Execute PowerShell in Windows Scheduled Task

 There are many ways to execute PowerShell in Windows scheduled tasks:

Option #1

Program/Script: PowerShell.exe

Add arguments (optional): -command "& {& 'C:\path\to\script.ps1'}"

Start in (optional): C:\path\to\

Option #2

Program/Script: PowerShell.exe

Add arguments (optional): -NonInteractive -Noprofile -File "C:\path\to\script.ps1"

Start in (optional): C:\path\to\

Option #1 allows me to have the script to connect to the Internet (server is located behind corporate proxy). 

Active Directory Group Policy by Powershell

 Use the following Powershell to get all the GPO dumped to HTML files

#> Get-GPO -All -Domain mydomain.tld | % { Get-GPOReport -Guid $_.Id -ReportType Html -Domain mydomain.tld | Set-Content C:\Reports\$($_.DisplayName).html }

Cleaning Up CSC Folders

C:\Windows\CSC folder is the offline files folder. It has special permissions. Without the correct permission, you won't be able to delete anything in it

To delete the content of C:\Windows\CSC, you need to modify its permissions

> cd c:\Windows
> takeown /f CSC /r /a /d y
> icacls CSC /grant Administrators:F

Then you can navigate to the folder and start deleting files

Ubuntu CIFS Mount to Windows

To support SMB2 mount from Ubuntu to Windows, edit the fstab file and include this:

//windows.domain.local/share/folder /mount/point cifs credentials=/root/.credentials,vers=2.0,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,dir_mode=0770,uid=33,gid=33 0 0

BitLocker Day

Today is the BitLocker day. I am BitLocking my file system with BitLocker. I have a QNAP and a File Server running Windows 2012 R2. My client machines, Windows 8.1 is having mapped drives that attach to the network shares on the File Server.

To secure the files:
Firstly I have a iSCSI drive set at QNAP and my File Server is using that drive by iSCSI initiator, lets say I: drive

Secondly, I create a VHDX file and store it in the I: drive. This newly created VHDX file is then mapped as a volume, lets say G: drive.

Thirdly, I have my data stored in the G: drive and share it as necessary to be used by my Windows 8.1 client.

Lastly, I enable BitLocker on the G: drive so that the VHDX is encrypted.

By having this configuration, the actual data is stored within the VHDX file which is encrypted by BitLocker. The I: drive is not encrypted - however it only contains .VHDX file(s) that need password if you want to mount that.

I purposely do not enable BitLocker auto-mount on G: drive. This to ensure if both File Server and QNAP are stolen, my data is not exposed. The only disadvantage of this method is that I need to mount the G: drive every time the File Server is rebooted - no biggie.

Changing Network Location on Windows 2008R2/2012

For some unknown reason, one of my domain controller servers has changed its network location from domain to public:

This is annoying because the 'public domain' firewall then starts blocking all unknown incoming traffic to my server.
We need to change this network location to be domain. However sometime, the location name is not clickable!!

To fix this, I found a trick:
Navigate to this network properties and un-tick the Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) stack

Click OK

Then it should change the network location type to domain
Now you can change the IPv6 stack back ON

OwnCloud - Setting IT Up

I need a solution to store my files, in fact I need to have some way of synchronisation for my files across 2 or more computers. Found this owncloud solution.

Setting it up is straight forward - just follow the doco. However, by default owncloud stores its file repository in the local server where owncloud is installed. I have a windows file share and I want all my files store in the windows file share

I am running Ubuntu and install owncloud in it.

I created a shared folder in my windows server, create a user account on my windows domain, straight forward.

on my Ubuntu server, firstly, I created a hidden file that contains the username and password of the windows domain account I created earlier

> vi /path/.smbcredentials

username=myuser
password=mypassword

save this file

next, I created a mount point to which I will mount the shared folder of my windows to this Ubuntu server

> mkdir /mount/projects

then I find the group id of the user account who is running the web server, in my case it is www-data

> id www-data

uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)

next, I edit the fstab file to mount the file share

> vi /etc/fstab

and add the following line:

//server.domain.local/share /mount/projects cifs credentials=/path/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,dir_mode=0770,uid=33,gid=33 0 0

then do

> mount -a

it should mount the windows shared folder to /mount/projects

now, during owncloud installation, it will ask for the data folder, you can put /mount/projects !!

iPhoto Backup

I am using iPhone and taking photos with it. As you know it imports the photos automatically to the iPhoto when it is connected to the OSX. I created the following bash script to mount the Windows file share and copy the photos to the Windows Server

#!/bin/bash
mount -t smbfs //username:password@windowsserver/pictures /Users/laurence/Mount
rsync -urz /Users/laurence/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters /Users/laurence/Mount/iPhoto
umount /Users/laurence/Mount