After a year of using a VPS and having intermittent network issues, primarily with DNS resolution and packet loss. I have moved all my sites to a new server from Serverloft. Until now my sites have either been hosted in a shared hosting environment or on a VPS. Currently the site is running on a dedicated server with a quad-core Xeon and 4GB of RAM, network connectivity is provided through a 100Mbps switch port. This is a vast improvement over the previous server.
I look forward to providing more content on this site and resuming some web development projects that I had planned, now that there is a proper environment for these projects.
I am working on a few new features for my site. One of which will be tying a wiki into my current WordPress installation. I am looking forward to being able to distribute some of the scripts that I rely on daily with the rest of the community, and a wiki will be the perfect way to do this. Another project that I would like to get underway is a photo gallery. I am contemplating various ways of doing this, currently I am looking towards tying into Flickr (possibly by making use of their API).
In other news I am changing the overall focus of this blog. At the end of 2009 I took a new position as a Systems Administrator working in the public sector. This has reignited my passion of technology and I look forward to sharing some the things I encounter with anyone that care to read this blog.
This script is designed to copy a user’s favorites folder from their local profile to their home directory. It is useful when you are not implementing roaming profiles and your users migrate to various computers in the office.
Save this script as a .vbs file, you can either incorporate it into an Active Directory Group Policy or execute the script with the cscript command.
As always this script comes with no written or implied warranty. Use at your discretion.
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| 'Created by Dustin Berube on 1/17/2009
'This script will copy the users favorites to the users folder on the server.
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim objShell, objFSO, objNet, strHomeShare, strUserProfile
'Create the shell and file system objects
Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
set objFSO = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objNet = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
'Use the Shell Object to retrieve system environment variables
strHomeShare = "\\Server\Share\" & objNet.UserName
strUserProfile = objShell.SpecialFolders("Favorites") 'Local
'Exit if the variables are blank
If strHomeShare = "" Or strUserProfile = "" Then
objShell.LogEvent 2, "Cannot copy favorites to the server" & vbCRLF & _
"Error Description: Variables not set"
Wscript.Quit
End If
If objFSO.FolderExists(strHomeShare & "\Favorites") Then
objFSO.DeleteFolder strHomeShare & "\Favorites"
End If
objFSO.CopyFolder strUserProfile,strHomeShare & "\Favorites"
If Err Then
objShell.LogEvent 1, "Cannot copy favorites from " & strUserProfile & _
" to " & strHomeShare & "\Favorites" & vbCRLF & "Error Description: " & _
Err.Description
Err.Clear
Else
objShell.LogEvent 0, "Favorites successfully copied from " & _
strUserProfile & " to " & strHomeShare & "\Favorites"
End If
Set objShell = Nothing
Set objFSO = Nothing
Set objNet = Nothing |
This quick and dirty script will delete all files in a supplied directory older than X number of days. I have used this to clear still images from a surveillance system so it doesn’t fill the entire hard drive.
Warning this script is intended to delete data from a hard drive. Use at your own discretion I am not responsible for any data loss experienced.
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| 'Created by Dustin Berube 2/9/2009
'Last modified 2/9/2009
Dim fso, f, f1, fc
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fso.GetFolder("path\to\folder")
Set fc = f.Files
For Each f1 in fc
If DateDiff("d", f1.DateLastModified, Now) > < # of days> Then
f1.Delete
End If
Next
Set fso = Nothing
Set f = Nothing
Set fc = Nothing |
Save this as a .vbs file and execute by running cscript filename.vbs
Today I have to say goodbye to trusty sidekick, my Asus Z7100 series laptop. After three long years of being tortured daily it finally died, in a blaze of glory. Apparently while using my hard drive adapter to backup some hard drives the adapter’s relay for the power supply shorted and put 12 volts DC straight through the USB ports on my laptop.
A tragic way for any piece of electronics to go, howver I’m just glad it wasn’t a customers laptop.
The best part is I’ve been in need of an upgrade anyways, so the office is just going to have to pay up.
It’s only week 2 of the NFL season and I’m already extremely frustrated. It seems in some sort of sideways deal CBS has picked up most of the Sunday football games to be aired on cable. Which means you are only going to see games that are in your local viewing area, not the other games you might be interested in.
The only solution for this at this point in time is to get DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket, which is out of the question for me since I’m a relatively happy cable customer (even happier if I had my NFL). In the meantime I am forced to take matters into my own hands and get text messages every quarter with scores and watch NFL Gameday on my BlackBerry Curve, thank god for SprintTV. At least I won’t be completely in the dark.
I don’t ask for much, just the ability to watch the football games that interest me, like last season I got to see pretty much every game.
/rant off
If you’re a Network Administrator that is in charge of your infrastructures DNS servers, whether they are running Windows or a *nix variant. If you have not heard about the DNS vulnerability and exploits that followed you’ve been hiding under a digital rock.
Dan Kaminsky (www.doxpara.com) found a DNS vulnerability that can have serious implications if your production servers if they get compromised. If you would like to read the details Dan posted them in this blog post http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1185 next week he will be doing a presentation at Blackhat / Defcon and explaining more of the details that he decided to withhold from the public until then.
Make sure you start patching now, there are already exploits in the wild and they have been ported to metasploit. Go ahead and stay late but most importantly get those DNS servers patched.
If you’re primarily a Microsoft admin then you should check out this security bulletin MS08-037.
I am in the process of transitioning all of the websites and domains that I manage over to the new server. My new server is hosted by Rack Force and I have to say that I am very satisfied with the level of service from this company. Previously I was using the new Grid Server service from Media Temple and was disappointed on many occasions.
I never like to single out a single company and give them a bad review, however I feel it needs to said. Media Temple is a great company in general, I know many people that are happy with there offerings. However I signed up for the Grid Hosting and had a few problems that were never resolved. The biggest problem is the lack of MySQL performance. ABout six months ago Media Temple announced the fix for the MySQL performance problems in the way of MySQL containers, which are dedicated to the individual user instead of all the domains working from the same database server. However they now want to charge an extra $20 a month for the use of this service. Personally I feel it is unacceptable to charge your users for a solution to a problem that should have been fixed long ago. With that being said, I will say that I never had a problem with the Customer Service and Support teams from Media Temple, they truly are great people. But until they fix the problems with the grid I do not see it being a viable solution for anyone needing a MySQL powered web application.
Rack Force offers VIrtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting starting at $59. While it is more expensive then the Grid Service from Media Temple, you get what you pay for. Rack Force gives you 2 IP addresses, unmetered 10mbps Connectivity, 20GB Drive Space and 512MB of memory for that price. Also you get the Plesk control panel so you can have a complete hosting solution. From day one anytime there has been a problem Rack Force has been on top of the issue and usally has it taken care of within a matter of hours. I continue to be extremely satisfied with Rack Force and hope to continue doing business with them.