Had a couple of problems with patches this week. The First was on a Windows2003 server that runs a Dcom based application. We put all the latest MS patches on last week, and for some reason it stopped working.
I re-built one from scratch today, trying to do the patches in batches, but surprise surprise I managed to install them all, and it worked fine!

The second problem I had was with one of my web based applications, and (I think) the patches that came out in January. Its an ASP.Net app written in VB.net. It uses the impersonation function so all users run as one user. This is done due it the application needing lots of file system access across Windows and Linux platforms.

Anyway, I installed the patches and all of a sudden the application could no longer see any remote unc paths. Every time it checked to make sure the unc was valid it failed, and took the path offline! As soon as I un-installed the batch of patches it started working again.
If anyone else has had this problem and sussed out what it is, let me know.

On another note, i’ve seen a lot about on the web about hacking PSP (Playstaion portable) consoles lately, and the on going battle between the hackers and Sony. Quite a good BBC artical about it is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6397797.stm

So for I’ve not tried ‘downgrading’ my PSP, cos if it goes wrong you can end up turning it into an expensive looking brick. I am very tempted to give it a go though. Does anyone know if what the hackers are doing is legal?

Got a new 80gig drive for my laptop today. Over the next few days i’m going to blow it away and get it duel booting between Windows XP and Linux. If I find out anything interesting ill post it here.

Listening To: New album by the Kaiser Chiefs. Can’t make my mind up about it yet.

I’ve today managed to find the solution to a problems that’s been bugging me for a bit. When trying to install software(an .msi file) via a computer group policy, I couldn’t get it to work. In the application event log I was getting errors along the lines of

The installation source is invalid

As far as I could see I had given the computer NTFS rights into the share where the software was located, and everyone had read access to the share.

While trying to install the Dell open manage client software today I worked out what it was. Our Active directory is based on Windows 2000 servers, but the unc share the software was located on was a Windows2003 server. I moved the installation source to a windows 2000 server, gave the Domain Computers group access to the files and it worked!

Not entirely sure what caused the problem in the first place, there must be some incompatibility between the 2 operating systems way of working with the NTFS permissions.

So I managed to get the software on, but I cant get the client pc’s to report properly to the Dell open manage IT assistant, without lots of manual intervention on the pc’s.
You need to create a new domain user and run the IAP service as this users so the client will report. If anyone has done this already with some sort of script, let me know how you did it.

Listening to: NoFx, Punk In Drublic

Had a very odd problem this week, i’m sure it must have happened to someone before.
We moved an 2k active directory domain controller from one (logical) site to another. This had the very strange knock on effect of causing the domain DFS (distributed file system) to start acting strangely.

First of all, some machines (XPsp1, XPsp2, 2003 server) could not access the DFS root at all. They got a error message along the lines of:

‘Configuration information could not be read from the domain controller’

Then some machines could see the DFS root, but some of the shares where missing. I tried re-creating the shares but this had no effect.

I then rebooted the Domain controller that was the PDC emulator and that did nothing. There wasn’t anything suspect I could see in any of the FRS logs, so as a stab in the dark I restarted the DFS service (I didn’t even realise there was one!) on all the domain controllers in the domain, and it worked!
I have know idea why this happened and cant find anything online as to what caused it, so anyone with any ideas let me know.

Also installed MS Sharepoint 3.0 this week. Looks quite funky not really done much with it yet. If i find out anything that might be of interest ill post it here.

Oh, and check out the new Apple iPhone here www.apple.com/iphone I know some smart phones will do similar things already, but this does look mighty cool.

So, we currently have a RIS server setup on Windows2000, its now very out of date, the base image has only got XP SP1 on and I cant see anyway I can just upgrade it, we can only ris clients from the subnet the servers on, and we needed to run the DHCP service on the server.
So we decided to create a new Windows2003 based ris server. This is what I had to go through to get it working:

•First of all I needed a copy of Windows XP with service pack 2 on it, to use as my XP base image on the server. There’s quite a good web site about it here

Basicly you copy the contents of the XP cd to your hard disk, extract the sp2 download to your hard disk (xpsp2.exe -x:c:\sp2), then run the update app in the i386\update folder of the extracted sp2 and point it to your original xp file. Then you’ll have a nice and up-to-date copy of Windows XP. Copy it onto cd or a server assessable by the new ris server

• Now just install the RIS service through the control panel/Add remove programs/Windows Components. Then you should get a Remote Install service under admin tools. Before running that you need to Authorize the RIS server on the domain. You do this (for some reason) using DHCP manager. See the Microsoft article here. Once you have authorized the server, run the new RIS setup application, point it at your new xp setup files and you should have the RIS server ready to go.

• The next thing we needed to do was not run the DHCP server on the same server as RIS, and get ris working across subnet’s. When we first installed ris I couldn’t find any way of doing this, but I have this time!

There are 2 scope options you can set in DHCP:
066 – Boot Server Host Name (Basicly the TFTP server the client will use)
067 – Boot File name (the file to use on the server to boot the PC)

Set the boot server host name option to be the IP address of the ris sever (give the server a static address) , and set the boot file name to be OSChooser\i386\startrom.com

Add these options to each DHCP subnet you want to use this RIS server on and the PXE clients should be able to find the RIS server and its boot file.

• Now one of the most tricky parts. Adding 3rd party drivers to the base image so that a) the basic RIS setup program will run, and b) the Windows XP setup will run.
We did most of the hard work with this when we setup the old RIS server. The best article I found on it is here. This article basicly says copy certain driver files to certain parts of the folder structure, and update your .sif file to look for the files in these location. When we did this originally we had to manually hack the drivers inf files to get them working on Dell GX270′s and 280′s but I don?t think that’s required anymore. If you need the drivers email me and I can send you them.

• At this point you should be able to now boot your client pc, and it should pick up the ris server and boot from it (as long as you have setup the DHCP options for the subnet your client is in).
Before doing this I copied in the existing ripref.sif file from the old server, as this contained all the options about joining the domain, the product key ect. Its probably worth sorting this file out before doing an install or the install will ask you questions and it still wont be unattended There are various sources on the web that will tell you about the settings, or use can use the RIPrep wizard, as described here

• Something that I never came across on the Windows2000 RIS was it failing to join a domain (if you set that option in the .sif file) If this happens you might have to run the delegate control wizard at the root of your domain in active directory users and computers. Just add the domain admin’s and any other groups that will be RISing, and make sure they have the ability to add computer accounts to the domain.

• The final problem I came across was when I pushed an image back to the server. It went back no problems, so I copied into the templates folder of the new image what i thought was a good .sif file.
When I then tried to use the new image, i kept getting an error saying
‘txtsetup.sif is missing or corrupt. Error 21′
I had a look around for this error and it turned out the problem was with the .sif file I had copied in. There were some new options in the [OSChooser] section, that the image needed to find the original mirror. So I re-created my new image, and instead of copying the good .sif file over the one it created, I just added all the sections I needed to this one.

That was it, took me a few days to get it working correctly but its definitely worth it in the long run, when you have 150 machines to setup!