Monday, December 22, 2008

Backup Exec and Domino Agent


OK, so here it the update from Symantec regarding my issue with backing up a domino agent.  Just for review, on a couple domino machines out of about 10 I would experience my domino agent crashing,  My Domino admin console would give out a c:\program files\symantec\backup exec\raws\belnapi.exe <2224/ox8B0> error about every minute and all backup jobs (obviously) would cease.  I have to reboot my machine (not just restart service) to every get the domino agent to even think about functioning as planned.  Anyway, the Symantec engineer has basically said......don't run your domino backup jobs through a policy-based job.  You must run a non-policy based job to get the functionality that I want.  So now I have to rebuild all of my jobs (for all 10 servers). I hate Backup Exec.
-PC

Friday, December 19, 2008

WSUS clients not reporting status 0x80190194


Had a bear of a time with WSUS.  I noticed that my machines were no longer reporting back to the server with any kind of status.  I uninstalled, reinstalled to no avail.  My windows update log was giving me a http://server/selfupdate/wuident.cab: error 0x80190194 which lead me to The WSUS Support Team Blog.  Their article here summed up the problem nicely, but I still don't know what happened to break it in the first place.
-PC

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

WTH


Another in my series of mind-blowing musicians that make me wet my pants.
-PC




This is going to be a day of music apparantly. From my friend Mike, I give you the 12 days of christmas

Monday, December 15, 2008

blogroll


My new favorite blog.  Chock full of good stuff for your humble network administrator. This one is going on the blogroll and my rss reader.
-PC

Friday, December 12, 2008

Cisco devices authenticated back to AD


So for awhile now I've known that I need to setup up authentication for command line access for our routers and switches.  I hadn't bothered because, 1. We are a smallish shop, 2. I can easily memorize a 24 digit hexadecimal password, 3. I'm lazy.  I finally got around to it and used this article by David Davis to help me out quite a bit.  When you used this crib sheet however, you never were able to get to privileged mode with your supplied credentials.  I then found this article that layed it out nicely.  
-PC

Basic IOS commands


David Davis has covered most of the basics but I would add the "do" command under config mode.  My most basic use of this command is "do sh run" while I'm inside an interface.
-PC

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

security policies


One of my major frustrations has been the implementation of meaningful security policies at my work.  I am in the unenviable position of having not enough pull in the company to own/implement a restrictive policy and my boss, a couple years from retirement, I don't think sees the need to write down everything.  I guess he figures we are a small enough operation that policy can be made up on the spot and communicated verbally.  This doesn't help me however when I'm trying to be pro-active in locking down the network and have nothing to measure against.  Frustrating.
-PC

Monday, December 8, 2008

BackupExec


Update -- Now they are claiming that there is a possible conflict between BE and either "Mail security for Domino" or "Endpoint Protection". Again, possible....but it would be nice if after the very large vxgather file I sent them, they could give me more than generalities. So, now I get to reboot our mail server


So we've had this problem with BackupExec (version 12) backing up Lotus Domino.  The remote agent will continually crash and can't be resurrected unless the machine is restarted.  This becomes a problem on live servers.  Symantec's solution is to upgrade my media server to 12.5 and push out new agents.  He assures me that during the transition my v.12 agents will still work until I can get around to upgrading them.  I don't mind upgrading software and understand that bugs happen.  My problem revolves around being Symantec's guinea pig.  I've seen this issue crop up enough times on their tech support forums that they should be able to tell me if this is going to fix it and why.  I'm also pissed because the engineer is telling me that I need to upgrade all of my license keys from v12 to v12.5.  Apart from the fact that this is just stupid and hurts my head, I now have to track down my software VAR and send him on a wild goose chase to track some numbers down. Dumb!

-PC

Twittered!!


I'm up and running on Twitter.  You can come and follow me at http://twitter.com/portcullischain
-PC

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Problem 3rd party connection


So I became aware of a problem connecting to a 3rd party that we use for additional information when rating quotes.  I believe the problem lies with the 3rd party's firewall.  I think it is limiting it to only a few class "C" subnets that we used to use.  Me being the rabble rouser that I am, I've dropped my users to a /21 subnet mask and move servers around to some /16 networks.  I'm thinking their firewalls are basically giving me the finger.  More to come.
-PC

p.s.  Yes I know that it has been eons since I last posted.  Given the fact that only my grandmother and one individual in the Balkans ever read my blog, I'm not all that concerned about how you feel.......ok maybe a little concerned.