blog.cuyler.com

The life of a sysadmin is never dull.  Last night, our Small Business Server had its usual “Patch Tuesday” slew of updates ready to go, so at 2 AM, I started the updates and rebooted the server as requested.

Upon reboot, the Exchange store wouldn’t mount.

Much teeth gnashing ensued.  I’ve recovered my fair share of Exchange stores, but this one just wasn’t coming back.

The event viewer was full of errors from the Exchange service:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    ESE
Event Category:    Logging/Recovery
Event ID:    494

Description:
Information Store (3860) First Storage Group: Database recovery failed with error -1216 because it encountered references to a database, ‘x:\pathtoourdatabase\priv1.edb’, which is no longer present. The database was not brought to a Clean Shutdown state before it was removed (or possibly moved or renamed). The database engine will not permit recovery to complete for this instance until the missing database is re-instated. If the database is truly no longer available and no longer required, procedures for recovering from this error are available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base or by following the “more information” link at the bottom of this message.

The frustrating part of all of this was the Exchange database was where it should have been (contrary to the above error).

Further struggle resulted in me throwing up my arms, catching a few hours sleep and attacking the problem in the morning.  I knew mail was being spooled on our mail gateway, so I wasn’t worried about losing any inbound mail.

In the morning, my luck was no better.  I did a quick Google search and turned up ExchangeRecovery.org

I made offline backups of the Exchange stores and gave them a call.  The receptionist answered promptly and transferred me over to “an Exchange specialist.”

I then spoke with Jon who was helpful as a fella could be.  I gave him access to our box and he ran thru the litany of tests I had, and then a few more too.   As a last resort, he tried moving the transaction log files out of the directory and that seemed to do the trick.  The store was in a clean state when it shutdown, so we didn’t lose any mail.

I can’t recommend Jon enough — he was good humored, professional and a joy to work with.  I give him an unqualified recommendation.

An article appeared recently in the Connecticut Law Tribune outlining how some redactions in PDF documents posted to PACER actually weren’t redacted all that well, and a simple select-all, copy, paste into your favorite word processor revealed what was hidden behind those redactions.

As you can imagine, there was some egg on some faces.

(This ties in, a tad, with my previous post about managing personally identifying information from your Word documents.)

The article goes on to point out a fact I think bears repeating: the new version of Acrobat (Version 8) does redaction right and actually removes the text hidden behind the redactions.

Even if you’re not using redactions, to make sure you’re not passing along any hidden data in your PDF files, you’ll want to do the following:

Open your PDF in Acrobat, click on Document > Examine Document and Check all boxes and click “Remove All Checked Items” and that should strip out any of the stuff this guy is worried about.  (The dialog box is shown; click on it for a version you can actually read.)

Also, the redactions in Acrobat 8 are PERMANENT which means once they’re applied, there’s no getting at the underlying info. No cut-and-paste into Word is going to get it back.  This is why Acrobat prompts you to use a NEW filename for your redacted copy… once you redact, there’s no going back.  SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL.

Also, once you redact, Acrobat — for good measure — will prompt you do the “Examine Document” scrubbing, since if you’re redacting, you probably want the other stuff out too.

CAVEAT: Examine Document also deletes any Bates numbers; so you’ll want to scrub and THEN Bates number.

Not only am I a sysadmin, but I’m also a family man.  I’ve spoken of my love for the Exchange connector which syncs my Treo with my Outlook calendar; but that doesn’t help my wife who would like to know where I am too…

Enter Google Calendar.

Both my wife and I have Google acounts which allows us to share our calendars.  I can find out where she is and she can find out where I am.  It’s a nice complement to the calendar that’s stuck on the fridge when I’m not near the fridge.

However, it’s been a hassle double-entering my stuff.. once in Outlook and once in Google Calendar (or GCal for you hipsters).

Companion Link software, maker of many fine sync products, had an Outlook to GCal sync program, and I ponied up the $20 or $30 for it, and it worked for awile… but things got horribly out of synch and I ended up with like 7 copies of birthdays and other recurring appointments on my Outlook calendar, so I sidelined CompanionLink and basicially let GCal wither on the vine.

But no longer!  Google themselves came out with an Outlook / GCal sync tool, and so far, I like it a lot.  It’s a small app that sits in your tray and it snychs up your calendars on a given schedule.  (Default is every 120 minutes.)

Whaty’s also nice is it allows for one-way sync… so I push my Outlook calendar out to my GCal and my wife knows (within two hours) where I’ll be.

Handy!

There’s a new bit of malware out there going by the name “MonaRonaDona” and it basicially infects your PC, changes Internet Explorer’s title bar to announce itself and does a few other more or less benign things. It’s designed so that you Google the name and buy a piece of anti-malware for $40 which disables it.

The anti-malware program does, in fact, disable MonaRonaDona… and that’s all it does. Nothing else.

The good folks over at DSL Reports’ Security Forum have put together a sure-fre way to clean your system without shelling out the 40 bucks.

Get the details at this link:

MonaRonaDona removal

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20088377-

The oddest things so far is no one seems to know how you get infected in the first place… so remain vigilant, don’t open emails that you don’t recognize, and certainly don’t do that with attachments.

Save early, save often.

One of the developers from Tumblr has come up with a new service: Instapaper.

The site basically acts as “to-read” list. As you surf the net, you click on a bookmark (which you conveniently place in your links bar) and that page gets added to your “to-read” list; something that’s interesting but you don’t have time to spend on it right now.

One of the great things about the Net is its breadth of information; and one of the worst things about the Net is its breadth of things. While reading one article, you stumble upon another link to something that is applicable not to the subject at hand, but something else you’re doing… but now’s not the time to go down that road. So you click on your Instapaper bookmarklet and know that you can go back to it easily.

There’s no registration necessary. You don’t even have to set up a password (tho you probably should).

The service is free, but as they point out in their FAQ: “Instapaper isn’t meant for permanent, long-term archival of everything you’ve ever wanted to read. And while best efforts are made, your data’s integrity is not 100% guaranteed here. This is for temporary storage of links you’d like to read.”

I’ve found the site to be incredibly handy and thought I’d do my part to spread the word.

Here at the Firm, we limit our users mailboxes to keep our Exchange server humming along. We use an archiving program to keep older mail around in accordance with our document retention policies.

One of the things we mandate is that Outlook purges its Deleted Items folder upon closing. We’ve had users maintain 3800 (unread!) messages in their deleted items folder and then complain loudly when they run out of mailbox space citing that they might need something in their Deleted Items folder. (Of course, this runs counter to the design of the Deleted Items folder is — short term storage for items no longer needed. Long term storage should be used in either the users’ folder or the server’s file system.)

These complaints have subsided now that everyone has had a chance to live with the policy… but there are still some times when people delete something, close Outlook and then realize they can’t get it back.

(Let’s assume the archiver is off-line.)

Outlook Web Access can come to the rescue and recover some of the lost items as long as it was deleted recently. Stuff deleted a year ago is long gone.

Log in to Outlook Web Access. (This works in Outlook Web Access 2000 and 2003. Screenshots are from OWA 2003)

Click on the OPTIONS button at the bottom of the screen (it’s the last icon on the right)

Scroll all the way down the page until you see “Click View Items to view and recover items that were recently emptied from your Deleted Items folder. Recovered items will be moved back to your Deleted Items folder.”

Click the “View Items” button and you should be able to browse thru a collection of recently deleted items.

Any item you restore will go back into your Deleted Items folder, where you can then recover it and put it where it belongs.

Bacon saved.

Just a quick post to trumpet the virtues of the Exchange Wireless Connector and how it’s helped us at Cuyler Burk.

I chose my SmartPhone, a Treo 700w, because my previous PDA (a Dell Axim) was Windows Mobile based, and I was familiar with it.  I also knew that Cuyler Burk,  as an all Microsoft shop — sure, we have a few Linux boxes (this blog is sitting on one) — that Exchange 2003 would support my phone out of the box.  I didn’t realize how cool it is.

Now, any calendar item I add at the office shows up on my phone automatically.  Any contact I add to my phone pops up in Outlook and I don’t have to do anything.   Mail just streams to the phone without me having to hit send/receive (like I do with my IMAP based mail accounts) and I can send to internal mailing lists, which is something I can’t do through our internet gateway…

Over the past year many of our attorneys have gotten Windows Mobile based phones.  Deployment takes only a few minutes — copy and install the remote certificate and type in their username and password, and they’re off.  They love that their secretaries can schedule calls and appointments and they just shows up on their home screen as upcoming events.

To sweeten the deal, this was all bundled with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, so we didn’t have to spend an extra thousand bucks on the Blackberry Connector.

Plus — if the phone is broken — just get a new one… since everything is stored in Exchange, the new phone will automatically sync itself up and all your contacts, speed dials, appointments, etc. are right back to where you expect them.  Gone are the days of losing your address book when you lost your phone.

So, if you’re running SBS2003, I would highly recommend taking a look at a Windows Mobile based device for your next phone — you might wonder how you lived without it.  I know I do.

(This sounds a bit shill-y, but I can assure you I’m a big fan of this technology.  Next time, I’ll rant a little bit about my Treo 700w.)

Former Cuyler Burk file clerk, Andrew Durkin, had another 59 seconds of fame last week as one of his compositions “Anger Management Classes” (as performed by his band, Industrial Jazz Group) was featured as bumper music on NPRs Talk of the Nation.

Imagined Monologue: “An Inarticulate, Self-Consciously Ironic Voice of His Twentysomething Generation Makes an Opening Statement for His Client in a Corporate-Fraud Case.”

“Over the next few weeks, the prosecution is going to trot out a lot of so-called “experts” and “witnesses” and “my bitter ex-girlfriends”—kidding! Except how crazy if Kelly or Jennifer actually did come in and was like, “You should totally vote guilty…”? Anyway, I urge you to ignore them as you would a call on your cell from your parents badgering you about getting a real job, until you finally go to law school more out of resentment and desperation than any real desire to study the justice system and make a difference, even though, sure, given the choice of making a difference or not, I’d take the former, but still …”

A few versions ago, MS Word came under fire for including personal information with every document. The registered user’s name, company and other info was available in the metadata of the document.

MS answered the hue and cry by giving users the option of removing this personal information. We think this is generally a good idea, tho it gets in the way try to collaborate using Tracked Changes.

Before saving a documents with tracked changes, make sure that the “Remove personal information…” option is UNCHECKED.

That will ensure that your tracked changes are saved and passed along; lest they be lumped together with all other changes, making user tracking impossible.