Nov 14, 2012
Changing umask based on Group Membership in Solaris 10 in profile
Recently ran into a situation where we needed to make sure that the umask of 002 was set on all the files owned by a specific group. There are several solutions but one way is to set the umask in the /etc/profile. For Solaris 10 it is set in the profile here. if [ “$LOGNAME” = “root” ] then PS1=”ROOT@`uname -n`# ” ; export PS1 else PS1=”$LOGNAME@`uname -n`$... read more
Nov 12, 2012
How To Change Passwords on Remote Windows Systems Using SyInternals PsPasswd
We all know that a good Administrator will find a way to automate or make boring tasks easy. Changing passwords on Windows systems, usually Administrator accounts, is one of those we least like to do but have to for audit purposes and also when other administrators leave. Well, here is another tool that can help with changing passwords. The free utility PsPasswd is part of Microsoft’s... read more
Nov 9, 2012
Spanning Volumes on Windows 2008 R2 Using Dynamic Disks
We have all been there, you setup a new server and allocate space to the server and think all is well, but next thing you know space is running out and you have a disk you need to add space to but you can’t. Well with Linux you can add the disk and extend the volume, this is possible with Windows 2008 R2 and Dynamic Disks. Dynamic disks can contain a large number of dynamic volumes (approximately... read more
Nov 8, 2012
How To Get Members of a Local Group with PowerShell
Every admin dreads audit and requests for members with privileged access. Some want screen shots, others use scripts and then there are those of us who like to tinker and use PowerShell for Windows. What the result is a script that gets the members of the local Administrators group and export it to a file. # Get members of local administrator group # getlocaladmins.ps1 $node = hostname # Set the... read more
Nov 6, 2012
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 HDD Issue LED:000000CC FAddr: 0025BF67
Recently ran into an issue with a Seagate FreeAgent 1 GB USB drive where the drive was no longer seen by the OS. After doing a bit of searching found that there were several issues with the 7200.11 HD’s and bad firmware. After dis-assembling the drive from it’s casing found the 1 TB drive in the system was in fact an affected drive. The issue is caused by a bug in the firmware. Once the data... read more
