Jacob’s Insidious Ramblings

Normally I am fine with Exchange, being the resource hog it is, but I was having to uninstall the damn thing the other day and it was being a huge pain. Let me set the stage, I had an Exchange 2007 server running as a VM and I had another one that was running full on the hardware of another server. I wanted to keep the latter one and remove the former. The problem was, I had to remove all replicas and everything else before uninstalling. I got everything removed except something that was replicating in the Public Folders database. I never could get it to replicate fully. For months off and on I was looking for answers that would not leave me hacking away at the low level parts of Active Directory. I finally found instructions that made some sense. Move the replicas. Well, I ran the script from the ‘Exchange Management Shell’ and it finished. I checked the status with another command and it showed it was not working still. There was nothing important in the database so I read that you could delete the database when it was not mounted and then when you remount the database it would recreate the public folders from scratch. I figured it was worth a shot. After it recreated the database I did the move replicas again and that seemed to move them. It did take a little bit before it was done. After that I deleted the public folders database and I was able to uninstall Exchange and remove that VM from the domain. Normally I do not get very upset at the little odd Microsoft quirks but man, that really did irritate me a lot.

Not too long ago I went to a Microsoft Event to learn more about Windows 2008 and of course get a copy of it so I will be able to set it up and learn about it even more than I already knew. The reason I said ‘already knew’ is because not too long before I came to the event I was able to work on Windows 2008 Standard up at work. I got it running on a new server and it will be our Terminal Server.

It has a few new features that I find very useful. One is the TS Gateway. It allows you to use the Remote Desktop Connection to burrow through a TS from the Internet using only port 443(https) and either connect to the TS itself or to other servers(and workstations). Of course you can lock it down and it actually works rather well. It works the same way that Outlook 2003 and 2007 fully connect to an Exchange 2003 or 2007 server safely over the Internet. It uses what is called RPC over HTTP(s). Let me just say that the TS Gateway makes things easier on the remote connection front. No need to mess with VPN bs or anything like that. Of course you would want to always make sure the TS Gateway is up to date. The TS Gateway requires at least RDC version 6.0. Windows XP SP2 with the RDC update or Vista come with it. Part of the settings are under the advanced tab on the configuration portion of RDC.

Anyway, another neat trick is something they seemed to have swiped(at least the idea) from Citrix. You can have a Web page, authenticated and encrypted of course, set up to share programs. This works well and allows you to run the program from the TS like it is running on your workstation. It even natively supports Dual Monitors. It is actually called RemoteApp. It is a bit more limited than it’s Citrix counterpart but it works just fine for regular usage. It does not support sharing applications per user. When you share an application, all users that are allowed to bring up the RemoteApp can run those apps. One glaring irritation is that the RDC version required is 6.1(partially due to the ActiveX plugin that comes with that version only). It currently is not being released as a separate product or update. It is part of Vista SP1 or XP SP3. SP1 for Vista has been released and seems to work well but XP3 has not been released but is scheduled to this month. We will see how well XP SP3 works…

I had the chipset fan on my motherboard go out a few weeks ago which started to cause rebooting issues every few days on my main desktop. I found a replacement the day before Thanksgiving. It is a huge heatsink without a fan which seems to be doing the job. I think that the job was done to Windows before I got a chance to fix the problem. Before, the reboots were so sudden Windows could not do a BSOD and now Windows seemed to be doing BSOD’s on me. After debugging the dump file it looked like it was the network driver(I hope). So far things seem to be stable after updating all the chipset drivers and network drivers. While I was at it I went ahead and updated my video drivers. I will be hoping that things are stable this coming week. If not then I may have to reinstall Windows. If that does not fix it then I think my MB may be crap and I will have to rip hardware from my secondary workstation. That is something I really do not want to do. Anyway, later…

I got a copy of the newest beta of Microsoft’s most recent offering of Windows. The install is beyond simple from what I have seen so far. I am installing it on my Dell Latitude C640. All the specs are fine for it except for the video card so I will find out how bad the new GUI runs on it. I may post a few more items with it as the topic with my thoughts and comments soon.

It has been a little while since I have done any posting to the blog. When I have not been busy I have been tired of doing too much with computers. I know that sounds scary if you know me, but I am doing better now. I updated some of the software running houstonjuggalos.com. It is a site that I am just the ‘code monkey’ for so don’t get any ideas. heh… I am enjoying things mostly. I am also slimming down my pile of computer junk slowly. I may have trouble not accepting old computer hardware but once I mess with it and make something useful I am finding it easier to get rid of it. The same can be said for hardware that does not work or is flaky. I am tired to dealing with that crap. Anyway, while I am typing this I am putting the finishing touches on my laptop image that I am creating. When I am done I will never have to reinstall Windows on my laptop again because I will have it set to just need a restore DVD put in the drive to get it back working in case I hose the OS.

Well, I finally got my Niece’s gallery upgraded to the newest version. She was using Gallery 1. She is now using Gallery 2. I also set up one of my nephews with a Gallery 2 set up of his own.
For my Niece, Jessica, it is http://seeker.theuncle.com/
For my Nephew, Charlie, it is http://chucknasty.theuncle.com/
It was interesting doing the import from Gallery 1 to 2 and it was actually really easy… Only a few differences exist that can be irritating but oh well. Got to go…

Well, I am going to try my hand at getting a replacement site going for the slightly aging look of the Lone Star Spirits site. I am going to try and use Drupal as it seems to be very versatile and yet clean and modular. I think I can get something whipped out in a few weeks or a month or so. Lates.

Most of my growing up years I was not a fan of Apple. It is widely known by friends and family of my thoughts about not just the company but the awkwardness of the OS. That was until OSX came along. I have found it to be mostly clean and not too bad of an Operating System which brings me to the title of this entry. A few months back I had the pleasure of test driving a couple of these units. I found that the Mini is worth the sticker price. In fact, I may one day soon get one of my own. w00t!! Below is the specs of what I want.
• 1.25GHz PowerPC G4
• 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 40GB Ultra ATA drive
• 4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Internal Bluetooth + AirPort Extreme Card
• 56K v.92 Modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
Those options jump it up to $748.00 but I would still find that worth it…

If anyone is in doubt or outright does not know, phpbb2 is a message board system. I had to update it on two sites today. One of them I used as a test since it is not being used yet. It is www.digitalsheep.org. The other is used a lot so I did it second which is www.houstonjuggalos.com/board. Even though it went smooth on the first domain I was kinda spooked about the second one because it stays kinda busy. I ended up putting up an index.html file to block any new visitors to the page and explained that it was being worked on and waited until everyone was out. I am glad it worked out. It is kind of irritating when security issues come up. I am just glad this was easy to update.

I don’t know about you but I plan to start using it asap to see how the whole version number handles. I almost never use Internet Explorer now except for the Windows Update.

One of the many things on my plate is trying to get a Linux-based kiosk working for where I work. I have to get it stable then lock it down but make it still useable. I plan to use Firefox as the browser as it works rather well in Windows and Linux. I wanted to use Debian because of how easy it is to update but it is a pain to use new stuff in package format. I am trying out the distrobution named “Ubuntu”. It is based off of Debian and offers regular security updates for 18 months per release. Each release comes out every 6 months so this should be interesting.

A question was presented to me today regarding authentication methods for Windows 2000 servers(and *nix ones) across the Internet so only one login is necessary. While I think there are a few fielded answers, finding one to implement that is secure is not necessarily easy. RADIUS was proposed but Windows 2000 I am not sure supports it. I have found it can run a server for that auth. method so when I do further research maybe it will be viable. Another possible type is LDAP. The problem with LDAP is that from what I have been looking at, you have to rig Windows a bit differently to auth. on it but might be worth a shot if done through SSL or some other secure method. Kerberos might show some promise. It looks like no easy way exists but I do not plan to give up that easily.

More on this later…maybe…

I finally got my Win2k Server running again. I got a storage repository again. w00t… I still have it sitting on the bench though making sure it works fine before I hold the heavy-assed thing in the air with one arm and screw it back into the rack(yes, the case is rack-mountable). Once this one is done and put in the closet I am hoping to get to the FreeBSD box and this time get it the exact way I want to right after an install.

Time has not been kind to me. I have to soon find time to get my Windows 2000 server going again and I plan to rebuild my Unix server that is running FreeBSD. I might wait until the 5.x series goes to stable if it has not already. It really depends on my mood of course. Once I get the Win2k Server back going it will be my primary file server for my wife and I. I plan to figure out a way to do monthly backups of the data on it just in case. The FreeBSD box is still running www.lackofpants.com on my home connection. Currently it is using 4.9 Release. While I may trust FreeBSD more than Windows I do know that no OS is perfect security wise so I have the BSD box behind a DMZ with only the necessary port(s) forwarded to that machine. It is totally seperated from the rest of my network as it should be.

Kramer was revived and is working again. I do not, as of yet, have Active Directory enabled on it but it is working fine as a local file server again. Now, my main system can back itself up to somewhere again. I am working on a computer right now that I am thinking of calling “Beast”. It might end up storing all the extra hard drives that are of any decent size, become the file server, and Active Directory Controller. Kramer I think will become a mail server for lackofpants.com. I plan to leave the two 20gig hard drives in it. Well, I gotta get back to what I was working on. Later…