Kerpau!

So you need to install mtr on FreeBSD but it tries to install X11, Gnome and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t need to go on your Web server? Use these steps to compile mtr on FreeBSD without X windows.

cd /usr/ports/net/mtr
make clean
make -DWITHOUT_X11
make install
/usr/local/sbin/mtr –help

Alternatively, you could edit /etc/make.conf to include “WITHOUT_X11=yes” to get the same result without using the -DWITHOUT_X11 command line option.

In Windows Explorer, hold down the shift key and right-click a file or folder. Select Copy as Path to send the full path name as text to the clipboard. It also works with multiple selects. That is, if you select multiple files/folders by holding down the control or shift key, selecting the Copy as Path menu item will send all of the items’ names to the clipboard - one item per line. Nice! As a tech who is constantly sending and receiving information about files, shares and folders, this is reason enough to upgrade to Vista.

The standard install from Insecure.org won’t run on Windows Vista. However, if you install WinPcap 4.0.1 it runs successfully.

Here is how to tell which USB devices are using USB 1.1 and which USB devices are using USB 2.0. In Computer Management, go to Device Manager. Right-click on Device Manager and select View > Devices by connection. Then expand the USB device nodes until you see one that says Enhanced Host Controller. Devices listed under this node are using USB 2.0. Devices listed under other USB nodes are using USB 1.1.

Configuring an application to retrieve messages from an Exchange Server 2003 using POP3, I kept getting failures. I enabled POP3 authentication diagnostic logging and this event started popping (bad pun) up in the application logs.

Event Type : Error
Event Source : POP3SVC
Event Category : Authentication
Event ID : 1011
Description : Authentication attempt from to User Logon Name has failed with error 0×52e

That event lead me to the following Microsoft KB article which contained the information necessary to resolve the issue.

Users Cannot Log On Using POP3 and the Error 0×80040920 Is Logged

Essentially, it says to use the “DomainName\LogonName\MailboxAlias” format for the user name. It fixed the issue immediately in my case.

To get around this ProFTPD error:

421 No Transfer Timeout (300 seconds): closing control connection.

Set the TimeoutNoTransfer directive to “0″ (disabled).

This particular sysadmin is wrapping up a 70+ hour work week. Ugh! I hope you all had a more relaxing week than I did. Happy SysAdmin day!

The stop error 0×00000077 is a KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR and means that a page of kernel data could not be read into memory from the paging file. Additionally, the parameter 0xC000009D is a STATUS_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED error and is the result of the controller not seeing the hard disk drive.

Some causes of this condition are:

• Outdated or faulty disk controller firmware
• Outdated or faulty disk controller driver
• Bad disk block in the paging file
• Improper SCSI termination
• Loose or bad cabling between the disk(s) and disk controller
• A disk controller error
• Lack of non-paged pool resources

Some possible resolutions to this condition are:

• Update disk controller firmware
• Update disk controller drivers
• Verify cabling between disk(s) and controller
• Verify proper SCSI termination

In all cases you should run a “CHKDSK X: /F /R” to repair any file system errors on the disk. If you have an additional disk on the machine you may want to rebuild the paging file.

Go to System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory > Change and configure No paging file for the existing drive. Select one of the other drives and configure System managed size. This effectively removes the paging file from one disk and creates it on another disk. You may get some warnings regarding the inability to create a dump file when doing this. Just click past them and finish the configuration. Reboot the server when prompted. When the system finishes rebooting, run the CHKDSK X: /F /R command and reboot again when prompted. When the system finishes the CHKDSK process, check the application log for the CHKDSK results and then move the paging file back to the original drive using the previous steps. A successful completion of these steps results in a fresh paging file on a known good file system.

CHKDSK doesn’t create a log file but it does write an entry to the Windows application log.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Winlogon
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001

You would think the system log would be more appropriate. That’s where I looked first. But there I go again…expecting things to make sense. What was I thinking!