My Scripts and Tips

MRTG error: log file was corrupt or not in sorted order

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:34:35 +0000

You create an MRTG config file to poll for CPU load on a device. When you run mrtg you get errors similar to that below:

Rateup ERROR: /usr/bin/rateup found server.cpu's log file was corrupt
or not in sorted order:
time: 1263993300.Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup The backup log file for server.cpu was invalid as well
WARNING: rateup died from Signal 0
with Exit Value 1 when doing router 'server.cpu'
Signal was 0, Returncode was 1

This may be because you have only specified one MIB value. MRTG assumes there will be two values (e.g. Tx and Rx). You can get around this problem by specifying the same value twice. MRTG will then superimpose one on the other. For example:

Target[server.cpu]: .1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.109.1.1.1.1.5.1&.1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.109.1.1.1.1.5.1:public@192.168.100.1:

For more information see this link.

One solution to “The network path was not found” Windows error

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:30:52 +0000

I had an issue escalated to me where NetBIOS name resolution didn’t work on one particular machine. DNS was working – you could ping by hostname. However, you couldn’t connect to a remote share using hostnames (although connecting using IP addresses worked).

As a number of other people had already looked at this before me I assumed that the problem must be particularly fiendish and started Googling. I tried all the recommendations to reset Winsock using netsh etc. Nothing worked. I tried uninstalling anything that might be network related – that didn’t work either.

In the end I went back to the basics and found the problem. It seems that somewhere along the line the “TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper” service startup was set to Manual. I started the service and everything started working.

I have no idea how this service was changed from Automatic to Manual but it must have been some time ago as the user had been putting up with the problem for months.

So, if you get the above error and can ping the host by name I suggest you first make sure that the “TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper” service is running. After that try checking all the hard stuff.

Windows 7 and ATI – Screen does not wake from sleep after RDP

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:04:36 +0000

You might have the following problem with Windows 7 64 bit with ATI Radeon 2400 HD (default Windows drivers or latest drivers from ATI). If you RDP to the machine after Windows has put the screen to sleep you might find that when you later try to use the computer, there’s no signal being sent to the screen.

A work around is to change your power options within Windows Control Panel and set “Turn off the display:” to “Never”.

DynDNS and Cisco 877 Router

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:54:03 +0000

I had a couple of issues getting DynDNS working on a Cisco router. The first issue was: how do I type a question mark within an IOS configuration command? Normally, when you type ? IOS responds with its command help. This is obviously a problem when you’re trying to enter a URL that contains a question mark. The fix, hit Control-v before typing the question mark. Just like Unix.

The second issue I had was with the router not registering with DynDns. Specifying debug ip ddns update showed the following:

Dec  6 10:03:00.988: HTTPDNSUPD: Sending request
Dec  6 10:03:20.996: HTTPDNSUPD: Call returned Connection time out, update of yourhost.dyndns.net <=> 123.123.123.123 failed

It turns out the second issue was with CBAC. I had to add an inspect entry to my router configuration:
ip inspect name CBAC-OUT tcp router-traffic

The relevant parts of my configuration are below:

ip inspect name CBAC-OUT tcp router-traffic
ip ddns update method DYNDNS
 HTTP
  add http://username:password@members.dyndns.org/nic/update?system=dyndns&hostname=&myip=
 interval maximum 28 0 0 0
 interval minimum 28 0 0 0

interface Dialer0
 ip ddns update hostname putyourdnsnamehere
 ip ddns update DYNDNS host members.dyndns.org
 ip address negotiated
 ip access-group DIALER0_IN-3 in
 ip inspect CBAC-OUT out

ip access-list extended DIALER0_IN-3
 permit icmp any any echo-reply
 permit icmp any any ttl-exceeded
 permit icmp any any time-exceeded
 permit icmp any any packet-too-big
 denyÂ Â  ip any any

Thanks to this thread at Whirlpool for helping me resolve this problem. For more on the ip inspect tcp router-traffic see Inspect router-generated traffic and it’s update Update: Inspect router-generated traffic. For information on CBAC try the following links:
http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=26533
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/13435
http://www.cisco-tips.com/how-to-configure-cisco-router-with-ios-firewall-functionality-%E2%80%93-cbac/
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1057051.html

VMware Workstation Unrecoverable Error: (vmx) NOT_IMPLEMENTED

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:51:34 +0000

I RDP’d to my workstation and attempted to start a virtual machine in VMware Workstation 6.5.2. However, part of the way through the boot process VMware would pop up the following error:

VMware Workstation Unrecoverable Error

Looking at the log file I would see

NOT_IMPLEMENTED d:/build/ob/bora-156735/bora/vmx/main/pollVMX.c:3651

It didn’t matter whether I was trying to start a Windows or a Linux virtual machine, I still got the error.

The cause appears to have been my display settings. I changed my RDP client settings to “High Color (16 bit)” and everything started working.

Edited at 13/8/2009:

This happened again and changing the colours made no difference. Normally I run RDP in full screen mode. I “umaximised” it and was then able to start the VM.

Moving MS SQL Server 2000 to new hardware

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:24:21 +0000

We had the fibre channel cards on our SQL Server fail on us. We had been planning to replace this server, and the storage array it was attached to, so we decided to bring that forward rather than repairing the server. Note we also had a copy of the server running in an isolated virtual machine for testing. All of our databases, including master.mdf were on a LUN on the storage array (previously mounted as D:).

Here are the steps we took in migrating our server:

Installed Windows and drivers on the new server.
Modified the zones and mounted the LUN containing the SQL databases on the existing storage array to the new server (E:).
Created the required LUN on the new storage array and mounted on the new server (D:).
Used robocopy E:\ D:\ /MIR /R:0 /W:1 to copy the databases from the old LUN to the new LUN.
Unmounted the old LUN and undid the zone changes.
Moved everything on D: to a temporary directory on D: (so they wouldn’t get overwritten during the install of SQL Server 2000). Note, move the files to the same filesystem so everything happens instantly (i.e. not a copy).
On the old server, exported HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQL from the registry.
Copied the SID from the old server to the new server using newsid.exe (I had a friend run into a problem when restoring databases to a new server during a DR test. Because the SID of the new server was different to the old server security in the database didn’t work correctly. I assume this was because they were using local Windows accounts. ) I don’t know if we needed to do this step, but we did it just in case.
Removed the old server from the domain and renamed it. Changed its IP address.
Renamed the new server to the original name of the old server and added it to the domain. Set its IP address to the one previously used on the old server.
Installed SQL Server 2000. During the installation we specified the same paths as had been used on the old server (D:\Databases).
Installed SQL Server 2000 service packs.
Shut down the SQL services.
On the new server, exported HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQL from the registry (just in case things went wrong).
On the new server, imported HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQL that had been exported from the old server.
Renamed the directory containing the new master.mdf (D:\Databases to D:\Databases.freshinstall).
Moved the directories in the temporary directory back to their original location in D:.
Restarted the SQL services.

Everything still seems to be working so I guess it worked. Luckily we weren’t using local accounts (only domain accounts) so we didn’t have to try to recreate the original accounts (which might have caused an issue with different account SIDs).

Windows Server 2003 W32Time Errors

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:54:19 +0000

The time on my PC at work has been gradually getting out of wack. So I took a look at the PDC Emulator (PDCe)in the root of our Active Directory forest and found lots of W32Time errors like:

The time provider NtpClient cannot reach or is currently receiving invalid time data from 192.168.1.1 (ntp.m|0x8|172.16.1.1:123->192.168.1.1:123).

192.168.1.1 is a Windows Server 2003 machine in our DMZ. The DMZ server synchs the time with time.windows.com and the PDCe synchs the time with the DMZ server. This used to work fine (well after many teething problems) when the server in the DMZ ran Linux. However, since moving the function to a Windows server it seems to have failed.

Looking at the debug logs (see the entries for the various filelog registry keys for information on enabling logging) I found the following errors:

149095 16:21:16.1250000s - ListeningThread -- response heard from 192.168.1.1:123 149095 16:21:16.1250000s - /-- NTP Packet:
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | LeapIndicator: 3 - not synchronized;Â  VersionNumber: 3;Â  Mode: 4 - Server;Â  LiVnMode: 0xDC
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | Stratum: 0 - unspecified or unavailable
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | Poll Interval: 15 - out of valid range;Â  Precision: -6 - 15.625ms per tick
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | RootDelay: 0x0000.0000s - unspecified;Â  RootDispersion: 0x0001.0400s - 1.01563s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | ReferenceClockIdentifier: 0x00000000 - unspecified
49095 16:21:16.1250000s - | ReferenceTimestamp:Â Â  0xCD676E70C58C64FD149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 12881592560771673500ns - 149092 12:09:20.7716735s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | OriginateTimestamp:Â Â  0xCD6B9DFC20000000149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 12881866876125000000ns - 149095 16:21:16.1250000s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | ReceiveTimestamp:Â Â Â Â  0xCD6B9D6D4D7C02AF149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 12881866733302673500ns - 149095 16:18:53.3026735s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | TransmitTimestamp:Â Â Â  0xCD6B9D6D4D7C02AF149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 12881866733302673500ns - 149095 16:18:53.3026735s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - >-- Non-packet info:
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | DestinationTimestamp: 149095 16:21:16.1250000s - 0xCD6B9DFC20000000149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 12881866876125000000ns149095 16:21:16.1250000s -Â  - 149095 16:21:16.1250000s
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | RoundtripDelay: 000ns (0s)
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - | LocalClockOffset: -142822326500ns - 2:22.822326500
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - \--
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - Peer 192.168.1.1 (ntp.m|0x0|172.16.1.1:123->192.168.1.1:123) is not Win2K. Setting compat flags.
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - Packet test 6 failed (not syncd or bad interval since last sync).
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - Packet test 7 failed (bad stratum).
149095 16:21:16.1250000s - Ignoring packet that failed tests from 192.168.1.1 (ntp.m|0x0|172.16.1.1:123->192.168.1.1:123).

Note the bad stratum message. I don’t know why these servers didn’t want to work together. The commands

w32tm /stripchart /computer:192.168.1.1

and

w32tm /monitor /computers:192.168.1.1

showed that they communicate using NTP. The way I got around it was to simply configure the PDCe to synch with the time server of a local ISP:

rem Stop the Windows Time service
net stop w32time

rem Set everything back to defaults
w32tm /unregister
w32tm /register

rem Start the Windows Time service
net start w32time

rem Specify the NTP server
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:100.20.3.4 /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

Note I thought about synching the PDCe with time.windows.com, but that address resolves to time.microsoft.akadns.net – so I imagine that the IP address will change fairly often which would cause a problem on the firewall access-list.
For troubleshooting information on Windows and NTP I recommend Windows Time and the W32TM service.

Where are VMware Infrastructure 3.5 snapshots stored?

admin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:48:14 +0000

When you create a snapshot in VMware Instrastructure (formerly ESX), the server stops updating the .vmdk files. Instead it creates a delta file for each .vmdk file. Any writes are written to the delta file rather than the .vmdk file.

This has a few implications:

The amount of disk space used will increase (a delta can theoretically grow as large as the original .vmdk).
Read performance can suffer (both the .vmdk and the delta file will now need to be read).

The delta file is stored with the virtual machine’s configuration file, not with the .vmdk file. So, if you have multiple .vmdk files on different volumes you might be in for a surprise.

In the example below I have a virtual machine called VM-Test. It has two .vmdk files, one in /vmfs/volumes/storage1/VM-Test and one in /vmfs/volumes/storage2/VM-Test. I have shown the directory listings before and after taking a snapshot. As you can see the delta for both .vmdk files is stored in the same directory as the configuration file.

Before the snapshot:

[root@vmsvr /]# cd /vmfs/volumes/storage1/VM-Test
[root@vmsvr VM-Test]# ls -l
total 8651072
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  268435456 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test-38405ab5.vswp
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  8589934592 Dec 14 22:16 VM-Test-flat.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  8664 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test.nvram
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  314 Dec 14 22:11 VM-Test.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  0 Dec 14 21:53 VM-Test.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-xÂ Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  1572 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test.vmx
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  252 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test.vmxf
-rw-r--r--Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â  19089 Dec 14 22:11 vmware.log
[root@vmsvr VM-Test]# ls -l ../../storage2/VM-Test/
total 4194368
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  4294967296 Dec 14 22:16 VM-Test_1-flat.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  314 Dec 14 22:11 VM-Test_1.vmdk

After creating a snapshot:

[root@vmsvr VM-Test]# ls -l ../../storage2/BC-Test1/
total 4194368
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  4294967296 Dec 14 22:16 VM-Test_1-flat.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  314 Dec 14 22:11 VM-Test_1.vmdk
[root@vmsvr VM-Test]# ls -l
total 9591296
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  671088640 Dec 14 22:26 VM-Test-000001-delta.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  248 Dec 14 22:18 VM-Test-000001.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  16777216 Dec 14 22:26 VM-Test_1-000001-delta.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  310 Dec 14 22:18 VM-Test_1-000001.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  268435456 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test-38405ab5.vswp
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  8589934592 Dec 14 22:17 VM-Test-flat.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  8664 Dec 14 22:08 VM-Test.nvram
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â  273866015 Dec 14 22:18 VM-Test-Snapshot1.vmsn
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  314 Dec 14 22:11 VM-Test.vmdk
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  542 Dec 14 22:18 VM-Test.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-xÂ Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  1510 Dec 14 22:25 VM-Test.vmx
-rw-------Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  252 Dec 14 22:25 VM-Test.vmxf
-rw-r--r--Â Â Â  1 rootÂ Â Â Â  rootÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â  30121 Dec 14 22:25 vmware.log

GNS3 and Vista 64bit

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:19:08 +0000

GNS3 installs on the 64 bit version of Windows Vista without any errors. However, when you try to test Dynamips you may get the error “Failed to start”. If you try to create a router you may get the error “Can’t start dynamips on port 7200″.

There are two things you may have to do:

By default, GNS installs in the directory C:\Program Files(x86)\GNS3 directory. GNS3 installs Dynamips below that in C:\Program Files(x86)\GNS3\Dynamips. However, GNS3 is configured by default to look for Dynamips under C:\Program Files\GNS3\Dynamips. You will need to update the path to the correct location (Under Edit, Preferences, Dynamips).
Check that you have the correct file system permissions to the above directories.

How to tell if another instance of a VBS script is running

admin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:30:45 +0000

The following VBS function will allow you to check if another instance of your script is running. Note, I have only tested this for one user.

^?View Code VBS

Function OtherInstances()
  ' This function determines if there are other instances of this script running. If other instances are running it returns TRUE, otherwise it returnes FALSE
 
  Dim strComputer, objWMIService, colItems, objItem, Count
 
  strComputer = "."
  Count = 0
  Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
      & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
  Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
      ("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'cscript.exe'" & _
          " OR Name = 'wscript.exe'")
  For Each objItem in colItems
      If InStr(1, LCase(objItem.CommandLine), LCase(Wscript.ScriptName)) > 0 Then
        Count = Count + 1	
	  End If
  Next
 
  If Count > 1 Then
    OtherInstances = TRUE
  Else
    OtherInstances = FALSE 
  End If
End Function