Computers

Windows Server 2008 with HyperV crashing

Submitted by pwnell on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 18:02

One incident is a co-incidence.  Two is a pattern.  For the second time I dealt with a strange situation that did not seem to adhere to any predictability other than the fact that it will happen.  Sometime.  A Windows 2008 Server Core and now a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Server with Hyper-V and some virtual machines would run fine for days, then suddenly become unresponsive.  The machine is up, Hyper-V VM's are inaccessible, console is locked up, can telnet to SMTP service but for the most part the system is dead.  Only a hard reset helped.  Until the next time.

The way I fixed the Server Core issue, and hopefully the R2 incident, is by configuring Hyper-V's network settings as follow:

  • Since my servers each had two NICs, I configured one for the host OS called LAN, and the other for Hyper-V's exclusive use.
  • The LAN interface is the one used to access the host itself.
  • The Hyper-V interface is used exclusively for each VM.
  • Ensure the "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter" setting is OFF.
    Screen Shot 2012 02 02 at 18 01 04

Using those settings, ensuring the Hyper-V nodes do NOT share the host LAN interface, seem to have fixed the crashing issue.

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Determining which FSMO roles a DC owns

Submitted by pwnell on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 15:41

Everyone knows this most likely, but the fastest way to determine which FSMO roles a domain controller holds is by typing in:

C:\Users\administrator> netdom query fsmo
Schema master               server.domain.local
Domain naming master        server.domain.local
PDC                         server.domain.local
RID pool manager            server.domain.local
Infrastructure master       server.domain.local
The command completed successfully.

 

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Exchange 2010 Fails Best Practices Analyzer due to Not Being Backed Up

Submitted by pwnell on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 09:30

I recently had an issue where a client's Microsoft Exchange 2010 server failed the best practices analyzer due to an "Database backup critical" error.  I was confused at first since I had a fully functional wbadmin scripted backup that I could see backed up Exchange.  Only after fiddling for a while did I discover the missing parameter I had to provide before exchange indicated a successful database backup and subsequently cleared out all the thousands of database log files it kept:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:\\1.2.3.4\backups -include:c: ^
   -user:msbackup -password:"password" -quiet -allCritical -vssFull -systemState

Without -systemState this never worked.

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Reinstalling Mac OS X Lion is elegant but...

Submitted by pwnell on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:23

…if you do not have a VERY fast internet connection, this will be a huge pain.  I rebooted, started the onboard OS Reinstall process and it went ahead downloading Lion… With my connection this works:

Screen Shot 2012 01 27 at 11 20 38

But imagine that over a 384kbps ADSL line...

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Replacing a RAID drive using FakeRaid (dmraid) on Linux

Submitted by pwnell on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:34

I recently had a client that needed to replace a hard drive in a Linux FakeRaid RAID5 array using dmraid.  The process is very unintuitive:

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Google's new graph feature is buggy

Submitted by pwnell on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 15:09

Google has a new feature where it plots graphs from the search bar.  But it is buggy:

http://tinyurl.com/c6ztdfj

produces:

Screen Shot 2011 12 06 at 14 49 45

It should have produced:

Screen Shot 2011 12 06 at 14 50 57

Some weird rounding going on there...

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Drupal 7 and Blog API

Submitted by pwnell on Sun, 11/06/2011 - 15:11

I finally managed to get Drupal 7 work with MarsEdit and Blog API.  Since I had a request to explain what I did, I have decided to include a summarised version of what was needed.  Take note that I cannot give you a module that just works as the changes I had to make was quite specific to my installation.  With some time and energy one can most probably make it generic, but I leave that to the reader.

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Older versions of Java

Submitted by pwnell on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 08:33

Though not recommended for security reasons, sometimes an application needs a specific version and you have no choice.

Link here.

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This gets more interesting

Submitted by pwnell on Tue, 10/25/2011 - 14:15

Me: What's the value of Pi?

She: (I presume this comes from WolframAlpha).

Photo

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iPhone 4S

Submitted by pwnell on Tue, 10/25/2011 - 14:09

Umm… My first experience with objectophilia. My recent conversation with my phone:

Me: Do you love me?

Her: I am not allowed to, Waldo.

Me: You are funny.

Her: I am glad you think so.

Stupid, but entertaining.  Curious as to what Apple must be receiving from people all over… What people ask their phones… Bet they have a laugh!

 

 

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