We're not on Rackspace, but we had continuous Outlook prompting issues a while back. Turning off Cached Exchange Mode stopped the login prompts for us. According to this, Cached Exchange Mode can be adjusted using Group Policy so it might be a decent workaround for the time being depending on your client's workflow.
Hope this helps!
Hey, we can always assume this trend is caused at least in part by IT pro outrage regarding their questionable practices right?
If there's one thing studying psychology taught me, it's that correlation = causation ✓
@Dashrender said:
@WingCreative said:
Instead, it was used like some sort of hidden DRM to ensure Lenovo software persisted when one assumed only Microsoft software would remain. This DRM-like system did not use SSL, allowing anyone sharing your connection the opportunity to intercept and modify the connection and traffic created every boot cycle. Boo to that.
I already agreed that Lenovo did a poor implementation of this solution, but the claim that this is malware - it's no more malware than Dell installing it's own solutions to the computer. They get off the hook ONLY because they prompt before the install actually takes place.
Fair enough - Ultimately we probably don't/won't know enough details about what was being downloaded every boot cycle to determine whether or not it was malware according to Wikipedia's definition. Badware, definitely! But outside of the security vulnerability, it could be argued that making sure Lenovo Service Engine is installed dilutes the term malware to the point where Windows 10 could also be considered malware as it does not seem to truly respect all user privacy settings at the moment.
With that said, we (or at least I) don't know what exact info the Lenovo Service Engine was sending outside of Lenovo's description. With Lenovo's reputation for doing dumb, sneaky stuff for a quick buck, their slippery PR department, and the fact that they are a Chinese hardware manufacturer, many people are assuming the worst. I have seen people suggesting this was part of a backdoor for the Chinese government and other things along those lines. That would fall under the "gather sensitive information" part of the definition of malware, but we don't know if that was the case.
All we know for sure is that a hardware manufacturer insecurely set up a system to make sure their computers reported system information for a few months before getting shut down. The insecurity and exploitation potential makes it badware. Software made to persist despite users' best efforts is malicious in my opinion, and I don't understand why Lenovo would go to such lengths to ensure the Lenovo Service Engine was persistently installed if it only sends system information once before disabling itself as they say. In my opinion, there are too many unknowns to definitively say "Lenovo included persistent malware on their consumer devices" beyond reasonable doubt, but there are enough things that don't add up for me to avoid buying or recommending Lenovo in the future and keep an eye on this situation as it develops. I do understand hesitating to declare Lenovo outright malware peddlers though.
@Dashrender said:
@WingCreative said:
I would assume that any legitimate usage of this function would be heavily marketed as a time-saving measure, something like:
"Many of our customers prefer to start off with a fresh install of Windows. We understand that hunting down drivers just to get hardware working after a reinstall is frustrating and time consuming. Now, we're using cutting-edge technology to ensure your computer has a direct line to automatically download the latest drivers even after a complete reinstall of Windows! System administrators: If you'd rather have a completely blank slate upon reinstallation, this option can be disabled in the BIOS."
You don't just spend time and money getting a feature like this set up without some sort of return on your investment, and in an ideal world this would actually be a pretty decent selling point. I would love to be able to do a fresh install without worrying about driver downloads & updates immediately afterwards. It's not a huge thing but it would be nice.
In contrast, Lenovo's implementation got shut down by Microsoft, and was only discovered by someone doing some deep diving into their own system. Otherwise it would have quietly been a thing until they had to patch it out. It was also difficult to disable, implying Lenovo didn't plan on allowing it to be disabled.
This tech isn't for businesses, it's purely for consumers. Businesses have people like you and I do make images that contain all the drivers needed, etc.
The vendors don't need to sell this to consumers, as the consumers won't understand what it means, and I'm sure they won't understand the value. Instead the vendor will use it because it CAN (but might not) help them reduce costs of support.
In the perfect world where companies use technological developments like this correctly, why not have it be for business too?
SMB and nonprofits rarely have imaging processes in place from what I have seen, and are more okay with buying the cheapest workable hardware instead of sticking to a standard hardware deployment.
If you could trust a system like this, you could use the same image across a variety of hardware without setting up and maintaining a driver repository. This would also allow places with mixed hardware to more easily integrate a standard imaging process without spending time finding the right drivers and keeping them up to date.
Instead, it was used like some sort of hidden DRM to ensure Lenovo software persisted when one assumed only Microsoft software would remain. This DRM-like system did not use SSL, allowing anyone sharing your connection the opportunity to intercept and modify the connection and traffic created every boot cycle. Boo to that.
I would assume that any legitimate usage of this function would be heavily marketed as a time-saving measure, something like:
"Many of our customers prefer to start off with a fresh install of Windows. We understand that hunting down drivers just to get hardware working after a reinstall is frustrating and time consuming. Now, we're using cutting-edge technology to ensure your computer has a direct line to automatically download the latest drivers even after a complete reinstall of Windows! System administrators: If you'd rather have a completely blank slate upon reinstallation, this option can be disabled in the BIOS."
You don't just spend time and money getting a feature like this set up without some sort of return on your investment, and in an ideal world this would actually be a pretty decent selling point. I would love to be able to do a fresh install without worrying about driver downloads & updates immediately afterwards. It's not a huge thing but it would be nice.
In contrast, Lenovo's implementation got shut down by Microsoft, and was only discovered by someone doing some deep diving into their own system. Otherwise it would have quietly been a thing until they had to patch it out. It was also difficult to disable, implying Lenovo didn't plan on allowing it to be disabled.
@JaredBusch said:
@WingCreative said:
I believe anon was referring to the new free tier of Goverlan's remote control software. I hope they come back and elaborate on their experience.
Free remote control for businesses sounds nice but there are too few features for us to consider it. It looks like it could be helpful for admins of a single site, but we are probably going to go with the full version because $250 isn't too much more for all the tools they put into it.
I realize there is a free tier. But I looked at the feature comparison and it was not worth even being free to me. The paid version feature list is very comparable though.
Fair enough, I struggled to think of a use case for the free version myself.
I believe anon was referring to the new free tier of Goverlan's remote control software. I hope they come back and elaborate on their experience.
Free remote control for businesses sounds nice but there are too few features for us to consider it. It looks like it could be helpful for admins of a single site, but we are probably going to go with the full version because $250 isn't too much more for all the tools they put into it.
For those new to Goverlan, it's worth mentioning that they have a whole administrative suite for remote management and the remote control is just part of that.
@MattSpeller said:
@WingCreative With the intertubes connected it's not really a big deal (drivers). Unless you work on some hairy old stuff I doubt you'll have any issues.
True, I suppose my specific scenario where I was testing this was pretty rare - On my desktop I use a USB WiFi adapter from before I knew I would get into Linux that only has Windows Drivers, so I need to install the software that lets me use those Windows drivers and have them on the USB stick before I can access the internet. It's dumb.
I could also see this setup coming in handy if you were working on an infected machine where you don't necessarily want it to be connected to the internet, but then again if you're booting into a live USB session to check it out that shouldn't affect you too much so maybe not.
It sounds like you are dealing with the same thing I am now - wanting to have a little USB toolbox that you can use on a variety of computers with your favorite diagnostic/cleaning/whatever applications. With that in mind, I discovered that Live USB is much better for this setup as the full install makes your USB Linux dependent on the hardware you initially installed it on.
Creating a persistent drive on the USB seems to work well for storing files, but as you say it's trickier to keep installed applications between sessions.
I'm wondering if there are workarounds, like portable versions of apps that don't depend upon an installation. It might also be possible/worthwhile to store the installation files on the drive and have a shell script to install all your programs from the local repo?
This isn't so much of an answer as it is me saying "I have the same question" but I hope it helps 
Was anyone logged in through RDP or anything?
Windows Server 2012 will do the automatic "You have 15 minutes until this thing restarts, you have no choice" thing just like it's Windows 8, but only if someone is actively logged into the server interface (AKA disconnected RDP sessions don't count).
I know there was an out of band patch not too long ago, I don't know if you applied it and rebooted it with your maintenance last weekend but the combination of an important patch wanting to restart stuff + someone stepping away from an open RDP connection would cause something like this.
I really wish I could switch to T-mobile but people on their plans in my area are the people who never have cell reception.
With texting I don't need to know the email account people check most often, or decide which account to email. It's also guaranteed to pop up on their phone, while some people never set up email access on their phone for whatever reason. When they do, the email apps are clunkier than the built-in messaging apps because they have to provide a bunch of extra features.
The biggest thing IMO is that there's a much better signal to noise ratio with texts. If I text someone I'm pretty sure they will see & read the message within 24 hours. Messages won't get lost in a sea of newsletters, spam, or anything like that. In contrast, there's a growing UX movement amongst mobile email apps to help people cut through email clutter and read what's actually important in their inbox.
@scottalanmiller said:
That Facebook is using HHVM in production makes me a little more comfortable with it.
True, but I would guess that Facebook's application runs mostly on code that Facebook is responsible for maintaining. On the other hand, most WordPress websites have at least a couple of third party plugins and/or themes and those usually assume you're running on PHP 5 so there's a higher chance of stuff like this happening.
Probably wouldn't be an issue very often but I would be more paranoid about updates breaking things if I were running HHVM in production.
I'm still a bit wary about HHVM in production environments... I ended up needing to set up ps watcher to make sure the process restarted after server reboots and general failures the one time I tried it out.
If your permalinks aren't working as intended, take a look at this nginx configuration. After modifying it a bit for my server, all of the permalink issues I had were solved
@scottalanmiller said:
@WingCreative said:
The weirdest part is that the emails sent to my own Exchange mailbox show up in the Sent Items section but never arrived in my inbox. So people might think they're sending out emails but no one is receiving them?
Welcome to email. This is how email has been since inception many decades ago. It is an async protocol where the sending happens separately from the receiving. Under no conditions does a successful send imply a successful receipt. Email just doesn't work that way.
Fair enough, I just thought it was strange that the emails I sent to my own email address from the Outlook client showed up in my OWA sent box, implying they had been received by the Exchange Online server somehow, but didn't show up in my OWA or Outlook inbox.
Either way, looks like everything's back in business so hooray for that!
So far none of my test emails between Outlook, OWA and my Gmail account have reached each other. I got OWA to open my inbox, but both it and Outlook have failed to actually send any of my test emails.
The weirdest part is that the emails sent to my own Exchange mailbox show up in the Sent Items section but never arrived in my inbox. So people might think they're sending out emails but no one is receiving them? There's also no mailer daemon response on my gmail account to inform me that my message failed to reach its destination. So even though it keeps cycling between "trying to connect", "disconnected" and "Connected" on my Outlook, it's really disconnected the entire time and can't update its inbox, send mail, or anything really.
@scottalanmiller said:
What Exchange Online issues are going on? I have not seen any yet.
The incident ID is EX27794 under "e-mail and calendar access" of the status log, here's the latest status update as of 3:30pm PST:
Current Status: The investigation determined that a portion of infrastructure which facilitates authentication to the service is experiencing higher-than-normal resource usage. Engineers are analyzing service telemetry to determine what is causing the high resource usage.
User Experience: Affected users are unable to connect to the Exchange Online service when using multiple protocols including Outlook, Outlook Web App (OWA), Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and Exchange Web Services (EWS).
Customer Impact: A higher than average number of customers are reporting this issue. Analysis indicates that customers will likely have some users experiencing this issue.
Incident Start Time: Wednesday, July 15, 2015, at 9:25 PM UTC
Next Update by: Wednesday, July 15, 2015, at 11:30 PM UTC
I was scheduled to be off 20 minutes ago... but it seems like a lot of people in my organization are affected by the Exchange Online issues happening right now, so I'm going to stick around and see if it gets resolved soon. Mostly I'm just here to catch people reporting the email outage and say "I know but thanks" as I don't really have much I can do to fix it on my end. #JustCloudServiceThings
I'm mostly spending my time wondering when the last time Gmail for Work went down...
@scottalanmiller said:
@WingCreative said:
Also wishing they offered MariaDB as one of the options but what can you do.
Is there really much benefit? MariaDB support is really bad, so I would not want a MariaDB setup that I was paying for. If I'm supporting it myself, then it is fine. But once I'm going commercial, I would the support coming from Oracle.
Probably not! I only have experience with simple MySQL deployments at the moment, where MariaDB has worked as a drop-in replacement without any issue and some performance gains. Haven't done anything with an Oracle DB myself yet but I have heard it's pretty much the best relational database out there if you're willing to pay for it.
@scottalanmiller said:
Building out my first Amazon RDS system.
I've been wanting to set up an RDS instance for when I finally get Sendy going on AWS...
Are you going single or multi availability zones? I really like the sound of a database with built-in failover, but I've read that it doesn't always trigger when the primary database fails for some people.
Also wishing they offered MariaDB as one of the options but what can you do.