Windows Server 2012 R2 & HP Proliant Microserver

Windows Server 2012 R2 hangs on 'Getting devices ready 84%'
Fails to Complete the installation on HP MicroServer Gen7 (N36L, N40L & N54L)

The MicroServer N36, N40L and N54L all share the same embedded NC107i PCI Express gigabit NIC. The NC107i uses the Broadcom BCM5723 chip which doesn’t have an updated driver included with the Server 2012 R2 installation media. The lack of drivers will get you stuck at 84%...

The current workaround is to disable the on-board NIC and install another card.
Flash the custom BIOS to unlock the hidden BIOS screens
Install a supported NIC in the PCIe slot (Joe used the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK
Go into the BIOS and change the settings to match
Boot Settings -> Embedded NIC Port 1 Control – [Disabled]
Boot Settings -> Wake-On LAN – [Disabled]
Chipset -> Atheros AR8132M NIC – [Disabled]
After a reboot, Server 2012 R2 should install fine.

Fall back to R1 or...., here's a solution for you!

Download this driver and add it to the $WinPEDriver$ folder of your media installation kit.
Disable Embedded NIC Port 1 Control in BIOS
Install Windows Server 2012 R2
Add a Server name
Reboot into BIOS to Enable the NIC
This should get you working, have fun!

HP have documented this as a known issue and are currently working with Microsoft to resolve prior to the official release of R2.

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Transmission deamon - 409: Conflict - Invalid session-id header

How to solve?
Remove the default /web from your URL:

http://www.example.com/transmission/web

to

http://www.example.com/transmission

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HRESULT 0xc8000222 when trying to install any version of .netFramework

This will occur mostly on Windows 7, never happened on Windows 8: 'Installation Did Not Succeed' .NET Framework has not been installed because: HRESULT 0xc8000222

There is a common problem with windows update and the .netframework. We'll have to clean the SoftwareDistribution folder before we proceed.

Click Start and Run:

cmd

This will open the well known Command Prompt, then type:

net stop WuAuServ

This will stop the Windows Update service. Make sure you're the admin.
Click Start and Run again, this time type %windir% and press Enter.
Look for the SoftwareDistribution folder and rename it to SwDist.old.
Now go back to the Command Prompt and start the Windows Update.

net start WuAuServ

That was it. Re-run the netFramework and it should work.

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Vodaphone USB Broadband on Linux

What you will need:

1. usb-modeswitch-2.0.1.tar.bz2
2. usb_modeswitch-data
3. libusb-1.x

Right after you install those files on your linux box, append these three lines in a terminal:

usb_modeswitch -WD -v 12d1 -p 1526 -n -M 555342437f0000000002000080000a11062000000000000100000000000000 -I -w 500

modprobe option

echo "12d1 14cf" > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/option1/new_id

Open your network manager window, select Mobile Broadband, create a new connection and for connection settings leave them as default, just set the password to 1234.

Plug-in your Vodafone USB and that's it !
                                                                                                                                           [Source]

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Enable TCP SYN cookie protection on your linux server

Normally when a client attempts to start a TCP connection to a server, the client and server exchange a series of messages which normally runs like this:

1. The client requests a connection by sending a SYN (synchronize) message to the server.
2. The server acknowledges this request by sending SYN-ACK back to the client.
3. The client responds with an ACK, and the connection is established.

This is called the TCP three-way handshake, and is the foundation for every connection established using the TCP protocol.

A SYN flood attack works by not responding to the server with the expected ACK code. The malicious client can either simply not send the expected ACK, or by spoofing the source IP address in the SYN, causing the server to send the SYN-ACK to a falsified IP address - which will not send an ACK because it "knows" that it never sent a SYN.

The server will wait for the acknowledgement for some time, as simple network congestion could also be the cause of the missing ACK, but in an attack increasingly large numbers of half-open connectionswill bind resources on the server until no new connections can be made, resulting in a denial of service to legitimate traffic. Some systems may also malfunction badly or even crash if other operating system functions are starved of resources in this way.

The protection should be enabled by default in many distros.

Commands used:

sysctl -n net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies
nano /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

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mesa-libgl and nvidia-libgl are in conflict error

pacman -Syu

and..

mesa-libgl and nvidia-libgl are in conflict, Remove nvidia-libgl? [y/N]

The following commands will fix it quickly:

pacman -Syu --ignore mesa-libgl
pacman -Sc
pacman -Rs xf86-video-ati
pacman -Rs ati-dri
pacman -S nvidia
pacman -Syu

Basically you update ignoring the mesa-libgl, then purge the pkg cache, remove xf86-video-ati which is 32bit ( maybe vmware would need that at the first place ), also ati-dri, then synchronize the nvidia drivers and do a full update.

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Unable to connect to network - Rebuild the TCP/IP stack

There's a bug when you just connect to a network but no packets are sent, nothing is happening, you havent got an IP address and nothing seems to be working... is the NIC broken? Check below how to fully reset the TCP/IP stack in order to get some things working back again:

1. Go SafeMode & Networking.
2. Delete these keys from regedit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Winsock
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Winsock2

1. Open the nettcpip.inf file in your %winroot%/inf folder
   (%winroot% is usually c:/windows).
2. Find the [MS_TCPIP.PrimaryInstall] section. Change the Characteristics value from 0xA0 to 0x80.
3. Open the properties of the network connection you want to fix. In the General tab, click on the Install button. Click on the Have Disk button, and point the location to %winroot%/inf. After that select TCP/IPv4.
4. Now you are able to uninstall TCP/IP, do it and reboot.
5. Go back to your network connection, and install TCP/IP again & reboot, things must be working now.
6. Open cmd and type the last thing to reset the txtlog:

netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt

Are you connected now? :)

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BSoD Resolution #1: Driver Power State Failure

0x000009F is the error code after you see the DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE message ruining your work at 3am in the morning with a blue screen.

Straight to the minidump folder, we grab the minidump.dmp file and head to WinDbg to investigate the fact at a closer look. In my case i'll be using a dumpfile i had stored some time ago when i was asked to identify crash problem in an office.
So i loaded the file into windbg and used !analyze -v to see some more details of the problem.

The result is shown below:

Do we need to say something more? I immediately called the guys at the office to update their drivers.... which actually were from the following link.

This conclues #1 resolution. Thanks for reading, more to come.

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How to: Disable UAC in Windows 8

It started back when i wanted to launch lineage on my brand new install of windows 8 enterprise N edition, tried to launch then got an error of l2.exe stopped working.., first thing i thought was UAC, where i tried to disable it but unfortunately it was unsuccessful.

How am i going to be aware that lineage will not play on Windows 8 ( talking about h5 or earlier ) before searching online.., so i played a bit with UAC in the latest windows version in order to disable it completely.

Let me explain.., 

1. You start off by typing 'UserAccountControlSettings' in Run in order to go into UAC's menu then set it to 'Never Notify'.
2. then, you move into registry editor by typing 'regedit' in Run again and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System. There's a DWORD there named 'EnableLUA' which we must set to 0.
3. now we have to restart our computer to reload registry.
4. By default, windows 8 is not granting user with administrator rights so we have to take ownership or the files of the entire C:\ drive, to do that you got to have a custom patch installed on your system for easier implementation. 
5. Download Ownership and run InstallTakeOwnership.reg and head to C:\ drive
6. select all folders, right click & hit Take ownership. After that, 
7. right click on Windows dir and Properties.
8. Security tab, advanced and Enable Inheritance.
9. Search for Owner name then Change, Advanced, Find Now and select your account that you're currently logged in and press ok. Back on the
10. advanced security settings, click Add, Select a Principal, Advanced, Find and select your account again, hit ok, again ok, Full Control, Show Advanced Permission and apply it to: This folder, subfolders and files, hit ok and apply, yes and continue.
11. Back into Regedit again at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and revert 'EnableLUA' back to 1.
12. Restart your computer, 
13. navigate to C:\ and Take Ownership again,
14. lastly, run RemoveTakeOwnership.reg file to make system as it was in the beginning.

After these steps, you should have disabled UAC completely from your Windows 8 system.

Cheers. :)

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Apache start problem: Unable to open logs

Apache gave a friend some trouble the other night and i thought of sharing after fixing...
He gave me SSH and asked me to check what's going on.

service apache2 start
Unable to open logs.

After i ran through /var/logs i couldn't find apache2 directory.
Went back to apache2.conf to check if CustomLog command was given but the default value was there.
I simply created /var/logs/apache2 directory with write permisson and the problem was fixed.

mkdir /var/logs/apache2 |chmod 755 /var/logs/apache2

cheers!

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Update your bt to r3

Yesterday backtrack 5 R3 came out, do you really need to burn another iso image for installation? hahah......
Update your system to current versions:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade



Now for 32bit version type:
apt-get install libcrafter blueranger dbd inundator intersect mercury cutycapt trixd00r artemisa rifiuti2 netgear-telnetenable jboss-autopwn deblaze sakis3g voiphoney apache-users phrasendrescher kautilya manglefizz rainbowcrack rainbowcrack-mt lynis-audit spooftooph wifihoney twofi truecrack uberharvest acccheck statsprocessor iphoneanalyzer jad javasnoop mitmproxy ewizard multimac netsniff-ng smbexec websploit dnmap johnny unix-privesc-check sslcaudit dhcpig intercepter-ng u3-pwn binwalk laudanum wifite tnscmd10g bluepot dotdotpwn subterfuge jigsaw urlcrazy creddump android-sdk apktool ded dex2jar droidbox smali termineter bbqsql htexploit smartphone-pentest-framework fern-wifi-cracker powersploit webhandler

Or for 64bit version:
apt-get install libcrafter blueranger dbd inundator intersect mercury cutycapt trixd00r rifiuti2 netgear-telnetenable jboss-autopwn deblaze sakis3g voiphoney apache-users phrasendrescher kautilya manglefizz rainbowcrack rainbowcrack-mt lynis-audit spooftooph wifihoney twofi truecrack acccheck statsprocessor iphoneanalyzer jad javasnoop mitmproxy ewizard multimac netsniff-ng smbexec websploit dnmap johnny unix-privesc-check sslcaudit dhcpig intercepter-ng u3-pwn binwalk laudanum wifite tnscmd10g bluepot dotdotpwn subterfuge jigsaw urlcrazy creddump android-sdk apktool ded dex2jar droidbox smali termineter multiforcer bbqsql htexploit smartphone-pentest-framework fern-wifi-cracker powersploit webhandler

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How secure is your gameserver?

Do you think you're invulnerable?

Today http://www.l2arcana.ru/ asked from us to check their vulnerability level..., damn was too low...

After running Nessus i got more than 43 vulnerabilities to play with....

Patch your servers, patches doesn't come for fun, there's a big reason a patch comes out for.... Buy the software you're using & make sure it's always up to date.

If you can't manage to do so then request someone's help doing it, never play with your personal data and security.
Voovode.NET

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Active Directory Recycle Bin - a must have feature

Active Directory Recycle Bin is a new feature welcomed in Windows Server 2008 R2. In Windows Server 2012 it has a GUI too :) Active Directory Recycle Bin helps you recover accidental deletion of users or objects very easily. Basically what it does is helps to reduce downtime. Back in the days of WS2003/2008 you could restore a backup, DSRM via ntdsutil.exe or ADRestore...., so how are we gonna enable this AD Recycle Bin? Default feature is disabled.

1. Start Powershell.
2. Type the following without the quotes:
   " Enable-ADOptionalFeature –Identity ‘CN=Recycle Bin Feature,CN=Optional Features,CN=Directory Service,CN=Windows NT,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=Voovode,DC=local’ –Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet –Target ‘Voovode.local’ "
3. Powershell will prompt for comfirmation,... proceed.
4. This will enable the recycle bin feature on voovode.local domain.
5. In Active Directory Administrative Center, action panel - you will find 'Deleted Objects'. You will see there anything that's deleted, Cheers.

Warning: The forest functional level of the AD Service must be 2008 R2 and above!

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Volume Shadow Copy Service error

Unexpected error calling routine RegOpenKeyExW(-2147483646,SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Diag,...).  hr = 0x80070005, Access is denied.

You may experience this on a Windows Server 2008 R2.
According to the research, the issue may be caused by an invalid entry inside the following registry sub tree.

HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Open the registry editor with regedit. Expand and local to the subtree, check if there is an entry that has a ".bak" value appended.
If so, this may be cause the failure when trying to resolve the SID of the writer. Please backup the registry key first, and then delete that entry with the extra ".bak" Then you may reboot the problematic server to check if it the issue can be fixed. HF.

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Auto-delete temporary folder

We all know what's the temporary files folder...., junk after use.

Some programs create temporary files and then leave them behind - they do not delete them. This can happen because the program crashed or the developer of the program simply forgot to add the code needed to delete the temporary files after the program is done with them (disk leak). In Microsoft Windows the temporary files left behind by the programs accumulate over time and can take up a lot of disk space. System utilities, called temporary file cleaners or disk cleaners, can be used to address this issue. Personal workstations with UNIX-based operating systems do not suffer from the same problem because their temporary files are wiped at boot. Servers, however, are affected because they are rarely rebooted. Anyone ever wondered if there was an automated task to prevent wasting time ? ;)

Windows XP Pro:
Head to Start & Run > gpedit.msc (Group policy editor)
Then follow:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Terminal Services > Temporary Folder
Finally, right click Do not delete temp folder upon exit & set to Disable.

Windows 7 Ultimate:

Head to Start & Run > gpedit.msc (Group policy editor)
Then follow:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Temporary Folders
Finally, right click Do not delete temp folder upon exit & set to Disable.


Cheers.

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Backup solutions

Backups are often neglected; do you backup your computer or server, if so, how often? At any moment a computer or server may crash unpredictably and put your critical data at risk. Are you confident that you will be able to do a full restoration with minimal downtime? Have you done a full backup test restoration including the hard drive images? 

How much information do you have stored on your Server’s hard drives? Are you hosting your own email or website? Are you running any SQL databases? These are all very critical and require a good backup strategy to be enforced and able to recover from a disaster in an efficient and effective way. You must be prepared for any calamities such as fire, earthquakes and floods. Do you have any backup plans in the event of a natural disaster? Backups are a very important factor to consider. The risk of losing data is often unnecessary and could be avoided by implementing a simple and sometimes cost-effective backup solution.

Steps:

1. If you have a Domain Network, having additional Domain Controllers(DCs) is something that has to be implemented so that there will be limited network downtime just in case a disaster happens. Active Directory Users and Computers will replicate to your additional DC(s) and improve the dependability and availability of your network resources if the main DC is not up and running due to a crash or failure.
2. Storing huge amount of files and data on your network can be very risky if you don’t have a well planned and tested backup system. Local backups can be done if you have enormous or terabytes of files stored in your file server(s). Losing these files could cause you a major problem that you may not be able to bounce back from. If your company has a limited IT budget then you can purchase some affordable external USB hard drives to do a local on-site backup. These can be taken off site by a member of staff. Another affordable option would be to purchase a (Network Attached Storage) NAS Device and use a third party’s backup software like Acronis or Symantec to do a full backup image of your Servers hard drives.
3. Do you have Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) configured in any of your Servers? If your Employer can afford it and has a budget for a RAID 10 (also known as RAID 1 + 0) system, it requires a minimum of 4 hard drives, I highly recommend this. A server with RAID 10 is amongst the most popular RAID solutions and provides a very high fault tolerance in case of hard drive failure. RAID 10 is very pricey but it is the best RAID option for any perilous applications especially databases. If you have a limited IT budget, then investing in a RAID 1 (Mirrored) solution is also acceptable. This will allow for one of your drives to fail without causing major downtime. Keep at least one spare hard drive for your RAID on site in case of a drive failure. Newer technology servers have hot swappable drives, so expect limited downtime and rest assured that your data will be safe and intact. Some Users won’t even know if the network was down.
4. Backup as often as you want – There is no such thing as backing up too much! Having a redundancy backup is a must have. A very common backup strategy is to make daily incremental, differential, and weekly full backups. Another question you may want to ask is: If my first backup solution fails, what will I do then? Having multiple backups to restore from is a must. Placing all of your eggs in one basket can be risky. If you are going to use Tapes or External Hard Disks to back up your data it is recommended that you have a daily or weekly rotation between drives. If you have five External Hard Drives on a daily rotation then even if your most recent backup is not restorable you can fall back onto the day before – Losing 24-hours worth of data is far better than losing it forever!
5. Do not backup to a different partition on the same physical disk. You should be aware that if the disk fails then the entire disk will be corrupted and your backup will be useless! You may lose everything.
6. The types of restore you can do with a backup are important factors to consider. How long will it take you to restore an entire hard drive? Can you restore your server onto other hardware? Do you have any hard drives in stock in the event your drives fail?
7. A Cloud backup solution can be costly, but if your company can afford it, it’s a great backup solution to consider. Hosted cloud also known as online backup is very popular nowadays. If you are going to use a hosted backup solution find out the level of encryption that they support and remember to write down the restoration procedure; in the event of a problem you will want to access the backups quickly. Cloud backup is safe and a secured way of backing up data on remote data storage, also accessible from anywhere. The only downside is that it requires a higher bandwidth.
8. It is a very good idea to keep your servers in a fire/flood proof location like a Vault, if your Employer can afford this type of Storage.Backup only important documents – you would be surprised how many gigabytes worth of Media files such as pictures, music and videos that some employees will store in their roaming profiles and local hard drives. Some are for business use but mostly are for personal use. It is worth reviewing what you are backing up at least once a month.

Make sure to backup once in a while. Hardware failures cost a life.

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Upgrading to the latest Backtrack version via the Terminal

The long awaited release of the BackTrack 5 R2 kernel has arrived. With a spanking brand new 3.2.6 kernel, a huge array of new and updated tools and security fixes, BT5 R2 will provide a more stable environment than ever before. Here’s how to get the new kernel and all of the updated goodness:

1. Update and upgrade your BT5 (R1) installation:

apt-get update 
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install beef
reboot

2. Verify that you are running a 3.2.6 kernel:

uname -a

3. Install all of the new tools featured in BackTrack 5 R2:

apt-get install pipal findmyhash metasploit joomscan hashcat-gui golismero easy-creds pyrit sqlsus vega libhijack tlssled hash-identifier wol-e dirb reaver wce sslyze magictree nipper-ng rec-studio hotpatch xspy arduino rebind horst watobo patator thc-ssl-dos redfang findmyhash killerbee goofile bt-audit bluelog extundelete se-toolkit casefile sucrack dpscan dnschef

4. Add the new security updates repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, and run upgrade again.

echo "deb http://updates.repository.backtrack-linux.org revolution main microverse non-free testing" >> /etc/apt/sources.list 
apt-get update 
apt-get dist-upgrade

 5.Done! You are now ready to start your new version of backtrack, just before you go, make sure to stop some services that are on by default in R2:

/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
/etc/init.d/cups stop
/etc/init.d/winbind stop

update-rc.d -f cups remove 
update-rc.d -f apache2 remove 
update-rc.d -f winbind remove 

Cheers.

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SkyDrive: How to maintain your 25GB instead of dropping to 7

SkyDrive's policy changed. You now have 7GB free instead of 25...unless you used skydrive before the change, you now must be seeing this at the very first screen after you logged into your account.

To roll it back & if you're lucky enough go to Manage Storage > Free Upgrade 25GB. If this isn't available for you, then you obviously haven't uploaded anything to your skydrive before 30th of April.

SkyDrive will be a useful cloud service in the near future, many options such as syncing between different devices will be available...

Forgot to mention that command prompt will be also available.

Cheers.

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