Wesley Levels's Blog

Backup MBR on your Linux server(s)

It’s always useful to backup your hard disk partition table(s).
You can use DD to back-up and restore your partition table using the following commands:

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Configuring your RouterOS based router (did this on a Mikrotik 450G)

For monitoring a remote Small Business Server (2003) I used the built-in PPTP server from SBS. This way my monitoring packets are encrypted, and I don’t have to built an IPSEC tunnel.

My Nagios server runs behind a Mikrotik 450G with RouterOS. I wanted to let my Mikrotik log in as PPTP Client and forward traffic between the remote SBS and my Nagios server behind my Mikrotik.
This can be done by doing the following:

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Installing SBS 2003 (premium) from scratch

Some days ago I got a call about a broken SBS 2003 server (server wasn’t in production yet). Because it would take me more time to check what somebody else did wrong, I just reinstalled the server. During this install I came by some weird problems, so I wanted to put it on my blog as a reference.

Note: I had a worst case scenario. I had the first version of the installation CD’s. They didn’t had any Service Pack’s and had a bug; some problems with a DLL verification algorithm that prevents you from installing Sharepoint successfully after 24 November 2003. To check if you have an old installation medium, do the following:

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Just found out that NewSid will break your Windows Server 2008 R2 install when using it to change the SID. Also noticed that NewSid isn’t provided anymore by Microsoft. Microsoft wants us to use Sysprep.

Using Sysprep on your Windows Server 2008 R2:

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When your using a Linux distro as your desktop environment, and you have VirtualBox running with Virtual Hosts, you will notice you can’t use any USB devicesin you VMs. This is because Linux doesn’t give VirtualBox the right access permissions to access the local USB devices.

You can solve this by checking the GID of your “plugdev” group, checking if you’re a member of that group (first user is a member by default) and adding the following line to your /etc/fstab:

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When cloning a Linux VMWare machine, you will get problems with your cloned VM not recognizing your network card. This is because VMWare automatically creates a new MAC-address on your cloned machine (to prevent duplicate MAC issues). Your Linux OS however doesn’t know it’s been cloned, and will still have the same MAC address. To resolve the issue that your Linux clone doesn’t recognize it’s network card, remove the following file:

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When getting the error “Cannot send this item” in outlook 2007 (mostly because you want to forward a received e-mail), this has to do with the code behind hyperlinks and/or pictures in the e-mail. You can remove the hyperlink and/or picture, however this way you leave critical info behind.

I don’t exacty know what precisely goes wrong, however, you can work around the problem by changing the format of your message to richt text by selecting “Options”, “Format”, “Rich text”.

We always run into problems with the OWA interface of the Exchange Servers when configuring a new rollup pack on the servers. I would even be surprised to see a rollup pack in the future not messing up our OWA interface.

To repair the OWA interface, you can do the following:

Open the Exchange Management Shell

Go to your Exchange Scripts folder (something like *:\Exchange\Scripts)

Execute the command “updateowa.ps1″

We found out about this script just after installing Rollup Pack 9, however we are confident that this script will help when installing a previous rollup pack.

The explaination was found at Johan Veldhuis’s Blog. Thanks Johan!

When creating an Ubuntu server, I use my own collection set of commands to get a uniform  configured environment, just the same as all my other Ubuntu servers.

When booting from the Ubuntu cd, I just follow the installation steps. Depending on what I’m planning to use the server for, I let the system ddecide how to configure the First Hard Drive, and I manually configure the second Hard Drive with an own /data shortcut.

When choosing additional software, I don’t choose anything. I like to have a clean install and configure all software myself, so I precisely know what happened during install/configure.

After rebooting the Ubuntu system, when first logging in, I use the following commands:   

# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade

(update repositories and upgrade the system)

# apt-get install vim-nox

(installing the full version of the Vi-editor. The default Vi in Ubuntu acts kind of strange)

# apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
# apt-get install build-essential

(optional packages needed to install VMWare Tools if you’re running Linux on VM’s)

# vi /etc/network/interfaces
# /etc/init.d/networking restart

(I configure the network settings, then restart networking on the server to apply the new network settings)

# vi /etc/resolv.conf
# nameserver 208.67.222.222
# nameserver 208.67.220.220

(You can configure DNS servers in the resolv.conf file. I always use the above two DNS servers of OpenDNS, very stable)

# apt-get install ssh

(For administrating your Ubuntu server remotely)

# /etc/init.d/apparmor stop
# update-rc.d -f apparmor remove
# apt-get remove apparmor apparmor-utils

(Apparmor is sort of a firewall that can really mess up your system. Some software won’t be running as it uses to, because of Apparmor blocking to much)

# vi /etc/apt/sources.list
# deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib
# wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
# apt-key add jcameron-key.asc
# apt-get update
# apt-get install webmin

(I use webmin for almost all my Linux webservers, it’s an easy way to do some simple administration to your Linux server(s))

# apt-get install ntp
# cd /etc/cron.daily/
# touch ntpdate
# vi ntpdate
# /etc/init.d/ntp stop
# ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
# /etc/init.d/ntp start
# chmod +x ntpdate

(The above commands configure your Ubuntu server to use a NTP server. This way you can always be sure your server has it’s time configured correctly).

# vi /etc/default/bootlogd

(So Ubuntu records a log of your last bootmessages in /var/log/boot)

Now you have a new Ubuntu server, ready for what you planned to do with it!

I got this from a blog from someone else. Lost the URL of the blog. I will post the URL if I find it.
Step 1: Install the Windows RPC over HTTP Proxy component.
You must configure RPC over HTTP before Outlook Anywhere can be used.

To install the Windows RPC over HTTP Proxy component:
1. Open Control Panel, and then click “Add or Remove Programs”.
2. Click “Add/Remove Windows Components”.
3. Select the “Networking Services” component and select “Details”.
4. Select the “RPC over HTTP Proxy” check box and then click “OK”.
5. Complete the Windows Component wizard to add the RPC over HTTP Proxy component.
Step 2: Complete the “Configure SSL for your Client Access server” steps on the “Finalize Deployment” tab for Client Access.
Make sure that you have completed the steps listed in the “Configure SSL for your Client Access server” section on the “Finalize Deployment” tab for the “Rpc” virtual directory. For more information, see the following:
- Managing Client Access Security.
Step 3: Enable Outlook Anywhere on an Exchange Client Access server.
If you have enabled Outlook Anywhere on a Client Access server, Outlook 2007 users whose mailboxes are located on Exchange 2007 servers that are running the Mailbox server role will be able to use the Windows RPC over HTTP networking technology to connect to Exchange from the Internet.

To enable Outlook Anywhere on the Exchange Client Access server:
1. Go to Exchange Client Access Management.
2. Select the Client Access server that you will configure for Outlook Anywhere.
3. In the action pane, click “Enable Outlook Anywhere”.
4. Complete the Enable Outlook Anywhere wizard.
5. After you complete the wizard, there may be a delay as long as 15 minutes before your users will be able to use Outlook Anywhere.
Step 4: Enable Basic authentication for the Exchange Web Services (EWS) virtual directory.
This will enable Outlook clients outside the firewall to use Basic authentication to access the Availability service for free/busy information. This is required for deployments that do not use ISA Server 2006 or for deployments in which ISA Server 2006 or later versions are not configured to allow NTLM authentication.

To enable Basic authentication for the EWS virtual directory:
1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
2. Run the following command, replacing identity with the actual name of your server and the externalurl with the actual URL:

set-webservicesvirtualdirectory -identity “MYSERVER\EWS (Default Web Site)” -externalurl https://exchange.contoso.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx -BasicAuthentication:$True
Step 5: (Optional) Configure Exchange 2007 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 to Support Outlook Anywhere.
When you install the Exchange 2007 SP1 Client Access server role to support Outlook Anywhere on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008, you must modify the default Internet Information Services (IIS) concurrent connection limit. The default value is 5,000 concurrent connections. We recommend that you change this setting to a value between 20,000 and 65,535 concurrent connections.

To modify the default concurrent connection limit for Outlook Anywhere clients for an Exchange 2007 Client Access server installed on a Windows Server 2008 computer:
1. Open a Command Prompt window and run Appcmd.exe.
2. Click “Start”, and then click “Run”.
3. In  the “Run” dialog box, in the “Open” box, type “%windir%\system32\inetsrv”.
4. Right-click “Appcmd.exe”, and then click “Run as administrator”.
5. Run the following two commands:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config “Default Web Site/Rpc” -section:system.webServer/serverRuntime -appConcurrentRequestLimit:value -commitpath:apphost

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config “Default Web Site/RpcWithCert” -section:system.webServer/serverRuntime -appConcurrentRequestLimit:value -commitpath:apphost

For value, specify a number between 20,000 and 65,535, depending on the number of connections that you want to support for your Outlook Anywhere users.