NotMe's questions

I have a windows 2008 R2 server with RRAS installed. I need it to make a demand dial connection to a remote VPN server. The type is PPTP.

What I've do so far:

1. Installed RRAS. In the properties area I've enabled it to be an IPv4 router with LAN and demand-dial routing turned on. Under IPv4, it's set to enable IPv4 forwarding.

2. I used the Demand-Dial interface wizard.

   • Connection Type: VPN
   • VPN type: PPTP
   • remote vpn server DNS name entered
   • Under Protocols, only "Route IP packets on this interface" is selected
   • On static routes, I put the specific internal IP address on the other side I need (192.168.x.x) with a net mask of 255.255.255.255 and metric of 1.
   • I entered the username/password etc.

When I click connect I get the following message:

An error occurred during connection of the interface. A connection the the remote computer could not be established. You might need to change the network settings for this connection.

The application event log shows 5 events which includes one that says (#20224):

The link to the remote access server has been established by user SYSTEM.

Immediately after that is one that contains a message saying (#20227):

The user SYSTEM dialed a connection named xxx which has failed. The error code returned on failure is 720.

The event numbers for all 5, in time order, are 20221, 20222, 20223, 20224 and 20227

The system event log shows an event 20167 which says:

No IP address is available to hand out to the dial-in client.

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Now, I can connect to that remote VPN server if I use a different computer running Windows 7 with the "set up a new connection" piece.

I'm not sure what else to do here.

I need to figure out who installed a particular program (Adobe Flash) on a server.

How can I do that?

MSDeploy is excruciatingly slow.

As in, it has taken our build /deployment process from 3.8 minutes to 15.

Is there anyway to speed this up? The publish method we are using is WMSVC.

I have a windows 2008 r2 server that needs to establish a VPN connection to a remote VPN server.

We're using the L2TP protocol with a pre-shared key.

I initially used the New Demand Dial interface wizard. Then I went into properties on the interface and set the type of VPn to L2TP/IPSec and put the key under the advanced settings.

The error I received when attempting to connect is:

An error occured during connection of the interface. A Demand Dial Router attempted to connect over a port that was reserved for Remote Access Clients only.

I have the Shrew client installed in order to connect to a cisco VPN.

(side note: anyconnect royally blows and I spent several hours trying to get it to work; I had shrew running within 2 minutes of installing it.)

Anyway, I can connect just fine and it works.

What I need to do is schedule the connection. For example, once a day I want a process to start shrew, auto connect to the vpn then run a SQL script. Once the script is finished I want shrew to disconnect from the VPN.

So far I have the following:

"C:\Program Files\ShrewSoft\VPN Client\ipsecc.exe" -r ClientSite -u MyUser -p MyPassword -a

When this runs, Shrew connects and starts the VPN interface. However, that line doesn't return until someone clicks the "disconnect" button.

Ideas?

We received an interesting "requirement" from a client today.

They want 100% uptime with off-site failover on a web application. From our web application's viewpoint, this isn't an issue. It was designed to be able to scale out across multiple database servers, etc.

However, from a networking issue I just can't seem to figure out how to make it work.

In a nutshell, the application will live on servers within the client's network. It is accessed by both internal and external people. They want us to maintain an off-site copy of the system that in the event of a serious failure at their premises would immediately pick up and take over.

Now we know there is absolutely no way to resolve it for internal people (carrier pigeon?), but they want the external users to not even notice.

Quite frankly, I haven't the foggiest idea of how this might be possible. It seems that if they lose Internet connectivity then we would have to do a DNS change to forward traffic to the external machines... Which, of course, takes time.

Ideas?

UPDATE

I had a discussion with the client today and they clarified on the issue.

They stuck by the 100% number, saying the application should stay active even in the event of a flood. However, that requirement only kicks in if we host it for them. They said they would handle the uptime requirement if the application lives entirely on their servers. You can guess my response.

I ran the installer for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2. Somehow I missed the part that says "this completely screws you over". Regardless, we had a couple databases with filestreams.

I followed some links and got the server itself operational. However, these two databases won't load.

I turned off filestream, uninstalled SP2, installed SP2 again, and am now at the point that I'm trying to turn filestream back on.

To do this I go to SQL Server Configuration, and on the FILESTREAM tab of the properties for the service I turn on Filestream and the share.

The I go to SSMS and run

exe sp_configure 'filestream access level', 2
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO

The error I get back is:

Msg 5597, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
FILESTREAM feature could not be initialized. The Windows Administrator must enable FILESTREAM on the instance using Configuration Manager before enabling through sp_configure.

Now, as stated above, I have enabled it in the config manager. Does anyone have an idea?

I tried setting the server to run under LocalSystem (it was set to a defined use). The sql log has several Error 5591 state 5 and 5105 state 14 errors along with several "a file activation error occurred..."" messages.

At this point I'm out of ideas.

UPDATE:
One more error that keeps popping up is:

Configuration option 'filestream access level' changed from 0 to 2. Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
<{81E6B8A0-60E9-4A9F-82E3-FD5326CC3663}>RsFxFt.Dll::RsFxMgmtInitialize failed: Error 0x80070002 (-2147024894)
<{C580416B-A13E-4ECD-B61B-AAFAE39E5E35}>Failed to initialize the CFsaShareFilter interface
<{1038F43D-3391-45F7-B1B3-BADF26459429}>Failed to initialize CFsaShareFilter: Error 0x80070002 (-2147024894)

Yesterday, we applied SP1 to our DNS server which is running Windows Server 2008 R2.

After the update DNS is failing. There are no failure codes in the event log; it says the service has started and for all intents and purposes acts like it is working.

However, when I go to DNS properties, Monitoring tab and click "test now" it says both the simple and recursive queries have failed.

Event loggings is set to log All events.

For some reason it worked for a few minutes earlier today; but since has stopped again.

Any ideas on what I can check?

NOTE: I did a restart on the DNS services and it came back online; for a little while. Then went away again.

EDIT: (4/5/11) 2 Months later and the same issue. DNS now runs for awhile before tanking. However, when it does there is absolutely no error.

I have a nightly task that executes wbadmin with the following arguments:

start backup -include:c: -backupTarget:\\storage\Backups -quiet -allCritical

When it kicks off, there are 3 events that occur.

3:15:09AM Event ID: 753: Block level backup engine service successfully started
3:15:15AM Event ID: 546: Backup attempted at '12/9/2010 9:15:15 AM' failed to start, error code '2155348081'.
3:25:09AM Event ID: 754: Block level backup engine service has stopped.

If I execute the task manually then it runs as expected.

I have it set to "run with highest privileges" and "run whether user is logged on or not"

This same task is set on other servers in the group, just different start up times.

How can I troubleshoot this?

I have an ActionTec MI424-WR router that has 5 external IP addresses bound to it.

One of the servers behind the router is a mail server on an internal address. When the mail server receives mail, it is responding on x.x.x.52. Which the router correctly port forwards to the internal machine.

However, when it sends mail, it is doing so on x.x.x.50. There are two problems with this. First, the .50 address is listed in a spam database (It was that way when the IP was assigned to me). Second, .50 isn't my mail server so I don't have a reverse DNS pointer set up for it. I do for the .52 address.

What I need is for my mail server to use the .52 address when it sends traffic out.

Ideas?

In SQL 2008, is there any way to see details about a deleted view. In particular who might have done it or at least when?

My nightly maintenance plans are failing for two databases. I'm not even sure what this means. Any ideas on how to fix?

Here's the error I have from the maintenance plan:

Executing the query "DBCC CHECKDB(N'Site_DB')  WITH NO_INFOMSGS
" failed with the following error: "The Index Allocation Map (IAM) page (0:0) is pointed to by the previous pointer of IAM page (1:747) in object ID 0, index ID -1, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 72057597046816768 (type Unknown), but it was not detected in the scan.
CHECKDB found 1 allocation errors and 0 consistency errors not associated with any single object.
CHECKDB found 1 allocation errors and 0 consistency errors in database 'Site_DB'.
repair_allow_data_loss is the minimum repair level for the errors found by DBCC CHECKDB (Site_DB).". Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, "ResultSet" property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.

The interesting part is that 2 different databases are reporting this with the exact same page id. Not sure why that is.

My servers are currently running IIS 7 (windows 2008). Is there any way to get IIS 7.5 without upgrading to 2008 R2?

The reason I ask is that they are 32 bit servers and there is no upgrade path from 32 bit 2008 to 2008 R2.

I have a sql 2008 database that had a filestream. Unfortunately, all I have is the .mdf and .ldf files. I no longer have access to the filestream .hdr file or anything that was in that directory.

Normally, you can just reattach the database to a new server; but sql server refuses to do that.

The error message I get is
Unable to open the physical file "c:\". Operating system error 2: "2(The system cannot find the file specified.)".

That error shows up when I try to use the DDL command to CREATE DATABASE FOR ATTACH.

What's the trick?
Thanks

I have a windows 2008 x64 server with 8GB of RAM installed.

Task Manager and Resource Monitor both insist that 7.5GB of the RAM is in use. However, the memory list under Processes (Memory Private Bytes) doesn't add up. I do have Show Processes from all users checked and hand adding the numbers I come up with about 3.5GB of RAM.

I also looked at the latest copy of SysInternals Process Explorer. And neither the Private Bytes or Working Set adds up to more than about 3.5GB of RAM in use.

What's going on?

=====

Update: I bounced the server to see what would happen with the memory utilization. After boot and regular operations began it sat at 3GB of RAM usage. 18 hours later, it's back up to 6.8GB of usage with no indication as to where the additional 3.5GB or so of RAM is being used.

Here are links to screen shots of the resource monitor and task manager:

Resource Monitor

Task Manager

Update 2: Well, I believe I located the problem. When I detached one of the larger databases from my sql server the amount of ram shown as "in use" dropped drastically. The Memory Private Bytes count barely moved. So I'm guessing that SQL server has some way of allocating memory where it doesn't really show up in any of the monitors.

I went further and created a new database file, then transferred all of the data from the one I detached. Even though it has the same data, and the same transactions going through it, the memory in use has stayed low. Maybe there was some corruption in the DB? I'll leave it to the DB gods and go searching for another "problem" ;)

We have an interesting situation. Our build server seems to want to go back to previously closed work items and update the Integration Build field.

I understand the build server setting it the first time. I could even understand it updating that field in the event that the first build didn't complete successfully.

However, I can't understand why it continues to update all of the previously closed work items with a new Fixed In Build value.

It's very annoying to get an email about all of the closed work items for every. single. build. that I had created.

I have a windows 2008 server which is backing up it's primary drive to a local hard disk.

Because this server doesn't change very often, I only execute it manually when worthwhile changes occur.

So far, I've accrued 13 backups that are on disk. Considering I really only want the last 2; how can I clear those out?

UPDATE: Just to be clear, this question is about the windows server operating system; not SQL server.

Under XP, 2003, etc if you happened to click on the Shutdown command it would ask for confirmation. Vista doesn't do this.

Considering the stupid number of ways to shutdown the computer on the menu, I've found that every so often I accidentally click on the wrong one.

Is there anyway to turn on a confirmation box?

When deploying web applications (.net) to a production environment, is it better to use integrated security or does it even matter?

It seems to me that if a hacker breaks the web server, it won't really matter as they can easily impersonate the machine.

Thoughts?

We have a large installation with over 15,000 machines. They are supposed to have a version of Trend Micro installed; however, we don't know that for sure.

These are all Windows boxes which includes XP with various SP levels, Vista both RTM and SP1, and several 2000 and 2003 servers.

How can I determine:

1. Whether ANY AV product is installed?
2. What version of the product is installed?
3. What version of the pattern file is on the box?

Ideas?

Thanks,