As part of some mail filter testing, I needed to install ESET Mail Security onto a Debian 4.0 Etch VPS running on Virtuozzo. As a side-note, I found that the install package for ESET’s Gateway Filter, Mail Security, and File Server Security for Linux is all the exact same package; the functionality is basically just controlled/activated by means of licensing the appropriate component.
Anyway, the download comes as an installation script called esets.i386.deb.bin. Running that script outputs a license agreement that you have to accept, produces a .deb package called esets.i386.deb, and outputs instructions on how to install the .deb package by using dpkg and import the license file. The .deb package installed just fine on another Debian test box, but when I attempted to run dpkg –i esets.i386.deb on the Virtuozzo VPS, tar squawked at me that it could not open /dev/stdin and the installation bailed:
hostname:/usr/local/src/eset# dpkg -i esets-3.0.11.i386.deb
Selecting previously deselected package esets.
(Reading database ... 24639 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking esets (from esets-3.0.11.i386.deb) ...
Setting up esets (3.0.11) ...
Unpacking esets modules ...
tar: /dev/stdin: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
dpkg: error processing esets (--install):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
esets
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We’ve been working on some major upgrades to our Exchange environment over the last while. During the course of that, we started receiving NDR’s for messages sent to mail-enabled public folders. Initially, these were “MapiExceptionNotAuthorized” messages, which are related to permissions. Those were sorted out without too much trouble, as the NDR is at least somewhat descriptive. But then we started receiving a very generic NDR of #550 4.4.7 QUEUE.Expired; message expired ##.
…not really much to go on. Exchange 2007 does give some more “in plain English, please!” information in its NDR’s, but that also wasn’t much help:
Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:
[user display name]
Microsoft Exchange has been trying to deliver this message without success and has stopped trying. Please try sending this message again, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.
Wow…that was helpful…
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Alright, so the title for this post seems pretty out there, but I can guarantee you that I have come across this on multiple machines. I’m not saying “If you install Windows Media Player 11 on your computer, networking will break,” I’m just saying that if you experience the symptoms outlined below and you’re stuck, trying uninstalling WM11 and the WM11 codec; you just might get lucky.
So, one of the other techs in the office calls me over: He’s been beating his head against a wall with a remote user being unable to get internet connectivity on his Windows XP workstation. The tech has been on this thing for hours, tried just about everything he can think of shy of a workstation rebuild, and he’s looking for some team support. I have him throw the ticket my way; I figure that another set of eyes can only be helpful. With a bit of digging, we isolate the symptoms:
- Full connectivity to the local server is available
- Name resolution is still solid
- Pings are working to both local and remote addresses
- Anything higher up the stack than pings only work locally, and bail as soon as you cross a router. This includes file shares, RDP, FTP, HTTP/s, MAPI, and I’m guessing anything else higher than layer 4. (more…)
On a recent network audit for a prospective new client, I came across an issue in the Exchange System Manager for their Exchange Server 2003 box. When you tried to browse into any public folder management, ESM presented the following error:
The SSL certificate server name is incorrect. (more…)
We recently received reports of message delivery delays in our Exchange organization. We run Exchange 2007, so I checked out the Hub Transport Servers and discovered that messages were piling up in the Submission queues on both of the main hub transports. Restarting the Microsoft Exchange Transport service didn’t get things going again, so I turned to the Application Log to try to figure out what was going on. (more…)
One of our techs recently ran across a problem with a new Windows Vista Business laptop trying to synchronize offline files to a Windows Server 2000 file server. Synchronization would start, but the Sync Center in Vista would show failures for every single file that was attempted to be sync’d. The error message read something to the extent of “The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process“.
We tried the usual: checking permissions on the folders being offline’d (I know that’s probably not a word, but you get what I mean); deleting his local cache of Offline Files; disabling and then re-enabling Offline Files. But we just kept on banging our heads against the same error. At first, just about any web search for the error resulted in either something about Windows Home Server or databases or something of the like. Eventually, though, we struck gold:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264/en-us: Configuring opportunistic locking in Windows
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We’ll start off with Inactive accounts first, and then work on the disabled accounts after that.
Active Directory in Server 2003 has a nice user/computer attribute called lastLogonTimeStamp that can help us keep track of inactive accounts. If you have ever tried to use that attribute, however, you might have come up with something like this…
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Dell, Broadcom, and Microsoft have decided to partner up with the release of a technology called TCP/IP Offloading, or TOE for TCP/IP Offload Engine. It was bundled together in the Scalable Network Pack (SNP), included and enabled by default with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Server 2003. The gist of this technology is to enable high-load enterprise applications to be easily scalable. For those of you familiar with the OSI model, TOE moves layer 3 and 4 processing out of the OS and CPU into the NIC. The idea is to better utilize advances in network card performance and free up CPU cycles for other purposes, such as application-side processing.
This all seems well and good, if they saw fit to properly test the stuff out against their own applications!
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I haven’t played around much in Linux lately, but I finally dusted off my Ubuntu CD’s and started tooling around again. I already had Vista installation on my work laptop, and did not want to blow that away, so I erred on the side of caution by not letting the Xubuntu setup program install its own GRUB bootloader…except then I couldn’t get into the Linux OS…
So, off I go in search of GRUB install guides, and just about every how-to out there is using the basic scenario that GRUB was installed in the first place, and that it just needs to reinstall itself, which was totally not the case this time around!
Anyway, after searching and searching and booting back and forth multiple times between Vista (slow boot!) and the Xubuntu live CD (which is somehow booting faster, even though it’s discovering all of the hardware for the first time), I finally stumbled across an absolute gem for Linux booting troubleshooting.
I have to say this is by FAR the most conclusive coverage I have EVER seen for resolving Linux boot issues. Lilo and GRUB issues are covered with tonnes of different scenarios, including dual-booting and the dreaded Vista BCD bootloader. If you have run just about ANY Linux distro, you need this reference. And don’t tell me that you’ve never had boot loader issues, ‘cuz it will happen to you!
Check it out here.
