Monthly Archives: February 2015

Tools

Stay up to date with RSS

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Staying Up-To-Date

I spend spent a lot of time watching various blogs, web pages, and other online sources for updates to the many platforms I’m responsible for supporting.  Windows has a new security patch. Mac OSX needs heart-bleed remediation.  SharePoint has a new Cumulative Update.  There’s a new Linux Kernel out, and 52 commits have occurred for the ROM on my phone.

That’s a lot of moving targets, with many different pages to remember to check on a semi-regular basis.  With probability against me, the time spent loading a page (and possibly googling it if I forgot to bookmark it) and deciphering what’s changed since I last visited generally resulted in a lot of lost time.

My Solution

Recently, a co-worker turned me on to RSS feeds.  They’ve been around forever, and yet, I’ve never really used them.  That is, until I realized how valuable they can be.   Just think: superbookmarks! One “Single Pane of Glass” to view all of the content updates. Feedly is a web based RSS reader.  You can use various authentication methods ( I prefer logging in with my Google Account) to access your list of “Subscribed” RSS feeds.

Whenever new content is posted, it shows up in your “unread” subscriptions.  Just make it your homepage, and enjoy the easy reading!

Subscribing to Content

After you’ve found a content source you’d like to stay current on, You’ll need to:

  1. Identify the RSS Feed URL
    1. Most sites will have an RSS button.  It should look like this: However, some sites do not publish the RSS feed, but still make it available.
    2. The RSS Feed for WordPress sites can be accessed via http://<sitename>/feed or http://<sitename>/?feed=rss2.
    3. Reddit publishes RSS Feeds for subreddits in the form of http://reddit.com/r/<subreddit>/.rss
  2. Point Feedly at the URL
    Click the “Add Content” button in Feedly, and provide the URL you discovered in step 1.

  3. Add the Feed to one of your collections
    Click the green “+”

  4. Choose a Collection

  5. Enjoy!
    New posts from this content source will now automagically show up when you open Feedly!

My Feeds

If you’re curious what I’m following, here’s a list of the RSS feeds I choose to follow.  You could also download, and import my feeds directly into your Feedly!

  • Ars Technica
    • http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index/
  • Michael Niehaus’ Windows and Office deployment ramblings
    • http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus/rss.xml
  • Reddit /r/sysadmin
    • http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/.rss
  • codeinsecurity
    • http://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/feed/
  • Krebs on Security
    • http://krebsonsecurity.com/feed/
  • In the Cloud
    • http://blogs.technet.com/b/in_the_cloud/rss.aspx
  • Ask Premier Field Engineering (PFE) Platforms
    • http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/rss.aspx
  • Errata Security
    • http://blog.erratasec.com/feeds/posts/default
  • NPR News
    • http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1001
  • XKCD
    • http://xkcd.com/rss.xml
  • LifeHacker
    • http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/vip
  • Todd Klindt’s Blog Posts (SharePoint Patches)
    • http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List={56F96349-3BB6-4087-94F4-7F95FF4CA81F}
  • Reddit /r/sharepoint
    • http://www.reddit.com/r/sharepoint/.rss
  • Stefan Goßner (SharePoint)
    • http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/rss.aspx
Microsoft Exchange

Cleaning Up Exchange Messages with Search-Mailbox

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Like most sysadmins, I receive notifications from end users about SPAM showing up in their inbox.  While not all spam can be avoided, we can deal with it.  I wanted to lessen the impact of already delivered spam and potentially avert a crisis if the same phishing email is sent to all 1500 mailboxes, so I whipped up this script to search out and destroy these messages from my Exchange environment:

$Subject = “About your last transaction”
$StartDate = $(‘1/1/2015’)
$BodyLanguage = “sellam.fr”
$TargetMailbox = “spamdump”
$TargetFolder = “WHD2918”

$Search = [scriptblock]::Create(“Received>=`”$StartDate`” and Subject:`”$Subject`” and `”$BodyLanguage`””)

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery $Search -targetmailbox $TargetMailbox -targetfolder $TargetFolder -loglevel full -logonly

Note the last flag in the last line of the script: “-logonly.”  Be very careful to run the command with this command the first go-round.  This ensures that the query you specify does not grab messages that it shouldn’t (and you wind up deleting everyone’s entire mailbox).  The result of logonly is an excel file in the target mailbox with the headers of the resultant messages.

After reviewing the messages, replace -logonly with -deletecontent.  This will actually move the messages from the users’ mailboxes into the target mailbox.

If you want to modify the query, take a look into how Search-Mailbox actually works.   Search-Mailbox uses KQL, so be sure to brush up on the syntax.  If you’ve beocme accustomed to the powershell boolean operators such as “-and,” You’ll be unpleasantly surprised when you learn that the same operator will evaluate to “not and” in KQL

Identity Management

ForeFront Identity Manager (2010 R2) Synchronization Service Becomes Disabled

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I had just installed FIM 2010 R2 in a lab environment – All roles on one server, and noticed that the “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service”  Kept stopping, and being set to “Disabled.”

I had installed all of the latest patches for both FIM (4.1.3613.0) and SharePoint (14.0.7140.5000). I saw nothing in the Windows Event log to indicate there was a problem.  The “Synchronization Service Manager on FIM” application would launch fine while the service was running.  All configured management agents would synchronize no problem.  It’s just that – Every so often, the  “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” would just up and STOP!

After some research, I found this TechNet Blog Post which suggests that SharePoint is the culprit!

Since SharePoint is installed on this server only for the purpose of providing the FIM Portal, I had no need to set up (or otherwise use) the User Profile Service.   Consequently, SharePoint isn’t expecting the Synchronization Service to be in a running state! So, as part of the “Health Analysis Job (Hourly, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer, All Servers)” SharePoint notices the service is running, and disables it!

I verified this by returning the service to the normal Automatic – Running state, and manually kicking off that Timer Job.

Sure enough, the job was stopped! ULS Viewer shows me this also:

See that? – “The SharePoint Health Analyzer found and fixed the following problem: One or more services have started or stopped unexpectedly..”  No details about which service was “started unexpectedly,” but I presume that the “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” was the culprit.

To prevent this from happening again, I nagivated to “Review Job Definitions” under “Monitoring” in Central Administration, located the  “Health Analysis Job (Hourly, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer, All Servers)” and disabled it.

All seems well at this point in time…

My set of links for FIM installation tips, tricks, procedures, etc:

  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332711(v=ws.10).aspx
  • http://www.harbar.net/articles/fimportal.aspx
  • http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=224
  • http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2229.fim-2010-build-overview.aspx
  • http://www.fimspecialist.com/fim-portal/installing-fim-2010-r2-sp1-portal-on-sharepoint-foundation-2013/
  • https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/76bd6012-f619-4636-8401-74cac8436f1f/fim-sync-service-keeps-disabling?forum=ilm2
  • http://www.fimspecialist.com/category/fim-hotixes-service-packs-updates/
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200258(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322920(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322863(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134316(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322877(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332711(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332707(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332708(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332710(v=ws.10).aspx
  • https://fim2010techie.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/synchronizing-active-directory-users/
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/connector_space/archive/2014/12/30/understanding-the-fim-service-management-agent.aspx
  • http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3610.fim-2010-wiki-articles.aspx