The ramblings of a computer geek
PROBLEM: You need to check if two domain controllers are in sync with each other. SOLUTION: To do this you need to understand a bit about how Active Directory reports if a domain controller replication is in sync. There is something called a UTDV up-to-dateness vector that is basically a number representing what the domain … Read more
You’ll probably find yourself using the message tracking logs to find if an email has gone missing. But what should a normal working mail transaction look like? Well below shows it, where the mailboxes are stored on the same server. EventId Source Sender Recipients MessageSubject NOTIFY STOREDRIVER {} RECEIVE STOREDRIVER fred@sender.com {bob@receive.com} Hello! SUBMIT STOREDRIVER … Read more
In Exchange 2013 you can set an email to be put in the user’s Junk E-Mail folder based on if you think it is SPAM or not. This doesn’t use the Exchange built in spam filtering, it assumes you have a spam filter external to your Exchange environment that can tag an email that it … Read more
I had an interesting request, how to move a load of PDF files from one directory structure to another but leaving behind that directory structure so all the files end up in one directory in a huge list. I thought XCopy, but this appeared to be a better way. Note: Files with the duplicate names … Read more
I needed to have an automated way to bulk import a load of PST files into Exchange 2013. In my case all the files were named as follows: samAccountName@domain.co.uk so for example: fred.bloggs@thingy.co.uk.pst You can run this command from an Exchange PowerShell console, bear in mind that you’ll need to change your domain name on … Read more
If you like me like a more simple password for your local administrator password on your servers in a test lab or production 🙂 then you can change it using the local security policy. Problem is on Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, you don’t have the MMC snap-ins to do it, so you need to use … Read more
To create a CSR and include not only a CN (Common Name) but also a SAN(s) too, you can use the following process. 1. Firstly create a text file called request.inf and fill it with the following: 2. Now run this command to create a CSR: You can check it has the right info here: … Read more
If you’re like us you still have old legacy applications that use POP3 for various things. On Exchange 2013 the way POP3 works has changed slightly. Now you access a POP3 mailbox via the CAS servers that proxy you to the mailbox on the Mailbox role server(s). Our application only supports plain text authentication, but … Read more
There’s some basic tasks which are good to automate, to save you some time, you can configure them to run as a scheduled task. First step is to create a user account to run the scripts, this account should have access to change Exchange and change Active Directory, lets call the account: exchangeserviceuser. To run … Read more
So you are moving from Pcounter to another printing system, but you want to export your users balances to export them to another system. To do this find the account.exe file within your Pcounter directory and run this command: ACCOUNT BACKUP <DOMAIN> Where the <DOMAIN> is your domain name (NetBIOS) name of the domain. This … Read more