[Solved]-Remote Web Workplace will not connect to my computer.

You have a user that has a Home (Windows 7 Home) or Work (Windows 7 Pro) Computer

When using remote web workplace they selects connect to my computer, picks their computer from the list and then it never makes it past this point. There is a error icon displayed in the lower progress bar area of the browser.

Running IE as a administrator they are able to use RWW just fine.

The user is an administrator on the computer. IE9 has been removed and replaced with IE8 same results.

Windows firewall is off, We have tried with the firewall on and off, makes no difference. We have added RWW site to the trusted site and relaxed all the active security settings for the trusted site, same result. The browser add-ons show the Microsoft rdp active control is installed when in IE both as an admin and just launching it normally so what could be hanging us up?

Well you will find that your UAC is on and one of the results of this being active is that Active X functions are suppressed. Just turn off UAC and the problem will go away.

Go to your start button and in the search window type “UAC”. It will launch the UAC Control and allow you to change the settings

Enjoy

Cubert.

[Solved] NTFRS – Journal Wrap Errors detected on Domain Controller

File Replication Service has detected that the replica set “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)” is in JRNL_WRAP_ERROR

Are you getting this error in your File Replication Service?

The File Replication Service has detected that the replica set “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)” is in JRNL_WRAP_ERROR.
Replica set name is : “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)”
Replica root path is : “c:\windows\sysvol\domain”
Replica root volume is : \\.\C:
A Replica set hits JRNL_WRAP_ERROR when the record that it is trying to read from the NTFS USN journal is not found. This can occur because of one of the following reasons.
[1] Volume “\\.\C:” has been formatted.
[2] The NTFS USN journal on volume “\\.\C:” has been deleted.
[3] The NTFS USN journal on volume “\\.\C:” has been truncated. Chkdsk can truncate the journal if it finds corrupt entries at the end of the journal.
[4] File Replication Service was not running on this computer for a long time.
[5] File Replication Service could not keep up with the rate of Disk IO activity on \\.\C:.
Setting the “Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore” registry parameter to 1 will cause the following recovery steps to be taken to automatically recover from this error state.

This is caused when the Sysvol gets currupted and is simple to fix. I will walk you through the steps.

First off before we do anything lets backup by taking a Shadow Copy of the C: Drive. To do this we will open MyComputer and select the C:Drive, right click it and select properties. Now find the ShadowCopy Tab, highlight the C: Drive and click the “Create Now” button to create a backup point on the drive. You do not need to “Enable” ShadowCopy to take a 1 time snapshot.

Now that we have a backup point to go to if all hell breaks loose we can safely move on to the next step. Open up REGEDIT and navigate to the RegKey -> System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters and create a new REG_DWORD key called Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore and place a 1 as the hex value.

Now launch a Command window(DOS) and run the following commands:

NET STOP NTFRS

NET START NTFRS

This will then cause the following to appear in your File Replication Service Event Log:

The File Replication Service is deleting this computer from the replica set “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)” as an attempt to recover from the error state,
Error status = FrsErrorSuccess
At the next poll, which will occur in 5 minutes, this computer will be re-added to the replica set. The re-addition will trigger a full tree sync for the replica set.

This will be followed by the following Event Log:

File Replication Service is scanning the data in the system volume. Computer MyDomainServer cannot become a domain controller until this process is complete. The system volume will then be shared as SYSVOL.

This will be followed by the following Event Log:

The File Replication Service moved the preexisting files in c:\windows\sysvol\domain to c:\windows\sysvol\domain\NtFrs_PreExisting___See_EventLog.

Now we need to wait a bit and allow the replication to complete. This has taken anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes for me based on server and what is being replicated. You will know it is complete when you get the Event Log:

The File Replication Service is no longer preventing the computer MyDomainController from becoming a domain controller. The system volume has been successfully initialized and the Netlogon service has been notified that the system volume is now ready to be shared as SYSVOL.

Once you get this log your replication is complete and the Journal Wrap issues are fixed. We now need to go back to REGEDIT and change the entry we placed in there from a 1 to a 0.

You are all done.

May this help someone out there..

Cubert

Protected: [RESOLVED] SQL DISTINCT – Select entire row, with one distinct column.

Fix: Remove all snapshots Unable to access file since it is locked

Solved!

You are running ESX and have a VDR or 2 setup to do backups? Somewhere the VDR was rebooted or stopped working during backup and now has left snapshots on you VMs. You try to manually remove the snapshots and BAMB!

Error: Remove all snapshots Unable to access file <unspecified filename> since it is locked.

Here is how to fix it:

Shutdown your VDRs and then try to remove your snapshots. If they fail to remove then take another snapshot then try using the removing all “Delete All” function. This is a safe process at this point, the delta files are not deleted until the successful merge of the delta and the flat file. This means if it fails you should still be no worse off than you are currently, no data was lost.

Now once all snaps are deleted, you may get a similar error trying to start your VDR. The VDR mounts the VM disks and does it’s backup . The mounts may still exist and this will cause the VDR issues booting. Edit the settings in the VDR and look for Hard disks 2+ and remove them from the VM (Do NOT Delete Then!!! Just Remove them leaving HardDisk1) .

Once all but HardDisk1 has been removed from the VDR VM then reboot the VDR and you should be ready to start backing up again.

I hope this helps someone out there..

Cubert.

Howto : Remove Windows Server 2008 / Windows 7 multiple default gateways with the first being 0.0.0.0

Windows has 2 default gateways set and the first is 0.0.0.0 which is causing network failures

You may have installed a new Windows 2008 server or Windows 7 workstation with a static IP address but networing outside your localnet fails. After you investigate you find by running “ipconfig” that there is 2 default routes listed. You see first 0.0.0.0 and then you see your real default router IP address below the 0.0.0.0 address.

This is preventing you from accessing the Internet as it believes the first route to the internet is your local IP address and it goes nowhere. You need to get the first route out but if you use “route delete” on the next reboot it will right back and you will be left without Internet access so what do you do?

You need to edit the registery and remove the entry listed in the default route key. To do this go to:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\your interface #\DefaultGateway

You will most likely find if you edit this key 2 IP addresses listed and the one you want being listed as the second IP in the list. Just remove all IP addresses but the real gateway address.

Close and reboot then try to ping out and it should now work.

Enjoy.

Cubert

RetrieveStorageInfo request is ignored because the VM is in an invalid state: bad config = false

RetrieveStorageInfo request is ignored because the VM is in an invalid state: bad config = false could be produced as a possible error when the VMX file is invalid. During different activities that the ESX system is doing and during this activity the ISCSI disks are lost or something get in the way where a snaphot or some other process gets funked up. Can leave items in your VMX file that are invalid. When you recover from a loss you may find a system in a “Unknown” state.

Look throught your VMX file for odd spaces or items that may have invalid data in it.

Then re-attach the VM and see if it will showup correctly in your Vcenter server.

How-to : Pass a username and password to Windows shutdown.exe command.

Here was my scenario I found myself in not to long ago. I have an Active Directory domain with a server outside of the domain in it’s own workgroup. It used different credentials for the administrator account then what the domain uses. One day it stopped responding to RDP and several control programs we have on it so we needed to do a reboot.

No problems right? just type in the command below:

shutdown /r /t 3 /m \\ServerName

Not so right, right off the bat we get ServerName: Access is denied.(5)

That’s right we do not have permissions “Yet”… But how do we send permissions to shutdown.exe ? If you do a shutdown /? you will find no switches for username and password but there is a way around this.

We will connect to the servers IPC$ and authenticate then we will run our command. Here is what you do:

First lets make a connection and authenticate by running the following cmd:

NET USE \\MyServer\IPC$ mypassword /USER:myuser

If successful then we are now ready to run the shutdown cmd in the same window:

shutdown /r /t 3 /m \\ServerName

Wait a few seconds and and you should get back your prompt which tells you the command was sent successfully. You now have authenticated and sent the shutdown cmd to a remote server using different permissions.

I hope this helps someone out there

Enjoy

Cubert

How-to : Setup GoDaddy SSL on Tomcat using a Public Certificate

Hello again,

Today I will be walking you through the process of setting up your Tomcat installation to use a public SSL certificate. I will be using examples from my Ubuntu 11 box but this will work with any linux based Tomcat install. We should have you up and running in just a few minutes, here is what we are going to be doing.

· Enable and initialize an empty keystore
· Generate a certificate signing request (CSR)
· Add a root certificate authority (CA) to your keystore
· Import the generated certificate for use in Tomcat

To create and configure a public certificate for your Tomcat installation:

Open a SSH Terminal to the server.
In Terminal, navigate to the Tomcat directory by typing the following command:
cd /var/lib/tomcat/
Type the following command to generate the keystore:
sudo keytool -genkey -alias Tomcat -keysize 2048 -keyalg RSA –keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore
Fill in the appropriate information when prompted. Type a new keystore password and when the prompt asks for a first and last name, it is requesting the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FDQN). All other information is not as important as the first and last name as this will define the URL the SSL is good for.
Let’s now generate a certificate signing request by typing the following command:
sudo keytool -certreq -alias tomcat -keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore -file godaddy-ssl-cert.req
Copy the entire text from the .req file and paste it in the Cert request window for GoDaddy SSL request form on the Godaddy.com website. Once approved GoDaddy will provide a download zip file that includes your new SSL certificate and the GoDaddy RootCA cert. We will be installing both certs in to the keystore. You will need to copy these certificates up to your Ubuntu (Linux) system.
Import the CA’s root certificate using the following command: (Replace the file location with the location you placed your new certificates from GoDaddy)
sudo keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias rootCA –file /home/myuser/gd_bundle.crt -keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore
Import your certificate signed by GoDaddy by typing the following command: (Replace myFQDN.crt with the file name and location of the new GoDaddy certificate)
sudo keytool -import -alias tomcat -keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore -trustcacerts -file /home/myuser/myFQDN.crt
Lastly we will edit the /var/lib/tomcat/conf/server.xml file. Point the “keystoreFile” attribute to the location of the keystore, and include the “keystorePass” containing the password to your keystore.This is the part of the file that you should modify:  <Connector port=”8443″ protocol=”HTTP/1.1″ SSLEnabled=”true”
               maxThreads=”150″ scheme=”https” secure=”true”
               clientAuth=”false” sslProtocol=”TLS”
             keystoreFile=”/var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystor
              keystorePass=”your keystore password” />

The instructions below can be followed to update a certificate, assuming you will be using the same keystore.

How-To clear the Tomcat alias:

1. Open a SSH terminal session to Ubuntu.

2. Create a backup of the previous alias by typing the following command:

sudo keytool -export -alias Tomcat -keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore -file MyBackup.cer

3. After a successful backup, type the following command to clear out the Tomcat alias:

sudo keytool -delete -alias Tomcat -keystore /var/lib/tomcat/.mykeystore

 You should now be able to run the commands to create and import a new certificate. 

I hope this makes quick work for somone out there..

Enjoy

Cubert  

How-to: Setup Ubuntu and PHP to use MSSQL Microsoft SQL Server

It is easier to get PHP on Ubuntu to connect to MSSQL than it is to get PHP on Windows.

I would not normally believe such a thing until I tried to setup a pre-existing install of PHP on Windows missing any MSSQL extensions. Looking through Google to find information was less than quick and I found myself wanting to go back to my old faithful Ubuntu server, but how?

Here are my 10 quick steps to get PHP seeing MSSQL:

There are some basic software we will need to grab using apt-get, then we will install them and modify the php.ini file to update the new extension. I will go over the process below on how to install and in what order but before we do that I will give you a brief description of what we are doing.

We will need to get the source for PHP, we will also need the PHP Development packages. We will be installing FreeTDS and then editing our php.ini file. Lastly restarting Apache to complete the process.

For the rest of this we will assume you have ( sudo su -) so you do not need to sudo each cmd, but if not then add sudo where it applies. We are also assuming you already have a working php system and only need to add MSSQL functionality.

apt-get source php5 – This will install the PHP source in the the current directory that you are in.
cd php5-5.3.2/ext/mssql – This will place you in the PHP source directory for MSSQL. You may need to edit the directory path as 5.3.2 was the version as of this document and may not be the same version you are installing.
apt-get install freetds-dev – This installs the extra libraries we will need for MSSQL
apt-get install php5-dev – This installs the application (phpize) which we will use next to help build the MSSQL extension.
phpize – Run this while inside the (/ext/mssql ) directory
./configure –with-mssql – This creates the MakeFile we will need to build the extension from source.
make – This cmd builds the extension.
cd modules – move in to the module directory.
cp mssql.so /usr/lib/php5/20090626 – Here you will need to pay close attention to the last directory here. This will very based on your version so change the numbers to fit what you have in your (/usr/lib/php5) directory.
vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini – We want to go down to where you will find (Dynamic Extensions) and add on a new line the following -> extension = mssql.so then save and close the vi session ( Esc : wq)

You are all done, just restart Apache and test your mssql_connect

Restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Enjoy

Cubert

W32Time Error : No valid response has been received from manually configured peer time.windows.com

Time, I don’t need no stinking time!!

You won’t here Windows saying that, Microsoft relies on time for Active Directory to work correctly so if you start to drift you will see access errors. Have you seen the following eventlog in your system logs resently?

The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or more time sources, however none of the sources are currently accessible. No attempt to contact a source will be made for 60 minutes. NtpClient has no source of accurate time.

Or maybe this one?

Time Provider NtpClient: No valid response has been received from manually configured peer time.windows.com after 8 attempts to contact it. This peer will be discarded as a time source and NtpClient will attempt to discover a new peer with this DNS name.

This is a sure sign that your having issues getting and setting time correctly. By default the setting for w32tm is to get it’s time from time.windows.com. There are many people out there having trouble getting time from that source since the DST change. So how do you fix it? You can use the w32tm /config options to change the time server you are using. This will then allow Windows to get time from a more reliable source.

In a DOS shell run the following lines.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:pool.ntp.org,0x8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync

This will set the new time server as pool.ntp.org and then force a resync of the time across the domain.

Enjoy

Cubert