So I never took the time to look these up, but I just heard about them recently.  I always wanted to know how to create a new folder in Windows Explorer without having to use menu’s, by just using a keyboard shortcut.

In the right side of the Explorer window, where you want the new folder, press your “CTL+SHIFT+N” keys.  You’ll get a new folder ready to type in a new name.

Also, you can hit “CTL+N” to get a new window in the same location.

Go to C:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries.

helpsvc.exe /regserver /svchost netsvcs /rainstall

Run that.
Now we have Help and Support available again.

This is just another one of those things that didn’t make any sense and only partially does now. At least NOW I know there is more at play here than the simple solutions in Samba using create mask and create directory mask. In Linux, that’s how I would get around the issues of Windows directory permissions running on a Linux SMB share.

Now, I am learning to do things the OpenSolaris way. I am loving OpenSolaris and ZFS! However, coming from a Linux and Windows “way of life”, there are some differences that just aren’t clear. What kills me is, I try the RTFM thing, and somehow completely miss that one little thing that makes it all work. Off topic, but an example, coming from Linux, I would just type “su” and get root access. In OpenSolaris, that won’t work. Neither will “pfexec su”, nor “sudo su”. Then one day, after dealing with it for a week or so, I stumble upon a post where someone in an unrelated sample script typed “pfexec su – root”. There ya go! Argh!

Anyway, back on the ZFS/CIFS/ACL thing. It was driving me nuts that I couldn’t figure it out. I wanted a folder with this setup:
/pool/sharefs – owner:greg – group:domusers
greg and domusers should have full control and all folders under “sharefs” should inherit that.

So under linux/samba, that’s where I would do like “create mask = 770″ or simlar, and “force create group = domusers”. Something like that, can’t remember exactly. made it simple actually. It always wrote files with the right perms and ownership and other people in that group could read/write just fine.

Problem is, you can’t get very specific about who get’s what, where, and you can’t use more than one group. Well, sure enough, there’s a thing called “ACL” that handles that stuff now. It’s been around for a while now, but I never even heard of it until I started using OpenSolaris. I like how it seems to be more compatible with the way Windows handles ACL’s. What I don’t like is, it’s confusing. I get the NTFS/Share perms in Windows, been doing that a long time now. The CIFS/ZFS ACL thing kind of makes sense, and it will “click” at some point the more I use it.

After spending hours on this, I reached a point where I had to figure it out. Here’s what I did.

On the ZFS file system, create it normally for SMB access. Then I changed some properties for aclinherit and aclmode. Change those to “passthrough”:
zfs set -o aclinherit=passthrough -o aclmode=passthrough pool/sharefs

Then chmod/chown. OH! That’s another thing. You need to use /bin/chmod and /bin/ls! Not just type: chmod … That wont work. In OpenSolaris the default path points to /usr/gnu/bin/chmod, which doesn’t have the “A” or “V” options to set/view ACL’s. That was another thing that DROVE ME CRAZY!!! I read the man pages and manuals and docs online and I didn’t catch anything that said, “Hey, there are different versions of chmod and ls here!” I can’t believe the time wasting here! Back to the point, do this to put your own default perms on:

/bin/chmod 2774 /pool/sharefs
(I actually am not positive that is needed, but I think it set group as inheritable)

/bin/chmod -R A- /pool/sharefs
(that will wipe out the current perms)

/bin/chmod -R A=owner@:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(resets perms with only that acl)

/bin/chmod -R A+group@:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(that appends the group perms, full control)

/bin/chmod -R A+everyone@:read_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(above appends everyone read access)

In all the above that will preset INHERITABLE permissions for the subdirectories.  Notice above there is one with “A=” on it?  That will reset the perms and set only that perm.  So I guess you may not even need the previous line for “A-” to reset.  (I am just learning here ya know!)

It looks as if that makes a little sense now.  You can view the current ACL’s like so:  ”/bin/ls -V /pool/sharefs”

In my case, I might want to add another user or group:

/bin/chmod -R A+user:stacy:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
/bin/chmod -R A+group:othergroup:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
/bin/chmod -R A+group:yetanothergroup:read_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs

So with this setup I can now open the share on the server and create a file or folder with inherited permissions.  It does, however, save my username as a new owner, so keep that in mind.  But if the group stays in there with “domusers” as full read/write access, I am happy.

Well, now I get it just a little and it makes more sense compared to Windows ACL’s.  I didn’t go over any share specifics and authentication issues, this was just ACL’s!  I still have to RTFM my way around that for a while.  Next project, join OpenSolaris to a Windows domain.  (Which, BTW, does not work in NT Domain style connections, you have to use Active Directory.)

When you run mstsc.exe, the Remote Desktop Connection client to connect to a virtual machine VRDP or other RDP connections, it’s not exactly clear how to enter the CTL+ALT+DEL keystroke to login. Do this:

CTL+ALT+END

:)

Man, I haven’t posted in ages! Well, here’s something I want to remember for later. Force a computer to logoff at a particular time, but still allow logons later. Using Active Directory, I think, will force a logon schedule and dissallow users from logon if not within scheduled times.

On the computer you want to force logoff, open the C: drive and create a text file. Then rename it to, force-logoff.bat
Be sure you can view the extensions, or it will hide the .txt at the end and this wont work. (it can’t be force-logoff.bat.txt, which is what you’ll get if you have “hide extensions of known file types” selected)
Then right click, edit.
Put this in the file and save it.

PsShutdown.exe -o -f

After that, find PsShutdown.exe and copy/paste it into the C:\Windows dir on that system. Get it from here:
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zip
You’ll have to unzip that and get the Psshutdown tool out of it.  I usually just put all the Pstools in the Windows directory anyway, it’s handy to have.
Then to test, just double click the force-logoff.bat file and it should log you out.  NOTE: The first time you run any of the PSTools, you’ll get a little EULA and you’ll need to agree to the terms.  Not big deal, then after that you won’t get a popup.

Last, make a schedule for it to run every day at your desired time.

Here’s the link to the Microsoft site regarding PsShutdown command line usage.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897541.aspx