If you have a list of servers, you can use the substitution feature in vi to quickly turn that list into a test script. For instance, if I want to test a list of domains that looks like this: domain1.com domain2.com domain3.com domain4.com domain5.com I can insert text before and after the domain name. Here […]

To create a list of regular users in an Active Directory group using the CLI: dsquery group domainroot -name groupname | dsget group -members | dsget user -fn -ln fn ln John Brown Bill Smith dsget succeeded

One problem with upgrading software remotely is that you often need to stop the software you are upgrading first. Often, there is no service that can be stopped. The process must be killed. This can be a bit nasty with Windows systems because there is no easy way to find all instances of a particular […]

There is a new version of Vim that will do spell checking. We used version 7.0131 available here. Grab the source, extract, compile, and install: [root@www src]# cd vim7 [root@www vim7]# ls vim-7.0131.zip [root@www vim7]# unzip *.zip Archive: vim-7.0131.zip Vim 7 snapshot version 7.0131 inflating: src/README.txt inflating: src/arabic.c inflating: src/arabic.h inflating: src/ascii.h inflating: src/buffer.c . […]

Although Windows 2000 can be set up using proprietary (Well… MSified) secure connections via IPSec, there are a variety of problems. Most notable is the difficulty to get secure connections to work across multiple platforms, even between different Windows products. It is quite easy to create keys and pull files securely over the Internet from […]

In this article we displayed our system properties via Tomcat. We were curious, though, how to retrieve these directly through Java. Here is how you can do this: [usr-1@srv-1 java]$ cat FirstProperties.java public class FirstProperties { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(“System Information: \n”); System.out.println(“Operating System: “); System.out.println(System.getProperty(“os.name”)); System.out.println(“\nArchitecture: “); System.out.println(System.getProperty(“os.arch”)); System.out.println(“\nOperating System Version: […]

There are many tasks that you may want to automate using a custom console. This could be for your Jr. Systems Administrators, for users, or for yourself. One tool that we like to use for this is Visual Tcl, but sometime it is nice to use plain old Visual Basic. If you do use Visual […]

“It is.” is the best answer, really, my friend confided in me over a campfire when describing his and a friend’s 24 hours of trying to unravel the mysteries. I was selling CP/M computers at the time, and he was talking bigger than Information Technology. We all know that IT is as we look out […]

If you have servers or workstations that use RAS to connect to your servers directly or via the Internet, you can use the rasdial command to automate the connection. This would be particularly useful for nightly file transfers. Enter: rasdial /? to get a list of the options for rasdial. For more info on rasdial […]

This series of articles will show how to install SSHd (OpenSSH) by using Cygwin. One benefit of using Cygwin for this is that we get the result: [usr-1@srv-1 ~]$ ssh administrator@10.50.100.112 ‘cat /proc/meminfo’ total: used: free: Mem: 964116480 231288832 732827648 Swap: 1447034880 8290304 1438744576 MemTotal: 941520 kB MemFree: 715652 kB MemShared: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 […]

The folks at the Arusha Project are *extremely* caffeinated. The best way to describe this project is that it is a language that defines systems objects. The catch is that it can be specific and useful. You can actually do package management with it. If you are running Open Source software of any ilk for, […]

Select your Internet connection type: Choose the closest, most available download site: When the packages are finished downloading, you will see a screen like this: Scroll down, expand the net section, and put an x through the binary box of openssh and rsync by clicking on the Skip cycle arrows. This will also automatically install […]

If you have tons of money, buy Visio. Visio is very easy to use, has tons of symbols… well, you know. This article, though, will introduce you to a number of tools that will allow you to create PDF network diagrams with free, open source software on a Windows workstation. The first tool you will […]

A progress page will show the packages as they are downloaded and installed: Choose where you want icons: Start cygwin by double clicking on the icons (wherever). Some initial configuration will take place automatically: Copying skeleton files. These files are for the user to personalise their cygwin experience. These will never be overwritten. `./.bashrc’ -> […]

Check out the collection of free books at O’Reilly’s Open Books Project. Much of the reason for the books being free is O’Reilly’s and the author’s involvment in Open Source. Don’t miss out on the unofficial biography of Richard Stallman, “Join us now and share the software, you’ll be free…”. There are also some good […]

Mountain Climbing Journal (MCJ) is a general purpose journal application that can be used to explore links between ideas, people, places, things, and times. In the realm of network administration, this can be used to store the results of, say, an Nmap scan, and proceed to wrangle with the associated security and networking issues the […]

You can use word abbreviation with vi to insert common chunks of code, commands, or text into your documents. Simply type esc: (to go into command mode) and enter ab abbr phrase. For instance, say you were editing html, and you wanted sztt to enter standard table tags of BORDER=”0″ BGCOLOR=”#E0E0E0″ WIDTH=”99%”, you could enter: […]

There is a glorious example of systems documentation of the LiveJournal system here. It includes how to install, administer, and program the system. Further, the documentation was generated with DocBook and XSL stylesheets, which means that it is relatively easy to produce documentation that looks exactly like this. Another benefit of using something like DocBook […]

When you shut down or restart Windows Server 2003, you are required to explain yourself: The only way to shut down is to enter something in the lower box: Whatever. Makes us want to punch the screen in defiance, like when XP gently asks if you have forgotten your password. Now, you might think this […]

There is a curious and strangely insidious problem associated with the change of the start of Daylight Savings Time. One thing that is counter intuitive for some is that just because information is stored in GMT for stuff like future appointments, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be problems when the time changes. The exact […]