Thursday, September 29, 2011

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Father of the Year

Since yesterday, all the Internet media has been posting the video below regarding a Taiwanese father dumped his daughter when trying to catch the foul ball, and got the death of look from his wife. The author of this site even would nominate him as the 'father of the year'. Funny.

This clip did not actually show father dropped his girl, but very funny the reactions are from the anchors..)
http://youtu.be/_zZHJ4m2wKM

This video dose show the whole 'accident".
http://youtu.be/zZdywEQF7JE

It also made the headline on Houston Chron.com which I have to read everyday.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Use PFDAVAdmin to Grant Permission to All

Out default policy is everyone can view everyone's calendar in Outlook. We're still on Exchange 2003 so the best way to configure that is to use PFDAVAdmin program.

Please follow this great article.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

SPF & Reserve DNS Record Setup

Changed the public IP for Exchange server last night and some users have got the Undeliverable message to some recepients like the example below,
Subject: Undeliverable: Financial Statements

 Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Financial Statements
Sent: 9/20/2011 10:07 AM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

John Doe on 9/20/2011 10:07 AM
You do not have permission to send to this recipient. For
assistance, contact your system administrator.
<mail.mydomain.com #5.7.1 smtp;550 5.7.1 This system is
configured to reject mail from 66.1.1.1 [66.1.1.1] (DNS
reverse lookup failed)>

I went to  http://www.openspf.org/Tools do some tests by sending an email to spf-test@openspf.org and here is what I got in reply:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

       Subject:   

      Sent: 9/20/2011 10:45 AM

 The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

       spf-test@openspf.org on 9/20/2011 10:45 AM

            You do not have permission to send to this recipient.  For assistance, contact your system administrator.

            <mail.mydomain.com #5.7.1 smtp;550 5.7.1 <spf-test@openspf.org>: Recipient address rejected: SPF Tests: Mail-From Result="none": Mail From="cc@mydomain.com" HELO name="mail.mydomain.com" HELO Result="none" Remote IP="66.1.1.1">

So I had to put the Reverse DNS back. It's been a long time since I needed to do that, and I was also confused it with SPF record which needs to be done in DNS zone hosted by provider. Here is what I actually need to do:

1. Call ISP to set up the reverse DNS record for my Exchange server. (That easy!)
2. Set up SPF records for my domain and exchange server. (See below)

Check this page for more details.

Sent a test message again to spf-test@openspf.org, then I got:
Recipient address rejected: SPF Tests: Mail-From Result="pass": Mail From="cc@mydomain.com" HELO name="mail.mydomain.com" HELO Result="pass" Remote IP="66.1.1.1">

also, sent a test message to check-auth@verifier.port25.com, the result is:

SPF check:          pass
DomainKeys check: neutral
DKIM check: neutral
Sender-ID check: pass
SpamAssassin check: ham


YAHOO!!

 

Monday, September 19, 2011

Rain Rain Come Back Again

As usual, the forecast has never been accurate, we did get some rains this weekend. Yahoo! we need more!





Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Shrink WSS3.0 Log.ldf size

WSS 3.0 server was running low on C drive. Only 2MB was available. I then ran the FolderInfo - my favorite disk space tool - so easy to use to find out "SharePoint_Config_xxx_log.LDF" has grown over 30GB.



 

Then I followed this article on web to shrink the file and it went down to 500KB only.



 

Monday, September 12, 2011

My Upgrade: from WSS3.0 to SharePoint 2010 Foundation

This is my upgrade experience by using "Attach databases and upgrade to SharePoint 2010". It's quite straight forward but since it was my first time upgrading a farm and I had created two new OS so it took me two days to figure out.

Source:
Single WSS3.0 server on a Windows 2003 server, 32bit standard with embedded SQL.

Target:
WFE: SharePoint 2010 Foundation farm on Windows 2008 standard server, 64 bit.
Database: SQL 2008 SP2 (64 bit) on Windows 2008 standard server, 64 bit.

Steps I took:

1. Follow this article, Attach databases and upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010

 

Ran STSADM.EXE -o preupgradecheck first on source WSS server.

Ran into the first problem while installing SP2010. The error is "Cannot connect to database master at SQL server at <SQL_server_name>. The database might not exist, or the current user does not have permission to connect to it.



Then I made sure the followings..

  1. Both SharePoint and SQL ware assigned the static IP address, and SP server can PING SQL and DC without problem

  2. Enable 'dbcreator' and 'securityadmin' Server Roles for the SP admin in Security/Logins in SQL Server Management Studio.

  3. Enable TCP/IP in "Protocols for MSSQLSERVER"






2. I got the new SharePoint set up without problem and I could browse to the default home page at port 80, but what I needed was the restored content database instead of a blank new site. So I went to "Manage Content Databases" in the Central Administration and deleted the default WSS_Content database, and deleted the WSS_Content SQL database from SQL management studio.

3. Run Mount contentt database command again below.
Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <DatabaseName> -DatabaseServer <ServerName> -WebApplication <URL>

It went ok with the message below. Then I was able to see the "WSS_Restored" was created in my content database page.


4. Try to browse to the SharePoint website and all my old WSS3.0 root site shown ok, but not the subsites.

 

 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Websense Express Seat Count


  1. From the Websense\BIN directory command prompt, type: consoleclient localhost 15869 Enter 2 for PrintSelf.

  2. Enter 1 for Dump to Local File.

  3. Enter 3 for the Data Dump Level.

  4. Enter a text file name (example: Seatcount.txt).

  5. Select entry for SubscriptionTracker.

  6. Enter Q to quit.

  7. At the DOS prompt, type the text file name (Seatcount.txt) and it will open up in Notepad.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Houston Forecast FAIL!!!

This was the forecast on 8/30/11, but what did we get? Nothing, Nada, not even a drop. It is just getting old.



I have never seen the water level of our lake is such low. I can even see the bottom of the lake.





Friday, September 2, 2011

NO rain today!!??

TX is really doomed! The possible rain chance is getting little when the storm from gulf coast made a slight turn toward New Orleans. WHY? Don't we deserve some rain after 8 months drought?

Extracted from Chron.com

Here’s the updated outlook for what Lee means for the Houston area from ImpactWeather‘s Fred Schmude:
Temperatures will remain fairly hot over the region today and tomorrow and gradually decrease on Sunday through the early to middle part of next week as the effects of the front start to impact the region with lows falling in the 60s and highs struggling to make 90 degrees over most of the Houston area by next Tuesday and Wednesday.

As for rain, unfortunately the chances for seeing some much needed widespread rainfall in the Houston area has subsided thanks in large part to drier air filtering southward on the west side of the tropical cyclone. Several days ago it appeared we could see some much needed widespread rainfall over the area; however, the developing tropical cyclone is acting as a sponge east of the area and absorbing most of the tropical moisture that normally would have already been over southeast Texas if it were not for the tropical system south of Louisiana.

It’s still possible we could see some fast moving showers and isolated thunderstorms moving across the area on the west side of the tropical cyclone through Sunday, but most areas will probably not see much in the way of rainfall as the tropical cyclone moves inland over Louisiana this weekend.   The extended outlook calls for another reinforcing surge of cooler and drier air maintaining the early fall weather pattern into the 2nd week of September.

Got that? If we don’t get some unlikely rain this weekend, it’s going to be dry until at least the 12th of September or so. The forecast is almost the exact opposite for Louisiana and areas to its northeast.

What the hell!!

Active Directory operation failed on "DC1". You cannot retry this operation: "Insufficient access rights to perform the operation"

I got this error when tried to enable certain users in Lync Server Control Panel.
Then I followed the resolution in MS KB 2466000 regarding "Enable-CsUser", however I got the error saying "Enable-CsUser: Specified SIP domain (SipDomain) is not valid. Specify a valid DIP domain and then tray again. Blah blah blah.

I finally came cross to the page below:
Enable-CsUer Commandlet
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398711.aspx

Then simply followed this command and enabled the problematic users by using "SamAccountName" parameter.

Enable-CsUser -Identity "Pilar Ackerman" -RegistrarPool "atl-cs-001.litwareinc.com" -SipAddressType SamAccountName  -SipDomain litwareinc.com




Azure MFA NPS extension stopped working due to expired certification

 Users complained they were unable to log in VMware Horizon Client portal and the logon stuck at "Authenticating...." screen. So I...