Jez's questions

I've installed the IIS failed request tracing rules feature on my server (Windows Server 2016), and I'm trying to add a new rule. When I click "Finish" to add the new rule, this error pops up:

I can't seem to find anything on Google as to why this error would occur in this circumstance, and I've tried changing the Providers to no avail. I'm trying to trace HTTP 500 internal server errors. How can I fix this?

This error is also popping up when I try to perform various other configuration changes in the IIS manager so it seems to be something fundamental.

It looks like if you're running a virtual SMTP server in IIS7, the only GUI to configure it properly is in the IIS6 management console, in the "SMTP virtual server" section. The IIS7 management console "SMTP E-mail" icon gives virtually no configurability in comparison.

Isn't this a bit strange? Why didn't Microsoft port over the SMTP GUI to IIS7 instead of telling you to use the old IIS6 interface?

I have an odd problem that has started happening with Task Scheduler on Windows Server 2012 R2.

A bunch of scheduled tasks all have this same problem. I checked on it a few weeks ago and it was fine, but now it has started happening on several boxes.

When the scheduled task is run, it has one action: start a program. This program is a batch file (with a .CMD extension, but I've tried with a .BAT extension; same problem). The task runs fine, but when the task is run, the file is usually (like 90% of the time) deleted! Well, actually, it's more like "shadow-deleted" because afterwards, a file of the same name cannot be written to the directory the .BAT/.CMD file was in ("destination folder access denied" even with Admin permissions) until the machine is rebooted. It looks like the file is still there in some memory cache, but it doesn't appear in Windows Explorer and cannot be found on the commandline.

This happens whether the task is triggered automatically via a time schedule, or triggered manually.

I can understand the possibility of the task failing to run because of a permissions error (although it was working fine a few weeks ago and the task does run successfully the one time before the file has been shadow-deleted!), but why on earth would it shadow-delete the batch file?

I found one other instance of someone having a similar problem, but they fixed it by recreating the tasks: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/windows-7-bug-task-scheduler-deleting-task-bat/33ecfb3e-d22e-4c1b-bc71-076391bcd1ba

I tried that but still get the same problem.

I have a rather nonstandard installation - Windows Server 2008 R2 on a Dell Latitude E6520 laptop. I want the Windows DNS server to run when the laptop starts up, but it looks like the network drivers don't present the NIC as being ready until a network cable is plugged in, because if I try to start the DNS service before the cable is plugged in, I get the error:

Error 1222: The network is not present or not started.

I suspect this is a driver issue because I have another non-laptop Dell server where, even when the machine is started without the network cable plugged in, the Windows DNS service will start.

So is there a way to get the Dell laptop network driver to start even when the network cable is not plugged in, or get the Windows DNS service to start with no NIC available? The silly thing is that once the Windows DNS service is started, it stays running even when you unplug the network cable - it just needs it plugged in to start up in the first place! I know I can start the laptop with the ethernet cable plugged in, or manually start DNS after it's been plugged in, but it would be nice just to have it start on boot no matter what.

The ssh-keygen command generates .pub files which it describes as "public key files", but they are a totally different format to most "public key files" I've usually seen, which are in PEM format. The ssh-keygen-style files look like this:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1... user@host

... whereas the PEM files look like this:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIGZjCCBU6gAwIBAgIDCIrNMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMIGMMQsw...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Are these two formats interchangeable, or are they performing a fundamentally different purpose? I came across this problem because I wanted to get the RSA2 key fingerprint of my PEM-encoded public key file, but the method usually suggested to do it (ssh-keygen -l) says that my PEM-encoded file "is not a public key file".

By the way, I'm aware of this answer, but it doesn't cover the .pub files generated by ssh-keygen.

It's often established in law that faxes are accepted documents because their delivery is 'guaranteed', whereas e-mail is not because its delivery is not. Isn't this just begging for a TCP-based protocol that guarantees delivery to the same degree that fax does? Does such a protocol exist, and how entrenched is it?

This article describes the (relatively laborious) steps you should go through to grant an Active Directory user the Log On As A Service right. However, if I install a service and manually specify my AD account's logon credentials (service properties | Log On), Windows tells me that 'The account [myaccount] has been granted the Log On As A Service right.' I can then run the service under my account credentials. However, on a subsequent reinstall of the service (or sometimes on reboot), the service is once again unable to start because of a login failure... until I go in and manually enter my credentials again, and the account is magically 'granted the Log On As A Service right.' After this, the service can once again start under my account's credentials.

What's going on here? Why do I apparently have the permission to grant this right to myself on-the-fly? If I can grant it on-the-fly, why doesn't it stay granted and I have to keep re-granting it? Bear in mind I'm not asking how to grant someone this right through Active Directory - I'm talking about the fact that this right appears to be 'auto-granted' by Windows upon your entering your credentials in the Log On window.

I'm at my wits end on this one; I have tried for hours to get this to work, but I'm stumped. Hope one of you can help. :-)

I'm trying to get dhcp3-server to work on Ubuntu. It's installed, and setup correctly to run in rc2,3,4,5.d runlevels. On boot, its init.d script does get run, and in syslog, I get the following:

Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server V3.1.1
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: All rights reserved.
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: Wrote 2 leases to leases file.
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: No subnet declaration for eth1 (0.0.0.0).
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: ** Ignoring requests on eth1.  If this is not what
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:    you want, please write a subnet declaration
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:    in your dhcpd.conf file for the network segment
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:    to which interface eth1 is attached. **
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd:
Oct 18 20:40:37 jez-ubuntu dhcpd: Not configured to listen on any interfaces!
Oct 18 20:40:39 jez-ubuntu NetworkManager: <info>  (eth0): device state change: 1 -> 2
Oct 18 20:40:39 jez-ubuntu NetworkManager: <info>  (eth0): bringing up device.
Oct 18 20:40:39 jez-ubuntu NetworkManager: <info>  (eth0): preparing device.
[...]

As you can see, dhcpd appears to be running before NetworkManager, which is what sets up my eth0 (internet) and eth1 (home network) interfaces. You'd think this had something to do with the rcX.d symlink names, and that dhcpd was named to start before NetworkManager. Not so. My dhcp3-server symlinks are named 'S99dhcp3-server' and the Network Manager symlinks are named 'S50NetworkManager', so it should be starting before the dhcp server. In addition, if I actually run (as root) from the commandline '/etc/init.d/dhcp3-server'... the server runs OK! It only fails at boot!

Why does it say it's not configured to listen on any interfaces? Is the network manager not bringing interfaces eth0 and eth1 up until after all my boot scripts have run? If this is the case, what use is it? Surely other scripts would need these interfaces to be available at boot time? Here's my /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf file:

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        option routers 192.168.0.1;
        option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
        option domain-name-servers 87.194.0.51;
        option ip-forwarding off;
        range dynamic-bootp 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.254;
        default-lease-time 21600;
        max-lease-time 43200;
}

and my /etc/default/dhcp3-server file:

# Defaults for dhcp initscript
# sourced by /etc/init.d/dhcp
# installed at /etc/default/dhcp3-server by the maintainer scripts

#
# This is a POSIX shell fragment
#

# On what interfaces should the DHCP server (dhcpd) serve DHCP requests?
#       Separate multiple interfaces with spaces, e.g. "eth0 eth1".
INTERFACES="eth1"

As far as I can tell, these are all correct. Any ideas?