Unreason's questions

In windows server 2008 it is possible to see the top files which consume the most I/O on the filesystem using standard system tools.

How to setup the same counters, but in reverse - I would like to have a graph that shows I/O on a specific file?

The purpose of this exercise is to monitor I/O on the SQL Server - here I know which files constitute logs and database files and would like to see how much I/O is used for each of the databases running on the server (so to compare and measure I/O that is gets assigned to each database).

Apologies if there is a better site.

I have DAP-1360 and another router connected to an office switch, which connect to the internet router.

I would like the two wireless devices to act as access points, but to be seen as the same network (there is an area of overlap of the signal).

DAP-1360 supports: AP Mode, Wireless Client Mode, repeater, bridge, bridge with AP, WISP client router and WISP repeater mode out of the box.

My requirements are satisfied with WISP repeater mode, however in this scenario (I assume, I did not run traceroute) the nodes communicate wirelessly between themselves, too, and there is available router over wire.

Related question that seem to have an answer is here. The answer is from 2009 and I was wondering if it is still the case that different channels and same ssid is a recommended, standard solution?

Since recently I have been using AD policies to deploy software packages through GPO on a small domain. This had been working well, but I am not sure what is the correct procedure for upgrading a package.

Assuming that I have initially deployed X, version a through GPO named "Install X". All works well and with time version b is released. (Assuming that the .msi of new version can perform an upgrade of already installed version) I believe that I have the following options for performing the upgrade:

1. replace original .msi in the distribution point and then through Group Policy Editor (open GPO "Install X"), under Computer Configuration/Software Settings/Software Installation assign a task to 'Redeploy application'

2. use Group Policy Editor to create a new package in Computer Configuration/Software Settings/Software Installation for the new version and specify which older package should be upgraded by this one (on Upgrade tab select package for version a; options to uninstall existing or do an upgrade)

3. use Group Policy Editor to remove a package for version a (with immediately uninstall option) and add a new package for version b

Questions:

• What are disadvantages of the 1st option?
• Is the 2nd option a proper/recommended way of upgrading packages distributed through GPO?
• Are there some other subtleties, best practices or some general advice regarding upgrading packages through GPOs?

EDIT: Also, I have only properly tested 3, so if I am missing some important step in 1 and 2 I would appreciate pointers. :)

I'd like to run some test on my system and for this I'd like to simulate a slow files system.

Are there easy options out there? (an idea that I have currently would mount something over TCP, even if local, then use iptables to limit speed on that particular TCP connection)

I am interested to know what would be expected maximum dedupe ratio for a set of PST files.

I have ~40G of pst files from ~15 usres with high level of duplication of attachments. I am running tests to see if I can have significant space savings if I store the data on ZFS with dedupe.

For this purpose I have installed a test setup of Nexenta, but was wondering if someone here had already done this and what level of deduplication I might expect (or in another words how sensitive are pst files to block alignment and what are the parameters that can influence the ratio?).

Initial test show very low dedupe ratio and I did find explanation that block level dedupe would not be efficient here and that byte level dedupe would be much better (and that it should be performed by application that is aware of internal organization), so I am just double checking here if someone have some more input.

Otherwise I will probably be converting PST files to IMAP.

I would like to do some statistics on the e-mails sent through my postfix server.

Mostly I will need to create a report counting then number of messages that were sent through this machine.

I am running postfix on ubuntu 9.10, but have very limited experience managing it, so if someone could outline how to conceptually do the above I would be grateful.

Bonus points are if I will be able to filtering/groping on

• subject of the message (will mostly be simple RE)
• eventually I'd like to include spam score from Spamassasin or dspam (when I configure/install them)

Have no problem with SQL so if I could get csv of timestamp, subject, messageid, subject, spam-score I'd know how to proceed; just need to conceptually organize where to get this from (which options to set and/or which logs to extract from).

EDIT: I also have a requirement for the procedure to be as reliable as possible - I'd like to filter out any bounces and other errors if possible.

Every now and then I revisit the issue of shaping skype traffic.

AFAIK Skype is notorious for ignoring most settings - incoming ports, proxies, etc so it is not possible to give special treatment to skype traffic - I guess the idea is to keep skype traffic unblockable by ISPs and telcos, but at the same time it makes it hard to prioritize the traffic and get good quality of the line, even on today's very wide connections.

Now, recently I saw a SOHO router that seemed to recognize Skype traffic and I think was able to prioritize it (didn't have much time to play with it)

So, is there any hope to do this? (Solution needs not be simple, I can do routing over linux box and play with traffic shaping on it)

EDIT: Might be duplicate of How to change routing for skype packets?, but I am checking for new developments and it has been a year since that question.

Seems it is possible to do it using l7 filtering

I'd like to allow anonymous from anywhere, while limiting authenticated to one or few IP blocks.

Can this be done in drupal 6?

I have a web server serving pages from a local IP address.

It is behind NAT which has correctly set port forwarding for 80 and 443 (tested by pointing to another local web server).

When trying to access from public address I get 403 while at the same time everything is reachable from local network.

Web server is apache.

What would be the order of things to check?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for their answers. Problem is resolved.

I checked apache access log (403 gets mentioned there), but that gave me no real clue. At that moment I was basically wondering if it is apache or the webapp (drupal) that is giving this response. After triple checking the apache config I also checked the webapp more thoroughly and found that non-local IPs were banned.

EDIT 2: If someone provides a good answer (or expand the existing) on what would have been a proper way to determine if it was apache or webapp I will accept it as an answer.

I have a small AD in which I am deploying software to domain computers through GPO (using msi installers).

What is the best method to deploy software that

• has no .msi installer,
• but has switches for silent installs

All I can think is to use startup scripts (that will do detect->install/uninstall/upgrade), but I was wondering if there are existing wheel designs in this area...

NOTE: I'd like to avoid repackaging to .msi format (unless someone convinces me otherwise).

Some examples of software that I would like to deploy

• picasa 3
• VLC

I had a working script for Windows XP clients, distributed via group policy from Windows Server 2003 PDC.

This is the main part of the script:

Function ggMapNetworkDrive(fDriveLetter, fShareName, fDrives, fWSHNet)    
'Map a network drive

Dim lExist
lExist = -1

For i = 0 to fDrives.Count - 1 Step 2
    If fDrives.Item(i) = fDriveLetter Then
        lExist = i
    End If
Next

If lExist = -1 Then
    'no drive, map us a drive
    fWSHNet.MapNetworkDrive fDriveLetter, fShareName
Else
    If fDrives.Item(lExist+1) = fShareName Then
        'do nothing, mapped to right point
    Else
        'is mapped somewhere else; remove then map then add again
        fWSHNet.RemoveNetworkDrive fDriveLetter, False, True
        fWSHNet.MapNetworkDrive fDriveLetter, fShareName        
    End If
End If

End Function

How to do the above in Windows 7?

EDIT: Error message...

Script: \\full-path-to-script\logon.vbs
Line: (line containing 'fWSHNet.MapNetworkDrive fDriveLetter, fShareName')
Char: 2
Error: The network path was not found

Code: 80070035
Source: WSHNetwork.MapNetworkDrive

After further inspection I can see something is wrong with networking, here are the symptoms: pinging and address resolution works, access to all computers on the same segment works as expected, but only access to PDC (windows 2003) is not working as expected (as experienced from win XP clients).

EDIT2:

I made a change for MapNetworkDrive to map to FQDN and it allowed the script to run. Still access to \server without the domain is not restored yet.

I have outlook files stored on a network share and accessed by clients directly.
Outlook is version 2003, clients windows XP and server is 2003. The files are quite big at around 3GB.

One of the common problem that happens is that I get 'delayed write failed' and this happens only on these PST files.

When this happens I have to run scanpst.exe to fix the PST file. I did not find any entries in even logs that I could relate to the issue.

What would you suggest to change to fix the issue or where to look to further diagnose it?

EDIT: No loss on ping and ping times within normal for LAN.

As all mail things change I wanted to get some thought if checking PTR DNS records these days is advisable?

1) I do want to use it if it will actually bring benefit

and

2) I do need to keep false positives as close to zero as possible.

I'd like to confirm the meaining of a mail failure notice. Here's the message

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mydomain.com
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<[email protected]>:
1.2.3.4 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 <[email protected]>: Relay access denied
Giving up on 1.2.3.4

The way I understand this is, that 1.2.3.4 is not setup to receive mail for this domain.

dig domain.com MX shows

;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.com.     6245    IN  MX  10 mail.domain.com.
domain.com.     6245    IN  MX  20 mx.anotherdomain.com.

(1.2.3.4 is mx.anotherdomain.com.).

The puzzling part is that I have reports that messages sent from gmail get delivered to this address.

P.S. Is this a proper question for serverfault?