Archive for May, 2014
Friday, May 30th, 2014
IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface is a standardized computer interface also accessible remotely via Java applet allowing remote management and monitoring access to PC BIOS. IPMI is a way to manage a computer that may be powered off or otherwise unresponsive by using a network connection to the hardware rather than to an operating system or a keyboard physical / screen login shell. The IPMI server standard was introduced by Intel and nowadays supported by more than 200 computer vendors i.e. – Super Micro, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Dell etc.
Intelligent Platform Management Interface is an open, industry-standard interface that was designed for the management of server systems over network. IPMI interfaces by various vendors have also Virtual Media support (i.e. – Operating System ISO files could be mounted remotely to a Virtual CD / DVD rom and you can approach installing a bare-metal server without physical presense to it). Just like Power Off / Restart, BIOS Entrance and Virtual Media access is done directly through a web-browser interface over the network or the internet.
ILO – stands for Integrated Lights-Out and is HP Proliant servers remote console to PC / server physical screen. ILO is server integrated chip on HP servers and doesn't need further installations. It gives you a web console using Java showing you server screen just like there is a Monitor connected to the server it is precious for remote system administration purposes as often when there is no SSH or Remote Desktop to server you can see directly whether the server has completed hanged and try to recover or see a failing hardware notification on the screen to a server with a partially accessible services. Using ILO console access to an HP server one can have a BIOS access remotely to machines already colocated in data canters. In other words ILO is HP's variation of IPMI remote interface also known under business buzz word IPKVM.
DRAC (iDRAC)- Dell's Remote Access Controller is interface card from Dell Inc. offering remote access (out-of-band) management facilities – i.e. DRAC is Dell's variant of HP's ILO – an implementation of Intel's IPMI out-of-band standard. DRAC is also giving you remote way to access no other means accessible server on a software level. Interesting and nice things is Dell provides their DRAC source code, so if you're a developer you can learn how DRAC technology works on a lower level.
ILO, iDRAC (Dell's new generation DRAC for Blade servers) and ILO's remote management interfaces's (IPMI tools) most valuable features is it allows remote system Power On / Shutdown and Remote Restart while monitoring the server screen (hardware output) messages and allowing you see critical hardware issue messages on pre-OS boot time, failure with memory, hard disks etc. and remote interface to do BIOS tuning.
Tags: bios, DRAC, hardware, hp, ILO, IPMI, level, network, Remote Access Controller, server screen, Super Micro
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various | No Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2014
Earlier I've blogged about helpful web developer or a web hosting system administrator Web Browser plugins . Among the list of useful plugins for debugging sent / received web content on your desktop (HTTPWatchm, HTTPFox, Yslow etc.), I've found another one called Fiddler.
Telerik's Fiddler is a Browser plugin and a Windows Desktop application to monitor HTTP and HTTPS outbound web traffic and report and provide you with various information useful for:
- Performance Testing
- HTTP / HTTPS
- Traffic recording
- Security Testing
- Web Session Manipulation
- Encode Decode web traffic
- Convert strings from / to Base64, Hex, DeflatedSAML etc.
- Log all URL requests originating from all opened browsers on your Desktop
- Decrypt / encrypt HTTPS traffic using man in the middle techniques
- Show tuning details for accessed web pages
Fiddler is available to install and use as a desktop application (requires .NET 2) or install as a browser plugin. Perhaps the coolest Fiddler feature from my perspective is its decrypt / encrypt in Base64 and Hex available from TextWizard menu. The tool is relatively easy to use for those who have experience in web debugging, for novice here is a video explaining tool's basics.
Fiddler doesn't have a Linux build yet but it is possible to run it also on Linux using Mono Framework and a few hacks.
A good native Linux / UNIX alternatives to Fiddler are Nettool, Charles Proxy, Paros Proxy and Web Scarab.
Tags: blogged, browser plugin, com, debugging, HTTPS, Linux, net, proxy, tool, traffic, use, web content, www
Posted in Everyday Life, Linux, Various, Web and CMS, Windows | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 28th, 2014
If you need to use Virtual Machine to run some testing on heterogenous Operating Systems and you have chosen VMWare as a Virtual Machine. You will soon notice some of Virtual Machines functionality like copy between host operating system and Virtual Machine, true fullscreen mode and most importantly Copy paste between your host operating system and VMWare is not working. I'm not too much into Virtualization these days so for me it was truely shocking that a proprietary software like VMWare, claimed to be the best and most efficient Virtual Machine nowadays is not supporting copy / paste, fullscreen and copy between host and guest OS. For those arguing why I'm using VMWare at all as it is proprietary and there is already free software Virtual Machines like QEMU and Oracle's VirtualBox its simply because now I have the chance to install and use VMWare 9 Enterprise on my work place at HP with a free Corporate license – in other words I'm using VMWare just for the sake of educating myself and would always recommend VirtualBox for those looking for good substitute free alternative to VMWare.
Before trying out VMWare, I tried Virtualbox to emulate Linux on my HP work PC running Windows with VirtualBox I was having issues with keyboard not working (because of lack of support of USB, no full screen support and lack of copy / paste between OS-es), I've just recently understood this is not because Virtualbox is bad Virtualization solution but because I forgot to install VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack which allows support for USB, enables copy paste and full screen support. The equivalent to Virtualbox Oracle VM VirtualBox in VMWare world is called VMWare-Tools and once the guest operating system is installed inside VMWare VM, its necessary to install vmware-tools to enable better screen resolution and copy paste.
In Windows Virtual Machine installation of vmware-tools is pretty straight forward you go through VMWare's menus
VM -> Install Vmware-tools
follow the instructions and you're done, however as always installing VMWare-tools on Linux is little bit more complicated you need to run few commands from Linux installed inside the Virtual Machine to install vmware-tools. Here is how vmware-tools is installed on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint and rest of Debian based operating systems:
1. Install Build essentials and gcc You need to have this installed some developer tools as well as GCC compiler in order for the vmware-tools to compile a special Linux kernel module which enables extra support (integration) between the VMWare VM and the installed inside VM Linux distro
apt-get install --yes build-essential gcc
...
2. Install appropriate Linux headers corresponding to current Linux OS installed kernel
apt-get install --yes linux-headers-$(uname -r)
....
3. Mount CD (Virtual) Content to obtain the vmware-tools version for your Linux
Be sure to have first checked from VMWare menus on menus VM -> Intall Vmware Tools
This step is a little bit strange but just do it without too much questioning …
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
umount /media/cdrom0/
mount /media/cdrom
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom/
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/
Note that /dev/sr0, might already be mounted and sometimes it might be necessary to unmount it first (don't remember exactly if I unmounted it or not)
4. Copy and Untar VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz
cp -rpf /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp/
tar -zxvvf VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz
...
5. Run vmware-tools installer
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl
You will be asked multiple questions you can safely press enter to answer with default settings to all settings, hopefully if all runs okay this will make VMWare Tools installed
Creating a new VMware Tools installer database using the tar4 format.
Installing VMware Tools.
In which directory do you want to install the binary files?
[/usr/bin]
What is the directory that contains the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/)?
[/etc]
What is the directory that contains the init scripts?
[/etc/init.d]
In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?
[/usr/sbin]
In which directory do you want to install the library files?
[/usr/lib/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/lib/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes]
In which directory do you want to install the documentation files?
[/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program
is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you
want? [yes]
The installation of VMware Tools 9.2.0 build-799703 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".
Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure it by
invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you want
this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]
Initializing…
Making sure services for VMware Tools are stopped.
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Guest operating system daemon: done
Unmounting HGFS shares: done
Guest filesystem driver: done
[EXPERIMENTAL] The VMware FileSystem Sync Driver (vmsync) is a new feature that creates backups of virtual machines. Please refer to the VMware Knowledge Base for more details on this capability. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no]
Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed…
make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel
Searching for GCC…
Detected GCC binary at "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6".
The path "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6" appears to be a valid path to the gcc binary.
Would you like to change it? [no]
Searching for a valid kernel header path…
Detected the kernel headers at "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include".
The path "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include" appears to be a valid path
to the 3.2.0-4-amd64 kernel headers.
Would you like to change it? [no]
The vmblock enables dragging or copying files between host and guest in a
Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no] yes
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmblock-only'
No X install found.
Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
Checking acpi hot plug done
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Switching to guest configuration: done
VM communication interface: done
VM communication interface socket family: done
File system sync driver: done
Guest operating system daemon: done
The configuration of VMware Tools 8.6.10 build-913593 for Linux for this
running kernel completed successfully.
You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take
effect.
You can now run VMware Tools by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd" from the
command line or by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox" from the command line
during an X server session.
To enable advanced X features (e.g., guest resolution fit, drag and drop, and
file and text copy/paste), you will need to do one (or more) of the following:
1. Manually start /usr/bin/vmware-user
2. Log out and log back into your desktop session; and,
3. Restart your X session.
Enjoy,
–the VMware team
Found VMware Tools CDROM mounted at /mnt. Ejecting device /dev/sr0 …
.To make sure vmware-tools compiled modules are loaded into Linux kernel inside VM, restart the Virtual Machine. Once Linux boots again and you login to gnome-terminal to check what is vmware-tools status (e.g. if properly loaded) run:
service vmware-tools status
vmtoolsd is running
This method of installing works on Debian 7 (Wheezy) but same steps should work on any Ubuntu and rest of Debian derivatives. For Redhat (RPM) based Linux distributions to install vmware-tools after mounting cdrom drive following above instructions you will have an rpm package instead of .tar.gz archive so all you have to do is install the rpm, e.g. launch smth. like:
rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.i386.rpm
Cheers 😉
Tags: checking, copy paste, Debian, Debian Ubuntu Linux Mint, directory, fullscreen, host, kernel, mount dev, need, operating systems, proprietary software, running, testing, usr bin, virtual machines, working
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 27th, 2014
If you're a Linux administrator you're probably already quite used to watch command which allows to execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen. Watch is very useful to run a specific command every XXX seconds, and see the results constantly updated. watch is very useful to keep an eye on growing files, i.e.: lets say keep an eye on SQL dump:
watch "ls -al some-dump-file.sql"
or keep an eye on how a directory keeps growing in real time
watch -n 5 "du -hsc /tmp"
Above command would tell watch to refresh du -hsc /tmp on a 5 seconds interval.
So a logical question pops up "Is there a command line equivalent to Linux's watch?" In Windows there is no native command equivalent of Linux watch but there is one liner bat (Batch) script to equivalent to emulate Linux watch in Windows. The Watch like script in Windows OS looks like so:
@ECHO OFF
:loop
tasklist timeout /t 2
goto loop
Use notepad and paste above batch script to any file and save it as whateverfile.bat, running it will make all processes to get listed occuring every 2 seconds (/t 2 – is an argumeent telling the loop to expire on every 2 seconds).
Modify the script to monitor whatever Windows command you like 🙂
Enjoy
Tags: command, eye, liner, Linux, logical question, loop, real time, running, script, Watch, Windows
Posted in Everyday Life, Programming, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 27th, 2014
When I opened firefox I was offered that firefox cleans some data. Pressing on it took a long so I killed firefox process from Windows taskmanager (taskmgr). . Next time Firefox was started I got the error (warning):
Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible"
Firefox version is 29.0.1.
Once the dialog, Firefox fails to further open. To fix Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible press windows-key+R to invoke <Open program prompt and type in:
%appdata%Mozilla
In explorer Window that will pop=up rename the folder labelled "Firefox" to something like old-Firefox.
On next start of firefox, you will be offered to recrate "the missiong profile and it will force Firefox to re-create profile.
If you want to import some of your old data into the new profile afterwards: Recovering important data from an old profile check Recovering important data from an old profile Another approach is to to go to Firefox profile folder and delete profiles.ini, this will also make firefox recreate the file on its next start. Enjoy ! 🙂
Tags: data, dialog, Firefox, import, make, Open, pop, process, something, version, Windows
Posted in Everyday Life, Firefox, Various, Windows | 6 Comments »
Monday, May 26th, 2014
Out of a sudden today after running Malware Bytes – Free Anti-Malware & Internet Security Software, and after it found some Malware (Pup.Optional.Opencandy) and removed it it WI-FI internet on my work computer HP Elitebook 8470p mysteriously stopped working.
That's quite nasty because today I'm working from Home – well known among Hewlett Packard employees under WFH abbreviation. I couldn't connect normally to my home Access Point and tried pinging Google from command line just to get an error:
Transmit Failed: General Failure
and first I thought it is a wi-fi router related problem and restarted my WIFI Router – D-Link DI524. As I could normally connect to the WIFI and I see there is an internet IP assigned running:
ipconfig /all
...
Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 3C-A9-F4-4C-E7-98
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::5d2f:97b8:9e1a:2b13%63(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.159(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : May 23, 2014 14:19:01 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : May 30, 2014 14:32:49 PM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 1094494708
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-19-CB-1A-5D-A4-5D-36-5A-EB-84
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
192.168.2.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
As you see in above output I have notebook IP, default gateway and DNS IP assigned – i.e. all seems fine, so as I got General Failure from pinging the Internet in order to make sure my Linux router is not the bottleneck I tried pinging Default GW
C:UsersGeorgi> ping 192.168.2.1 Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
Ping statistics for 192.168.2.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)
Just to realize I'm continually getting General Failure error …
I tried trying to renew IPs, to make sure there is no some kind of IP assignment conflict with my other WIFI connected devices,reflushing DNS and resetting WinSock stack, hoping this could help:
> ipconfig /renew
> ipconfig /flushdns
> netsh winsock reset
Then I tried restarting the PC a couple of times, but unfortunately none of those helped the shitty error:
PING: Transmit failed. General Failure
continued …
I was totally out of idea .. and red some people managed to fix the issue after booting Windows into Safe mode with Networking. I tried booting in Safe mode, but as Hard Drive data is encrypted with Bitlocker encryption I was asked about some kinf of Serial Key – which I don't have at hand – hence I couldn't boot into Safe mode …
Here is moment to say even loopback device was returning "General Failure"!
I tried even connecting the laptop directly into my homelan with UTP cable, but though everything got connected, there was no local network and internet. I tried even connecting via Vivacom's mobile network 3G modem and even there I got the "General Failure" error …
Running out of options, I decided it might be that Malware Bytes broke something during Malware removal hence I put out back Quarantined Malware files – but this didn't solve it either.
Finally I found this post and this thread talking that reason for "General Failure" might be firewall related. After checking my firewall settings in Windows Firewall and Advanced Security, surprisingly I realized everything related to firewall – e.g. Default Profile, Inbound, Outbound connections are Turned off!!!
I switched everything back and my Internet and local connection came back! THANKS GOD! Pfuu, now I can continue working. It seems HP work computers are patched with software / configured to not allow Internet connection in case if Firewall is Off. If you happen to be an HP Employee and you get the PING: Transmit failed. General Failure, be sure the first place to check is whether Windows Firewall is enabled? – if not enable it and this will solve your connectivity issues. Cheers ! 🙂
Tags: data, default gateway, General Failure, help, hp, Internet, ipconfig flushdns, Lease Obtained, Malware, Networking, Physical Address, ping, problem, Safe, solution, Windows, Wireless Network Connection, working
Posted in System Administration, Windows | 3 Comments »
Friday, May 23rd, 2014
If you happen to have the rare case of having a hung MAC OS X application and you're coming from a Linux / Windows background you will be certainly wonderhing how to kill Mac OS X hung application.
In Mac OS the 3 golden buttons to kill crashed application are:
COMMAND + OPTION + ESCAPE
Command + Option + Escape
while pressed simultaneously is the Mac Computer equivalent of Windows CTRL + ALT + DEL
Holding together COMMAND + OPTION + ESCAPE on MAC OS brings up the Force Quit Window showing and letting you choose between the list of open applications. To close freezed MAC application, choose it and Press the Force Quit Button this will kill immediately that application.
To directly end application without invoking the choose Force Quit Window menu, to force a hanging app quit right click on its icon in Dock (CTRL + Click) and choose "Force Quit” from context menu.
A little bit more on why applications hung in MAC OS. Each application in MAC OS has its event queue. Event queue is created on initial application launch, event queue is buffer that accepts input from system (could be user input from kbd or mouse, messages passed from other programs etc.). Program is hanging when system detects queued events are not being used.
Other reasons for Mac OS hanging program is whether you're attaching detaching new hardware peripherals (i.e. problems caused by improper mount / unmounts), same hang issues are often observed on BSD and Linux. Sometimes just re-connecting (mouse, external hdd etc.) resolves it.
Program hungs due to buggy software are much rarer in Macs just like in IPhones and Ipads due to fact mac applications are very well tested until published in appstore.
Issues with program hungs in Mac sometimes happen after "sleep mode" during "system wake" function – closing, opening macbook. If a crashed program is of critical importance and you don't want to "Force Quit" with COMMAND + OPTION + ESC. Try send PC to sleep mode for a minute or 2 by pressing together OPTION + COMMAND + EJECT.
An alternative approach to solve hanging app issue is to Force-quit Finder and Dock to try that, launch Terminal
And type there:
# killall Dock
Other useful to know Mac OS keyboard combination is COMMAND + OPTION + POWER – Hold together Command and Option and after a while press Power – This is a shortcut to instruct your Mac PC to reboot.
Tags: application, BSD, case, close, event, external hdd, Force Quit, Force Quit Window, kill, Linux, linux windows, MAC, Mac Computer, new hardware, Press, program, queue, rare case, Restart, sleep, system
Posted in Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Mac OS X, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
I'm doing another server services decomissioning and part of decomissioning plan is: Removing application and all related scripts from related machines (FTP, RSYNC, …). In project documentation I found a list with Cron enabled shell scripts:
#Cron tab excerpt:
1,11,21,31,41,51 * * * */webservices/tools/scripts/rsync_portal_sync.sh
that has to be deleted, however there was nowhere mentioned under what kind of credentials (with what kind of user) are the cron scripts running? Hence I had to look up all users that has cronjobs and find inside each user's cronjobs whether respective script is set to run. Herein I will explain shortly how I did that.
Cronjobs by default has few locations from where cronjobs are setupped depending on their run time schedule. First place I checked for the scripts is
/etc/crontabs
# cat /etc/crontabs SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/lib/news/bin
MAILTO=root
#
# check scripts in cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly, and cron.monthly
#
-*/15 * * * * root test -x /usr/lib/cron/run-crons && /usr/lib/cron/run-crons >/dev/null 2>&1
59 * * * * root rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly
14 4 * * * root rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.daily
29 4 * * 6 root rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.weekly
44 4 1 * * root rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.monthly
I was not really user via what user is shell script run, therefore I looked first if someone doesn't set the script to run via crontab's standard locations for Daily, Hourly,Weekly and Monthly cronjobs:
a) Daily set cron jobs are in:
/etc/cron.daily/
b) Hourly set cron jobs:
/etc/cron.hourly
c) Weekly cron jobs are in:
/etc/cron.weekly/
d) Monthly cron jobs:
/etc/cron.monthly
There is also a location read by crontab for all Software (package distribution) specific cronjobs – all run under root user privileges.:
e) Software specific script cron jobs are in:
/etc/cron.d/
As the system has about 327 users in /etc/passwd, checking each user's cronjob manually with:
# crontab -u UserName -l
was too much time consuming thus it is a good practice to list
/var/spool/cron/*
directory and to see which users has cron jobs defined
# ls -al /var/spool/cron/*
-rw——- 1 root root 11 2007-07-09 17:08 /var/spool/cron/deny
/var/spool/cron/lastrun:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 2014-05-22 11:15 .
drwx—— 4 root root 120 2008-02-25 15:45 ..
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 0 2014-05-22 04:15 cron.daily
/var/spool/cron/tabs:
total 8
drwx—— 2 root root 72 2014-04-03 03:43 .
drwx—— 4 root root 120 2008-02-25 15:45 ..
-rw——- 1 root root 4901 2014-04-03 03:43 root
/var/spool/cron – is crond (/usr/bin/cron/)'s spool directory.
# ls -al /var/spool/cron/tabs/ total 8
drwx------ 2 root root 72 2014-04-03 03:43 .
drwx------ 4 root root 120 2008-02-25 15:45 ..
-rw------- 1 root root 4901 2014-04-03 03:43 root
Above output shows only root superuser has defined crons.
Alternative way to check all user crontabs is via quick Linux one liner shell script show all user cron jobs
for i in $(cat /etc/passwd | sed -e "s#:# #g" | awk '{ print $1 }'); do
echo "user $i --- crontab ---";
crontab -u $i -l 2>&1 >/dev/null;
echo '----------';
done|less
Note that above short script has to run with root user. Enjoy 🙂
Tags: checking, cron, cron jobs, etc passwd, jobs, kind, lib, Linux, root, root root, run, script, scripts, show, spool, time consuming, total, var
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014
In Linux to check uptime there is the uptime command, so how is it possible to check your system uptime – e.g. check when was last time Windows host was rebooted?
Or in other words what is Windows server equivalent to Linux's uptime command?
To check uptime on Windows OS, there is the:
net statistics server
command a shorter reference to this command is
net stats srv
To run it quickest way is to press Windows (button)+r type cmd.exe and exec command in Windows command prompt:
C:UsersGeorgi>net statistics server
Server Statistics for \SM07862
Statistics since 21.05.2014 09:55:21
Sessions accepted 1
Sessions timed-out 0
Sessions errored-out 0
Kilobytes sent 0
Kilobytes received 0
Mean response time (msec) 0
System errors 0
Permission violations 0
Password violations 0
Files accessed 0
Communication devices accessed 0
Print jobs spooled 0
Times buffers exhausted
Big buffers 0
Request buffers 0
The command completed successfully.
C:UsersGeorgi>
Statistics since 21.05.2014 09:55:21 – shows when system booted last time, so to check the difference between current time and when system booted last – you need to check current time with time command
C:UsersGeorgi>time
The current time is: 16:59:26,60
Enter the new time:
Alternative command to check when Windows system booted is:
C:UsersGeorgi>systeminfo|findstr "System Boot Time"
System Boot Time: 21.05.2014, 09:54:11
System Manufacturer: HP
System Model: ProLiant BL460c G7
System Type: x64-based PC
System Directory: C:Windowssystem32
Boot Device: DeviceHarddiskVolume1
System Locale: de;German (Germany)
Time Zone: (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
C:UsersGeorgi>
If you want to check Windows boot time "the Windows way" through the GUI, launch Windows Task Manager – run taskmgr command and go to Performance tab
Tags: buffers, check, command, current time, GUI, How to, last, last time, microsoft windows, net, Print, server, Server Statistics, sessions, statistics, system, system boot time, time, Windows
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 20th, 2014
For 5th time since I both my ZTE – Blade III Smartphone – Android OS powered mobile, my Phone Contacts disappear. This is pretty annoying and I'm more and more convinced Android is not yet really ready for the masses..
I've enabled on Phone Sync my contacts with Google but even though I can see all my mobile phones visible via – http://gmail.com/contacts/, my attempts to use Android's:
Settings -> Account & Sync -> Gmail -> (Sync Contacts and Sync people details
– to synchronize Gmail Phone and E-mail Contacts to Phone from Gmail did not produced a positive result.
To Solve the situation earlier I've used on multiple times Contacts Sync Fix – Tool to help fix some (not all) of the causes of "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly." message from Google contacts sync. However this time Contacts Sync Fix tool did not revert back my missing Phone Contacts.
I googled to see what kind of Phone Contacts recovery software is there and stumbled on Wondershare Dr. Fone – World’s 1st Andorid, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch data recovery software for personal users. Here is what Dr. Fone does:
- Recover data from Andorid and iOS devices, iCloud backup and iTunes backup (including encrypted one).
- Available to recover messages, contacts, photos, videos, notes, call history, calendars, voicemail, voice memos, reminders, bookmarks and other documents.
- Recover App data like WhatsApp, Instagram, Flickr, iPhoto, iMovie, Kindle, etc.
- Compatible with the latest iOS 7 and supports iPhone 5S/5C/5/4S/4/3GS, all iPads and iPod touch 5/4.
- Regain lost data due to deletion, device crashed or broken, OS bugs, device loss, jailbreak, iOS upgrade and factory.
Dr. Fone is proprietary software and quite expensive costs a lot 50$ bucks! But Cracked versions are circulating the net on many torrents, there is a cracked version of Dr. Fone on http://ThePiratebay.se
Dr. Fone is very easy to use, to recover my lost Android Phones data, I had to:
1. Connect my ZTE through USB cable to a Windows PC (where I have installed Dr. Fone
2. Scan the device for my lost data, through the program GUI interface (This make a lot of data be seen including all my Videos, Pictures, Contacts etc.)
3. Press the recover data button and choose a destination folder where found files to recover will be stored.
A Note to make here is, Dr.Fone requieres that USB Debugging has to be Switched on from the Phone (on Android version 3.0 to 4.1) – "Settings" -> Click "Developer options" -> Check "USB debugging".
On Android 4.2 and newer to activate USB Debugging – "Settings -> About Phone -> Developer Options -> (Check) USB Debugging"
Found Phone Contacts, are exported into .CSV file, HTML and VCard. So to import back my recovered contacts from my Mobile, I transferred VCard file extension (VCard.VCF) into my Mobile Phone via attached USB cable and from Phone's File Manager clicked on VCard.vcf to import my contacts.
So far so good, I had all my Phone Contacts recovered and again accessible from Android's PhoneBook app, however because of import for some reasons I had many of contacts Imported and visible now multiple times, as well as a lot of junk contacts like just Phone Numbers without names. To resolve that I first thought of manually reviewing and deleting only junk and duplicate addressbook contacts. As I didn't know how to select and delete multiple Phone Contacts? – using the phone default Phone Contacts app, I googled and found the Contact Remover app – a tiny program listing all your contacts letting you choose only those who would like to delete.
Though this program was working, Contact selection was lagging and was really irritating, so I googled further to see if there is no Application to delete duplicate phone contacts in Android, finding – Duplicate Contacts – Simple tool to see and delete duplicate contacts.
Once deleting the duplicate Phones (I had most of the phones occuring 5 times and there were number of email addresses wrongly parsed and imported into Contacts. I just had to delete a number of junky names but happily all my Phone Contacts were succesfully recovered! 🙂
Now because I already had a Contacts set to Sync with Google, once the Junky multiple duplicate contacts were stored on the Phone they started synchronizing with Google Contacts.
After synchronization was completed to clean my Google Account stored Phone number names and Contacts – since some time Google introduced a special functionality for that – Find and Merge Duplicates.
For future to Keep my contacts in Ordered and backupped to prevent such a complex future exercises, I was recommended MyPhoneExplorer by a colleague. MyPhoneExplorer supports backup (Export and Import) your Phone Contacts via USB, Bluetooth or even WI-FI on multiple devices, starting from Android Tablets, Android Mobile Phones and even old Nokia Symbian or other archaic Alcatel, LG etc. OS-ed mobile phones.
Tags: Android Phones, attempts, Contacts Sync Fix, cracked version, CSV, data, destination, Found Phone Contacts, Google Account, HTML, Huawei, import, LG, lot, multiple, multiple times, OS, phone, Phone Contacts, Press, proprietary software, recovery, revert, software, succesfully, tiny program, USB, ZTE
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