Monthly Archives: September 2008

Miscellaneous

Virus/Trojan Alerts

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I usually don’t do this: if you get infected by a virus/trojan/adware etc it’s almost 100% YOUR FAULT. No way around that – you probably clicked on something and installed it. Just be safe.

But since a lot of phishing sites/bad people are getting rather clever with new sites…

Here’s what is hitting work now and in the past:
Bank alerts – Subject “Bank Of America AIert: OnIine Access Suspension Message” Link to .html internet page for phishing scam.
eCard – Subject “You have received an Greeting eCard”, Filename “ecard.zip”
Account suspension – Subject “Your internet access is going to get suspended”, Filename “user-EA49943X-activities.zip”

It’s never good practice to open zip files from any source. Some problems arise when the ecard is coming from a friend or family member, but those will never be in .zip format.

Use virus protection – a standard consumer firewall (either built-in on your wireless router or a software piece such as “zone alarm”) will NOT protect you from downloading a virus. That is a common misconception.

Linux, Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Test SMTP Using Telnet

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I’ve been using this more and more and have finally memorized most (if not all) of it. But this is for those of us who don’t really like to remember useless information.

Start -> Run -> CMD
telnet
open mail.mailserver.tld 25
At this point the server should respond with a 220 mail.mailserver.tld ESMTP Mail Service.
ehlo test.com
The server then should respond with 250 mail.mailserver.tld along with all the supported features of the mail server
mail from:tester@test.com
250 Sender OK
rcpt to: admin@test.com
At this point, the server should say 554 Relay access denied. This means your server is not an open relay.
rcpt to: actualemailaddress@mailserver.tld
250 Recipient OK
data
354 Start Mail input; end with CRLF.CRLF
subject: subjecthere
You’ll have to hit enter twice after the subject, then go on and type the body.
body here.
Note the . at the end – you’ll have to type a return and another . to finish.
Then there should be a server response 250 Queued mail for delivery. You can quit now.
quit

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

XBMC Keyboard Controls

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Since my memory isn’t what it used to be (they say the memory is the first to go), I have decided to put down the keyboard controls for XBMC. This is for DVD playback. Long story short:
I have a server with a ton of ISO’s of movies
I have a decent computer hooked up to
A very nice HD TV via DVI-HDMI cables
XMBC allows me to play any movie I want, whenever I want.

x – stops the movie, returns to movie list
s – brings up shutdown window
p – pause / play
space bar – pause / play
r – rewind
f – fast forward
up arrow – next chapter
down arrow – previous chapter
right arrow – fast forward 30 seconds
left arrow – rewind 30 seconds
t – show title and real life time
i – info on data stream
o – status on chapter number and time
s – subtitles on/off
m – menu

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Rip PAL DVD, Convert to NTSC

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The people I work with always seem to find ways to make me think, search, and try. Although, as of late, it’s become quite hard to “stump the IT person”.

Guy came over and had a foreign movie that he wanted a duplicate created. Foreign to me is anything outside of the US of A. PAL happens to be outside the US of A. This DVD was created in the US of A, but then banned. So this copy was converted to PAL. I want it back!

Before I get too far into things, this is for WINDOWS OS COMPUTERS! I know there are plenty of Linux applications out there to do the same things (or at a minimum “very similar things”), but since I work on Windows machines all day, I decided to make it easy on everyone. You have a *nix post you want up here? Send it to me.

So basically you’ll need a few things (besides the obvious):
DVD Ripper – any should do, I use DVDFab though
VOB Blanker – free program
DVD Shrink – another free program

1. Rip the Movie (not to ISO format)
2. Open VOB Blanker, search for the IFO file
3. In the middle of the screen, find the chart with your VOB file listed
4. Right-click on the VOB file and select Video Attrib
5. In the window that opens up, select NTSC instead of PAL (or the opposite if you need PAL instead. Do the math)
6. On the bottom of the main window press the giant PROCESS!! button.
7. After about 10 minutes, your movie should be finished. Burn the movie – I used DVD Shrink to do this

It tested fine so far, and I’m not aware of any complications. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you.

Miscellaneous

PS3 and Xbox360 Reset Video Settings

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I haven’t had to deal with this yet, but knowing my luck.. well, we’ll just say it’s probably a good idea to write this down.

Xbox360 – To reset to 480i.

Remove any Discs from the drive
Turn off the console
Turn on the console using the Controller
Press and Hold the Y button
Press and Hold the Right Trigger

PS3 – To reset to 480i

Remove any Discs from the drive
Turn off the console
Press and Hold the Power button on the console
Wait for a second beep

That’ll probably help someone out.

Microsoft

Domain Controller Replication Failure

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I have a client that has two domain controllers. When rebooting the PDC, we noticed that access to the Exchange server would stop. Traced the issue back to a GC not being found problem. Added the second DC to be a GC (it’s not recommended to have the Infrastructure Owner be a Global Catalog server, but with only 2 servers to play with…) so that the user systems would be able to use secondary DNS.

But then I noticed in the eventviewer that we were receiving an error:
Replication Failure: The reason is: The source server is currently rejecting replication requests.
Not good.
You can find out the exact error easier by going to Start >> Run >> replmon. Add your entire domain to the list, then expand out the servername. You’ll see red x’s on the non-replicating servers. Click on one of those red x’s to see the exact logs.

The fix:
In a command window, type:
repadmin /options SERVERNAME -DISABLE_INBOUND_REPL
repadmin /options SERVERNAME -DISABLE_OUTBOUND_REPL
The “-” is very important in this instance. It removes the restrictions. + would therefore add the restrictions.