Using PowerShell to add windows features on Windows 7

Rob — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:43:53 +0000

On server 2008r2 you can do import-module servermanager & then add-windowsfeature to configure features etc.. from PowerShell, this doesn’t exist out of the box on 7, however if you install this: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/PSClientManager you have an equivalent set of modules

Handy eh!

Rob

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Problems removing first Exchange 2003 Server

neilc — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:22:39 +0000

Recently had a problem un-installing the first Exchange 2003 Server in the organisation even after moving off all the Users, Offline Address Book, removing the RUS etc. etc.

“One or more users currently use this mailbox store. These users must be moved to a different mailbox store or be mail disabled before deleting this store”.

Doing an AD Search for Exchange recipients and either sorting by the Exchange Server I want to remove or explicitly searching for Exchange Home Server came up with nothing….. hmmm

Tried running an advanced AD find and hey presto, it found two users that seem to have some details of once being enabled on that Exchange Server. Once I had removed the Exchange attributes from those accounts I could un-install Exchange.

Here is how to perform the advanced search:

In Active Directory Users and Computers right-click your domain and choose ‘Find’
Click ‘Advanced’ and then choose ‘User’ from the Field menu
Now choose ‘Exchange Home Server’ from the list.
Set the condition to ‘Ends With’ and type the name of your Exchange Server
Click ‘Find’

Good luck

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Installing Proliant Support Pack to DL385 G1 running Windows 2008 R2

neilc — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:54:49 +0000

We came across an issue recently where-by we had a DL385 G1 running Windows 2008 R2. As this OS is not on the supported matrix for this Server it means that there isn’t a PSP for it and therefore no monitoring for us. If you run the setup you will received a ‘Failed Dependencies’ alert against the HP Insight Management Agents and HP Insight Diagnostics Online Edition and when you view those failures you will see them as listed below.

How do we fix this then? We need these dependencies on so we can monitor the status of the Server.

Easy peasy….. well, it is now I figured out how to do it

Right-click the setup.exe file and properties, select the Compatibility tab and enable the ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’ option then select ‘Windows Server 2008 (Service Pack 1)’ from the drop down. Apply and Ok and you are now good to go.

Run the setup.exe again and this time it will meet the requisites and let you install all the agents etc.

Good luck.

Neil

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PowerShell string manipulation

Joe — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:01:16 +0000

Whilst trying to automate some reporting automation and analysis , I overcome a requirement to reformat a csv ( loosest sense of the term) so that PowerShell will process it. The following is a useful demonstration of how to manipulate text data and reformat it, also the use of regex (Regular Expression) in PowerShell to identify the current days file.

This has been tested against PowerShell 1.0 on Microsoft Windows Server 2003

##
# A csv Files report is created but you are unable to load it as a csv File due to irregular formatting of the report.
# this will serve as a good example of string manipulation.
#
# Issues with csv file
# remove top 6 lines, header information not required.
# headers contain , but are not quoted, so you now have more columns than data
# trailing , stop PowerShell loading csv as you can not have a blank header
# the data is includes a % sign. this then stop it being a number when imported into SQL / Excel
#———————————————————–
#
#
$tmpfile    = “temp.csv”
$mydat        = (get-date ((get-date).adddays(-1))-uformat “%Y%m%d”)    # get yesterdays date in the correct format
$filter        = [regex] “^Daily-View.*$mydat[0-9]{6}.csv$”            # Use regex to find today’s file
$csvfile    = Get-ChildItem -Path “c:Joetest*.csv” | Where-Object {$_.Name -match $filter} # return 1 filename

#              use PowerShell to drop the first 6 lines of unwanted text at the beginning of the file
#
$csvContent = get-content $csvfile

$csvContent | select -last ($csvContent.count -6) | Out-File $tmpfile

#             replace “, %”   with ” %”
#
$csvContent = “”
$csvContent = get-content $tmpfile
$csvContent[0] = $csvContent[0].replace(“, %”,” %”)

#             remove trailing , on header line
#
$csvContent[0] = $csvContent[0].substring(0,($csvContent[0].length)-1)     # remove the last char on the line

#             remove all the “%” signs from the data ( but not the header)
#
$counter = 0
foreach ($line in $csvContent)
{
    if ($counter -ne 0)     # skip the header line
    {
    $csvContent[$counter] =$csvContent[$counter].replace(“%”,”")
    }
$counter++
}

#            output the plain txt file
#
$csvContent | out-file $tmpfile

#             now you can import the file as a csv with no errors
#
$csvdata = import-csv $tmpfile
$csvdata

#        ————————————–
#         now you can do stuff with the data here
#        ————————————–

#         Remove old temp file
#
if (test-path $tmpfile)
    {
        remove-item -path $tmpfile -force
    }

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URL Rewrite module for IIS7

Rob — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:36:05 +0000

As part of a larger project I’ve been involved with which uses an IIS7 web application (I’ve been helping the client with their infrastructure and integrating the application with AD) we hit an issue where some 3rd party pieces of code were using absolute links *tut tut*! rather than relative ones, this had the side effect that a user would start off their session using an SSL secured https session & after performing certain tasks would find themselves on http. Not ideal! The application also has a requirement that the web servers are able to connect to themselves on port 80 – this could not be changed & interfering with this connection would break functionality.

To resolve this I’ve implemented the Microsoft URL Rewrite module 2 for IIS7, with the following configuration:

Download and install the IIS URL re-writing module: http://www.iis.net/download/urlrewrite
Go to the site in IIS manager & navigate to URL Rewrite in the right hand pain
Create a new inbound rule with the following settings:
Match URL:

Requested URL: ‘Matches the pattern’
Using: ‘Regular Expressions’
Pattern: ‘(.*)’
Ignore Case: ‘True’

Conditions:

Input ‘{HTTPS}’ Type ‘Matches the pattern’ Pattern ‘^OFF$’
Input ‘{LOCAL_ADDR}’ Type ‘Does not match the pattern’ Pattern ‘127.0.0.1’

Action: ‘Redirect’ Redirect URL: ‘https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}’ Append Query String: True Redirect type: ‘See Other (303)’

This will not only correct broken URLs which get returned but will redirect users who hit the site via http to https which is a requirement for the service.

Handy fix – I’d often use TMG / ISA to resolve this but this customer’s solution does not feature those products (the site is being deployed internally).

Rob

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Oracle Virtual box 3.2.6 duplicate UUID Issue when copying disks files

Joe — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:39:18 +0000

I have built a new VM recently using VirtualBox and needed to use it as my base image, I stop the VM and copied the disk files to a new name and location. I then tried to create a new VM and attach the copied disk, only to get the following error

“Failed to open the hard disk”

“Cannot register the hard disk ‘testdisk2.vdi’ with UUID {UUID} because a disk ‘Testdisk1.vdi’ with {UUID} already exists in the media registry””

The solution is to use the command line tool to clone the drive as follows:

open a command window (start > Run > cmd)

cd C:Program FilesOracleVirtualBox (move to the program files folder)

VBoxManage.exe clonevdi “testdisk1.vdi” “f:VirtualBoxtestdisk2.vdi”

This will clone the drive to the new file and location which you can then use. This will need to be done for each subsequent copy.

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Windows 2008 R2 activation problem ( 0x8004FE2F , 0x8007232B on x64 servers)

Joe — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:16:06 +0000

Like the 100′s of times before, you install Windows 2008 R2 on to a server , try activating it ,and get the error :-

0x8007232B – DNS name does not exist

then you remember to set the proxy settings.. you open internet explorer and change the proxy settings , you can now browse the internet, and try activation again

but this time it still fails… that’s not supposed to happen, as you can access the web. (also phone activation completely failed at this point too.)

This time it fails with code 0x8004FE2F

You find other blogs on the internet, which suggest that its your proxy settings that have not been set, and they are right but what they don’t tell you is specifically its Internet Explorer (64 bit) you need to set the proxy for. I had inadvertently set the IE (32 bit) settings previously.

Happy installations.

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Archiving Event Logs

Rob — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:33:34 +0000

As part of a recent engagement I was asked to implement a solution to automatically export & archive System and Security logs from servers to a central location, the requirements were:

Nightly time stamped archive of Security and System event logs to a central location
Clear the local log once the archive has been successfully taken

I put together the following PowerShell script to achieve the above:

$locallocation = "c:logs"
$remotelocation = "\fileserverEventLogs"
$localmachine = $env:computername

$evtlgs = Get-WMIObject -Class Win32_NTEventLogFile -Computer $localmachine
foreach ($log in $evtlgs)
    {
    if ($log.LogFileName -eq "System" -or $log.LogFileName -eq "Security")
        {
        $timestamp = get-date -f yyyyMMddHHmmss
        $path = $log.LogFileName + $timestamp
        $store = $locallocation+$path+".evt"
        $backup = ($log.backupeventlog($store)).ReturnValue
        if($backup -eq 0)
            {
            $log.ClearEventLog() | out-null
            }
        move-item $locallocation* $remotelocation$localmachine
        }
    }

The above script is executed by a Scheduled Task (which on another note are brilliant on Server 2008), the lines you’re interested in are the top 2 lines which configure a local location to write the log out to and the remote location to move the log to once it has been written. I ran this script using a service account which has permission to write to the local and remote locations.

If you wanted a different selection of logs to be archived you would adjust the

if ($log.LogFileName -eq "System" -or $log.LogFileName -eq "Security")

line to suit your requirements.

In our requirement the logs had to be archived daily, this was simply achieved by configuring task scheduler to run once per day at the desired time, no code changes are required.

The requirement for only clearing the local log if the export was successful is met by checking the exit code form the backup, if this wasn’t 0 then the log wont be cleared.

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“The AD General Response is above the configured threshold” and “AD Op Master response is above the configured threshold” on a x64 bit Domain Contoller

Daniel Davies — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:16:03 +0000

We came across an issue today where the following two alerts were exceeding there thresholds “”The AD General Response is above the configured threshold” and “AD Op Master response is above the configured threshold”. The DC in question was a x64 windows 2008 machine and interestingly enough we had x86 DC in the same site which did not exhibiy any of the issues.

So we had a look at what version of oomads (AD Management Helper Objects) on the x64 DC only to find the x86 oomads installed , so we simply removed the x86 version and installed the x64 version of oomads and the alerts just disappeared

Daniel Davies

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Exchange 2010 – cant create new distribution group

Ashley Moore — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:23:26 +0000

When trying to create a new distribution group through EMC you may receive the following error message at the end of the wizard:

Error:
Couldn’t find object "UserAccount". Please make sure that it was spelled correctly or specify a different object. Reason: The recipient UserAccount isn’t the expected type.

Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
new-DistributionGroup -Name ‘test’ -Type ‘Distribution’ –OrganizationalUnit ‘OU’ -SamAccountName ‘test’ -Alias ‘test’

The reason for this is that when creating a Distribution Group it tries to add the mailbox of the user creating it as the manager of the Distribution Group and usually the Admin account that creates the Distribution Groups will not be Mailbox enabled.

To get around this you can use the New-DistributionGroup cmdlet with the ManagedBy Parameter:

new-DistributionGroup -Name ‘test‘ -Type ‘Distribution’ –OrganizationalUnit ‘YourDomain/Distribution Groups’ -SamAccountName ‘test’ -Alias ‘test’ –ManagedBy ‘MailboxEnabledAccount’

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