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 […]
Using VB to Create an Administration Console
IT is, true, but define with the Microsoft Operations Framework
“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 […]
Using rasdial to automate RAS connections
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 […]
Installing an SSH Server on Windows 2003 – Part 1
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 Arusha Project
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, […]
Installing an SSH Server on Windows 2003 – Part 2
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 […]
Creating PDF Network Diagrams on Windows with Free Software
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 […]
Installing an SSH Server on Windows 2003 – Part 3
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’ -> […]
Free Books
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 […]
Network Auditing Using the Mountain Climbing Journal
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 […]
Word Abbreviation With Vi
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: […]
LiveJournal Systems Documentation Example
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 […]
Disabling Shutdown Reasoning on Windows Server 2003
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 […]
Testing Daylight Savings Time on Microsoft Windows
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 […]
Creating a One Way External Trust Between Windows 2003 and NT (MMC)
To allow users in an NT domain to use resources on a Windows 2003 domain, you need to set up a one way external trust. In NT-style language, this means that the Windows 2003 domain (trusting) trusts the NT domain (trusted). In User Manager for the NT domain, select policies->trust relationships, and add a trusting […]
Using sar – Part 1
Getting Started sar (System Activity Reporter) is an oldy but a goody that should be in your bag of tricks and installed on every *nix system you administer. It collects and logs system data at regular intervals, allowing analysis of system actity historically, trending, baselining and much much more. It comes as part of the […]
Pstree
Use the pstree command to list processes in a tree format. It will show the process owners. Default is to start the root of the tree at init: u-1@srv-1 u-1 $ pstree init-+-3*[agetty] |-ahc_dv_0 |-bdflush |-crond—2*[sh—perl—sh-+-grep] | `-iget-quote] |-cupsd |-devfsd |-keventd |-khubd |-kjournald |-kscand |-ksoftirqd_CPU0 |-kswapd |-kupdated |-lockd |-login—bash—startx—xinit-+-X | `-sh-+-icewm-+-Eterm—bash—ssh | | |-Eterm—bash—pstree | […]
Using sar – Part 2
Using sar Part 2 – Making it Play In Part 1 of this article, we looked at basic invocation of sar and how it works. In Part 2 of this article, we’ll use sar to look at disk, network, and CPU activity. In Part 3, we’ll look at the options available to report on the […]
Setting Time Synchronization With Windows 2000
We have some Windows 2000 servers we administer that are authenticating against some NT domain controllers. You can set up your Windows 2000 servers to synchronize time with an outside source: C:\>net time /querysntp This computer is not currently configured to use a specific SNTP server. The command completed successfully. For a list of NTP […]
Hail Support
Have you ever had a user call you, and the thought of guiding them through running ipconfig or winver is daunting? Hail Support is a program that users can run to submit a support request. The program runs identically on MacOS X (Intel and PowerPC), Windows (NT and 2000+), and GNU/Linux (GTK 2) systems, and […]
