Sunday, December 21, 2014

Super-Scale ForSec Linkpost

I think this post is going to have the same number of URLs as Christmas tree ornaments and mantle decorations that I hung and set out this afternoon. That’s to say there are a lot, and I am quite behind when considering the calendar.

I’ve been collecting these for at least two months and there are too many now to continue to put off posting them for reference. I’ve tried to group them somewhat for consistency in theme.

Exploits

Advice and Guidance

AV/AM

Analysis

Web Security

Network Bits

In the Library (mostly whitepapers)

Note: Many of these are PDF links and will open in your web-browser as a PDF…

Live CD News

Whew!

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

USB Tools and Utilities

It has been a while since I posted a general USB utility round-up: It’s a USB Thing.

So I had seen a new one recently that provides some nice information on USB related system hardware components and it seemed like a good idea to re-mention some similar tools:

Of course, Nir Sofer has some great USB info tools also.

Then there are these:

It has been a while since I was over at Uwe Sieber’s website but he has been hard at work keeping his special USB tools updated.

Microsoft has a tool also for working with USB data:

Windows USBView - sample application in C++ for Visual Studio 2013

Usbview.exe is a Windows GUI application that allows you to browse all USB controllers and connected USB devices on your system. The left pane in the main application window displays a connection-oriented tree view, and the right pane displays the USB data structures pertaining to the selected USB device, such as the Device, Configuration, Interface, and Endpoint Descriptors, as well as the current device configuration.

Important  If you need UsbView as a tool, do not download this sample. Instead get UsbView.exe from the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) in the Windows Kits\<version>\Tools\<arch> folder. If you need to see the source code for UsbView, open the Browse code tab.

And then there is this “anti-usb” tool that removes USB drive history from the registry.

--Claus Valca

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Sysadmin Links - QuickPost

Stand back from your browser! Here comes a messy GSD Quickpost with tons of linkage for sysadmins….

New or Useful Software

PowerShell

Windows Diagnostic tool “PerfView”

  • Download PerfView - Microsoft Download Center - This little gem of a Windows performance collection tool is sweet! I’m really loving the easy of its data collection.
  • PerfView Tutorial - Channel 9 - Different video series than the “Defag Tools” listed below, Vance Morrison has some short mini-videos reviewing the tool, its usage, and some example applications. Good stuff!

Additional videos that are longer and more detailed on the tool.

Tips and Tricks

Windows 10

Windows/Updating

Network Nuggets

Cheers!

Claus Valca

Backup & Sync - QuickPost

For planned (personal) system backups to external USB drives I use Back4Sure by Ulrich Krebs

It has both x32 and x64 bit flavors, comes in a portable version, and is rock-solid based on my experience. Mr. Krebs keeps it regularly updated.

For synchronizing specific folders with those on my collection of USB flash drives and “service” USB HDD’s I had been using DSYNCHRONIZE by Dimio but found that some files were not actually getting copied over for some reason. Not sure why.

So I switched to FreeFileSync instead. It is also regularly updated and super-fast. I also like that I can more easily review what will/did/didn’t get actually sync’ed. It is available in an installed and portable version. It is so easy and reliable to use, I recommended it to my non-techie daughter Alvis who now uses it for system backups of her own. As a college student, data/homework/assignment backups are critical!

  • FreeFileSync - Free backup software to synchronize files and synchronize folders on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X

I recently saw mention of Beanland: AutoVer that can handle automatic/real-tie backup and versioning as well.  (I’m not sure where I found it so I can’t hat-tip anyone but I’m sure it was from one of my favorite technical bloggers…) I’ve been wanting to try it out but have been reluctant due to one critical requirement, you need to leave your backup storage location online and accessible! Duh! Well, from a security standpoint, if I’ve got an external USB drive attached to my system and am running live updates to it, and malicious code hits my system and does “bad things” to my files/storage, then it might be possible it could find/overwrite my “live” backup stores as well.

I’m sure there is a way to work around that with additional options (maybe store them in a container/way that would avoid being “crypto-locked”). But for now, I’m sticking with non-quite-live regular updates of my systems using Back4Sure and attaching an external media (I rotate between two) USB HDD for just the backup run, then removal when done. Hopefully the extra work (and drive rotation) will isolate the backup data from any infection damage were that to occur.

Thoughts?

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

Browser Bits in the News - Quickpost

Lots of web-browser bits have been in my RSS feed pile lately.

Here is a sizable collection for your review and bookmarking.

Security Related

  • SSLPersonas, making the padlock obvious. - Malwarebytes Unpacked - I like the concept but the graphic was a bit too bold IMHO.
  • Are you a robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA” - Google Online Security Blog - GSD has been flooded in the past several months with an update in comment-spam. I seriously debated turning comments off, however there wasn’t a granular way on Blogger to keep the current comments visible and suspend commenting. So, since I do like the discussions and comments from the GSD support base -- and I guess keeping things open so it wastes time for the comment bots and boiler-room comment spam drone workers -- the comments remain open. And I will continue to rely on Blogger’s spam-filters to catch most of them.
  • The No CAPTCHA problem - Egor Homakov - and counterpoint analysis
  • The New Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit 1.05 - Malwarebytes Unpacked - I really like the promise of Anti-Exploit. Lavie continues to “pilot” it on her Win 8.1 system. However I also run EMET on our systems and AE seems to require some significant tweaking of the EMET rule-set to get Internet Explorer to run “normally” when both are installed at the same time.That said, I hope to one day see where they both can run concurrently without additional tweaking of default rule/behavior sets. Alas, this new version of AE didn’t bring it to me just yet.

Firefox Related

Chrome Related

  • The Best Chrome Extensions - MakeUseOf -  I have some of these already and will be looking into a few to see if they will be worth adding.

GPU acceleration in the web browser

Also, in Chrome you can type “chrome://flags/” in the address bar and get a GUI and more fine-grained way to address/disable rendering options in the browser.

F12

Cheers,

Claus Valca

Outlook 2010/2013 Troubleshooting - Quickpost

Some time ago I posted the following link:

Mark’s post focused on some advanced diagnostic features in Outlook 2013. We are running Office 2010 as our current standard and are only now piloting future deployment of Office 2013.

So I had filed the post away for a “when we get there” future time.

Only yesterday our ticket queue was filling up with customer Outlook issues and I hopped into the first-line trenches to help with the dig-out.

While working with a remote customer I said to my myself, “Self! Wonder if those diagnostic features for 2013 might be present in 2010.”

I found the 2010 Outlook system tray icon on the user’s remote system, held down the CTRL key while right-clicking the icon and…YES! There they were.

They quickly helped me to diagnose and fix the user’s issue and the user’s email was flowing again to her Outlook client program after a 1-week hiatus.

That helped me on the next several Outlook tickets as well and soon the backlog was addressed.

Nice to know. More Outlook tips and references for this particular troubleshooting feature set below.

Cheers,

Claus Valca

SSD Care - Quickpost

I really am loving life with my Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250 GB SSD drive.

Boot times are rocket-fast and the laptop seems to run much cooler. I still have a 2nd mechanical 500 GB hard-drive in the laptop’s second drive bay but having the system on the SSD makes performance so much more exciting.

So now that I am the owner of a SSD, I’ve been paying closer attention to news and posts regarding SSD care; feeding and watering.

That last link is to the only SSD utility software (Samsung Magician Software) I am using for tweaking and control of the SSD drive.  All other maintenance functions are being left to the Windows OS software. While I don’t doubt that -- like CPU overclocking -- additional SSD tweaking “might” eke out some additional service-life and performance gains, I think it would be negligible. So I’m going for stability and OEM performance adjustment over data-hot-rodding.

Thoughts and recommendations?

Cheers,

Claus Valca

A New (old) iPhone for Claus

IT Lavie went out a few months ago and (on her own) upgraded her iPhone 4 to a new iPhone 6 (16GB) model.  She enjoys it very much and the storage space is now double from what her model 4 had. She looked at the Plus model but settled on the standard 6 size. Compared to the 4, the size of the 6 was a pretty big jump in itself.

I’ve spent some time on it (while doing the migration support for her) and while the technical details of it are very nice, I haven’t been overwhelmed by either the more rounded styling nor the feel of it.

All that to say I much prefer the more solid and “blocky” feel of my older iPhone 5 unit. Plus the 64 GB storage size is super-duper.

And will all that said, a few weeks ago I got a new iPhone for free.

There I was a work on my lunch hour relaxing and closing out my RSS feed review. As I went to tuck it away I noticed that the screen seemed to be a bit “proud” of the bumper case edging. Currently I’m rocking a very trim Spigen iPhone 5 Case Neo Hybrid in the bright red. It is super trim and just a touch flashy with a soft polymer cover. I assumed I had just pushed the phone up a bit from behind and tried to snap it back it.

Nope.  After some trials I removed the phone from the case and discovered the touch-display screen itself was popping out of the actual phone case.

I didn’t capture any photos of the issue, but this post I found over by Travis Ehrlich at Gear Diary pretty well matched my experience exactly, photos and all, Is Your iPhone 5 Screen Lifting Up and Away?

I hadn’t dropped it, stepped on it, drove over it, or otherwise abused it (that I could remember) so the only thing that came to my mind was that the battery may be swelling causing the screen to be pushed up and off the phone body.

With images of the alien-body-popper scene fresh in my mind, and a battery meltdown/explosion I shut the phone off and called Apple.

They had me turn it back on, do some stuff to send diagnostics to them, confirmed the phone seemed to be in great shape (and reported I was very good on my battery/charging activity somehow), that it wasn’t included (based on SN) in the Apple battery recall scope, and advised me to run it in to an Apple Store for a Genius review.

The whole process of getting an appointment, waiting, etc. for an Apple Store service visit is a post in of-itself. However, for this one, one I finally found the store, and waited for a while (an hour?) the Genius took the phone into the back, came back out and informed me that yes, the battery inside the device was indeed swelling pretty nicely, that it was out of warranty, and not included in the battery recall scope.

However, they “graciously” would go ahead and replace it for me free of charge.  Only they didn’t have a replacement in their store. Would I be willing to go to another store that had it in stock? Yep.

So we secure wiped my iPhone (I had a back-up at home about a week or two old so no significant data loss worries) and pointed me to the 2nd Apple Store.

A mad dash across town and after some discussion with that store’s Genius staff, they eventually pulled the replacement unit. The Genius agent swapped my SIMM card between the phones after re-confirming my old one had already been wiped, I was able to talk them into getting me a piece of tape so I could pull and reuse my screen scratch protector (Spigen also). It came off fine and with some skilled tape-usage, I was able to get it transferred to the new phone lint/bubble-free.

A new (old) iPhone 5 64-GB phone in my hand.

The Genius couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me if this unit was refurb or new but from later production runs. Either way it looked brand new and ran just fine so I’m not complaining.

The phone has continued to operate well since.

Some forum crawls have found others with the same issue of a non-scope iPhone 5 with battery issues that Apple has replaced for free.  Some comments are that they may do so for phones with this problem up to one year beyond the original 2-year warranty period. I think it is currently a case-by-case basis at Apple’s discretion.

Regardless, I’m very pleased with the service provided in my case. It took a while to work through the process but it turned out well for me.  And having several Apple Stores in the Houston area was a real plus. I never considered going to the carrier’s stores for help and if you don’t have an Apple store around, you would likely need to send it in which would be a hassle also.

Hopefully this one will last for another two-years…So that may mean there would be an iPhone 7 or 8 model out to consider?

Cheers,

Claus Valca

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Linkfest for the Weary Sysadmins

As usual, the weekend is quickly waning and work looms just on the other side of a short night’s sleep.

So, like all good sysadmins, why worry about precious sleep when linkage awaits?!

Offered with minimal (if any) comment as Lavie is looking at me sternly. Categorized for your enjoyment.

Security First

You can download EMET 5.1 from microsoft.com/emet or directly from here. Following is the list of the main changes and improvements:

  • Several application compatibility issues with Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Mozilla Firefox and some of the EMET mitigations have been solved.
  • Certain mitigations have been improved and hardened to make them more resilient to attacks and bypasses.
  • Added “Local Telemetry” feature that allows to locally save memory dumps when a mitigation is triggered.

All the changes in this release are listed in Microsoft KB Article 3015976.

If you are using Internet Explorer 11, either on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, and have deployed EMET 5.0, it is particularly important to install EMET 5.1 as compatibility issues were discovered with the November Internet Explorer security update and the EAF+ mitigation.

  • Adware Remover - Bitdefender Labs – new free standalone tool to scan and remove unwanted apps, adware, hijackers, toolbars, and add-ons. Finds are listed and you can select which you want to remove. spotted via Betanews.

New Performance Troubleshooting Tool PerfView (and other tips)

I used this tool just last week to quickly and simply take a performance trace on a problematic system. I’ve not had time to do an analysis yet but I must say, the capture process was super slick! Check out the videos above to get a quick review. Does require .NET to be present on the system.

In Depth Refocus on Folder Redirection Impact

I recently stumbled across the Helge Klein web site and blog. It contains a great variety of technical posts and tips for harried sysadmins. Check out this series on Folder Redirection issues by Aaron Parker, Helge Klein and Shawn Bass

Windows PowerShell 4.0 (and other tips)

IE 11 Enterprise Mode News and Tips

New and Improved Tools/Utilities

A few of the changes I implemented in this version

  • The .NET framework 4.0 is now required.  The previous version required 2.0.
  • Updated for DISM 6.3.  This version may work with older releases of DISM but some feature may not be available.
  • Added Capture and Apply tabs – This was the single most requested feature.  Requires DISM 6.2 or higher
  • Added a Read Only option to the mount control tab
  • Corrected some spelling errors

The Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel was developed by Microsoft Research and performs fuzzy matching of textual data in Microsoft Excel. It can be used to identify fuzzy duplicate rows within a single table or to fuzzy join similar rows between two different tables.

The matching is robust to a wide variety of errors including spelling mistakes, abbreviations, synonyms and added/missing data. For instance, it might detect that the rows “Mr. Andrew Hill”, “Hill, Andrew R.” and “Andy Hill” all refer to the same underlying entity, returning a similarity score along with each match. While the default configuration works well for a wide variety of textual data, such as product names or customer addresses, the matching may also be customized for specific domains or languages.

VM’s and ISO’s

Network Tips

Note: The process to get and load Plug-ins for Microsoft’s Message Analyzer packet capture application is much different from Microsoft Network Monitor (NetMon) was. It really wasn’t intuitive. To do so you need (assuming MessageAnalyzer is already installed on your system) launch it, then go to “FIle” and select “Start Page” from the list.

image

Once you do, the Start page show be showing in the top pane. From there look for and select the not-so-obvious “Downloads” hotlink which then displays the Add-On modules. click to download install just the ones you want, or if space isn’t a concern, just grab them at at once! See below.

2014-11-15 22_44_34-Office and SharePoint Plug-fest Video - MessageAnalyzer - Site Home - TechNet Bl

Security Bits for Sysadmins

“Now How Do I’s”?

“Where Do I Learn From Here?”

Good Night and Good Ops this week!

--Claus Valca

Open URL Links from Omea Reader in Firefox by Default

Every now and then I score a major, minor victory. This is one of those stories.

On my Windows 7 laptop “Tatiana” I have been using the free RSS reader Omea Reader. There are a lot of client-based RSS feed readers and believe me, I have gone through many of them.

In the end I settled on Omea Reader; it was free, it was very fast, it supported all kinds of tagging, highlighting, filtering, and sorting. However one of the strongest features it offers is an incredibly robust (for my needs) search engine that lets me go back and rediscover feed articles I knew I saw somewhere.

What makes it super convenient to me is how it integrates in my blogging process.

I sort though the feed links and view the article in the embedded window pane. That uses the Internet Explorer browser. Nothing special there.

I’m running Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition in the background as it is my primary blogging platform.

Now I also use Chromium and have just been fiddling with Mozilla Firefox Developer Edition, Portable.

Yet I still have Internet Explorer 11 set as my system default web browser.

With me so far?

When I want to save a feed article for later blogging or reference, I click the link – in Omea – and it opens as a new tab in my Firefox browser. I then drag the tab into its place on my bookmark sidebar and it is thus categorized and saved for a future blog-post or other usage.

It is very seamless.

So when I got around to setting up my new Win 7 laptop “Alister”, I copied my portable Firefox folder over to the new system and my browser system was set.

I then decided to try out an alternative RSS feed reader again for kicks and grins.

I settled on trialing QuiteRSS Portable and the portable (ZIP) version of Feedreader (v3.14) instead of going for Omea Reader.

I really liked the simple layout of Feedreader and the search worked fine but there was no way I could work out a way to get it to open URL links in Firefox. I would have to copy/past the link from Feedreader into Firefox, or open the link in IE and again copy it into Firefox. Not smooth. However, for simple RSS feed needs it still works great after all these years.

I then gave QuiteRSS a workout. It is actively being maintained and it shows. It is very polished and devoured the OPML file I gave it. It has AdBlock integration which was unexpected and good. I can flag, tag, and bag just about anything I want with a feed article. It has some basic filtering and sorting options.

And, in the options, there is one where I could set a third part external browser to be used. I pointed it to my portable Firefox install and – happy day – any URL for a feed or embedded in the feed article would open in Firefox. Great! It is a strong and viable RSS feed reader.

What made me give it up? Well, despite it running on an i7 processor with 16 GB RAM and off the SSD disk, it kept locking up and was particularly good at doing so (APPCRASH) when I was searching for a word or phrase within my feeds. Not being able to run any searches in my feed reader was a deal-breaker.

So I just installed Omea Reader on Alister and was done with it…or so I thought.

It installed great, I tweaked it out with all the same settings I had on Tatiana and I thought I was good.

Except when I clicked on URL’s they wouldn’t open in Firefox like on Tatiana.

(To be clear…the Firefox web browser has to be open already for it to open in a new Firefox tab. That’s the way the process works. If no web browser is open, then IE gets the default call and the URL link opens in an IE tab.)

I fiddled with settings, I scoured and compared Omea Reader’s key “omniaMea.ini” file between both systems looking for some kind of hidden config setting. I didn’t find any.  I went through all my notes and blog posts trying to find out how I got Omea URL’s to open in Firefox and I just couldn’t do it.

I also tried setting Firefox as my default system web-browser on Alister but even then, URL’s launched from Omea Reader still launched in Internet Explorer. I then reset IE back to be the default web browser again like before. I was stumped.

Google was surprisingly unhelpful.

What gives?!!  How did I manage to get Omea Reader URLs to open in Firefox?

In the end I turned to Process Monitor and did a controlled trace run on Tatiana.

I had Firefox running in the background, with just a blank tab open.

I set filters on Process Monitor for OmeaReader.exe and firefox.exe and firefoxportable.exe process names.  I had scrolling turned on and I cleared the list of events showing.

I then waited for an event to show up and bookmarked it as my starting point.

Then I switched to Omea, selected a feed URL and watched it open in Firefox.

I then stopped the trace.

I was focusing on OmeaReader.exe events after my bookmark right before a Firefox process took over.

Examining the filtered events (3,861 of 14,964) and the sequence, I quickly found a possible area to focus on in the registry.

There were a whole series of RegQueryKey operations to HKCU\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec (and subkeys

image

Jumping into the registry from ProcMon I dug around and found all kinds of interesting registry keys/values. I exported the entire “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http” branch as a REG file.

When I then cross-matched those to the same ones on Alister I found that Tatiana’s registry keys held clear differences; the important parts being the following which were present on Tatiana and missing on Alister.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec]
@=""
"NoActivateHandler"=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application]
@="Firefox"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic]
@="WWW_OpenURL"

So basically what I did was to clean up the REG file and remove the values that didn’t need to be modified/added to result in the REG key (above).

I then exported the entire “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http” branch on Alister s a REG file for backup purposes.

Then I merged the new REG file (above) into Alister’s registry.

I then opened Firefox, then Omea Reader, and tried launching a URL link.

Success! It opened as a new tab in Firefox just the way I needed it to as as it does on the Tatiana system already.

Again, if Firefox is not running already, then Omea Reader (or any other URL from any other app) still launches in the default system web-browser IE (just like it does on Tatiana).

Here is my final (full) REG key export for the curious; “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http”

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http]
"URL Protocol"=""
"EditFlags"=dword:00000002

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\Users\\Alister\\Tools\\FirefoxPortable\\App\\Firefox\\firefox.exe,1"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell]
@="open"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Users\\Alister\\Tools\\FirefoxPortable\\App\\Firefox\\firefox.exe\" -osint -url \"%1\""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec]
@=""
"NoActivateHandler"=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application]
@="Firefox"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic]
@="WWW_OpenURL"

Don’t use this full one on your system, I’d recommend trying after careful consideration and modification (YMMV…paths and filenames are certainly going to be different, here be dragons, etc.) the shorter REG key text earlier above. I just want to show how it all looks.

There are probably just the entire sum total of one (1) person who is a Omea Reader user in the entire online world who cares, but it bothered me and I’m glad I could figure it out.

One other interesting tidbit; Omea keeps a running activity log file. The name/location on your system may vary but I was able to find and correlate the URL launch in Firefox from Omea Reader I was tracing to the following log entry on the Tatiana system:

16.11.2014 13:58:11.768 [U] ResourceListView2.HandleActiveNodeChanged
16.11.2014 13:58:11.768 [U] Displaying resource 474367
16.11.2014 13:58:11.770 [U] [OMEA.MSHTML]: ShowHtml has been invoked for content-length=520, words-to-highlight=<Null>.
16.11.2014 13:58:11.959 [U] [OMEA.MSHTML]: OnDocumentComplete: loaded document "about:blank".
16.11.2014 13:58:57.207 [N] [UIM]: Error making a DDE conversation to the Browser at "Firefox" on topic "WWW_OpenURLNewWindow" with command "http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/passwordfox.html",,0. Could not start the DDE conversation. A client's attempt to establish a conversation has failed.

In there was a reference to a DDE conversation in Firefox for "WWW_OpenURLNewWindow" .

That corresponds to what I found present in Tatiana’s registry and missing (now added) from the Alister system registry.

In case you want to go deeper on what is behind the activity…

DDE stands for Dynamic Data Exchange. Here’s a Google search on it.

And here is a Google search for “WWW_OpenURLNewWindow”.

Whew! Score one for Claus this weekend—even if it took me about an hour to trace out and then another two or so to blog…

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Speed Dating Windows SBS 2008/Server 2012 Essentials

I’ve had to up my game at the church-house and start assisting with more regular Windows desktop administration and support.

I’ve been doing it already for some time, but for the most part it has been focused on just some of the physical network items and a few key workstations. I’ve not needed to address the domain/server operations yet.

That changed a few weeks ago when the deacon wearing the primary “network admin” hat decided he wanted to share it with me.

A few logins later and now I’ve been granted full domain admin rights on the Windows server. Nice.

While I have a lot of hands-on time for domain administration and objects/permissions, truth be told, I’ve had very little opportunity to work on the actual Windows servers.

Time to get learning!

After a few hours of recon-work, I had established we are running Windows SBS 2008.

So before I got too crazy with my RDC Win Server work on the live server, I thought it might be good to build a few VM’s with available trial versions. This way I can spend some time looking around and getting the flow of things without worrying about impacting the live server—at least at first.

I decided to play with Windows Server 2012 Essentials as well as SBS 2008 just to compare the differences. I must say I much more like WS 2012 Essentials. It is slick.

Windows Server Essentials (Small Business Server) – Microsoft TechNet

Windows Server R2 Essentials

Installation and setup was so simple it was frightening.

The price-point for WS 2012 R2 Essentials is pretty decent too. If I get any more laptops or desktop systems, I might have to seriously consider getting a copy and setting up our own home domain network.

In getting it set up in my VM, I discovered a cool trick from Andrea Matesi to getting MSSE to install as a poor-man’s AV solution. Perfect for this VM-loaded trial.

Read the post for the details but basically you set the installer binary to run in compatibility mode for Win 7, then install it via a command-prompt “mseinstall /disableoslimit”  Super clever.

For kicks and grins, I decided to load the Windows Management Framework 5.0 Preview as well. This was to get me the very latest version of PowerShell to fiddle with.

image

Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2008

It took me two tries before I was actually able to get SBS 2008 installed in a VMWare Player session for some reason. The first go, I just could not get the vm to pick up a network driver.  Not sure what happened, but the second time it worked fine.

image

More Windows Server Resources:

So the first issue I had to address was that although I (my user object) had full permission rights to just about everything, I just could not get either my user account or a few other important ones to map to a Windows network share on the server. Permissions were perfect. It took me a whole day before I figured out some basic foundational items for share permissions in SBS.

Steep learning curve lowered…I discovered it wasn’t enough just to set user domain permission shares to have rights to a folder, I had to go into the SBS Console, select the “Shared Folders and Web Sites” module, then select the folder (share) access was desired on, then change folder permissions to add the SBS user account so they can access it. Once done, I was able to easily map the network share from the local workstation with nary a fuss.

I know…basic stuff…I’ve got a lot to learn quickly…

The next “major” issue I need to address (and haven’t yet) is to get things properly configured to either A) fix the SBS WSUS service on the system or B) disable it entirely so the Windows client systems (desktops/laptops) can self-manage updates directly.

Currently, all the domain systems don’t get updates, at all. Checking Windows Updates shows the message that “Updates are managed by system Administrator”. If you click the link below to check online for Updates, you then find like 20 GB (I slightly exaggerate) of updates available to actually bring the system current. Nice.  So we have be manually checking each system and manually forcing them to pull down updates to at least get caught up. It’s a serious security issue from a patching standpoint.

I’ve collected the links below for reference, now I need to dig around on the live server to figure out just what part of it is “broken” and if it would be best to disable things altogether or try to repair it so updates flow from the server to the clients again properly. Not all of these may specifically be applicable but they seem like a good place to get to better know the lay of the land.

I would be appreciative to any good links to Windows SBS administrations resources and/or blogs that might help me get up to speed with being an effective sysadmin for SBS/Server Essential systems. Even it is down-and-dirty basic foundational stuff. Got to start somewheres!

Whew.

--Claus Valca

Windows 10 Bits and Pieces

I managed to successfully upgrade my Win 10 TP VM to the latest preview build. I’ve decided to set the build update preferences to the “slow” preview build branch for now.

The first time I tried it, the download came fine, but the install failed.  The second time the install was found downloaded and went on with no drama.

Additional thoughts:

I’ve come to like the new “modernized” start menu. I think it establishes a strong balance with the prior Windows start menus and the new “live-tile/apps”.  I’d like to have a bit more control over tiling and create (one level smaller?) groupings of square icons.

image

The “dual nature” of the start “Window” icon is hard to get used to. Left-click to get the start-menu, right-click to get an additional set of action links known as the “power menu”. I get it but I’d like to see it better unified.

image

I am only now starting to experiment with “Metro” type apps. For now I’ve tried tweaking out the default Weather and News apps. I really like the weather app and the news one isn’t too bad. However I don’t think it will replace my feed reader anytime soon.

So far, still liking Windows 10 TP…

--Claus Valca

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

More Browser Quick-Links

As I continue to work my way through the blog hopper here are some quick-links without additional comment regarding browser stuff lately.

Cheers,

--Claus Valca

VirtualBox Working Again

Back with Oracle’s Virtual Box 4.3.14 version release, it had some new security enhancements that broke things bad. Really bad. As in I can’t launch my VM’s any more bad.

I rolled back to 4.3.12 and was fine again.

Here’s the drama for the curious.

That eventually got resolved.

Today I downloaded and installed the latest current version (4.3.18) and all my VM’s are running fine with this version.

So there you go.  Better late than never I suppose.

--Claus Valca.

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn out

Getting caught up on some blog posts.

Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” was released a few weeks ago.

I ran an upgrade and it went on. I am getting some errors launching it now and am trying to decide if I want to trace them out again or not and just start with a fresh build.

I don’t have too many things installed in this VM I run it in.

Biggest thing I would need to do is to reload Xplico. It’s a hassle tweaking everything including my Firefox launching shortcuts to behave with Xplico but I’ve done it a few times now.

It doesn’t look like the Xplico team has specifically updated their repository support for 14.10 just yet but I may go reckless and give it a try again if I can’t clear the (non-fatal) error upon logging into Ubuntu that I see.

I don’t think the Classic Ubuntu desktop package I loaded has anything to do with it…but maybe?

Miscellaneous:

Update: latest round of updates obtained today through the Software Updater app seem to have cleared the issue and/or the upgrade to VirtualBox 4.3.18.  All is well and no reload required…for now.

FYI,

--Claus Valca