Helpful Tech Support!

I don't often gush about good experiences, but I recently had an issue with Spiceworks, which ended up being a configuration problem on my end. Not only did the Support Engineer help me with my issue but they also saw another configuration issue and made some recommendations on how to fix it. Additionally they told me about a bug in the software that I was not aware of that has been affecting the performance!

Also the support rep was able to do all of this and not make me feel like an idiot!

TL;DR
Had a problem. It was fixed. Also fixed two other issues I didn't know I had!

Esker Fax 5.0 System Installation

This is mostly just for me. I recently had to build a new server to host our fax software and fax board. I ran into a few problems as I had lost my documentation, so I am posting this link here to remind me should I need to do this in the future.

http://doc.esker.com/edp/5.0/en/installation/index.asp?page=installationa.html

There are some very specific pre-requisets for Windows 2008 that I need to be mindful of in the future, and those can be found at http://doc.esker.com/edp/5.0/en/installation/Content/2008_requirements.html

In reality this was a very simple re-build, that I made more difficult by some rather poor planning on my part.

Ghostscript Convert PDF to TIFF

Again this is mainly for my reference, but someone may have trouble finding the solution like I did earlier today.

On Windows be sure to add "C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.64\bin" to your PATH, then run the following command.

gswin32c -dNOPAUSE -q -r300 -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -dBATCH -sOutputFile=[YOUR_OUTPUT_FILENAME.TIFF] [YOUR_INPUT_FILENAME.PDF]

Similarly on Linux you can run the command below.

gs -dNOPAUSE -q -r300 -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -dBATCH -sOutputFile=[YOUR_OUTPUT_FILENAME.TIFF] [YOUR_INPUT_FILENAME.PDF]

There are also possibilities to script this, and when you can do that you should. I haven't found the need to bring it to that point yet as I just had to do four files today, but should this come up again I will be scripting it in some fashion and posting the results here.

Thank you to StackOverflow for the solution to my problem. Also one of the other solutions to this is to use a recursive search of a directory with PowerShell to convert files.

A simple file shredder for Windows

Working with sensitive data all day long you come to realize that what I download needs to be deleted securely, just as the paper copies need to destroyed securely.

I happened upon this script on Lifehacker a while ago, but I have been using it more and more lately.

First you will need to download sdelete from Microsoft. I copy this exe to the Windows directory on each machine as part of my install process.

The script if very simple:
@echo off
FOR %%F IN (%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 %10) DO sdelete -p 7 -s %%F

I save this as shred.cmd and place it in my C:\Scripts folder. It will take up to 10 files at a time and run sdelete with 7 passes on each file. Sdelete will also rename the file 26 times to obfuscate the file name.

About once a month I will run sdelete -p 3 -z to clean the free space on my PC and to make sure that any temp files I didn't shred are cleaned up. Now this won't obfuscate the file names at all, but the contents of the files are gone for good.

You can also place a short cut to the shred.cmd file into your Send To menu options and have an easy way to clean files from any folder.

Adding programs to the "Send To" menu

From time to time I write small scripts that accept Command line arguments. In the past I kept shortcuts to them on my desktop, but today I wanted to remove all icons from my desktop.

If you open up %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo in Windows Explorer.

You see %APPDATA% is an environment variable that usually maps to something like C:\Documents and Settings\[YOUR USER PROFILE]\Application Data\ in Windows 2000/XP and "C:\Users\[YOUR USER PROFILE]\Application Data\" in Windows Vista.

Let's say you wanted to add an item to the Send To menu to shred files with sdelete. You could just drag a shortcut to the shred script this folder, or create a new shortcut.

This method should work for any application that allows you to open a file by using a command line argument.

Things learned over time, Part 1

This is going to be an on going series of quick posts.  Some of those quick little tid bits of information that once you know you never forget, but up until that point it makes things harder than they need to be.

I typically change directories to where I want files to end up if say I am using wget or xcopy.  I used to do xcopy z:\some\directory\* c:\Users\Steve\Desktop\Directory 

now I have either realized or learnd from someone that you can do 

xcopy z:\some\directory\* .

Saves a lot of typing and reduces mistakes.  Again you have to be in the directory for it to work.

Alternatively if you open a command prompt by default you are in your home directory, so if I wanted the same outcome but didn't want to change directories I would do 

xcopy z:\some\directory Desktop\Directory

Of course this works on Linux as well as Windows but the paths and slashes will be different.

Spiceworks releases 3.5!

Just found out that Spiceworks has been updated to 3.5. I never got the chance I wanted to beta test 3.5, but now I don't have to worry about it. Looking forward to the Network Bandwidth Analyzer and the Nagios integration.

I plan on doing a backup of my database tonight so I can do the update after hours. Wish me luck.

Configuring PuTTY to use PKI (passwordless) authentication

Since this is about using PuTTY I would recommend you download it if you haven't already. Also you will need to get PuTTYgen, it might be worth it to grab pscp as well. I like to keep putty.exe and puttygen.exe in my Windows directory, so I don't have to update my path, thus allowing me to run putty right from the command prompt.

Now run PuTTYGen and create a new pair of keys by clicking the “Generate” button. You will have to move your mouse around in the box to generate randomness, so keep doing that until the progress bar fills up. You can keep all the options at their default settings. Then, save both public and private key to a safe location. Name your public key [your_key_name].pub and the private key [your_key_name].ppk.

Now, upload your public key to a directory on your remote system. I used pscp to do this quickly to all of my servers (pscp [your_key_name.pub] user@remotesystem:)

Now you have to import your public key into the authorized_keys file (and authorized_keys2)

ssh-keygen -i -f [your_key_name.pub] >> .ssh/authorized_keys && ssh-keygen -i -f [your_key_name.pub] >> .ssh/authorized_keys2

Replace [your_key_name.pub] with the path to your key. Now log out and start PuTTY.

In Putty, you have to configure the following items:

In Connection/Data, add your remote user name

In Connection/SSH/Auth, browse to your private key file (.ppk)

In Sessions, fill in the FQDN or IP address of your remote machine, give your session a name [session_name] and click on Save.

Now you can use putty to SSH into your remote boxes with out a password. If you are a fan of having one or two click shortcuts create a shortcut to %windir%\putty.exe -load [session_name]. If you gave your [session_name] a name with spaces use double quotes to encase it like putty.exe -load "session name".

Howto: Reset Local Windows Passwords with Knoppix STD

***THIS HOW TO IS FOR COMPUTERS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RESET PASSWORDS ON*** ***DO NOT USE THIS FOR EVIL***
From time to time I will run across a computer that I need to get Administrator access to, but I have no clue to the password. The easiest thing to do is simply reset it and if there is another administrator user I can open a command prompt and run "net user administrator newpassword" and be all set.

For those other times I have to use Knoppix STD to reset the password. It takes roughly 5 to 10 minutes to do this, but has worked everytime I have needed it to.
Download Knoppix STD.
Burn ISO to CD
Boot from the CD
Right click on the desktop and choose XShells, Root Aterm.
Type "cat /etc/fstab" and look for a NTFS drive like /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1
Type "mount -o rw /dev/hda1" or whatever drive you need to mount.
Type "cd /mnt/hda1/" This will put in the "C" drive of the windows machine.
Type "ls" and look for either Windows or WINNT. Remember that in linux case matters so use what ever case you have.
Type "cd Windows/system32/config" If this fails cd one level at a time and use "ls" to find the case of the next directory.
Type "ls" once in /mnt/hda1/Windows/system32/config to find the case of three files. The three files you need are SAM, SECURITY, and SYSTEM. They will not have an extension on them.
Now to actually change the password.
Type "chntpw -u Administrator SAM SECURITY SYSTEM
It will prompt you to disable the SYSKEY, hit N for no.
chntpw will then prompt you for the new password, use * to blank it or type the new password.
Hit Y to really change the password.
Hit Y to write hive files.
Right click on the desktop again and choose "Reboot".

Once the reboot is complete you should have administrator access to the computer.

Tarpitting IISFTP Service

If you have been running an FTP server on the internet for any amount of time at some point you have noticed hundreds or even thousands of errors in your System Event log with an Event ID of 100. In an attempt to stop these run the following command from the command prompt, but if you change the location of the script file put in the correct path for this to work.

eventtriggers /create /TR "Reset FTP Service" /TK C:\scripts\ResetFTP.bat /L System /EID 100 /SO MSFTPSVC /RU "system"

The batch file is very simple, I created mine in a folder I have on my drive called "Scripts" and named it ResetFTP.bat. The contents of the script are below.

net stop msftpsvc
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1
net start msftpsvc

Thats it! The script will run when someone enters the wrong username and password for a FTP session. It will effectively stop the server for 10 seconds (10 pings to localhost) and then restart the FTP service. On a side note it only works on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server (Windows XP) and later. Also does not work on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server as there is no "Eventtriggers" program native to Windows 2000.

Failed to send SMTP (2AFC) for CA BrightStor ARCServe Back

This error was getting thrown after every backup my system does. BrightStor used to send me emails when it finished a backup job but at some point in time it started failing.

The simple fix for this is to add in a hosts entry for the SMTP server. Even though I specified an IP address for my SMTP server this fix worked.

To add in a hosts record open Notepad or whatever text editor you love and then open the file "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts". Notice there is no extension on this file.

If you have your \Windows directory located on a partition other than "C:" use "%windir%\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts".

Failed to access IIS metabase.

This error typically occurs when you install IIS after you have asp.net installed. It is a very simple fix.

Copy and paste this into the Run Command from the Start Menu.
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

This will reinstall asp.net for use with IIS and in most cases fixes the error stated above.

App-Domain could not be created. Error: 0x80131902

Failed to execute request because the App-Domain could not be created. Error: 0x80131902
Event-ID: 1088
Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0

I was getting this error in Event Viewer while trying to run a web app. This was fresh install of IIS, but on an older server. The problem is that after IIS is installed you need to re-install the .Net framework.

Step one is to un-install the .Net framework.

• Open a Command Prompt
• run "net stop w3svc"
• cd %windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\
• run "aspnet_regiis.exe -ua"
• run "aspnet_regiis.exe -i "
• run "net start w3svc"

aspnet_regiis.exe -r may have worked instead of the two step uninstall / reinstall based on it's discription but I didn't try that option.