A lingering problem with the server has been that installing any program that uses an msi installer would take many hours to make any progress at all, appearing to hang altogether – although task manager still showed the process as active and eventually it would finish (around 12 hours!). Quite a problem as most of the updates from Windows Updates are in MSI format.

I spent many hours trying all sorts of other solutions which made no difference at all. Eventually, by using Process Monitor I was able to figure out what was going on.

It turns out that the HP Print Driver put literally thousands of entries in the windows registry under the Key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hewlett-Packard

I decided to delete the registry key, but I exported it first. This resulted in the creation of a huge .reg file of 190Mb!

I was initially hopeful that this would solve the problem completely, but soon realised that because this machine is a terminal server that these registry entries also existed in other user profiles. So I went through each profile that also has these entries and deleted them from there also.

Once these horrible registry entries from the HP driver had been completely deleted, MSI installations went back to normal and I was able to install patches normally.

I really hope this helps someone else out there someday, I have pulled my hair out for you, keep yours.

First up, create a text file containing the username and the password, separated by a comma, i.e:

user1,password1
user2,password2
etc..

The script:

for userdetails in `cat /pathto//users.txt`
do
        user=`echo $userdetails | cut -f 1 -d ,`
        passwd=`echo $userdetails | cut -f 2 -d ,`
        echo "useradd -d /user1/kopen3 -p `mkpasswd $passwd` $user"
done

run the script and redirect the output to a file, e.g:

./createusers.sh > userscript.sh
chmod +x userscript.sh

Check the contents of userscript.sh to make sure it looks sound and then run it and it should create all of the users with the passwords provided, note that the passwords will no longer be in the format you have provided as they have passed through the mkpasswd command.

Credit to Steve as I used his user creation script to form the basis of this one

http://www.storagereview.com/lsi_megaraid_cachecade_pro_20_review

The LSI CacheCade Technology is now included with Dell PowerEdge Servers that have the PERC H700 1GB Raid controller installed. What I have been unable to determine from the Dell documentation is if the Dell PERC Controllers support CacheCade V2.0 or the original specification.

It has been said that it is not possible to add drives that are not factory fitted by Dell to an existing server and I am happy to report that the Intel 520 seems to work without issue. Perhaps this is a change that Dell made to the controller firmware.

I really wanted a high performance SSD that carries a long warranty and Intel seem to be the only vendor that offer that at the moment.

Installing the SSD inside an R510 is really easy and it is quite a neat setup as you don’t lose any of your main storage bays as the server has two internal 2.5″ drive bays:

The Drive Itself:

The internal 2.5″ Drive Bays (Notice the included screws atop of the bays, a nice touch) :

Dell PowerEdge R510 2.5" Drive Bays

The internal 2.5″ Drive Bays with the Intel 520 120GB SSD installed:

Once the drive is installed, go into Raid Controllers BIOS configuration utility (CTRL+R) and you should see the newly added Intel drive listed:

Highlight your controller and press F2 and a list of available tasks is displayed. Choose “Create CacheCade Virtual Disk”:

Select the SSDs that you want to add to your Cachecade virtual disk. I’ve not tried it with more than one:

And hopefully you will get a successfully created message(perhaps in a later firmware they will work on wording):

CacheCade can only be set-up on the DELL PERC H700 with 1GB memory. So don’t go splashing out on an SSD if you don’t have that RAID controller. I presume it will also work on a H800 with 1GB, but don’t have one in this machine to test it.

Have not had a chance to do any performance comparison as yet, and it is a shame that there are no tools to actually show you if the CacheCade is active or to provide any statistics.

I plan to test performance of StorageCraft ShadowProtect Virtual Boot performance with and without the SSD Caching and see how it compares, as this is what we are using to provide disaster recovery systems to our clients, and while it works OK with normal drives, I am hoping that the SSD will make the performance comparable to the native system.

http://www.gradwell.com/support/kb/article.php?id=159

I wrote a powershell script to test the system and it worked well, but I didn’t really have a practical use for dialing from the command line.  Yesterday I was by chance reading about Extending the Internet Explorer Context Menu.

I decided to put together a quick bit of code that would allow me to initiate calls directly from Internet Explorer to my Gradwell extension, and it works really well!  I ditched the original Powershell version in favour of javascript because it made the solution much neater.

To make this work for you need to setup an authentication token for your extension on the Gradwell VoIP control panel first. Make a note of your extention and authentication token.

Download this HTML File (right click - Save Target as) and store it locally somewhere on your machine.  Open the file for editing and modify with your own extension number and authentication token:

Now we just need to create the internet explorer context menu, create the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt\&Gradwell Call]
@=REG_SZ:”C:\some\path\to\View\DialGradwell.htm”
Contexts=REG_DWORD:10

You will need to change “c:\some\path\to” to the actual folder where you saved “DialGradwell.htm”.

Open Internet Explorer again and highlight some text or a link and right click and you should now have the option to call the number directly from your browser:

If you have done everything right, simply click on the “Gradwell Call” context menu option and your phone should start ringing right away.  Answer the call and you’ll hear the ringing of the destination number right away.

I might see about doing the same thing for Chrome and Firefox.

I’ve written a few little tools for the SPA series of phones but this one required a lot more effort. We’ve been using it internally for while now and it really does make using the phones so much easier and quicker.

It took me a while to figure out how to control the call functions of the phone, but I am very pleased with the results. Here is a screenshot of the main application window:

The program has a number of features to make working with the Linksys SPA 942 and the Cisco 504g easier, such as autocomplete dialing from the phone and applications personal directory and the ability to directly dial any number stored in the phones Dialed/Answered and Missed call logs.

We’ve also added the ability to dial any number stored in your windows clipboard, really handy when you are web browsing and just want to get hold of someone quickly without having to look back and forth between the phone and your screen.

You can import numbers from your own databases via the CSV import utility and easily build up your own contact database within the application and then export it for use on collegues machines.

We have put together a dedicated website for the application, if you use one of these phones I urge you to check it out to make your life easier!

SPA Call Manager Pro

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: FW: Offer

Sent: 20/09/2011 10:33

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

‘user@domain.com’ on 20/09/2011 10:33
None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient.

This problem is caused when the email address has been pasted into to the to: field with the mailto: portion still intact.

Go into the sent items and open the email that failed to transmit and then choose “resend this message” and then double click on the email address you will probably see something like this:

As in the picture the “E-mail type:” is set to MAILTO. Clicking on the Internet type button will reset it back to SMTP and should be able to send the message.

Sometimes the incorrect address can also get cached into your NK2 file, so you will need to remove it from your autocomplete cache to make sure that you don’t get the problem again.

So, I have rewritten the script in Powershell and it should now work on any system which has Powershell installed.  The new script is easier to read and includes support for SMTP over SSL, making the use of a Gmail account for sending the alerts very straightforward.

The whole process is very similar to the previous script, so if you used that one, this will be immediatly familiar.

Installation:

After you have downloaded the Zip file extract it to a folder on your server, e.g “C:\Script”

You will then need to edit the variables at the top of the script to make them appropriate for your environment:

If you do not specify an SMTPServer, it will default to localhost.  If you do not specify an SMTPPort it will default to port 25.

If you intend to use the script with a gmail account set:

$SMTPServer = “smtp.gmail.com”
$SMTPUser = Your gmail account name (without the @gmail.com part).
$SMTPPassword = Your gmail account password
$SMTPPort = 587
$EnableSSL = true

Test Email is functional

Now that you have the script installed open up a powershell prompt and run the script with the “testemail” parameter e.g:

c:\script\dellalerts.ps1 testemail

If everything is working properly you should receive a test alert in your inbox.

Setup Alerts from OpenManage

Once the email function has been tested you can go ahead and setup the script to run from open manage, simply run the script again with the “setup” parameter, and you should see something like this:

Testing

There are a few easy ways to test the script in practice with a real alert generated by OpenManage:

• Pop the side off the server casing, this will generate a chassis intrusion alert.
• If you have a dual powersupply system you can pull the power to one of the supplies and the server should report the power loss.

The problem with these methods is that you have to be in the same place as the server.  So I prefer to trigger a tempreture alert like this:

Just set the warning threshold to be a couple of degrees lower than your current reading.  Warning: If you have a thermal shutdown action configured, this could trigger that process off and shutdown your server.  Once you have received your test emails, set the tempreture wanrings back to default values.

Please let me know of any issues you have with the script and I will work on them as soon as possible.  I have installed this updated version on a number of systems and it is working well.

The download includes both the new version and the older VBScript version.

I also got the Official Amazon Cover for the reader but I really did not get on with it. It is high quality and durable, but it makes the device so awkward to read that I always end up removing the Kindle anyway. It is also quite heavy and I generally leave the Kindle in my laptop bag and can do without the extra weight.

My girlfriend, who knits constantly made me a Kindle Cover which fits the reader perfectly and provides surprisingly good protection. She has made the pattern available freely on this post on her blog.

This version has had some cosmetic tweaks, includes a proper installer and has the ability to upload the directory to many phones.

There is a small charge of £1.95 for this software.

This has been tested and works with:

Linksys SPA941Linksys SPA942Linksys SPA962

This Dynamic Distribution Group was created with the Exchange Management Shell. You can use the Exchange Managment Shell to modify the filter.

And all of the controls are disabled.

To update the recipient container from the Exchange Management Shell run:

Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -Identity DistributionGroupName -RecipientContainer ‘containername/ouname’