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

    Lots of new stuff: Command Line Wiki Integration

    The Mac Commands page and the PowerShell Commands page are both now wikis and users with accounts on this site can edit them. Additionally I added a number of new pages worth of commands, FTP Commands, Windows Commands, Final Cut Server Commands, Amazon S3 Commands, Podcast Producer Commands and Xsan Commands; both of which are wikis as well.

  • Windows Server

    Shadow Copy from the Command Line

    I was recently building some scripts to alternate shadow copy storage locations (long story). In so doing, I found that pretty much anything I would normally do in the GUI is exposed at the command prompt using the vssadmin command. The first and one of the most important things that you can do is list settings. This includes the following: providers – lists components that can create and maintain shadow copies shadows – lists shadow copies shadowstorage – lists storage that can be used for shadow copies volumes – lists volumes that have shadow copy enabled writers – lists registered components of applications that store persistent information on a volume…

  • Business,  personal,  Windows Server

    Home Robotics

    Technology is a beautiful thing. Especially for those of us that hate to do the dishes, get up to change the channel or even walk over to grandma’s house to say hi. For those things we have (respectively) dishwashers, remote controls and of course the telephone. I’ve talked about Z-Wave for awhile now and automating the home – but that’s automating electrical currents. But what I haven’t talked about is automating the cleaning that goes on in the home. And I’m not referencing putting a cleaning service on automated bill pay; I’m talking about robotics. To sweep, mop and do tasks beyond those that have been automated for 30 or…

  • VMware,  Windows Server

    Windows Server 2008 R2

    Can you say virtualization? How about “better together”? Do you care about Hyper-V or Windows 7 integration right now? If the answer to either question is yes (and in my experience that’s not always actually the case) then you will want to check out R2. One of the biggest new features in R2 is one that VMware has had for about 5 or so years in Live Migration, the ability to move a virtual machine, while it’s running (assuming the application in use supports the ability to do so and that you’re using Clustered Shared Volumes). This includes failover in Cluster Node Connectivity Fault Tolerance. SC VMM, or System Center Virtual Machine…

  • Windows Server,  Windows XP

    Bubble Alerts w/ Silent Installs

    When you push software to a Windows computer there’s an annoying little alert that pops up to tell the user that new software was installed. In one organization I was recently at this accounted for approximately 20 calls to the help desk every time they pushed out an update (patch Tuesday for them is one week after patch Tuesday for Microsoft). To turn off the bubbles in your image, right-click on the start button and click on properties. Then click on the Customize button. Click Advanced and uncheck the box for Highlight newly installed programs. Not too bad. But don’t want to touch all of the existing machines. Open HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced…

  • Windows Server

    Setting up DFS in Windows Server 2008

    The first task that you will complete setting up any WIndows Server 2008 is to set up a Server Role. To do so, open Server Manager and click on Add Roles. At the Add Roles Wizard, click on the Next button to show a list of roles to add. Check the box for File Services and click on the Next button. Click on Next again. At the Select Role Services screen, you’ll see that File Server is checked. This will install the SMB/CIFS services. You’ll also see Distributed File System. Check the box for Distributed File System and the then check the boxes for DFS Namespaces if you want to…

  • Windows Server

    Adding a Role in Windows Server 2008

    Installing services in Windows Server has always been a straight forward affair.  In Windows Server 2008, much of the role addition is wizardly and provides administrators with a guided setup.  To get started, open Server Manager from Start -> Administrative Tools.  Then, click on Roles under the appropriate server in the side bar to the left of the screen.  Next, click on Add Roles and then after reading the Before You Begin screen, click on the Next button. At the listing of available roles, click on the role you would like to install and highlight the checkbox for the role, clicking on the Next button once all roles that you…

  • Windows Server

    Show Logical Disks in Windows with PowerShell

    Quick & dirty, needed to loop through some servers to look at the logical volumes available on each. Using get-WmiObject you can query the available disks for Windows servers: get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk There were a lot of servers, so then I realized I only cared about disks that were named a certain way. As with posix, you can pipe data, so I used where to constrain the output to those with names matching a certain disk name I was looking for: get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk | where {$_.name -match “SomeName”} Isn’t server sprawl so much fun…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Windows Server

    From Open Directory to Active Directory

    Whether you’re going from Open Directory to Active Directory or from Active Directory to Open Directory, chances are you’ll encounter csvde along the way. Csvde is installed on Windows Server and allows you to interface with Active Directory using csv files. cvsde can import files using the -i switch, followed by the -f switch to indicate the file that you are importing, followed by the path of the file. So if you save a file called toimport.csv to the root of your c drive temporarily you would use the following command to import the objects in the rows of the file: csvde -i -f c:toimport.csv Now, what’s that file need.…