Best posts made by Rob Dunn

...so, I wrote my own!

The major benefit? Building your menu structure is dead easy compared to before. It's all XML based. You can report on your data. Since I am storing the menu selections in generic-named fields, you can imagine how much easier reporting would be compared to having a category called 'Software,' then another attribute called 'Microsoft Office,' etc. Waaay easier, IMHO.

It supports your existing categories too!

In the app:

In the new ticket form:

In the user portal:

Check it out and let me know how it works out for you - - - I need feedback! @Bill-Kindle has tried it, so should you!

http://community.spiceworks.com/plugin/1654

I wanted to post this here if anyone remembers eWoman (Rose) in the community. She and her husband are in financial straits due to her health right now and need some assistance - check out the post here: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/889146-an-it-pro-in-need-is-a-friend-indeed-ewoman-needs-our-help

If you feel that you can help with any amount $10, $5, $1, whatever...I know it would really be appreciated. If you can't afford it or don't do that sort of thing, just some thoughts or prayers (whatever is your fancy) would be great too.

I know it can feel tacky to post something like this, but trust me, she and her husband really need the help.

Later everyone,
Rob

https://www.avast.com/avast-for-business

Big news - it used to be back in the day, Comodo and Clamwin were your only options for free AV for commercial use - I think even Comodo stopped doing this at some point. The only other contender was MS Security Essentials for up to 10 nodes in an environment.

Now, I see this! I've not tried it yet, but, if you don't get nagged to hell (or asked to register every year on each device), this is indeed great news!

@thanksajdotcom said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@thanksajdotcom said:

@thecreativeone91 said:

@scottalanmiller said:

For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.

And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. Chances of this stuff getting see by an employer get higher and higher each time you do it.

Most of us are trying to help, but obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.

I appreciate that. I have a really easy time empathizing with others' pain, whether physical, emotional or mental. However, I have a very hard time empathizing with how other people interpret what I say. I'm working on that but it's a real struggle for me.

The most important part is to stop saying it. You have recognized that you can't tell how others will see it. Now, how do you action that knowledge in a good way? You avoid the behaviour until you can determine what is safe or not.

Think about it this way, what if you can't tell if the range top is hot? Do you put your hand on it and get burned sometimes? Or do you stop putting your hand on it at all until you figure out how to determine if it is hot or not?

When it doubt, avoid. Play it safe.

The other part of my problem is my own way of viewing myself. If you ever talked to me in person, I could give a more accurate demonstration, but I'm a world-class liar. I know exactly how to work it so that I can make a person totally believe one thing without actually lying most of the time. The devil is in the details. So the odd part is that, while I'm quite amazing at this, I also detest lying. In fact, I think it's pretty obvious I often are a little too honest. The biggest reason I do this has nothing to do with anyone else, but has to do with the fact that it's a coping mechanism for me. I don't do well keeping stuff bottled up. I'd much rather put everything out there and deal with the consequences than keep whatever it might be bottled up. Now the consequences at times are pretty severe, and most people would think I'm nuts. But to me, dealing with that is STILL easier than the feeling and anxiety I get keeping it bottled up. The trick I need to figure out is just knowing when to release that info/those feelings, etc.

I'm not trying to be a dick by saying this...please keep this in mind.

The problem, though - is that you cause other people anxiety & discomfort by doing this. So what you are accomplishing is projecting your own insecurities and anxiety on other people, forcing them to deal with something that should be handled by yourself & possibly a professional therapist/coach. "If they feel that way, that's their problem." - Sure, but their coping mechanism is either to avoid you altogether or make you feel uncomfortable in return.

People don't want to have to deal with your problems; they have problems and anxieties of their own, why should they cope with yours, too? You don't make it everyone else's responsibility to have to deal with the issues you may have because it makes you feel weird to bottle it up.

You need to find a different way to address this and find an outlet that doesn't negatively impact everyone around you.

We had a user today receive an email with "See enclosed report" in the message body, and a random name as the email subject. Attached was a .dot file which presumably was macro-enabled. One of our users (I have been pushing for removing admin rights and setting application whitelisting for months, but hey, I'm the new guy, so...) clicked into the .dot and got herself infected. Trend Micro caught the residual breadcrumbs but only after being infected.

The next thing it did was it found another machine on the network which had a USB-drive attached and shared and began to encrypt THOSE files as well.

We didn't get a chance to thoroughly analyze what was going on, but it definitely dropped a .VBS in the user's appdata folder and executed that. The interesting thing about the file was that all the variables, objects, functions, etc. were named with a random set of alphanumeric characters, so it LOOKED encrypted, but it wasn't. Presumably to circumnavigate pattern-based detection.

In any case, this rolled right on through our Barracuda Spam Filter - they didn't have the definitions for the infection yet until an hour after we had cleaned up the mess.

The mail content:

Please find latest report attached.

Sharon Blackwell 

Attached file: 263_2567rh.dot

Obviously, the names and filenames are different per each email, but this was the format of the incoming infection this AM.

Just a head's up for everyone - keep any eye out.

Also, guess what I got approved to do starting tomorrow? Application whitelisting and removing admin rights...FINALLY.

That's AWESOME - and congrats!

Now, for a Mangolassi Community request: Make sure you work in the word "Khan" somewhere in the interview, ok?

The key...if you're into functional GPO's (vs. monolithic) is having an effective and meaningful OU structure. Otherwise, half of your time will be creating security filters or specific targeting which can get very confusing very quickly.

The performance impact of processing GPO's in general is negligible, but it does depend on what that GPO is doing (i.e. deploying software in general or printers over slow links? Have a seat and grab a cup of coffee). I would be more concerned if you have slow links at your sites - if this is the case, you need to ensure that you have Sites and Services configured appropriately and a RODC at your remote site to facilitate speedy logins.

Being aware of GPO enforcement (which you should try to avoid) and LSDO ordering will help you tons.

There's really no right or wrong way to deploy GPO's as it is more about what you're doing with them, how they are deploying, and what you're deploying them to.

Personally, my preference is to break my GPO's out to functional objects - i.e. this one is for security, this one is for desktop preferences, this one is for drive mappings, etc.

What the hell, SourceForge? I go to download FileZilla and Vipre kills it because you've packed in a bunch of adware/toolbar stupidness into your downloads again. I thought we talked about this already.

I've been messing around with the home lab and have successfully created an Active Directory domain controller on Linux Ubuntu Server. Has anyone configured a Group Policy Central Store and had it successfully work with RSAT on a Windows client? I've created the PolicyDefinitions folder on my DC sysvol\Policies folder, but when I open up a policy and begin editing it, I get this, one after another...one for each admx file in the PolicyDefinitions folder:

'An appropriate resource file could not be found for file \domain.blah\SysVol\domain.blah\Policies\PolicyDefinitions\blah.admx (error = 2): The system cannot find the file specified.'

Seems like it should be a simple thing - create the language-specific folder ('en-US') and drop the adml files in, but for some reason, something ain't happy...

Anyone have any experience with this?

Yikes! Go big or go home.

Hope all is well...

@scottalanmiller said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

@Rob-Dunn said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

I think it's great that there is a discussion about the implications of backing/not backing up data, but I don't see why this conversation has to derail.

Any conversation that grows organically is not derailed. It's important aspects of the topic that were simply not envisioned as the ones that would be important to the conversation at the outset.

...and this is why I don't post here often. Every time I post anything or try to follow a topic here on ML, it devolves into an argument between usually you and someone else who doesn't agree with you. So now, this side convo is occurring which has very little to do with the original topic.

I don't mean offense to you or anyone else here, but I'm being totally honest here - this is exactly why I don't like interacting on ML.

@Dominica said:

I feel like MangoCon would attract some pretty confused people, wondering where the sessions on mango growing and harvesting are.

Or looking for this guy...

It's been a few years, but I migrated our Public Folders from 2003 to 2010 by adding the 2010 Exchange server as an additional replication partner. Once the folders were completely moved over, I updated the public folder location using PowerShell (there's a lot of documentation out there that goes over this process) and then removed the old Exchange server from the Public Folder synchronization partners.

I'd have to look it up again, but it wasn't terribly difficult.

This unit is actually a donated (from one of my personal clients) MediaSmart 485: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859105420

It's one of those "boot em up, load the CD on your desktop PC to attach" kind of servers that runs WHS. I rebuilt it last year using Ubuntu server and RAID'd 3 x 1TB drives (yeah, I know, RAID 5) + 1 drive for OS. I do have everything backing up from the RAID volume to an external source locally + Crashplan to the Cloud (don't hate me Scott).

You saw the topic heading - this thing is headless in the truest sense. There's no video output - no SVGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, etc. so troubleshooting is a real bitch. You might ask how I built it in the first place? I have an HP dc5700 that I popped the OS drive into and installed/configured everything and then moved the drive back into the media server. The underlying architecture was similar enough I suppose, but you Linux guys can probably explain that better than I...

I rebooted the server the other day and it wouldn't completely fire up. It would ping, but I couldn't SSH to it, Webmin wasn't working, couldn't get to Plex, etc. I assumed that maybe there was a message waiting for me So, I popped the drive out, put it back in the HP and everything boots fine - complains that the media volume group couldn't be found, but this was expected. Since I'm not actually seeing exactly what was going on with the media server (drives are over there, in that box there...not this HP!) I couldn't troubleshoot...so, I decided to rebuild. I thought maybe the boot drive might have been going (it was an oldie, so I switched to a 3TB that I had on the bench).

Once rebuilt, I installed/configured openSSH, then popped the drive back in to the server, booted it up and then installed webmin.

Adding the volume that I had created previously was a cinch, but apparently due to some improper shutdown I had some corrupted files on the volume. I couldn't get to a particular folder that had all my kids movies...so, after some Googling the particular error (about inode not being found and some input/output errors while performing a copy) I backed up everything I could to another drive, unmounted the volume, and ran e2fsck on it and let it repair (like chkdsk for Windows). In retrospect, I wonder if the boot wasn't completing because it was waiting for an answer to repair the volume?

Once repaired, my files were in the lost+found folder, I think I only lost a few. I installed Samba via Webmin, moved the files back to their proper folders, installed Plex and pointed them at the files. Everything is working swimmingly now.

Lessons learned:

• If you run an OS you're not familiar with - video output is a really, really good idea
• Webmin is awesome
• I like Linux. It's powerful, but it's such a different beast than Windows it takes a mental gear-shift to work with it. You can't just "do things" with Linux. You have to be deliberate and be aware of the repercussions of anything that you do.

On a side note - does anyone know of a Linux-supported USB-driven display adapter? I know I can buy a kit that I can plug into the motherboard to get video, but I'd prefer something that wasn't so specific to this unit.

I think it would be a real problem if your manager was intentionally sabotaging your work/position by falsely accusing you of things and setting you up to fail.

With management, there is a level of respect that should be followed - he's your manager, do what he asks (so long as it is within reason - the singing thing? That's really not an issue, but it sounds like you were provoking him). If it is affecting your job in a real, quantifiable way (and can be proven), then I would say something. Otherwise, it sounds like nitpicking - suck it up and wait for the right situation to complain about.

With all this said, if you and the manager don't get along, maybe it's time to find a place that is more compatible with your work style/ethic. If you can't change the culture, and it's unlikely that a manager would leave, then it's not going to be a place you are going to thrive in. The guy obviously doesn't like you, and it sounds like he might be trolling you.

Finally, I know everyone else is thinking it, but posting here about your workplace isn't a good idea. You could be in breach of some hardly known 'electronic communication policy' - I've seen people get fired for stuff like that.

Basically it's a troubleshooting tool that people can use to verify their port bindings with WSUS.

http://pastebin.com/AhLGfGjh

Any takers? I just want to make sure it reports back information that can be used to troubleshoot WSUS problems.

I personally love Hyper-V - I started using it on Server 2008, and it was ...ok at that time, but it ran. Now, when Server 2008 R2 came out, Hyper-V introduced High Availability and volume shared clustering, and it worked splendidly for us. Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to work with this on any automated level, but it was fantastic when we had planned building outages and needed to migrate our servers to our secondary server node.

It's always been easy to set up - my only beef with it is the built-in GUI management tools. You can manage Hyper-V Server 2008 & 2008 R2 from a Windows 7/2008 box, but if you want to manage 2012, you need Windows 8/2012. There are other tools available (5nine Hyper-V Manager works great) - - but, it's annoying.

4624 for logons, but logging off can be problematic, since a computer can become disconnected from the network or turned off abruptly. With that said, the logoff event is 4647.

I would enable logon auditing at the workstation level as well. You should be able to track a user pretty well if you need to.

Here's a great reference card that you can keep handy to help you track logon/logoff auditing: https://www.ultimatewindowssecurity.com/securitylog/quickref/default.aspx

@RoopanKumar said:

@scottalanmiller one of my senior said if it is installed then only we can open share drive in a network even it is in different subnet or ip class or ip segment

This really makes no sense. RSAT is a set of administration tools, it doesn't facilitate connectivity to any other resources a normal workstation wouldn't have access to.

Here too:
http://faildesk.net/2014/11/20/barbie-gets-a-job-as-a-computer-engineer-cant-avoid-malware-takes-credit-for-game-design/