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• Deploy our own software using Puppet?

  - by Ken

  (Apologies in advance for the stupidity in this question. I'm normally a programmer, not a sysadmin, but I've taken it upon myself to automate some things, and clean up some other things which are automated but not in the prettiest way. :-) I've been looking around at various tools for automation of software deployment to a bunch of servers, like cfengine, Puppet, and Chef. So far, Puppet looks the most appealing, but I've certainly not committed to anything yet. These tools all look like they can do a great job of keeping a bunch of servers up-to-date with prepackaged software. What I don't get is: how does one use a tool (like Puppet) to manage deployments of our own internal software? I think I'm at a loss because I've seen a thousand tutorials showing how to keep Apache ensure => latest (which is pretty cool), but nothing that quite corresponds to my use-case today, which is something more like: when a human being pushes The Button, pull branch A from the version-control repository B run command C to compile it copy the binaries D to servers E1 through E10 on each server, run command F to make all changes take effect Puppet sounds great, and I totally see the advantage of declarative, idempotent configuration over some shell scripts, but I've not seen any tutorials for "you want to update your shell scripts to Puppet (or Chef, or cfengine) so here's what you should do". Is there such a thing? Is it obvious to other people how to take the things provided in the Puppet docs and replicate the behavior I want? Am I just not getting it? What it's sounding like to me, so far, is that the human being (#1) would manually package the software (#2 and #3) external to Puppet, manually update the Puppet config, which would trigger Puppet to update the servers ... maybe? (I'm a little confused here, as I'm sure you can tell.) Thanks!

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• How to encourage Windows administrators to pick up scripting

  - by icelava

  When i worked as an administrator in my first job, I was frustrated our administration processes with Windows servers were a series of point-and-clicks; we could never match the level of efficiency with the Unix servers which had a group of shell scripts to automate a lot of the work. I soon read about WSH and ADSI and wasted no time learning just how much automation I was able to achieve with scripting. There was a huge problem though - almost none of my Windows colleagues were really interested in learning scripting. They seemed happy with the manually mouse-clicking chores and were never excited at the prospect of using scripts to do the work on their behalf. I struggled to convince them to pick up scripting skills despite the evident increases in efficiency. I left that job in pursuit of a full-time software development career thereafter. Almost a decade on working in various environments and different customers, I still encounter Windows administrators mainly possessing this general "mood" where they would avoid scripting as much as possible. Despite the increasing level of accessibility Windows server technologies are opening up for scripting and automation. I am almost certain the majority of administrators are administrators precisely because they absolutely hate performing any kind of programming duties. What are some means to encourage and motivate administrators that scripting can really help them in the long run?

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• Migrating Linux user data to Windows profiles automatically

  - by scott ryan

  I have what seems to be an incredibly simple problem with a very simple solution but I'm having some trouble connecting dots. I have an aging server running Ubuntu Server which hosts roaming profiles. I am switching to a Windows Server 2012 DS shortly. Users used to be named firstinitial.lastname and we are switching to firstname.lastname. I need to transfer things like favorites, documents, etc. from the roaming Linux profile to the user's local Windows profile. So, the way I think it'd work is by using a login script. I think I'd use a script to mount the Linux server's /home for each user, then do copy to various paths (documents, pictures, etc.). But, how do I automate this for each user that logs in? I'm working with a nonprofit, so doing this by hand would probably be out of their budget. I'm open to suggestions, though. What I want is basically Windows Easy Migration, but I'm fairly certain that won't work under Wine... (Kidding, I promise). Thanks!

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• Organizing automatically Windows Files and Folders

  - by Kiquenet

  For Windows only, Organizing the eleventy-billion files you've got stuffed into folders on your hard drive is very "hard". For example, I have one folder on my computer that I save all web downloads to, regardless of file type, size or purpose. Many of the files are only temporary downloads, for instance setup files of applications that I test, demonstration videos that I watch once or documents that I want to read. Some files on the other hand are there to stay, and I used to move them out of the download folder manually in the past. Another files in folders in my computer: many source code, tests, programs, tools, ... I need tecnology for organize billion files. Which best tools for organize, sort, etc automatically your files-folders? Digital Janitor http://davidevitelaru.com/software/digital-janitor/ Belverede http://lifehacker.com/5510961/how-to-automatically-clean-and-organize-your-desktop-downloads-and-other-folders Download Mover http://www.neoteo.com/download-mover-reorganiza-tus-descargas-14188 File/Folder Date Organizer http://seedling.dcmembers.com/other/ffdorg.zip DropIt http://www.lupopensuite.com/db/dropit.htm Others issues about organization files, desktop, etc How to automate the process of organizing audio files on Windows Organizing My Windows Desktop What's a good way for organizing PDF documents on Windows? Folksonomy tagging for files What is your method of “folksonomy” tagging for files on your local machine?

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• Finding matching columns in excel

  - by fakaff

  I've never used excel before so I need the simplest solution available, and this is a work assignment due this week so I didn't have time read much of the documentation. Basically, I have two tables, A and B, and they are both thousands of rows long. Description of my task: right now (since I don't know better) I'm manually doing this: Go to row i in table B. Select entries in columns B(a, b, c) of that same row. Look for a row in table A where column A(b) matches row B(a). Paste the entries of columns B(a) of row i at the end of the row found in the last step. Repeat for row i + 1. Example: row B(cat, dog, mouse) matches A(mammal, cat, Mr. Whiskers). So I would paste B after A and have A(mammal, cat, Mr. Whiskers, cat, dog, mouse). Note: I am not joining tables. I am merely extending table A by pasting row A(b) if row A(b) matches row B(a). Also, sometimes entries are spelled slightly differently. Using wildcards to search for candidates would be of help. As the description should let on, this task is very tedious and inefficient if I don't know how to automate some operations (there are thousands of entries). Any quick tips as to how to be more productive is a big help.

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• Automated Linux VMs on Hyper-V 2012

  - by Mick

  I have a requirement to create a ton of linux VMs for our customers (we run managed infrastructure) on Hyper-V 2012 in the coming months and I have an issue with automating it. Here is how I need it to work: User accesses their web page and creates a VM. VM is created with a unique IP and name User logs in over SSH I know Hyper-V quite well and can work with powershell and am a C# programmer so the development side of things is taken care of. I also know enough about Linux to be at least competent: I have used it on and off for a number of years but not done anything Enterprise-level with it. All this can be done easily by manual processes but I need to be able to script or program this to automate it as there could be hundreds of them being created but I don't know how. My first thought is to have a database with random-generated names and IPs already created but I don't know how to get a Linux VM to boot up and grab one from the database... I suppose a Kickstart script would take care of it but I don't know what to do from there. Here is what is bouncing around in my head: Create a std linux build. - Easy to do Someone clicks "Create VM" and I pull a name and IP from the database and write it to a kickstart script. - Easy to do I could then open the template VHDX file and copy in the script and then save it. - Not sure if possible User boots up new VM and the kickstart script gives it the name and IP I assigned it. My problem is that I don't know how to open a VHDX file and insert a kickstart script into it... can't figure it out. I am reaching here and this solution may be miles off... I am more used to creating Windows VMs with scripts and so on which i am more familiar with... any help would be appreciated. Thanks Mick

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• On Windows machines, what is the typical toolchain for remote maintenance?

  - by Hanno Fietz

  I need to deploy PHP and Python code and the appropriate environment (web server, db server) to remote Windows systems, and I don't know what toolchain would be the equivalent to ssh, scp, bash and the like. So, basically, what I need to be able to do is the following: access remote Windows with the appropriate privileges in a secure manner, like I routinely do with ssh (I don't even know whether that would be a text or graphic interface on Windows). remotely install software: Apache or IIS, MySQL or Postgres, Python or PHP copy files from remote (the application we're deploying) remotely configure the machine to run regular tasks (e. g. checking for updates to the application) automate tasks like downloading files from a designated place The main question is probably how I get onto the machine securely in the first place, and then the rest is general Windows admin knowledge, which probably is too broad a scope to fit into one question. I have years of experience with maintaining Linux boxes and I have used tools of varying sophistication on those, ranging from plain scping of PHP files to deployment of Java application containers and even full VMs with Vagrant. On Windows, I'm a complete noob, and I don't even know where to start. I have installed Apache, MySQL , PHP on a desktop machine maybe twice in my life, that's about it. Bonus points for things that work from a Linux machine at my end, but I could run a VM and do everything from there.

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• Cronjob not Running

  - by Pete Herbert Penito

  I have a bash script that looks like this: #!/bin/sh PID=`ps faux | grep libt | awk 'NR==2{print $2}'` STATUS=`ps faux | grep libt | awk 'NR==2{print $1}'` if [ "$STATUS" = "ec2-user" ]; then echo "libt already killed" else sudo kill $PID echo "libt was killed" fi sleep 5 cd /home/ec2-user/libt sudo ./libt I have saved this file as restart.sh and when I run it like ./restart.sh, it does what its supposed to (kills the libt process and restarts it). However, now I am trying to automate the process by using cron. So I made a cron job that I want to run every 6 hours that looks like this 0 */6 * * * /home/ec2-user/restart.sh When I run "crontab -l" I can see this print so I know it's been added properly. I should mention that the service does not have the ability to be restarted, (like "service ... restart") the process ID needs to be found, killed and then the start script needs to be ran. I have found that this cronjob is not working, I'll log onto the box and I can tell by looking at the logs that no restart has occurred. What am I doing wrong? What can I do to troubleshoot? Any advice would help, this is my first cron job :) Thanks!

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• Retrieve a user's Exchange database in powershell

  - by Paul

  Hey Everyone, I've scoured the interwebs for a few days now off and on to find this. I am creating a powershell script for email-enabling new user's(Exchange 2007). To give you a little background when we have a new hire, their AD account is created at our off-site helpdesk, but they don't create their email account. I'm trying to automate the process of mail-enabling the user which involves putting them in the same database as an existing user, disable imap pop activesync, and lastly email the requester of the ticket. I would like to just get prompted for the New User's name, User to Replicate(mailbox, storage group, database), and the person to email after it's been created. So if someone could just help with a command to Retrieve a user's Exchange database in powershell that would be great, but if people also want to help with my hacked up script please do so as well!!! Here is what I have so far: Write-output “ENTER THE FOLLOWING DETAILS” $DName = Read-Host “User Diplay Name" $RUser = Read-Host "Replicate User(Database Grab)" ***$RData = #get the Replicate user's mailbox database here*** $REmail = #either just use a Read-Host “Requester's Email address" or ask for Requester's name and pipe through their email address by digging for it w/ powershell Enable-Mailbox -Identity "$DName" -Database "$RData" Send-MailMessage -From "John Doe <[email protected]>" -To (put $REmail here which is the Requester's email) -Subject "Test Person's email account" -Body "Test Person's email account has been setup.`n`n`nJohn Doe`nGeneric Company`nSystems Administrator`nOffice: 123.456.7890`[email protected]" -SmtpServer genericexchange.exchange.com

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• How can I implement ansible with per-host passwords, securely?

  - by supervacuo

  I would like to use ansible to manage a group of existing servers. I have created an ansible_hosts file, and tested successfully (with the -K option) with commands that only target a single host ansible -i ansible_hosts host1 --sudo -K # + commands ... My problem now is that the user passwords on each host are different, but I can't find a way of handling this in Ansible. Using -K, I am only prompted for a single sudo password up-front, which then seems to be tried for all subsequent hosts without prompting: host1 | ... host2 | FAILED => Incorrect sudo password host3 | FAILED => Incorrect sudo password host4 | FAILED => Incorrect sudo password host5 | FAILED => Incorrect sudo password Research so far: a StackOverflow question with one incorrect answer ("use -K") and one response by the author saying "Found out I needed passwordless sudo" the Ansible docs, which say "Use of passwordless sudo makes things easier to automate, but it’s not required." (emphasis mine) this security StackExchange question which takes it as read that NOPASSWD is required article "Scalable and Understandable Provisioning..." which says: "running sudo may require typing a password, which is a sure way of blocking Ansible forever. A simple fix is to run visudo on the target host, and make sure that the user Ansible will use to login does not have to type a password" article "Basic Ansible Playbooks", which says "Ansible could log into the target server as root and avoid the need for sudo, or let the ansible user have sudo without a password, but the thought of doing either makes my spleen threaten to leap up my gullet and block my windpipe, so I don’t" My thoughts exactly, but then how to extend beyond a single server? ansible issue #1227, "Ansible should ask for sudo password for all users in a playbook", which was closed a year ago by mpdehaan with the comment "Haven't seen much demand for this, I think most people are sudoing from only one user account or using keys most of the time." So... how are people using Ansible in situations like these? Setting NOPASSWD in /etc/sudoers, reusing password across hosts or enabling root SSH login all seem rather drastic reductions in security.

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• download and process a file by ftp at set intervals, with error handling, rescheduling and status messages

  - by compound eye

  I want to download a data file from a remote ftp server to my machine at regular intervals. Once the file is downloaded I want to call another script which will process the file. My development machine is mac os x, the eventual deployment environment is linux. What's would be the stock standard way to automate this? I know I can use cron to schedule curl to download and to run a script that will process the downloaded file at regular intervals, and I know could write a slightly more complex script or an application that would do this and add error handling, rescheduling and sending status emails. But one of my requirements for this project is to write as little custom code as possible, instead I should try to use standard, tried and true existing tools, and if I do have to write code, to try and write the most straightforward code possible. The reason for this is the code will potentially be installed on a large number of machines, all of which will need to be tweaked, customised and maintained by different people, long after I am gone from the project, so the intention is to use well documented, well supported tools as much as possible. This seems such a common task, there must be tools and scripts all over the internet, written by people who have carefully considered everything that could possibly go wrong when you need to download and process a file from a remote server at regular intervals, with error handling, rescheduling and sending status messages. Is that what Expect is for? What would you recommend? (the system will be downloading weather prediction data every six hours, so that the system can prepare in the event of bad weather warnings)

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• Connecting SVN from Remote Server

  - by Ashish

  I have hosted my repository in assebbla & it works fine. now I want to write a script that can automate the build process : 1. Take the code from assembla repository 2. Make a dump and copy it onto my web server. what I have researched from net states that use of commands like svn co svn+ssh://[email protected]/home/svn/test I believe I need to open Shell on my server and type these commands but shell has been disabled from my server admin. I tried to run the same from php using exec , admin has disabled that too. (am using shared hosting and want to do a automated deployment using these simple steps. i don't want to bring my local system in this process) now am not sure even if I get the shell access open to my server these commands like svn will work there as I don't have SVN installed on my server (its installed on assembla). kindly let me know if any more explanation is required regarding the same or if am going on the wrong track. Am a newbie so please be descriptive in answering :) Thanx in advance Ace

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• How to install wordpress without a web browser

  - by bvandrunen

  What I am trying to do is to automate wordpress website creation for the company I am working on. We have lots of information in our database for our customers and we want to create a wordpress website for each customer. The process works great and we have no trouble with the creation of websites/transfer of data or anything like that. The problem we do have is when we buy a new domain (http://www.newdomain.com) our process breaks (we call a stored procedure which installs all the data after the URL is called to install wordpress) if the domain takes more than 15min to resolve. We have tried doing looping (where the process checks to see if the domain resolves and keeps trying - but eventually if fails). So what we are looking for is to see if there is a way to install an URL without actually having the domain resolve yet. I have seen where possibilities where you can change the wp-config file but this doesn't work since we have more than one domain and it changes the source URL for all the domains. What we really need is just a way for us to manually start the install script through a call either through a database or some other way that doesn't check to see if the domain is resolved or pointing at the server or not. Thank for any suggestions. EDIT: All we do to install wordpress is call this URL: http://"newdomain".com/wp-admin/install.php?step=2 - if you change settings in the backend calling this URL will install wordpress without having to go through the wp-admin/install.php form

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• Kickstarting an Ubuntu Server 10.04 installation (DHCP fails)

  - by William

  I'm trying to automate the network installation of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with an anaconda kickstart and everything seems to running except for the initial DHCP autoconfiguration. The installer attempts to configure the install via DHCP but fails on its first attempt. This brings me to a prompt where I can retry DHCP and it seems to always work on the second attempt. My issue is that this is not really automated if I have to hit retry for DHCP. Is there something I can add to the kickstart file so that it will automatically retry or better yet not fail the first time? Thanks. Kickstart: # System language lang en_US # Language modules to install langsupport en_US # System keyboard keyboard us # System mouse mouse # System timezone timezone America/New_York # Root password rootpw --iscrypted $1$unrsWyF2$B0W.k2h1roBSSFmUDsW0r/ # Initial user user --disabled # Reboot after installation reboot # Use text mode install text # Install OS instead of upgrade install # Use Web installation url --url=http://10.16.0.1/cobbler/ks_mirror/ubuntu-10.04-x86_64/ # System bootloader configuration bootloader --location=mbr # Clear the Master Boot Record zerombr yes # Partition clearing information clearpart --all --initlabel # Disk partitioning information part swap --size 512 part / --fstype ext3 --size 1 --grow # System authorization infomation auth --useshadow --enablemd5 %include /tmp/pre_install_ubuntu_network_config # Always install the server kernel. preseed --owner d-i base-installer/kernel/override-image string linux-server # Install the Ubuntu Server seed. preseed --owner tasksel tasksel/force-tasks string server # Firewall configuration firewall --disabled # Do not configure the X Window System skipx %pre wget "http://10.16.0.1/cblr/svc/op/trig/mode/pre/system/Test-D" -O /dev/null # Network information # Start pre_install_network_config generated code # Start of code to match cobbler system interfaces to physical interfaces by their mac addresses # Start eth0 # Configuring eth0 (00:1A:64:36:B1:C8) if ip -o link show | grep -i 00:1A:64:36:B1:C8 then IFNAME=$(ip -o link show | grep -i 00:1A:64:36:B1:C8 | cut -d" " -f2 | tr -d :) echo "network --device=$IFNAME --bootproto=dhcp" >> /tmp/pre_install_ubuntu_network_config fi # End pre_install_network_config generated code %packages openssh-server

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• Can Dovecot IMAP automatically create Maildir folders for new (virtual) users?

  - by user233441

  everyone. I am learning to set up a dovecot home IMAP server using a virtual Ubuntu 12.04 machine. My intention is eventually to have a home server that uses POP3 to take email from several addresses and remove them from my ISP's servers, while making them accessible through a home IMAP server (this is similar to the setup described at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/POP3Aggregator, which explains how to set up the system with dovecot version 1, and is thus outdated). I intend to use the ISP's server directly when sending messages, and to BCC all sent messages to myself. I've completed the basic set up of the test server: getmail uses POP3 to fetch messages from two test email accounts, and successfully delivers them to the respective Maildir-style new folders on the virtual machine. Dovecot then successfully sees these messages. I have two questions: 1) I had to set up new, cur, and tmp folders for both of the test accounts manually to get this setup to work. Is there a way to get dovecot to create these Maildir folders automatically when I create a new virtual user account (e.g., when I add a user and password combination to my dovecot password file), or is it expected that I write a bash script to automate that task? 2) I would welcome any comments you have on how this approach could be improved as I learn to set it up. My motivations with this approach are 1) to enable archiving/storing emails from several hosting providers that impose a cap on server storage, and 2) to give me somewhat greater control over email storage without requiring that I set up and administrate a mail server from scratch (which I'm not yet prepared to do) (this follows the recommendations at https://ssd.eff.org/tech/email). Thank you!

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• How can I rapidly switch hosts?

  - by EAMann

  I'm in the process of migrating a forum setup from one version of the software on one machine (older shared Windows host) to a new VPS (Windows Server 2008). To install the software, I used my hosts file to temporarily point the domain at the new IP address. To see the old site, I obviously re-edit the hosts file to remove the reference. But this leaves me constantly adding/removing a # from my hosts file just so I can switch back and forth between the two servers. Is there a way to do this more rapidly? I've found a handful of toggling batch scripts, but all they do is automate the addition/removal of the # character ... so there's still a noticeable lag where I have to repeatedly hit F5 to force my system to detect the new settings. Ideally, I could view both servers at the same time on the same machine. Maybe one through a regular browser session and one through some kind of a proxy. Unfortunately, I don't have the first idea how to set that up. Ideas?

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• How to add a writable folder to the PHP document root on linux

  - by Ron Whites

  We are building an example bash script for our PHP TestCoverage Tool use on Linux. The development environment is Ubuntu 12.04_1 but we intend to have the linux example work across as many linux versions as possible without modification. The example linux script requires a variable be set to the PHP Document Root path and by default uses a small PHP example source to show the user how our GUI and text report shows the covered and uncovered PHP code areas. The linux script is also intended to be easily alterable by the user to automate the TestCoverage display of users PHP code. The problem we are having with Ubuntu 12.04 (any linux?) is that the PHP Apache2 document root is defined in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default as /var/www and /var/www is defaulted with "drwxr-xr-x" read only access. So in order to add our own folder as /var/www/SDTestCoverage we must change /var/www to "drwxrwxrwx" read-write access. So it seems our script (at least on Ubuntu) will need to ... 1. acquire and save the /var/www permissions then do .. 2. sudo chmod 777 /var/www (to make writable) 3. mkdir -p /var/www/SDTestCoverage (create our folder under the document root) 4. sudo chmod 777 /var/www/SDTestCoverage (make our subfolder writable) 5. and finally restore /var/www permissions Thanks and our Questions are .. 1. Is this the standard way (using Ubuntu) one adds a writable folder under the PHP Document Root? 2. Is this the most general purpose way one adds a writable folder under the PHP Document Root on other versions of Linux?

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• New AD user request form and workflow

  - by user66390

  I'm wondering if anyone is providing a solid solution for creating New Network User Account Request forms, and attaching workflows to them to automate account creation? I'm currently investigating a number of options, but am surprised that such a ubiquitous task hasn't been solved a dozen times over and thoroughly documented. Or at least isn't integrated into current off-the-shelf change management and ticketing systems. Ideally, I'd like for our current ticketing system, ServiceDesk+ to present a standard 'New User' form to department heads, which they can fill in with the required new user details. This triggers a workflow that submits the request as a ticket that can be reviewed and actioned. Actioning the ticket triggers a workflow that creates a user in AD with the details provided, and notifies the department head upon completion. All told, a pretty standard requirement that I'm sure most organizations have. What are other people doing to accomplish this? Edit: I should add, I'm more looking for "supported" methods. As is, I've submitted a number of scripted solutions, none of which have met with manager approval.

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• powershell vs GPO for installation, configuration, maintenance

  - by user52874

  My question is about using powershell scripts to install, configure, update and maintain Windows 7 Pro/Ent workstations in a 2008R2 domain, versus using GPO/ADMX/msi. Here's the situation: Because of a comedy of cumulative corporate bumpfuggery we suddenly found ourselves having to design, configure and deploy a full Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7 Pro/Enterprise on very short notice and delivery schedule. Of course, I'm not a windows expert by any means, and we're so understaffed that our buzzword bingo includes 'automate' and 'one-button' and 'it needs to Just Work'. (FWIW, I started with DEC, then on to solaris and cisco, then linux of various flavors with a smattering of BSD nowadays. I use Windows for email and to fill out forms). So we decided to bring in a contractor to do this for us. and they met the deadline. The system is up and mostly usable, and this is good. We would not have been able to do this. But it's the 'mostly' part that is proving to be the PIMA now, and I'm having to learn Microsoft stuff anyway until/if we can get a new contract with these guys for ongoing operations. Here's my question. The contractor used powershell almost exclusively for deployment, configuration and updating. My intensive reading over the last week leads me to think that the generally accepted practices for deployment, configuration and updating microsoft stuff uses elements of GPOs and ADMX templates, along with maybe some third party stuff like PolicyPak. Are there solid reasons that I've not found yet that powershell scripts would be preferred over the GPO methods? I'm going to discuss this with the contractor lead when he gets back from his vacation, and he'll be straight with me (nor do I think they set us up). But I can also see this might be a religious issue, so I would still like some background on this. Thoughts? or weblinks? Thanks!

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• How to backup virtual machines on a standalone ESXi host?

  - by Massimo

  Standalone ESXi (4.1) host without any vCenter Server. How to backup virtual machines as quickly and storage-friendly as possible? I know I can access the ESXi console and use the standard Unix cp command, but this has the downfall of copying the whole VMDK files, not only their actually used space; so, for a 30-GB VMDK of which only 1 GB is used, the backup would take 30 full GBs of space, and time accordingly. And yes, I know about thin-provisioned virtual disks, but they tend to behave very badly when physically copied, and/or to blow up to their full provisioned size; also, they are not recommended for actual VM performance. It is ok for me to shut down the VMs before backing them up (i.e. I don't need "live" backups); but I need a way to copy them around efficiently; and yes, a way to automate shutdown/startup when taking a backup would also help. I only have ESXi; no Service Console, no vCenter Server... what's the best way to handle this task? Also, what about restores?

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• Silent install of Japanese Language Pack in Win7

  - by Doltknuckle

  Every year, due to re-imaging, I am forced to find a way to install the Japanese language pack on a collection of 30 computers. Each year I look for a way to automate this process, and each year I am forced to do this manually. Maybe this year will be different. Has anyone had any luck with installing and configuring far east language support for windows 7 without user interaction? I have already downloaded kb972813 and have a way to get it out to the computers. What I normally do is this: Run the EXE, use the default settings. Open up language settings and create the JP keyboard. Configure the language bar settings. Copy settings to default user. Delete the local user cache. Sign the different user accounts in to make sure that the default settings are correct. This whole process takes about 10 minutes, multiply that out by 30 machines and you are looking at a 5 hour process. If I can log into all of the computers at once, I can normally cut that down to about an hour. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

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• Despeckle line art

  - by Dour High Arch

  We have a number of line-art charts unfortunately saved as JPEGs. They are now riddled with distracting compression artifacts or "speckles". Is there any way of removing these? I do not have the original files and it will be very difficult to recreate them. I am running Windows 7 and tried Paint.Net; none of the filters help. Posterize washed out all the colors and leaves the speckles. Blur makes text unreadable. Noise Reduction wrecks antialiasing of curved lines, and perversely enhances the speckles, making them look like checkerboards. Yes, I have Googled for software to do this; there are many programs that advertise despeckling but, after my experience with Paint.Net, do not want to experiment with applications that show no before and after images. The only example I have seen that does what I want is from a Photoshop tutorial. I have dozens of files and the tutorial requires considerable manual fine-tuning. I would prefer to automate or batch-process this task. Commercial apps are fine, but I do not want to spend over $600 and learning a complex program for a single task.

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• Experience with asymmetrical (non-identical hardware) SQL Server 2005 / Win 2003 cluster

  - by user24161

  I am reasonably good at dealing with SQL Server clusters; I am wondering if folks have experience, good or bad, using a mix of different models of servers from the same vendor in one SQL 2005 cluster. Suppose: I have one more powerful, more RAM, more shizzle box and one less powerful, less memory, less shizzle box bound together in a 2-node cluster. These would be HP DL380 and 580 machines (not that it should matter) I understand AND automate the process of managing memory for each SQL instance, so there's no memory contention when SQL instances fail over. Basically I am thinking a CLR proc will monitor the instances and self-regulate memory caps on each instance, so that they won't page or step on one another. I get the fact the instances might be slower and or under memory pressure if they share a "lesser" node, and that's OK. The business can deal with a slower instance in a server-problem scenario. Reasonable? Any "gotchas" to watch out for? More info 10/28: doing some experiments with a test cluster I find that reconfiguring max/min memory is OK PROVIDED the instance isn't already under memory pressure. If I torture the system with a huge query that demands a big chunk of RAM, and simultaneously adjust the memory allocation to a smaller value than what is being actively used, it's possible to run the instance out of memory and have it halt and restart itself (unhappy situation). Many ugly out-of-memory messages in the error log, crashing, burning... It's an extreme case, but good to know. Seems, then, that it would only be really safe to set this on startup of the instance, as in have a startup script that says "I am on node1, so my RAM settings are X or I am on node two, so they are Y," like this: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand... Update: I am testing a SQL Agent + PowerShell solution described in more detail here.

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• Apache on CentOS 5.9 VM serves my optimized images corrupted (but my Mac doesn't)

  - by Robert K

  I'm using a Vagrant VM to mirror the client's environment as closely as I can. As part of our build process we do no optimization of assets early on; that comes as we're ready to take a site live. Needless to say, this issue is beginning to worry me as we need to take the site live very soon. I use ImageOptim to automate optimization of image assets, which runs a whole series of tools (Zopfli, PNGOUT, OptiPNG, AdvPNG, PNGCrush). I always set the optimizations to their maximum setting. After optimization, my PNGs start looking like this: What's weird is, if I serve the same file through my Mac's copy of Apache, not through Vagrant, the image loads fine. In fact, the only time it's ever corrupt like this is when the image is served from the Vagrant VM and its install of Drupal. All optimized JPEGs display only the first ~20% of the image. And PNGs, depending on the image, may show either a portion or the "progressive"-style corruption below. The browser itself makes no difference, the same browser will serve an uncorrupted image from my Mac's Apache instance and a corrupt image from the VM. When I disable all PNG optimizations except PNGCrush, and the removal of the PNG metadata, the image is served corrupted. I'm optimizing JPEG images with JPEGmini. The server is running CentOS 5.9, Apache 2.2.3-85, PHP 5.3.3, and Drupal 7. As best as I can tell the error lies somewhere within the VM, either with Apache or with (perhaps) the network stack. Seems like the tools that optimize the compression of the PNGs and JPEGs are what trigger this error. I've already determined that the .htaccess file isn't interfering with how the images load. What should I try to troubleshoot this?

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• Advanced cell selection in Excel

  - by Supuhstar

  I am new to this flavor of StackExchange, so if this belongs elsewhere, please move it; I figured this would be the best place, though. I am making an Excel Worksheet that simply stores basic financial data in 5 columns (Check Number, Date of Transaction, Description, Profit from Transaction, and Balance After Transaction) and indefinite rows. Each worksheet represents one month, and each Workbook represents a year. As I make or receive a payment, I store it as a new row, which, inherently, makes the number of rows per month indefinite. Each transaction's Balance cell is the sum of the Balance cell of the row above it and the Profit cell of its row. I want each month to start off with a special row (first one after column headers) that displays a summary of the last month's transactions. For instance, the Balance After Transaction cell would display the last row's balance, and the Profit from Transaction cell would display the overall profits of the month) I know that if I knew every month had exactly 100 expenses, I could achieve this for March with the following formulas for profit and balance, respectively: =February!E2 - February!E102 =February!E102 However, I do NOT know how many rows will be in each month's table, and I'd like to automate this as much as possible (for instance, if I find a missed or duplicated expense in January, I don't want to have to update all the formulas that point to the ending January balance). How can I have Excel automatically use the last entered value in a column, in any given Excel spreadsheet, in a formula?

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