Ondrej Žilinec – IT Blog

When you play with w32time service to much and you want to reset it to its default settings you can run following commands:

net stop w32time

w32tm /unregister

w32tm /register

net start w32time

I just needed it 🙂

Today I published article how to make synchronization between Active Directory and Microsoft cloud Office 365. I also mentioned that you can filter which users you want to synchronize to cloud and which not. I also mentioned article where it’s described. I started to play with it, but it’s not as simple as I thought 🙂

They mention that you can filter on three conditions:

• Based on OU location
• Domain based
• User attribute

I wanted to investigate third option – filter on User attribute. So I started to read article. First and most important is to mention that you set filter on users which you DO NOT want to synchronize. 🙂 So I decided to synchronize users which have their attribude “department” set to value “IT”. So I had to set filter out all users which don’t have this attribute set. 🙂

Another catch in article is about location of MIISAdmin tool. Article specifies some disk location, but it’s completely different. On my Windows Server 2012 it was installed in:

When I want to sync account which have department attribute set to “IT” I had to do following:

Open up miisclient.exe and click on Management Agents:

Right click on AD Connector (Agent) and Properties:

On left side you have to select Configure Connector Filter, then on right select user and select New…:

Now declare new condition, which means we don’t want users that have department attribute set to IT:

OK, OK. I set in domain only users User10-User19 to have value set. Now let’s force synchronization (IMHO it could be something more inteligent and nicer 🙂 ).

Let’s go to installation folder and run DirSyncConfigShell.psc1:

Now I have to run Start-OnlineCoexistenceSync:

You can check if everythin works fine in Application events and you should have success on the end:

And on cloud Office 365 I see just users I wanted to see:

Only thing I’m missing is to filter based on group membership.

Have a nice day,

Once upon the time there was customer asking if we can help them with integration their Active Directory with Office 365 cloud. The main request was to sync Active Directory users into Office 365 cloud and then test Office 365 applications on their computers.

Registration for free Office 365

First you need to check prices and packages you want to use. I wanted to test it so I registered HERE. In free month you can use licences for 10 users. Don’t forget to register for Office 365 Midsize Business, only this version of Ouffice 365 can sync AD. After registration I have received e-mail with my account to log into Office 365 portal. After firt logon there is really not to many things to configure. I have to notice that I received testing domain @AtosSlovakia.onmicrosoft.com. This is what you need to have.

Preparing playground

So I have my playground setup:

• Domain name: DOMAIN.LOCAL
• Domain controller: MT-SERVER01.DOMAIN.LOCAL
• Server which will synchronize data into cloud Office 365: MT-SERVER02.DOMAIN.LOCAL

Computer which will do synchronizaction needs to accomplished couple conditions:

• Must have Microsoft .NET Framework 3.x
• In cannot be domain controller
• Must be part of the domain
• It can be Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012
• If you have less than 50 000 objects in AD which you want to sync you can use Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express. Other way you need to use “normal” SQL
• Active Directory forest functional mode has to be Windows Server 2003 and higher

More HERE.

I also need to generate some users in domain which I will upload into cloud. I just have created 50 bulk users using following powershell script:

I have received testing domain suffix from Office 365 @AtosSlovakia.onmicrosoft.com so I have to set it as aditional UPN for new created users:

• Open Active Directory Domain and Trusts
• Right click on Active Directorz Domains and Trusts and click Properties
• Type defined UPN and click OK

Setup Active Directory Synchronizaction

When you log on Office 365 portal you go to “users and groups” and select Active Directory synchronization Set up.

Then you have to complete 6 steps (not really work to do) to make it work:

Activation of AD Sync tool can take about 24 hours:

While we will wait for activation of feature, let’s install Directory Sync Tool on server MT-SERVER02.DOMAIN.LOCAL.

Read more…

Trvalo mi nejaky ten cas kym som pochopil (vsimol si v zatvorke), ze “Nastroj na pripravu systemu” je po nasom SysPrep 🙂

Naco to prekladaju? Len s tym matu nepriatela. 🙂

I was facing weird problem with computers when I was trying to migrate computer accounts between two active directory domains. When you use ADMT to migrate computer accounts, ADMT installs ADMT Agent on computer and this ADMT Agent makes all changes during computer account migration.

Problem

When there was computer with ESET Smart Security installed I had following problems. First problem was that migration failed and in ADMT log file I received following error:

2013-04-12 16:29:54 The Active Directory Migration Tool Agent will be installed on CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL
2013-04-12 16:29:59 WRN1:0000 Could not open SCManager on \\CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL : GetLastError() returned 5
2013-04-12 16:29:59 WRN1:7015 Failed to connect to the service control manager on \\CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL, rc=5   Access is denied.
2013-04-12 16:29:59 ERR2:7006 Failed to install agent on \\CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL, rc=5   Access is denied.

 So error number 5 means I have no rights somewhere. After reading couple pages of ADMT documentation I found out that ADMT installs ADMT Agent using Admin share called ADMIN$. So I tried to access ADMIN$ share on computer CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL. I received following error:

I have never seen such an error:”An attempt was made to logon, but the network logon service was not started.”. I checked services on computer CENTRALA.DOMAIN.LOCAL and Windows was right. Service NETLOGON was Disabled!

Solution

I had to temporary turn off ESET Smart Security (I would preffer not use this software at all 🙂 ) and also enable and start service NETLOGON.

Conclusion

Every computer I migrated and had installed ESET Smart Security had the same problems. So IMHO ESET Smart Security has changed service NETLOGON to Disabled. I really don’t understand why this is necessary, but I think it’s not right way “smart security product” should protect your computer.

I found one article about disabling NETLOGON service as security practice. It’s maybe good security practice, but there is also pitfall stated on websie:

If you disable the NetLogon service, a workstation no longer functions reliably as a domain member. This setting may be appropriate for some computers that do not participate in domains. However, it should be carefully evaluated before deployment.

I’m wondering what other functions are not available when NETLOGON disabled (besides not accessible ADMIN$ share) on domain member computer.

I hope this helps someone 🙂

When I come to customers I most of the time see some third party management tools installed on client workstations (for example VNC). These tools are used by administrators to manage workstations remotely. They are able to see user’s desktop and solve a problem. Administrators thinks the only tool to manage user’s desktop is to connect to workstation with RDP. Problem with RDP is that user and admin cannot see same screen and just one ot them can work on actual desktop.

Microsoft implemented Remote Assistance feature to Windows since Windows XP. It’s technology based on shadowing technology used in Terminal Services/RDS on server based OS. It is great tool to implement (or just configure) in corporate environment. It can be also used in home environment. There are two modes how to make connection:

• Initiated by person which needs help (home/corporate use)
• Initiated by helping person (mostly by professional use) – called Easy Connect

When person which needs help wants to send request for help to helping person, he can do it using following ways:

• Using Microsoft Messenger
• Creating special kind of file
• Sending mail

I will not describe how to use Remote Assistance in home environment. I will focus on corporate use. Most of the time you have some administrators for workstations and, of course, workstation users. Workstation users always have a problems they cannot handle and we, as a admins, need to see a problem which user sees and need to solve a problem. Let’s work with environment where Active Directory domain is implemented. We will implement two methods of providing help to users.

You can configure Remote Asistance on computers in domain using GPO. Configure if you users can send invitations for Remote Assitance (called Solicited Remote Assistance) (Computer Configuration — Policies — Administrative Templates — System — Remote Assistance — Solicited Remote Assistance):

and also if someone can offer help to users (Computer Configuration — Policies — Administrative Templates — System — Remote Assistance — Offer Remote Assistance):

Don’t forget to specify users/groups which can send you offer for Remote Assistance by clickin on button “Show…” in this GPO settings:

You can configure more options in GPO:

• Allow only Vista or later connections – this feature enables improved encryption of invitations
• Turn on session logging – enables logging of Remote Assistance sessions. Log files are located under user’s Documents folder under Remote Assistance
• Turn on bandwidth optimization – you can set optimization of sessions
• Customize Warning Messages – you can custom warning messages before connecting and before sharing control

When you apply GPO you can use Remote Assistance.

Workstation users can ask for help by running Windows Remote Assistance (msra.exe):

Click “Invite someone you trust to help you”:

And you can choose method how you want invite helper:

• Save this invitation as file – This will save your invitation information into file and you can distribute this file to your administrator. There can be some file share or you can send it as attachement to your administrator.
• Use e-mail to send an invitation – This option is enabled when you have mail client installed (Outlook). It will open up New message in mail client and fill required fields. It will also attach generated invitation file to mail message.
• Use Easy Connect – This option helps users to select from available helpers. This options is nice, but it depends on IPv6 tunneling interface Teredo. You need to have IPv6 enabled on computers, Teredo interface has to be in Enterprise mode and service Peer Name Resolution Protocol.

Use Easy Connect

Just some remarks to setup of Teredo interface:

• You can check the status of Teredo interface by running command netsh int teredo show state. If you see Type set to “Client” then Easy Connect won’t work. You should change it to type “Enterprise Client”. You can do it in two ways. One is by running command netsh int teredo set state type=enterpriseclient and other is by GPO (Computer Configuration — Policies — Administrative Templates — Network — TCPIP Settings — IPv6 Transition Technologies — Teredo State set toEnterprise Client).
• You can check if Peer Name Resolution Protocol works correctly by running command netsh p2p pnrp cloud show list. You should see status Active (rather  than Virtual and Alone) in line named Global_.
• Your router should support UPnP technology if you are going to support machines behind NAT.

If you are admin and you want to provide help to user, the easiest way is to run msra.exe /offerra:

type IP address/name of computer which needs help and you can manage it. When you offer assistance, user is asked to approve your assistance:

This opens Read-only view of desktop. If administrator wants to get full control of desktop, he needs to request for it by clicking button “Request Control” in his Remote Assistance window (just for Robert Švec – upper left corner 🙂 ):

From now this is very intuitive to use. This feature is nice to use and you don’t have to install any 3rd party solutions.

If you want to use Remote Assistance on Windows Server OS, you need to install feature:

Windows Server 2008 R2:

ServerManagerCmd.exe -install Remote-Assistance

Windows Server 2012:

Install-WindowsFeature Remote-Assistance

You also need to create some exceptions on firewall:

• If you want to offer assistance, computers which need help have to have following exceptions:
  • Windows Vista and later
    • Port 135:TCP
      %WINDIR%\System32\msra.exe
      %WINDIR%\System32\raserver.exe
  • Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
    • Port 135:TCP
      %WINDIR%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\Helpsvc.exe
      %WINDIR%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\Helpctr.exe
      %WINDIR%\System32\Sessmgr.exe
  • Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
    • Port 135:TCP
      %WINDIR%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\Helpsvc.exe
      %WINDIR%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\Helpctr.exe
      Allow Remote Desktop Exception
• If you use Easy Connect, you need to enable PNRP port UDP 3540

You cannot manade Windows 7 computers from Windows XP computers. You can though oposite way (thanks to Roman Kučerák for remark).

From now I will try to convince administrators to use Remote Assistance in situations they will need it.

I hope I covered everything I wanted 🙂

At one customer I upgraded domain controller into Windows Server 2008 R2. This customer use two RIS (Windows 2003) and one WDS (Windows 2008 R2) servers to deploy OS images.

Problem

Customer complained that before upgrade of domain controllers to Windows Server 2008 R2, he could provision computer accounts for RIS/WDS. After domain controllers were upgraded user  creates Computer account in ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers), but he sees only one screen to define computer name.

He couldn’t define GUID/UUID and couldn’t specify remote installation server.

Solution

To be able to prestage computer accounts for RIS/WDS server you need to install Feature called Remote Server Administration Tools — Role Administration Tools — Windows Deployment Services Tools.

Windows Server 2008 R2:

Windows Server 2012:

Or by using PowerShell in Windows Server 2012:

Install-WindowsFeature WDS-AdminPack

When you install this feature you can define GUID/UUID:

and also specify remote installation server:

That’s all,

Installation of WSUS on Windows Server 2012

I started to install WSUS service on Windows Server 2012. I selected to install Windows Internal Database as store of WSUS metadata.

I selected to store updates on local C:\ drive (it’s just testing machine):

After first run on Windows Server Update Services management tool WSUS asks again if I want to store updates locally or not:

When I click Run, post-installation starts to run:

And I received Post-installation “notification” 🙂 in Microsoft word it means I have a problem (Failed to restart the current database. The currecnt database is switched to master):

So if computer has problem with restarting database, let’s restart service. Didn’t help 🙂 Let’s restart whole computer. Didn’t help either. So the problem will be somewhere else.

I tried to install WSUS from scratch. I uninstalled WSUS and also Windows Internal Database feature. I also deleted data for Windows Internal Database from directory C:\Windows\WID. Then I installed WSUS with all dependecies – WID, IIS, …

Now I’m getting different error:

Problem was backslash in input window for defining directory to store updates 😀 This path was predefined by wizard and it was wrong. This is really funny 🙂

So after reinstallation of WSUS and WID and defining “correct” path to update store directory (without backslash on the end 🙂 ) everything looks to be done correctly:

Let click Close and look what’s new in WSUS. First we need to configure WSUS and I did it using WSUS Wizard. I don’t see any news in this Wizard compared to older one.

Exploring WSUS

I haven’t notice any news in WSUS mmc console. I always use client side group targeting. This feature allows you to create groups of computers in WSUS structure. It can be used to target updates specified for testing to just group of computers and so on. To make this working you need to set client side of group targeting by defining name of Group and also you need to create new Computer Group in WSUS structure. What I always forget it to create these Computer Groups in WSUS structure 🙂 I would love to see some option to allow WSUS to create these Computer Groups automatically. But this didn’t happend of this version of WSUS.

I think the most powerful thing Microsoft added into WSUS is support for Powershell cmd-lets. Most of the time WSUS settings about update Classifications and update Products are same from customer to cutosmer, so you can automate this settings using cmd-lets Get-WsusClassification, Set-WsusClassification, Get-WsusProduct and Set-WsusProduct.

To get some information about WSUS Server it selft you can use cmd-let Get-WsusServer:

There are more interesting cmd-lets. One is Get-WsusComputer which prints out some more information about computer reported into WSUS:

Get-WsusComputer has lot of ability to filter out computers on some conditions. Failed, Needed, …

To manage updates from powershell you can use cmd-lets Get-WsusUpdate, Approve-WsusUpdate and Deny-WsusUpdate. You can for example approve all updates that are Unapproved and FailedOrNeeded:

Get-WsusUpdate -Classification All -Approval Unapproved -Status FailedOrNeeded | Approve-WsusUpdate -Action Install -TargetGroupName “All Computers”

And the last cmd-let I really love, because I can make scheduled task to run Clean-up Wizard. Cmd-let is Invoke-WsusServerCleanup. You can do every cleanup task you can make from GUI.

Conclusion

I don’t think there is too much to improve on WSUS, but little powershell support for WSUS is handy.

I had to run one vbs script on Windows 7 with UAC enabled. This script was implemented as part of Run/RunOnce technology in Windows. When you want some script/application to run everytime you log in or just once you log in, you can use this technology built-in Windows. You can read about it here. Implementation of these registry keys was easy. Problem raised when I found out that script doesn’t run in elevated mode – without administrative privileges.

If you need to run some script in elevated mode, you can right-click on script and select “Run as administrator”. This is fine, but what about script that is part of registries? There is no way to right-click 🙂 You have to use UNDOCUMENTED parameter “runas” of parameter ShellExecute of object Shell.Application. It’s really undocumented on official sites!

Another bad thing of running script in elevated mode is that you cannot access network drives which you have mapped. You need to remap them and then you can use them.

There are nice articles which describe how to run scripts in elevated mode:

• One is about ShellExecute secret “runas”
• Second is nice .bat script to remap network drives and run it in elevated mode

This saved me couple hours of fight with scripts 🙂

When I wanted to Enable AD users in Lync Server 2010 which were members of Domain Administrators and Enterprise Administrators I received error:

Active Directory operations failed on “DC_server”.  You cannot retry this operation: “Insufficient access rights to perform the operation 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0”

It’s same problem as Exchange has. You cannot be member of those two groups, because periodically all accounts in this groups have cleared Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent and set explicit permissions by AD. But if you want to add members of those administrative groups into Lync you can check checkbox Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent, enable user in Lync and uncheck checkbox Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent after you are done.

Exchange fixed this issue after couple year in Exchange 2010 SP3. Hopefully we will have some fix also for Lync Server.