Diary of a Network Geek

I got a kind of Christmas bonus Friday.

So, Friday, after long resisting it, I finally cleaned up my office.
I had all kinds of junk there, most of which I threw out. But, there was this older iMac. It was in decent shape, outside of a temperamental wireless card. So, rather than get rid of it, I asked the boss if I could have it. Mac lover that he is, he was thrilled to give it to someone who’d appreciate it. And, I think maybe he thought he’d converted me to the Apple camp. He hadn’t, but now I have two versions of desktop Windows, Linux and OS X in my house. Not to mention Novell and Linux server systems. So, now, when someone asks me to convert files for them, format shouldn’t be an issue.

Now, that is what I call a Christmas bonus!

Not sure who else will care about this.

I doubt most of my readers will care too much about this, but I do sort of follow what goes on at Six Apart. They were the first real blog company, I think. They made the first blogging software I used, MovableType, and, really, they were around before just about anyone else. As a company, they’ve contributed quite a bit to the blogging world, beyond their software. In short, I keep an eye on them because they’re one of the big players in the blog world.

In any case, according to this story on ZDnet, they’ve sold LiveJournal to a Russian online media company called SUP. They, apparently, are making a few changes, but the overall attitude seems to be a positive one. Personally, I wonder what made Six Apart sell LiveJournal. I don’t use it myself, but I read a couple of blogs that are on LiveJournal so I’m passingly familiar with them. I doubt that LJ made any big money for Six Apart, but, then, I didn’t think that was why they acquired them in the first place. At the time, I thought it was to convert people from LJ to Six Apart’s MovableType-based service, TypePad. Now, though, I wonder if that was it at all. If they were after some technology that LJ had, what would it have been? And, now that they have it, why dump LJ?

Not sure what’s going on there, but, no matter how you feel about Six Apart, they’re pretty savy when it comes to business and blogging, so they likely have a pretty good reason for their decision to sell LiveJournal.  And, just as likely that none of us regular joes will ever know what it is.

This time, we’ll restore the image we made last time

mkdir /tmp/server
mount -t smbfs -o username=my_user_name   //server_name/share /tmp/server

Now, this assumes that you don’t have anything installed on the new pc yet and are working with just a blank, unformatted hard drive. First, I restored the partition table and the master boot record:
# sfdisk /dev/sda < /tmp/server/images/cad1r-sfdisk-sda.dump
# dd if=/tmp/server/images/cad1-sda.mbr of=/dev/sda

And then the partitions. Since I had several files produced by split for my primary partition, I needed to take them all, in the right order of course. Now, keep in mind that when we used split in the last post, it added “aa”, “ab”, “ac”, etc. to the end of the file name.

# ls -l /tmp/server

will help you check which files you need for the next step.

Now, again, this all assumes that you had a single partition on the original machine and are restoring a single partition. First, change to the directory where the images are:

cd /tmp/server

Now, we restore the image files with the command below. You’ll have to “cat” all the files in the image directory on the server. Notice the pattern of the file names? That’s what split did for us. Now, rather than do the work manually to restore them, I used a little bit of shell code and a variable reference to save you the need to type the names of all the files. Also, the little “-” at the end of the line does matter, so don’t forget it. Oh, and this command should all be on one line.

cat cad1-sda1.img.gz_a[a-z] | gunzip -c | ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/sda1 -

Reboot into your new Windows XP clone.
It’s just like magic, isn’t it?

Hey, I get paid to be a geek, right?

So, I’ve been having some issues with my network and several Windows XP machines. In a nutshell, these machines seem to lose connectivity after approximately nine hours and fifteen minutes from the last restart. In other words, when my crazy-dedicated engineers work past their ninth hour, their machine slows to a crawl and eventually locks tighter than a Catholic school-girl’s knees. In any case, after weeks of troubleshooting this issue, I’ve come up empty. The best that I’ve got for these guys is either a) Don’t work such long hours or b) Reboot the machine at lunch.
In a further attempt to fully understand what is happening and at what level, I’ve gotten one of these machines and I’m going to install Windows 2000 on it. If we have the same issue, I know it’s hardware. If I don’t, I’ll be certain, within a reasonable percentage of sureity, that the issue is some arcane aspect of Windows XP. Either way, I should be closer to a real answer.

But, before I wipe my current experimental machine, I decided I wanted to back it up. Naturally, I turned to my old friend, Linux. A quick Google turned up a blog entry titled “Cloning XP with Linux and ntfsclone“. So, with a few modifications for my own environment, I followed the instructions there. Incidentally, I used the latest version of Knoppix as a boot CD.

First, open up a terminal/shell session and create a mount point with the following command:
# mkdir /tmp/server

Then, because my DHCP server didn’t give the Knoppix virtual machine the right DNS information, add your server to the /etc/hosts file.
Next, mount the network share that you want to dump the images on.
# mount -t smb -o username=administrator //server1/share /tmp/server

Check how your live CD sees the partitions you want to save with the following command:

# cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

8       0   78150744  sda
8       1   76211608  sda1
240     0    1939136  cloop0

I want to save that 80 GB disk sda, which has a primary partition sda1. First I saved the partition table and the Master Boot Record this way:

# sfdisk -d /dev/sda >/tmp/server/images/cad1r-sfdisk-sda.dump
# dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 of=/tmp/server/images/cad1-sda.mbr

and then the partitions:

ntfsclone -s -o - /dev/sda1   | gzip | split -b 1000m - /tmp/server/images/cad1-sda1.img.gz_

Note that this saved disk image in 1G files, in case the way I mounted the share to the network server didn’t allow for large files. Sometimes that can get tricky going from Linux to a Windows 2003 server and back, so I decided not to take any chances. It makes a mess of files, but at least it took the guess-work out for me.

Coming soon, the restore process! Keep an eye out!

This is old news.

So, lately, there’s been a bit of buzz about Windows Home Server. The press has gone on at length about how this was such a brilliant idea who’s “time has finally come” and patted Microsoft on the back for thinking of it.
Well, this is really old news. As I was going through some old magazines recently, before throwing them out, I saw a short article on the Memora Servio Personal Server. A Linux-based home server that did everything from share files to filter e-mail to act as a firewall for home users. The device was auto-configuring and sat between your home network and your broadband connection and even could be ordered with wireless built in. The magazine was from 2001.

Sadly, the company doesn’t seem to be around any more, though you can see the old Memora About page, thanks to Archive.org. Again, this company was doing this six years ago and, from what I can tell, only seemed to have closed up shop in the past year or two. I wonder how well this product sold? What’s more, I wonder if anyone has the distro around, with the configuration programs on it? I know, I’d love to get my hands on that!

So, some of my readers are geeks, too. Ever heard of this product? Or, maybe, something like it?

(And, if you haven’t looked at my pictures yet, scroll down to untill you see them, then vote on the sidebar!)

Two things for two different kinds of geeks.

Back when I was a one-man IT shop the first time, I read a book called “Time Management for Dummies“. I know, I know, one of those damn Dummies books, but it really wasn’t bad. The best thing it taught me was about ToDo lists and how to manage one and prioritize it and all that. Well, over the years, I’ve used a lot of different software to try and manage my various ToDo lists. Mostly, I used Lotus Organizer and synched it to my cranky, old PalmIII. (That was back before I had the New, Improved, cranky, old PalmIIIc!) But, it was always a hassle to deal with formating and I never could quite get all the little bells and whistles just the way I wanted. Then, I found ToDoTxt.org
It’s a shell script to manage a simple, text-based to do list.
You can run it via Cygwin, or even as part of your user profile on, oh, say, a Linux server. And, you can add in code to automate the insertion of future events that you don’t want to worry about for several days, weeks or months. In fact, there’s a bunch of extra code and even a little user community that’s sprung up around this super cool shell script.

Anyway, I thought it might appeal to the truly “hardcore” geeks who still read this blog the way it appealed to me.

Now, for that other thing…
It’s a book for bloggers. I figure if you’re reading this blog and you aren’t one of the aforementioned hardcore geeks, then you’re still a blog-geek. Now, sooner or later, all of us who write blogs have an embarassing, little “problem” called Writer’s Block. And we prattle on about whatever silly thing comes into our head, like, say a todo list organizer. Well, I haven’t gotten the book myself, but it sure sounds like it might just help us with those sad, lonely times when we can’t think of anything more interesting to write about than the sandwich we had for lunch. It’s No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. And, based on the table of contents, I might just pick it up!

It’s not quite the “birthday” of the mouse, but…

Today is the 38th anniversary of the first time a mouse made its commercial debut. That’s right, the mouse, that marvel of modern technology that most of us use daily is just a little older than I am. Invented by Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, the original mouse was little more than a square, wooden box, but the little device would change the world.  Engelbart showed how the mouse could let a user jump from text on one part of the screen randomly to another section without having to scroll through the text inbetween.  Doesn’t sound too revolutionary to us today, does it?  But, think about how you navigated to this page to read this little blurb, then try to imagine doing it without a mouse.

So, happy demo day, little guy.  Thanks for giving me a job and us a way to waste time at work.

Have I got a tool for you! (Oh, that sounded wrong in all the “not-safe-for-work” ways…)

So, I had this “little problem” at work with a machine from a remote site. We don’t have high-speed connections between offices, so each office is their own Domain, right? Well, no one could remember any username/password combonations on this machine so I could sign in and fix the other problem.
Luckily, I found the “Offline NT Password and Registry Editor“.

I used the bootable cd ISO and in less time than it took to download and burn the CD, I had reset the admin password and was working. Did I mention this is a free tool?

Oy!  This I’m familiar with!

So, I just got an e-mail from my lawyer.  You know, the one who did my divorce just over a year ago?   Well, some time back I did some work on their website, Affordable Houston Divorce Attorney, and fired off a bill to them.  They just got it and got things organized and a check is “in the mail”.  Naturally, things are tight all over, so I’m very familiar with this phrase, but, mainly because I say it so often!

Anyway, I was sure this was going to a black hole that I’d thrown a bunch of time into for no reward, but, suprise!  The check is in the mail!  I guess I can buy groceries and gas this month after all…

I really don’t mind flying with my boss, but I wish he’d stop saying that.

So, Thursday last week, things started to go wrong with our server in Bellechasse, or, as I think of it, the Sweaty Armpit of the Gulf Coast. First, it was a user who just couldn’t seem to connect. Then, there was another user who couldn’t connect, though that turned out to be a totally unrelated problem. After dinking around with the server and the workstation over the phone, we finally rebooted the server and the problems seemed to be solved.

Turns out, not so much. Friday I got a call shortly after 8:30AM letting me know that now four users can’t connect to the server. So, again, after a few minutes of screwing around with a work station, I had them reboot the server, figuring that what worked the day before should work again. Seems like sound logic, right? Well, it is a Windows 2000 server, so logic probably wasn’t the best tool to apply. Everything seemed fine, right up until the server hung up at the “Preparing network connections” message. We rebooted the server at least three times after that and even tried Safe Mode, but, to no avail. So, I broke the news to my boss who was barely able to contain his joy at having an excuse to fly.

I should mention that I’ve flown with him on several occasions without incident and, as far as I can tell, he seems to be a very fine pilot. Certainly the flight itself has been smoother than most commercial flights I’ve been on. And, being able to bypass any sort of security checkpoints or limited schedules is really nice. It means, generally, that I can fly over, fix the problem and fly back in the same day. All with out needing to fill out an expense report, I might add.

So, well before sunup on Tuesday, we flew over to a little flat spot on the edge of New Orleans they call Lakefront Airport. This trip, I noticed that the same roofs seemed to have the blue FEMA tarps over them, but more yards had the pre-distressed FEMA trailers in them. Not sure if that’s progress or not, but, somehow, it seems like it should be. At least more of the traffic lights were working. Certainly, that has to be considered progress.
In any case, we got to the office about 9:00AM and I walked right to the server and got to work. I started by rebooting, just to see if I was going to get lucky. Naturally, I wasn’t or this post would’ve just ended. So, I cycled through several different boot options and finally, after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I got the server into a semi-stable state by booting into Safe Mode with Networking Support, but via the Repair Mode on the Windows 2000 install disk. (No, don’t ask me to recreate the steps because I wasn’t taking notes and I was probably running a fever.)

So, guesses on what was wrong? Out of disk space. Or rather, there wasn’t enough disk space for Active Directory to run properly. So, I killed a bunch of temporary files and cranked down on the size of the virtual memory paging file. Sure enough, when I rebooted into “normal” mode, the server came up and everyone was able to log in and all was well with the world. All done before lunch, I might add!
And, so it was that I humbly asked to be brought an oyster po’boy, dressed, sans tomato, with fries for lunch while I attempted to kill all spyware and adware and other such nastiness. What I got was a catfish po’boy, two hours later, and one machine that still has some spyware remnants on it that need to be cleaned up. How fleeting is glory… Oh, and that’s not to mention the several requests I got that were far, far outside the scope of “fixing problems”, which was, in fact, my stated purpose.

Interestingly enough, when we touched down again in Houston an essential piece of navigational hardware in the boss’ plane locked and threw an error message. Then, up popped the infamous Windows NT “Blue Screen of Death”, upside down on that oh, so essential monitor. Yes, boys and girls, our lives depended on hardware that runs the most unstable, buggy, crash-prone version of Windows I’ve ever worked with.
Yeah, we sure cheated death again. Barely.