Best posts made by Dashrender

@siringo

Bay1 and 2 show SSD, Bays 3-5 show HDD, are you sure those are Solid State Drives?? I mean I see the QLC (I assume quad level cells), but it's worth confirming!

@Pete-S said in Another new server question:

@Dashrender said in Another new server question:

@siringo
Bay1 and 2 show SSD, Bays 3-5 show HDD, are you sure those are Solid State Drives?? I mean I see the QLC (I assume quad level cells), but it's worth confirming!

It's SSD because it says SSD on the same line

It's actually these: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1223-thinksystem-5210-entry-6gb-sata-qlc-ssds

Micron 5210 SSD drives with Lenovo stickers and maybe firmware adjustment for Lenovo.

uh - I missed that - thanks...

@dafyre said in Turn server into backup storage for remote servers?:

@Pete-S SSH will pretty much only be limited by the bandwidth available for you to suck in the backups.

I actually just finished a script for doing almost exactly what you said just a few days ago. I sanitized it and dropped in in Gitlab if you want to take a look.

https://gitlab.com/dafyre/linux-utils/-/blob/master/autobackup/autobackup.sh

I think I made everything a variable, but since it's sanitized, it's quite possible I missed something.

This one is for pushing backups from the server with data out to the backup server. Once you get it working, just set it up in Cron and go.

Why push instead of pull? Wouldn't pulling be safer - i.e. the webserver has no information about the backup server, so if it's compromised, it can't give anything to the attackers about the backups.

@Pete-S said in "Snapshots" on win10 laptops?:

@scottalanmiller said in "Snapshots" on win10 laptops?:

@Pete-S said in "Snapshots" on win10 laptops?:

I want to be able to take a snapshot and then install things and then being able to roll back everything to the exact same place.

Windows Backup and Restore does this via the Volume Shadow Service (VSS). They call it a backup, but if the target is local, it's just a snapshot.

Windows Backup and Restore doesn't seem to allow a local target. I'm on 21H2.

While I suppose I could see a use of this - I wouldn't expect to be able to "backup" to the same disk you're backing up.

If you had a second physical disk, or even a second partition large enough to hold the contents of the backed up one - that should work for you.

Unlike VM backups - Windows generally doesn't have the ability to stop using the "disk file" and create a new one for changes, then allowing you to discard the extra disk, thereby reverting to the original. That's the process that makes snaps so good.

@JasGot said in "Snapshots" on win10 laptops?:

They are called Restore Points on windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-a-system-restore-point-77e02e2a-3298-c869-9974-ef5658ea3be9#:~:text=In the search box on,and then select Create > OK.

Make a restore point, play around, the revert.

these are not the same as snaps in a VM - many things aren't reverted in restore points.

@scottalanmiller said in Manage domains and DNS for customers?:

Then you have other issues. Which lots of people do, of course, where you can't let them have admin access to anything as they can't stop handing out their passwords (and yes, we see this all the time, too.)

It's amazing how true this is!

Root could be denied access to SSH. This is a pretty common lockdown option that people enable.

@Danp said in How to use different accounts on the same website/service with profiles:

With Firefox, you also have the option of using the Multi-Account Containers extension.

been using this for 3+ years - damn I just wish Chrome supported it.

@Pete-S said in User migration to azure:

@lilyleiden said in User migration to azure:

We just tested migrating a small batch of test users to our new Azure tenant.

While migrating the PC/user account was no problem, the fact that people get a completely blank user profile, certainly was a showstopper!!

Many of our users has had their AD profile for years, even a decade and has a lot of individual settings, ways to work, shortcuts, quick links, favorites/browser cached passwords etc. and they loose all that.
Management has currently halted the process due to the protests.

So I am on the lookout for a way to link/migrate the old profile/profile settings, when Azure joining the PC?

I would use this as an opportunity to remove unneeded customizations and old ways of doing things and introduce new ways of working instead.

For instance is it really wise to rely on browser cached passwords? To me that's a signal that you need to look over you password management policy. Maybe your users need a real password manager or setup SSO to apps they're using.

I'm really on board with this! We don't migrate when people get new machines, that said - we have few users that do much customization to their setup...

@scottalanmiller said in I Cant Even...:

Today a large corporate "IT department" that uses DattoRMM (OMG, shoot me now) ask me if we needed these "apps"...

sc.exe and wmic.exe because DattoRMM was flagging them.

Um, that's WINDOWS. What kind of IT department that manages thousands of Windows computers opens a ticket to their upstream MSP to ask what sc and wmic are? Like, ever heard of Google? Or Windows? Seriously?

Damn... /sigh

And here I am being told to 'use the MSP more'

@Obsolesce said in User migration to azure:

@pmoncho said in User migration to azure:

@Dashrender said in User migration to azure:

@Pete-S said in User migration to azure:

@Dashrender said in User migration to azure:

@Pete-S said in User migration to azure:

@lilyleiden said in User migration to azure:

We just tested migrating a small batch of test users to our new Azure tenant.

While migrating the PC/user account was no problem, the fact that people get a completely blank user profile, certainly was a showstopper!!

Many of our users has had their AD profile for years, even a decade and has a lot of individual settings, ways to work, shortcuts, quick links, favorites/browser cached passwords etc. and they loose all that.
Management has currently halted the process due to the protests.

So I am on the lookout for a way to link/migrate the old profile/profile settings, when Azure joining the PC?

I would use this as an opportunity to remove unneeded customizations and old ways of doing things and introduce new ways of working instead.

For instance is it really wise to rely on browser cached passwords? To me that's a signal that you need to look over you password management policy. Maybe your users need a real password manager or setup SSO to apps they're using.

I'm really on board with this! We don't migrate when people get new machines, that said - we have few users that do much customization to their setup...

Yes and it's also question of setting the right expectations. For instance saying: IT allows users to customize their desktops but will not provide support for it. New machines, reimaged desktops etc will be reset to company default.

I do this - I don't support end user shortcuts to their desktop. If you figure out how to get it - or get others around you to do it for you, fine... but IT does not support your shortcuts.

Wondering what others do for users bookmarks? Do you just have them create and use their own Google/Firefox/Microsoft account so they follow the user?

They can sign in and use their corporate email to sync in the web browser.

huh - a PITA making users make three separate accounts (one for each browser) based on their corporate account... but doable.

@WrCombs said in What are you using to open HEIC files?:

GIMP seems to be the winner; anyone use GIMP a whole bunch?

I've used GIMP over the years - I don't find it overly straight forward -but if all you're doing is opening and looking at an image - it's fine.

@scottalanmiller I missed this post when you made it years ago.

I got the MCSE in NT4.0 - they claim it was hard? not really - at least not in my opinion - what was hard was the study material at the time was just flat out bad! the NT 4.0 workstation books left out all kinds of unix/linux connection/printing part meaning you didn't stand a chance on those parts on the workstation test unless you had external knowledge.
I barely passed the workstation test because of this.
After reading the server book and realizing "here's the shit that was missing from the workstation book" - I read the book for the next test before taking the test I was on. From that point forward I passed the test with flying colors!
Networking Essentials was probably one of the best books I read back then - It really educated me a lot on networking I didn't know beforehand.

I eventually did the upgrade test to move to MCSE 2008, but haven't maintained it since.

@scottalanmiller said in Remembering the MCSE+I, Microsoft's Terminal Certification:

@dashrender said in Remembering the MCSE+I, Microsoft's Terminal Certification:

the NT 4.0 workstation books left out all kinds of unix/linux connection/printing part meaning you didn't stand a chance on those parts on the workstation test unless you had external knowledge.
I barely passed the workstation test because of this.

I never took the NT4 Workstation. I did the WIndows 98 / DOS test instead, the one where the study book was over 2,000 pages. It was harder than the rest of the MCSE+I combined. It was definitely the foolish choice as it was easily 20x the work of the NT 4 Workstation test and not one single item of all of that did I ever use, ever, in my entire career.

Yeah - I've heard that win98 was a beast of a test - so much craziness almost not IT person ever needs.

@Cagatay said in Remembering the MCSE+I, Microsoft's Terminal Certification:

Lol here is mine... does it still have value these days? or are we considered as dinasours?

Roar!

@WrCombs said in Reboot resets Desktop Win 10 -:

Got a client running Windows 10, and every time they restart the computer, it resets everything on the desktop - Background is wiped, apps and programs are removed, files are removed, the only things that stay are the recycling bin, and Edge. I have no idea what is causing this, and I have no idea where to start. Anyone seen this before?

When you say programs are removed - do you mean the shortcuts on the desktop or actual full applications that were installed - like Chrome or Adobe Reader - are removed upon reboot?

We regularly email xlsx files to people outside our company.

On Monday one of my users received a note back from their counterpart telling them that they couldn't open the attachment.

After digging into it - MS is now applying Digital Rights Management (DRM) to attachments where it can.

Even worse - the external users so far in testing can't open the file unless they have an account in our M365 tenant.

It seems that MS has been rolling this change out for years - I've found posts about this in reddit from 5 years ago, and more recent posts about all the DRM changes they have been making lately.

The current listed solution is to disable encrypting the attachments tenant wide with this powershell command
Connect-ExchangeOnline Set-IRMConfiguration -DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $true

I'm in the process of testing it.

@JaredBusch said in Can you run a Windows desktop OS as a server to run AVImark Veterinary Software?:

@PhlipElder said in Can you run a Windows desktop OS as a server to run AVImark Veterinary Software?:

We've gone through plenty of audits where QuickBooks has a company file on one PC while there are two or more other PCs accessing that company file. No issues there.

Historically, QuickBooks has only used file sharing for this. The remote users are opening the QuickBooks data file over the network. This matches the restrictions last I knew.

AVImark is connecting to a database server running on the host computer to my understanding. This is not file services, print services, IIS, or ICS.

historically this was true - but at some point QB expanded this to using ports other than file sharing to get the job done

Once QB did that - QB no longer qualified under the fileshare exception.

Here's a pretty easy way to test for this.

If you install a firewall between the instance hosting the AviMark software and the client and block all but 139 and 445, as well as 80 and 443 - and AviMark stops working - then you're 99% sure that it's not a legal use of Windows non-server edition.
of course this isn't 100% because software could attempt to use these ports as a bypass to the licensing..