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[Keith] Welcome to the Mind Of Root. I'm Keith Albright
[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.
[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski.
[Keith] This is Episode 45 recorded on Tuesday April 1, 2008.
Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?
[Steve]
- Not too much. I've been working on some PowerShell cmdlets, which I'll talk about in a bit. I've also been spending more time than I really wanted to working with XML documents that are a straight copy of the paper form it replaces - no reworking the process to take advantage of better information or technology.. if it had to be there before, it needs to be there now. Frustrating..
[Rich]
[Keith]
Housekeeping Items
[Rich]
[Steve]
[Keith]
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-Lee Holmes, the author of Windows
PowerShell Cookbook and member of the
PowerShell Development Team, has released the proof of concept code for
BgShell? - Background Shell.
-
BgShell? runs in the background, listens for keystrokes and executes macros written in
PowerShell based on those keystrokes. It also provides a limited
PowerShell session only a Control-Alt-B away.
- DNS Reverse Lookup [KEITH]
-Email problems because I didn't have rDNS entries for my mail host. So, I figured it would be better to bring DNS back in house than keep with provider.
-Discuss what rDNS is briefly and why it matters.
-Change in plans when I encountered problems with the power supply on my
OpenBSD? box, so I loaded Microsoft DNS on a Windows server in my DMZ.
-Forward lookup zone pretty straight-forward. I setup reverse zone and realized I have to have the ISP forward rDNS lookups to my server. Essentially, they put a delegation in their zone file for my subnet.
-Setup, they tested and refused to forward since I was answering for the full class C subnet. You can't setup any smaller CIDR subnet in the GUI. You have to manually do it. (MS KB Article ID 174419) So, I set it up and they tested again and agreed it had only the subnet and would delegate, however, my entries were resolving with the ip.ip.ip.in-addr.arpa appended to the host name. e.g. mail.company.com.ip.ip.ip.in-addr.arpa.
-I double-checked the zone file and the DNS daemon appended the info. I corrected and restarted and it did it again. As I scan the KB article, I see for Windows NT (which I'm not) it says to end your host name with a period(.). So, I try it and voila, it stops appending the reverse lookup zone file name to the host name.
-/n Software has released the V2 beta of the
NetCmdlets?.
-This release has added functionality for the existing cmdlets, adds new cmdlets for working with the Amazon
WebServices?, and most importantly - SSH functionality.
-The SSH functionality is the coolest, because you can have a
PowerShell to
PowerShell session, where it will pass serialized objects back and forth, or you can use a terminal program like
PuTTY? and access your
PowerShell console session.
- Exchange 2007 Upgrade Planning [KEITH]
-Planning an upgrade to Exchange2007 and I've never had to spec a server before. I know there are a lot of recommendations around how you build your drive arrays and the way the data is spread across the spindles. I'm sure I could wing it and it would still perform well given the size of my environment, but I figured I'd see what resources are available.
-Found a great storage planning workbook. They also have one to CPU and memory recommendations.
-By the time this is released, I should have some cmdlets for working with
PolyMon posted on the Sample Solutions page for the
PolyMon project.
-I talked with Fred Baptiste about adding my cmdlets to his project and he seemed enthusiastic and would like to incorporate them in the next version.
-The cmdlets I'm working on are Get-Monitor, New-Monitor, Remove-Monitor, Set-Monitor
- Old T1 Disconnect.......File Under Vendor Frustrations [KEITH]
-Level3 was our old carrier and I needed to submit a disconnect request for the old T1. Oddly enough, they had a cover letter with the bill a couple months back indicating they will no longer take email or phone call disconnects, you must use the web form. Web form is not secure and requires lots of account information. OK fine, it's a dead account soon anyway.
-The online form instruction says to also SEND A COPY TO THE EMAIL BUCKET! OK, so I do. I then get a reply telling me I shouldn't do that and to use the online form. This was 4 days later. The online form indicates I should have had a response within 48 hours.
-
- Standing Tall on My Vista Soapbox [STEVE]
by Greg Shields - MCP Magazine Online
-In Greg's quick tip column, he lists out a number of reasons that admins he talks to haven't switched to Vista and are showing a reluctance to consider switching.
-For the most part, I agree with his assessment. The number of issues that have been hindered Vista's adoption have declined and will continue as the OS matures.
-I did take issue with one aspect of his assessment though.
-"In my small office here, we installed Vista early on and never looked back. Yes, there were some applications like Quickbooks that didn't work. But for those, we simply moved them to a Terminal Server and made them remote applications. The movement of applications from desktops to Terminal Servers actually made our lives easier with fewer apps to manage across the network. Vista has, in many ways been a boon, to Terminal Services."
-It should not be seen as a positive that an application will not run on the OS. It could be the fault of the vendor of the program, but that doesn't make it a positive for the OS. Also, some small environments that run Quickbooks or other non-compatible programs do not have the luxury of a terminal services machine or the licensing to use one.
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Listener Feedback
From listener....Brad Call who posted a comment on the blog for Episode 42.....
SubInAcl? is a great tool, I use it all the time to script owenership of file after they have been copied from my old domain (the evil NT) to the newer 2003 domain. Keep in mind that it must run from a server, you will get syntax error (and other error) if you try and run it from XP, even if the syntax is correct.
[KEITH] Which explains why I kept getting a syntax error when running from my XP workstation trying to examine permissions on a network drive. Thanks Brad.
From Listener.....akaalvoip, who posted a comment on the blog for Episode 43....
Could you please give me links to the apps you where speaking about, towards the end of the show.
[KEITH] I'm not sure, but I believe she/he is referring to the SubInAcl? tool mentioned in listener feedback (and again here). I listened to the end of the show and didn't hear any other software referenced. So, here it is.
Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&DisplayLang=en
Link: http://shrinkster.com/wkg
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Website Picks
Rich - http://
Steve - http://
Keith - Nitro Portaits. This is where the big-time podcasters like Leo Laporte get those cool portraits. Anyone can get one done, they are just pretty expensive.
http://www.geekculture.com/geekculturestore/webstore/nitroportraits.html
Last Call
Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....
Closing
All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] mindofroot.com or post a comment on the main site at MindOfRoot.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.
Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast and the Blubrry networks. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com and Blubrry.com....That's Blubrry without the E's
Thanks everyone.
