For a little back-story, we migrated from a FreeBSD based print server using LPD to a Windows print server running 2008 server approximately 2 years ago.  The benefits of that switch were many and immediately apparent, with easier queue generation and ease of upgrading and installing drivers, giving us better control over our printers.  Deploying those printers to our student use machines (which utilize roaming profiles) using group policy and scripts turned out to not work as well as we had hoped, but that’s another story for another time.  Our old FreeBSD server had a name which fit with the server naming scheme of the time, and it also had a DNS cname alias.  When we were doing the testing and migration to the new Windows box, we decided to give the server a regular name, and then just move the cname from the old box to the new.  This seemed to be a marvelous idea, as we’d be able to test the new production box before migrating our users to using it, and then when we moved the cname, it meant all of our users wouldn’t need to delete and remap their printers.  This all worked fairly well after finding that we had to create the DisableStrictNameChecking registry key in order for our server to respond to both it’s real name and it’s cname.  This worked swimmingly well for us, at least until we installed SP2.

The SP install went fine, everything completed as normal.  Before I left to go home, I decided to make a spot check that printing was still working, and I found that both of the network printers I had added to my machine using the alias were showing as offline.  When I tried to get their properties or open the queues from my client machine, I received an error stating that I may have a network problem or the printer may have been deleted.  The printers I had mapped to the same machine using the actual server name were working fine.  If I browsed to \\servername, I could see all the shares, and then if I clicked the “view remote printers” button (this was a Windows 7 client), all of the printers would be shown.  However, if I did the same thing using \\alias, I would see all the shares but after clicking to view the remote printers, none of the printers would appear.  It was as though the actual queues on the server weren’t being mapped to the shares when using the alias.

I spent several hours Googling, and attempting fixes which ran the gamut from rebooting the server, creating host name entries on the server, checking the DNS records for the server and the cname, creating registry edits for setting lanman parameters, to setting SPN records.  Finally, deep in the bowels of Google somewhere down around the 25th page of results, I found a tiny no name forum, which I can’t even find again now to give it the link love it so rightly deserves, was someone who had the exact same problem.  That forum post claimed the resolution was to rejoin the server to the domain.  I almost disregarded it entirely because I couldn’t come up with a single reason why this would work, and the connection to the domain seemed to be intact as I was able to login and authenticate to the server, and the domain doesn’t even know about the cname alias.  Having tried everything else and having no other viable options on the table short of trying to migrate the printer queues to a new server with no guarantee that would solve the problem, I gave it a shot.  Sure enough after the server rebooted, my print connections to the alias showed up as online, and started working again.  Probably the most frustrating issue I have ever encountered during an upgrade was fixed by just about the easiest possible thing you could do, which just intensified the frustration and the celebratory drinking which soon followed.

So, the moral of the story is: If your cname alias for your Windows 2008 print server stops working after an SP2 upgrade, try rejoining the server to the domain.

The first order of business was upgrading WordPress to version 2.3 which took forever due to cryptic error messages like: “cheatin huh?”, something along the lines of “Firefox has determined that this page will never load due to infinite redirection”, and a couple other hurdles.  It turns out some of that was due to my original theme, which is why I’m back to the classic WordPress theme and makes my second order of business creating/hacking a new theme.  Please hang in there as the new content is coming soon, I promise! 

To change the block size of a vmfs filesystem, you need to use vmkfstools to reformat the partition.  The command is:vmkfstools --createfs vmfs3 --blocksize 8M vmhba0:0:0:3 It is important to note that like any other formatting procedure, this will destroy any data on the partition, so make sure you move your data before you do this.  The “vmhba0:0:0:3″ is where you specify which partition to reformat.  According to the VMWare server configuration guide, the format is:

vmhbaA:T:L:P format, where A, T, L, and P are integers representing adapter, target, LUN, and partition number respectively. The partition digit must be greater than zero and should correspond to a valid VMFS partition of type fb

For example, vmhba0:2:3:1 refers to the first partition on LUN 3, target 2, HBA 0.

If you’re reformatting a current vmfs filesystem just to increase the blocksize, you can get that information from the storage section in the configuration tab of the Virtual Infrastructure Client.

I happened to stumble onto an interview on YouTube a few weeks ago from MSNBC where Tucker Carlson confronts McCarthy about the ban, and barrel shrouds in particular.  After McCarthy tries to side step the question 3 times, she finally admits she has no idea what a barrel shroud is, but that banning them would make the US a safer place.  How people who don't have a clue get into positions this powerful is beyond me.  Click here for the full text of HR1022.

[tags]Carolyn McCarthy, HR1022, Clinton assault weapons ban, law enforcement protection act of 2007, clinton gun ban, stupid politicans, open mouth insert foot, msnbc, tucker carlson[/tags]

[tags]bud lite commercial, good commercials, superbowl commercials, beer, bud lite, swear jar, office, swearjar[/tags]

The first thing that came to  mind after reading this wasn't, "Thank goodness nobody got hurt" instead it was, "Who counterfeits toothpaste?!".  Honestly, what kind of racket is this?  What can you make per tube of fake toothpaste?  30, maybe 40 cents?  And how do you get paid for it once it's in the supply stream?  None of this makes sense!  This may just go down in history as the worst money making scheme ever.   

If you find a tube of Colgate that has a bunch of spelling mistakes and was made in South Africa the next time you brush your teeth, put it down and go buy yourself some genuine Crest.

[tags]counterfeit toothpaste, colgate, bad ideas, how to get rid of the neighbor's dog, diethylene glycol, antifreeze, ghetto radio, 80's music, counterfeit, toothpaste[/tags]