Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Tell Firefox to show popups normally and not in a new tab

Published
by
Greg
on September 28, 2007
in Internet
. 2 Comments

For some reason or other, Firefox does not have the option under the Tabs option items to “force links that open in new windows to open in:”. I have Firefox 2.0.0.7 now, and I don’t have that under Tabs options. But, if you open about:config in your address bar, you can change the setting manually.

Change: browser.link.open_newwindow

Mine was set to 3, which told the popups to always open in a new tab. I like that, mostly. But some web sites, TinyMCE editor in this case, like to open a popup and return you back the the original page. I keep losing that original popup. So I wanted to turn off my popup forced to new tab option. To make this behave normally, I set it to 2. All worked just peachy!

Browserfirefoxconfig

User name variables on home directory with ADModify.net

Published
by
Greg
on September 7, 2007
in Windows Server
. 0 Comments

Took me a while, again, to figure this out. Thankfully not as long this second time.

When you use ADModify.net to set properties on groups of objects in Active Directory, you can use variables. Home directories, in my case, is a big one. When I moved to a new server, I didn’t want to set the new home directory on each user, so I used ADModify. Now, when you set the variable, this is what got me. You can use the normal: %username% (for example: \\server\homes\%username%) You have to use the AD way. Set it like this: \\server\Homes\%’sAMAccountName’% Notice the syntax: %’variable’%

You can get ADmodify here: http://www.codeplex.com/admodify/Wiki/View.aspx

It’s a lifesaver!

Edit: 10/24/07
NOTE… those are supposed to be apostrophe’s!  So you can’t copy and paste directly, you’ll need to replace those backticks with apostrophe’s. (wordpress seems to be replacing them on publish.)

Edit: 08/20/08

NOTE that Using ADModify.net OR WiseSoft’s Bulk Modify will NOT create the home directories for new users!  You must either manually create the directories, use AD Users and Computers to set the property (and therefore it will create the directory) which is the standard way of creating them, or script that somehow.   What this means is, you can use ADModify to chagne the HOme Folders property from 1 server to another, but if you are trying to create a bunch of new home folders, ADModify will not do this for you.  So, works great if you want to modify existing, like if you copy all the home directories to a new server and you need to update all the user accounts to reflect the new server name.

Active Directory recovery using a secondary offsite DC

Published
by
Greg
on September 1, 2007
in Networking and Windows Server
. 0 Comments

The basics of this require that we setup a second CPU to take offsite. This system would have AD loaded, GC set, DNS, and all that stuff needed to run AD separately from the network. Here’s the catch, though. We can’t run this and be current. In a disaster, it would work great to be up and running, but it wouldn’t stay current.

So what do we do? We use a cheap PC, do all that DC stuff on it, and make sure it’s syncing good and working on the network (with the GC, DNS, WINS and stuff). IT SHOULD NOT have any FSMO roles. It’s purely a secondary.

BEFORE running DCpromo on that system, Make an image. And make sure we can recover it quickly. Save that image of the server in “stand alone server” install mode (not a DC or even member server yet), because this is what we’ll use to run this process over and over quickly.

AFTER we run the DCpromo and setup all the DC stuff, make another image. We’ll use this to drop back onto the system for offsite recovery of AD.

Here’s the steps to setup. (in general)

  1. Setup a stand-alone server, not member of domain. (include all needed SP’s and patches)
  2. Make an image. (PRELOAD image, save this!)
  3. Dcpromo and setup all needed AD and make sure NTFrs and syncing work perfectly.
  4. Make an image. (OFFSITE-DC image, save this!)
  5. Demote the server to a member server again and then remove from domain. (this is to remove it from AD as a DC, make AD cleaner and no NTfrs errors)
  6. Add OFFSITE-DC image to system again, BUT DO NOT CONNECT TO NETWORK.

Here’s the steps to run regularly to keep up to date.

  1. Take that offsite pc, image over it with the PRELOAD.
  2. Join this to the domain and do the DC stuff.
  3. Make your OFFSITE-DC image again.
  4. Demote the server, remove from domain.
  5. Load OFFSITE-DC image on again, BUT DO NOT CONNECT TO NETWORK.
  6. Take it offsite, seize the FSMO roles. You now have a DC ready to run in an emergency.

This process might take a day with all the imaging, but if you keep the drive loaded with ONLY the DC, it should be pretty quick. And consider that you won’t sit and watch it, you really should only spend like 2 or 3 hours running the process. Also consider that if you run this every month, or even every couple weeks, you’d get real fast at it. And this is what we want in a disaster recovery situation, fast recovery!

Why do all this? Couldn’t we just do an NTBackup recovery? Well, first of all, last I saw on a Microsoft KB article, recovering to alternative hardware on a DC was not supported. So, there’s one obstacle. Though, they do provide a good “how to” KB article, they say it’s not supported. (now I need to find that article again.) Second of all, I tried doing all of the Microsoft suggestions, and I was never able to recover my DC, whether it was the PDC or a backup, to alternative hardware. Of course, I was using Windows 2000, and recovering to 5 years newer hardware, maybe that might have something to do with it. But you know what, I have a lot of clients that would be in that boat. I’ll have more to say on this later.

Restoring a Drive Image XML to a server running host based RAID

Published
by
Greg
on September 1, 2007
in PC Repair, Windows Server and Windows XP
. 6 Comments

Some RAID controllers are not what I call *true RAID* drive controllers. They may have a hardware controller, but they run kind of a fake RAID on the host OS. It’s not really software raid, but the RAID is dependant on the OS.

This, as you might guess, causes some problems when we want to do some fun stuff on the system drive while we are not actually booted into the OS. Like when we want to restore an image of the C: drive! That’s ok though, we’ve got a work-around.

BIG NOTICE, DISCLAIMER, OR WHATEVER….

This is based on a RAID1 mirror.
My RAID controller allowed me to build the array based on one of my drives, yours may not.
Do this at your own risk.
Make sure you have a backup. (DUH!)
If you lose your data, it’s your fault.
Your mileage may vary.

Assuming you have made your image successfully already, here’s what we do. The trick is that you must turn off the RAID functions and break the array first. So that your drives look like they are single drives in the system. Delete the partitions you will be reimaging over. On my server, it was just an onboard BIOS setting.

Boot the system into a PE boot disc. You can get a free one called: Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. It’s a doctored up PE Disc, but you’ll need to “build” it. They have great instructions for that on their site. (just Google it) Anyway, you boot into this, and right when the CD starts to boot, you see the “Press F6″ option, like you see when you do a new Windows install. Insert your floppy disc and load the drivers when it asks. Then it will boot to a custom version of XP.

The PE disc should load and see your C: drive. Make sure you open Drive Manager and create your C: drive again. Only DON’T FORMAT it or make a drive letter. Now open Drive Image XML and load the image you made, and recover it to that C: drive.

Reboot when complete and before Windows loads, open the BIOS or RAID controller and turn on the RAID again. On my controller, I was able to recreate the Mirror by building off the first drive. Let that process complete and reboot. Your system should boot right to that image.

The keys to making this work was:
Make the drive appear as a single drive again, turn off RAID in the BIOS or Controller.
Drive Image XML always crashed on me, even if I loaded the drivers at the F6 prompt. It couldn’t deal with that Host based RAID. (but it appeared fine!)
After image is restored, turn on RAID1 again and build your array based on the newly imaged disk BEFORE you boot back to that drive in Windows.