The technology ramblings of Glassboy and friends

Wellington Solution Architects Forum

2009-11-09T00:41:00.000-08:00

Wellington Solution Architects Forum - New user group in Wellington kicked off in September. Already they had few interesting sessions.

WSAF

There is also a linkedin group to subscribe - WSAF linkedin group

2009-09-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

If you're a user of the Objective document management system, you probably need to configure client computers via various registry hacks.

To make it easier here is a Microsoft Group Policy administrative template for the Objective 7.3 client.

Emptying Windows XP temporary directories the Powershell way.

2009-08-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

I previously blogged about emptying the Windows XP temporary directories with a batch file. For completeness, here is how to do the same thing with Powershell.


ri -rec $env:windir\temp\* -force
ri -rec $env:temp\* -force
if ($env:temp -ne $env:tmp)
{ ri -rec $env:temp\* -force }

Quick and dirty server operating system audit.

2009-08-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at my desk and I overhead a conversation about the Microsoft Licensing true up. There was a suggestion that someone would have to log into each server to find out what particular flavour of Windows is installed.

Now of course this information should be readily retrievable via WMI from the Win32_OperatingSystem class so I said I'd whip up a quick script that would produce a report.

As I remembered there is a property OperatingSystemSKU which holds this information, but it turns out to be Windows 2008 and beyond. After a bit of mucking around I discovered that the first part of the Name property value had the information I wanted. So it was simply a matter of snipping this out.

The script below uses the Quest Active Directory Cmdlets to query for all server computer objects, uses Win32_PingStatus to determine if the host associated with the object is actually responding, and does a WMI query for the details we want if it is. I decided to grab the O\S Architecture and Service Pack as well.


$now = $now = get-date -uformat "%Y%m%d"
$Domain = [DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Domain]::GetCurrentDomain()
$filename = "servers-$domain-$now.txt"
$computers = get-qadcomputer -sizelimit 0 -ldap '(operatingSystem=*server*)' %{$_.dnshostname}
Set-Content $filename "Report on server Operating System information in $domain created $now"
"HostName, SKU, Architecture, Service Pack" Add-Content $filename
ForEach($Computer in $Computers) {
  $Result = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "address='$computer'"
  If ($Result.Statuscode -eq 0) {
    If ($computer.length -ge 1) {
      $WMI = GWMI -computer $computer -query "Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem"
      $Name = ($WMI).Name
      $Arch = ($WMI).OSArchitecture
      $SPMaj = ($WMI).ServicePackMajorVersion
      If ($Name -ne $null) {$NiceName = $Name.Substring(0,$Name.IndexOf(''))} Else {$NiceName = ""}
      "$Computer, $NiceName, $Arch, $SPMaj" Add-Content $filename } }
    Else { "$Computer did not respond." Add-Content $filename}}

Restoring your Windows quick launch bar show desktop icon.

2009-07-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

If you're like me you use the Windows Quick Launch bar a lot. So when you loose your Show Desktop icon it is really annoying. To restore it you need to create a new file in the Quick Launch directory. But it's also annoying when you have to google for instructions every time. And as I do weird stuff to PCs, every time can be more than once a year, and that means remembering what the file name is, or the name of the little bar thingy at the bottom of the screen, where my little clicky thing with the pencil used to be.

To solve these many problems I have have created myself a small Powershell script to do it for me.


#Create Windows XP Quicklaunch bar Show Desktop icon
#requires Powershell 1.0
$FileName = "$env:appdata\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Show Desktop.scf"
New-Item -ItemType file $fileName
Add-Content $FileName "[Shell]"
Add-Content $FileName "Command=2"
Add-Content $FileName "IconFile=explorer.exe,3"
Add-Content $FileName "[Taskbar]"
Add-Content $FileName "Command=ToggleDesktop"

And in case Brandon Shell finds this post, here's the same thing in three lines,so he doesn't taunt me, and call me a $noob. (Make sure if you cut and paste it to correct any line wrapping problems).


$FileName = "$env:appdata\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Show Desktop.scf"
$Content="[Shell]`nCommand=2`nIconFile=explorer.exe,3`n[Taskbar]`nCommand=ToggleDesktop"
Set-Content $filename $content

Of course you could collapse that down to one line


Set-Content "$env:appdata\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Show Desktop.scf" "[Shell]`nCommand=2`nIconFile=explorer.exe,3`n[Taskbar]`nCommand=ToggleDesktop"

but that's getting pretty silly isn't it.

Active Directory Port Requirements

2009-07-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

Recently I was setting up the group policies to control the firewalls in a Windows 2008 Domain. I was asking around trying to find out exactly what ports the Domain Controllers needed open. No one could come up with a definitive list.

Now the Active Directory documentation have come up with the proper documentation. See it at
Active Directory and Active Directory Domain Services Port Requirements.

Windows Server Log Sizes

2009-06-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recommends different log sizes for Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 servers based on whether you are running a 64bit or 32 bit operating systems. You can find these recommendations in Article ID 957662. Obviously you don't want any bad things to happen to your servers so you don't want to accidentally apply the 64bit log size recommendations to a 32bit server, so you need a method of making sure each O/S architecture gets the appropriate settings.

The best way of applying a setting to multiple servers is to use Group Policy Objects. The best way of targeting our particular O/S architectures is to use a WMI filter on a GPO. Now the challenge is to work out what WMI class and what property to use.

The obvious candidates are WIN32_OperatingSystem and WIN32_Processor. The next step is testing a few machines to see what property is the one for the job. The easiest way to do this is to use PowerShell and the Get-WMIObject command.

Using this technique it becomes obvious that the OSArchitecture property of WIN32_OperatingSystem is the one we want but it doesn't always get returned. So WIN32_Processor it is then, and AddressWidth is the property. Michael B. Smith has a blog post 32-bit or 64-bit - What Is My Processor? which is informative on the subject.

So we want AddressWidth, but wouldn't it be nice to check all of our servers to make sure. That's easy to do with PowerShell and the Quest AD cmdlets. The following script shows you how.


$OU = "enter you server OU here"
$computers = Get-QADComputer -searchroot $OU | %{$_.dnshostname}
$query = "Select systemname,addresswidth FROM Win32_Processor"
ForEach($Computer in $Computers) {
  $Result = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "address='$computer'"
  if($Result.Statuscode -eq 0) {
    if($computer.length -ge 1) {
      Get-WMIObject -query $query -comp $computer | Select-Object systemname,addresswidth | Sort-Object systemname
    }}}

So now we have our WMI filters to determine the scope of our GPO containing log settings the query for 32bit Operating Systems is

"select * from Win32_Processor where AddressWidth = 32"

and for 64bit Operating Systems it is

"select * from Win32_Processor where AddressWidth = 64"

technology

2009-05-31T18:51:00.001-07:00

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.

Douglas Adams

More fun with for loops

2009-05-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

As you currently can't configure the Windows DNS with Powershell you need to use DNSCMD.exe, and as it's a command line tool batch files come in really handy. As do FOR loops.

The example batch file below

Sets the default aging state to on
Creates reverse look up zones for 192.168.1.0/24 through to 192.168.100.0/24.
Restricts zone transfers to hosts listed on the name server tab
Sets dynamic updates to secure only
Writes the info for each zone to a text file for you to check


dnscmd servername /config /defaultagingstate 1
FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,100) DO dnscmd servername /ZoneAdd %%G.168.192.in-addr.arpa /DsPrimary
FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,100) DO dnscmd servername /ZoneResetSecondaries %%G.168.192.in-addr.arpa /SecureNS
FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,100) DO dnscmd servername /config %%G.168.192.in-addr.arpa /AllowUpdate 2
FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,100) DO dnscmd servername /ZoneInfo %%G.168.192.in-addr.arpa >> dns.txt

If you create the zones without changing the default aging state for some reason your zones don't inherit Aging being on you can use the following batch file


FOR /L %%G IN (1,1,100) DO dnscmd servername  /config %%G.168.192.in-addr.arpa /Aging 1

If you're going to use these sample make sure you replace servername with the name of your server.

batch file tricks; the date variable

2009-05-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

On of the tasks I most use batch files for on servers is rolling log files for applications that don't automatically roll their own log files. Rather than have a log file that grows extremely large it's best to stop the application and rename the log file based on the date.

I like to use dates in the form of year, then month, then day, as it sorts best in a directory. You can get all of these details from the %date% variable, however it returns a string like "Thu 21/05/2009". So the trick you want to perform is just getting different portions of the sting.

This is actually quite easy. To get the year from the %date% variable you simply call it like this %date:~10,4%, which basically is "give me the four characters from position ten of the date variable". The same technique works for month and day.

The full line to create a variable called %yyyymmdd% that you can use in your rename command is


set yyyymmdd=%date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%

StackOverflow.com and ServerFault.com

2009-05-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Stackoverflow.com - great resource for developers to get answers on various technical questions.

Now there is ServerFault.com targeted for System administrators, exchange folks, network people etc.

Go to ServerFault.com and give the secret password "alt.sysadmin.recovery" to register an account with OpenID.

I used my google account as my OpenID.

Cool site.

Jamie Hyneman & Adam Savage (Mythbusters) @ RSAConference2009

2009-05-11T21:51:00.001-07:00

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage the presenters for Mythbusters were the closing speakers for the RSA 2009 Conference. If you know the story of Mythbusters and RFID then the webcast is worth a watch.

Emptying the temporary directories

2009-05-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

One of the consistent problems with Windows XP seems to be the increasing size of the temp directory. I have dabbled with various vbscript scripts to empty the temp and temporary Internet directory when a user logs off but I've found it an ineffective approach; often not working at all.

What seems to work much better is relying on the underlying O/S commands to do it. Delete and Remove Directory are your friend. You can use the following batch file as a log off script for Active Directory or in the local policy on a stand alone machine.


@ECHO OFF
REM Empty user's temp directory of files and folders.
DEL /S /Q /F "%TEMP%\*.*"
FOR /D %%d IN ("%TEMP%\*.*") DO RD /S /Q "%%d"
REM Empty Window's temp directory
DEL /S /Q /F "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\*.*"
FOR /D %%d IN ("C:\WINDOWS\Temp\*.*") DO RD /S /Q "%%d"
REM If tmp and temp are different empty tmp as well
IF %temp% == %tmp% GOTO END
DEL /S /Q /F "%TMP%\*.*"
FOR /D %%d IN ("%TMP%\*.*") DO RD /S /Q "%%d"
:end

Steve Riley gone

2009-05-09T04:37:00.001-07:00

Microsoft is in the process of laying off 5000 employees. One of the people to go is the high profile security specialist Steve Riley.

He was one of very few good people that Microsoft brought out to the NZ TechEd last year. the fact that he won’t be presenting at TechEd may have a few people deciding it’s not worth going this year.

Network Monitor Experts

2009-05-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Network Monitor 3.3 has an "Experts" feature that allows you to add functionality to NM with 'external' tools. There are a couple available now on their Codeplex Project.

Principles for interaction with social media

2009-04-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

The State Services Commission has released Principles for interaction with social media; a guide for Civil Servants on how to use blogs, wikis, and social networking sites.

Netmon

2009-04-26T03:12:00.000-07:00

Back in the day before Ethereal now Wireshark existed I used to use Microsoft Network Monitor. I think it was originally released on one of the SMS CDs. I was happy to see the other day that version 3.3 has been released and is available for download.

I'm happily looking forward to using it.

FOR loops are powerful and fun.

2009-04-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a bit of research that involves scrounging up old catalogues and scanning pages in high resolutions. This has meant that I have accumulated directories of large tif files that I need to share with other researchers around the world.

Sometimes I need decrease the resolution of the tif and compress it to make it quicker to send. I do this with a batch file that loops through every tif file in a directory and uses the ImageMagick mogrify command to shrink the file.

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%T IN ('dir /b *.tif') DO "C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.1-Q16\mogrify.exe" -adaptive-resize 2400 -compress LZW "%%T"

The tricky part was working out that I needed "tokens=*" as the file names contained spaces.

I also needed to zip individual tifs with maximum compression, once again a batch file utilising a for loop came in handy. This time I used a variable modifier ~n to get the file name minus the extension.

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%T IN ('dir /b *.tif') DO "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a "%%~nT".7z "%%T" -t7z -mx=9

For more information about the FOR command type "HELP FOR" at the command line.

Opening post

2009-04-26T02:46:00.000-07:00

Hello all. This is the opening post of my technology blog. I comment on other people's blogs with some frequency and often the posting dialog has an option to enter a web site. My normal blog is aimed at improving my personal sociality rather than a techical or professional sociality so i never feel like including it.

I've been involved in a lot of technical grunt work lately so I have decided to create a technical blog to blater on and use on technical web sites.