Braindump

Lately I have had a few client servers that needed this done for various reason. usually it has something to do with troubleshooting Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices getting email via the OMA portion of Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2003. Some of them were getting the error, “ActiveSync encountered a problem on the server support code: 0×85010001″ or similar on the hand held devices. In all of the cases the following fix resolved each client’s particular problem.

Exchange 2003 has 6 total virtual directories. They are as follows:

Exchange | Exchweb | Exadmin | OMA | Public | Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync

For more information on the function of each virtual directory please visit this Daniel Petri’s website which is where I normally go to get the how-to for this function.

Now that we have identified the virtual directories associated with OWA, we need to backup the configuration and then delete them. I know, this seems like a really huge step, it was for me the first time I did it but now I do it on a regular basis. You will need to backup the configuration from IIS Manager by right clicking on the Default Web Site and going to “Save Configuration to a File”. I don’t think I need to walk you through the rest of the dialog boxes, you’ll figure it out.

Now that the configuration is backed up, delete the 6 virtual directories mentioned above. You may also, depending on OS version, have a virtual directory “exchange-oma”. Leave it alone for right now, we will get to it in a bit. Before we recreate the virtual directories, we need to delete a key out of the IIS Metabase. For this you will need to download the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit from here. Go ahead and install the package and navigate to “Metabase Explorer” which is part of the resource kit you just installed. In Metabase Explorer you will have some keys on the left hand side, LM being one of them. Expand the LM key and you will find the first one (ususally) to be DS2MB. Delete it the key DS2MB. DS2MB stands for Directory Service to Metabase. It’s purpose is to transfer configuration information from AD to IIS. It’ll get recreated during the next process.

Now that the virtual directories and the DS2MB keys are deleted, you can restart the “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant” service. That will recreate what we have deleted.

For some reason when the virtual directories are recreated you still have to fix a permissions issue to get it to function. Do this by going into IIS Manager and right clicking on the virtual directory “Exchweb” and select properties. Then go to the Directory Security tab and click Edit under Authentication and Access control. Ensure that Anonymous and Integrated Authentication are checked. An Inheritance Override dialog box will appear, make sure you click Select All. Click OK to finish. After you have completed that, go back into Authentication and Access control and uncheck Integrated Windows Authentication. (Yes I know, seems odd). Ok out and you are finished.

That pretty much sum’s the fix up. You will need to redo your SSL stuff but other than that you should have a fully functional OWA configuration.

Now, this is where the support code stuff and the exchange-oma virtual directory I mentioned earlier comes in. There are a number of mobile devices that are capable of connecting to Exchange to get email, contacts, calendar and tasks from their account. Some of them work with SSL / Forms Based Authentication and some don’t. To fix the ones that don’t support it, follow the steps below to get your non SSL Windows Mobile devices to connect to Exchange.

First delete the virtual directory (if you have it) exchange-oma. Now to finish this we will need to create a second virtual directory for OMA access. First, open IIS Manager and right click on the Exchange virtual directory and select “Save Configuration to File”.  Name is something like exchange-oma. Now, right click on “Default Website” and select new virtual directory from file.  Find the file you just saved (i.e. exchange-oma).  You will get a dialog box saying the virtual directory already exists.  In the alias box, type exchange-oma (or similar).

Lets, make it non SSL bound now.  Right click on the virtual directory you just created and go to the Directory Security Tab and then Authentication and Access control.  Make sure that Integrated and Basic authentications are enabled. Ok out and then under Secure communications click edit and uncheck “require SSL”.  Ok out and close IIS Manager.

To get IIS and Exchange to use the new virtual directory correctly we need to make a slight registry change.  Open the Registry Editor and find “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MasSync\Parameters” If it does not exist, in the right pane right click and create a new String Value.  Name it ExchangeVDir and press Enter.  Modify the value of the key and put /exchange-oma in that field.

You are almost done now, quit the registry editor and restart the IIS Admin Service.  You can also use iisrestart from the run line or command prompt.

Here are some of the links I used to put this post together and have used in the past successfully.

Petri IT Knowledgebase | Dev IT Weblog | Microsoft

Windows is definitely the big player in the game still, however Linux usage is gaining some steam. This post is going to concentrate on what programs you can use to make the switch to Linux. This process is not going to be entirely pain free if you are an avid user of all things computer related, however, if you are just a basic office user/worker or only need to check your email and play a few basic online games, Linux might be for you. There are literally thousands of choices for most applications out there so I’m only going to name the ones that I like or use and also only ones that work on Ubuntu. If you have any additions, please let me know.

Windows vs. Linux (Ubuntu)

Internet Browsing
W - Internet Explorer
U - Firefox

Email Clients
W - Outlook, Outlook Express
U - Thunderbird, Evolution

Chat Clients
W - MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, mIRC
U- Gaim / Pigdin, xChat, BitchX

Com Port Communications
W - Hyperterminal
U - MiniCom

FTP Client
W - Filezilla FTP Client
U - Filezilla FTP Client

Remote Access Servers
W - Terminal Server, RealVNC, TightVNC, WinVNC
U - FreeNX, RealVNC, TightVNC

P2P Filesharing
W - Limewire, Bearshare, Bittorrent
U - Limewire, Azureus

VoIP Clients
W - Skype, X-Lite
U - Skype, Linphone, Twinkle

Drawing / Photo Editing
W - Paint.net, Photoshop, MSPaint
U - GIMP
3D Annimation / Rendering
W - 3D Studio MAX, Blender
U - Blender, Maya

DVD Players
W - Windows Media Player, PowerDVD
U - MPlayer, Kaffine, VLC

MP3 / Music Players
W - Winamp, iTunes
U - RhymeBox, K3b

Office Productivity
W - Microsoft Office
U - OpenOffice.org

Network / Relation Mapping
W - Microsoft Visio
U - Dia

Accounting / Financial
W - Quicken, Microsoft Money
U - GnuCash

Desktop Publishing
W - Microsoft Publisher, Quark
U - Scribus

PDF Editing
W - Adobe Acrobat Professional
U - PDFEdit, pdftk

Imaging
W - Norton Ghost
U - G4u, dd

Partition Resizing
W - Norton Partition Magic
U - GParted

Backup Software
W - Symantec Backup Exec
U - BackupPC, Amanda

Web Servers
W - Microsoft IIS
U - Apache

File Servers
W - Microsoft File Services
U - Samba

Email Servers
W - Microsoft Exchange
U - Postfix, Sendmail

AntiVirus Software
W - Symantec AV, Mcafee
U - ClamAV, AVG

For more of these “like” software lists, please visit what I believe to be the most complete list on the internet, Table of Equivalents.

Tonight I was at a client site working on an Server 2003 / Exchange 2007 Deployment for a client which required us to disjoin computers from the old domain and add them to the new domain. Well, the trick to a successful deployment of any product is ease of use, for the IT guy’s and the end user. The end user is ultimately affected by what we do so we try to minimize the changes that are actually made to their experience. For the IT guy’s, how can me make this easy, simple, and yet functional. When it comes to profile migration, there are a few tools out there that will do it for you, some cost money, some don’t. For me, those are too complicated to learn and master. Secondly we have the profile copy utilities like xcopy and robocopy which I honestly still use quite often, they work and work well in my opinion, however, the third option is the best and easiest to do. A simple registry hack to change the GUID that you are logged on with as the user, to point to a different profile path. Here are the steps to execute such a plan.

• Change the local administrator password
• Disjoin the system from the old domain
• Use the set command to determine what profile path the user is currently using
• Reboot the system
• Login as the local administrator
• Join the system to the new domain
• Reboot the system
• Login as the user on the new domain
• Logoff and logon as the domain administrator
• Open regedit and modify ProfileImagePath within “[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\]“
• Change the permissions on that profile path within explorer, give the user full control and propagate to the child directories and file.
• Reboot (Last Time)
• Login with the user on the domain and you should have the “old” working profile with the new domain user account.

This process took two fairly skilled individuals about 5 hours to complete on 18 systems and that included doing the first “test” machine and troubleshooting any problems that might have come up (missing mapped network drives, incorrect shortcut paths, etc.). Hope this helps you along the way as it did me when I learned it. If you have any suggestions, options, better methods, please let me know. I’m all ears.