Network and Server Monitoring tools

Been researching this topic recently.  Found a great resource to assist me with finding something to monitor my servers:

http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2011/100411-open-source-management-software.html

Numerous tools on this page.  Will begin documenting and testing.  If you have a favorite tool, leave me a comment!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=842

Why RAID 5 Stops Working

I was tasked a while ago with rebuilding our home made NAS server.  Given my options, I went with a RAID-6 config.  Why?  Here’s why:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/162

RAID 6 is the way to go these days.  Minimum.  And thankfully we did, as one of the hard drives went bad within a month.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=838

Bottled My Stout and Pumpkin Ale- Batches 47 and 48

So, last night I was able to bottle both batches of beer.  Doing it by myself sure takes some time!

The Pumpkin Ale is a bit weak in the pumpkin realm.  It could really use more pumpkin presence.  Guess that’s what I get for using a cheap pumpkin and not shopping around for the best pie pumpkin.

On the other hand, the chocolate stout is amazing!  Rich, dark, full bodied and just a hint of dark chocolate flavor.  Ooohhh, yeah!  Gonna be a good winter with this beer on hand.

Final gravity for the pumpkin ale was 1.012, giving me a grand total alcohol by volume of 6.8%.  Hmm…. that seems a bit high, especially for as little fermentation as I saw.  Final on my stout was 1.016, for an alcohol by volume of 5%.  This is wrong.  I may have switched the initial gravities of the two.

Switching the initial gravities, I come up with the pumpkin ale being 5.5% alcohol, and the stout being 6.3%.  I think I’m sticking with these figures.  Next time I need to write down my initial gravities IMMEDIATELY, and not wait a day or two.

Chocolate Stout Beer Label

Chocolate Stout Beer Label

 

Pumpkin Ale Beer Label

Pumpkin Ale Beer Label

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=833

Chocolate Stout and Pumpkin Beer- Batches 47 and 48

Saturday was a big day for me.  Not only did I bottle my Weizen, but I also brewed two batches of beer with help from my friend Rob!

Rob Morrison doesn't like his picture taken. Can you tell?

Rob Morrison doesn't like his picture taken. He's not giving me the peace sign.

So, we started with the Chocolate Stout.  Here is the recipe I followed (based off of Rogue’s Chocolate Stout):

1.5lb two row
7lbs liquid extract
.5lbs 120L crystal malt
.5lbs chocolate malt
.5lbs rolled oats
3oz roasted barley
1.5oz chocolate extract (in secondary)
1oz Cascade (90 min)
1oz Cascade (60 min)
1oz Cascade (30 min
1oz cascade (0 min)
1 tsp Irish Moss Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=813

Bottled my Weizen- Batch 46

Had a big beer day yesterday.  Finally got around to bottling my wheat beer.  Used mostly 22oz bottles to bottle it.

Wheat Beer Bottling

Wheat Beer Bottling

Since I had no initial gravity, I didn’t take the final gravity.  I also have no idea what the alcohol by volume is.

Bottles drying in dishwasher

Bottles drying in dishwasher

 

Transferring beer into bottling bucket

Transferring beer into bottling bucket

Look at that color

Look at that color

Got about 40 bottles out of it, about 15-20 22oz bottles and the rest small bottles.  Will be a nice drinkable beer.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=805

Logging the bubble frequency in your airlock

Leave it to a geek who loves beer to come up with this one.

One of the folks over at Hack-a-day created a device to measure the frequency of bubbles in his airlock by measuring the passage of air through the air lock.  They say the system breaks down during vigorous fermentation, but for later on in fermentation or in secondary fermentation this could tell you when your beer is close to being done.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=803

Autodesk DWG TrueView on Terminal Server

I was once tasked with installing Autodesk’s DWG TrueView in a Terminal Server environment.  Needless to say, it didn’t go well.  Autodesk designs everything to run in a stand alone user mode with full admin privileges.  So, to make this work, I found a website that had instructions that worked.  The original site has since removed that posting, but I was fortunate enough to pull it from Google’s cache (thanks, Google!)  I did exactly as this said and all users in my Terminal Server environment were able to use DWG TrueView.  However, those same users also needed full admin privileges on the server.  I have yet to tinker with permissions to get this to work with regular users, as my boss told me to just give ’em admin and then lock them down with Software Restriction Policies and Group Policies, but for those who need a starting point, here it is.

  1. Logon as an administrator to the Windows TS
  2. Install DWG TrueView 2012 accepting all default setup options
  3. After setup is complete, launch the DWG application and make sure it starts successfully without any errors. Then close the application
  4. Make sure the following 2 folders were created:
    1. C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk
      (or on Server 2008 C:\users\%username%\AppData\Local\Autodesk)
    2. %APPDATA%\Autodesk
      (Server 2008- C:\users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk)
  5. Create a new folder called, for example, “DWGSHARE” on the local terminal server drive and grant the following NTFS permissions:
    1. Administrators – Full Control
    2. Authenticated Users –  Full control
    3. System – Full Control

    (Also create a “Temp” folder below the “DWGSHARE” folder

  6. Merge the 2 folders noted in section 4 above to one Autodesk folder ,and copy the New Autodesk folder to the DWGSHARE folder
  7. Delete the 2 folders from the user profile and from the redirected application data, if applicable
  8. Export the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk key using Regedit to a .reg file
  9. Edit the exported registry file with notepad , change and replace all values that point to
    C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk (or on Server 2008 C:\users\%username%\AppData\Local\Autodesk)
    AND %APPDATA%\Autodesk (see 4.B above) to the new “DWGSHARE” folder path

    (I did a replace on “Users\\administrator\\AppData\\Local” with “DWGSHARE” and “Users\\administrator\\AppData\\Roaming” with “DWGSHARE” )

  10. Also replace all instances of “C:\\Users\\administrator\\Documents\\” with “C:\\Users\\%username%\\Documents” within the registry file.
  11. Import the edited registry file ,start the application and make sure there are no errors, if so this means you are on the right path.
  12. Edit again the exported registry file and now replace the path from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Autodesk
    (Note – this Registry key is actually the terminal server “install mode” key, each Registry key is automatically pushed to the Current User hive of each user logging on to the terminal server  )
  13. Import the file to registry, and make sure the following key  is replaced correctly and identical to exported file:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Autodesk
  14. Logon to the server with a test user and try to launch the DWG application

Just replicated this today and all my terminal server users can use DWG TrueView now.  Did some more testing, and users don’t need to be local admins to run, they just need to be local admins the FIRST time they run it.  So, make them an admin, have them log in and run DWG, then log them out and set them back to normal users.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=790

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Yesterday marked the passing of an IT titan.  A man who not only got a second chance in the business world, but a third chance.  A man driven by ideas and art, who thought the personal computer should be about design and usability, not just about code and bits.

I cannot sum up his achievements better than what The Register has over here.  It’s 11 pages, but worth it.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=787

Fatal Error 1719 – The Adventure!

Trying to push out Backup Exec Remote Agent to one of my terminal servers, and I received an error:

Fatal Error 1719: The windows installer service could not be accessed.

Great.  Had this error once before on this server when I was trying to install this legacy application written for Access 2003.  I was able to work around it by not using the Access 2003 engine it was installing, but using the Access 2010 already installed on that server.  Haven’t seen this error since until now.

So, I hit the inter-webs.  Lots of useful advice, unfortunately none of it worked.  For posterity sake, here is what I tried:

1.  Unregistered and re-registered the Windows installer service

msiexec /unregister
msiexed /regserver

This did not work.  Still got the 1719 error.

2. Ran system file checker to fix any broken system files

sfc /scannow

Restarted my server, tried the install, didn’t work.

3. Tried booting into safe mode, and unregistered and re-registered the service again

regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\msi.dll
%systemroot%\syswow64\regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\syswow64\msi.dll

Restarted, still got the 1719 error.  What the heck?

4.  Examined the registry key regarding the MSI Service.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msiserver

Compared the values here to two other servers I have and found discrepancies.  Hmmm….. this might be it.  So, I saved a copy of the current registry settings, exported the settings from my other terminal server and imported them into my troubled terminal server.  Restarted just for fun, and tried to install my Symantec Backup Agent again.

And, once again, it failed with the same error.

I went to Symantec’s site and searched for 1719 error.  I got 0 results.  Nothing.  I searched and searched and found nothing.  So, I retried the steps above.  I tried re-registering the service in the system32 and the syswow64 folder.  Nothing I did worked.

So, in desperation I went to  Symantec’s site again, browsed through the categories to get to the Backup Exec 2010 product and began going through the troubleshooting options.  Several pages into it guess what I found?  Yep, an article entitled

When trying to install Backup Exec Remote Agent, Windows reports error “1719 The Windows Installer service could not be accessed

Gee, thanks for having such a great search engine to find this for me 1/2 hour ago!  The first part of the article was worthless, but the very end had a nice tidbit of info worth trying, so I fired up REGEDIT once again and made the following change:

I changed the WOW64 key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msiserver from 1 to 0.

After that, the install worked just fine.  Hurray!  Now, to find an email to Symantec’s webmaster and tell them to fix their worthless search engine.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=784

HTTPS IS BROKEN!!!

Warning:  HTTPS is no longer secure.

If possible, set your browser to use TLS 1.2 and undo all other encryption options (SSL3, TSL1.0).

This will break a number of web sites you visit, but you will be secure.

Read all about it here.

Update:  There is quite a bit of talk on the interwebs regarding this issue.  The folks over at openssl claim they have fixed this by inserting empty fragments into their TLS streams (read about it here).  Firefox bug track has some info on it; it looks like they’re working on TLS 1.1 first before 1.2.  Another good discussion going on at ISC about it.  The Register also reported on The Beast tool that exploits this flaw in TLS and SSL.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.brettgorley.com/?p=772