Author: Bill

RE: Controlling your Patch Management with WSUS

If you haven’t heard yet, Windows Server Updated Service is available for download… for free!, it’s 100% compatible with your Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1 server. Currently, the SBS writing team is working hard to get a documentation out the door to aid you with the installation and configuration of WSUS on SBS 2003 SP1.

But, why wait?

It’s certainly not hard by any means, simply download the setup.exe file, and launch it on your SBS server, then just follow the defaults, and you’re pretty much finished. However, if you have premium, you’ll need to tell WSUS your proxy server.

Finally, you need to configure the clients to look at the server for their updates. This is the tricky part. There are two major steps, granting access to the website, and configuring the group policy.

To grant access to the clients to update themselves

  1. In the Server Management Console, drill down into Advanced management, and into the default website
  2. You’ll have to do this for both the SelfUpdate and ClientWebService virtual directories. Right-click, choose Properties, click on the Directory Security tab, then IP Address and choose Granted Access for all IP addresses

Now your website is ready

Pointing the clients to the server via Group Policy

  1. Create and link a new Group Policy Object on the domain level
  2. In the Group Policy Object Editor, Expand Computer Configuration, Administration Templates, Windows Components and select Windows Update
  3. Double-click Configure Automatic Updates, click Enabled and ensure Auto download and schedule the install
  4. Then double click Specify Intranet Microsoft Update Service location and choose Enabled and type in http://{servername}:8530 into both boxes and click OK
  5. Finally, double-click No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installations

And that’s all there is to it. You’ll need the latest service pack for Windows 2000, or SP1 or 2 for XP for this to work. Also, as you recall, you have to wait for a period of time before policy actually takes place, or you can use the gpupdate /force to force the policy to take place.

Now, even happier patching …

[Via SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff]

Desktop Sidebar Home Page

Desktop Sidebar Home Page

Desktop Sidebar provides you with instant access to the information you most desire by grabbing data from your PC and the internet. The result is a dynamic visual display you configure and control.

I am playing again! I ran something like this a couple of months ago but I ran into performance issues. This bar works and appears not to consume too many resources. It has a much slicker integration with Outlook. I like its performance panel and I am beginning to like its Newsroom panel. So far, its pretty cool!

Dual-Core Server Hits the Midmarket

Dual-Core Server Hits the Midmarket

Dell this week is introducing its first server powered by Intel Corp.’s dual-core technology. Customers buying the PowerEdge SC430 will have the option of running it on Intel’s dual-core Pentium D chip.

I was wondering when the first dual-core server would hit the market. This is a good solution for SBS folks since products like Exchange, ISA, and SQL Server will probably do quite well with multi-processors. This drops the dual processor price point to a very attractive level.

ISA Firewall Best Practices, Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

ISA Firewall Best Practices, Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

I have been having some intermittent problems. The error message pointed my in the direction of my DNS configuration so I compared my configuration to the Best Practices recommended in this document. Since my configuration was setup during the ISA 2004 install, everything should be standard. I did find two things did not match up.

  1. The WAN adapter DNS setting was pointed at the intranet DNS server. I blanked this parameter out in the GUI. This set the DNS configuration to get it automatically from the router.
  2. There were no local addresses configured in the Web Browser tab for the internal network. I added the loop back network and the local network addresses.

I also installed the Beta Release of Copylattowebproxy Script. I looked at the script and I think it populates the direct access address ranges in the web browser tab. It appears to do the same thing I just finished doing by hand but I cannot imagine why someone would create a script to do what you can do so easily by hand.

It will probably will take me some time to figure out if these changes made a difference.

T-Mobile – Downloads

T-Mobile – Downloads

I downloaded the upgrades to my Blackberry phone and desktop yesterday. It said it was fixing a variety of small problems including an extended search for the network. It did seem to fix my Error 3 problem I was getting on the Week View. The upgrade to the Desktop went without a hitch. The upgrade to the phone was more of a problem. I had updated Pocketday online. That version was replaced with the version connected to my Desktop which unfortunately was a much older version. It also reset all of my settings. I had to:

  1. Change the TCP setting so I could get the weather and stock ticker to work.
  2. Change the zipcode so I could get weather for my location.
  3. Add a stock ticker for Dow Jones. The stock ticker was blank.

Changing screen resolution on Fedora Core 4

I finally got the higher resolution to work on my mere mortal userid. The higher resolution worked for the root userid but I would get blank gnome panels at the higher resolution with my mere mortal userid. The problem is probably related to the “Save current setup” check box you see when you logoff. I guess that gnome freaks out when it finds a configuration saved at a lower resolution. To get out of this problem, I created a new panel and added the Preferences application. I found that if I changed the resolution to something else and then changed it back to the right resolution it would refresh the screen correctly. Once I had the screen formatted correctly, I could then log off and check the box to “Save current setup”. The next time I logged on everything would be correctly formatted for the higher resolution.

While I was playing with the screen resolution I went ahead and installed foo2zjs so I could print to my Magicolor 2200 printer.

RE: I HATE SQL SERVER!

Okay so maybe hate is a harsh word, but how about severely dislike instead? We moved over the blogs to a more private SQL server and in the process had to reattach some things. My SQL server knowledge is about a -5 on a scale of 1 to 10 so if you were wondering why the blogs were offline so long it’s because I had no clue in how to fix it and Google wasn’t the most informative tool for someone who has no clue of the right question to ask. Thanks to fellow MVP Brian Desmond who got things fixed up in less than 2 minutes [a severely humbling experience I might add].

It’s been a long time since I felt in that ‘helpless I have no clue’ state. Right now that’s the problem I have with bothSQL server and Sharepoint. They are a bit outside my comfort level. I use Sharepoint but I don’t feel like I know it. Of course there are times that I’m not sure I truly know Exchange either, but at least enough to set up smarthost entries and what not.

Okay any SQL gurus out there? So what SQL books would you steer a SQL newbie to? It seems like SQL is the future [or something like it] for data file storage and I don’t feel confortable with it at all right now.

[Via E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS “Diva”]

I was wondering why her blog was offline. She is a smart gal with lots of good advice so it is not hard to see why she is frustrated. At this time I share her concern that Sharepoint and SQL Server are a bit out of my comfort level but I do believe this will pass in time as we use it more and find new ways to break it. Although Community server looks like a potential contender, I am much more comfortable with WordPress.

More on Fedora Core 4

I am still fiddling with Fedora Core 4. Yesterday I finally gave up on trying to pass authentication credentials from Fedora to the firewall and opened up anonymous access for http and https. It is a little of a defeatist attitude but I thought that Core 4 would be easier in this area and I needed to move on. The bottom line was that I needed yum to work. Yum was giving me somewhat misleading error messages about the repos and the base url when it actually was getting a html error 407. I tried a variety of supposed fixes. Ntlmaps looked the most promising but I could not get it to work.

Once I got Yum working I installed the Evolution connector for Exchange. It kind of worked. It cratered with a big old error message the first time I tried to use it but seemed to work anyway. I was able to read my email, look at contacts, and view the calendar. The error message bothers me. It is not ready for prime time in this state.

I also tried to change to a higher screen resolution. The gnome menus do not appear at the higher resolution on my mere mortal userid. It works with the root userid. Now that is a mystery.

fernando_graphicos » Document » Solution to WP1.5.1 RSS errors

fernando_graphicos » Document » Solution to WP1.5.1 RSS errors

I try not to patch applications but my WordPress blog was not showing my updates in RSSBandit. I validated the feed from RSSBandit/FeedValidator and it said it was seeing a http 304 error. After a little research I found that someone else had noticed the problem and an official patch existed. Whew!

Dual-Boot Linux and Windows 2000/Windows XP with GRUB HOWTO

Dual-Boot Linux and Windows 2000/Windows XP with GRUB HOWTO

If you have multiple hard drives (disks), /boot must be on the same hard drive (probably the first hard drive) that has the Windows boot loader (NTLDR) on the MBR.

As I mentioned in the previous post I had recently set up a dual boot system, W2K Server and Fedora Core 4 linux, and have verified the linux installation by booting off of a floppy. Now I wanted a slicker way to boot. I found these instructions and they worked for me. The surprising thing was when I reread the instructions it said that the “/boot must be on the same hard drive (probably the first hard drive) that has the Windows boot loader (NTLDR) on the MBR”. My /boot is on the second drive and it works! I guess this might eliminate the resize NTFS problem for some people. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Bootdisk for Fedora Core 4

Booting to Fedora Core 3

try this for now;

Get a freshly formatted floppy disk and have it ready toinsert into the floppy drive.

Boot in to rescue mode from the 1st install cd of fc3. At the boot prompt, type in;

linux rescue (hit the enter key)

When that is done, insert the floppy disk into the drive.

Then chroot into the mounted filesystem

chroot /mnt/sysimage (hit the enter key)

then type in

grub-install /dev/fd0 (hit the enter key)

Give that a few minutes to complete (there is a delay).

Take out the Fedora install cd.

Reboot, making sure that the bios is set to boot first from a floppy.

See if grub gives you the menu to boot to Fedora or Windows.

Then we will look more closely at the Grub file.
_____________________________
” I love it when a plan comes together.” – Hannibal Smith


I have been buildig up a new dual boot PC over the last couple of days. I am using my son’s old desktop, a AMD 900. I installed W2K Server to test out the WSUS client and the Visual Studio Beta. I had a NFR W2K server on the shelf so this was a no cost experiment. To make things interesting I did a standard install on a NTFS disk. Traditionally you need to plan ahead when you want to dual boot and make sure you install NT/W2K/XP on a FAT32. In this case, I forgot. So I set about making this configuration work. The hardware has previously worked with both W2K Pro and Linux so I was pretty sure I would not have many compatibilty problems. The only new hardware was a recycled 10 GB hard drive to hold linux. The Fedora installation went fine and I rebooted. It booted immediately into W2K without a mention of linux’s boot manager, Grub. So I cranked up the Fedora Rescue disk and checked out the Fedora installation. It was there. I just couldn’t boot to it. What I needed was the old boot disk yet I don’t remember Fedora Core 4 installation asking me if I needed one. I hunted and hunted thhrough the documentation till I found this off the internet. Grub complained about the bios of the hard drive used to store the boot partition. That’s when I remembered I had to set the drive to LBA for linux to work. It is interesting that I could install with Auto setting but I needed LBA to boot. Now I can use the floppy to start linux. Since I had a functioning linux I could now go on to the slicker options of dual booting with a NTFS based Windows.

RE: Where should WSUS be installed?

The biggest issue with adding WSUS to SBS is setting the group policy to http://servername:8530

So?

You ready for Tuesday?

[Via E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS “Diva”]

I struggled with this for a long time. The instructions did not mention the port number though it was mentioned in the wizard. I discounted the wizard since the troubleshooting used port 80 and it worked. Well, it took sometime before the computers reported in but they all look fine. Since I have such a small network I am not staging the updates locally. A great resource is Windows Update Services installed on SBS 2003 on the smallbizserver.net site. Sometimes you need to see the pictures to see your mistake.

Just a thought about dual core CPUs and SBS

One of the things I have learned about running SBS on under powered CPUs is where I can get the most bang for my buck. When I bought my server a couple of years ago it was a single CPU P3-700 with the potential of adding a second CPU. It worked for my very small network but every hour it maxed out the CPU for a short period doing some unspecified task related to sqlserver. Naturally the response time was poor during this period so I bought a second CPU off of eBay. The CPU was inexpensive so there wasn’t much risk. Amazingly this fixed the problem.

Naturally this lead me into preferring dual CPU systems. Entry level SBS systems use a single CPU. This setup is probably adequate for most small business with “few” client computers. The current crop of fast CPUs overcome the bottleneck I experienced. Businesses with a larger number of computers probably need a dual Xeon system. The availability of dual core systems probably expands the number of client computers a single CPU system can handle. I expect the Microsoft server products, SQLServer, ISA, and Exchange, to be very good at taking advantage of dual core systems. If this works as expected the low cost, dual core CPU should take market share away from the dual processor Xeon servers. Hmm…

Directory Comparisions

I have been looking at utilites that sync up directories. I like Sharepoint but I am uneasy with the backup so I have opted to create a parallel directory structure. This originally started out of a need to use PDFCreator store content. So I saved the files in the file system version rather than the Sharepoint version. To synchronize the directories I have looked at several alternatives, Robocopy, Winmerge, and dirssync.

I am not sure how I found this one. It is a Python program I found on sourceforge. Please notice that its name has ‘ss’ in it. I could not get the latest version dirsync to work with Python 2.4 so I ended up using an older version with a compiled executable. It’s okay and its FTP interface is intriguing. It looks like a way to back up web sites.

Then I remembered that Winmerge has recently updated their program. They have done a nice job with this program. I tried it and it worked as expected.

I started out this process using a batch file that called Robocopy and I will probably continue to use it. When I rebuilt my OS the scheduled job disappeared and I forgot to re-create the job. For me it is still the best solution for me.

WSUS is available

In the SBS world the big announcement was the long awaited availability of Windows Server Update Services or otherwise known as WSUS. It is a major step forward in the patch management process. I am going to install next month and evaluate using remote storage for my small office. I want to see what problems the folks on the SBS mailing list has with WSUS.

RE: The ultra-thin InfoCard

Over the weekend I needed to log in to eBay from somebody else’s machine. The browser was Firefox, but it would have been impolite to install Greasemonkey and Password Composer, or even to install a bookmarklet, so instead I just used the live version of the password generator that has dramatically streamlined my online life in recent months.
…

[Via Jon’s Radio]

This caught my attention! I have been using KeePass to keep track of my passwords but this sounds like a better solution in some cases. I still prefer having a database of passwords and in some cases a password with greater complexity for the sites containing sensitve data. However, this might be a nice replacement/convenience for the non-critical sites that are accessed off-site.