totalnetsolutions.net

I ran into a problem today where I couldn’t remember the native packet capture tool for Solaris and couldn’t install tcpdump, so i thought I’d put down as many as many native packet capture commands as I knew, by OS, in a single place.  I’ll update this as I find more, since there’s hundreds of Operating systems out there.

• AIX: iptrace: /usr/sbin/iptrace [ -a ] [ -b ][ -e ] [ -u ] [ -PProtocol_list ] [ -iInterface ] [ -pPort_list ] [ -sHost [ -b ] ] [ -dHost ] [ -L Log_size ] [ -B ] [ -T ] [ -S snap_length] LogFile
• FreeBSD: tcpdump (I think): tcpdump [ -adeflnNOpqRStuvxX ] [ -c count ] [ -C file_size ] [ -F file ] [ -i interface ] [ -m module ] [ -r file ] [ -s snaplen ] [ -T type ] [ -w file ] [ -E algo:secret ] [ expression ]
• HP-UX: nettl: nettl requires a daemon start, and other setup: /usr/sbin/nettl -traceon kind… -entity subsystem… [-card dev_name...] [-file tracename] [-m bytes] [-size portsize] [-tracemax maxsize] [-n num_files] [-mem init_mem [max_mem]] [-bind cpu_id] [-timer timer_value]
• Linux 2.4 and higher:
  • tcpdump (some distros): tcpdump [ -AdDefKlLnNOpqRStuUvxX ] [ -c count ] [ -C file_size ] [ -G rotate_seconds ] [ -F file ] [ -i interface ] [ -m module ] [ -M secret ] [ -r file ] [ -s snaplen ] [ -T type ] [ -w file ] [ -W filecount ] [ -E spi@ipaddr algo:secret,... ] [ -y datalinktype ] [ -z postrotate-command ] [ -Z user ] [ expression ]
  • wireshark (some distros, used to be called “ethereal”): GUI-config, no command-line, use tethereal (now tshark) for that
  • tshark: tshark [ -a <capture autostop condition> ] … [ -b <capture ring buffer option>] … [ -B <capture buffer size (Win32 only)> ]  [ -c <capture packet count> ] [ -C <configuration profile> ] [ -d <layer type>==<selector>,<decode-as protocol> ] [ -D ] [ -e <field> ] [ -E <field print option> ] [ -f <capture filter> ] [ -F <file format> ] [ -h ] [ -i <capture interface>|- ] [ -l ] [ -L ] [ -n ] [ -N <name resolving flags> ] [ -o <preference setting> ] … [ -p ] [ -q ] [ -r <infile> ] [ -R <read (display) filter> ] [ -s <capture snaplen> ] [ -S ] [ -t ad|a|r|d|e ] [ -T pdml|psml|ps|text|fields ] [ -v ] [ -V ] [ -w <outfile>|- ] [ -x ] [ -X <eXtension option>] [ -y <capture link type> ] [ -z <statistics> ] [ <capture filter> ]
• Mac OSX: tcpdump (among others): tcpdump [ -adeflnNOpqRStuvxX ] [ -c count ] [ -C file_size ] [ -F file ] [ -i interface ] [ -m module ] [ -r file ] [ -s snaplen ] [ -T type ] [ -w file ] [ -E algo:secret ] [ expression ]
• Solaris: snoop: snoop [ -aPDSvVNC ] [ -d device ] [ -s snaplen ] [ -c maxcount ] [ -i filename ] [ -o filename ] [ -n filename ] [ -t [ r | a | d ] ] [ -p first [ , last ] ] [ -x offset [ , length ] ] [ expression ]
• Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and beyond:
  • netmon (not installed by default): GUI config, filter creation info here
  • wireshark (available by download): GUI-config, no command-line

Any others anyone wants added (or corrected), just comment or email and I’ll update this.
(Edit 7/29/08 - change tcpdump link)
(Edit 10/13/08 - add tshark info, thanks Jefferson!, and wireshark on Windows)

Here’s a couple of quick extra helpers for administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core.

1. Guy Teverovsky (Microsoft MVP) has created the CoreConfigurator which gives a small GUI to many of the initial setup pieces of Server Core, so you don’t have to follow my detailed (cryptic) instructions.
2. Create Shadow Copies on your Server Core file server with
   vssadmin add shadowstorage /for=C: /on=D: /maxsize=900MB
vssadmin create shadow
at 7:00am /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su "vssadmin create shadow /for=c:"

   MaxSize can be bytes (/maxsize=10240), KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, or EB (/MaxSize=1EB), assuming your disk is that big.

I haven’t used CoreConfigurator myself, but I did create my shadow copies again finally on our main server today. There’s a backup that’s amazingly great to have.

Edit on July 8, 2008:  I forgot the”/for=c:” in my paste back to here -I was configuring another Windows Server 2008 Server Core file server and couldn’t figure out why the scheduled task wasn’t creating shadow copies properly.  Sorry to anyone who used this note and had issues.

I recently build a Windows Small Business 2003 Server that was a migration from old hardware. Following this guide from Microsoft makes it pretty straightforward. However, there are a few things I noticed, especially this late in Windows 2003’s lifetime.

1. The guide mentions “Join the new server to the domain” as part of the DCPromo process. I like to separate this out as a way of verifying the join goes well, and that the server can get fully patched more easily. There is a 7 day limit to having 2 SBS 2003 servers live on the network at the same time, and it’s enforced by the old server shutting down after 1 hour uptime. However, this limit isn’t enforced untill after you run the second part of the SBS setup (the first part is the OS setup, the 2nd is the Windows mode “double-click to run” setup). This gives you time to patch and prepare the OS prior to that time limit starting.
2. Once the 2nd part of setup has been run, migrate your users immediately.
3. Migrating users includes moving their mapped drives to the new server. The Client Side Caching Tool from Microsoft will make this much easier. I normally do this change as follows:
   1. Create the share on the new server, if you’re not using the default SBS \Users share.
   2. Edit all user’s profiles to point to the new location. I’ll post a script for this later, but all of the ones I have at this time are protected by IP contracts, and therefore non-sharable. I believe there’s at least a stub for this at either Don Jones’ Scripting Answers or Microsoft’s Script Center.
   3. I have yet to see an SBS environment with no laptops. Therefore, you’ll want to move the Client Side Cache for the My Documents of your users.
      1. Copy csccmd.exe to your NetLogon share on your DC (c:\WINDOWS\SYSVOL\sysvol\domain.local\scripts by default)
      2. Find the current path, and new path (\\dc01\Users for current, and \\dc02\Users for new, below)
      3. Make the logon script be: “\\domain.local\netlogon\csccmd.exe /moveshare:\\dc01\Users \\dc02\Users”
      4. When all the laptop users have logged in and run this script, unlink the GPO but keep it around for documentation (knowing how documentation is in most Small Businesses I’ve visited). This will speed up logons for everyone.
4. Now you can finish the Exchange / SharePoint / ISA setup. This will require downtime, but is easy to do, if you’re following the document referenced above.
5. Finish up cleanup of Exchange prior to the 7 day timeout value. you’ll need to replicate all the Public Folders, OAB, and Free/Busy data as documented in the “Migrating to new Hardware” document.
6. Uninstall Exchange on the original server.
   1. Requires “Modify”ing the Small Business Server roll in “Add/Remove” programs. choose to uninstall Exchange.
   2. This cleans up a huge number of items in AD, and makes future migrations simple. Also cleans up potential problems down the road.
7. DCPromo the original DC, so it’s not a DC on the original network. Just run “dcpromo” and remove the server from being a DC.
8. Now you can shut down the old DC and have no issues.

However, if you follow my guide directly, you’ll run into a single issue: https://servername/oma (or Exchange ActiveSync) will fail with an error: Server Error in '/OMA' Application.
Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute. You will only see this error if you try to access the site directly from the new SBS2003 server. Remotely, you’ll just get a generic error.

This is caused by .NET Framework 2.0 being installed *prior* to Exchange 2003. If you join the domain with the DCPromo and do patching *after* the fact, this probably won’t come up, because .NET Framework 2.0 won’t install untill after Exchange 2003 is installed. If, however, Exchange 2003 is installed first, you’ll probably get this error.

Good news, it’s a simple fix:
c:
cd\windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v1.1.4322\
aspnet_regiis -sn W3SVC/1/ROOT/OMA/
iisreset /restart

It might take 2 minutes to initialize, but OMA and ActiveSync should now work flawlessly.  As is always implied, contact us somehow if you have issues!

I built a Windows Server 2008 Server Core DC last week. It’s an interesting exercise because you have to use an unattend.txt file. I found quite a few places online that listed RODC unattend.txt files, but not full read-write DC unattend.txt files. So, attached to this post you’ll find the unattend.txt I used, but also, of more interest, I’m attaching the full help file directly from the server, which I used to create the file.

FIrst, you have to install the server and set an IP address - my previous posts on IP changes on DCs all used netsh commands as well, so if you followed thouse, you should be somewhat prepared for Server Core. I already had a WIndows Server 2003 DC in the environment, so that will be my primary DNS server for the install, untill DCPromo edits the settings.
netsh interface ipv4 set address local static 10.1.1.6 255.255.255.0 10.1.1.1 10
netsh interface ipv4 set dns local static 10.1.1.5
netsh interface ipv4 set wins local static 10.1.1.5

Now networking is set up, we can rename the computer: netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:dc02 and join the domain with netdom join dc02 /domain:foo.local /UserD:FOO\Administrator /reboot:5 /PasswordD:*. The “5″ after the reboot flag says to reboot 5 seconds after completion, and the “*” at the end says to prompt you for your password. I join the system to the domain manually first, because then I can WSUS patch it (if WSUS is in the network), or open up the firewall for any other patching software I have.

Once the server is back from reboot, activate, update the firewall to allow remote MMC connections (if you’re not doing that through GPO already), and install new roles.
slmgr.vbs -ato
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Administration" new enable=yes

The following roles are optional, depending on the service of the server. Mine has DNS and the File Server roles, but not DHCP. None of these are required to install AD Domain Services!
start /w ocsetup DNS-Server-Core-Role
start /w ocsetup DHCPServerCore
start /w ocsetup FRS-Infrastructure
start /w ocsetup DFSN-Server
start /w ocsetup DFSR-Infrastructure-ServerEdition

If this is the first Windows Server 2008 DC in your environment, you’ll need to take the Windows Server 2008 DVD to the DC with the Infrastructure Master role (required for /gpprep only) and run the following (E: assumed as DVD-ROM drive):
e:\sources\adprep\adprep.exe /forestprep
e:\sources\adprep\adprep.exe /domainprep
e:\sources\adprep\adprep.exe /domainprep /gpprep (Also run adprep /rodcPrep if you plan on building RODCs.)

Now you’re ready to do the DCPromo itself. Create an unattend.txt file. To add a DC to an existing domain, you can use:
[DCInstall]
AutoConfigDNS=Yes
ConfirmGc=Yes
DatabasePath=E:\Windows\NTDS
LogPath=c:\windows\NTDS
RebootOnSuccess=Yes
ReplicaDomainDNSName=foo.local
ReplicaOrNewDomain=Replica
ReplicationSourceDC=dc01.foo.local
SafeModeAdminPassword=passwordhere
SysVolPath=e:\windows\SysVol
UserDomain=foo.local
/Password:passwordhere

DCPromo will wipe out the passwords when it starts, or you can fill in “*” instead of the password, to be prompted. When it’s done, the server will reboot and be a new Global Catalog / DC in your domain. DCPromo will install neccessary binaries and configure the firewall for DC Services for you. It’s quite slick.

And as promised, here are the DCPromo Unattend Options for reference for creating your own unattend.txt.

As of today:

“Akismet has caught 347 spam for you since you first installed it.”

That’s since 11/29/2007. Akismet has YET to miscategorize a comment as spam, and it has missed a single spam comment. All I had to do was click “this is spam” and it’s cleaned up.

The only other anti-spam product I’ve seen to perform this well is the IronPort mail system at a client. 130,000 or so attempts / day, 1 spam / day in the entire company queue, and no users complaining about spam in 5 months.

Akismet, Ironport, my hat is off to you both.