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Recently, I was working on our Cisco 3560E switch. I needed to create a route-map and apply it to an interface for some changes we were planning to make. I was able to create the route-map, but it wouldn’t allow me to apply it to the interface with the “ip policy route-map” command. After doing some research I realized to apply a route-map to an interface for policy-based routing our switch had to be licensed for “IP Services.” The command wasn’t even available, which makes sense being that it wasn’t supported. While upgrading the license; I tried to apply the “ip policy route-map” command again. I did a “sh run int vlan 1” to see if the command was showing up in the config and to my surprise it wasn’t listed!  I went back to the documentation and found the route-map command “set ip default next-hop” was not supported at all on the 3560/3750 switch platforms. I removed this command from my route-map and applied the route-map to the interface and everything seemed to apply correctly. Unfortunately, our whole plan revolved around the ability to use the “set ip default next-hop” command.

So when you are working with Cisco equipment there are at least 3 ways they let you know a command isn’t supported in the IOS:[more]

1. The logical way:  The command isn’t present in IOS and it can’t be used.
2. The illogical way: Allow you to apply a command, but doesn’t prompt you with an error if another “child” command is not supported.  This can only be discovered if you review the configuration and see that the command you entered is nowhere to be found.
3. And what I like to call “The Cisco Way”:  Include the command in the IOS to lead users to believe that the command is supported and works with that IOS/platform all the while not supporting the command in any variation of the IOS/Platform.

After further review, the documentation did have a note that stated the command we needed wasn’t supported on these platforms.  In summary, it is a good idea to fully read any and all documentation on supported/unsupported commands for a platform.  

One of our network consulting clients complained of being unable to use remote logon for shadowing sessions on a terminal server.  Upon testing I was able to use remote logon fine.  I did eventually find a user that I could not shadow.  I received an error, “Access is Denied” when attempting to use remote logon with their session.   Further investigation found that users that had two monitors setup and were using both with remote desktop 7 were the ones I could not remote to.  This had been confusing because sometimes it appeared to work and others it did not.  The customer was in the process of moving all users to a two monitor setup so the problem had been progressively getting worse.  Various forums and Microsoft articles referenced this problem.  Shadowing of dual monitor sessions is not currently supported by Remote Desktop Services Manager.

I had to recreate a terminal server user’s profile recently and they asked me if I could put the “show desktop” shortcut next to their start button.  Usually the icon is there by default as long as the quick launch toolbar is showing.  It was turned on, but the icon wasn’t there. 

I searched for a way to put it back in the quick launch, but I couldn’t come up with anything quick.  I found that you can recreate the icon yourself using notepad.

Open notepad and type the following: [more]

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

Save the file as Show Desktop.scf to a location such as their documents folder.  Drag the file down to the quick launch toolbar, and it works.

To re-execute a recently typed command, retype the first few letters of the command and press F8. The command will expand to the latest command in the history that matches those letters. Press F8 again to keep going back in time. Note that the matching is case sensitive.

If you want to see a list of commands previously typed, just press F7 in the command window to get a menu of selectable commands. [more]

The order of shutdown on a multi-shelf SAN is important. This is especially so for situations where there are Vdisks that span the shelves in the SAN. There is apparently a timestamp (specifically on the MSA 2000 series) that the controller keeps current on each of the drives in the Vdisk set and these must match for the controller to bring the Vdisk online after a power cycle.

You should power off the main controller shelf first, then any secondary shelves so that the timestamps written by the controller will be consistent.

When powering on, power on the secondary shelves first and then the main controller shelf.

There are some four and five finger gestures on the iPad (iOS 4.3) that can be enabled by downloading Apple’s development kit, Xcode. The gestures can be enabled on the iPhone, too, but they seem much less useful on the smaller screen. Xcode costs $5 to download and you have to install it on a Mac, but you do not have to purchase the developer license. This website explains how to download Xcode and enable the gestures. The gestures include:

• Pinching the screen with all five fingers to close an app and return to the home screen
• Quickly switching between apps by swiping four fingers across the screen
• Opening the multitasking bar by swiping four fingers up the screen

Oldversion.com and oldapps.com host old versions of many Windows and Mac programs. A recent example where this came in handy is this. Roboform's latest release no longer exports the full site URL. Roboform even changed the previous version so that it no longer has this feature either.  If you want to migrate to LastPass, you need those URLs. So the old version of Roboform is what you need. Another example is PRTG - It used to be very simple to install and set up. The most recent version is much more powerful, but you have so much setup to do just to do some simple monitoring. Of course, be careful running older versions because there may be security concerns.

A local IT support customer who does CPA work, was getting errors submitting tax returns electronically. They were instructed to install an update to install the new forms needed. During the installation by one of the employees, it stopped responding and only half installed. They had been instructed to reinstall the old version over the current  install then run the update again. I was asked to perform the procedure. Every time I attempted to re-install the older version it would hang and then give me an error that it was the wrong operating system.  I attempted the install from a Windows 2003 and Windows XP system which is how it is normally installed.

After consulting with ProSystems support found that the problem was that the Microsoft installer was trying to run with the installation. The tech said “right after starting the install, open the task manager and kill any instances of MSIEXEC.exe that is running”. I did this and the install ran without any problem. I then apply the updates and it installed the needed updates, using the built in update agent, without any issues.

The nice thing is that when I asked the tech if this was documented anywhere, his response was “nope”.

I came across a problem with OWA where it kept redirecting the external server address to the internal server address (Ex.  Mail.public.com -> servername.domain.dom).
 
After doing some thorough research, I discovered that there is a property in the IIS Metabase file that controls whether or not the server name is always used.  Microsoft KB article 834141 says that “The UseHostName property will instruct IIS to always replace the SERVER_NAME variable with the fully qualified machine name.”  This property is a Boolean value.  Setting this property to false stopped the automatic redirects and kept the external server name in the web browser. [more]
 
In order to edit the metabase, you must use commands with adsutil.vbs.  You must have the site ID of the website you want to edit the value for.  I show in the screen shot below how you can view the log file name in order to determine the site ID number.  I then show the commands used to get and set the UseHostName property for the website.