Paul D'Ambra's questions

I have a linux vps running Ubuntu 12.04 and when I run uname-r it replies:

paul@webforms:~$ uname -r
2.6.32.33-kvm-i386-20111128-dirty
paul@webforms:~$ sudo grub-install -v
grub-install (GRUB) 1.99-21ubuntu3.1

if I run update-grub I get:

paul@webforms:~$ sudo update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic-pae
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-26-generic-pae
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-15-generic-pae
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-15-generic-pae
done

and then rebooting gives me the same dirty kernel

I'm going round in circles and as a relative noob I'm sure I must be missing something obvious so over to the hive-mind!!

I have an offsite windows server 2008 R2 server. And an ipsec tunnel set on our router here plus a connection security rule in Advanced Firewall on the server. I have ssh access to the console on the server

If I turn on windows firewall then the IPSEC tunnel connects but all I can do is ping from either end.

I've set the firewall to allowinbound and to allow remote desktop using netsh advfirewall

C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\Firewall>netsh advfirewall show currentprofile

Domain Profile Settings:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
State                                 ON
Firewall Policy                       AllowInbound,AllowOutbound
LocalFirewallRules                    N/A (GPO-store only)
LocalConSecRules                      N/A (GPO-store only)
InboundUserNotification               Disable
RemoteManagement                      Enable
UnicastResponseToMulticast            Enable

Logging:
LogAllowedConnections                 Disable
LogDroppedConnections                 Enable
FileName                              %systemroot%\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\pf
irewall-domain.log
MaxFileSize                           4096

Ok.

but the firewall still logs dropped packets from our network on port 3389

2011-09-22 22:31:06 DROP TCP LAN OFFSITE 53254 139 48 S 3249668813 0
 8192 - - - RECEIVE

I'm at a loss and wondering what advise people have...

Update: I think I've identified the moment of the problem in procmon on the primary server and have put a small chunk of the procmon output here.

http://pastebin.com/GGX8qczs

We've set up an offsite DPM server to act as a secondary server to our onsite DPM server.

We set up some protection groups, recovered the appropriate data and shipped the USB drive with that data to the offsite box.

All of the protection groups are now synchronising except the group that has the system state /BMR image of our domain controller.

The protected domain controller is running as a VM on vmware ESXi with the vm files stored on a NAS.

The configuration protection fails with "Access is denied"

Affected area:  Computer\System Protection(computer.domain.local)
Occurred since: 07/09/2011 19:48:04
Description:    DPM could not start a recovery, consistency check, or initial replica creation job for System Protection Computer\System Protection(computer.domain.local) on onsite-dpm.domain.local for following reason:
 (ID 3170)
    An unexpected error occurred while the job was running. (ID 104 Details: Access is denied (0x80070005))
    More information
Recommended action: Retry the operation.
    Run configure protection job again...
Resolution: To dismiss the alert, click below
    Inactivate alert

Since other groups (including system and BMR cover) are working and were set up in the same way I'm guessing there's some unwritten fangling that needs to be fangled.

When the error occurs the offsite server records

Log Name:      DPM Alerts
Source:        DPM-EM
Date:          09/09/2011 12:34:36
Event ID:      3170
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      offsite.domain.local
Description:

DPM could not start a recovery, consistency check, or initial replica creation job for  System Protection(computer.domain.local) on onsite.domain.local for following reason:
 (ID: 3170)
An unexpected error occurred while the job was running. (ID: 104)

The onsite server doesn't record anything in any event log around the time of the error

Any assistance or advice gratefully received!

We have a Server 2008 R2 DC that runs as a virtual machine on a vmware host. We back this up using DPM 2010 and that backup has been running for ages.

Recently the backup started failing and the error on the DC is

The backup operation that started at '‎2011‎-‎04‎-‎11T07:51:50.959402800Z' has failed because the remote shared folder '\BMCBAC01.thebmc.local\810dc4298960497bb3544f2cf49bc2bf' that you are using for a backup storage location is not writeable. Please make sure user 'SYSTEM' has write permissions for this location, and then rerun the backup operation.

There is enough free space on the client to hold the backup image.

If I look in the share and storage management section of file services I can see that share is marked with a red x

Clicking properties against that item throws the error:

810dc4298960497bb3544f2cf49bc2bf

\?\c:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\Non VSS Datasource Writer\vol_e5907630-426a-4bc7-bc83-c699182bf185\810dc429-8960-497b-b354-4f2cf49bc2bf\Full\C-Vol: Cannot verify that the folder exists. Illegal characters in path.

I've reinstalled the agent and removed and readded the machine from the protection group all TNA

Any help appreciated

UPDATE:

I see in this thread that an MS person has said that the illegal characters in path error is normal...

So we need to concentrate I guess on event ID 564 source Backup with text as above.

On the machine in question vssadmin list writers shows no writers with errors.

also

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list volumes

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.



Volume path: \\?\Volume{60936920-a0cd-11df-af25-806e6f6e6963}\

    Volume name: \\?\Volume{60936920-a0cd-11df-af25-806e6f6e6963}\

Volume path: C:\

    Volume name: \\?\Volume{60936921-a0cd-11df-af25-806e6f6e6963}\

I note that the volume here doesn't match that on DPM but I'm guessing that isn't the issue.

On each DPM synchronisation the following errors are logged on the exchange server

Unable to update Mailbox SD in the DS. Mailbox Guid: 2ad8687a-a049-4db2-b8c2-86b493495c20. Error Code 0x8004010f 

Unable to update Mailbox SD in the DS. Mailbox Guid: 03be3109-83b4-45da-8695-8f32371cb0bd. Error Code 0x8004010f

Error:0x8004010f translates as NOT_FOUND

the full event is:

Event Type: Warning 
Event Source:   MSExchangeIS 
Event Category: General 
Event ID:   9554 
Date:    02/11/2010 
Time:    15:40:07 
User:    N/A 
Computer:   BMCEX01 
Description: 
Unable to update Mailbox SD in the DS. Mailbox Guid: 2ad8687a-a049-4db2-b8c2-86b493495c20. Error Code 0x8004010f

I've used the adfind tool to try and identify them:

adfind -gc -b "" -binenc -f " msExchMailboxGUID={{GUID:2ad8687a-a049-4db2-b8c2-86b493495c20}}" -dn

But that returns no records.

So how do I determine what is causing the error messages?

I have an office LAN protected using a Zyxel Zywall USG 300. I've set up an L2TP/ipsec VPN on that which accepts connections using a shared secret and I've tested this from multiple clients.

I have a server offsite and want to set up RRAS to use a persistent connection to the VPN so that it can carry out network jobs even with no one logged in (I'm using it for Micorosft DPM secondary backup).

If I create a vpn as if I were setting up a users laptop it can dial in no problem but if I set up a demand dial interface in RRAS it errors.

• I enable RRAS ticking only demand dial interface (branch office routing)
• Select network interfaces, right click and choose new demand dial interface
• Name the VPN ToCompany
• Select connect using VPN
• And then L2TP as the vpn type
• enter the IP address (double-checked for typos!)
• select Route IP packets on this interface
• specify static route to remote network as 10.0.0.0/24 with metric of 1
• add dial out credentials (again double checked for typos and confirmed with other vpn connections
• click finish
• now I right-click on the new interface and choose properties and then the security tab
• I change Data encryption to optional
• select only PAP for Authentication (both as per manufacturer of Zywall)
• click advanced settings against type of vpn and set shared secret
• then I select the new interface, right-click and choose connect

this dials and then errors with either 720 or 811 as the error codes. However, if I create a VPN by going to Network & Sharing center and setting up as if I was creating a VPN from my laptop to the office (say) it dials successfully

so I know the VPN settings are correct and the machine can connect to the VPN.

Suggests very strongly the problem is how I'm setting up RRAS. Can anyone help?

So I have a DC running Server 2008 R2 on a HP server.

1. I take a full back up using DPM 2010.
2. Then restore the BMR image to the network
3. copy that to a USB drive
4. boot a laptop using the Serer 2008 R2 install media and with the USB drive plugged in.
5. choose to repair and restore the image

The image restores fine and when the machine reboots I get a 0x0000007B BSOD. I'm guessing that this is because I've shifted the image from server to laptop.

I'm trying out a scenario where the office is unavailable and I have our offsite backups. I want to quickly set up a small recovery using several laptops so a couple of staff can deal with customers while we recover the servers properly.

Am I barking up the wrong tree with this BMR recovery? But even if I install Server 2008 and then restore system state of the DC surely I'll hit the same driver errors? Argh help!

Have just run netstat -A on my SQL Server and seen an established connection from one of our workstations on bmcw000340.domain:close-combat.

My google-fu is failing me and I can't find out what close-combat is... does anyone know?

I've got a DPM 2007 server with 4TB storage... and since it's DPM there are many, many volumes on the disks when you view disk manager.

I've copied over an ISO of Server 2008 R2 and run an upgrade install. When the server reboots the screen shows "Upgrading Windows..." and stays there for a long time. I left it for 16 hours. Then I rebooted it and it happily booted back into Storage Server 2003.

I remember that when I did an inplace upgrade of a Vista laptop to Win7 it "processed" disk 2 even though the OS was on disk 1. Although in that case user data was redirected to disk 2.

Plus this isn't (I don't think) a supported upgrade path - although the setup didn't complain.

So hivemind... Am I being impatient or am I trying an upgrade doomed to fail?

Thanks

Paul

This is probably a noob question but I have a SMB network with AD domain corp.local and external hosting with a DNS domain corp.co.uk.

As a result if I add web services on an internal machine (like cool-app.corp.co.uk) we can't resolve it internally.

I tried adding a corp.co.uk domain to my DNS servers with no entries in it (expect the SOA created automatically). My understanding was that my server should attempt to resolve x.corp.co.uk within the forward lookup zone and when it cannot just forward the request to the outside world.

But that doesn't happen if I add a primary zone to the server then I can't resolve any corp.co.uk addresses.

If it had worked I'd then have started to add cool-app x.y.z.b etc to the local lookup zone so that those resources on the LAN can be resolved when you're in the office.

My guess is I'm making a silly mistake or that I'm trying to do something the wrong way and I thought the hivemind was the best way to try to find out...

I'm a relative noob at virtualisation but would like to roll it out in our organisation. The application I'd like to test with needs to be back up pretty quickly after failure... So I'd like to put 2 VMWare servers on the network and have the virtual machines on a disk array so that if one of the hosts goes down I can bring the VM up on the second host. We don't currently have a windows storage server NAS on the network but we do have a Windows Server with a lot of disk space in it.

Also, our internal backups are carried out using DPM 2007 as a result to backup the data it needs to be on a windows machine (I think)

In an ideal world I can share a large array on the windows server and VMWare ESX server use that as a datastore for the VMs.

However, I'm worried that will either be impossible or perform poorly... in which case I guess we use Server 2008 Hyper-V instead of vmware... or is there a better way to provide the redundancy I'm after here?

Finding out my question is meaningless would be as useful as getting an answer because I'm still at the research stage :)

I have a query that checks if we've made sales of a particular stock item

select * from merchand_history where stock_code = 'zzz007' and create_timestamp >= getdate() order by create_timestamp desc

I'd like to have a sql job that emails a user (I guess using the alert mechanism) but only if there are rows returned by that query.

I can't think how to do this and submit to the hivemind. I really need a sql only solution...

On my Exchange server I can drop appropriately formatted text files in the "pickup" directory and Exchange will process them.

I'd like to split this bulk mailing functionality onto another box to protect our business mail IP from the bumpy ride that our monthly newsletter gives us.

I should note at this point that the mailing is opt-in with an opt out link included and only goes to people who pay to be a member of our organisation

The ideal solution for me would be to add a linux box to use just for this purpose so we're not paying for Exchange licenses.

So is there a linux equivalent of the Exchange pickup directory?

I'm considering setting up a DPM server offsite and synchronising it with my onsite DPM server. How can I determine the size of the changes that would be replicated (based on my historical data) so that I can determine if we have the bandwidth to support this?

I've recently installed a DPM2007 server on Server 2003 and have set up a protection group against a server 2003 server running SQL 2005 SP3.

The SQL server in question has a full backup (as a sql agent job) once a day and transaction log backups hourly. These are zipped up and FTP'd to a server offsite by a scheduled task.

Since adding the DPM job I'm receiving many error messages:

DPM tried to do a SQL log backup, either as part of a backup job or a recovery to latest point in time job. The SQL log backup job has detected a discontinuity in the SQL log chain for database SERVER_NAME\DB_Name since the last backup. All incremental backup jobs will fail until an express full backup runs.

My google-fu suggests that I need to change the full backup my sqlagent job is running to a copy_only job. But I think this means that I can't use that backup with the transaction_logs to restore the database if the building (including the DPM server) burns down.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious and thought I'd see what the hivemind suggests.

It is an option to set-up a co-located DPM server elsewhere and have DPM stream the backup but that's obviously more expensive than the current set up. Many thanks in advance