hmm, not put anything up here 4 a while...

Ok, a few things that I have done since last blogged:


• Migrated a few machines / laptops from Vista to XP.
• Found out the hard way NOT to use Vist 'Easy' transfer as XP cant import the files. Lol.
• Using Drive Image XML (freeware) now for imaging - it creates bootable image discs too. Looks good. Using the plugin for BartPE in my Bart boot disc...
• Looking for a good free duplicate file finder - the Molesoft one is great as it shows you image preview of duplicates it finds to help you decide on deleting them.
• Playing with Server 2008 and Windows 7 beta, which both look good.

• I'm hoping to start MCSE track from MCSA, and also CCNA/CCNP with a view to becoming an ethical hacker in the next 2-3 years ;)

• Want to get an apple mac mini to play with. (but avez non $)

• Oh yeah, fixed a few more residential pcs....

Over&out4now

MCSA

Finally got my MCSA Certification - 18 or so months from when I started - which I am quite pleased with.

slipstreaming win2k3 installation-saving time on the hotfixes

Just decided to sort out slipstreaming SP2 and all hotfixes to my Win 2k3 installation files/discs, as haven't got around to doing it as yet.


Using nLite is a nice way to do it - google nLite and grab the latest version. This takes care of all the manual editing files and replacing files etc. you have to do otherwise. (Have't got it to integrate .Net framework 3.5 though - yet!)

Anyhow, to identify all relevant hotfixes required I installed the Win2k3 which I have already slipstreamed the SP2 to, and ran MBSA to check for security updates.
This provides a nice little report with download links to all the hotfixes not yet installed. You click through the download list and save the hotfixes/updates to a folder.

Thing is, they have like 'long' names, so here is a little script to quickly rename all hotfixes in a folder (change strPath to the relevant folder path) and it also creates a nice little QChain batch file to silently install the hotfixes with no restarts. (Need to restart manually when all done)


strPath = "D:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.SERVER\My Documents\MBSA\Updates\Rename"
set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set oFolder = fso.GetFolder(strPath)
set oQ = fso.OpenTextFile (strPath & "\qChain.cmd",2,True)
for each oFile in oFolder.Files
strf1 = oFile.Name
i = instr(oFile.Name,"kb")
If i >= 1 then
strF2 = mid(strF1,i,8)
strF2 = strF2 & ".exe"
fso.moveFile strF1, strF2
strF3 = strF2 & " /q /z "
oQ.WriteLine(strF3)
End If
next
oQ.Close

Win 2k3 Routing...

I wanted to do some simple routing from subnet A to subnet B. For some reason I got real confused to why it wasn't working... until I realised I have 'foolishly' missed the obvious and set up the incorrect default gateway on subnet A.

This was because I was setting this subnet up on a network where I already had a default gateway to my router to the internet... let me explain.

I had a gateway router out to the net - 192.168.1.1
So i had subnet A 192.168.1.0, then I thought I would use a win2k3 box to practise a bit of RRAS routing. So I set up my Windows Home Server testbox on to IP 202.202.202.202, and then set up my router box with IPs 192.168.1.254 and 202.202.202.1.
I set up the WinHomeserver as follows:

IP 202.202.202.202
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway 202.202.202.1
DNS 192.168.1.254

(the router box has DNS installed on it - really a caching DNS server, as it forwards all unresolved requests to 192.168.1.1)

I then set the router box IPs as follows

IP 202.202.202.1
SM 255.255.255.0
DG 202.202.202.1

IP 192.168.1.254
SM 255.255.255.0
DG 192.168.1.1

OK, so then I tried to PING ips from the winhomeserver box. After sufficient firewall admendments, I could ping the box itself, and both IPs (202 and 192) on the RRAS box. But I couldnt PING the 192.168.1.1 router....

It was because I was thinking about it all wrong. What i needed here was a NAT box so allow requests from subnet B to subnet a. as soon as i configured the NAT on the RRAS box everything was fine. But why wasnt the LAN only routing working?

It was because i was thinking about it wrong. The RRAS box IPs didnt need default gateways for what i was doing, but what should be set up was this:

Subnet B 202.202.202.0, have default gateway of 202.202.202.1 (The RRAS box)
Subnet A 192.168.1.0, ahve the default gateway of 192.168.1.254 (The RRAS box) - this is what i didnt have, as I didnt want the rest of the 192.168.1.0 network to route back to subnet B, but to go out on the net through my main router.

SO, i guess the thrust of this rambling post is that I should have drawn out what i was trying to do before I went setting things up the way I did.

Such fun ;)

Firewall Basics

If you are going to use a server behind a firewall - like Windows Firewall - as a DHCP and DNS server, these are the default ports to open and things to bear in mind... suffice to say mine is now working :)

DNS server
UDP port 53 and TCP port 53.

DHCP server
UDP ports 67 and 2535.

Note that when you create a Firewall exception for the DHCP protocol on a DHCP server, you must set the scope for the exception to Any computer including those on the Internet. If you leave it set to My network (subnet) only, all inbound DHCP Discover packets from client computers are dropped because the IP address of the packet is 0.0.0.0, which is not recognized by the computer as being part of the local subnet. This causes the DHCP process to fail and clients do not receive IP addresses.

Now you know!!

backups using MS synctoy

I have had a (fairly non strict i must admit) backup routine now for a couple of years - and thankfull I haven't had a hard drive fail (at home - plenty have at work) yet... Still, we must be careful and press on with making sure our data is not to be lost!

I have been looking for a nice backup utility, as havce used ntbackup till now, which does the job, but you have to do a normal backup, then incremental / differential etc which can be time and HDD space consuming.

Looking at various Sync software, I came across SyncToy v2.0 which really does a good job and gives you a lot of control of how to keep various folders / drives synched. You can add the sync job/s to a scheduled task, to ensure that your backup is up to date.

Hows that? Very nice indeed !

Slow wireless connection

When we recently moved house, we got sky broadband mid, which was up to 8Mbps apparently.

My PC is in the next room from the router, so out came the old wireless card, but my connection wouldn't go past 2Mbps. On checking the speed with a LAN cable plugged in, we had 5-7Mbps depending on time of day, which is more like it.
What was keeping my wireless connection limited ? Well to be honest, not quite sure, but upon downloading and running the excellent TCP Optimizer the issue was completely solved!!
Cool.
Problems like this, then definately try this utility.

VirtualBox is impressive

That's it... After just 2 days using VirtualBox as my new VM platform, I am so impressed that I have uninstalled my MS VP2007 and will now be using Virtualbox permanently!


It is just soooo much faster - running 4 instances of Win Server2k3 no problem. Everything is much quicker.

A few things to note:

1. There is no drag and drop capability between the host and the VM, which I admit at first was a bit annoying... but it is easy to map a folder (eg your desktop) from the host to the VM. Hopefully this functionality will be included in future revisions as quite a number of comments on their forums show it is a desirable feature. Still, as I said, with the mapped folder its fine.

2. I have as previously posted, used the vboxmanage command line with clonevdi to clone my .vbi file about 5 times. I ran into problems joining these machines to the domain though, so I got the free utility newsid.exe from sysinternals, which generates a new SID for the machine (make sure you do this BEFORE you join the machine to the domain) and then everything works fine.

3. You have to power down the VM before changing any settings such as networking which I have to admit is pretty annoying. For my current set up though this isnt a problem as I have setup my subnets (the virtual networking capabilities are awesome and far outweigh the cons) so it doesn't bother me too much.

Right, back to it... I have my 70-299 to do!! Lets set up some SSL certificates!

virtualisation

There are 3 main offerings for free to enable you to use virtual machines on your box.

Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007, Sun's Virtualbox, and VMware's Virtual Server. I have up till now used Microsoft’s offering, which has got me through my 1st 3 MCSA exams nicely, allowing me to set up a virtual network of servers and XP boxes to go through all the practices on.

Just recently I am trying out the Virtualbox, due to a review I read in PC Pro. Virtual networking limitations and no usb support on Virtual PC 2007 are 2 reasons why I am interested in this.

Well, I have to say that I am well impressed thus far. Apart from being able to easily set up lots of subnets, and assign up to 4 network adapters to each Virtual box, there is USB support, the overall interface is nicer I think, and the amount of system resources seems to be a lot less.

I not have 3 Servers (Server 2003) on a subnet, and overall operation is noticeable faster than that of Virtual PC 2007.

Copying virtual machines on Virtual box took me a while and a bit of Googling to get the hang of, but I actually like it very much. There is a command line command set (vboxmanage) which has many helpful commands, one of which being ‘clonevdi’(.vdi being the file extension of a virtual machine for VirtualBox (Virtual DIsk no doubt). This allows you to clone hard drives for Virtualbox nicely.

Will post a more in depth review and tipset later...