Stafforshire University are doing a MSc in “Electronic Commerce” – sounds interesting!

Both Windows 2000 servers are now online and joined in the active directory and happily replicating away. unfortunately exchange won’t install on the server either because we blew away the server details in AD to get the server to join the domain or because I had notification monitoring running on the server (this can cause the setup routine to crash!) However, when I hit the cancel installation it just cancelled that section of the install so I no longer know whether exchange is installed or not. I guess not seeing as though its not working and won’t let me restore the databases. Back over to Microsoft again 🙁

We got one of our W2k servers joining the domain yesterday. After having spent the best part of 5 days trying to work out how to get a domain controller out of its broken active directory domain and joining the *real* AD domain we managed to do it – and without Microsoft’s £185 help (ok – we asked for help but it was our guy who found the solution but we are very grateful for your help MS!). It involved setting the HKLM/currentcontolset/control/productoptions/producttype regkey so that the server read ServerNT instead of LanmanNT. A reboot later and the server now thinks its just a domain controller. Then ADSIEdit was used to remove the server from Active Directory on the live sites, the server renamed into a different workgroup,rebooted, dcpromo’d as a DC as the first controller in a new domain/forest. Rebooted, dcpromo’d back as a standalone server, rebooted and then dcpromo’d back into the original domain. Hey presto – the server synched ok. For those of you more interested in this I will be writing up my experiences and posting them somewhere on this site so hopefully no-one else will have to go through the pain again! I now have to repeat the whole process on our email server and then I can install exchange in disaster recovery mode (a whole new ball game) and hopefully we’ll be back to email again soon. 5 days is *far* to long to do a restore and MS’s solution at the time was looking more and more like it was going to have to be a reinstall – not something I was looking forward to and makes you wonder why you backed up! Fortunately as you can see we seem to have made some more progress.

WinNT = workstation
ServerNT = Member server (will allow dc promo to promote)
LanmanNT = Domain controller (will allow dcpromo to demote)

I’ve started seeing quite a few notes about Gladiator Anti Virus software. This is free software, I guess similar to AVG but is currently in Alpha testing at the moment. If you don’t have any anti-virus then a) you are mad and b) go get some now! I am not downloading it as I already have a free copy of Norton Anti-VIrus with my ADSL connection and its not a good idea to have two av programs on the pc. I might put it on one of my w2k servers to try it out though.

I wish there was a way of creating your own security levels in ie. I have basically turned flash to prompt in my security settings now as I am fed up of getting those annoying banners. However, one of my regular visits uses flash for an advert, so everytime i load the page up it loads flash. What I want is a zone where I can set download flash stuff to NO but still allow the posting of forms…Anyone got ideas of how to do this? The sites don’t really fit in any of the standard ie security zones.

oops – i think i’ve worked out how to crash my isp’s website by going to a particular url…..no I’m not going to tell you *what* url it is!

Reading through Scot Finnies Newsletter – aimed at the techie or techie wannabe with broadband he was touching on two things I’m interested in. Agnitum’s Outpost Firewall and blacklists on spamming. The first is about to launch a beta version 2 which sounds really good. This is the firewall I am running on my home pc and my parents in-laws. Its much better and more configurable than ZoneAlarm, is free and gives you more protection from things like webbugs in your email. He also talks about blacklists and how they are evil. I agree with him and I think the only way to stop spam and give yourself control is either for isps to implement blacklists but at the same time divert spam into a special mailbox for each user so they can decide whether it *is* spam or not and then have the option to whitelist the mail for themselves or even better is to have the decent ability to do this in their email client. It will be brilliant the day that outlook express etc has decent mail filtering built in. I do like the idea of Cloudmarks spamnet, but from my experience it just does not catch enough spam. Also, a lot of newsletters get blacklisted which loses readers. Whitelisting (which overrides the central blacklist filter) works, but defeats the object as this means “your vote” (which is how cloudmark works) never gets counted. They should make the software act so that a “whitelist” option makes the email rank more highly in the “not spam” category.
Scots Newsletter | Cloudmarks Spamnet | Agnitum’s Outpost

If you are using WinMX the file sharing program then i hope you have uptodate a/v (as anyone should) as there is a trojan targeting this network dentified as Win32.Glimp trojan by ETrust anti-virus, Trojan.Win32.WinMXtrojan.10 by Kaspersky anti-virus, and Trojan.Win32.WinMXp2p by Gladiator anti-virus. Its a nasty piece of work in that it copies all your word,ini and batch files into your shared directory for anyone to download.

From the Spyware newsletter:-

Anyone using the WinMX file sharing application needs be aware of a new trojan in the wild that seems to be targeted specifically at the WinMX network. This trojan is being identified as Win32.Glimp trojan by ETrust anti-virus, Trojan.Win32.WinMXtrojan.10 by Kaspersky anti-virus, and Trojan.Win32.WinMXp2p by Gladiator anti-virus.

On an infected machine, the WinMX trojan will copy Word documents, text files, .ini files, batch files, etc into a special directory, then change their extensions to .avi. This directory is then shared on the network by the WinMX peer to peer application. By adding the victim’s WinMX login name to the attacker’s “Hotlist” and then selecting “Browse”, the attacker can browse through and download every file that has been copied into the directory.

I can’t find a whole lot of information about this trojan. At this point, all I can suggest is to keep updating your anti-virus software and to double-check what are in the folders you are sharing through WinMX and other peer to peer programs. No matter which anti-virus software you have and no matter which peer to peer program you use, always scan newly downloaded files before you run them. Always.

APC UPS Recall
Look under the desk at your Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). You know… that warm thing the cat likes to curl up next to. Is it an APC? Is it a Back-UPS CS model? Look again just to be sure. It’s important.
American Power Conversion (APC) has recalled some 2.1 million units produced under the Back-UPS CS line, specifically the CS 350 and CS 500 models, in both 120-volt and 230-volt varieties. Eight reports have come in regarding these units overheating, six of which were within the US and three caused property damage. Symptoms include a melted outer casing, and obvious rise in the temperature of the unit, and I’m guessing potential failure in the components and/or quality of power protection. Compare the first six chars of your serial number to the following ranges to see if your UPS qualifies for replacement:
° AB0048 through AB0251
° BB0104 through BB0251
° JB0125 through JB0251
Also note that any units with an R at the end of the serial number are not included in the recall. Be sure to read the article linked above for more information
Thanks Techspecialist in Lockergnome!