Archive for December, 2009

Bits the I have to fix using Windows / Microsoft, could incompass any of the Microsoft OS’s but typically Windows 2000 server, 2003 server 2008 server, active directory, Exchange server, RIS etc.. etc..
Probably the largest section given that Windows seems to be more problematic than Linux.

VMWare ESX 4.0 iscsi volume problems.


Fedora 13 Network interface alias problems


Changing the user IIS runs as Windows 2008 IIS 7.5


Authenticating against a domain cifs share from a non domain server in IIS7.5 2008


troubleshooting activesync with exchange 2003 for iPhones


iPhone slow to wake / slide to unlock – three network


setting up replication with mysql – slave / master


How to increase your iPhone battery life – a few tips.


VMWare ESX4 guests loosing network connectivity briefly.


Howto: extract files from a .msi file


Hyperterminal / command line modem calls


Checkpoint fw monitor to debug and trace traffic.


Checkpoint FW HA debugging.


Pure-ftpd unable to list more than 2000 files.


Windows 2000/2003/2008 server Auto Admin logon


VMWare ESX4i guests power on automatically when host restarts.


Business Objects Xi3 error – The Central Management Server has failed to start. Press ‘Retry’ to attempt to start it again or ‘Cancel’ to skip any actions dependendent on the Central Management Server. (STU000213)


Find vmware guest using the MAC Address on ESX


mysql error error: ‘Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2)’


How to speed up web servers and apache using DEFLATE.


Removing files with odd names dashes etc.. linux


Checkpoint anti-spoofing problems.


samba guest access


Windows 7 Graphics very slow refresh etc..


VMWare ESX3 Errrors after storage or host failure. Could not power on VM: No Swap File. Failed to power on VM


VMWare vSphere / virtual centre on Windows 7


File and printer sharing in Windows 7 inc admin c$ share.


Configuring VMWare ESX4i / vSphere for SNMP


Configuring sendmail for TLS certificate communication.


Enabling SNMP on VMWare ESX hosts


How to check how busy your VMWare esx cluster hosts are.


Adding category index to wordpress.


How to check sendmail is STARTTLS enabled


Change sort order of blogroll from name in wordpress


Checkpoint R60 VPN Debugging and killing IPSec / IKE Tunnels


MailScanner 4.77 process defunct and looping.


Google sitemaps appearing in russian!


Stop ARP responses for loopback adapters for loadbalancing.


Business Objects Xi3 Services not starting.


Killing VPN Tunnels in Checkpoint (IKE etc.)


Problem with show_image_in_imgtag.php in virtuemart missing images.


Finding duplicate files in Windows


Enabling SSH in VMWare ESX4i and making it permanent


VMware converter session not authenticated error


iplayer on Nokia E66


Joomla Metamod positioning problem


xrandr / xorg / laptop additional monitor setup (IBM X60)


Capturing and decoding POST data using tcpdump / wireshark


USB on VMWare ESX 3.5i console


Adding virtual interfaces and routes to Macbook Air


Cisco IOS Software, C3750 Software (C3750-IPBASE-M), Version 12.2(35)SE5, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1) IP Policy issue


Intro


VMWare ESX 4.0 iscsi volume problems.

We recently encountered a problem which nearly ground  our VMWare ESX farm to a halt.

The cause of the problem was a iscsi lock caused by 2 hosts trying to write to the same store at the same time.

This was evident from messages on the ESX hosts from the error message: vprob.vmfs.heartbeat.timedout and referencing one of the volumes on our ISCSI storage.

This was causing the entire ESX host to have connectivity problems as well as affecting the guests that resided on that volume.

Because the host and guests were not accesible through vSphere, we were unable to remove the volume or power cycle the guests.

After much digging around and with the help of VMWare support we understood that the cause of the problem was a lock on that filesystem, and to fix the problem we ran vmkfstools -L lunreset /vmfs/devices/disks/volumename…

This removed the lock which was caused by 2 hosts trying to write to the same volume at the same time and causing a iscsi lock.

Very painful, but happy to have the cluster back up and running.

Fedora 13 Network interface alias problems

Perhaps everyone knows this, but its not something I have come across before.

I recently built a fedora 13 server without any of the X / Gnome / KDE parts as I only want command line on it – this is relativly normal for what I do, however I normally use kickstart scripts, but as it was my first jaunt into 13 I didnt.

Its common for me to set up interface aliases as I use apache and a number of sites with SSL which requires independant IP addresses.

Normally I create a interface aliase file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts to the figure of ifcfg-eth0:0 etc..

Doing this in FC13 and then trying to bring the interface up threw up the following error

Bringing up interface eth0:
** (process:3898): WARNING **: fetch_connections_done: error fetching user connections: (2) The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings was not provided by any .service files.

Bringing up interface eth0:  ** (process:3898): WARNING **: fetch_connections_done: error fetching user connections: (2) The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings was not provided by any .service files.

As I mentioned I have configured aliases lots so was confused as to exactly what was causing my problem – however the clue was in the error message – as it normally is..

The NetworkManager service was running which I dont use and this was preventing my alias’s from working properly. So a quick pkill -9 NetworkManager and then removing it from rc3.d to stop it starting up again fixed all my issues.

I guess thats what happens when you script build all the time – you forget these little bits :-)

Changing the user IIS runs as Windows 2008 IIS 7.5

Back in the (good?) old days, it was easy to change the user IIS ran as through the services console you could pick anyone you wanted.

You might need to do this for a variety of reasons, access to remote services, file systems or for other reasons.

However with windows 2008 and IIS 7 / 7.5 you can no longer run the World Wide Web service as a different user without a whole world of pain..

For most people there is a fairly simple way to resolve this – in IIS 7.5 now the ApplicationPools are what fire up the specific workers for the w3wp process, and as such its very simple to change the user that the w3wp process runs as.

Open IIS management console and expand your website tree.

Click on Application Pools, and in the right hand pane you should see the DefaultAppPool – you will also see the user or Identidy that this is currently running as.

To change this to a different user simply right click the DefaultAppPool and select Advanced settings, then under the process model section click the identity name and click the elipses (the 3 dots) you will then be prompted which user account you wish to use.

If you want to use IIS to pass authentication through to a non domain machine then still in advanced settings you will also need to change the option for LoadProfile to true – this allows you to pull the credentials that get cached in cmdkey should you need it (see my other post on cmdkey).

Once you have done this, right click the DefaultAppPool and choose recycle for good measure which restarts the w3wp process.

You should now see it in task manager process list running as your defined user, and hopefully have access to all the resources you needed.