I’ve run into this a few times, thought I’d record the solution for once so I remember it.

After adding a new user account, the user does not show up in Outlook’s Global Address List, but does show in All Users. (If you click “To” in a new message, for example, and in the Select Names windows under “Show names from the:” drop down, you select All Users.) Even if I go into Active Directory Sites and Services and manually force replication it does not work. (under the NTDS Settings for each server) Normally, I would even go into Recipient Update Services and manually update, but this does not work either.

I found out that if you have Outlook in Cached Exchange Mode, the Global Address List does not update for up to 24 hours. I don’t know the details on that, but I can force it to update. This is on a per-machine basis, so doing this across the whole network won’t work. (Although, there may be a way to do this, I just don’t know how.)

Go into Outlook, go to Tools, Send/Receive, then click Download Address Book. Make sure you have Global Address List under the Choose Address Book drop down, and click OK. Problem solved.

By the way, I am using Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003.

When using Folder Redirection on a Windows 2003 server, the default policy is allow only ownership and permissions to the user. No admin account would have access to this folder. For example, you create a Group Policy to redirect user’s My Documents folders to a home directory on the server. Once a user logs on and this policy is applied, the folder is created with ownership of the user only, and file permissions granted for that user only, too.

This has presented a big problem for me, having come from Windows 2000, where this was not the case. As you might guess, when only the user has permissions specified, no administrator can get access to this folder for backup purposes. Our backups always failed.

Well then, on Windows 2003 Server, two default policies are in place making the user’s folders more secure. Nice, but I don’t care. I want backup rights by default. Go into the Group Policy where you would like to define the new policy. I made a new Organizational Unit and put all my computers in there, so I could define the policy at a lower level, instead of at the domain level. Once into and editing you policy, drill down to here:
Computer Configuration –
Administrative Templates -
System –
User Profiles –

In here look for these two policies and enable them:
“Do not check for user ownership of Roaming Profile Folders”
“Add the Administrators security group to roaming user profiles”

Now this will allow Windows 2003 to behave more like Windows 2000 on the redirected folders. Unfortunately, there is one issue. It does not change permissions on previously created folders, only on newly created folders. That’s a pain, but not that big a deal, because I can probably script some folder moves and recreate them.

Also, even though this says “Roaming” in the policy items, they apply to local and roaming accounts.  So even if your users are normal, non-roaming profiles, you still need to set.  In my case, we did not have any roaming profiles and only used folder redirection OR simply had home folders mapped from the server.  Doing either of those had the same permissions problem and the policies mentioned solved the issue. (except for previously created folders, it only changes on newly created folders after the policy change.)

Recently I went to reset a user’s home directory permissions on the server to allow them full control over each file/folder in their home directory. I setup all the normal accounts and of course the actual user account, with Full Control. I then went into Advanced and selected “Replace permission entries on all child objects” and hit apply.

This seemed to work fine, except the user complained that they could not access the documents in certain subfolders. When I checked those subfolders, the permissions were correct, except for her account had no permissions specified. Essentially this means, no perms, no access. So I tried again, same result.

The solution was simple, though, I can’t figure out why this was configured this way. At the root folder you wish to start inheritance, go into advanced under security on that folder. Go into Advanced again, and under Permissions, highlight the user in question, and click Edit. Under the detailed Permission Entry window, at the very bottom is a checkbox for:

“Apply these permissions to objects and/or containers within this container only.”

Uncheck that! And apply the permissions once more. All child objects should now have all the correct permissions! Yay!

I don’t understand why this is set this way. Is there a Group Policy in place I don’t know about? Did a previous IT guy change that? At least I have a solution. J

In Internet Explorer 7, Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab. The checkbox for “enable integrated windows authentication” is very confusing. You would think this means “just log me in with my windows credentials”, but no, there’s more to it than that. And what I found was, it simply enables “Negotiate”. It set’s this registry key to 1:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\EnableNegotiate

After some research, this actually means that IE will negotiate between NTLM or Kerberos authentication. In some situations, Kerberos will fail. I don’t understand well enough to explain this one. But that’s ok, because the point of all this is… I want IE to authenticate automatically on my Intranet! Anyway, if you uncheck this setting in IE, it will set Negotiate to disabled. (0) If Negotiate is disabled, IE will use NTLM by default. BAM! I can login automatically.

Wouldn’t it be much more helpful if Microsoft had labeled that for what it was? Like: Negotiate Kerberos or NTLM Authentication.

Word of caution… some Intranet apps might depend on Kerberos, so this might cause more problems down the road of you disable this on all your client systems.

Another note… IE6, as I understand it, does not behave this way. It has a similar setting to enable windows authentication and I believe it uses NTLM by default. I HAVE NOT TESTED THIS, and I don’t know for sure if this is true, but according to my Googling, this is the case.

I found this site with info regarding EnableNegotiate:

http://ie7triage.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3B6634EF5458F389!422.entry

Here’s another blog you might find useful:

http://blog.super-networking.net/systems/internet-explorer-enable-integrated-windows-authentication/

One of the main reasons I don’t use Firefox in an Intranet environment, is due to the logon prompt from IIS Windows Authentication. I keep having problems with IE7 on Vista losing the auto-NTLM auth, where it asks for my password, when it’s supposed to just log me in based on my domain logon! ARgh! So I started Google-ing and found out that Firefox can do this too!!! I never knew that, in all these years of Firefox use!

You have to set which sites are allowed to do this though. But that’s fine, not like I login with NTLM all over the place, just a couple sites from the Intranet. Go to about:config in Firefox, lookup all the “network:auth” items and you’ll see this one:

network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris

Open that, and enter the website address. (even port if needed) BAM! That’s it!

For example:

webapp.servername.local:8080

This will use automatic NTLM logons based on your windows logon. But note: I do not know if this works if your machine is not a member of a domain.

I love how people always say that a software firewall like IPCop is a “lesser” product than a hardware system. I ran into one site speaking of Netsentron as a hardware solution. I’d also include Endian Firewall and Untangle when we talk about a “linux based hardware firewall”. Well here’s my thought. These systems offer a hardware solution, but aren’t these products really the same thing as the downloaded software version they provide? And if so, these products are really only a “hardware/software bundle”, right? (I think they actually advertise them this way anyway, but my gripe is with all those techs out there under the notion that these are real hardware based products.)

I can’t comment on any Cisco or Sonicwall, hardware firewalls, because I have not used any of them. But are these also just software running on hardware? And the main thing I’ve heard from security people about the lesser quality software products is that they are not good at defending against DOS attacks. Is this really true? Even if so, in the last 10 years I’ve ran some sort of Linux based firewall, whether home-brewed or special firewall distribution, I’ve not once had a break in. I’ve not once had a DOD attack. (THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION!)

Now, I have had a DOD attack directly on and Exchange or IIS server that was port forwarded directly to the Internet. Not pretty! Which is a big reason why I don’t run these systems directly anymore. But this is off topic. (maybe another blog coming!)

I’ll do some of my own research, but maybe if someone out there can shed some light on the deficiencies of a Linux firewall, in particular IPCop or Smoothwall. For my use, IPCop with a few addons, make for a fantastic filtering firewall, provided we pick good hardware to run it, and configure it properly. Is Sonicwall truly better at providing security?

Ah, just thinking out loud again. I am sure someone out there will give me hell for saying things like this. I am not a security expert, not even close. But, sometimes I just wonder about things… J