All posts by bsdman

Currently working as an IT Manager. Worked for an OIT company as a Network Engineer in 2011. Worked for a Medical IT company as the Network Administrator 2009-2011. Worked as the Senior Systems Administrator at a computer reseller from 2005-2009. Worked as a Computer Consultant for several small companies from 2007-2009. Worked as a Computer Technician at a computer reseller from 2002-2004.
Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Rip PAL DVD, Convert to NTSC

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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.

Linux

Anti-SPAM SMTP Gateway

Leave a comment

Ah joy of joys. One good, and bad, thing about Exchange 2007 is that you need to run a separate installation of an SMTP gateway. It’s good for security and also for lowering the load on the exchange server. It’s bad because that’s one extra point of failure, and it won’t work straight out of the box.

Up until recently we’ve been running a custom installed MAIA/Postfix/ClamAV/SpamAssassin server. The problem we’re encountering is the huge database files created by MAIA. Logging of every email is necessary, but we’re growing by 1GB every week. MySQL is a nice server, but even it has limits. One of those limits is when the server grows to the max of the HD – then all services stop. Never a fun time.

So as a backup plan, we installed a standard Ubuntu server running a standard SMTP postfix configuration. Only issue with that is it doesn’t have the anti-SPAM/greylisting (at least it has the AV installed). So instead of 99% of SPAM being blocked, it’s at 0%. Not fun.

Since I’m not the best at Postfix configuration, I decided to go with a package deal: ESVA (Email Security Virtual Appliance). Yes, it’s a virtual machine. You need to run a VMWare server of sorts (or workstation) in order to use this software suite. Click here for the website. So far it’s been a breeze to setup – it’s maintained by several people, has a forum board, and a few whitepapers on how to install/administer. I’ll be fully testing it out on a maiden voyage soon, so look for an update.

***UPDATE***

Here’s a few items that I learned during setup:
Stop “SPAM Not Delivered” messages
Edit /etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf and remove "notify" from the spam actions line.
Webmin stops working after an update or during initial setup. You MUST open webmin using the admin panel interface link (under tools).
If you want to edit the message body tags (the “scanned by ESVA” blah blah) go here:
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en
And edit the files you see (txt and html).
To keep /var low, do the following:
Turn on the script in /etc/cron.daily/clean.quarantine by changing the number 0 1
$days_to_keep = 14; in /etc/cron.daily/clean.quarantine
define(QUARANTINE_DAYS_TO_KEEP, 14); in /var/www/html/conf.php
INTERVAL 14 DAY in /usr/local/bin/mailwatch/tools/db_clean.php
esva-update and esva-configure are your friends
/etc/hosts is your friend too – You might need to add the IP of your mailserver and the name here

As a final update: I’m getting roughly 500MB worth of mail every day (SPAM and regular). It doesn’t appear to actually delete the SPAM as I have stated per the rules, but I set the days to keep quarantine to be 7 days instead of 14. 7 days X 500MB = 3.5GB. Weekends receive a ton less mail, so we’d probably be fine with 14, but I just want to make sure.

Microsoft

Show Extended Status Messages Windows

Leave a comment

I’m not a big fan of seeing the whole “windows is starting, please wait” crap that Microsoft makes me view upon startup. I like to know what’s really going on. Is it initializing something? Is it hung up? Am I wearing pants?

Well, that last part I can figure out on my own easy enough. And now I can figure out the first two as well. This requires the use of the trusty regedit application. Don’t make changes unless you know what you’re doing (or trust a guy who can tell if he is or is not wearing pants).

1.) Start >> Run >> Regedit
2.) Navigate to:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
3.) Add the following DWORD Key:
VerboseStatus
4.) Make sure the value of the DWORD is set to “1” (obviously no quotes)
5.) Reboot

Computer Hardware, Miscellaneous

Blackberry Curve 8300

Leave a comment

My work recently provided me with an all-expenses-paid Blackberry Curve 8300. Yay.

That’s both a good and a bad thing.
Good: I have a free phone that I can always check on my work email, personal email, sports scores, talk with people, take pictures of products, etc.
Bad: I have a device that keeps me always in contact with people that need my help.

So I’ve had it for about a month now. I stopped using the silly leather holder they provide in favor for a easier approach: I just lock it and throw it in the pocket.

Then, just yesterday, I stopped being able to move the ball to the left. Correction, I could move the ball to the left, but the cursor wouldn’t recognize any of my efforts. Up, down, right – they all worked just fine.

I’m not one to just sit around sulking, so I jammed a skinny flat screwdriver under the plastic (but metal looking) ring that holds the trackball in place. You can do the same – just above the T and Y keys. Just slowly pry it up, then the ring comes out. Then you can flip the whole phone upside down and the trackball assembly falls gently into your hand.

Blackberry Curve
Blackberry Curve

This is when I noticed a piece of crud (technical term, I know) on one of the wheels that spins. Crud free is the way for me!

Needless to say it all works now. Pretty sure I put the wheel back in upside down, but it doesn’t matter to the phone.