We have a number of Server 2012 systems, all of which run virtualised on Hyper-V 2012 server. We are having problems with two such virtual instances, both of which are used as file servers, whereby they occasionally stop responding to requests to serve files to clients. After logging on to the server, attempts to shut it down gracefully fail (no error, it just fails to acknowledge a shutdown request).

Recovery is a case of power cycling the server(s) from the Hyper-V console.

These two servers don't serve a large number of users (one serves no more than 6 users, and the other serves around 20 users), they are in the same domain, but on different physical hardware (and at different sites). They don't lock up at the same time. They both use DFSR to replicate a fairly large amount of data between themselves (200GB) over ADSL connections, this is working fine, and we have been using DFSR to do this on the previous two generations of server OS we have used (Server 2008 R2 and Server 2003 - both of which were physical installs however).

Today, when one of the servers crashed, I noticed an entry in the event log, which looked similar to the following:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        ESENT
Date:          27/11/2012 10:25:55
Event ID:      533
Task Category: General
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      HAL-FS-01.example.com
Description:
DFSRs (1500) \\.\E:\System Volume Information\DFSR\database_C8CC_101_CC00_EC0E\
dfsr.db: A request to write to the file "\\.\E:\System Volume Information\
DFSR\database_C8CC_101_CC00_EC0E\fsr.log" at offset 4423680 (0x0000000000438000)
for 4096 (0x00001000) bytes has not completed for 36 second(s). This problem is
likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further
assistance diagnosing the problem.

When the server started up again, I went to find the event log entry to investigate further and found that the event log entry was no longer there (I assume it was in memory but failed to write to disk before the server was powered off, for the reason mentioned in the message). I found the above message by searching back further in the event log.

Both of these virtual servers have their E: volumes fully allocated as opposed to dynamically expanding, and there are no other issues on any of the other virtual servers (which include server 2012, server 2008 R2 and Ubuntu 12.04 x64). There are no signs of IO, memory or CPU starvation on the host systems.

I've used performance counters on the affected virtual servers to monitor memory usage (including non paged pool usage), as well as CPU and network utilisation, and none of these show any signs of trouble when the issue arises.

I would have thought our configuration isn't that uncommon, so I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this, and managed to resolve the problem?

The host specifications are as follows:

hal-vm-01 running a total of 5 virtual servers (affected file server, DC + other guests) is a Dell Poweredge R710, 16GB, 6 x 300GB SAS 15K RAID 10, Perc H700

hey-vm-01 System running 2 virtual servers (affected File server and DC) Dell Poweredge T620, 16GB, 2 x 3TB SATA RAID 1, Perc H310

We have a further virtual server hal-vm-02 running 5 guests, which is unaffected by this problem and is a lower spec than hal-vm-01, but loaded about the same (exchange, DC, SQL + other guests). More memory is on the way so that we can configure shared nothing failover between this host and 'hal-vm-01'.

There is AV software (MS SCEP) running on the two virtual servers that are affected, they are configured to scan on create only, and to not scan files created by the dfsrs.exe process. There is no AV software running on the VM hosts themselves.

We are using Windows Server 2012 backup on the host hal-vm-01 to backup all the VMs, this runs out of hours. The other affected server hey-vm-01 isn't backed up, as it's just an off site DFSR copy of the data at our main office. Another backup job runs on the affected virtual guest hal-fs-01, this also uses Windows Server backup, to take snapshots of the data stored in the DFS replicated shares. Both backup jobs run out of office hours.

Three months later...

We've had a support ticket open with Microsoft for over three months now, there have been lots of performance counter logs, memory dumps, event logs sent to Microsoft. The analysis they've performed indicated a problem with one of the virtual drives of the hal-fs-01 (the virtual server with the problem). The virtual drive in question was the server's E:\ drive, which just happened to have all our DFSR groups and shares. Recently, I moved all data off the E:\ drive to many smaller virtual disks that I added to the server, and of course moved all the shares and DFSR groups, leaving just Windows Deployment Services files on the E:\ drive. Despite this, we still saw the problem with writes to the E:\ drive failing.

Last week I've moved the WDS files to a new virtual disk and also disabled the WDS service. I've also deleted the E:\ virtual disk just in case there was some anomaly with the disk. Since then, we've not yet had another failure, however it's too early to know if this has fixed the problem, as our longest up time was previously around 2 weeks, as of the time of this edit (20/03/2013), we are only one week into the current config, if the problem hasn't surfaced again by next week, I'll be re-enabling WDS, as I have a suspicion that WDS could be the culprit.

I'll keep this question updated (or provide an answer if I manage to resolve the problem).

Moved back to Server 2008 R2...

Not updated the question with progress, but we ended up rolling back to Server 2008 R2, everything works fine. I'd still be interested in hearing about anyone having this issue and managing to find a fix.

I'm trying to add multiple USB external disk targets to a Windows Server 2012 Backup schedule.

Having gone through the steps in the GUI to add an additional target, the process fails with the error The system cannot find the path specified.

I followed the steps in this article:

• Option 1 is a non starter, because we have over a dozen removable disks, and I don't want to buy a box full of USB hubs and hang all these disks out the back of the server rack. So in this instance, the article suggests moving on to step 3.
• Option 2 removes old disks from the backup schedule, not an option, for obvious reasons.
• Option 3 suggests running the command WBADMIN ENABLE BACKUP -addtarget:{DISKGUID}, but this fails with the error message ERROR - The specified backup location could not be found or is not a supported backup storage location.

I've found numerous threads with some people reporting success on option 3, but others with, like myself have the exact same problem.

I've checked event logs, and the files in the directory C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsServerBackup, but haven't found anything helpful. I've also tried deleting the volume on the disk and repeating the process, as well as pre-creating an NTFS volume on the disk.

I'm using a series of USB disks with an unformatted capacity of 2TB (1.82TB formatted) if that is of any relevance.

Has anyone else had this problem and managed to resolve it?

Update 1

An answer to this question suggested putting quotes around the GUID e.g. WBADMIN ENABLE BACKUP -addtarget:"{DISKGUID}". This goes a step further as it asks me if I want to format the device, however, after formatting, it then fails with the error The system cannot find the path specified.

With Hyper-V 2012, it is possible to configure the primary server to replicate to a slave server, to allow virtual guests to be live migrated to the slave server, when maintenance is required on the primary server.

My question is as follows:

Is it possible using Hyper-V 2012, to configure replication from the primary server to two (or more) slave servers?

I'm not having much look finding the answer using Google, so I was hoping somebody might know the answer already.

Correction to the above

Without shared storage, it isn't possible to replicate a VM and live migrate it. To perform a live migration, you first have to remove the replica. The question still stands however.

I've been having problems getting Windows Search Service on our file server to provide our Windows 7 clients with searching capability of the indexed files on the server.

I've got the Windows Search Service working fine (searches work on the server), but I've had no luck finding content on the server, using the search tools on the clients.

What might be causing this problem?

I've got a Bind 9 DNS server sitting behind a NAT firewall, assume the Internet facing IP is 1.2.3.4

There are no restrictions on outgoing traffic, and port 53 (TCP/UDP) is forwarded from 1.2.3.4 to the internal DNS server (10.0.0.1). There are no IP Tables rules on either the VPS or the internal Bind 9 server.

From a remote Linux VPS located elsewhere on the internet, nslookup works fine

# nslookup foo.example.com 1.2.3.4
Server:    1.2.3.4
Address:   1.2.3.4#53

Name:      foo.example.com
Addresss:  9.9.9.9

However, when using the host command on the remote VPS, I receive the following output:

# host foo.example.com 1.2.3.4
;; reply from unexpected source: 1.2.3.4#13731, expected 1.2.3.4#53
;; reply from unexpected source: 1.2.3.4#13731, expected 1.2.3.4#53
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached.

From the VPS, I can establish a connection (using telnet) to 1.2.3.4:53

From the internal DNS server (10.0.0.1), the host command appears to be fine:

# host foo.example.com 127.0.0.1
Using domain server:
Name: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Aliases:

foo.example.com has address 9.9.9.9

Any suggestions as to why the host command on my VPS is complaining about the reply coming back from another port, and what can I do to fix this?

Further info:

From a windows host external to the network

>nslookup foo.example.com 1.2.3.4
DNS request timeout
    timeout was 2 seconds
Server: UnKnown
Address: 1.2.3.4

DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out

This is a default install of bind from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, with around 11 zones configured.

$ named -v
BIND 9.8.1-P1

TCP Dump (filtered) from internal DNS server

20:36:29.175701 IP pc.external.com.57226 > dns.example.com.domain: 1+ PTR? 4.3.2.1.in-addr.arpa. (45)
20:36:29.175948 IP dns.example.com.domain > pc.external.com.57226: 1 Refused- 0/0/0 (45)
20:36:31.179786 IP pc.external.com.57227 > dns.example.com.domain: 2+[|domain]
20:36:31.179960 IP dns.example.com.domain > pc.external.com.57227: 2 Refused-[|domain]
20:36:33.180653 IP pc.external.com.57228 > dns.example.com.domain: 3+[|domain]
20:36:33.180906 IP dns.example.com.domain > pc.external.com.57228: 3 Refused-[|domain]
20:36:35.185182 IP pc.external.com.57229 > dns.example.com.domain: 4+ A? foo.example.com. (45)
20:36:35.185362 IP dns.example.com.domain > pc.external.com.57229: 4*- 1/1/1 (95)
20:36:37.182844 IP pc.external.com.57230 > dns.example.com.domain: 5+ AAAA? foo.example.com. (45)
20:36:37.182991 IP dns.example.com.domain > pc.external.com.57230: 5*- 0/1/0 (119)

TCP Dump from client during query

21:24:52.054374 IP pc.external.com.43845 > dns.example.com.53: 6142+ A? foo.example.com. (45)
21:24:52.104694 IP dns.example.com.29242 > pc.external.com.43845: UDP, length 95

We have an Exchange 2010 Server, running within our Active Directory domain, with an internal hostname of server.example.local.

The server is configured for Exchange anywhere, but currently has a self signed certificate with a name of server.example.local installed.

Internally, clients connect and work fine, but externally, we are having certificate errors as you would expect.

I'm about to purchase a UCC SSL Certificate to install on the server with all the relevant SANs on the certificate to correct this, but due to obvious problem obtaining a trusted cert with .local as a subject alternative name, I'm looking to configure clients on the internal network so that they don't use any reference to the .local hostname.

I've configured our external DNS name for the server as exchange.example.com, and have created an CNAME for autodiscover.example.com which also (correctly) points to exchange.example.com. I've also configured internal DNS records for these two hostnames which point to the internal interface of the same server. I don't anticipate any problems here.

I'm now trying to reconfigure Auto Discover internally, so that Outlook attempts to connect to exchange.example.com. I've followed the steps in KB940726 to prepare for this, and this appeared to work fine. No errors were generated and I was able to verify the CAS name in AD using ADSI edit.

I've just tried testing this with a newly created test user account complete with a new Exchange mailbox, and Outlook 2007 connects fine on the internal network, but looking deeper in the Exchange profile, Outlook is still resolving the server name as server.example.local.

Could it be the self signed cert, that is causing Outlook to display the server name as server.example.local, or is there still something wrong with my internal autodiscover configuration?

Edit

I've proven it isn't the certificate that is responsible for outlook returning server.example.local, by installing another self certified certificate with a name of test.example.com. When creating a new outlook profile, I get the mismatch error I'm expceting, but after accepting the cert, and finishing the config of the Outlook profile, again it still shows server.example.local as the server name. This means that if I were to purchase the UCC cert now, that external client would work fine, but internal clients would show a certificate name mismatch.

Any ideas where to start diagnosing this?

I have a Windows 7 PC on our company network (which is a member of our Active Directory). Everything works fine until I open a VPN connection to a customer's site.

When I do connect, I lose network access to shares on the network, including directories such as 'Application Data' that we have a folder redirection policy for. As you can imagine, this makes working on the PC very difficult, as desktop shortcuts stop working, software stops working properly due to having 'Application Data' pulled from under it.

Our network is routed (10.58.5.0/24), with other local subnets existing within the scope of 10.58.0.0/16. The remote network is on 192.168.0.0/24.

I've tracked the issue down to being DNS related. As soon as I open the VPN tunnel, all my DNS traffic goes via the remote network, which explains the loss of local resources, but my question is, how can I force local DNS queries to go to our local DNS servers rather than our customers?

The output of ipconfig /all when not connected to the VPN is below:

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : 7k5xy4j
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : mydomain.local
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : mydomain.local

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mydomain.local
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : F0-4D-A2-DB-3B-CA
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::9457:c5e0:6f10:b298%10(Preferred)
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.5.89(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 31 January 2012 15:55:47
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 10 February 2012 10:11:30
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.5.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.3.32
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 250629538
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-14-AC-76-2D-F0-4D-A2-DB-3B-CA

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.3.32
                                       10.58.3.33
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

This is the output of the same command with the VPN tunnel connected:

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : 7k5xy4j
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : mydomain.local
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : mydomain.local

PPP adapter Customer Domain:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : customerdomain.com
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : CustomerDomain
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.85(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.16
                                       192.168.0.17
   Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.17
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mydomain.local
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : F0-4D-A2-DB-3B-CA
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::9457:c5e0:6f10:b298%10(Preferred)
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.5.89(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 31 January 2012 15:55:47
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 10 February 2012 10:11:30
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.5.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.3.32
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 250629538
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-14-AC-76-2D-F0-4D-A2-DB-3B-CA

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.58.3.32
                                       10.58.3.33
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Routing table

Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric

          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0        10.58.5.1       10.58.5.89     20
        10.58.5.0    255.255.255.0         On-link        10.58.5.89    276
       10.58.5.89  255.255.255.255         On-link        10.58.5.89    276
      10.58.5.255  255.255.255.255         On-link        10.58.5.89    276
    91.194.153.42  255.255.255.255        10.58.5.1       10.58.5.89     21
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        127.0.0.1  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
  127.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
      192.168.0.0    255.255.255.0     192.168.0.95     192.168.0.85     21
     192.168.0.85  255.255.255.255         On-link      192.168.0.85    276
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link        10.58.5.89    276
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link      192.168.0.85    276
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link        10.58.5.89    276
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      192.168.0.85    276

The binding order for the interfaces is as follows:

I've not configured the VPN tunnel to use the default gateway at the remote end, and network comms to nodes on both networks are fine. (i.e. I can ping any node on our network or the remote network).

I've modified the PPTP connection properties to use the DNS servers 10.58.3.32 followed by 192.168.0.16, yet the query still goes to 192.168.0.16.

Edit:

The local resources that disappear are hosted on domain DFS roots, which might (or might not) be relevant.

Further Edit:

This only seems to be affecting domain DFS roots. If I reference the share via the server name (i.e. \\server\share instead of \\dfsroot\share), I can access the shares.

As per my comment against this answer, I've found I can add the DNS name of the domain to my hosts file which stops my (DFS) network drives from disappearing, but I'd still like the bold part of my question (above) answering if anyone has any ideas.

I've have an ageing Linux server running on Dell PowerEdge hardware, with a SAS 5IR RAID controller. It has a pair of SAS 146Gb disks in a RAID 1 configuration that has the OS and other software. I have a need to add a large chunk of storage to the server. The data going on the disk isn't important, and with budget being limited for this, I've decided to add a large 2TB SATA disk to the unused SATA interface that is on board. The system sees the disk, but dmesg reports:

scsi 5:0:1:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD2002FAEX-0 05.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 5:0:1:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
sd 5:0:1:0: [sdb] 18446744073321613488 512-byte hardware sectors (9444732965540666 MB)
sd 5:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 5:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 5:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

As you can see above, the size is reported incorrectly. I suspect it might be a limitation of the kernel I'm running, but I can't find anything to support this theory. Can anybody confirm if this is likely to be the case?

The OS is Ubuntu 7.10 (Server, x64 IIRC, no GUI), running kernel 2.6.22-14-server.

BTW: Yes, I know it's a non LTS version of Ubuntu, and it is very out of date. This isn't a security risk in the scenario it is being used in. I'm hoping to not have to update the kernel or OS if it can be avoided, but am prepared to do so, if I'm sure it will resolve the problem.

We have a server 2003 R2 standard (which I'll refer to as SRV01) that's knocking on a bit now, but it still acts as a file, print and SQL server on our company's network. SRV01 hosts user profiles, home directories and pretty much all our business data. Note our AD is currently at 2008 R2 level.

This server is due to be upgraded in the next 12 months, but I've no budget to spend on it just yet.

A bit of history of this server follows:

When SRV01 was first commissioned, it acted as a domain controller (with the same 2003 R2 install it has today), paired with another server that ran Server 2003 R2 SBS.

A few years ago, we purchased a pair of dedicated DCs (2008 R2) and at this point we decommissioned the 2003 SBS server, and SRV01 was DCPROMOed out of the AD.

Up until very recently, SRV01 used to run Exchange 2003, however we've recently purchased a dedicated server for Exchange 2010 and upgraded (following Microsoft recommended upgrade path). Exchange 2003 was recently uninstalled. - Cleanly to the best of my knowledge.

Ever since Exchange was removed from SRV01, I'm finding that after a few days of uptime, when I attempt to logon, pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL just hides the Welcome to Windows Server 2003 banner, and never presents the logon dialog. All I see is a moveable mouse pointer and a blank background.

It's a similar story with an admin TS session, the RDP client connects and gives me a blank background, but no logon dialog is presented. The RDP session indefinitely hangs until I give up and close it.

The only way I've been able to gain access to the server is to pull the plug on it. Whilst the server does have a battery backed up RAID 5 controller, I'm unhappy about having to do this, so as a temporary measure, I've created a scheduled job to reboot SRV01 each night.

Not only do I not like the idea of scheduling a reboot of a server like this, but it is also causing problems for users that leave desktop PCs left logged on overnight. Users complain of 'Delayed Write Failures', and there has also been a number of users that have started to complain about account lockout problems, as well as users not able to connect to shares on SRV01 until they reboot their desktop PCs.

I've examined event logs on SRV01 and on the DCs looking for clues as to what the problem is, but there really is nothing untoward being logged. How could I being to investigate this problem when nothing of any relevance is being logged? Is there some additional logging that can be enabled that might give some clues as to what could be causing this problem? Could performance monitor help me out here, and if so, what counters would you consider monitoring?

It's worth mentioning that whilst the server is unresponsive via the console and TS, it does still respond to clients connecting to shares without problems for several days, but after about a week I then start to hear users reporting problems accessing shares, but this seems quite sporadic.

I've also tried leaving the console logged on (and locked), when I notice I can no longer logon via TS, I can unlock the server console without problem, but it refuses to reboot/shutdown, and subsequent attempts to reboot report that a system shutdown is already in progress and the system then completely hangs.

I've tried playing the waiting game for several hours thinking that a timeout might allow the shutdown to continue, but to no avail.

Having just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, I'm attempting to create a certificate that can be used both internally and externally (by staff).

Previously with exchange 2003, we didn't need an certificate for internal use, so we simply created an certificate from our internal CA, with the CN of our external hostname for OWA.

With Exchange 2010 though, outlook is using RPC over HTTPS internally too. Unless I'm missing something, it appears as though the internal CA with Windows server doesn't allow the creation of certificates with SANs. The certificate for internal use need to be created by a trusted CA, which the Windows CA is.

But to allow staff's home PCs to connect via RPC over HTTPS, it seems to be impossible to configure Outlook to connect, as it fails with certificate error 0x00000010 (FLAG_CERT_CN_INVALID)

This would be rectified if I could include the external CN as a SAN.

As there is only a small handful of staff wanting to use Outlook anywhere, we'd rather not have to purchase an externally trusted SSL certificate. Is this possible, or do we need to spend some cash to achieve this objective?

What's the best way of comparing two directory structures and deleting extraneous files and directories in the target location?

I have a small web photo gallery app that I'm developing. Users add & remove images using FTP. The web gallery software I've written creates new thumbnails on the fly, but it doesn't deal with deletions. What I would like to do, is schedule a command/bash script to take care of this at predefined intervals.

Original images are stored in /home/gallery/images/ and are organised in albums, using subdirectories. The thumbnails are cached in /home/gallery/thumbs/, using the same directory structure and filenames as the images directory.

I've tried using the following to achieve this:

rsync  -r --delete --ignore-existing /home/gallery/images /home/gallery/thumbs

which would work fine if all the thumbnails have already been cached, but there is no guarantee that this would be the case, when this happens, the thumb directory has original full size images copied to it.

How can I best achieve what I'm trying to do?

I have a Linux based router with four interfaces (each with its own private subnet).

When I directly connect a device directly (i.e. no switch, just a patch cable) to one interface and another device directly to another, as below, then the router works perfectly.

   DEVICE1
192.168.8.11 ------- 192.168.8.254 
                         ROUTER
                     10.58.129.254 ------- DEVICE2
                                         10.58.129.1

When I connect the router with our switches in between, as below, then router doesn't work.

   DEVICE1
192.168.8.11 ----------- switch1
                            |
                         switch2
                            |
                         switch3
                            |
                      192.168.8.254 
                         ROUTER
                      10.58.129.254 -------- switch3
                                                |
                                             DEVICE2
                                           10.58.129.1 

All the switches are Layer 3, Switch1 (Dell PowerConnect 3548P) has a fibre connection to Switch2 (Dell PowerConnect 6224F) which is our core switch that handles routing between most VLANs. This is connected via fibre to Switch3 (Dell PowerConnect 6224).

Routing on the core switch isn't enabled either of the two VLANs (192.168.8.11 or 10.58.129.254). The reason for this is because our core switch doesn't support policy based routing, hence the reason behind this Linux box to perform routing on these VLANs.

With the router connected via the switches, from Device1, I can ping the interface 192.168.8.254 on the Linux router, but can't ping the other interface (10.58.129.254).

Switch2 configuration/diagnostics

switch2#show ip route

Route Codes: R - RIP Derived, O - OSPF Derived, C - Connected, S - Static
       B - BGP Derived, IA - OSPF Inter Area
       E1 - OSPF External Type 1, E2 - OSPF External Type 2
       N1 - OSPF NSSA External Type 1, N2 - OSPF NSSA External Type 2

S      0.0.0.0/0 [50/0] via 10.58.3.16,   vlan 3
C      10.58.3.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 3
C      10.58.4.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 4
C      10.58.5.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 5
C      10.58.9.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 9
C      10.58.10.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 10
C      10.58.11.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 11
C      10.58.12.0/24 [0/0] directly connected,   vlan 12
S      10.58.64.0/24 [40/0] via 10.58.3.17,   vlan 3
S      10.58.128.0/24 [40/0] via 10.58.3.254,   vlan 3
S      10.58.129.0/24 [1/0] via 10.58.3.254,   vlan 3 
S      192.168.8.0/24 [1/0] via 10.58.3.254,   vlan 3

switch2#ping 10.58.129.254
Pinging 10.58.129.254 with 64 bytes of data:
----10.58.129.254 PING Statistics----
4 packets transmitted,0 packets received,100% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 0/NaN/0

switch2#ping 192.168.8.254
Pinging 192.168.8.254 with 64 bytes of data:
----192.168.8.254 PING Statistics----
4 packets transmitted,0 packets received,100% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 0/NaN/0

Router diagnostics

router# traceroute -d 192.168.8.11
traceroute to 192.168.8.11 (192.168.8.11), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  192.168.8.11 (192.168.8.11)  0.237 ms  0.222 ms  0.211 ms

router# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway      Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
10.58.3.0       0.0.0.0      255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
10.58.128.0     0.0.0.0      255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth3
10.58.129.0     0.0.0.0      255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth2
192.168.8.0     0.0.0.0      255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth4

router# ping 192.168.8.11
PING 192.168.8.11 (192.168.8.11) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.8.11: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=2.23 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.8.11: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.237 ms

Device1 diagnostics

(device1)c:\>route print
===========================================================================
Interface List
0x1 ........................... MS TCP Loopback interface
0x2 ...bc 30 5b d8 41 c3 ...... Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller - Pac
ket Scheduler Miniport
===========================================================================
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0    192.168.8.254    192.168.8.11       20
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0        127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1       1
      192.168.8.0    255.255.255.0     192.168.8.11    192.168.8.11       20
     192.168.8.11  255.255.255.255        127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1       20
    192.168.8.255  255.255.255.255     192.168.8.11    192.168.8.11       20
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0     192.168.8.11    192.168.8.11       20
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255     192.168.8.11    192.168.8.11       1
Default Gateway:     192.168.8.254
===========================================================================
Persistent Routes:
  None

(device1)c:\>tracert -d  10.58.129.254
Tracing route to 10.58.129.254 over a maximum of 30 hops
  1     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
(etc. until 30 hops).

So from device1, running ping 10.58.129.254, and with tcpdump running on the 192.168.8.254 interface of the Linux router, I can see ICMP echo requests and replies

router# tcpdump -i eth4
17:08:08.326221 IP 192.168.8.11 > 10.58.129.254: ICMP echo request, id 512, seq 63746, length 40
17:08:08.326240 IP 10.58.129.254 > 192.168.8.11: ICMP echo reply, id 512, seq 63746, length 40

But the reply never returns to device1.

Does anybody know what the problem might be? tcpdump on eth2,3 & 4 also reveals the following output (I've not seen it on eth0, which is the one VLAN of the above that is routed by the core switch):

19:49:16.246286 STP 802.1w, Rapid STP, Flags [Learn, Forward], bridge-id
8000.a4:ba:db:69:74:91.8014, length 43
19:49:18.257007 STP 802.1w, Rapid STP, Flags [Learn, Forward], bridge-id
8000.a4:ba:db:69:74:91.8014, length 43

I understand this is spanning tree, but I don't know if this is a bad thing or not. Does this offer any clues? For info, the hardware address in the above STP message, is that of switch3.

I have a small network with 10 VLANs, mostly routed via our core layer 3 switch. RIP is enabled on the core switch, but I'm in the process of adding a second router for a couple of VLANs as our core switch doesn't support policy based routing.

In a previous question, i asked for help configuring a Linux box as a second router, which is now mostly working, but I'm seeing some odd results whereby sometimes it works, and at other times it doesn't. The default gateway coupled with one static route on two servers should be all I need for everything to work on our network, but it appears as though something is interfering, as tcpdump shows that packets aren't always going to the correct gateway that I've configured.

Not understanding routing protocols, i was wondering if they could be what appears to be interfering with what I'm doing?

For info, 3 VLANs are routed exclusively via the Linux router, 6 exclusively by the core switch, and 1 VLAN is routed by both.

I'm trying to build a shell script to automate the installation of several packages onto an Ubuntu 10.04 server, and I'm having problems with proftpd-basic.

I'm using the command line

apt-get -qy install proftpd-basic >/tmp/install.log

For most packages, this approach would work fine, however proftpd-basic appears to require some interaction (it asks whether to perform an inetd or standalone installation).

Is it possible for me to pre-select this option on the command line somehow, as I don't want the user to be bothered by this question? - For info, if it matters, I want to choose the 'standalone' option.

Edit:

The interactive part of the process doesn't just require simple y/n answers, it requires that I use arrow keys to navigate to the option I want, requiring me to press enter to make the selection. This might have some bearing upon the solution to this problem.

I've installed the beta version of Ubuntu 10.04 server edition (x64), but the system doesn't have an internet connection. Is there a way I can find out what packages are in the apt repository with nothing more than a web browser?

The reason I'm asking, is because I will have an internet connection available when the production system goes live, but it simply isn't possible to internet connect my development system.

I'm trying to create a table in DokuWiki, with a cell that vertically spans, however unlike the examples in the syntax guide, the cell I want to create has more than one row of text.

The following is an ASCII version of what I'm trying to achieve

+-----------+-----------+
| Heading 1 | Heading 2 |
+-----------+-----------+
|           | Multiple  |
| Some text | rows of   |
|           | text      |
+-----------+-----------+

I've tried the following syntax

^ Heading 1 ^ Heading 2 ^
| Some text | Multiple  |
| :::       | rows of   |
| :::       | text      |

but this generates the output

+-----------+-----------+
| Heading 1 | Heading 2 |
+-----------+-----------+
|           | Multiple  |
|           +-----------+
| Some text | rows of   |
|           +-----------+
|           | text      |
+-----------+-----------+

I can't find anything in the DokuWiki documentation, so I'm hoping I'm missing something fundamentally simple?

I'm a sysadmin/developer that works for a small IT company. We are having a new office building built, and we have a limited time window in which to put in the core infrastructure network cabling that we require.

As budgets are tight at the moment, my intention is to get runs of fibre optic cabling from the central server room location to a number of key areas in the building. We aren't interested in getting the cables terminated at this point, we just want to put the runs of cable in place whilst we can.

There will be about 9 runs of fibre in total from the server room (lengths ranging from about 15m to 60m), and I'm probably looking at about 12 or 16 cores in each run - I'll probably only ever use a single pair, but I might as well make it as future/failure proof as reasonably possible, and this number of cores seems to be the sweet spot from a price perspective.

All the cable is going to be internal and will be used for IP only, and the plan is to (eventually) putting a stack of Cisco catalyst 3750s at the remote end.

Other than patching fibre to switches and media converters, I've had a very limited amount of experience with fibre installations in the past (used a fusion splicer many years ago), but other than that I'm a fibre installation newbie, so I'm looking for some help regarding the type of fibre I should be purchasing for the job.

Looking around, I see many different types OM1/OM2/OM3/OS1, single/multi mode, 62.5/125 or 50/125, Tight buffered / Loose Tube.

Had budget not been an issue, I'd have got a contractor in, but this really isn't an option at the moment, so can anyone make any recommendations, or offer any good sources of information to make sure I purchase the correct cable type?

p.s. UK based if different standards are relevant - although I guess you can probably tell that I'm UK based from my spelling of 'Fibre'.

We have a small stub office that currently has a single server 2003 domain controller, and a DFS-R copy of the file store held at our main office. We probably replicate about 100Gb of data, I would guess about 20Gb maximum is actively used at both ends. We have (relatively) slow ADSL links between sites.

Replication mostly works quite well for us, except on instances where we make changes to security on some of the replicated files. - this causes a huge backlog of changes that seem to take several days to clear. I've been reading some other posts about issues, and also about the new Branch Cache feature that Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2 have to offer, and as I understand it, the pros and cons are as follows:

Branch Cache

Pros

• No version conflicts
• Fast access for subsequent access

Cons

• Slow access for first time access
• Slow write access

DFSR

Pros

• Quick read/write access to data at all times
• A limited amount of additional data security

Cons

• Backlogs can occur very easily
• Version conflicts can be an issue with backlogs
• Replication can take too long - not suited to real-time access to files between offices.

Has anyone tested branch cache? I'm wondering if know how well branch cache performs in the real world? Would it be better than DFSR for our setup? I would imagine it could be very useful if I were able to pre-fetch chunks of data (I guess I could do this manually with robocopy and delete!). The only concern I have is the fact that data writes would be slow.

I've also been considering implementing sharepoint at our main office. I think this might just swing in favour of Branch Cache.

Obviously if I decided to go with branch cache it would have to pass testing, but I just wanted to know if I'm missing any other pros or cons that might persuade me one way or the other?

I'd probably keep our AD deployed software as DFS-R replicated and maybe even user specific data (e.g. Home Directories and Profiles), otherwise the writes would surely cause delays on the clients?

I'm looking for some useful information about how to design network cabling for a building.

I'm not so much interested in wiring standards such as 568A, but more interested in physically wiring the building.

For example:

Is it better to have all the cabling from all the data points in a building to go back to a central point (where line length permits), or is it better to have a number of local switches linked back to a core switch or router via fibre (or copper) links?

Any useful tips or URLs would be appreciated.

I've configured several of our outlook 2007 clients (connected to Exchange 2003) to use RPC over HTTPS. This allows our users to connect to the Exchange server remotely without having to connect using VPN tunnels.

All the computers are domain members, yet outlook refuses to remember the users credentials for connecting to the Exchange server, despite checking the remember password checkbox.

For info, the operating system on the clients doesn't seem to matter, WinXP, Vista and Windows 7 all show the same issue.

Does anyone know how to fix this?