I knew that you could get the MAC address of a network interface in Windows, by using “ipconfig /all“. Just discovered, this new command (that only works in Windows XP) “getmac“.
Exchange 2003 : Logging
If you are trying to troubleshoot an issue with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and need more verbose logging, you can get additional logging by
1) Launch Exchange System Manager
2) Drill down to the server in the Administrative Groups
3) Right click on server and click on properties
4) Open the “Diagnostic Logging” tab and enable logging on any of the exchange modules
You can check the logs from the event viewer.
Chicago Marathon 2006 : Thoughts..
It was a blast to see the runners braving the 45F weather to run the 2006 Chicago Marathon. I signed up for the marathon, but didn’t run it because I didn’t get to train (something called a job took up all my free time 🙂 ). I took a ton of pictures, but the two below convey the spirit of the day
Freeeeezing 🙂
You go girl!!!
C# tools
Here’s all you need to start dwelling in C#
.NET Library from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa731542.aspx
Visual C# Express from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/
Programming : C#
I have been itching to program in C# for a long time now.. finally got a chance to try it out due to requirement at work. Here’s a small snippet of code that does a bunch of things
1) Opens a directory and get a list of files in it
2) Parses the file name into multiple variables
3) Connects to Active Directory and gets properties for a user
4) Creates an error file with list of errors.
5) Creat an output file in csv format.
For the programming gurus out there, this should be pretty easy :).. I am sure that there are tons of errors in the way, I wrote the code, but this is a beginning :).
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.DirectoryServices;
namespace sortAssetData
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Create a Log file and output file
System.IO.TextWriter infoLog = new System.IO.StreamWriter(“sortAssetDataLog.txt”);
System.IO.TextWriter outputLog = new System.IO.StreamWriter(“finalAssetData.csv”);
// Write the column headers into the output file
outputLog.WriteLine(“Last_Name, First_Name, Display_Name, Batt_Check_Version, Model_Type, Model_Number, Serial_Number, Batt_Manufacturer, Batt_Model, Batt_Serial_Number, Affected”);
// Define the folder where the data files are sitting
string fixDirectoy = “P:\\BatteryCheck_Results”;
// Change working directory to the folder with all the files
System.IO.Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(fixDirectoy);
// Create a directory object to get list of asset files
System.IO.DirectoryInfo tempDirObject = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(fixDirectoy);
// Get list of *.csv files in the asset folder
System.IO.FileInfo[] listOfFiles = tempDirObject.GetFiles(“*.csv”);
// Process each file in the directory
foreach (System.IO.FileInfo tempFile in listOfFiles)
{
// Display the current file that is being processed
System.Console.WriteLine(“Processing : {0}”, tempFile.Name);
infoLog.WriteLine(“Processing : {0}”, tempFile.Name);
infoLog.Flush();
// Split the file name into Domain, Hostname, Username
string tempData = tempFile.Name;
// Removing the .csv at the end of the file name
tempData = tempData.Replace(“.csv”, “”);
string[] sortData = tempData.Split(new Char[] { ‘_’ });
// If file name doesn’t contain 3 records (Domain, ComputerName and UserName), we ignore it
if (sortData.Length != 3)
{
infoLog.WriteLine(“ERROR : Bad file format : {0}”, tempFile.Name);
infoLog.Flush();
continue;
}
// Display the userdata we got from the file name
System.Console.WriteLine(“\nDomain :\t {0}”, sortData[0]);
System.Console.WriteLine(“Computer Name :\t {0}”, sortData[1]);
System.Console.WriteLine(“User Name :\t {0}\n”, sortData[2]);
// Get the users full name from ActiveDirectory
System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher searchUser = new System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher();
searchUser.Filter = String.Format(“(SAMAccountName={0})”, sortData[2]);
searchUser.PropertiesToLoad.Add(“cn”);
searchUser.PropertiesToLoad.Add(“givenname”);
searchUser.PropertiesToLoad.Add(“sn”);
System.DirectoryServices.SearchResult resultFromAD = searchUser.FindOne();
// If the username doesn’t have a AD account, note and skip to the next file
if (resultFromAD == null)
{
System.Console.WriteLine(“ERROR : Bad User name : {0}”, sortData[2]);
infoLog.WriteLine(“ERROR : Bad User name : {0}”, sortData[2]);
infoLog.Flush();
continue;
}
else
{
//Parse the file and write data to the log file and also to the screen
System.IO.StreamReader tempSoureFile = new System.IO.StreamReader(tempFile.Name);
// Read the first line in the file and ignore it
string tempAssetData = tempSoureFile.ReadLine();
// Read the second line and store it to write to outputfile
tempAssetData = tempSoureFile.ReadLine();
string tempUserFirstName = resultFromAD.Properties[“sn”][0].ToString();
string tempUserLastName = resultFromAD.Properties[“givenname”][0].ToString();
string tempUserDisplayName = resultFromAD.Properties[“cn”][0].ToString();
outputLog.WriteLine(“{0},{1},{2},{3}”, tempUserFirstName, tempUserLastName, tempUserDisplayName, tempAssetData);
outputLog.Flush();
System.Console.WriteLine(“User First Name:\t {0}”, tempUserFirstName);
System.Console.WriteLine(“User Last Name:\t\t {0}”, tempUserLastName);
System.Console.WriteLine(“Display Name:\t\t {0}”, tempUserDisplayName);
}
}
System.Console.ReadKey();
infoLog.Close();
outputLog.Close();
}
}
}
Cool Links of the day
Links to some cool projects around the web
Yahoo : Time Capsule : http://timecapsule.yahoo.com/capsule.php
Ms. Dewey : Search Engine with a beatuful host 🙂 : http://www.msdewey.com/ (Hint: As her what her age is 🙂 ).
Microsoft Excel : How to repair "Opening blank file when double clicking on an excel file"
Ran into an interesting problem with troubleshooting an Excel issue. Double clicking on an excel file opened a blank file on the affected machine. I thought it might be something related to the associations and checked them from “Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types” in the Windows Explorer menu. Everything was in order there. I then tried a reinstall of Office (note : would not do this in the future without additional troubleshooting 🙂 ). That didn’t help either. Finally, I gave up and did a Google search, which returned this URL
Did the following according to the post and everything returned to default settings
1) Run Excel with “/safe” option.
2) Click on “help -> Detect and Repair” from the Excel menu
3) Close Excel for repair
Thx Google.
New cuisine..
We went to Ros Dashen, an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate a friends upcoming birthday. For those that haven’t tried Ethiopian food and like spicy cuisine, I would highly recommend trying it. In addition to the tasty food, the whole experience of sharing the same plate is very interesting. The food is served on top of pancacke like sour bread that you end tearing up and dipping/wiping the food in along with the rest of the folks at the table. Here are two pictures that show, how much we appreciated the food..
nmap : how to scan a network
If you want to scan a network or range of IPs for hosts that are on a network, you can use nmap with the following option
nmap -sL NETWORK/MASK (ex: nmap -sL 192.168.1.0/24)
or
nmap -sL NETWORKRANGE (ex: nmap -sL 192.168.1.0-50)
For a complete reference of nmap capabilities, go to http://insecure.org/nmap/man/.
HOW TO : Blackberry : How to use it as a modem
On popular demand..A lot of people asked me how you can use the BB as a modem, the way I specified in this post. Here’s the link with detailed instructions on how to do this..
Note: Make sure you have an unlimited data plan from your service provider or you can get dinged with a large bill :).