Cupfighter.net

After the latest patchround, I had WSUS3.0 break on me. The management snapin kept failing with ‘not responding’, and remote MMC connections weren’t accepted anymore either.

I figured to remove and reinstall, keeping the database and logs, but every reïnstall kept failing and bombing at about 90% out with a dialogue box stating ‘there is something wrong with your installation package’. As I knew for sure the package was fine (I did try both the SP1 and SP2 install..) it must be something else.

The logfile MWusSetup.log located in the Windows temp folder mentioned: ERROR CustomActions.Dll  RemovePsfsip: Failed to load dll  (Error 0x8007007E: The specified module could not be found.)

After a little googling, I found a lot of references, but not one fully working solution.

What worked for me is this (reboot after every step):

Removed all dotnet installs using a MS utility cleanup_tool.exe
(http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/attachment/8904493.ashx)

Stop and remove the WsusCertService using the 2003 resource kit utility instsrv.exe
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9D467A69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en)

Cleaned the registry using ccleaner.
(http://www.ccleaner.com)

Reïnstalled .Net3.5SP1
(http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe)

Removed the wsus mmc cache files in my profile directory.

This finally allowed me to reïnstall WSUS.

[BBG]

Recently we started evaluating Citrix Edgesight, on a enviroment we are currently building, consisting of XenApp5 2008 x64 and XenDesktop 4 Farms.

After the installation of the EdgeSight agent, suddenly a bunch of applications running within a Java Virtual machine stopped functioning. Throwing the “Could not launch the java virtual machine” error.
These Java apps tried allocating quite some memory using these java arguments (eg: XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=20 -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio=35 -XX:NewRatio=2″   initial-heap-size=”32m” max-heap-size=”1024m”)

After some investigation a colleague (Hugo Trippaers) found out that there was only 0,9 GB of memory allocatable on our Citrix XenApp machines using the memtest32.exe tool. While our other servers happily reported 1,5 GB of allocatable memory (Within WOW64). (Physical Machine = HP DL380G6 with 48 GB of memory, uh should be enough?)

After some deeper digging using memalloc.exe, I discover some substantial differences in memory allocation between our XenApp Servers with the edgesight agent installed and servers without the EdgeSight agent.

XenApp servers with Edgesight Agent 5.2 SP1 x64: memalloc.exe with edgesight
XenApp Servers without edgesight: memalloc.exe – without edgesight

The main difference here is all the Citrix hooks being loaded, see below.
This apparently consumes so much memory that it was not possible for java to allocate enough memory.

For more insights on WOW64 look here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/gauravseth/archive/2006/04/26/583963.aspx

By default 32bit applications within WOW64 can leverage the full 4 GB of memory availlable, which is not possible on a native 32 bit system because of the separation of kernel and user space.
Applications need to be compiled with /largaddressaware (Visual Studio : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wz223b1z(VS.80).aspx) or patched using editbin (http://bilbroblog.com/wow64/hidden-secrets-of-w0w64-ndash-large-address-space/), to fully use the 4 GB availlable otherwise they can only allocate 1,6 GB of memory.

We will open a case with Citrix on this; to be continued.

Citrix hooks being loaded when edgesight is installed:
Read more…

As part of my work I was installing a Microsoft PKi infrastructure with two tiers. A root CA and an issuing CA.

Since the root CA is in another domain then the issuing CA, it took some fiddling and tweaking around with my CDP and AIA extensions, but that is another blogpost all together.

I knew I was in for some fun when when the following happened:

• I installed my Issuing CA and generated the certificate request
• I issued the request to my Root CA and generated the Issuing CA certificate
• I tried to install the Issuing CA certificate and got the following error:

Cannot verify certificate chain. Do you whish to ignore the error and continue? The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2168885613)

My first reaction was to call one of the network guest and notify him that I needed http access to the Issuing CA to the CDP location. But whil on the phone, I decided to try and to my surprise I was actually able to manually pull down the crl.

Intregued, I decided to check a few things:

• I could download the CRL from both CDP locations with Internet Exporer
• I could open the downloaded CRLs
• I could telnet to port 80 of the both webservers
• I could telnet to port 80 manually issue the GET /crl/CRLname.crl HTTP/1.0 command and get data back

O.K. what is going on here… Lets open PKI view, which is now included in Windows 2008 and Vista and can be downloaded for Windows 2000 and 2003.

It seemed that PKI view as in agreement, it too could not download the CRL from the CDP location

PKI view shows "Unable To Download" for both CDP locations

This did sent me on a wild goose chase:

• Microsoft own documentation, clearly blames it on unavailability of the CDP location, something I, by now, had triple checked four times and refused to believe
• This “Network Builders” forum and many others, simply suggest to turn off revocation checking, but that is clearly not a worthy solution either.
• Apparently there is also an issue with serving delta CRLs threw IIS because the + sign at the end of the basename of a delta CRL file leads to so called “double escaping”. I could rule this out by looking at the IIS logs.
• In the end this technet forum post, about OCSP reponders Brian Komar points out:

But, as stated, I would use certutil to get the “best” answer on how is my configuration.
Certutil -verify -urlfetch “certfile.cer” will check *every* CDP and AIA URL (including OCSP) and tell you how they are all doing *at that specific instance in time” since it goes to the URLs immediately.
Brian

I exported the Issuing CA certificate from the certificate database of the Root CA and ran the command against is and this is what I found

E:\>certutil -verify -urlfetch <certfile>.cer
Issuer:
CN=Root CA
Subject:
CN=Issuing CA
Cert Serial Number: 115d5f6400020000000b
<snip>

—————-  Certificate AIA  —————-
Verified “Certificate (0)” Time: 0
[0.0] http://IIS1.domain1local/crl/Root-CA.crt

Verified “Certificate (0)” Time: 0
[1.0] http://IIS2.domain1.local/crl/Root-CA.crt

—————-  Certificate CDP  —————-
Wrong Issuer “Base CRL (13)” Time: 0
[0.0] http://IIS1.domain1.local/crl/Root-CA.crl

Wrong Issuer “Base CRL (13)” Time: 0
[1.0] http://IIS2.domain1.local/crl/Root-CA.crl

<snip>
E:\>

So while PKI view and the other error messages I was getting all pointed to the most common cause, it actually turned out that the CRl did get downloaded, but was not cryptographically relevant to what the system believes is the Root CA certificate.

Root cause

Inspection of the CRLs generated and the Root certificates installed showed what had caused the problem. In order to test the CDP extensions I had reissued the Root CA certificate, causing the Root CA to have three active certificates. Each with a different key.

This CA has three CA certificates

When validating the Issuing CA certificate, validation would end at the last certificate issued, however the CA still signs its CRLs with the key pair of the first certificate.

I guess for me there is nothing left but to reinstall the entire chain.

Schuberg Philis has sent me and 4 colleagues to Berlin to attend the TECH-ED over there.

Together with another 7000 techies, this is a week of planning, running, eating, experiencing all kinds of (new) technologies presented by Microsoft guys.

Feeling some blisters already, because I’m not used to running so much on a day, especially with a Lenovo T500 on my shoulder. The Berlin Messe is a huge place. But the overall sense of the MCE’s is that we are enjoying the sessions. Not all session are that good, but for instance Mark Minasi is good fun to watch and hear.  The food and beverages (very important) are good and plenty.
Technically we are not always that challenged, in many occasions the depth is lacking, but then again, it is a mass-event and not everybody is a (potential) MCE.

Read more…

Finally I have seen a nice Microsoft solution for light touch deployment of servers and workstations. During a half-hour demo session on TechEd MS demonstrated that deploying new desktops and servers doesn’t have to be a tough job if you use the new Deployment Toolkit 2010 and WAIK 2.0. It was impressive to see how easy automated deployment for various operating systems becomes when you use the new Deployment Workbench which wraps like a management shell around the individual WAIK 2.0 components. Big plus for the Deployment Workbench is that all UI management operations are also accessible from Powershell by loading a single powershell snap-in making it easier to automate.

WAIK 2.0 comes with some new tools like DSIM.exe which is a combination of previous WAIK tools like Pkgmgr.exe, Intlcfg.exe, PEimg.exe and has basic functionality to mount and maintain Windows images (either WIM or VHD file format) by adding or removing device drivers, patches, software packages etc..

Other new features in this toolkit:

• BCDboot is a new tool used to quickly set up a system partition, or to repair the boot environment.
• USMT. User State Migration Tool used for doing an in place migration while maintaining all user data and settings.
• Volume Activation Management Tool. Manages volume activation of Windows clients using a Multiple Activation Key (MAK)
• Hardware recognition and driver injection (also during pre-installation stage while booting from WinPE).
• Create image files for media-based deployments from existing deployment shares (WIM and/or ISO image files).

It supports deployment of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003/2008/2008 R2

Read more about MDT 2010:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791.aspx

What’s new in MDT 2010 (link to Word doc):
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163309

Of course there was a warning, as all speakers must have done the last couple of years, about the `ending` of IPV4. We are running out of ip addresses, we’ve heard that before.

Here you will find a nice link of where Geoff Huston is predicting the end of time:http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html 

And in fact, we cannot ignore this. It will happen. And I want to be prepared, so that’s why I attended this session. I cannot longer sit back and hoping this would only happen when I’m retired. (and the Dutch government is not helping as well, as they have decided to extend pensioning from 65 to 67 years..)

Windows has already implemented the IPV6 stack from 2003 (and XP sp2) onwards and IPV6 from Vista onwards is the preferred protocol by default. Of course you can disable this, but in Win2k8 IPV4 is built on the IPV6 stack, so even when you disable IPV6, you’re always able to ping your local-home-address (::1).

Something I found during my research: Exchange 2003 on Windows 2008 needs IPV6, unless you disable it via a reghack (http://msmvps.com/blogs/ehlo/archive/2008/06/12/1634433.aspx).

You need to understand the principles (doh…) but networking is a piece of cake with IPV6

IPV4 is all about routing, IPV6 is all about shouting, was a statement of Mark Minasi.

Motivators to use IPV6:

• China is knocking at the internet-door.
• All European car-manufacturers have agreed to implement IPV6 in their cars as the standart protocol for car applications. (so beware, breaking will done via commands transported via IPV6..)

I don’t want to get in detail here, plenty of explanation on the web, but the modern OS-es all are capable of doing IPV6, and certainly I will dive deeper into this.  

You should too.

Late October PowerShell V2 was released for almost all Windows platforms. Check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929 and download the version you need.

Happy scripting!

Remote Management.
Well finally, PowerShell v2 is included and holds an AD Module, so the Quest ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory is now ‘sort of’ native.  A comprehensive set of AD cmdlets for AD DS and AD LDS administration, configuration and diagnostic tasks.

PowerShell drives for AD will simplify navigation in AD Directory Services. And most of all: certain tasks can only be achieved through PowerShell hurrah for the shell.

AD Web services (ADWS) will create a web service ‘gateway’ for managing windows 2008 R2 servers through PowerShell. Be sure you have port 9289 opened on the firewalls and your home free.

For backward compatibility Active Directory Management Gateway Service (ADMGS) is available for Windows Server 2003 and 2008, however this does not support instances of AD Mounting Tool (get-PSdrive)

AD Administrative Center
The users and computers interface is enriched by progressive disclosure of data, which means, the interface builds up navigation history and anticipates on tasks you’re about to do and fill the interface accordingly. Big plus is that you can connect to multiple domains at the same time.

Managed Service Accounts
Currently using built in accounts for services does not provide service isolation. And in case we run the services using standard user accounts with some extensive privileges. But then again, changing services account passwords on a regular basis did cause some unexpected service failures.

So managed service accounts are presented, though the accounts must be created and managed through Windows PowerShell. J. It’s delivered in three steps. The sweet thing is that a reset of the password is done on a regular basis (default by 30 days) by the system itself.

However:
1: Service / application requiring managed account must be running on Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2
2: Managed accounts cannot be shared across multiple servers

The latter is a major setback since the whole security of the password changes are embedded, so why don’t enable it cross hosts, so keep it simple and transparent does not apply here.

Djoin.exe
Now, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machines can be joined to a domain while offline, it’s not PowerShell driven though. During deployment the machine has already domain joined the domain at startup, so no reboot required. This will definitely speed up deployment of VMs and scripted installs. The sysprep process will create a new section in unattended.xml to supports offline domain joins which will actually simplifies domain joins to RODCs.

Recycle Bin for AD
Here it is: a fast and decent failsafe of accidently deletion of AD objects; the recycle bin for AD.
You need to promote to 2008 R2 Forest functionality and, of course, it’s PowerShell driven.
Bear in mind, once enabled it cannot be disabled, but then again, it restores all attributes including linked attributes.  Of course it will impact storage, but no more than 5 -10% increase of the AD database. Here is how it will work:

Session by: Andrew Fryer

In this interactive lab I learned how to install and configure SQL 2008 on Windows 2008 R2 Core, which has the following technical advantages and characteristics:

-          Running on R2 Core instead of normal setup, limits the need of patching and maintenance of a SQL OS to the minimum R2 core components updated, minimizing the instance downtime.

-          Running several SQL instances is possible as it is on the GUI enabled full OS setup.

-          All installations and configurations needs to be done using Powershell cmdlets, which are limited to installation of .Net framework 3.5, configuring windows firewall to allow 1433 and installing base components of SQL 2008, and of course the GUI components of SQL including management studio is not to run from the R2 core and the instance needs to be managed by remote machine.

-          It makes the life really easy to prepare an R2 image with pre-installation of SQL 2008 using Sysprep for fast deployment of an SQL Server. We have reached an OS/SQL deployment time of 5 minutes in the lab.

-          Running on R2 core is has also security advantages for SQL Server instance as major windows vulnerabilities are related to higher levels and Windows 2008 core is mostly not affected.

-          It is possible to cluster an SQL instance running on R2 core.

-          This implementation is not supported by Microsoft at this moment, but several factors shows it will be supported in the near future.

The how to guide will be shortly available on Codeplex. If not, I will add an installation guide to this blog too.