January 24, 2012

Mitsubishi Key Fob - recode

Had a dead mitsubishi tear drop style key fob for a cobra alarm. Found some text on the internet that suggested you may be able to recode by shorting some pins on the OBD adapter and ended up nearly setting fire to the car. In the end I found a much safer way that actually worked.
The problem I had was the key fob appeared to be working where the panic button worked and when unlock was pressed the little LED inside did light up but the car didnt lock / unlock.
To fix the issue I had to do the following
Face the car door
Press and hold both buttons on the key fob, the red light should flash and then stay on
Release both buttons and the light should go off
Turn away from the door and press the big button once
Turn back to the door and press the big button again

November 07, 2011

XBOX 360 System Update Stopped

Had this issue today with my xbox and found the following on a post in a forum which helped me

When I inserted a new game the console rebooted it came back with the message containing "System Update Stopped ... contact xbox.com\support ...

I tried turning off/on, re-inserting several disks, unplugging power, holding the sync button down and powering on, nothing worked. I tried to run the latest update (downloaded from the Xbox support updates site) from a FAT32 formatted USB stick: nu luck.

What did the trick for me in the end

1. Look at the second bunch of numbers in the error code which in my case was 351f convert it from hex to decimal to give 13599
2. Then go to http://dl.console.se/index.php?dir=Xbox360/Uppdateringar/ and download that version of the update.
3. Unzip the contents and place on the root of a usb stick
4. Insert the USB stick into the xbox and it should resume.

November 16, 2010

Jailbreak PS3

Had an issue with getting my first game from the backup manager onto it tonight. The problem I had was all down to folder struture. The game has to sit in a folder called GAMEZ. Then it has to sit in a folder called BCES-00XXX where xxx is a 3 digit number relating the the game. In there there should be the PS_GAME folder PS_UPDATE and a PS_DISC.SFB file. In my case I didnt know the xxx value so opened up the .sfb file and managed to fine it in there. Once everything was in the correct structure it worked a treat.

November 07, 2010

ESX Put Snapshots into a different Directory

By default, the snapshot of your VM’s are created in the same folder where the VM exist. Sometimes you need to create a snapshot elsewhere. Why?

- There is not enough space on VMFS volume…
- You are not able to power on a VM because this one cannot create a swap file on the VMFS volume (which is full of course).

What do do?

To change the default location:

01.) Power off the virtual machine.
02.) Add the following line to the VMX configuration file for the virtual machine:

workingDir=”"

For example: workingDir=”/vmfs/volumes/46f1225f-552b0069-e03b-00145e808070/vm-snapshots”
03.) You need to reload virtual machine configuration, run the command at the console:

# vimsh -ne “vmsvc/reload “

When you power on the virtual machine, snapshot files and VSWP files are created in the new location.

December 02, 2009

Change the folder for the picture screensaver in Ubuntu

Οne of thе default screensavers included wіth Ubuntu іs onе thаt wіll display whatever pictures уou hаve ѕaved іn уour ‘Pictures’ folder (/homе//Pictures). Τhe screensaver wіll randomly display a picture from thіs аnd аny subfolders.

However, thеre’s no wаy of customsing whіch folder thе screensaver rеads іf уou wаnt to uѕe уour Pictures folder to ѕtore pictures, but manage whіch of thеse images іs uѕed.

A workaround іs аs follows:

Create a nеw folder somewhere (іt doеsn’t hаve to bе undеr thе ‘Pictures’ folder)
Οpen a terminal window (select Terminal undеr Accessories)
еnter thе following:
gkѕu gеdit /uѕr/ѕhare/applications/screensavers/personal-slideshow.desktop(еnter уour password іf prompted)

Scroll down to thе lіne (nеar thе еnd) thаt begins
Εxec=slideshowΑdd thе following аfter thіs command:
--location=(Υou wіll hаve to uѕe standard escape sequences іf уou hаve spaces іn thе pаth.)

Ηere’s аn example:
Εxec=slideshow --location=/homе/myusername/Pictures/Μy\ ScreensaverΑnd thаt’s іt. Ѕave thе fіle, аnd restart уour screensaver. Ιt wіll now onlу search for pictures іn уour chosen folder.

May 08, 2009

Dell Latitude D610 Windows 7 Graphics Driver

I installed the RC of Windows 7 of a D610 last night and apart from it being a bit slow due to it having 512MB of ram its running it quite well. There were no Windows 7 / Vista drivers for this machine on the Dell website but all the XP drivers seem to work OK. The one exception to this was the Video drivers.

To resolve this I downloaded the drivers from here

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=1862&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go%21

I had to change the properties on the exe to run as administrator and in Windows XP compatabilty mode to install it but seems to be working fine.

March 05, 2009

Ubuntu - Connecting to stuff on my Windows network

I had been using the Dolphin file manager to do this previously as it was easy to use but the problem was when I wanted to play a music file or view photos it would have to copy them to the machine first.

I used the information here to allow me to mount network drives as local folders which works a lot bettr as I can then browse through the content as if it was on my machine.

March 03, 2009

iplayer downloads

This app lets you download shows from iplayer so you can view them offline

to install it in ubuntu

wget http://linuxcentre.net/get_iplayer/packages/get_iplayer-current.deb
sudo dpkg -i get_iplayer-current.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

you can then run
get_iplayer
to get a list of the tv shows

then using the number next to the show you want to download
get_iplayer --get 123

additional commands at
http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/documentation/

February 27, 2009

Crunchbang Linux

Decided to try a new flavour of linux on the netbook to see if by going with an Ubuntu based distribution there would be more up to date stuff avalable.

I went with crashbang as it looked like most of the stuff worked...even though it had a dodgy name
I followed this guide

I had to rebuild it shortly after as I found that if I installed the recomended kernel I couldnt get my Vodafone mobile Connect USB stick to be recognised by the netbook.

I installed vodafone mobile connect from here
follow the instructions under the Debian, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Linux Mint secion

Only other configuration I have had to do so far is to get the mic to work in skype I had to set the inbound sound to use the device HDA Interl (hw:intel,0) from the dropdown options in the skype sound devices configuration.

February 26, 2009

Backing up Acer Aspire One

I usd this method to backup the netbook tonight before I tried a different version of Linux

Had to zero the drive first to reclaim all the space I had been using otherwise my backup was just too large

Acer Aspire One Backup
AA1BACKUP is a backup solution for the Acer Aspire One based on free and open source software. It makes an exact copy of the drive, bit for bit, and therefore works with any file system, partition table or operating system. And to emphasize its operating system independence it can be installed from either Linux or Windows.

In Windows just download the installer from here.
In Linux open a terminal and run the following commands.

wget -O aa1blinux http://sites.google.com/site/aa1backupinstaller/1/aa1blinux
chmod 755 aa1blinux && sudo ./aa1blinux

The only selectable option is the drive letter or device node.

You can now reboot and press F12 to select the USB drive from the boot menu. The next menu will only have two options: BACKUP and RESTORE. Selecting either of them will start the fully automated backup or restoration process. There will be no further prompts or warnings.

A sufficiently large USB drive is obviously required to store the backup on. If your USB stick or external USB hard drive matches or exceeds the size of the internal solid state disk or hard drive you're set.

In most cases a smaller USB drive will also work due to the data being compressed during the backup. Not already compressed data is compressed by a factor of 2:1 on average at a speed of about 40 MB/s, which exceeds the write speed of any USB stick and most portable external hard drives. Free space is compressed by a factor of 250:1. Note that most of the free space may not be really empty, depending on the amount of data already written to the drive, but just not indexed in the file table. To get the increased compression ratio just overwrite all free space with zeros. There are probably a few freeware tools to do this in Windows, one of them is eraser. In Linux only a single command is required.

dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zero

Another benefit of zeroing the free space is an increased backup speed, especially if you only have a slow USB stick. And most of them are very slow. If the write speed is not specifically advertised or mentioned anywhere then it's usually just 3MB/s. External hard drives are usually fast enough, but a 120GB or 160GB backup will take a while in any case.

A fresh system installed from the recovery image with some modifications takes up about 2-4GB of disk space, depending on the amount of actual software removed or installed. The backup fits nicely on a 2GB stick and can then be used as an updated recovery image, which avoids going through all the modifications again on every reinstall.

The backup itself is split into 1GB files and stored in the backup folder in the top directory of the USB drive. The files are automatically removed before the next backup, but you can still keep several backups if you move them to another medium or simply rename the backup folder if there's still enough space for another backup.

And despite its name suggesting otherwise AA1BACKUP is not limited to the Acer Aspire One, but will also work with all other currently available netbooks like the Asus EEE, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Samsung NC10 or Lenovo S9. Probably most notebooks as well. There is however a limitation: it only makes a backup of the first physical drive and it does probably not work with non-SATA controllers.

As a final note a few words on the software used to realize this project. The installer is a custom version of Unetbootin and the distribution is based on Linux Live scripts with a slimmed down version of SLAX.

Upgrading the Memory in the Acer Aspire One

Bit of a big job to do this... if you are every brave enough instructions are here
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2673

Updating the Acer Aspire one Bios

Updated the BIOS today using these instructions

1. You need a USB flash drive (SanDisk or any Generic brand)
2. Make it bootable to DOS by following these instructions:
Just download the file from here
Set the distribution to FreeDOS 1.0 and set the drive letter to be the USB drive
3. Download the latest BIOS and Extract all files from the BIOS zip file onto the USB stick.
4 Reboot and press F12 to select a bootable device. Choose option 5 when prompted by DOS and ignore the error about a missing CD-ROM. Change to drive C: and if that doesn't work try drive B: instead.
5 Run the included batch file to flash the BIOS by simply entering its filename, The AC adapter must be connected or else the flash utility will wait until it is.


February 22, 2009

Vodafone Mobile Connect - Linpus

Found these instrucions to get Vodafone Mobile Connect working on Linpus and my Acer Aspire one. I use a Vodafone USB 3G device E172


Download the installer from here, and save it to your Desktop.

Then, open a terminal, and run:


cd ~/Desktop
sudo sh vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux-2.0.beta3-ALL-i386-installer.run


When prompted, enter your password

You will be prompted to enter users who should have permissions for this: enter your username, and root

When installation has finished, you should be able to run the utility from the terminal by typing:


sudo vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux


or, if you modify the entry in the Internet section of the Launch menu, so that the command "vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux" is prefaced with "sudo", you can run it by clicking on there instead.

Acer Aspire one official linux updates

found a website with some easy to install linux updates for the apire one

http://www.acer.com/aspireone/support/files/connect.html

February 19, 2009

Acer Aspire Netbook

After saying I wouldnt get one I finally decided that at £150 it was too good a bargin too pass up

The netbook comes with a cut down version of linux on it called linpus. Its quite locked down so that its nice and easy to use.

To unlock it I followed the instructions here

http://jorge.fbarr.net/2008/08/06/acer-aspire-one-tips-and-tricks/

First I unlocked the deskop by doing

SUPERUSER
sudo su -

NOTEPAD style editor
mousepad

But the thing is, when you replace xfdesktopnew with xfdesktop-xfce, a script called xfce-mcs-manager won’t start up, and that is what some people find so “horrible” about the regular xfce-desktop. If we open up the file xfdesktopnew located in /usr/bin/, we find the following:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -f /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager.new ];then
sudo mv /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager.new /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager
fi
/usr/bin/xfdesktop2 & >/dev/null 2>&1
sleep 5
if [ -f /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager ];then
sudo mv /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager /usr/bin/xfce-mcs-manager.new
fi
As you can se here the script xfdesktopnew starts the application xfdesktop2. What that script contains, I’ve no idea. Try opening the file for yourself, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Anyway, in order for this to work, change the line:

/usr/bin/xfdesktop2 & >/dev/null 2>&1
to:

/usr/bin/xfdesktop & >/dev/null 2>&1
Save it and close it. Next, open up the file /usr/bin/xfdesktop, and change line 6 to look like this:

/usr/bin/xfdesktop-xfce & >/dev/null 2>&1
Save, close, and reboot. You should have a fully working xfce desktop, with icons!


Usually when you’re in xfce you can right-click on the desktop to bring forth a menu. This isn’t enabled as a standard function with the desktop that comes with the Acer Aspire One. To enable it, do the following.

On your desktop, under the File category, select My Documents. When this opens, select File and then Terminal. When the terminal opens, type:

$ xfce-setting-show
This will bring up the xfce settings manager. Select Desktop, Behavior and click the box named Show desktop menu on right click. Voila, that should be it.


Installing Firefox 3

If you want Firefox 3 to be installed properly (via yum), you should add the remi repository:

# wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-8.rpm
# rpm -Uvh remi-release-8.rpm
Edit the file /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo, and set enabled to 1 under [remi] and NOT [remi-test].

Then we proceed with removing the old Firefox and installing the new one. Now, a regular yum remove firefox won’t work, as it’ll drag a buttload of dependencies with it. However, this will only remove Firefox, without its dependencies:

# rpm -e --nodeps firefox
Then install the new one:

# yum install firefox
That’s all there is to it.

Now, having said that, a friendly chap named Nacho Marin made me aware of a problem that had totally slipped my mind. It seems that there are several programs that are depending on some libraries that Firefox 2 has, and not Firefox 3. The Acer Aspire One e-mail client being one of them, and the RSS reader too. The missing libraries are libgtkembedmoz.so, libmozjs.so, libxpcom_core.so and libxpcom.so.

A big thank you to Nacho for the heads up about the library-files.

Update: It seems that several people were complaining about how the e-mail program kept shutting down for no apparent reason. It seems that they need more than simply the library-files. I believe I’ve located the files, and that you now should be able to have both Firefox 3, and the email client working. Give me some feedback to let me know how the script turns out.

I (Jorge) have made a script to make this a bit easier to fix, so stay tuned.

Update: Script is finished, instructions are as follows:

Become root and open a file named recover_firefox_libraries.sh:

$ sudo su -
# mousepad recover_firefox_libraries.sh
Place the following in it:

#!/bin/bash
#
## Script to recover Firefox 2 libraries
## Jorge Barrera Grandon
## Version 2
#
#
## Usage: ./recover_firefox_libraries.sh

WGET=`which wget`
RPM_URL="http://jorge.ulver.no/files/firefox-files.tar.gz"
MV=`which mv`
CHOWN=`which chown`
CHMOD=`which chmod`
RM=`which rm`
TAR=`which tar`
MKDIR=`which mkdir`
RMDIR=`which rmdir`

cd /root/
echo "## Getting hold of the Firefox-files.."
$WGET $RPM_URL

echo "## Unpacking the library-files.."
$TAR zxvf firefox-files.tar.gz

echo "## Moving library-files.."
$MV /usr/acer/bin/AME /usr/acer/bin/old.AME
$MV /root/firefox-files/AME /usr/acer/bin/AME
$MKDIR /usr/lib/firefox-files/
$MV /root/firefox-files/* /usr/lib/firefox-files/

echo "## Changing permissions and cleaning up.."
$RM /root/firefox-files.tar.gz
$RMDIR /root/firefox-files/
$CHOWN -R root.root /usr/lib/firefox-files/
$CHMOD -R 755 /usr/lib/firefox-files/

echo "## Done!"
What the script basically does is to get hold of the file firefox-files.tar.gz (so be online when running it), moves the libraryfiles, changes the permission, and removes the file and the unnecessary directories it creates. Make the file executable, then run it:

# chmod +x recover_firefox_libraries.sh
# ./recover_firefox_libraries.sh
Enjoy!

December 28, 2008

Getting full screen video on a second monitor using VLC

This was driving me nuts. I have just rebuilt my machine and previously was able to watch full screen movies using VLC on a second monitor. After the rebuild VLC refused to go full screen.. the picture would always flip to the main monitor. After a lot of playing I finallaly found the option under preferences.. show settings all.. video.... untick embed video.. This seperates the controls from the video window and was the only thing that seemed to work for me.

December 15, 2008

Unlock the Vodafone panel on the SE X1

The vodafone panel can be unlocked by changing the key HKLM/Software/SonyEricsson/PanelManager/Panels/Vodafone Panel/Locked to 0.

Hard Reset SE X1

I am sure I will need to do this at some point in the future.

Reset button is located under the Battery cover. Pull your stylus, along the Right side there is a round hole (no need to remove battery!)

Power off you X1.
Hold down the two "Soft" keys and turn power back on to your X1..
Release the two key....
You should see the white screen with blue text asking if you want to restore to the "factory" default setting....Press "r"

November 27, 2008

Dragging a file into command prompt on Vista / 2008 server

When entering commands into the command prompt if part of that command needed a file path you used to be able to drag the file from explorer into the command prompt and it would poplulate the full file path saving a bit of typing. Apparantly due to the elevated security permissions needed to run the command prompt this is no longer allowed. I finally bothered to look for a fix for this and found a work around.
Shift right click on the file in explorer and select copy as path.. you can then right click and select paste into the command prompt.

October 15, 2008

The terminal service client %1 has provided an invalid license

Had a problem with an old citrix environment today where they were running metaframe 1.8 on a Windows 2000 server that was also the domain controller.

They had rebooted the box and ICA clients were unable to log in. RDP sessions were fine.

There were no errors getting logged at all in the event log. After some playing about and trying different things I re-activated the Terminal Server licensing service and then restarted it and got a message about the database was corrupt. Entered all the CALS back in but this still didnt resolve the issue although now we were getting

The terminal service client %1 has provided an invalid license

in the event log

With some further digging I found an article that talked about deleting the following registry keys on the server that is running the licensing service.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\TermService\Parameters

Certificate
X 509 Certificate
X 509 Certificate ID

This then requires a reboot to kick in. After rebooting the box this resolved the issue and the clients were able to connect again

October 08, 2008

Event ID 12014 on edge and Event ID 12019 on hubcas

Customers Exchange 2007 server was reporting errors with internal SMTP certificates that had expired.

On the hubcas server they were seeing Event ID 12019
The remote internal transport certificate expired

On Edge it was showing they were seeing Event ID 12014
Microsoft Exchange couldn't find a certificate that contains the domain name xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To resolve this issue the existing certificate was looked at on the edge server to confirm that it had indeed expired
get-exchangecertificate | fl

A new certificate was then requested on the edge server using
new-exchangecertificate

get-exchangecertificate
was then run again to confirm that the new certificate was in palce and the SMTP service had been assinged to it.

The edge transport server then had to be re-subscribed back to the organisation.

New-EdgeSubscription -FileName "C:\EdgeSubscriptionInfo.xml"

copy the .xml file to the hubcas server

On the hubcas server do the following
1.Open the Exchange Management Console. Expand Organization Configuration, select Hub Transport, and then in the result pane, click the Edge Subscriptions tab.
2.In the action pane, click New Edge Subscription. The New Edge Subscription Wizard starts.
3.On the New Edge Subscription page, in the Active Directory Site: drop-down list, select an Active Directory site.
4.On the New Edge Subscription page, click Browse. Locate the Edge Subscription file to import. Select the file, and then click Open.
5.On the New Edge Subscription page, click New.
6.On the Completion page, click Finish.

to force a sync do
Start-EdgeSynchronization

August 20, 2008

Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2007 gives "service unavailable"

Just had a problem with my Exchange 2007 server where OWA was giving service unavailable.

I also had these errors in the event log

Event ID: 2268
Raw Event ID : 2268
Record Nr. : 3746
Source: W3SVC-WP
Category: None
Type : Error
Machine : ACISERVER2
Description:
Could not load all ISAPI filters for site/service. Therefore startup aborted.

Event ID: 2274
Raw Event ID : 2274
Record Nr. : 3745
Source: W3SVC-WP
Category: None
Type : Error
Machine : ACISERVER2
Description:
ISAPI Filter ‘C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_filter.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a AMD64 processor architecture. The data field contains the error number. To learn more about this issue, including how to troubleshooting this kind of processor architecture mismatch error, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29349.

Basically, you (or the software you were installing) switched your IIS site where OWA is installed into either a 32bit mode or ASP.NET 1.1. Since Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access 2007 only runs on ASP.NET 2.0 in 64bit mode, you need to fix it back.


The easiest fix that I found for this was to run the following

cscript C:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 0

Once thats completed run

cd C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727
aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Restart IIS and that should fix it..... did for me

August 19, 2008

VMware ESXi Command Line and SSH

ESXi 3.5 does ship with the ability to run SSH, but this is disabled by default (and is not supported).

1) At the console of the ESXi host, press ALT-F1 to access the console window.
2) Enter unsupported in the console and then press Enter. You will not see the text you type in.
3) If you typed in unsupported correctly, you will see the Tech Support Mode warning and a password prompt. Enter the password for the root login.
4) You should then see the prompt of ~ #. Edit the file inetd.conf (enter the command vi /etc/inetd.conf).
5) Find the line that begins with #ssh and remove the #. Then save the file. If you're new to using vi, then move the cursor down to #ssh line and then press the Insert key. Move the cursor over one space and then hit backspace to delete the #. Then press ESC and type in :wq to save the file and exit vi. If you make a mistake, you can press the ESC key and then type it :q! to quit vi without saving the file.
6) Once you've closed the vi editor, run the command /sbin/services.sh restart to restart the management services. You'll now be able to connect to the ESXi host with a SSH client.

August 08, 2008

PHP_CURL

Doing some work on a PHP based bulleting board today. I added a module that needed to talk to another web site. It needed to use a PHP add on call curl. I had change the php.ini file to include the php_curl.dll add on but it was still giving me an error saying that it was Unable to load dynamic library php_curl.dll.

The solution was that libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll must be present in your PATH. In my case I ddint have these files so I downloaded the PHP package package again which included these files and copied the directory with these DLL files and others to my PHP directory and then modified the PATH statement to include this directory. I could of just copied the DLLs to system32 but thought it would be easier to update this way.

March 17, 2008

Exchange 2007 OWA - 440 Login Timeout

A customer had a problem with their Exchange 2007 server today after they applied Exchange 2007 SP1. They were getting an 440 Login Timeout when we tried to connect internally to OWA.

Had a look at all the obvious settings in the GUI and command line and everthing looked ok.

In the end we fixed it by removing the OWA Virtual directory and re-creating it.

1. Run Get-OwaVirtualDirectory -Server to get the name of the OWA directory.

2. Remove-OwaVirtualDirectory -Identity "server\owa (default directory)"

3. New-OWAVirtualDirectory -Name "server\owa (default folder)"

4. restart IIS using iisreset /noforce


March 06, 2008

PowerGui

I found a nice little tool that helps you get to grips with Windows PowerShell. Its an easy to use GUI that includes all of the powershell commands you will need for AD and Exchange. I've been using it mostly for reporting where its easy to format the results and filter just the information that you want. It also shows the scripts that its creating in the background to give you a better understanding of whats going on.

Its a free tool and can be downloaded from

http://www.powergui.org/index.jspa

December 13, 2007

Exchange 2007 - Securing SMTP with SSL

One of the projects I'm working on at the moment has a customer with a large POP3 user base. They had recently migrated from another POP3 server to Exchange 2007. The previous system wasn’t secured at all so we moved the users without the security initially with a plan to add SSL security at a later date. We are now at the stage where we wanted to test securing the email traffic with SSL. Adding POP and IMAP went fine, we pushed this through an ISA server back to the CAS server and were able to run secure and non secure in parallel whilst we did our testing.

I couldn’t however get SMTP working. For these users we have set it up so that they connect to the edge server. Exchange 2007 creates a default authenticated SMTP listener on port 587. We were already using port 25 for normal internal email. All our clients were configured to that they had to authenticate with the SMTP server and they were configured to use port 25 for SMTP. During the migration we moved the DNS names of the old SMTP server to Exchange 2007 so there was no re-configuration required from the users. We then set up a firewall rule that mapped port 25 to port 587 on edge. This also would get around the bug where Outlook Express doesn’t like to use any other port other than 25 for secure email.

I loaded an external certificate onto the edge server and assigned it to the SMTP service. Now the SMTP service is a weird on. I'm not going to include screenshots as I don’t want to give the customer away so I will try and describe it best I can. When you do the get-exchangecertifcate command the SMTP service is always bound to the default generated certificate and whatever other certificate you assign it to which is different from the other services like POP or IMAP where they seem quite happy to jump certificates. You can’t remove the SMTP service from the default certificate by specifying none as the service and you can’t remove the default certificate.

The problem I was getting was that the server seemed to always be using the internal certificate when the external clients connected. Users were getting a certificate chain error and if you enabled logging on the receive connector it showed that it was indeed using the internal certificate. I tried and tried but I couldn’t find a way to assign the external certificate to this connector. I ended up placing a call with Microsoft and after 4 days they found a solution. The solution was remarkably simple but not obvious.

The receive connector has a setting where u can specify the FQDN of the exchange server that it responds to clients when they do an EHLO or HELO command. The certificate that Exchange will use it tied into this FQDN. I had not bothered to change this and it was therefore using the internal certificate. As soon as I changed this to the external certificate name everything started to work. I didn’t need to stop any services it just kicked in straight away. Checking the receive logs for that listener I could see that the external certificate was now being used.

November 30, 2007

Vodafone Branding - Grrrrr

I am angry at Vodafone today for making me tired. I got my wife a new phone as an early xmas pressie. A Sony Erricson K850i so she could take pics of Amy whilst they were out and about. The phone has been ok but was let down by some over sensitive soft buttons and a problem where the screen would fade to black at least once a day and then become unresponsive for a random amount of time before springing back into life.

As I hadnt seen too many posts about this problem I had a sneaking suspicion it may be a Vodafone branding issue so I decided to lookin into removing the Vodafone branding.

I did most of my reading on the expansys.co.uk forums. The people on there recommended using the tools from the website http://www1.davinciteam.com/index.html . Most people that had gone through the process seemed quite happy with the results.

I downloaded the client from the latest client from the website and paid my money for 10 credits. I didnt have to upgrade my USB drivers as the ones I had installed as part of the software that came with the phone seemed to work ok but a lot of people in the forms had to do this.

The client I downloaded connected to my phone and gave me the options to install some new firmware. I chose the Customized UK Blue firmware. It then went away downloaded the files and flashed the phone.

The firmware upgrade wipes all the settings in the phone. I had backed up the contacts to the memory card before I started to restoring these were easy. Setting up the WAP settings and MMS settings again for Vodafone wasnt so easy but after a bit of digging around I managed to get it all working again.

The phone acts like a different phone. Navigating around is loads faster, browsing pictures on the phone is really quick now and the over sensitive soft buttons werent an issue any more. I dont know how Vodafone manage to take a perfectly good working phone and make such a hash of it. The whole process took me about 3 hours from starting to read the forums to finally sending an MMS. If you have one of these phones that is Vodafone branded I would recommend you consider going through this process as the difference is well worth it.

Thank you vodafone for costing me £7.50 to remove your crap and 3 hours of my life. By all means add your logo to the phone if you must and pre stage them with GPRS / MMS settings but leave it at that please.


June 22, 2007

Exchange 2007 Free / Busy and Out of Office

Had a few problems with a recent install of Exchange 2007 where Exchange 2007 clients weren’t able to see free / busy information or set their out of office but Outlook 2003 clients were fine. Outlook 2007 uses the availability service for free / busy which is web based, as opposed to public folders with Outlook 2003.
In this case there were two problems that we had. I had to set the internal address of the Autodiscover service which tells outlook 2007 where the Availability service is.

To do this I used the following command

Set-ClientAccessServer -id server2 -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri "https://server2.jwarburton.home/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml"

make sure the address matches the SSL certificate name on the CAS server.

The other issue we then had was that everyone was uses a proxy server which was interfering with Outlook when it was looking for the autodiscovery service. A quick exclude for the autodiscovery URL pushed out by an AD policy resolved this.

A useful way to make sure its all working is hold down the CTRL key and right click on the Outlook icon in the task bar and you should see a new entry called test email auto configuration.

May 24, 2007

Changing Exchange 2003 routing group connectors in Exchange 2007


Today I wanted to decommission one of my Exchange 2007 servers. The server was running the mailbox, client access and hub transport roles. I had installed these roles onto another server and migrated the mailboxes across. I had also moved the internet connector that this server had been running. The two areas that I was unsure of was I had to move all public folder replicas off this server onto a new box and I also had to move the site connector as this server was a bridgehead for the 2003 servers I had.
To move the bridgehead for the routing group connectors I used the following command
I had to change the outbound server on one connector and the inbound server on the other connector
Set-routinggroupconnector –identity -targettransportservers
Set-routinggroupconnector –identity -sourcetransportservers

Removing Public Folder Replicas
To move all content from a public folder database that you are removing to a public folder database on another server
1. Start the Exchange Management Shell.
2. If necessary, run the following command to change directories to the folder that contains the Exchange management scripts:
Set-Location "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts"
3. To move all folder content from the database that you are removing to a public folder database on another server, run the following command:
.\MoveAllReplicas.ps1 -Server MySourceServer -NewServer MyTargetServer
Note:
This script operates by modifying the public folder replicas in a server's public folder hierarchy table. When you run the script, first the hierarchy changes are replicated, and then the contents of the public folders are replicated.
Note:
When you run this script, both the source and target servers must have a public folder database, and at least one of them must be a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox server.
Note:
When you run this script, an Exchange 2007 server that has the Hub Transport server role installed is required for replication to and from an Exchange 2007 public folder database.
5. When the script completes in the Exchange Management Shell, wait until all content is moved to the new server. This may take several hours. To check how many folders remain to be moved to the new server, run the following command. (When the move is completed, this command returns no results.)

Get-PublicFolderStatistics -Server
Note:
If the source database is dismounted before all its contents are moved, remount the database and run the MoveAllReplicas script again.