• Microsoft Exchange Server

    Migrate Mailboxes With Large Items Using New-MailboxImportRequest In Exchange 2013

    When migrating mailboxes to Exchange 2013, you can run into an error the regarding maximum number of bad items. This causes the import to fail: Error code: -2146233088 This mailbox exceeded the maximum number of corrupted items that were specified for this move request. The message exceeds the maximum allowed size for submission to the target mailbox. A bad item can be one whose size is a bit large. The New-MailboxImportRequest commandlet can be called with the -BadItemLimit option, specifying a number of items> when using that option you must also specify the -AcceptLargeDataLoss option. For example, to import a mailbox called john.doe using a pst of john.doe.pst, the command would…

  • Home Automation,  iPhone,  Mac OS X

    Which Apple TV Works With My TV?

    I recently purchased a new TV (actually won, but that’s aside from the point). I put the DirecTV receiver on there and it worked like a charm. Then I put the Apple TV on and it appeared to work like a charm. But when the screensaver kicked in, the colors inverted. Sometimes I’d see lines across the screen and other times the Apple TV would get weird and just be blurry. I knew immediately that I was sending it too much. Turns out the new TV couldn’t do less than 1080p and the old Apple TV couldn’t do anything higher than 720p. To confirm, I looked up the serial number.…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Reset Lost Admin Passwords In OS X

    I’ve gotten a couple of questions about this and don’t remember where I posted it previously, so here goes again. If you forget a local admin password in OS X and you have physical access to the machine then unless you’re using full disk encryption or firmware passwords (and know those passwords) you can reset the password. To do so boot the computer or server from your recovery partition using Command-R at boot (or Option and then selecting the recovery partition). At the Recovery Desktop open Terminal from the Utilities menu. From terminal use the following command: resetpassword When the Reset Password window appears, choose the volume you’d like to reset an account…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Unix,  Windows Server,  Xsan

    Make iMovie Work With Network Volumes

    I work with a lot of network storage and video world stuff. While most in the editorial world prefer FinalCut, Avid, Adobe and other tools for video management, I do see the occasional task done in iMovie. By default, iMovie doesn’t support using assets stored on network volumes. However, you can make it. To do so, just use defaults to write com.apple.iMovieApp with a boolean allowNV key marked as true: defaults write com.apple.iMovieApp allowNV -bool TRUE

  • Windows Server

    Locate the Citrix Datastore

    There are times in a Citrix environment where you might have servers pointing to different data stores. You then might get confused about what box is pointing to what datastore location. To find out, open Powershell on the Citrix server and run the following command: cat "c:\program files\citrix\independent mananagement architecture\nf20.dsn"

  • Windows Server

    Rock the Logging Facilities in Windows Server (aka More Syslog Crap)

    The default logs in Windows Server can be tweaked to provide a little better information. This is really helpful, for example, if you’re dumping your logs to a syslog server. Here’s a script that can make it happen with a few little tweaks to how we interpret data (to be run per host, just paste into a Powershell interface as an administrator): auditpol /set /subcategory:"Security State Change" /success:enable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"Security System Extension" /success:enable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"System Integrity" /success:enable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"IPsec Driver" /success:disable /failure:disable auditpol /set /subcategory:"Other System Events" /success:disable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"Logon" /success:enable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"Logoff" /success:enable /failure:enable auditpol /set /subcategory:"Account Lockout" /success:enable…

  • Windows Server

    Force Citrix XenApp Uninstalls

    At some point in your Citrix experience, you may decide that you need to uninstall and reinstall Xen App or Presentation Server. If and when this happens you will likely need to force the uninstall. Luckily, the mps.msi comes with an operator to CTX_MF_FORCE_SUBSYSTEM_UNINSTALL which can be set to use, rather than hunting through the registry and manually removing entries there. You run the msi through msiexec, as follows: msiexec /x mps.msi /L*v c:\ctxuninstall.log CTX_MF_FORCE_SUBSYSTEM_UNINSTALL=Yes Once uninstalled, you can install anew.

  • Windows Server

    Ports to Open When Doing Citrix Deployments

    When deploying XenApp, there are a few ports that typically need to be open for the solution to work properly. The most common of these are 1603 and 1604, but you may also need to open 1494 and 2598 as well. And of course, 443 and 80 if you’re doing web stuff. So here’s the list and what they do: Admin: 135 Access Gateway Deployment: 443 App Streaming: 445 Citrix ICA thin client protocol: 1494 Citrix ICAbrowser: 1604 Independent Management Architecture: 2512 Management Console: 2513 Citrix Session Reliability Service: 2598 There are also a number of ports that communicate back into your infrastructure, such as LDAP (can be a RODC),…

  • personal

    The 25 Nerdiest Kid Movies

    Movies, movie trailers and TV shows helped to validate that many of us were on the right track (or wrong track) in school. For those that were kinda’ smart (or like me, liked being with the smart ones even if they weren’t smart) there was a whole stream of movies, starting with the advent of computers and moving forward until the cliché was beaten right into the poor dead horse with a party hat. So if you’re raising a kid and you want to start them off right or just validate them that they have started off right, here are some movies to help you along that path. From grade…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    DeviceScout

    DeviceScout is a tool that leverages JAMF’s Casper Suite to show administrators vital statistics and show alerts on client systems. These alerts display some of the critical aspects of systems, from encryption to disk capacity to backups, there are a number of pretty cool aspects of DeviceScout. Using the device view, you can view serial numbers, device types, check-in status, boot volumes, memory, etc. It’s a lot of insight into what you have on your systems. I’m a huge fan of such visibility. You will need to be running Casper to leverage DeviceScout, but it provides a very simple interface for management and even techs to see what’s going on…