Melbourne Trip

Yes, I am flying to Melbourne Office. Nice!!

I am doing Domain Controller hardware refresh and Proxy server replacement.

Create SSL Certificate

If you want to get a FREE SSL certificate, you can get it from CAcert. All you need to do is to have your CSR ready.

As per my previous blog about creating CSR, all you need to do with openssl (Linux or cygwin) is:

%> openssl req -new -nodes -keyout private.key -out public.csr

Submit the public.csr to the CAcert, it will give you the public key of your SSL certificate (save it as public.cer)

Now you need to convert both your public and private key to PKCS12 format:

%> openssl pkcs12 -export -out cacert.p12 -in public.cer -inkey private.key

You then will have cacert.p12 which you could import to IIS

Fix MBR with Linux boot loader

If for some reasons your MBR is corrupted, you won't be able to boot back to your OS.
Boot from the Linux installation CD and type:

%> linux rescue

It starts mounting your linux installation partition to the /mnt/sysimage. Then type:

%> chroot /mnt/sysimage

Now you are in the shell within the parent directory. It depends on your boot loader, if it is GRUB, then do:

%> grub-install /dev/sda

For SCSI disk or

%> grub-install /dev/hda

for IDE disk

If you have LILO, then do:

%> /sbin/lilo

Unload application disabled /greyed out in IIS

In IIS6 application unloading / recycling is handled differently. You may notice that the "Unload" button is greyed out or disabled in the Application Settings area. This is because the application is in native IIS 6 mode using application pools. Synonymous to unloading the application in IIS 5 is the concept of recycling the application pool in IIS6, see the Application Pools folder in IIS manager (inetmgr). The only time the Unload button will work is if the IIS web service is running in IIS 5.0 isolation mode and the Application Protection is set to either Medium or High.

Microsoft Ready Summit 2006

Yes, Microsoft Ready Summit 2006 today @ Darling Harbour - Sydney.

The keynote was great, Microsoft Australia Managing Director, Steve V, was talking the evo products.

Cool thing about EVO:

Vista Bitlocker
Vista built-in shadow copy
Vista Search Engine - able to save the search result as a dynamic content folder
Vista Deployment Service

Groove Server

Group policy for blocking device installation - get rid of USB drives
Windows Firewall group policy enhancement - 3 profiles: Domain, Private and public

Exchange 2007 Managed folders - automatic archive emails
Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging - voice mail inbox capability

Network Access Protection - quarantine network for un-healthy machine, incorporate IPSec and Health Certificate

Sharepoint 2007 Rocks!!!

www.microsoft.com.au/readysummit

Microsoft Partner Roadshow 2006

I am attending the Microsoft Partner Roadshow '06 today at Darling Harbour - Sydney.

They were talking about Vista, Office 07 and Exchange 2007 and the benefit of Microsoft Partner.

Links:

http://www.microsoft.com.au/partner/evo

Windows Scripting Links

link will be posted here:

Script Center:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx

Using WMI:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/using_wmi.asp

WMI Reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/wmi_reference.asp

WMI Explorer:
http://www.ks-soft.net/hostmon.eng/downpage.htm