In an effort to diagnose it myself with the least amount of work possible I stumbled upon this VB Script which pings a host defined in a text document and outputs it to excel.

I hacked on it a little bit and came up with this:

Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
objExcel.Visible = True
objExcel.Workbooks.Add
intRow = 2

Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set InputFile = fso.OpenTextFile("list.txt")

count=0

Do While Not (InputFile.atEndOfStream)
	objExcel.Cells(1, 1+count).Value = "Machine Name"
	objExcel.Cells(1, 2+count).Value = "Results"
	count=count+2
	InputFile.ReadLine
Loop
objExcel.Cells(1, 1+count).Value = "Time"
objExcel.Cells(1, 2+count).Value = "Date"

Do While 1
	Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
	Set InputFile = fso.OpenTextFile("list.txt")
	count=0

	Do While Not (InputFile.atEndOfStream)
		HostName = InputFile.ReadLine
		Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
		Ping = WshShell.Run("ping -n 1 " & HostName, 0, True)
		objExcel.Cells(intRow, 1+count).Value = HostName
		Select Case Ping
		Case 0
			objExcel.Cells(intRow, 2+count).Value = "On Line"
			objExcel.Cells(intRow, 2+count).Interior.ColorIndex = 4
		Case 1
			objExcel.Cells(intRow, 2+count).Value = "Off Line"
			objExcel.Cells(intRow, 2+count).Interior.ColorIndex = 3
		End Select
		count=count+2
	Loop

	objExcel.Cells(intRow, 1+count).Value = TimeValue(Now())
	objExcel.Cells(intRow, 2+count).Value = date

	intRow = intRow + 1

	WScript.sleep 30000

	objExcel.Rows(1).Select
	objExcel.Selection.Interior.ColorIndex = 19
	objExcel.Selection.Font.ColorIndex = 11
	objExcel.Selection.Font.Bold = True
	objExcel.Cells.EntireColumn.AutoFit
Loop

All you have to do is create a text document “list.text” in the same directory as this vb script and it will layout the excel document for you without any modifications. Only thing you may want to change is the delay/sleep I put in on this line “WScript.sleep 30000″ which tells it to wait 30 seconds before continuing.

The best part is that I could feasibly give this to a non-technical tenant use it to troubleshoot their connection problems.
The host list would include something like their AP, the Gateway, google.com and another host thats known to be reliable to ping like 4.2.2.2

I found the SBSMonitoring instance of SQL using 1.2 GB ram. For an application that looks relatively simple that amount of ram consumption seemed too high. To fix the problem I did some digging and found these pages:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178067.aspx
Use Performance Monitor to set the “correct” ram usage on the SQL Server instance by using  the SQLServer:Buffer Manager object. Or just guess randomly like me.

http://dogriley.blogspot.com/2005/08/sqlservrexe-high-memory-usage-for.html
Set the maximum ram though CMD prompt

If you’ve got SQLServer Management Studio installed you can do it though GUI instead of CMD.

Connect to the instance of SQL, in this case “ServerName\SBSMONITORING”
Right click the Database instance and select properties
Then click the Memory section and put in your “Maximum Server Memory” (I set mine to 100MB)

Since our staff uses sharepoint VERY little I decided to limit that instance to 500MB. Connecting to that with SSMS wasn’t as easy as the SBSMonitoring instance. If you type in “ServerName\MICROSOFT##SSEE” it doesn’t connect. However this text does work “\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query”

Problem: Macs couldn’t access shares over SMB
Solution:

Group Policy Management > +Domains > +Domain.Name > +Domain Controllers > Right click Edit Default Domain Controllers Policy

+Policies > +Windows Settings > +Security Settings > +Local Policies > Click User Security Options

Microsoft network client: Digitally sign communications (if server agrees) : ENABLED
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always) : DISABLED
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (if client agrees) : ENABLED

Start > Run > gpupdate /force (not sure if this step is needed)

Run this command from the Exchange management shell to allow anonymous connections.

Set-ReceiveConnector -Identity “Default <insert server name>” -PermissionGroups “AnonymousUsers”

In the Firefox address bar type “about:config”
Locate the key called “network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris”

Double click and put in a comma seperated list of all your internal sites. In this case I needed to add “companyweb” Didn’t even need a restart and FF no longer asks me for authentication to the SharePoint site

[user@test ]$ tail -f /var/log/samba/log.smbd

[2009/07/29 10:06:14, 0] printing/print_cups.c:cups_connect(69)
Unable to connect to CUPS server localhost:631 – Connection refused

After some google work I found this.

For those seeing the same error, it’s apparently solved by adding this
line to [global]:
printcap name = /etc/printcap

So a quick trip to “/usr/local/etc/smb.conf” and I uncomment:

;     printcap name = /etc/printcap

Then I start samba “/usr/local/sbin/smbd -D” and all is good in the world once again.

This test is just to pull out Office and Windows verision/keys. Not interested in extra stuff like Visio or Project right now since they’re special cases.

Had to do some hacking because even though only Outlook from SBS 2003 is installed on a few computers OpenAudit reads it as full Office 2003 messing up the reporting. To fix this on machines that had OEM Office 2000 installs that don’t register I added the search for ‘Microsoft Office Outlo’

SELECT s.net_user_name, s.system_name, m1.ms_keys_uuid,
if( left( m1.ms_keys_name, 22 ) = ‘Microsoft Office Outlo’, ‘n/a’, m1.ms_keys_name ) AS OfficeVersion,
if( left( m1.ms_keys_name, 22 ) = ‘Microsoft Office Outlo’, ‘n/a’, m1.ms_keys_cd_key ) AS OfficeKey,
m2.ms_keys_name as WindowsVersion, m2.ms_keys_cd_key as WindowsKey
FROM `system` AS s
INNER JOIN `ms_keys` AS m1 ON s.system_uuid = m1.ms_keys_uuid
LEFT JOIN `ms_keys` AS m2 ON m1.ms_keys_uuid = m2.ms_keys_uuid
WHERE left( m2.ms_keys_key_type, 6 ) = ‘window’
AND (left( m1.ms_keys_name, 22 ) = ‘Microsoft Office Profe’
OR left( m1.ms_keys_name, 22 ) = ‘Microsoft Office Small’
OR left( m1.ms_keys_name, 22 ) = ‘Microsoft Office Outlo’)
GROUP BY m1.ms_keys_uuid

Once I understood the relationships between services, hosts, and commands the whole thing came together pretty quickly. Also props to Brian for answering all my questions and helping me fix the final email problem. Definitely the most rewarding work project I’ve had in a while.

Links:

http://www.section6.net/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_Nagios_in_FreeBSD

http://bobcares.com/index.php/blog/?p=67

http://nagioswiki.com/

http://nagiosexchange.org/

A laptop came in from the field that had the internet connection hijacked. It would only go to some bogus anti-spyware site, and occasionally opens a bunch of popups.

I ran hijackthis without a problem, then I try to run spybot.

And when I hover over the “ok” this happens.

So that made me laugh. Real sneaky.

Finished up by running LSPFix.exe and removing a dll hook reported by Hijackthis. Finally a reboot and update of Nod killed everything and the internet worked again.

Solution: Spam filtering services.

So I got hooked up with Verizon business, who handles all the cell/WAN cards at work already, they offer an anti spam/virus filtering solution for $2.70 per mailbox. We’ve only got ~35 boxes so it sounded like a decent deal. So I attend a 1 hour phone call/demo thing and configure optimum settings while on the phone with the rep. Contact our ISP (I forward mail from pop-boxes to exchange) get them to switch over our MX records and .. I’m done.

Less than a month later I find http://www.spamstopshere.com It’s gotten some really good reviews and is a hell of a lot cheaper than Verizon (almost 50%). http://www.spamstopshere.com/antispam_pricing.aspx

After our contract lapses I’ll be making the change. Will end up being ~$300-$400 dollar savings over the course of a year.