Paul’s esoteric meanderings

I have seen this one a few times and it’s always entertaining to watch and hard to fix.

Lets say you have a domain name of company.com.xx and you host it yourself. The primary is stored on your DNS server in your DMZ and the secondary with your ISP.  

Now someone in your country will be hosting the .com.xx records. They will have a DNS server with a listing of delegations, that is who is responsible for sub-domains under .com.xx like your company.com.xx 

This is where it gets interesting. Delegation is done by hostname, not by IP address. In this case it will be delegated to something like NS1.company.com.xx and NS2.YourISP.com.xx  Read more... (474 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

If you get an EventID 14148 on your ISA Server (2K4 in this case) and it’s running on an IBM Server, chances are the IBM ServeRAID software has stolen port 8080 for it’s own use. Specifically Miniwinagent will be using it. The docs on IBM’s site say it’s not critical to the ServerRAID management software and only used for firmware updates. If you want port 8080 back you can either uninstall and reinstall without the feature, or just disable the Service.

 Read more... (144 words, 1 image, estimated 35 secs reading time)

My Jasjam won’t browse the Internet successfully. It’s actually Windows Mobile 2005 at fault.

Turns out the Proxy settings buried under Start – Settings – Connections – Connections – Advanced – Select Networks – Edit – Proxy Settings

Are set to my work proxy, and it learns this every time I plug in to use ActiveSync, it learns them again.

The fix and why is here.

I was installing Vista Ultimate onto a PC a few weeks back. The machine had a HDD installed that used to have XP on it. The HDD was configured as a Dynamic Disk and a single partition.

Vista could not install. Vista could see a single unrecognizable partition. Fair enough I think, it doesn’t like dynamic disks, I’ll just delete it.

Errgh, No. Vista doesn’t let you delete partitions from dynamic disks though the installer. The only solution I could find was to either boot to a 3rd party utility CD (which wasn’t handy) and nuke the partitions, or, the one I chose, to pluck the disk, drop it in an external USB caddy, and delete the partition from there on another XP PC.  Read more... (151 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

I find it fairly frequent that I have to assist a company redesign or improve their exchange infrastructure. When changing servers around Move Mailbox is a particularly handy tool. There is an absolute dearth of information on the Outlook side of things however. Here is a few things I have found that may be useful.

When you move a mailbox Outlook will (generally) get redirected without issue. It will do this by connecting to the original server, whop will then issue an instruction as to the new mailbox location based on what information is stored in AD. Some (5% or less) will not automatically redirect due to dodgy profiles.  Read more... (317 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

Active Directory uses the _msdcs.domain.local sub-domain to host SRV records. Depending on your domain structure and upgrade path, you may find this domain delegated rather than held as part of your “domain.local” zone. The conditions are in this KB article.

Now lets get tricky. Let’s say your _msdcs is delegated as in the picture above. Let’s also say over the years you replace and upgrade servers as your network grows. Sooner or later you’ll most likely replace your original domain controllers.  Read more... (502 words, 1 image, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

I am very careful on servers to disable ALL unused network interfaces, lest they corrupt the domain. Here is why:

I once got called out on a job to give MS PSS support a hand onsite. Unusual I thought at the time, normally I ring PSS, not they ring me. Anyway, they had a rough time getting a client up and running and needed someone on the ground that could help sort through it.

When I got there the Windows 2000 Domain Controller and Exchange 2000 Server  were both very unhappy. The Exchange database was offline, corrupted, and the Domain had more errors in the event log than I had seen before.  Read more... (314 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

Now this may be old news, but hey, it’s new to me.

I ran a DCDIAG /test:dns today and received an error

DNS server: 128.9.0.107 (b.root-servers.net.)
1 test failure on this DNS server
This is not a valid DNS server.
PTR record query for the 1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa. failed on the DNS server 128.9.0.107

Well it would appear that way back in 2004 the B Root Server had a change of IP Address as advised here. The old address was valid for some time but has since been de-commissioned, although I don’t know when exactly.  Read more... (178 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Lets say you have a server – MAILSERVER1

And you rebuild it for some reason. It’s a clean rebuild. As part of this rebuild you delete the Computer Account from AD. When you add the computer to the domain again, a new computer account is created.

BUT – if you have “Only Secure Updates” enabled in DNS, the new computer account doesn’t have permission to modify or overwrite the existing DNS entries. You’ll get an Event ID 11166 on boot up of the new server from DnsApi in it’s System Event Log. It’s only a Warning, not an Error, but the consequences could be significant. In my case Exchange Auth kept failing, despite logging no other errors in the event log. Don’t forget this applies to the PTR or Reverse lookup as well.  Read more... (303 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

 It’s tough for media companies these days. We all hear about terrorism piracy of Movies and Music, and how it’s destroying the world.

Well I hear a rumor that now it’s moved to books. If you for example were stuck on a remote island with no access to external print media, then it wouldn’t be surprising that you found this floating round.

Reading books on a PC or handheld device just isn’t relaxing. Luckily Adobe has a “print in booklet” function, allowing a novel to be broken into manageable booklets.  Read more... (178 words, 1 image, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Network Attached Storage – hey that sounds pretty cool. That should be  kinda like iSCSI? Ahh – no. NAS is the buzzword for what used to be known when I was a young boy as a File Server.

WOW – a real file server? yep, it’s that astounding. Somehow I have trouble getting all excited here. File servers have been round for a while now. NAS boxes come with an OS installed, and the discs on some type of RAID. I’m still not excited.   Read more... (281 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

I’ve been playing with sat dishes here and there and every time I see a Fiberglass one the thought keeps occurring – how does something radio transparent reflect radio waves?

I had a few theories ranging from

• Metalised Paint
• Metalised Gel-coat
• Metal Fibre reinforced glass
• Metal Impregnated resin
• Foil Layers
• Wire Mesh

I had the opportunity to drill a water drain hole in one today and the answer became obvious (at least for the Prodelin brand dishes)  Read more... (149 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

I spend most of my time visiting different sites implementing projects and sorting out problems. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the huge plethora of file shares at most of these sites. It’s like having a file server means you have to map everything you can. It makes life far more confusing than it needs to be.

There is no “backup” tool for share configurations when performing DR on a file server. Ideally for my DR I want to be able to restore the files and that’s it, not worry about the server configuration. My File Servers don’t run any app’s, they do SMB and that’s it. All other functions are run on an application server. Print Serving runs on a VM.  Read more... (390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Years ago I had the pleasure of getting called out to a client site where they had some problems with their IBM Server. I needed access to the data from their Raid 1 pack running on an IBM ServeRAID controller. For some reason that eludes me there was a problem on that machine. ”No Worries” I thought, I’ll just drop it in the box beside it and read off the data. It’ll show up as a normal disk on a normal SCSI controller.

Err – NO  Read more... (596 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

I like having a bit of space to store stuff at home. Dumping the Media Centre, Music, Photos and Backups back to a central server makes sense to me. It lets me use my XBox (chipped original) as a brilliant DivX player with AC3 Surround. I also worry about losing this data, and find it impractical to back it up to CD (3000 CD’s is difficult). This is why I run RAID on my server, to help protect my data. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start.  Read more... (1311 words, 1 image, estimated 5:15 mins reading time)

The screen rotation feature of the Jasjam is cool, but it takes a while, and some apps really hate it. It will even crash some video playback. It’s a great function for the slide out keyboard, but it is slow.

Have you ever noticed your Jasjam is incorrectly aligned when you answer the phone or an SMS message, and it takes a few seconds to sort it self out?  Read more... (152 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)