Ramblings from The Montopolis Group

Since working with Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange 2007, I’ve put in quite a bit of time with the PKI/Certificate infrastructure for active directory domains.  Every service requires a certificate now, and you do NOT want to self-sign them. 

Purchase public CA signed certificates for public facing services (OWA, OCS Edge, etc) or better yet, get one of the nifty new Communicator Certificates.

But for internal-only services, Windows Server provides Certificate Services.

Here are a list of tips:

1. If you install Certificate Services WITHOUT IIS already being installed, your CA won’t be reachable via HTTP.   You don’t want this.  To fix this, install IIS and then type in "certutil -vroot" at the command prompt – this will quickly recreate the folders needed in IIS. 
2. PKIVIEW.MSC from the Windows Server Resource Kit is invaluable.  Run it and look for errors.  If there are any, fix them before moving on.
3. If any service complains about your certificates or certificate infrastructure, you must resolve those issues.  You can’t work around it!  The error messages are cryptic and its sometimes difficult to Google what you need without some serious effort.  Have patience and read everything you can.
4. It can take between 10 minutes and 4 hrs for certificates to published throughout AD.
5. The OCS Certificate Manager on our OCS Edge server appears to only rescan its certificate store once between 2am-3am each day.  I have not figured out how to force the update.  You might need to wait for this to happen before repairs to your PKI infrastructure are noticed.

I’ve been an UltraEdit user since at least 1995, so I don’t advocate other editors often. But this one has my full attention.  A nifty editor just for PowerShell – just what the geek ordered.

If you are using PowerShell as much as I am, the Intellisense and Syntax Highlighting are very welcome improvements.

Did you know spyware is typically the root cause of your computer running at a snails pace?

For the novice computer user, this may be difficult, but none the less follow along, you’ll learn something new!

The goal is to run a test on your computer and determine if any spyware is connecting out to the internet, which may cause your computer to slow down.

To run the test, open up your command prompt.
- Windows + R > “CMD”
- Enter “netstat -b 5 > log.txt” without the quotes and hit enter.
- Wait about 2-4 minutes and then press CTRL + C.
- Enter “log.txt” and notepad should pop up with the information captured.

Your log file will have a list of connection attempts to the internet that occured in the last 2-4 minutes. You log should read something like this:

Active Connections

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State PID
TCP computername:7904 ats-mda.dial.aol.com:5190 SYN_SENT 6592
[aolsoftware.exe]

TCP computername:7499 localhost:7500 ESTABLISHED 10668
[aim6.exe]

TCP computername:7500 localhost:7499 ESTABLISHED 10668
[aim6.exe]

In the log you’ll notice that each requesting “Application” is shown in brackets below the connection information. You can then use this information to determine any spyware that is talking to the internet.

If you’ve lost your HP iLO login or inherited a new server and can’t get into iLO, here are the defaults: http://docs.hp.com/en/AB464-9001B/ch06s09.html

Main thing to remember is the username AND the password are case-sensitive!!

If that doesn’t work, here are the instructions you need graciously provided by Chrissy:  http://blog.netnerds.net/2006/04/ribcl-reset-administrator-password-on-ilo/

Worked like a champ for three different HP servers for a new client we picked up…

I have David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) book (http://www.davidco.com/store/catalog/Getting-Things-Done-Paperback-p-16175.php) but I haven’t found time to finish reading it yet   Its that Chicken and Egg thing.

For those who are getting things done better than myself, and want to use Outlook better using David’s recommendations, here are a bunch of neat links:

Outlook add-in for GTD: http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/home/
Nice review and other links: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_archives/Feb07/pocketview.aspx

Its on my to-do list to check out….