP Calculator

2005-03-28T11:33:00.000+02:00

Handige IP calculator, gevonden op Novell's Cool Solutions site. Het handige eraan vind ik de slidebar, waarmee je heel gemakkelijk het subnetmask versleept en bepaalt. Verder ook handig dat het subnetmask zowel in hex als binaire en decimale notatie worden weergegeven.

Pablo's Quick 'n Easy FTP Server

2005-03-28T09:55:00.000+02:00

Pablo van der Meer verdient volgens een bevriende developer/administrator een standbeeld. Of dat inderdaad moet weet ik niet, maar dat Pablo leuke software maakt is een feit.

Zelf ben ik erg weg van zijn Quick 'n Easy FTP Server. Een complete FTP Server als standalone executable. Niks installeren, niks IIS configureren om alleen maar een simpele FTP Server te hebben. Erg handig als je bijvoorbeeld in een netwerk komt waar je niet kunt, mag of wilt inloggen, maar toch bestanden wilt uitwisselen. Talloze andere toepassingen zijn te bedenken...

Visio Stencils download locations

2005-03-28T09:53:00.000+02:00

http://www.mvps.org/visio/3rdparty.htm
http://www.visiocafe.com
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/prod_visio_icon_list.html

Wat ben je dan?

2005-03-28T09:36:00.000+02:00

Blooper gemaakt? Oops-moment gehad? Www.watbenjedan.nl?.

In het briljante boek "Group Policy, Profiles, and Intellimirror" van Jeremy Moskowitz, noemt hij een oops-moment overigens een CLM: een Career-Limiting Move... ;-)

Institute for Backup Trauma

2005-03-28T09:33:00.000+02:00

Erg geestige reclameclip van LiveVault, met John Cleese als MD van het Institute for Backup Trauma. Must see!

Sizer.exe - handige window (re)size tool

2005-03-28T09:30:00.000+02:00

Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows you to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows you to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs.

On-line verzamelbak?

2005-03-27T00:06:00.000+01:00

Sinds een week of twee ben ik met Ron Onrust van de NGN in gesprek over de NGN Nieuwsbrief. Namens de NGN is Ron auteur van de NGN Nieuwsbrief, een zeer prettige nieuwsbrief op ICT-gebied. Lekker no-nonsense, geen of zeer weinig reclame, lekker to the point enzo. Echt een prettige resource dus.

Ron zoekt al tijden bijdragen van lezers voor een bepaalde column (Tips, Tricks & Tools) van deze nieuwsbrief en aangezien ik de NGN wel het eea verschildigd ben, voel ik me wel geroepen om mijn eigen Utils-directory eens door te spitten. Komende tijd zal ik dergelijke zaken ook wel hier posten, zodat Ron ze gewoon hier kan wegplukken.

Netware 6 SLPDA and 3com 4300 Gigabit Switch Problems

2005-03-25T11:10:00.000+01:00

Netware 6 SLPDA and 3com 4300 Gigabit Switch Problems

Beschrijving van een situatie waarin de "broadcast storm control"-feature van 3COM-switches de oorzaak is van veel ellende met SLP (onder Novell NetWare). Er zijn overigens ook problemen bekend met DHCP Servers onder NetWare die niet leken te functioneren, waarbij de oorzaak niet de DHCP-config was maar een al te ijverige 3Com-switch.

Firewall Comparison - Internet's largest comparison site.

2005-03-25T09:54:00.000+01:00

Firewall Comparison - Internet's largest comparison site.

Leuke site voor het vergelijken van firewalls van diverse makelij. Deze site heeft het in de regel goed voor w.b. de functionaliteiten, maar wees gewaarschuwd: de vermelde prijzen slaan echt helemaal nergens op. Dus vergelijk de functionaliteiten, maar bel vervolgens een reseller (of kijk op de Buy IT Direct-site) voor prijzen.

Top 20 Misconceptions about Citrix MetaFrame and Microsoft Terminal Server

2005-03-25T09:48:00.000+01:00

Top 20 Misconceptions about Citrix MetaFrame and Microsoft Terminal Server

As the “Three Musketeers” (Stefan, Jeff, and Thomas) in the official Citrix support web forums, we have written about 20,000 posts over the last two years. During that time we’ve probably read more than 100,000 posts and noticed some basic misunderstandings with Citrix or Terminal Services. Sometimes answering the same questions get really frustrating for us! Therefore, we’ve written this “Top 20“ list of misunderstandings. Contrary to what you may believe, all of these 20 statements are TRUE.

Cisco PIX - Clearing SAs

2005-03-24T12:59:00.000+01:00

Link naar Cisco site

Certain configuration changes will only take effect when negotiating subsequent security associations. If you want the new settings to take immediate effect, clear the existing security associations so that they will be re-established with the changed configuration. For manually established security associations, clear and reinitialize the security associations or the changes will never take effect. If the PIX Firewall is actively processing IPSec traffic, it is desirable to clear only the portion of the security association database that would be affected by the configuration changes (that is, clear only the security associations established by a given crypto map set). Clearing the full security association database should be reserved for large-scale changes, or when the PIX Firewall is processing a small number of other IPSec traffic.