ryv's blog

One of my client's server pairs seems to be intermittent in its syncronisation of data. Here are a few commands to test the sync.  Using an elevated command prompt ( right click, run as Administrator ) execute the following: C:\Users\ryv> dfsrdiag.exe backlog /SendingMember:ServerX /ReceivingMember:ServerZ /RGName:RepGroup /RFName:"Data" So what does this do? The initial part of the command is dfsrdiag.exe - the program to run the diagnosis. The switches are as follows: /SendingMember:ServerX - this is the server pushing data to the replication partner /ReceivingMember:ServerZ - and this is the server receiving the data /RGName:RepGroup - DFS Management has servers in groups so it will want the group name /RFName:"Data" - DFS is capable of managing different folder groups with different sync settings so you have to specify the folder.  If all is going well the result from this command should come back with something like:  No backlog - member <ServerZ>

Recently for a motel client I rolled out 12 of these little babies. The UAP-Outdoor+ is a compact, apparently weather resistant access point. The website details are here:  https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-outdoor/ I chose these for a number of factors: they are designed for the outdoors 183M range (apparently) 300Mbps speeds 802.11b/g/n with plenty of bandwidth and a wide frequency band price point was pretty good (compared to other products) While not strictly producing a meshed network, the UAP-Outdoor+'s have a zero config handoff, so end users won't know as they move around through network range.  Configuration of the access points was really quite easy - Ubiquity has a great bit of software called UniFi v4.7.6 Controller for Windows. Installing this on my laptop, and connecting it to the same network as the first access point got things up and running really fast. UniFi Controller allows you to configure SSID's, guest network information and everythi

Recently I upgraded our several years old OTRS install to version 5. The upgrade procedure is exactly like all the others have been. It was straightforward and I actually found that the documentation was better this time around than it has been in the past. After backing up, upgrading and testing, I like, mostly, what I see. There are a couple of things that are a bit annoying though. When closing a ticket, the previous version would automatically put in subject in the closure note. Likewise, in the Owner Update note it doesn't do it either. So each time, I have to update it. Not a problem if you're only getting a few notes every now and then, but we are changing and closing tickets in some large numbers at times. Also, I have about 50 statistics generated monthly via a script I run. The syntax for doing this. From: /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.GenerateStats.pl -n number  -blah blah etc To: /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Console.pl Maint::Stats::Generate --number number  etc (from:  https:

Anyone working in the IT sector knows how hard it is to get a flow going without interruptions. Working in a small business and supplying support for everything in IT to our clients, the phone rings constantly (desk and mobile) and email never stops pinging in the background. Add to this our obsession with multiple screens, a billion web pages open, Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram etc and there is a huge amount of data overwhelming us. We also get jobs logged from our other staff members, clients can create their own and the phone calls / emails generally generate work to be done. Keeping up with all of this is hard, and the hardest part is keeping all the tasks straight and on point. We use multiple systems - OTRS and another, non-cool job management system for our tasks. This is a nightmare too - jobs coming in to both, keeping them updated and trying to remember if you've actually updated the job or not. Plus trying to keep on track with a complex task long enough to get the thin

Recently one of our clients relocated their main office and we moved their servers for them. Upon arrival, racking and cabling the XenServer hosts all powered up immediately. The HP StoreEasy NAS with all the data on it also started up. We noticed that our XenServer hosts had no IP addresses - no data was showing and they seemed to have lost their configuration. Uh oh.... we had a huge bet on getting this thing going by the end of the day with the managing director. There were beers involved and we were pumped to make it work. After fiddling around with the XenServers and trying to get it working and swearing a *lot*, I turned them all off then back on. Lo and behold they came up and it took a bit to figure out what had gone wrong. The answer was simple - the XenServer hosts are big, fast machines with a lean install on a high speed SAS drive and the NAS is slower - running Windows Storage Server 2012 and RAID'ed disks. The hosts had come up first, looked for the storage repo

I've been using OTRS for about 10 years now, starting when I was doing desktop / server support at uni. Since then it's changed a lot in the way it looks, but fundamentally it has remained the same. The great things about OTRS are: creating / modifying / updating and closing tickets is easy the interface is relatively straightforward creation of tickets from emails is easy reporting is straightforward open source and robust Since the early versions it's ticked all these boxes and I was very interested to see what OTRS 5 was going to bring. The interface is still the same, updated here and there with a prettier graph showing closed / opened tickets but generally the same. Fonts are still nice and readable and its good for what it does. We use it for our clients that have a maintenance agreement with us. We have them create tickets that we then update and put minutes against. OTRS has never had a parts component and we have always used a secondary system for tha

One of my clients, a non-profit, has a lot of files on it's clients. They need a way to digitally store these files, securely and with availability for certain people. They also need these files to expire and be deleted after a given length of time - usually about 7 years. These were the parameters I was given to search for a Document Management System (DMS) or more commonly a Content Management System (CMS). There are quite a lot of them, but most are designed for front facing information delivery - that is, to write something, put it up for review, have it reviewed and then published. We do not want this data published ever - and some CMS's make that a bit tricky to manage. So at the end of the day, I looked into several CMS systems that looked like they could be useful. The first one to be reviewed was OpenKM ( www.openkm.com ). It looked OK, was open source which is preferable and seemed to have solid security and publishing options. Backing up the database and upgradin

I've taken the plunge and upgraded my beloved Pavilion dv7 to Windows 10 from 7. I watched with baited breath yesterday to see if anything would happen, after all, I had signed up to get the upgrade and was prepped for it to happen. Nothing happened. I experienced sadness and then I watched my download widget in Rainmeter jump up to 1.5MB/s - our full download speed here. It stayed there for some time and then trailed off. OMG! I thought exultantly that my laptop would then upgrade magically and instantly.... but alas no. Nothing happened again. Anti-climactic was the theme for Windows 10 day. After several hours where I pointedly ignored my laptop and hammered away on the desktop, I patiently waited for something to happen. Around 4pm it did - a new windows popped up and said it was ready. Just a few things to do over 10 seconds, then the install would start. I click on the Go button and waited. It turns out that 10 seconds lasted 14 hours - I went home, slept, came back and the

As all the world (not literally) knows, the newest version of the Windows Desktop operating system Windows 10 (X?) arrives at the end of the month. I've been playing with it since it's early days and throughout the updates and newer iterations of it my feelings haven't changed much. I think the overall vision for the UI is missing internal design cohesion. My initial feeling was that they've tried to take elements of the Windows 8 menus, and blend them into the Windows 7 (and previous) familiar menu style. I don't like it. It's gaudy and unpleasant and for straight business work it doesn't speed things up at all. My other gripe with it has been that under a VMware Player install, it only starts up once every 3 or 4 times. That concerns me. What also concerns me is the dumbing down of the control panel. Accessing the stuff in there isn't for everyone, but the people who do want to get into it need access to the internals of the machine. I can't he

With 6.5 released we have started upgrading machines. Our initial upgrades were fairly straightforward and although the install of the Xentools was very slow and required numerous restarts it completed fairly well. We have had issues with 2012 server running Exchange 2013 - insofar that we've lost the network adapter and can't get it back. The solution seems to have been to clone the VM and then remove and add the adaptor back in. The restart took a very long time and there were issues with the Xentools install not working properly and difficulties with getting it to upgrade. We ended up removing it and reinstalling it however that wasn't really optimal and we blew our outage window but quite a margin. Before upgrading Xentools definitely take a snapshot of the VM if it's running Exchange. As we do more I will continue to update this site with more information.

I have a Google Sheets file that I put all the water information for our farm into. It's fairly comprehensive with formulas etc to let me know the following once I measure the water level from the top of the tanks: volume of water remaining amount used since the last recording date average usage since last recording date amount of rain we can have until the main collection tank overflows (so I know when to pump it up to the feeder tanks) I would like a summary of the actual levels in each tank in a nice little chart that I can import into our personal intranet site hosted with Google Sites (this part is ridiculously easy), but I don't want to have to change the site information overtime I think about it.  I found this: =FILTER( A10:A100 , ROW(A10:A100) =MAX( FILTER( ArrayFormula(ROW(A10:A100)) , NOT(ISBLANK(A10:A100))))) Now if you put that into a cell, alter the ranges to suit, it will give you the last number in the column (and maybe row, but I haven't

Recently our little company has been very busy and while it has been tricky to maintain a high level of service, it's something we are managing very carefully. Interestingly though, we have had clients ask us to do things quickly, easily or cheaply. Generally there is no difference in the service provided, however, as our time becomes more precious, it's easy to take the client's request and act on it in the manner they have requested. For example - "Can you quickly wipe these computers and then roll them out to be sold?" "Sure - how much time and effort do you want us to put in to this?" (read: how much money do you want to spend on using our valuable time). "Not much, just make sure our data's wiped and then get them out the door." OK, so we clear the data, wipe the free space or re-install after a Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN) and then roll them out. Now our client says to us that it hasn't been done properly and they wa

Recently I was required to update a number of XenServers that I've taken over. They were running 6.2SP1 but were about 6 updates behind. No problem, I'll just queue the updates up and shoot them over. Had 2 Windows VM's (2008R2 and 2012 server) and 5 Ubuntu 12.04LTS Linux Servers. The updates were fairly straight forward - I followed my own guide :-) After the final update was completed I booted up the VMs only to find the two Windows Servers came up no problems, and none of the Linux servers booted. None of them. They started up, black screen and white cursor in the top left hand corner and that was it. No boot no errors, just gone. I ran through some basic repair work and had no joy. I changed the GrubConf.py from  if arg.strip() == "${saved_entry}": to  if arg.strip() == "${saved_entry}" or arg.strip() == "${next_entry}": . Still no luck. I re-installed Grub - no joy. I booted from the Ubuntu server CD and tried to run rescue the broken

I came across elementary OS on LifeHacker I think and thought it looked pretty interesting. I've been looking for a lightweight operating system that's reliable and fairly full featured (I accept it won't be totally featured - that's the cost of lightweight) for use on various older laptops and the like. elementary OS is a free download with donations as optional. I downloaded it and burned it to a CD. Alas my favourite test laptop has gone the way of the dodo and is never to return (much like the dodo). I found a HP Pavilion D6 floating around, replaced the hard disk (it was toast) and the RAM (also toast) with 6GB. It's an i3 which doesn't really qualify as a lower end machine, but what the hey. elementary is based on Ubuntu linux and is quite heavily customised running a lightweight desktop called Pantheon. The current version of elementary is called Luna and it's nice to see they are in development of new versions and it seems like an active developm