Invisicons... what?

I found this on my desktop today... Just went and did a drag to select operation, and it found several other "squares." I can drag them around, if I click and drag on the "real folder" first. I cannot open them however. I wonder what they are....

BTW: refreshing the desktop does not make them go away. Selecting the mysterious icons by them selves also highlights them, but they cannot be dragged anywhere. Deleting the CMC Contract folder has no affect. Finally, I cannot delete the "invisicons."

Strange.

A trip to Lansing?

Today, Mitch (one of my best friends) called me up from his work place in Lansing. We were doing some basic checks of his server... He needed to open the case and check to see the motherboard model and if all the RAM slots were full. He was planning a RAM upgrade, and I needed details, especially since I was getting different information about his server from different sources. Opening the case would be required.

He said he would call me back once he got the information. I told him not to break the server -- I was headed off to a service call in East Owosso, and would talk with him afterward. The roads were bad, a good 3" (7 cm) of slushy snow. Driving back, it was a little worse, but not too bad. The snow was tapering off, but still, I made the decision that all other service calls were canceled, save for mission critical support.

Once I walked into the store, returning from my service call less than an hour after I left, Mitch was already on the phone with Joel, co-owner of CyberMedics. First words out of Joel's mouth: "Mitch is on the phone, apparently the southbridge heatsync fell off... the server has shut itself off."

This was critical in Mitch's work environment. They only had one server, and everything was loaded on to it. Exchange (mail), Data Server, Domain Controller, everything. It simplifies administration, but it also is one whopping single point of failure, and it was down.

I stopped Joel as soon as he finished speaking and instantly responded, "Transfer him to me." I needed to speak with him immediately to get the details. I was quickly regretting not polishing off my cup of coffee before heading into work.

Yes, it was that bad. Mitch opened the case and the heatsync just fell off... No apparent reason why, it just fell off. It took only seconds for the server to over heat and shut down. And now, the server was unable to boot. Thoughts rolled though my head: circuitry failure from over heating, power supply failure, motherboard failure. All of which are hardware related, none of which were a quick fix.
Status: Server is Down, support required, mission critical, productivity has been stopped.

I was to prepare for a trip to Lansing, a 35 mile (55 km) drive. There is now nearly 8" (17 cm) of slushy snow on the ground. Calls were going crazy, authorization needed to be made before I headed out to work with Mitch, and I needed to schedule things with CyberMedics before heading out.

Within half an hour, a strategy was made, and the trip was planned. I was to head out, stop by my apartment and grab a second set of clothes, a blanket, some food, and something to drink (all but the first were in case my car broke down or I got into an accident, as well as planning on staying the night on site, since the roads were to get worse until after 1 AM) -- if I could, Mitch asked me to pick up some Cheetos for him, if I passed a convenience store, we were planning for a serious all-nighter. The 2-mile drive home took me nearly 20 minutes. While I was there, I took a moment to leave a note for my roommate with emergency contact information, in case I was in an accident or didn't return from Lansing within a day or so; I told myself, "Just in case, ya know?"

Upon leaving with my supplies, I got a few blocks before I determined that the storm had become a lot worse, there was now around 9" (22 cm) of snow on the ground. The snow had picked up visibility was down to nearly nothing, and my little car, basically a Ford Escort without anti-lock breaks, was unable to safely navigate the roads in town... The 35 miles to Lansing seemed quite impossible without getting into an accident or losing control of my car. And I was really beginning to think that those emergency contacts I left my roommate would need to be used if I did go to Lansing this evening. My logic stepped in full force, I had serious doubts that I'd be able to drive though town, let alone to Lansing, without getting into an accident. I needed to cancel on Mitch.

I felt bad. All I could do was call Mitch and talk with him over the phone. I really wanted to be there and help him with his network in this critical state, but it was too dangerous to drive this evening... I told him that I would try to come out the following day if he wasn't able to get the server up and running that evening, if the roads cleared up. I told him to call me with updates as he worked this evening.

The roads were so bad that I even called into work and talked with Joel, I told him that it was unwise to drive my car presently and would not be returning to work. It took me another 10 minutes to drive the half mile back home, down a single road, sliding with each turn, sharing a near-miss with the Shiawassee river at one point.

I just hope Mitch makes it home safely. I'm going to call him later this evening just to be sure.

iPod of Love?

32 GB iPod Touch? Ohhhh, that is awesome.

iPod Touch: 32 GB: $499USD.

Just switch that wire....

A few weeks ago, I was working on site with a business planning on doing a minor change-over. Scheduled service was for Friday at 1pm. Due to another business having serious issues, I wasn't able to get on site until 3:30, at which time the in-house technician had already started some basic adjustments, nothing serious though.

Our goals were pretty simple. Migrate from the DSL internet connection to the T1 per the instructions of the ISP, adjust the backups on the server to be sure that they were working correctly, and ensure that the antivirus software was working correctly throughout the network, including the satellite offices (via remote desktop) several of which are located in Canada. Estimated time on site: 3 to 6 hours.

Well, our biggest problem was that due to the previous net admin's total lack of documentation, we were running into this with high-hopes while also being a little blind. We totally didn't think about the router configuration. A Cisco 800 SOHO router.

The switch over directions from the ISP were pretty much "just switch over the ethernet cable from the DSL to the T1 and you'll be all set." Well, we didn't have a crossover cable, we just had a standard ethernet. Doesn't work when connecting between the Cisco 800 SOHO and the Cisco 1700 T1 router.

So, after a few hours of troubleshooting, we go that situated with the help of the local ISP. We then realized that the configuration of the Cisco 800 SOHO wasn't correct, but we didn't have the password to it... Here's where the trouble started coming in...

We got the Cisco Console cable from the ISP and instructions on how to reset the password on the router without reseting the configuration. A few simple commands.

Even with our best efforts and constant contact with the ISP, the router configuration was lost. It was now coming up on 2 AM, I had been on site for over 10 hours and was losing the ability to think straight, so we decided to call it a night and resume troubleshooting the following day.

Day two's priorities were different. Get the router up and running. Everything else is secondary. So that's what we did. I contacted the ISP and had them out on site to take a look at the Cisco 800 SOHO and figure out what was wrong and if we could restore the system back into a running state.

The ISP guy informed me that we needed to get the config file from the other network site, to get the configuration details. So at 5 PM, we made the final decision to head deep into Canada and get done what needed to be done.

The drive was going to take 4 hours. Quite a haul. And I don't have a passport, so it was a little risky, for the most part the problems would arise when coming back though, and the priority would be to just go over there and get the config file and email it back to the ISP. Simple.

So, that's what our goals for "the Canada trip" were. As everything else, it didn't go smoothly.

Canadian Boarder Crossing Services stopped us for nearly an hour, (apparently, they don't like Americans that are going into the country to work) but they eventually let us in. We headed on to site an hour behind schedule and got to work right away.

The work was simple... Meet up with one of the Canadian employees to let us in the building, adjust set up a computer near the router, directly access the router, copy the config and send it to the local (American) ISP and have them adjust what needed to be adjusted. We would then test the config to be sure that everything was working and then go home. Total estimated time on site: 45 to 60 minutes.

Once again, things didn't go as planned. Once we got the computer hooked up, we found it to be incredibly slow. And once we started working on the router, we found the data transmission to be faulty. After talking with the American ISP guys to see what they thought, they told us to replace the computer with a different one to check to see if it was a problem with the COM port on the PC. So we did that (it wasn't easy to set up these computers in the networking closet either, it would take around 15 to 20 minutes just to plug everything in). The second computer was no better. But we lived with it. Once again the communication wasn't working correctly though. So we called the American ISP again to see what they thought...

Well, there's several areas of configuration for the HyperTerminal configuration. First, we had to figure out which COM port was used. After some troubleshooting, we figured it must be COM3, it was the only port that displayed anything when we tried to connect to it. But, the port would only display gibberish. After talking with the ISP again, they suggested playing around with the Bit Rate settings. Over an hour of troubleshooting later, we finally found the correct bit rate. We made some setting adjustments and hacked the password on the router (very carefully) and copied the router configuration. All we had to do then was to email it to the American ISP.

That's when we realized that the internet was down. We spent a good fifteen minutes or so troubleshooting that, when we finally gave up and did some resets to the router to get it back online. We finally were able to send the email to the American ISP. Me and the In-House IT guy snacked on some chocolates that the office had laying around. We talked a little about what else we needed to get done and what we needed to test before heading back home.

It didn't take long before the American ISP got back to us and told us that the router should be back online and running as it should be. We did some basic checks and tested the ability to communicate over the VPN and called it good at 5 AM, where we decided to head back to the US.

Once at the boarder at 8 AM, the US Department of Homeland Security didn't take too kindly to us not having passports, but let us back into the country anyway, after inspecting the vehicle. We didn't get back to Owosso until 10 AM, 24 hours after I got up to go to work. I was glad to be home and be free of tinkering with an international network.

There were some problems come Monday, but nothing major and nothing that we couldn't get fixed remotely. By Wednesday, everything was fully operational.

Thin as Air

Yesterday evening, I got an email that I just couldn't ignore for more than a day. Apple has released a new notebook computer, the MacBook Air.

Quite the impressive design, weighing in at under three pounds and no more than an three-quarters of an inch thick at its widest point, it is by far the smallest full-sized laptop ever released by Apple, and perhaps the smallest the IT industry has seen yet.

The unit still retains many features of the every-day MacBook, complete with the built in iSight camera and microphone, as well as the 13.3" screen. But it does come with some differences one may want to consider before buying the unit.

For one thing, the unit only has one USB 2.0 port and no firewire port. It has a single headphone jack, but no audio in (beware podcasters!) The unit also has no Ethernet (although, a USB adapter is available, for an additional charge).

The Mag-Safe adapter is a common feature, but it's not the same adapter that the previous MacBooks have used, so don't expect to have a spare power adapter from that ol' MacBook Core Duo.

There are some nifty features of the unit that aren't as highly publicized.

For one thing, the screen is lit using LEDs instead of a CCFL tube, which makes for less energy consumption, which is quite handy. And for those of us on the plane frequently, or in dark college dorm rooms, a back-lit keybaord may come in handy, especially when trying to finish up that term-paper at 4 AM.

One of the more astonishing aspects of the laptop is that if you are willing to be an early-adopter of the new "mobile computing concepts," you could get the $3,000 version of the Air that comes with a solid-state drive instead of the usual thin PATA that the less expensive ($1800) version comes with.

Personally, this is something I'd buy in a heartbeat...
...If I were rich.

PS: Check out Air's web site to watch the promo, guided tour, and if you have the navigation skills to stumble accross it, even the Steve Jobs keynote, presenting the new unit.

Enjoy.

Octadecimal

Today I got an email from Apple announcing that they are upgrading the standard again. The default configuration for the Mac Pro now is eight-core. It's really an insane default configuration. The configuration can easily handle just about anything a video guru can throw at it,

This incredible power stems from all-new Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors, featuring speeds up to 3.2GHz and 12MB of L2 cache per processor.

Apple Store

The default configuration, starting off at $2,799.00USD may be a bit much for most home Mac users, but this computer is no iMac.

Leopard Upgrade

So, the trip home wasn't too bad. The annoyance of having to make a special trip to manage a Macintosh because the correct OS wasn't preinstalled is really annoying, but I did need to manage the firewall directly, and there was some other family issues that needed to be addressed, so it wasn't exactly just a "tech support" thing.

I must say, the OS is beautiful. My family is quickly adapting to the Mac OS lifestyle, and they are really loving it. Especially Photobooth.

The biggest issue so far has been the side buttons on the Mighty Mouse, they kept hitting them, causing Expose to fire-up. So I decided to disable that button (#3 on the mighty mouse). I enabled right-click though (button #2) on the mouse, to make troubleshooting with them over the phone easier.

Unfortunately, Remote Desktop doesn't seem to be working so well over the internet. I believe that it is the firewall at home that is doing it, since everything is spot-on with the Mac, but each time I try to RA into any computer from outside the network, I'm blocked. Very disappointing. The ISP is also bouncing the IP address around all the time now, It seems to change every 12 to 48 hours, making remote access almost impossible. I'm really starting to think that it is time for my parents to change ISPs again.

Outside of that, the iMac itself is running wonderful with Leopard (upgrade only disk, requiring Tiger to be installed before Leopard can be installed). There's really no complaints about it, other than I'm not so sure that I like the new folder icons. Everything else is nice though. I'll be tinkering with it on and off again over time though, if for nothing else than to decide if I want to upgrade to it myself. ^___^

About This Mac

Well, I cannot emphasize how disappointed I am in Apple right now.

The new iMac that my parents just got, it did not come with Leopard.

Leopard is in the box, but it's not on the computer. Blue swirly background. Old dock. About This Mac: "Mac OS X Version 10.4.11."

I'm really annoyed by this. I may have to make a special two-hour drive south tomorrow to go fix it. In the mean time, I just might call Apple about this.

One heck of a way to start the new year.

Update: I am making a special trip home tomorrow to upgrade the iMac. I just cannot believe how stupid it is for Apple to sell an iMac (ordered on December 23, nearly two months after the original release of Leopard on October 26). I am utterly dumbfounded. Is this the way all new Macs are shipping? If so, why?!? If not, then why is my parents computer configured the way it is?? And no, it's not like it was a "pre-boxed special" or anything, it was a modified order placed at store.apple.com.

The Broken

So, after three months, I've got a basic review of my "new" keyboard.

When I got it, there was some signs of wear and tear on the keyboard and mouse. For one, some of the text on the bottom of the keyboard was faded. It looked like from being slid across a desk. The same goes for the mouse and for the glide pads on the bottom of the mouse. Rather disappointing.

Minus 1 Point

One of the little flippers on the bottom of the keyboard just fell off the other day. I don't even use them, so it seems odd that it would just fall off one day without any reason.

Minus 1 Point

They removed the scroll lock button, because "it's not often used" however, they added in an "F-Mode" key... for being dumb, I feel they are in need of... They also put the "connect" button in an odd place on the bottom of the keyboard, so it's a little too easy to hit when picking the board up. And the new layout of the "home-end" keys area of the board and moving of the "insert" key completely into a different area of the board. Not to mention the missing left windows key. Not major issues by themselves, but for us KVM users out there, I must say:

Minus 1 Point

The mouse doesn't have an off button. Even with my lack of using the mouse, it has already died, within three months of use. I picked up rechargeable batteries shortly there after.

Minus 1 Point

The keyboard has a simple and sleek "black" design. Smooth keys. Not to mention the special utility keys, such as backward, forward, and volume controls.

Plus 1 Point

The keyboard batteries, which I really utilize, have not failed. I have replaced them with rechargables anyway, but they went three months without so much as a single issue. I did have to reconnect once to the receiver for the keyboard, but that was after taking a vacation for almost a week, leaving the keyboard and mouse sitting idle without anyone using them.

Plus 1 Point

The mouse, lefty-compatible, fits well in the hand and is quite simplistic, utilizing the standard three button with scroll wheel. And the optical light hasn't cause me any issues as of yet, working just fine on my desktop, my mouse pad, the edge of the bed, even on the leg of my pants once.

Plus 1 Point

It's wireless, need I say more? And I already knew about all of it's flaws before I purchased it.

Plus 1 Point

Final Score:
0
Break Even.
I'm not exactly impressed with my Logitech EX110 Cordless Desktop, but it's not exactly bad either. There is definitely room for improvement, and there were a few corners cut by both Newegg and Logitech, but nothing too serious. I'd buy another in a heart beat. As a matter of fact, I noticed several of these wireless guys when I was on site earlier today and was impressed with the wise decision of the owner to purchase a decent wireless keyboard. It really did help the office seem less cluttered.

Buying a new computer for your parents is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Or so Mitch would say.

Last week, on Sunday, December 23, 2007, I went home for christmas. My dad had complained that the computer, a Dell Dimension from 2001 (yes, it uses RD-RAM) was shutting down randomly. I brought my PC repair kit from home, and dinked with the system shortly after walking into the house (and after my two-hour drive down south).

I noticed that the system was booting slow, but the system logs didn't show anything too abnormal. So I decided to run a few more intensive scans on the hard drive. From those scans, I found that the hard drive was starting to fail. I was able to restore it to normal operation, but it is now only a matter of time before the drive is gone far enough that it'll just die off one day.

My dad was determined. Finally, he had an excuse to get a new computer. Mom was none-too-happy, but she'll live with it. My dad has had his eyes set on a new iMac for quite some time now, and finally, he was an excuse to get one. He's going with the 20" iMac 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB DDR2 RAM and a 250 GB Hard Drive. Ordered Sunday night, arriving, tentatively on Saturday, December 29, 2007. If it does arrive on that day, I'll be heading home either that day, or the day after to set up the system for them and retuning home the following day. My biggest concern is the fact that it won't be just a new computer for them, but also an entirely new operating system, one that is really new. I've never so much as booted a Leopard machine, and with only a year or so of Tiger experience, I'm a little worried to say the lest, but I am confident in being able to use VNC to manage their computer. Besides, how bad could running the world's most user-friendly operating system be? Never mind, parents always find a way to break computers.

More on this as it develops...

100th Post! Good Bye Vista, Hello XP?

Today at work, the Vista machine started acting oddly. We hate Vista at work. It's system requirements are too high for our used hardware and the system is sluggish. Worst of all, we didn't install XP as a boot option with Vista, so we didn't really have an XP option to use at work, outside of our register.

Well, we finally had it today. Vista had lost all it's network shares, connection to the internet, it's desktop background, and a few other minor things, along with the problems we have been having using the Vista operating system instead of XP. So, we backed up what was necessary and reinstalled Windows XP. Vista just wasn't cutting it, and we weren't about to spend hours running through the software to get it up and running the way we want.

So, we've got our new Techroom system, which Mitchell has dubbed "Milton" after the doofusy character from Office Space. A fitting title for our strange an unusual Tech Room system.

We'll probably just run Vista in an emulation mode, but more on that later, after it has been implemented.

BTW: the odd behaviour in Vista turned out to be more related to a bad network cable than a problem with the OS, including the desktop background, which was being loaded from one of our network drives. Ahh well.

24: The Unaired '94 Pilot

Remembering The Little Guys

Back in the late 90s, there was a lot of wild and crazy operating system development projects. Linux was growing in it's early days, Windows was in it's hay-day, and Apple was floundering, but would shortly gain a bunch of strength once again with the return of Steve Jobs and the development of OS X.

But there was much more out there than what we know of as the Big Three in the IT industry... Unix was still quite common, BSD was commonly used, NextSTEP was in development, and so many others were out there.

There was a little guy out there though, one that was distributed for free yet still had closed source: BeOS.

Be was the little guy on the block. Having dealt with being only for AT&T Hobbit architecture, and later PowerPC only, before adding in x68 in the late 90s, which was when I first started using it.

The OS seemed as easy, if not easier than using KDE and GNOME in Mandrake Linux back then, so I was tinkering with it. The system was stable and there seemed to be just about everything I wanted on the system pre-installed. I was continuing to work with the software, but due to school requirements, I couldn't keep running BeOS running, especially since I didn't understand the concept of "dual booting" at that time and was unable to figure out how to do things in open source that would be compatible with my Microsoft-centric high school.

In the end, I only worked with Be for a few weeks before I headed back to Windows 98, an operating system that paled in comparison to BeOS.

There are some out there that may question me, "Well, if it was so nice, where is it now?" Unfortunately, due to their failing business model, BeOS didn't make it much past 2001. Be Incorporated folded, selling shares off for just a few dimes.

Controversy was followed, albeit a few years later. Be's source code somehow got to yellowTAG, a German company, which began re-releasing BeOS under the new name, ZETA in 2004. Zeta looked interesting to me, especially since I was nursing along my Windows 2000 machines, and I was none-too-interested in switching to Windows XP and the prospective Longhorn (later Windows Vista) seemed even worse. In that situation, I was getting more and more disillusioned with the Microsoft model of development and their ever-growing paranoid obsession with software piracy.

I never switched to Zetta, because of their custom license agreement and their closed source model... In the end, I chose openSuSE Linux.

Now, I'm pretty grateful. Zeta was only for for a few years before it was found to be legally questionable to such a degree that yellowTAB (now bankrupt) stopped all software development and distribution.

I must say, when I found out about this, I was really disappointed. When Be folded, I was really hoping that the OS would go open source, and be distributed and modified by the community, since the business had failed. When I heard about ZETA, I believed that they were close to the appropriate solution, however not being open source, I was a little disappointed, but I could understand the mentality. But to once again go through seeing Be and later ZETA go through these failures is very disappointed. There was so much potential for these operating systems... It's sad to see that business-related troubles has once again stopped development cold of a quality operating system.

A Public Letter

Today I want to take a minute to write a letter to someone. This person has been posting items about CyberMedics and me on the community forms where I live, posts that I believe are not true.

Dear Poster,

If your intention was to hurt someone's feelings, you should know you have. Your posts on the forms have really hit a key with me and will be taken to heart. I am sorry that your experiences with Don, Joel, and myself have given you cause to be so angered with us; to the point where you don't feel comfortable talking with us anymore.

I respect your rights to post about your experiences at CyberMedics. I can only ask that you post only the truth.

Respectfully,

Daniel,
CyberMedics Computers,
Departments of PC Repair, On Site Support, and Accounting
117 E. Main St.
Owosso, MI 48867
989.729.2667 x115
dan [at] saycomputer [dotcom]


However, if these posts were from a customer, I feel that I must also write a response:

Dear Poster,

I am sorry that you feel that my service to you was less than what you expected. Policy at CyberMedics is to make ethical and logical decisions on the repair process of every computer and to keep the customer informed to the highest level of detail regarding the repair process. If I have failed you in any of these aspects I express my apologies.

As an IT professional it is not only unethical, but could also jeopardize my career if I install the wrong operating system on a computer. That being said, we are required to install the operating system listed on the product code on the side of your computer if we cannot repair the operating system on your system. If I did not make this clear, I take full responsibility for the situation.

Information is the most critical part of any computer system. In your post, you stated that a back up that you paid for was not performed and your information was lost. This is a most serious issue for a PC repair technician. I can only ask that you please stop by CyberMedics, preferably with your receipt or work order, and I will offer a full refund for your data back up and I will personally speak with the owners of the shop to see if I can offer you a full refund for all labour performed on your system.

If you do have any questions or would like to speak with me in person, please feel free to contact me in person at CyberMedics, 117 E. Main St., Owosso, Mi, 48867 or on the phone at 989.729.2667 x115. I am frequently out on service calls, but if you leave me a message, I'll return your call within two business days.

Once again, I offer my apology for any inconvenience you have had.

Daniel,
CyberMedics Computers,
Departments of PC Repair, On Site Support, and Accounting
117 E. Main St.
Owosso, MI 48867
989.729.2667 x115
dan [at] saycomputer [dotcom]

Keepon!

Razr Hell

I cannot emphasize how much I cannot stand this phone anymore. At first, it was beautiful. It had a better camera and was quite stylish to use. Best yet: it was easy to sync up with my MacBook via Bluetooth. Excellent.

That is, until I started playing around with my own mp3 ringtones.

I quickly found out that to get a ringtone onto my razr (a V3m from Sprint, USA - CDMA) phone, all I had to do was upload it to the \audio\ directory and then set the phone to use that as it's ring tone.

Excellent! In a test, I uploaded "My World Down" from the Animation Beck OST. However, I did that a year or so ago now... I've since got a few complaints that the ringtone sounds like a failing HDD and my co-workers freak out each time they hear it. I was getting a little tired of it too, and the ring tone was the full song (around 3 minutes) and over 2 MB, taking up a lot of space on the phone.

So, I decided to delete the mp3 from my razr. Simple enough, right? Just go in through bluetooth and delete the file like I do with the photos.

I keep getting an error, "Operation failed" each time I try to delete the file. There also seems to be no area of the phone itself where I can delete the ringtone. It doesn't show up in the "Ringtones" section of the phone, but it is listed as a ringtone. But, in the "assign a ringtone" section, I cannot delete ringtones. Frustrated, I tried connecting the phone via USB. No luck at all.

After doing some google searching, it seems that the Razr phones will do this to a lot of people. Requiring one to set the phone to silent, load it up as a USB disk drive, go into the "audio" subdirectory, delete two *.db files, and restart before deleting the MP3 can be done. --Getting it to load as a disk drive isn't bad, but I'll also have to use a special "razr explorer" app to view *all* the files on the phone. ~sigh. Okay, whatever... I'll follow the directions and do this.

Well, it didn't turn out so easy. First, the Mac directions won't work on a Razr V3m Sprint CDMA phone. Okay, what's next: using "hack the razr" to do it via USB in Windows XP. No prob, fire up XP in Parallels and we'll be all set. Parallels for some reason tonight freaks out my Mac however. Eating RAM and CPU like nothing else.

So, I'll just grab the link from Firefox and email it to myself and reboot the Mac into Windows XP (boot camp) and we'll go from there. Well, that's when I found out Firefox had freaked out after Parallels used up so much of the system resources. Took some time, but Firefox eventually came back to me. I quickly grabbed the link, pasted it into an email and sent it off, and restarted the Mac into XP.

Once in XP, I found the site really well laid out. Including video examples. Nice! I did exactly what they said, and loaded my phone into the system. Took a while to do everything just so, but it was going well. Drivers successfully loaded all I had to do was plug the phone in and wait for Windows to see it.

Apparently, Windows can't load the correct device drivers and it displays a message, "An error occured... Yadda yadda yadda... Device might not work." Great. Well, Hack the Razr says that I can get the most recent drivers from MotoDev, okay, no problem.

Registration required. Crap. At least it's free. Okay, do that. Signing away my identity again (*garbage in, garbage out*) and logged in. Downloaded the drivers, only to find that the device still won't work. Great, I can't even get the first and most critical step done. Grrrrr.

By now, I've spent over an hour and a half working on this dang phone, just to DELETE A SINGLE RINGTONE!!! I was so enraged, I was willing to just stomp on the phone to be done with it. ~sigh... This happens, lets try Bluetooth in Windows, maybe that'll have better luck... No dice. Bluetooth in Windows is even more shitty than Bluetooth in Mac OS X. Okay, well, the *.db files are probably hidden files, so how about using Onyx on OS X to view hidden files and connect via Bluetooth to delete the files. No dice once again. Too frustrated to continue on, I shut the phone and Mac off and decide that I'll just have to live with the ringtone until I get up the desire to get peeved by it again.

Guess What Broke Down Again

Early this morning, my MS rep called me, wanting mostly to close the ticket. I bet his manager is breathing down his neck to get the account closed... We've already spent nearly 8 hours on the phone together. I finally let him talk me into it.

About 15 minutes later, I found out that the backup from the night before failed. ~sigh. Nothing sucks more than realizing that you just paid Microsoft $259 to waste two days of work. I'm still troubleshooting it now myself, while I've been in contact with my MS rep (via email only, apparently he doesn't feel like calling me back anymore) trying to get the back ups running again.

Damn you Exchange, you suck.

BTW: I also found this guy who actually did hit the 16 GB limit. Thank God that didn't happen in my Exchange environment... But it seems the two of us are having "post maintenance" troubleshooting. I'm glad that at least my users are able to send and receive easily, but without having decent backups, we definitely having a ticking time-bomb that is known as Microsoft Exchange Server.

[update]
I just finished some basic management of Exchange, I ran eseuitl /k (checksum checks) which turned out well, as well as eseutil /d, which defraged the database just fine. I then ran NTBackup and was able to backup the database... However, Veritas backups still don't work. ~sigh. I might look into troubleshooting that, but I'm not so sure that I'm as worried as I was earlier.

Exchange Sucks

I have no clue why Microsoft doesn't really design a better concept for Exchange. It works, and it works really well, until something goes wrong and undetected for a few months.

The repairs I ran with my Microsoft Support guy did get the job done... We did eseutil /k on the priv1.edb and priv1.stm files. Priv1.edb was find. No errors. Priv1.stm: a few thousand errors. My tech literally said "Oh My God" twice as the errors scrolled up the screen.

He then informed me that deleting the STM file and recreating it would be the best option for this situation. Repairing the file just wasn't as likely to succeed.

Unfortunately, both the database and our server were in bad shape. The server has very little storage space available on it. It was so low in fact, that we had to do much of our database management on an external USB hard drive and to expedite our troubleshooting, we also used the tape drive to back up the MDBData directory.

Once we got everything done, which we started at 5 PM and ended at 9:30, we made a backup of the MSExchangeIS and proceeded on to basically conclude the ticket. People were able to access their storage, the database was able to be backed up again, and I was even able to do an offline defrag of the database. Things were looking good and we were done long before I thought we would be.

I left the building after speaking with my "on-site boss." Neither of us got home until well after 11pm. I then spoke with Don, my "boss/mentor" down at CMC. We talked on the phone until 2 AM about the service call and what needed to be covered a few other things that needed to be done on site to be sure that we had everything under control. I was finally able to get into bed at 3AM.

I woke up at 7:30 to turn on my cell phone, just incase something happened on site, I went right back to bed.

At 8:30 AM I received a call from my on-site boss. There were problems. Apparently, after the work done on Monday night, now ever one on site who connected to Exchange had lost all of their external emails. They had emails from the local domain, but anything outside of that, including emails that have been saved for years were lost. It caused quite a stir come Tuesday morning. Fortunately, the most affected people were the IT staff.

I spent some time on the phone with Microsoft technicians and eventually we decided that further work was needed on the database. I worked with a new MS Technician for over an hour, before I got a call from the tech that I worked with the night before. We ended up deciding to switch the contact from my new support technician back to my original and continue work. I talked with my support tech and we decided that we needed to back restore the database to an alternative location and then we needed to get a second server up and running and mount the database on that guy to retrieve the data if at all possible.

Getting a decent computer, installing Windows 2000 Server and MS Exchange 2000 SP3 w/ Roll-up was troublesome enough. It was worse when I got back on site and received a call from my support tech at 4:30 and was informed that "Oops, we can't actually do that. It won't work unless everything is really similar." Great. 4 hours wasted. At least I got half an hour of sleep while the server OS was installed by Joel and Mitchell.

So, my support tech and I decided that it would be best to take our database offline, mount the old one and use ExMerge to pull out the six mailboxes that we needed. The process should be relatively quick compared to Monday's work.

Assuming, that is, if it works... Which it didn't.

ExMerge got one mailbox out of six. It was the largest mailbox too, at nearly 2 GB. At least that was something.

We then went and loaded up client machines and pulled their mailboxes off right from outlook instead of trying to do it through exchange. A much slower process, but at least it is much more likely to get the correct data. It seemed that it had. We remounted the "good" exchange database and all we needed to do was import the data back into Exchange.

Right then and there, my tech seemed really interested in getting me off the phone. We had pulled the mailboxes off of the server to back them up and we had reconnected the good exchange database, but we had not restored anything to Exchange.

I managed to talk him into helping me restore a single mailbox and keeping the trouble ticket open for another 24 hours before he closes it. And he quickly ushered me off of the phone. I can understand, the two of us have had busy days, but it was a little crappy there at the end... And I was not exactly pleased about the whole "Make a server by 4pm!" thing either.

~sigh. This is why I cannot stand Exchange.

Finally, The Horrors of Exchange, part 1

Last week, Wednesday, September 26, 2007, I was assigned to an on-site contract for a local Owosso business. On day 1, I focused on getting oriented with the network there, mostly just familiarizing myself with the 5 on site servers and the one off site server.

The network is interesting, it is international, two exchange servers, and a whole kaboodle of other traits of the system that give it a personality all its own.

Standard IT policy for managing a network, be it from day one administration or having a new administrator come into a network, the first place we look is at the domain controllers and fire up the event viewer to find out what errors the system is having.

I noticed several errors labeled as "MSExchange..." This is one of my nightmares. Exchange is really sensitive, and can be easy to break or lose data if it isn't dealt with according to Microsoft policy. I'm not sure why Microsoft made Exchange in such a sensitive way, but they must have had a reason for it, seeing as how they've been doing it for over a decade now [Microsoft Exchange Server, Wikipedia]. One of the interesting design concepts of Exchange is how messages are stored on the server. Exchange drops messages into one of several databases: priv1.edb priv1.stm pub1.edb pub1.stm or into an ever-increasing amount of log files. But one of the annoying features of Exchange is that it requires everything to be 100% operational for most of it's own functions to work correctly.

For example, while on site, I found that the Exchange wasn't backing up correctly each night and it had been doing this for several months. After doing some tinkering, I also noticed that it was running out of space. The MS Exchange database --the database is priv1.edb + priv1.stm, was 15.9 GB, while Microsoft has set maximum capacity on the Exchange database to be 16 GB. Email doesn't exactly come in at an extreme speed for the network, so it wasn't slated as a major thing, so we scheduled Exchange Database management for the upcoming Saturday, which would give me plenty of time to check to see what commands I need to run on the database and what contingencies I should be prepared to deal with (cough-disaster recovery-cough).

One day went by without major events, but then on Friday, I arrived on site to find that the Exchange had crashed and was re-enabled. It had crashed, according to event viewer, because the hard drive had gone down to less than 10 MB of free space (thankfully, Exchange was hosted on "D drive" instead of on C). However, when I fired up My Computer to see how much space was presently left on the drive, and found it to be under 512 KB, I immediately reported to my on-site boss that the Exchange server was going to go down any minute, due to the drive being filled up again and I was going to have to shut Exchange down to prevent it. He quickly remote into the server to take a look at the data, and noticed that the drive had 2 MB free and was growing?? And then several people immediately stated that they had suddenly lost email... Yup, Exchange had crashed again.

Now, this isn't a huge issue, Exchange is designed to protect itself in situations like this, by shutting down and displaying error messages so we avoid data loss. However, now that the drive had less than 10 MB free, we were in a bit of a bind. Exchange needs to be defraged (that would be the command eseutil /d) --the defrag command deletes information in the database that has been deleted by users or mailboxes that have been deleted by administrators, which should free up a decent bit of space in the database. The recommended procedure by Microsoft is that we take a backup of Exchange and then run the defrag command. While it is very common for the defrag command to cause problems with the database, it is still a possibility, especially if we have undetected hard ware problems.

So started the second fiasco. Backing up Exchange. Now, we have known for a while that the Veritas Backup Exec backups have been failing on that server for a while now, but they were backing up the entire server, and while it was getting an error while backing up Exchange, it wasn't clear if the Exchange errors were causing the backups to fail, or if it was more related to a tape/tape drive issue. So, I decided to just do an NTBackup.exe backup and save it to an external drive. It was redundant enough for our situation.

The backup started, and 2.5 hours later it had not displayed an error message and switched to data verification. 2.5 hours after that (a total of 5 hours after starting the backup), it returned "Backup failed." I checked the logs, and it said "\Mailsore (%servername%)" failed. The database may be corrupt or inaccessible. The file will not restore correctly. This was a becoming a major stressor for me. I have to do a defrag on the database, which a backup prior-to doing the defrag is highly recommended by Microsoft, yet I am unable to do the backup due to a corrupt database.

To keep this story from getting horribly long, I eventually was able to just run Defrag on priv1.edb, pub1.edb, and pub1.stm, which freed up nearly 6 GB of space. However, I was not able to defrag priv1.stm, which seems to be corrupt. I spent a lot of time with other variations of the eseutil command, but wasn't able to get the database back. I could use eseutil /p [database] /i to rebuild the indexes between priv1.edb and priv1.stm, however, the P switch will not only repair the database, but it will also delete anything it determines to be corrupt. Which, frequently will cause other problems with the database. But, there is one nice thing, even if it does delete files that it shouldn't, we can use the *.log files to replay transactions in exchange to get it back up and running with the correct information.

Once again however, my hopes were dashed. To save space, some log files had been deleted. There is no guarantee that we'll be able to use the log files to get the database up and running again. Hopes dashed. And upon further research, I'm suck between a rock and a hard place. There is no other options available. The only options I've got are to break the RAID array and tinker with one half of the mirrored image to see what happens (no guarantee of success, and it is possible to damage the RAID array in the process), or I can call Microsoft and start a support ticket. My boss at CyberMedics suggests the latter, after talking with the guys on site, we'll make the final decision come Monday.

More details as the story progresses.

The 'k' is for krazY!

Krazy 3-D Sudoku!