Exchange 2003 will not uninstall with error 0x8000ffff

Ok, I have a development server that runs Exchange 2003 as a testbed but I wanted to try Exchange 2007b2 on this box. I thought about reinstalling the box but feeling slightly lazy I decided to remove Exchange 2003 and install Exchange 2007b2. Except I couldn't.....

"Unexpected error 0x8000ffff" so the dialog box said. On examining the log file in the root of C:, the first mention of error 0x8000ffff was in relation to not being able to find the CD. Except it hadn't asked me for the CD.....

On further examination it turned out (I remember now) that I had mounted the Exchange 2003 install CD iso image using Daemon tools and shared them across the network. The error 0x8000ffff was because it couldn't find the share. I shared the iso from the same machine and same sharename and presto! It worked!

How to control OWA spell checker in Exchange 2003

Microsoft KB article 825430 details registry changes for controlling OWA. I came across it when looking for a solution to the error message "The spelling in this item can't be checked. Please try again later."

I think this problem is caused by organisational proxy servers (seen with both ISA and Border Manager) so there's not a lot you can do about someone elses proxy. Microsoft KB article 820378 has more details.

SuSE 10.1 "eth0 renamed to eth1"

After playing with the bcm43xx wireless module I noticed my eth0 had been renamed to eth1, indeed the message also appeared in dmesg output:

dmesg | grep eth1
eth0 renamed to eth1

After a bit of poking I found duplicates of my network card mac address in the following file:

cat /etc/udev/rules.d/30-net_persistent_names.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:56:37:58:8c", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:90:4b:12:5f:fa", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k wlan0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:56:37:58:8c", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k eth1"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:56:37:58:8c", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k eth2"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:56:37:58:8c", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k eth3"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:56:37:58:8c", IMPORT="/lib/udev/rename_netiface %k eth4"

Removing the extra lines (eth1-eth4) and restarting the network caused eth0 to behave again.

How to enable remote desktop.... Remotely!

I recently removed terminal services from my test server as I was through with it and the evaluation license was about to run out. When I tried to connect to my headless server using remote desktop I found that it was disabled by the removal of ts.

Thanks to a blog by cogent free knowledge I was able to enable remote desktop remotely.

Using regedt32, connect to the remote machines registry and change the following key from 1 (disabled) to 0 (enabled):
KEY: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer
DATA: fDenyTSConnections

No need to reboot, it works straight away.

Using the bcm43xx driver with SuSE 10.1 and Dell Inspiron 5100

As of Kernel 2.6.17rc a native, reverse engineered, driver is available for bcm43xx range of wireless cards. I have had my bcm4306 rev 02 (Dell Truemobile 1300) card working in my Inspiron 5100 using ndiswrapper for some time but wanted to get the native driver working to play with tools such as kismet.

You'll need the following files:

Kernel.
Novell have not provided a kernel later than 2.6.16 so I had to find a more up to date one. I eventually settled on the 2.6.18rc7 one from the factory distributioncalled kernel-default-2.6.18_rc7_git1-2.i586.rpm. I can't store a copy here because community server does not seem to handle files that big.

Wireless tools.
The wireless tools provided with SuSE 10.1 do not seem to configure the new wireless driver correctly to I again used the rpm from the factory distribution.

bcm43xx-fwcutter-004.
This tool is required to extract firware from the windows driver to make the card work with Linux. You can find the file from the makers siteor use this local copy. I have a precompiled version here too.

A windows driver.
I had been using thedell driver with ndiswrapper with no problems but it would not work with bcm43xx giving me IRQ errors. I eventually found this onewhich worked great for me.

Proceedure.
1. Install the new kernel using a command similar to 'rpm -ivh kernel-default-2.6.18_rc7_git1-2.i586.rpm'. Reboot into the new kernel but be aware that if you were using ndiswrapper it will no longer work because the new kernel will prefer to use bcm43xx instead.

2. Install the new wireless tools. Because Yast2 and a few other pieces of software require the previous version of wireless tools you will get a dependency error on libiw.so.28. I used the following commands to get around this:
'rpm -Uvh –nodeps wireless-tools-29pre10-5.i586.rpm'
'ln -s /usr/lib/libiw.so /usr/lib/libiw.so.28'

3. Install the fwcutter tool from source or by copying the precomiled binary. Installing from source is the standard:
'./configure'
'make'
'make install'

4. Extract the firmware from the wl_apsta.o file using a command similar to:
'bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.a'
This should place a load of bcm43xx* files into /lib/firmware.

5. Use Yast2 to configure your wireless card and reboot.

You should see output similar to the followig:

ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:12:5F:FA
inet addr:192.168.0.51 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::290:4bff:fe12:5ffa/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:30401 errors:0 dropped:220 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:61069 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3078309 (2.9 Mb) TX bytes:87433000 (83.3 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"thefoleyhouse" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:15:E9:E1:C9:15
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:open
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=2/3 Noise level=187/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

lsmod |grep bcm43xx
bcm43xx 427776 0
firmware_class 14208 2 pcmcia,bcm43xx
ieee80211softmac 36992 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 34760 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac

Test Blog From Word 2007B2TR

Just thought I'd test "Publish to blog" from Word 2007B2TR. We'll see if it works!
And what about pictures?

Windows Genuine Advantage - Internet Connection Problem [0x80080293]

It's all well and good having Windows Genuine Advantage so that only licensed users can download products and fixes but surely the servers should be highly available or it defeats the purpose? I have a problem with Windows Defender not carrying out scheduled scans and I deceided to reinstall it as a troubleshooting step. Despite having validated my copy of Windows XP many times in the past (repeatedly!) I can not currently download Windows Defender:

Disgusting Keyboard

When my keyboard has got really bad in the past I just bought a new one. Today I decided to clean it:

After I took all the keys off:

After I cleaned it:

All back together again:

Blog Updated to CS2.1

I did a couple of trial runs on this and found the best option was to do a complete in place upgrade.
I first upgraded the database:

• CS1.1>CS2.0
• CD2.0>CS2.1
• ASP1.1>ASP2.0

Then just extracted the new website over the old one. I initially tried creating a new website but had lots of prolems with the old photos!

Windows Live Messenger Setup Problem

I was told that a new version of Windows Live Messenger (v8.0.0812.0) was available so I downloaded it.

Problem is that I had to cancel setup for setup to continue because the "Windows Live Messenger Setup Wizard" tells me it can't run whilst the "Windows Live Messenger Setup Wizard" is running. There was only one copy running, honest!

[*-)]

 

Device Manager Empty

This has happened to me a number of times now. All of a sudden, plug and play hardware stops working and when you go into the device manager it all appears blank. Microsoft KB311504 suggests that this is caused by the Plug and Play service being stopped but this was not my problem.

My problem was that the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum registry key was lacking permissions. Use REGEDT32 (Windows 2000) or REGEDIT (Windows XP) to add the System account with full control and Everyone with read to make this work again.

AV Filtering mail with Evolution

This site has a nice script to run each incoming mail through ClamAV and to display a warning and move it to a quarentine folder if it contains a virus.
Thanks to Fred Blaise.

XGL on Dell Inspiron 5100 with SUSE 10.1

This documents my attempt to install XGL on my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop using Suse 10.1. I first tested it with the Kororaa Xgl Live CD so I knew that it would work. I had some problems with the login screen (seen this reported elsewhere - but I don't have it with SUSE 10.1) but overall it worked well. The following procedure works for me!
First a bit on hardware:

• Dell Inspiron 5100
• Radeon 7500 Mobility with 32 MB Video RAM
• Using Xorg "radeon" driver with 3d dri enabled

I mainly followed the procedure on Opensuse.org here.

Download the following RPMs from Suse factory i586:

• compiz
• xgl
• libwnck

Download the following RPM from Suse factory noarch:

• xgl-hardware-list

Install the RPMs. I had a dependency issue when I tried this:

• error: Failed dependencies: libpng12.so.0(PNG12_0) is needed by compiz-cvs_060621-2.i586
• I used --nodeps and it installed with no apparent side ill effects. There is a libpng12.so.0 in /usr/lib provided from libpng-1.2.8-17 so I am not sure why I got the error.

Make sure that you have enabled 3d acceleration from YaST:
(Image lost due to Blog move)

Activate the desktop effects from the Gnome Control centre:
(Image lost due to Blog move)

It didn't work for me first time because it said 3D acceleration enabled although it was. I saw this:
(Image lost due to Blog move)

When I checked the status with glxinfo I got this so I know it's working:

• name of display: :0.0
• display: :0 screen: 0
• direct rendering: Yes

After a bit of research I found the XGL control applet sometimes does not identify that 3d acceleration is enabled and that if you hold shift and double click on “3D Acceleration: Disabled” then you can force it to on:
(Image lost due to Blog move)

You can now click on “Enable Desktop Effects” and you now have XGL!
The only problems I have are:

• I occasionally get lines or corrupted pixels on screen. A quick spin of the cube (CTRL+ALT+ARROW) sorts these out quickly.
• Windows have pink lines around them after restoring from hibernation. I have to restart the X server to sort these out.
• The display does not handle full screen dvd video very well. Either use a hardware player (!) or turn of desktop effects to be able to play video at any decent speed.

VMware on Suse 10.1

I've tried using CrossOffice to run MS Office applications on Linux but you really can't beat VMWare with an XP guest machine to run Outlook. That is unless you can't get VMWare to run. Thanks to Nilesh Bansal, now I can. 

SUSE 10.1 Wireless on Dell Inspiron 5100

As always I had to use ndiswrapper to get my wireless working but this time was the easiest ever. I followed the following proceedure:

1. Downloaded the latest drivers for my minipci from here. Bear in mind that I am in the UK so these are the non US/Japan drivers. Click here if you want the US or Japanese drivers. (If you don't want to download the 48MB packages you can find the UK bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys as a download here.)
2. Used Yast to install ndiswrapper. It seems that Novell have split the drivers into tools&docs in one package and kernel modules in another. I selected ndiswrapper-1.10-19 in Yast and it auto selected ndiswrapper-kmp-default-1.10_2.6.16.13_4-19 for my Kernel.
3. Followed the instructions I found in /usr/share/doc/packages/ndiswrapper/README.SUSE. (Copy here.)
4. The only thing that didn't work was the WEP key instructions. Because I elected to use the new user mode network control I had to use the Network applet to join the wireless network.
   (Image lost due to Blog move)

Moving from Vista to Suse 10.1

With my laptop failing and having to send it back to Dell for repair it seemed an ideal opportunity to try out the latest beta of Vista (beta 2). Unfortuneatelty my graphics card (Mobility Radeon 7500) didn't let me use Aero and I had quite a few problems with beta 2:

• Mouse clicks sometimes not registered on desktop (same with default detected device and downloaded synaptics driver)
• Some 700MB out of 1GB of memory in use when just on desktop (!)
• Slow response

So, I decided to move back to Suse only this time I will try 10.1 with XGL so watch this space! I know XGL will work because I tried the Kororaa XGL Live CD v0.2.

Playing with Exchange 12

I had my first look at Exchange 12 yesterday and had huge problems getting it to install. You have to have MMC 3.0 installed but even though it was installed, the install claimed it wasn't.

I found the answer on the Exchange EHLO blog.

Create this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\MMC30Core

Blocking hackers access to SSH

Since putting a Suse 10 box on the internet and allowing SSH through the firewall we have been getting attempts like this on a regular basis:

May 27 09:14:20 nprobe sshd[689]: Did not receive identification string from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:40 nprobe sshd[816]: Invalid user aaa from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:43 nprobe sshd[818]: Invalid user aaa from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:46 nprobe sshd[820]: Invalid user aaa from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:49 nprobe sshd[822]: Invalid user aaaudio from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:52 nprobe sshd[824]: Invalid user aaaudio from 140.136.158.182
May 27 09:20:55 nprobe sshd[826]: Invalid user aaaudio from 140.136.158.182

Found a cool script on the Novell cool solutions web site that scans the system logfile and then blocks access from the systems that have been trying to gain access with invalid user names.

I followed the reccomendation to modify the script for Suse 10 and this worked for me:

#!/bin/bash
LAST_IP=0.0.0.0
COUNT=1

# Set MAXCOUNT to the maximum failures allowed before blacklisting
MAXCOUNT=5

#
# The three lines below put the leading lines in /etc/hosts.allow
# Note: This script overwrites the entire /etc/hosts.allow file.
#

echo '
# /etc/hosts.deny
# See "man tcpd" and "man 5 hosts_access" as well as /etc/hosts.allow
# for a detailed description.
http-rman : ALL EXCEPT LOCAL' > /etc/hosts.deny

#
# Scan the /var/log/messages file for failed login attempts via ssh.
# Parse out the IP address, and count the failure occurances from that IP
# If the IP fails more than 5 times - deny further access
#

for IP in `/bin/grep sshd /var/log/messages|/bin/grep "Invalid user"|/bin/sed 's/^.*from //'` 0.0.0.0; do
if [ ${LAST_IP} == ${IP} ]; then
let COUNT=${COUNT}+1
else
if [ ${COUNT} -ge ${MAXCOUNT} ]; then
echo "ALL: ${LAST_IP}/32" >> /etc/hosts.deny
fi
LAST_IP=${IP}
COUNT=1
fi
done

PC line PCL-RP100 Rumble Game Pad

I always like to install the latest drivers but when buying OEM hardware it proves difficult to track down the drivers.

For this particular device it proved to be a company called Ruling Technologies.
I am also informed by Glen that:

http://www.rockfire.com.tw/

Is the manufacturer, drivers are by Padix (same company)
Work fine with XP but not with Vista

Enjoy :-)

Blog Offline

Ooops. Blog has been offline for a couple of days because I had a server issue. Seems one of my recurring SQL jobs didn't finish within 24 hours and got it's knickers in a right old twist. Disk utilisation was through the roof and I stopped IIS services as a troubleshooting step. Problem was, I forgot to restart them!

Strange thing with the SQL job was I restared SQL server and the job (SMTP Log Trim) ran manually fine..... Hmmmm....